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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

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Dmitri Shostakovich
Age: 68 †
Born: 1906
Born: September 25
Died: 1975
Died: August 9
Choreographer
Classical Composer
Composer
Jazz Musician
Librettist
Music Pedagogue
Pianist
Politician
University Teacher
St. Petersburg
Shostakovich
Shosty
Dmitrii Dmitrievich Shostakovich
Dmitrij Šostakovič
Dmitri Dmitrievitch Chostakovitch
Dimitri Shostakovich
Work
Peasants
Actively
Spectators
Worker
Deported
Count
Ussr
Naturally
Comprehensible
Workers
Peasant
Live
Spectator

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Stravinsky the composer I worship. Stravinsky the thinker I despise.
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The best way to hold on to something is to pay no attention to it. The things you love too much perish. You have to treat everything with irony, especially the things you hold dear. There's more of a chance then that they'll survive.
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I feel eternal pain for those who were killed by Hitler, but I feel no less pain for those killed on Stalin's orders. I suffer for everyone who was tortured, shot, or starved to death.
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He fell like a chicken into the soup.
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It's about the people, who have stopped believing because the cup of evil has run over.
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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.
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The real geniuses know where their writing has to be good and where they can get away with some mediocrity.
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What you have in your head, put down on paper. The head is a fragile vessel.
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Music is good, not evil. Poetry is good, not evil. Primitive, but oh, so true!
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If they cut off both hands, I will compose music anyway holding the pen in my teeth.
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A great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed.
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In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music.
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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.
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Football is the ballet of the masses.
Dmitri Shostakovich
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The majority of my symphonies are tombstones.
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Those who have ears to hear, will hear
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People knew about Babi Yar before Yevtushenko's poem, but they were silent. And when they read the poem, the silence was broken. Art destroys silence.
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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.
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A great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed. Any prelude or fugue of Bach can be played at any tempo, with or without rhythmic nuances, and it will still be great music. That's how music should be written, so that no-one, no matter how philistine, can ruin it.
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