Real music is always revolutionary, for it cements the ranks of the people; it arouses them and leads them onward.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHReal music is always revolutionary, for it cements the ranks of the people; it arouses them and leads them onward.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHA great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHThe most uninteresting part of the biography of a composer is his childhood. All those preludes are the same and the reader hurries on to the fugue.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHThe majority of my symphonies are tombstones.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHI live in the USSR, work actively and count naturally on the worker and peasant spectator. If I am not comprehensible to them I should be deported.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHA creative artist works on his next composition because he was not satisfied with his previous one.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHI don’t know what will become of this piece. Our brave critics will no doubt charge me with imitating Ravel’s Bolero. Too bad – this is how I hear war.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHWhat you have in your head, put down on paper. The head is a fragile vessel.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHFootball is the ballet of the masses.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHI feel eternal pain for those who were killed by Hitler, but I feel no less pain for those killed on Stalin’s orders. I suffer for everyone who was tortured, shot, or starved to death.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHWhat can be considered human emotions? Surely not only lyricism, sadness, tragedy? Doesn’t laughter also have a claim to that lofty title? I want to fight for the legitimate right of laughter in “serious” music.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHThose who have ears to hear, will hear.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHI always try to make myself as widely understood as possible; and if I don’t succeed, I consider it my own fault.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHThe real geniuses know where their writing has to be good and where they can get away with some mediocrity.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHIt’s about the people, who have stopped believing because the cup of evil has run over.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHStravinsky the composer I worship. Stravinsky the thinker I despise.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH