I don't personally consider Shostakovich one of "the great composers", but even barring that, both Messiaen and Ligeti, who died more recently, are quite popular and frequently discussed.

The problem with this question is that people's definitions of what constitutes a "great composer" differ widely, as do their qualifications for being considered "one of the great composers".

 

I noticed a lot of TC discussions tend to come back to definitions. While useful, it often distracts the thread/topic. In cases like this, I tend to think those who argue about definitions would be in the "disagree" option (in this poll anyway).

 

Depends on how you take to his music, I guess. I don't. I find it dull, boring and depressing. Therefore he's not a "great" composer in my book. There are a lot of his supporters here on TC who feel otherwise. That's what makes a horserace.

"Big name"? Yes, among folks like us. But the man on the street? Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, yes. Most of them probably never heard of Shostakovich.

As for me, I would rather listen to William Schuman's symphonies, which are a bit pithier.
I simply don't have all day to listen!!

One thing they both have in common-most "regular folks" never heard of either one of them!

 

...Despite all the political upheavals of the years he was active in two world wars...

Shostakovich was twelve when WW One ended, so that might be pushing it a bit. But in answer to your question, yes. So far.

 

You are right. Thank you for pointing that out.

 

voted yes................
but a bit too depressing

 

...a pithier true statement this board has not seen. It would be less pithy to include self-justification of (a somewhat infamously limited) personal taste, but I suppose that is inherent in "self-gratification."

RE: the OP, "Was Dmitri Shostakovich The Last Of The Best Known Great Composers?"

NOT!

 

No he wasn't, a lot of great (whatever that means) well-known composers came after him, like Messiaen.

I'm a huge fan of Shostakovich but I must say that I'm constantly annoyed by the questions posed everywhere: was Shostakovich the greatest composer of this and that, was he the last great symphonist, was he this and that and the best, blah blah blah. Where does this need to exaggerate the importance of his music come from?

 

I think members are just having a discussion about the man and his music.

 

We once a long thread on about the same subject:

http://www.talkclassical.com/538-shostakovich-last-great-symphonist-10.html

Naturally, I disagree with the assumption that he was "the last of the greatest".

 

The allegation appears to be that the OP posits a question that the OP already 'knows' the answer to as a way of the poster receiving confirmation of the OP's existing beliefs

Whether this 'sticks' or not is not for me to say, you honour!

 

Of course I have my own views, as I do with most of my other polls. That's exactly why I do polls, to see what other members think/discuss. And what's "wrong" with that?

 

The problem is that composers often only become known about by the general public and/or considered great after a time lapse; so that many of us won't live to find out about more recent composers who may in fifty or a hundred years completely dwarf Shostakovich in reputation.

I have to admit that before I became interested in classical music, about two years ago, I had heard of Shostakovich but hadn't heard of Messaien or Ligeti. But honestly, that proves nothing except my ignorance and I'm certainly not qualified to comment on whether he was 'great' or not. I voted 'don't know enough to comment/decide'.

On the other hand, I always enjoy reading these threads and hope I'll learn a few more names to juggle with.

 

I don't think so. Even if we just stick to Russian composers I've been a lot more impressed by Schnittke and Gubaidulina. There is nothing wrong with someone preferring Shosty's music to the newer stuff, but to think that because of ones music preference composers just stopped being "great" where their tastes end I don't think makes a lot of sense.

 

I don't know if he's one of the greats (Whatever that means), but I do like/enjoy his music tremendously. To my ears, Shostakovich will always be a terrific composer who wrote lots of amazing music that I enjoy greatly, and whatever category he might be placed in by the general populace is of no importance to me.

I guess I must rescind my response to the OP because it truly matters not to me whether Shostakovich is considered one of the greats or not.

 

Shostakovich had the fortune (or misfortune) to live and compose music through traumatic times for Russia, and whatever it's failings as pure music, much of his music seems to speak of that trauma. It connected powerfully for Russian audiences at the time, and still does for many as a human document. On purely abstract musical grounds Shostakovich is not that great a composer. But most people don't judge music's greatness on abstract musical grounds.

 

He was, at least in my opinion, a towering figure of 20th c. music but he also happened to be in very good company - I wouldn't put him above or below illustrious near-contemporaries such as Britten, Copland and Weill. Perhaps Shostakovich is discussed as often as he is because of the extraordinarily tumultuous times in the country that he lived in and the fact that he had to don different musical masks at times in order to get through it all.

Of course, he wasn't the only composer who experienced difficulties with authority (either in the USSR or anywhere else), but he seemed to have to jump through more hoops than most and because he was a 'survivor' after so many cultural figures had fallen by the wayside this perhaps helps to add lustre to his reputation.

 

The poll choices are to few and unconsidered, the truth (if there are one) is an amalgam!

/ptr

 

The poll choices are to few and unconsidered, the truth (if there are one) is an amalgam.

Dmitri might have agreed. "For some reason, people think that music must tell us only about the pinnacles of the human spirit, or at least about highly romantic villains. But there are very few heroes or villains. Most people are average, neither black nor white. They're gray. A dirty shade of gray."

 

How well known is Shostakovich? I think if I mentioned his name at the office, most wouldn't have heard of him. More would have heard of Philip Glass.

 

In my (ex) office most would have asked what football team did he play for.

 

Shostakovich is a great composer but how can one dismiss Messiaen and Ligeti among others?

I am truly amazed at Ligeti's genius embedded in every single piece of music he composed. He died just eight years ago and I am sure he will be remembered for a long time as a truly great modern composer.

Dismissal of other composers with a blanket refusal to acknowledge other forms and styles of music is wrong in my books.

 

Shostakovich is a great composer but how can one dismiss Messiaen and Ligeti among others?

Add to that: Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Carter, Partch, Stockhausen, Xenakis, Pettersson, and the 'Vulture' himself, Stravinsky. In such formidable company, Shostakovich can't be considered a great anything -- at least not in the field of music.

 

John Williams is far more well known than Shostakovich, and yet Shostakovich is better.

Hmm, maybe popularity has nothing to do with quality. Could it be?

 

I agree with the sentiment of your post, but surely you cannot simply say that Shostakovich is 'better' than Williams? As we know, some hate Shostakovich, others hate Williams. You say that Shostakovich is better as if it was simply a universally accepted fact, like "France is in Europe!", or something like that.
From what I have heard of their music, both are very good composers.

 

If you talk to some people in the general public, the last of the best known great composers might be Beethoven. If you ask the question here on TC, then the answer is no.

 

Considering the balance between the political circumstances of Shostakovich and his music, compared with other composers mentioned in this thread so far, I think Dimitri has an edge over the others. I mean he wasn't a free artist compared with the others, politically and even socially. He crafted his music allowing for all the perceptions that were around him ready to fire at him musically and maybe even personally.

 

Every composer in the USSR including the Eastern Bloc around that time were under the same conditions, Gubaidulina, Ligeti, Schnittke i.e. other composers that have been mentioned that were younger than Shostakovich.

 

Aram Khachaturian died in 1978. Aaron Copland died in 1990.

Both of these composers' works are better known to the public at large than anything by Shostakovich I'm afraid.

I like Shotakovich's music, but I certainly hope he was not the last great composer. That would be horrible

 

Aram Khachaturian died in 1978. Aaron Copland died in 1990.

Both of these composers' works are better known to the public at large than anything by Shostakovich I'm afraid.

I agree with you that the 'public at large' wouldn't know anything by Shostakovich, but I am pretty certain that the 'public at large' in Britain would know nothing by Copland or Kachaturian either unless they were 50 or older - then they might know the theme tune to The Onedin Line or Emerson, Lake and Palmer's Fanfare to the Common Man but probably in neither case would they have heard the music out of those contexts and they may well struggle to name the composer.

 

What do you think, ArtMusic, of Boulez calling Shostakovitch's symphonic output as "third pressing Mahler" (like over-pressed olive oil, each pressing renders less and less quality)?

 

Or Holloway, who called DSCH's music "battleship-grey in melody and harmony, factory-functional in structure; in content all rhetoric and coercion." Yes, but still...

 

but still ... Stalingrad !!!!!!

 

The well-known musicologist Richard Taruskin revised his dismissive opinion of Shostakovich's music during a research stay in the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. His comments in a New Republic article are worth reading. This edited extract is from a Wiki contributor.

"For the first time there occurred to me, half-formed, the unbearable suspicion that the ways of listening to music and thinking about music that had been instilled in me and all my peers at home were impoverished ways... the idea of Shostakovich's doubleness struck me, and with tremendous force. It was not just Shostakovich's unique stature that I sensed. His stature was among all the artists whom I could name. It was a backhanded fulfillment of the old Socialist Realist ideal -- and the older Tolstoyan ideal -- of an art that would speak with equal directness and equal consequence to all levels of society, from the least educated to the most educated...

[After the premiere of the Fifteenth Symphony] I was shaken that night in a way that no concert before or since has shaken me... the effect of this particular evening was to rattle me out of my complacency regarding the inhumanity of the musical esthetic in which I had been raised -- an ideal that nurtured self-regard and social indifference... The avant-garde position...had become a cultural leftover, emptied of appeal not just for audiences but for artists as well. What it lacked, precisely, is the resonance that comes from doubleness. And the source of doubleness is social engagement."

Added: Found the whole article. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/double-trouble

 

I'm willing to say that Shostakovich is a great composer and then to say that I don't much like most of his music. I don't necessarily find it empty or boring or lacking in skill. I simply don't empathize with it. S's personality and preoccupations don't mesh very well with mine, therefore I often get annoyed when I listen to him, as I would at having to spend time with an incompatible person. And that's about all there is to it.

Our evaluations of composers' works have objective elements which we can look at and say "that's good" or even "that's great," but our estimate of those works is never based entirely on those factors. Works of art may be great not only because they're well put together but because they say great things -significant and powerful things. But we may hear something significant and powerful being said, recognize it as such, and still not enjoy hearing it. And so we must offer any pronouncements about relative greatness cautiously, with the knowledge that our sympathies play a role in our judgments.

It seems to me that Shostakovich and Prokofiev are probably the greatest Russian composers of the twentieth century (with a very honorable mention going to Rachmaninov, whom I can sometimes love more than either of the others). I wouldn't presume to say which of the two is greater - but I like Prokofiev a lot more. The important thing for me - next to just enjoying the music of course - is to try to understand what makes a highly regarded composer, in both his skills and his message, so highly regarded.

 

It seems to me that Shostakovich and Prokofiev are probably the greatest Russian composers of the twentieth century (with a very honorable mention going to Rachmaninov, whom I can sometimes love more than either of the others). I wouldn't presume to say which of the two is greater - but I like Prokofiev a lot more. The important thing for me - next to just enjoying the music of course - is to try to understand what makes a highly regarded composer, in both his skills and his message, so highly regarded.

You don't count Stravinsky as Russian because he lived most of his life outside this country, or you just consider all of the mentioned composers simply superior to him?

 

Very much enjoying DSCH's Symphony #1 right now. Astonishing considering it was essentially a student work. Perhaps a tonic for people put off a bit by the grimness of some of his later works.

 

Student works are fascinating. They can show how far the student has absorbed from student to master.