If they cut off both hands, I will compose music anyway holding the pen in my teeth.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHIf they cut off both hands, I will compose music anyway holding the pen in my teeth.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHMusic is good, not evil. Poetry is good, not evil. Primitive, but oh, so true!
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHReal music is always revolutionary, for it cements the ranks of the people; it arouses them and leads them onward.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHThe majority of my symphonies are tombstones.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHWhen a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something.
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 SHOSTAKOVICHThe best way to hold on to something is to pay no attention to it. The things you love too much perish. You have to treat everything with irony, especially the things you hold dear. There’s more of a chance then that they’ll survive.
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 SHOSTAKOVICHThe real geniuses know where their writing has to be good and where they can get away with some mediocrity.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHOur business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHA great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed.
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 SHOSTAKOVICHIn the long run, any words about music are less important than the music.
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 SHOSTAKOVICHI write music, it’s performed. After all, my music says it all. It doesn’t need historical and hysterical commentaries. In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHStravinsky the composer I worship. Stravinsky the thinker I despise.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH