Quote #1

I 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.

More from Dmitri Shostakovich

  1. There can be no music without ideology. The old composers, whether they knew it or not, were upholding a political theory. Most of them, of…
  2. What can be considered human emotions? Surely not only lyricism, sadness, tragedy? Doesn't laughter also have a claim to that lofty title? …
  3. If they cut off both hands, I will compose music anyway holding the pen in my teeth.
  4. A great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed. Any prelude or fugue of Bach can be played at any tempo, with or wit…
  5. A creative artist works on his next composition because he is not satisfied with his previous one. When he loses a critical attitude toward…
  6. I don't think that either self-deprecation or self-aggrandizement is among the defining qualities of an artist:Beethoven could have been fo…
  7. Music is a means capable of expressing dark dramatism and pure rapture, suffering and ecstasy, fiery and cold fury, melancholy and wild mer…
  8. Real music is always revolutionary, for it cements the ranks of the people; it arouses them and leads them onward.

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