He wrote three. I'd be fascinated to hear from anyone who can tell me which is the greatest of these symphonies and who this composer was.
2007-12-12 09:10:15 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Entertainment & Music ➔ Music ➔ Classical
Shostakovich composed 3 symphonies during WW2 - the 7th(1941), 8th (1943) and 9th (1945) . Many think that his Seventh Symphony was the best of the three.
EDIT: While Prokofiev's 5th is great (and a favorite of mine) it is the only one of his actually written during the war years. His 6th which takes the horrors of WW2 as its inspiration was composed post-war in 1947.
Musician, composer, teacher.
2007-12-12 09:25:13 · answer #1 · answered by Bearcat 7 · 4⤊ 0⤋
I take it by 'he' you mean Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975). The three symphonies known as the 'war trilogy' are:
Symphony No 7 in C major Op 60 'Leningrad' (1941)
Symphony No 8 in C minor Op 65 (1943)
Symphony No 9 in E flat Op 70 (1945)
... although the Ninth was written after the war had ended. People were expecting monumental victory symphony and what they got was the most lighthearted symphony Shostakovich wrote - which had the people scratching their heads and the Soviet authorities not best pleased.
The most famous of the three is the Seventh - the 'Leningrad' Symphony. The first three movements were actually written at the time that Shostakovich was working as a fireman in Leningrad. The Eighth is one of his finest works and is strewn with the agony, sorrow and brutality of war.
So, the Leningrad is the best known of these three symphonies but the Eighth is the stronger symphonic work by far. The Ninth is a wonderful work in its way - like a distillation of the Eighth with all the nasty bits taken out.
Other 'war' symphonies:
Prokofiev's Fifth (1944) was more a statement about the indomitability of the human spirit.
Khachaturian's Second Symphony (1942) has an elegy to war as its third movement.
The Third Symphony (Symphonie liturgique) by Swiss composer Arthur Honegger appeared just after the war in 1946 but is full of wartime angst and terror, as is the Second Symphony (Della guerra) of 1940 by the Lithuanian composer Vytautas BaceviÄius.
2007-12-12 11:12:00 · answer #2 · answered by del_icious_manager 7 · 1⤊ 1⤋
I'm going out on a limb here and guessing Prokofiev? The Fifth Symphony is a masterpiece, check it out even if that's not who you are referring to.
2007-12-12 09:28:56 · answer #3 · answered by kucletus 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky
2007-12-12 09:37:39 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 3⤋