Shostakovich: String Quartet No.1 in C major Op.49 [July 1938]

LIGHTS UP: SUNNY IF SOMEWHAT JAUNDICED

Interior: a small apartment with simple furnishings.

The composer sits at a table toying with a Belomorkanal cigarette.

He stands and walks to the window and stares out through blinds which are slightly opened. 

I am certain.

Of uncertainty.

He clears his throat.

I am alive.

And strongly supported by Slavic optimism.

Tilts his head to one side, stares directly at the audience and smiles.

Not everyone is equipped for that.

If Slavic optimism manifested itself in the West

You’d hardly consider it uplifting.

Particularly if you tried to hyper-rationalize.

Slavic optimism is a riddle told by time.

He crosses back to the table.

There’ll be time.

For talking.

He sits, carefully laying the cigarette diagonally across the pack.

To one’s self.

To who else?

Raises an index finger, as if proposing a toast.

To Franz Josef Haydn.

He listens.

Pause.

Very quiet in the bright sun off the water,

Inconspicuous on the streets of Petrograd—excuse me, Leningrad.

He removes his spectacles, rubs his forehead, then stares at his fingertips absently as if to see if anything came away with them.

Don’t talk to me. Don’t even look at me.

My name is...

I live and try to work inside of a fantastic tragicomedy

They tell me all sorts of unbelievable things

These people here

Silence, as he replaces his spectacles and bites the cardboard tube of the papirosa cigarette, stands and walks to the window where he stares once more through the blinds.

To quote my good friend Mikhail Zoshchenko,

Writer of stories which are utterly saturated in Slavic optimism:

I don’t hate anybody—that’s my precise ideology.

BLACKOUT

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Shostakovich: String Quartet No.2 in A major Op.86 [1944]

LIGHTING RESUMES AT A SLIGHTLY BRIGHTER SETTING

The composer is lying on the bed grasping an unlit cigarette.

I’m talking to myself.

I live upstairs where the lights stay on late.

And lying wide awake I dream of faces.

The marbled surface of memory.

He stands and walks forward as proscenium dissipates.

SPECIAL LIGHTING CASTS SILHOUETTE OF ROUGH WOODEN OUTDOOR STAIRWAY

Faces in the sky.

He takes a deep breath.

STAIRWAY SHADOW DISAPPEARS

AS LIGHTING BECOMES SIGNIFICANTLY DARKER, MORE TEXTURED

Another vodka episode.

Alone I wrote in the air with my finger.

So that no one could detect precisely what it was I was up to.

He faces to one side, speaking in profile.

Slowly I will walk to the dam and listen to its dynamos.

Almost imperceptible, in the rain and fog.

I am a man but look at me a boy in shirtsleeves and collar.

Ink-stained fingers adjusting spectacles.

I am capable of introspection

Every bit as much as Rilke

He gives a start and turns abruptly 180 degrees, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief, gasping for breath.

Vsevolod.

Meyerhold.

Pinned to a filthy wall.

The moon is filled with pus.

A long sigh, and again he removes his glasses, but now he wipes his eyes and blows his nose. Stuffing the kerchief in his pocket, he clears his throat and addresses the audience with slightly restored composure.

My black brothers call this “blues”.

I’m not giving it a name tonight.

Besides, it runs back across centuries.

Like acres of Flemish linen bleaching in the sun.

This peculiar sense of life and death.

It’s as simple as a waltz.

He begins to dance, somewhat awkwardly.

What was it Mahler said?

Death takes the fiddle!

Jump, you rascal, jump.

Stops abruptly.

Holds out his hands which are unsteady.

Like my hands with nothing to calm them.

Puts his hands in his pants pockets.

Begins to pace the floor.

What is the music saying?

What does it mean?

What’s it tell you that I cannot?

One doesn’t set off magnesium flares.

With resignation:

Cross the street when you see me approaching.

Angrily:

They have the unmitigated gall.

To insist upon contrition and accessibility.

As if I were adjustable.

As if my voice were something out of a tap.

I cannot speak to anyone just now.

Tomorrow perhaps but not at this moment.

You’ll see me walking away, don’t ask.

It’s cumulative, you see? And protracted.

Whimsically:

We’re possibly waltzing again perhaps

And none of us carry pistols

We are simple enough for regular weapons:

Cigarettes mostly.

And warm enough in winter.

And verses memorized by heart.

And decent meals shared with friends.

From behind the armchair he produces a small suitcase and embraces it with both arms.

I keep this packed all the time

In case I have to leave in a hurry

Squeezing the suitcase like a life preserver

At any moment I could be summoned for questioning

Sometimes I wait half the night on a chair in the hallway

So my family won’t be disturbed by the noise

Places the suitcase back behind the chair

Returns to stand at the window

Closes the blinds entirely but holds them away from the glass and carefully peers outside.

LIGHTS GRADUALLY FADE TO BLACK

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Shostakovich: String Quartet No.3 in F Op.73 [summer 1946]

THE LIGHTS ARE AT THEIR BRIGHTEST SO FAR, WITH YELLOW & AMBER TONES

The composer has removed a stack of folders from the drawer of his desk.

We used to drink tea and talk about the future, remember?

Joscha and Nadzia would laugh and say so much without using words.

Just their eyes, remember?

He lifts his face as if scanning the sky through the ceiling.

I thought I heard thunder.

Remember how the chickens hated thunder, as much as we hated artillery?

Taps the folders with an unlit cigarette.

This is chambered music.

Each score is placed in a drawer upon completion.

I won't even bother trying to have this stuff performed—or published.

Not now.

Drops the folders on the desk with a thump.

What a peculiar position to be in.

Everything we create is subject to official interpretation.

And I'd rather have no interpretation at all.

He puts them swiftly away.

Into the drawer with it!

A long silence as he crosses to the table sits down and runs his hands through his hair, scratching behind the ears. Tension builds.

What?

Haven’t I been a good boy?

They have no idea.

He rubs his head with both hands, mussing his hair.

I’ll make my fiddles to mince around tip-toe.

As if not to cause a ruckus.

Pause

I just want to be left alone.

I haven’t done anything wrong.

He stares with incredulity.

I can see them all commence to dance.

When the directors say so.

Can’t you?

Every so often.

The current gets switched on.

And they all commence to dancing.

On their knees.

Or even in their graves.

At least a game on the field is honest:

One kicks the ball either

This way or that

And if we disagree with the way it’s called

We can holler together in protest

He sighs.

But the rest of life seems to be so much more irrational.

I’ve begun to sign my name to the most ridiculous statements.

Simply to get them to let me be.

There comes a point at which

The natural response consists

Of resignation,

To all appearances.

He stands.

You know the saying:

Give ‘em the finger

But with your hand

Deep down in

Your pants pocket.

He demonstrates by doing so.

THERE IS A CHANGE IN LIGHTING

He pours half a glass of vodka.

Raising the glass he toasts the audience:

To moderation.

Everything in moderation.

Especially moderation itself.

He tosses down the liquor and grimaces slightly.

THE LIGHTS ARE DIMMING YET EVERYTHING IS BECOMING MORE DISTINCT

I had a bit too much to drink.

I walked through the square to the park.

It was very dark.

The moon had waned to nearly nothing up there.

Comrade Stalin

Has measured everything out

Including insomnia

I have my share

Once in the night shadows of the trees

I began to relax and breathe deeply.

The vodka was still in my bones.

But I felt better able to handle myself.

I heard an owl.

An owl is heard.

Lit a cigarette.

Sat down and rubbed my eyes.

He lights a cigarette, sits down, removes his spectacles and rubs his eyes.

Slowly the dance returned in my head.

I found myself smiling.

Later under the streetlight when I saw myself reflected in the window of a shop.

I could see what is happening to my face.

I’m looking progressively older and puffier.

The queerest thing about the face I saw in the glass.

Was the way its mouth behaved when it smiled:

One corner up, one down.

LIGHTS INTENSIFY TO MAXIMUM BRIGHTNESS, THEN BLACKOUT

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Shostakovich: String Quartet No.4 in D major Op.83 [1949]

THE LIGHTS ARE RICHLY BLENDED VARIATIONS ON LAVENDER

The composer has lit a small candle.

This is a shawl to be used in reflection.
For nobody but me at this point.
Nobody is to hear this just yet.
My invisible ode to all Jews.

He speaks pragmatically:

Perhaps it’s just as well this way.
I got by with the 5^th symphony.
They invented a program for it.
Something they’ll never do to this.

But all the same I’m shaken.
To have been officially named for the second time:
Enemy of the People Shostakovich

Succinctly:

My name is Dmitri
As a child they called me Mitya
I was born in September
Nineteen hundred and six

My parents wanted to name me
Jaroslav but the priest objected:
“That will never do”

He deliberately downs another glass of vodka.

Everyone is acting strangely.
Although certainly one should be accustomed to this sort of thing by now.

I find myself walking by myself.

He paces, looking down.

Minding my own business.
Watching my feet.

Stops short. Glancing up to confront the audience.

You should know that these quartets are my uncensored reflections.
Although some would consider them little more than nail parings.

He places both hands face down upon the table.

My name is Dmitri Dmitriyevich.
I am the same one to whom you gave the Stalin Prize.

My grandfather was a Polish revolutionary.

I have woven here the fine fabric of Judaica.
It cannot be separated from that of Russia.

Impossible to deny these people their existence and well-being.
Also unthinkable that I should fail to weave this cloth for them.

For the Jews
And for Armenia
For Palestine
And the Jews

Archly:

‘Rootless Cosmopolitans’?
You’d better include me too.

BLACKOUT








© arwulf arwulf 2015

Shostakovich: String Quartet No.5 in B Flat Op.92 [1952]

DRAMATICALLY CONTRASTED LIGHTING

The composer sits rigidly in an armchair.

He speaks with concise gravity.

Judge me, judge yourself.

Look to your own hands.

It’s written in the psalm:

Blood shall be avenged.

The voices of victims will be heard.

Nobody is silent forever.

Not even me.

But I have a beautiful curse to deliver.

With almost surgical precision:

With this quartet Iosif Vissarionovich—Stalin

I do bring you to your death bed in its well-protected bunker

To arch your back in convulsions and stare with horror

At the phantoms on the ceiling as you die.

As he rises and moves forward,

THE LIGHTS CAUSE THE COMPOSER TO BECOME EFFULGENT.

IT IS ALMOST AS IF HE IS THE SOURCE OF THE EMANATIONS WHICH TRANSFORM THE SPACE.

A STREETLIGHT APPEARS PROJECTED ON THE WALL,

BUT IT IS THE COMPOSER WHO SEEMS TO GLOW.

It is past midnight again.

Once again I am at large.

The pulse of the entire continent is audible.

If one moves quietly and wanders at night.

I’m hearing all of you as you sleep and dare to dream.

I hear you.

I am the ears of night.

They think that they are the ears but I…

He smiles oddly and brandishes his cigarette, then plants it behind an ear.

This one here.

Smoking alone.

Beneath the lamps.

I am the ears of night.

But then I am the afternoons.

And early evenings as well.

I am all the time you’re given.

All the days and nights am I.

Wistfully, then with grim satisfaction:

It is possible I am the chance.

To hold hands and start to dance.

But then again…

He crosses back to the sink and opens the taps.

Excuse me…

Throws water in his face, dries off with a thread barren towel which hangs on a nail.

Ahem.

Straightening his necktie while gazing unhappily into a ridiculously small mirror:

Dress myself for dignity’s sake:

Naked for all state occasions.

Crosses back to the dresser, which he caresses absently

My friends who disappeared belong with me at least.

In the arms and legs of this little quartet with its heart opened.

I mustn’t obsess, it’s unhealthy.

I’ll simply live to another morning.

Then another.

And fill the drawer with music.

A hidden voice is best

for calling the names of friends

who cannot be brought to dinner again.

The hidden voice is necessary, and very personal.

I continue to call the names of my very own friends.

LIGHTS GRADUALLY FADE TO BLACK

They are summoned

With the cello

Violins and viola

I pass them invitations

And then they come.

© arwulf arwulf 2015

Shostakovich: String Quartet No.6 in G Major Op.101 [1956]

LIGHTS ARE BRILLIANT AS IF THE COMPOSER IS AT THE SEASHORE.

We are in the present day.

I watched the people at

The beach and the waves

Themselves I watched as

The gulls tackled each

Other over scraps of food

I saw us for what we are

And always will be

I saw a family of Chassids

Out for a walk

Taking the air

We are all breathing it in

That is most likely too simple

For the simpletons who seem

To require complexioned

Complexities; it’s so simple.

And that gets them riled.

They wish for a specially

Crafted simple complexity

They much prefer it that way.

LIGHTING SUGGESTS HE HAS WANDERED OFF AND CLOUDS ARE GATHERING IN THE SKY

We hear the beginning of the andante caloroso from Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No.7

{this could be interpreted by any instrument}

All of this aside—can you

Believe how fate put Sergei’s

Death right under Stalin’s?!

No one spoke of Prokofiev

They all got busy, industriously

Grieving as if their lives depended

On the one death and in truth

They did!

But I’m thinking about Sergei

Never thought I’d miss him this way

I miss so many of you now

And as priggish as he was

I wish that more of us had been

At his tiny funeral; after all

As different as we were and are

A larger picture’s to be seen

And this is what’s possible in the key of G major

Savor it the way you savor fish

Or wine or chocolates or a kiss

Or waking up knowing you’ve survived

Equilibrium

Up the back stairs

and let myself in the side door

Put my coat in the closet

And sketch these ideas out

Before laying myself down

Progression and balance

I can build something

The way they make

Tiers of hanging crystal

In the chandeliers, I can

Wrap these tones together

In braids and loops and

Spirals, you will see me

With my arms in the air

I will actually spin as if

I was a dancer which I’m not.

(Honestly, no! Of all things!)

But this is a dance I’ve written.

So that you might feel it too.

There’s no need for subsidy.

Or public discourse.

This is highly personal.

He gestures with cupped hands, ending with both arms outstretched towards the audience.

Catch the housefly.

And release him outside.

BLACKOUT

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