The Techniques Of Shostakovich's String Quartets

In terms of the various schools of Western music of the 20^th century, it is really difficult to categorize Shostakovich, for he never identified himself with any school. That, however, did not prevent him creating his own style. His basic musical idioms were based on the tradition of tonality, but he also, if necessary, resorted to dissonances and occasional atonality. He dealt with a considerable variety of genres, ranging from operas, dance dramas, choruses, concertos for all kinds of instruments, chamber music for piano and strings, string quartets, music for piano solo, to music for films, dramas and vocal music.In this thesis, a study is made on six of Shostakovich's fifteen string quartets (nos.1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8), analyzing every theme, every chordal structure, the harmony progression, the tonal plan and the form of each of the compositions, based on which we try to generalize his techniques, both in the common and the individual senses, and examine how he combined tradition and innovation, the national spirit and the modern style, which will definitely be a useful guide to our own practice. As Chinese musical professionals, we should make every effort to explore better ways to absorb the international musical language into our own tradition and our national elements, so as to produce more outstanding modern works with Chinese spirit.The thesis is divided into four parts.Part One: study of the theme. First, the themes of the works chosen are categorized , according to their subjects, modes and styles, into several types, such as themes of major-minor key style, themes of Russian folk music, themes that emphasize special intervals, etc.. Second, attempt is also made to study the means by which themes are developed, involving imitation of the motifs within the key, imitation among remote keys and transformation of themes.Part Two: study of the harmony. On the one hand, various chordal structures are enumerated, which are used entirely out of vertical thinking. Among them we have superposition of the third—whether with additional tones or not, which is of traditional use, and tone cluster, superposition of minor second and perfect fourth, which are characteristics of modern music. On the other hand, attention is paid to the horizontal thinking as well. Elements of persistency and parallelism, linear harmony, semitonic part and the like are sorted and studied.Part Three: study of the tonality. First, new patterns of tonal presentation are enumerated, which appeared in the works after the disappearance of the traditional functional harmony. Second, the features of the tonal plan and connection are classified and studied, both in general and in detail.Part Four: study of the form. Illustrations of the formal structure of each composition in the study are presented for reference.In the process of writing the thesis, I not only analyzed the scores in detail, but also, with the help of the computer, broke the sound materials into passages, phrases, and even smaller units, and listened them carefully. Through scrupulous comparison between the scores and the sound, we can virtually appreciate the charm of Shostakovich, whose mastery of the technique to combine the traditional and the modern, the national and the international, made his music so unique and fascinating.