Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad

Anderson, M.T. Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad. 2015. 456p. ISBN 9780763668181. Available as an eBook on Overdrive.

The most successful Russian composer of the 20th century, Dmitri Shostakovich found himself at the center of three momentous events in Russian history. He was a young child in St. Petersburg when the October Revolution dethroned the Tsar and eventually enshrined Lenin and the Communist Party. He continued living in renamed Leningrad through the Soviet purges of the late 1920s and the Great Terror of Stalin in the 1930s. He wrote his first symphony at the age of 18, and kept on writing music for the rest of his life. Living in a totalitarian state, Shostakovich had to be very guarded and careful in what he wrote, and several times his music was judged as reactionary, an accusation passable with death. He came close numerous times to being arrested or executed by the regime, but managed to escape through luck or the intervention of others.

Following the invasion of the Soviet Union by Germany in 1941, Shostakovich and 2.5 million other people were surrounded in Leningrad. The longest siege in history, the city of Leningrad was cut off on all sides by attacking German and Finnish armies, and, especially through the first winter, hundred of thousands died of hunger or fell under the relentless rain of bombs and artillery shells. Considered one of the prominent composers, Shostakovich was eventually evacuated with his immediate family and the rest of the Leningrad Conservatory towards safety east of the Urals. There, he completed his 7th Symphony, which he had begun writing in Leningrad.

What became known as the Leningrad Symphony was eventually played around the world, and premiered in Leningrad itself on August 9, 1943, still under siege. One of the most inspirational piece of music ever written, it gave the population hope that they would triumph over the German invaders.

This book is thus the story of Shostakovich and of his Seventh Symphony. But it is so much more than that. It is the story of an enduring people under incredible hardship and violence. It is the story of hope in the face of overwhelming odds. And it is the story of music’s power to motivate and celebrate life.

Interviews with M. T. Anderson