Songs of Night, Nights in Fear
Fear in the Music of Dmitrii Shostakovich
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
In the Stalin era, the privilege of expressing the things that could not be said fell to music. Dmitrii Shostakovich developed a virtual system of hidden meanings, something that gave his music a false bottom, which only those felt the same and understood this language could see through. He gave expression to the fears that inflicted an entire epoch – fears that appeared at night in particular.
(Osteuropa 8/2006, pp. 61–74)