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Dmitri Shostakovich Quotes - Page 2

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I always try to make myself as widely understood as possible; and if I don't succeed, I consider it my own fault.

I always try to make myself as widely understood as possible; and if I don't succeed, I consider it my own fault.

Dmitri Shostakovich
Trying, Succeed, Faults
New York Times, February 9, 1942.

He fell like a chicken into the soup.

Dmitri Shostakovich
Soup, Chickens

The 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 Shostakovich
Childhood, Biographies, Prelude

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.

Dmitri Shostakovich
Should, Peasants, Workers
"Shostakovich: A Life". Book by Laurel Fay, p. 55, 2000.

I don't think that either self-deprecation or self-aggrandizement is among the defining qualities of an artist... Beethoven could have been forgiven if his symphonies had gone to his head. Gretchaninoff could also be forgiven if his Dobrinya Nikititch went to his head. But neither one could be forgiven for writing a piece that was amoral, servile, the work of a flunky.

Dmitri Shostakovich
Writing, Artist, Thinking
"Composers on Music". Book edited by Josiah Fisk and Jeff Nichols, p. 354, letter to Isaac Glikman (February 26, 1960), 1997.

I don't know what will become of this piece. Our brave critics will no doubt charge me with imitating Ravel's Bolero. Too bad - this is how I hear war.

Dmitri Shostakovich
War, Brave, Doubt

Many consider that Shostakovich is the greatest 20th-century composer. In his 15 symphonies, 15 quartets, and in other works he demonstrated mastery of the largest and most challenging forms with music of great emotional power and technical invention...All his works are marked by emotional extremes - tragic intensity, grotesque and bizarre wit, humour, parody, and savage sarcasm.

Dmitri Shostakovich
Sarcasm, Emotional, Symphony

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