Response to Geoff Kuenning's artical "Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5 in D Minor"

The artical talked about the mentioned it was Shostakovich's misstep that he composed the Fourth Symphony after the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and he " Despite the risk of associating with an 'enemy of the people' ". Actually, it's not Shostakovich's fault. And the opera Lady Macbeth is also a great opera. But in that time 1930s, Russia was undergoing and the Soviet government killed lots of people. And the main problem is inside of the government, they even created a rule for the composers that all the composition must in tonal and triditional in harmony and with clear melody. But in 1920s to 1930s Prokofiev and Stravinsky is like the super star in composers, many composers influenced by them. And they were tried to use some use textures to compose. But it's not allowed by the soviet government. So Shostakovich met a denunciation, in the 1936 began with a series of attacks on him in Pravda, in particular an article entitled Muddle Instead of Music. The campaign, which condemned Lady Macbeth as formalist, "coarse, primitive and vulgar,"was thought to have been instigated by Stalin; consequently, commissions began to dry up, and his income fell by about three quarters. The Fourth Symphony entered rehearsals that December, but the political climate made performance impossible. It was not performed until 1961, but Shostakovich did not repudiate the work: it retained its designation as his Fourth Symphony. A piano reduction was published in 1946.
More widely, 1936 marked the beginning of the Great Terror, in which many of the composer's friends and relatives were imprisoned or killed. His only consolation in this period was the birth of his daughter Galina in 1936; his son Maxim was born two years later.The composer's response to his denunciation was the Fifth Symphony of 1937, which was, because of its fourth movement, musically more conservative than his earlier works. It was a success, and is still one of his most popular works. It was also at this time that Shostakovich composed the first of his string quartets. His chamber works allowed him to experiment and express ideas which would have been unacceptable in his more public symphonic pieces. In September 1937, he began to teach composition at the Conservatory, which provided some financial security but interfered with his own creative work.

The introduction of Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony is available at "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._5_(Shostakovich)"

Music scholars versus musicians

There are something different between a music scholar and a musician. A music scholar means a people learning music and maybe he/she has ability to play or represent music and who known music very well. A music scholar can be a person learned in a conservatory and who learned everything same as a musician. But if people want to be a musician, you must be more professional than a music scholar. For a musician, never late for each orchestra rehearsal. A musician is not just has ability to represent music but also has the ability to teach others to learn and know what music is. A music scholar can be a musician, but you need to know more about the skill and ability both in music and something related by music even in the how to talk with others.

What music means to me

I started music learning at age of 8 as a saxophone player. I wonder if there is such a thing as important as music in my live. I listen to the music anytime and everywhere. I use the 2 movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No.8 as the alarm for wake up. I learn music in school, I analyze and compose music in my theory class, I play the oboe in orchestra and we payed time to rehears every notes and rests and every cut-offs. And our orchestra just had a concert in Esplanade. I enjoyed practice everyday and every week I've major lesson which is so interesting. For me music is such as thing as breathe in my life.