Orts #961

 

Shostakovich plays with clichés most of the time, I find. It's like olive oil, when you have a second and even third pressing, and I think of Shostakovich as the second, or even third, pressing of Mahler.
     ― Pierre Boulez (1925-2016)
 
Studying Mahler changed many things in my tastes as a composer. Mahler & Berg are my favourite composers even today, as opposed to Hindemith, say, [or] Krenek and Milhaud whom I liked when I was young but cooled towards rapidly.
     ― Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)

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Some additional quotes of Shostakovich
(most of these are from his book Testimony: The Memoirs)

 
When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something.
 
Football is the ballet of the masses.
 
I'm totally against walking around looking at the sky when you're experiencing a block, waiting for inspiration to strike you…. you [have] to write constantly. If you can't write a major work, write minor trifles. If you can't write at all, orchestrate something.
 
. . . the best way to hold on to something is to pay no attention to it. . . . You have to treat everything with irony, especially the things you hold dear.
 
I like listening to any music, including bad music. it's a professional disease, an addiction to notes. The brain finds sustenance in any combination of sounds. It works constantly, performing various composerly operations.
 
 I hate Toscanini. I've never heard him in a concert hall, but I've heard enough of his recordings. What he does to music is terrible in my opinion. He chops it up into a hash and then pours a disgusting sauce over it.
 
This quality of Jewish folk music [viz., it can appear to be happy when it's tragic] is close to my idea of what music should be. [There] should always be two layers in music.
 
So many unsaid things collect in the soul, so much exhaustion and irritation . . . you must unburden your spiritual world or risk a collapse. Sometimes you feel like screaming, but you control yourself and just babble some nonsense.