Dmitri Shostakovich
“That guy needs to cheer the fuck up.”
“When you play dodgeball, it's always important that you choose the bigger, and stronger kids on your team. That way you can gang up on the smaller, nerdy, and glasses-wearing kids, like Dmitri here.”
“Portraying Dmitri in Harry Potter was so amazing, yet each day I felt my character was becoming more like Edward Scissorhands than Houdini.”
Dmitri Dmitrison "Shostie" von Shostakovich (born 1906 C.E.) was a Soviet composer of emo music and popular television actor. Today his fan base consists mainly of depressed teenagers and his television show survives in syndication on Fox. He is most famous for his eighth string quartet, written to encourage his fanbase to slit their wrists.
Early Life & Education[edit | edit source]
Dmitri Shostakovich began his formal music education at the age of 5, in an elementary school in the village of Klod, Siberia. The only school within 10,784 miles to teach the infamous Orff Method, Klod Elementary was the perfect match for young Shostakovich, who once asked his music teacher, "But where are the actual notes?"
Criticised for his lack of appreciation for instruments that did not need to be thwacked to produce the majority of the score, Shostakovich was summarily expelled from Klod Elementary with a recommendation that no music school in the district take him on as a student. Young Dmitri passed several years searching for a school that would enroll him, though this is partially due to his search being interrupted every twenty minutes for him to break down and weep, morosely playing his violin to anyone who would listen.
Anyone who would listen turned out to be the KGB, because they had a habit of listening to you anyway, and in 1920, he was abducted by the State. He spent several months in prison. The squealing of the rats, grunts of forced laborers, and the dripping water inspired his sketches of this period, which in 1937 were compiled into the famous 5th Symphony, also known as the Stalingrad Symphony.
Using a fake ID to enroll in the Odessa Conservatory three years before the legal Russian composition age of 21, Shostakovich was a quiet presence on campus. But beneath the exterior smoldered rebellion, and also a portable kerosene stove that Shostakovich often kept in his underwear. He was nearly kicked out on three occasions for chromatic truancy, missing all the lectures about the major mode and several instrumentation lectures on appropriate french horn registers and trombone clef writing,he also missed lectures that laid out guidelines on playable tempos especially with regard to festival overtures and was temporarily suspended for insinuating that the 2-sided Soviet triangle was inadequate compared to Western models.
Professional Career[edit | edit source]
Television[edit | edit source]
At the end of the second world war, Shostakovich embarked upon a little-known television acting career to supplement his meager income as a composer. He auditioned frequently but was awarded few roles.
His first success in television arose with the early Soviet Reality TV programme "The OC" based on (and named after) his time at the Odessa Conservatory. Shostakovich, son of the wealthy son of rich internet tycoon Al Stalin, dismisses his father's wishes in pursuit of his dream of one day becoming a real live human composer. The series finally ends happily when Shostakovich realizes the silly error of his ways and exiles himself to the Gulag to die of frostbite, hypothermia, and malnutrition. His last line in the show was "If it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college."
Harry Potter Controversy[edit | edit source]
In 1997, J.K. Rowling published a well-known biography on Shostakovich--The Harry Potter Series. Harry Potter was the pen-name used by our very own Shostie in his diaries. After his final arrest, the diaries were confescated by Russian police and sold for a high sum to an anonymous British publishing company. Apparently, Ms. Rowling was an intern who had majored in Russian diary reproductions and fantasy editing.
The Harry Potter Series is not to be confused with Bela Bartok's autobiographical books-Twilight Saga: A love triangle of vampire Edward Grieg, Gordon Jacob Black and his gay lover, Bela Swan.
In this series, we learn that his composition was not a natural birth from his creative mind, but rather part of his ever-evolving craft of Wizardry. The keen observer will notice that in his later years, he often conducted concerts with not a tiny white stick, but a magic [[Wand of Gamelon]. Azkaban, where he claims to be a prisoner, was actually a province of the Soviet Russia where composers were often locked away to prevent anyone from harming them. He wasn't truly a prisoner, but more of a composition slave for the Slavic Order of the Phoenix . He'd be locked away for hours in a room of pitch black with only a pencil, a knife, and manuscript paper. There were no potty breaks allowed outside of the dungeon and endless servings of water laced with cholera bacterium. This period marked the beginning of his final work on the Chamber Music of Secrets. It was here he was inspired to compose the Symphony No. 13, or "Deathly Hallows" symphony.
Dmitri sought damages for defamation of character even though it was all true and J.K. Rowling was sentenced to life in Prison without parole. Daniel Radcliffe was also forced to sign a non-compete clause and is signed to appear in at least 2 sitcoms portraying the 'positive' minor life of Shostakovich.
Composition[edit | edit source]
Musicolologists usually classify Shostakovich's various musical output into three distinct periods. His first period (often known as his dark period) is characterized by a preponderance of minor keys and a pointed lack of cheer. Upon a close personal encounter with death, he joined the Church of Scientology and rapidly transitioned to his popular emo period. Shostakovich's style during this period combined his previous darkness with the Far Out proto-emo style of Gustav Mahler. It was during this period that, in keeping with emo tradition, Shostakovich would cry for several hours until his four eyes bled before composing. He wrote symphonies and string quartets and concertos and all other sorts of funeral music for his rich old emo friend Al Stalin. Al's eventual death crushed Shostakovich, but this again drove him to his final style - his so-called depressed period. It was during this last phase of his life that he wrote his violin, cello and piano da gamba concerti, which confirmed his diagnosis of clinical depression. All of his works during this period were characterized by pervasive misdemeanor plagiarism, but John Williams was composing his score to Star Wars and nobody noticed Shostakovich's less visible crimes.
Today, Shostakovich's oevrrrrrrre is most noted for his three operas "The Nose, "Rothchild's Violin," and "The Big Lightning," which comprise his famous "Thing Cycle." When working on his operas, Shostakovich was meticulous and systematic, and he always met his librettists early in the morning. According to his own Testimony [...], he "disliked working during the night, quite unlike the Bohemian way" (an obvious pun on the surname of the Armenian composer Levon Bohemyan who was always composing during the night, but nevertheless had a great influence on Shostakovich's style).
His works consist mainly of death marches, waltzes to accompany occult Satanic rituals, and war music depicting gunfire (see Symphony Nos. 4 through 13).
Works[edit | edit source]
Orchestral[edit | edit source]
- Symphonies
- Symphony No. 1 "The Emo Symphony"
- Symphony No. 2 in seventy-seven sharps, for orchestra with moaning ghouls instead of strings and a bunch of Russian peasants writhing on the floor screaming (In the recording you can hear the police sirens coming to arrest D.D.S)
- Symphony No. 3 in E flat major? The 31st of June (a patriotic challenge to the Gregorian Calendar)
- Symphony No. 4 in C minor What Symphony, Mr. Stalin?
- Symphony No. 5 in DD minor A Soviet Artist's Reply To Just Criticism (in Third Person) While Undergoing Monstrous Testicular Torture With A Frighteningly Large Ejaculation Probe By Agents Of The Glorious Proletarian Vanguard
- Symphony No. 6 in Q sharp double-semidiminished-not-major "Russia has no Pastoral Symphony"
- Symphony No. 7 in C flat majorish, to be fought in Leningrad
- Symphony No. 8 in C flat minor, to be fought in Stalingrad
- Symphony No. 9 in E 1/4-flat "the emo in disguise"
- Symphony No. 10 in S sharp minor, for timpani tuned to D, S, C, and H
- Symphony No. 11 in ( minor The Positive Integer 1905
- Symphony No. 12 in p minor The Positive Integer 1917
- Symphony No. 13 in B flat-flat-flat-tire Baba O'Riley
- Symphony No. 14 in $&%@#* double-sharp minor minor for strings, noise, and two suicidal soloists
- Symphony No. 15 in A Quintuple-sharp major, for percussion, The Lone Ranger and Wagner's Ghost.
- Concerti
- Concerto for Depressed Violin No. 1 (includes the hit single movement "Satan is Spelled D-S-C-H")
- Concerto for Depressed Violin No. 2
- Concerto for Depressed Cello No. 1 for cellist and three-piece orchestra
- Concerto for Repressed Cello No. 2 for cellist and bi-curious french horn
- Concerto for Piano da Gamba No. 1 (for piano, bagpipe, and fiddles)
- Concerto for Piano da Gamba No. 2 (for amateur pianist and animated toy soldiers)
- Suite from Hamlet
- Suite from The Gadfly
- Suite from The Horsefly
- Suite from Hamlet "In case people forgot I wrote a suite for Hamlet in my early life"
- Festering Overture
- The Execution of Stepping Raisins
Operas[edit | edit source]
- The Nose
- The Eyes
- The Other Various Body Parts I Have Chopped Off
- Rothchild's Violin
- The Big Lightning
- Lady MacBurnt of the Fire District (Sponsored by the Socialist Firemen Association)
Ballets[edit | edit source]
- The Age of Gold
- The Age of Stalin (composed for Stalin's birthday)
- The Age of Aquarius (often improperly attributed to Galt MacDermot)
The Stronganoff in My Pants"
Chamber Music[edit | edit source]
- String Quartets
- String Quartet No. 1 "Screechy"
- String Quartet No. 2 "Extremely Screechy"
- String Quartet No. 3 "Screeching Some More"
- String Quartet No. 4 "Dustin Diamond"
- String Quartet No. 5 "Not Mahler"
- String Quartet No. 6 "Not Mahler, once again"
- String Quartet No. 7 "Pepperoni Pizza-cato"
- String Quartet No. 8 "Y'know what. I'm going to kill you all."
- String Quartet No. 9 "Hooked on Chamber Phonics"
- String Quartet No. 10 "The Tenth Quartet for Strings"
- String Quartet No. 11 "Attention Deficit Disco"
- String Quartet No. 12 "Hey guys, I can do 12-tone too!"
- String Quartet No. 13 for depressed viola and jazz groupies
- String Quartet No. 14 "I'm not dead yet"
- String Quartet No. 15 "Deathly slow" for quartet of flies dying in midair of boredom
- Sonatas
- Sonata No.1 for Drunk Pianist
- Sonata No.2 for Hungover Pianist
- Sonata for Violin - First Vodka
- Sonata for Violoncello - seCo..Nd Voaoaodka
- Sonata for Viola - th...third (hic) Vodko? ...Oooh! is this Beethoven?
- Piano Trios
- Piano Trio no. 1 "To My Girlfriend, Who Dumped Me"
- Piano Trio no. 2, "My Best Friend Just Died and I Really Hate Cellists"
Johann Sebastian Bach • Milton Babbitt (Discussion - Rewrite) • Béla Bartók • Johannes Brahms • Anton Bruckner • John Cage • Antonín Dvořák • Philip Glass • Joseph Haydn • Paul Hindemith • Charles Ives • Gustav Mahler • Felix Mendelssohn • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart • Sergei Prokofiev • Sergei Rachmaninoff • Steve Reich • Arnold Schoenberg • Franz Schubert • Robert Schumann • Dmitri Shostakovich • Karlheinz Stockhausen • Richard Strauss • Igor Stravinsky • Pyotr Tchaikovsky • Ludwig van Beethoven • Richard Wagner • Anton Webern
