6A — Friday, September 16, 2016
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

By DAYTON HARE

Daily Classical Music Columnist
T

his is a true story.

It was late night in 

June of 1937, and the 

young 
composer 
sat 
alone 

in 
his 
Moscow 
apartment, 

bent over his work. The room 
was 
quiet 
except 
for 
the 

metronomic ticking of the clock 
on the mantle and the furious 
scribbling of the composer’s 
pen. In the opposite corner his 
piano stood untouched — he 
didn’t need it.

Peering at the tiny notes on 

his manuscript through the 
smoky haze around him, the 
composer pushed his round 
spectacles back up the bridge of 
his sweat-covered nose before 
nervously 
lighting 
another 

cigarette, 
his 
thin 
fingers 

fumbling for a moment with 
the lighter. It was probably his 
20th cigarette of the evening — 
he always smoked when he was 
anxious. He jumped at a sudden 
noise outside in the hallway; 
for a while now he has been 
expecting Stalin’s Narodnyu 
Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del 
to pay him a midnight visit.

After a moment, he returned 

to his music. He was writing 
a 
very 
important 
work, 
a 

symphony, perhaps the most 
important work of his life — 
more important probably than 
his previous four symphonies, 
or his opera “Lady Macbeth,” 
and with luck Stalin wouldn’t 
hate this one. If all went well 
this piece would redeem his 
reputation, remove him from 
the blacklist of “formalist” 
composers 
and 
reinvigorate 

his career. If he isn’t caught, 
that is. That’s a very important 
detail. It’s crucial that Stalin 
can’t know that his symphony 
of “rejoicing” is really a work 
of satire and mockery. That 
would be the end of him. They 
had already killed plenty of 
his acquaintances, and the 
composer 
could 
never 
be 

convinced 
that 
Mayakovsky 

had actually shot himself.

The composer didn’t really 

know why he was taking the 
risk of writing a satire. Perhaps 
he simply couldn’t stomach 
the idea of writing a joyful 
work among the horror around 
him. Besides, it’s not as if 
people would really be able to 
understand what he was saying 
— only the clever ones would get 
it, the ones who would notice 
the 
soul-crushing 
sadness 

of the third movement and 
sarcastic bombast of the finale. 
And honestly, most people are 
rather stupid if you think about 
it, so the risk was very low. 

This is what the composer told 
himself. He told himself this 
very often. So he was writing a 
symphony of false rejoicing, for 
better or for worse.

•••
The above is a tableau from 

the life of the Soviet composer 
Dmitri Shostakovich, in which 
he composes one of the most 
enduringly popular symphonies 
of the 20th-century, his fifth. 
Additionally, 
it’s 
almost 

certainly a lie — or, if not quite 
that, it’s hyperbolic in the 
extreme.

But it is a very compelling 

lie. A very large and influential 
part of me wants to buy into 
the above image, wants to 
see Shostakovich as a quiet 
dissident, as a frightened artist 
silently struggling against the 
brutal Soviet machine — and 
that’s not only because I wrote 
it. The words are mine, but 
the story is the same one I’ve 
always heard in classical music 
circles. It has been part of my 
perception of the composer for 
as long as I can remember.

And I’m certainly not alone; 

if you opened a Shostakovich 
program note or asked any 
random classical musician or 
regular American concertgoer 
about the subject, you almost 
surely will receive the same 
description you just read, i.e. 
that 
Shostakovich 
subtlety 

slipped little anti-Sovietisms 
into his music and quietly 
fought against Stalin’s tyranny 
through his art.

But the story’s prevalence 

doesn’t make it any more true. 
This particular version of the 
composer came almost entirely 
from one source, inculcated 
by 
a 
1979 
book 
called 

“Testimony,” 
by 
Solomon 

Volkov. The book claims to be 
the memoirs of Shostakovich, 
merely arranged and edited 
by Volkov — however, there’s 
a litany of reasons to doubt 
its authenticity (which I won’t 
bother going into here), and 
its veracity has been a point 
of heated scholarly debate for 
the better part of 30 years. I’m 
sure you have already deduced 
which side of the argument I 
fall on, but for the time being 
I ask you to forget about that. 
Right now, I’m not really 
concerned with whether or not 
the image is a lie. Right now, 
what I care about is whether it 
really matters that it’s a lie.

Before you roll your eyes, 

dismiss me as just another 
relativist and abandon the rest 

of this article, let me clear up 
a few things. I realize that I’m 
starting to sound dangerously 
similar to that one student in 
your mind-numbingly tedious 
freshman English class (“You 
can’t really say that, because 
everything is relative”), so let 
me quickly allay some fears. Of 
course objective truth matters. 
Shostakovich 
either 
worked 

anti-Soviet messages into his 
music or he didn’t — that’s not 
going away, and musicologists 
certainly 
shouldn’t 
drop 

the subject. But at the same 
time, we’re talking about the 
ever-elusive 
(capital-A) 
Art, 

where human perception is a 
necessary conduit for meaning. 
So as frustrating as it is to 
hear, in such a nebulous and 
perception-oriented 
realm 

as this, everything really is 
relative. That’s not going away 
either.

As it pertains to Shostakov-

ich, this question of truth is a 
very interesting one. He’s unde-
niably one of the most popular 
composers of the 20th-century, 
and I personally think that 
this has a great deal to do with 
the image you read above. 
Shostakovich-as-dissident 
is 

a very emotionally satisfy-
ing identity, particularly in 
the United States, where the 
residual ethos of the Cold War 
linger still: The idea of the-
artist-as-hero is a striking one 
— powerful in the Romantic 
sense — which easily fuses 
with the American passion 
for individualism, all of which 
I think enhances Shostakov-
ich’s fame in the United States. 
This version of Shostakovich 
has seeped into everything. 
For example, just this year the 
Grammy for Best Orchestral 
Performance went to Andris 
Nelsons and the Boston Sym-
phony 
for 
“Under 
Stalin’s 

Shadow,” a recording of Shosta-
kovich’s Symphony No. 10.

None of which is to say 

that I think Shostakovich’s 
popularity is unwarranted — 
he was my favorite composer 
for a time, before I decided 
that having explicit favorites 
was sort of impossible/limiting 
— or that “Under Stalin’s 
Shadow” doesn’t deserve a 
Grammy (I heard the Boston 
Symphony Orchestra perform 
it last summer, and it certainly 
does), but simply that his fame 
is augmented by his story, 
however fictitious. So much of 
his notability is constructed on 
a falsehood. And yet, I would 
postulate that in this context, 
the idea of Shostakovich-as-
dissident is not necessarily 
false, even if it’s a lie.

Without getting into too 

much technical detail, there 
is a concept in philosophical/
literary theory called verisi-
militude, or the idea that one 
thing can be less false than 
another, perhaps even if the 
first is a lie and the second the 
objective “truth,” in the sense 
that the second only expresses 
what something is, while the 
first expresses what something 
means.

As Tim O’Brien succinctly 

notes in his excellent Vietnam 
War novel “The Things They 
Carried,” “A thing may happen 
and be a total lie; another thing 
may not happen and be truer 
than the truth.” So perhaps 
that’s what all the Shostakovich 
stories are — truer than truth 
because of what they mean to 
the audience. Ultimately, you 
just have to listen and decide 
for yourself. 

Hare is The Daily’s new 

Classical Music Columnist. 

You can email him at 

haredayt@umich.edu.

CLASSICAL MUSIC COLUMN

Shostakovich, Stalin, 

Terror & Truth

M.I.A. takes ‘AIM’ 
and misses the mark

By MATT GALLATIN

Daily Arts Writer

Unabashed activism is impor-

tant. Important, and danger-
ous. The more radicalized we 
become, the 
less we allow 
our 
posi-

tions to be 
challenged 
and 
our 

understand-
ings 
to 
be 

broadened. 
It’s easy to 
scream talk-
ing points over confrontation — 
nuance is hard. AIM, the fifth 
and supposed final album from 
the Sri Lankan refugee artist 
M.I.A, would have benefited 
from some confrontation and 
nuance.

The 
production, 
handled 

by Diplo, is “bigger” here than 
on nearly any of her previous 
works — though not necessar-
ily better. Right from the start 
a pounding bass is placed at the 
foreground. “Borders” pulses 
with the familiarity of any num-
ber of Electric Daisy Carnival 
headliners: swirling synths, the 
pause of the production on a 
high pitched hook and the quick 
return, accompanied either by 
the sound of a car zooming or, 
maybe, a refrigerator powering 
up.

Much 
here 
resembles 
an 

echo, and not always in the most 
pleasant or successful way. The 
beats can echo into redundancy. 
M.I.A.’s delivery echoes her pre-
vious work, often incorporating 
and rehashing lyrics and refer-
ences from her own discogra-
phy. And the album itself echoes 
what once was, distant from the 
greatness of earlier albums like 
Kala and Arular.

AIM does have its moments, 

though. “Go Off” is exciting and 
catchy enough to feel in your 
bones, and manages to make 
some of the subtle, yet biting 
critiques of Western society that 
she’s done so well in the past: 
“At least you tell your children I 
came from London.” The bragga-
docious “A.M.P.” recalls some of 
her more successful tracks, like 
“Bamboo Banga” and “Boyz.” 
But it’s the final — and best — 
track, “Platforms,” which offers 
us the most powerful reminder 
of that burning yellow roman 
candle we once knew, with con-
templative, cryptic lyrics and 
a confident flow that demands 
attentiveness. That it took 16 
tracks to reach this level of suc-
cess, though, is telling.

What’s certain is that there 

is nothing here even remotely 
comparable to her ceiling-shat-
tering single “Paper Planes” or 
the unforgettable “Bad Girls.”

The rest of the album, frankly, 

is almost entirely forgettable. 
This is especially frustrating 

given the reputation that she’s 
built as a kind of global ambas-
sador in recent years. Where she 
once stitched sounds and ideas 
from Bollywood films and pre-
teen Australian rap groups, she’s 
now rapping about Proactiv 
over commercialized beats and 
shouting out R. Kelly. It’s almost 
baffling the lack of actual sub-
stance included on this album, 
given the ongoing migrant cri-
sis, increasing global xenopho-
bia and the increasing growing 
disdain shown to refugees today. 
These are all issues M.I.A. has 
been a fierce critic of before. 
Why she isn’t making an equally 
fierce album in response is any-
one’s guess.

When she does makes state-

ments here, they come across as 
confusingly boring and underde-
veloped, like she’s listing talking 
points, not arguing for them. She 
opens the album with a series of 
questions: “Borders / What’s up 
with that? / Politics / What’s up 
with that? / Police shots / What’s 
up with that?” The ideas here 
have potential, which makes it 
all the more frustrating that she 
only brushes them with vague 
and lazy hands — there’s so 
much that she could have done, 
and has done before, that she 
hardly even attempts on AIM.

Perhaps M.I.A. fans would be 

better off simply omitting this 
final album. There’s too much to 
praise, to admire, before this.

‘Our Little Sister’ is 
sluggish & minimal

By JOE WAGNER

Daily Arts Writer

“Our Little Sister,” direc-

tor Hirokazu Koreeda’s most 
recent film, 
based 
on 

the popular 
manga series 
“Umima-
chi 
Diary,” 

which liter-
ally 
trans-

lates 
to 

“Seaside 
Town Diary,” is a modern tale of 
divorce. It endeavors to address 
the slew of consequences relat-
ed to divorce and moreover, and 
perhaps unfortunately, to life in 
general.

Three sisters, Sachi Kouda 

(Haruka Ayase, “Ichi”), Yoshi-
no Kouda (Masami Nagasawa, 
“From Up on Poppy Hill”), 
Chika Kouda (Kaho, “A Gentle 
Breeze in Village”) live togeth-
er in the house in Kamakura 
that they were raised in until 
their parents divorced, and 
their mother then abandoned 
them while the eldest was still 
in high school. After not talk-
ing to their father for 15 years, 
the three sisters attend their 
father’s funeral, where they 
meet their younger half-sister 
Suzu Asano (“Suzu Hirose, 
“Chihayafuru Part I”). The 
eldest sister offers to have Suzu 

come back and live with them 
at their home in Kamakura. As 
far as plot goes, this is about the 
extent of the movie. What fol-
lows is the dealings of the four 
sisters living under the same 
roof.

Each of the three blood-relat-

ed sisters clearly represents a 
certain type of person. Sachi, 
the eldest, is serious, work-ori-
ented and struggles with love. 
Ironically, she has an affair 
with a married man — the same 
action that destroyed her fam-
ily. Yoshino is constantly falling 
for different men and cares lit-
tle about her job. Chika is in cer-
tain ways the most immature, a 
bit ditsy, but overall, seems to 
be the happiest and maintains 
a healthy relationship with her 
boyfriend. Yoshino and Chika 
call Sachi “Sis” in a way that 
is reminiscent of how a more 
typical family might address 
their mother as “Mom.” When 
Suzu comes to their home, she 
helps to put all of their lives in 
perspective. Suzu is happy, or 
at least relatively so, even after 
her father has passed, constant-
ly cheerful while simultane-
ously acting quite mature for 
her age. As a result, these char-
acters feel flat and their actions 
are predictable. 

The sisters learn from each 

other and attempt to find pas-
sion in each of their lives. With 

the death of their father and 
the terminal diagnosis of a 
close family friend who runs 
a diner, their lives are put into 
perspective. The sisters learn to 
value their sisterhood, and try 
to reconcile relationships with 
their mother. They grow to 
understand that relationships, 
particularly familial ones, are 
give and take, that they are two 
sided. These same deaths teach 
them beauty and its value. The 
most memorable line from the 
film is when Suzu recalls sit-
ting next to her dying father 
in the hospital and he remarks 
about how he is happy that, 
even while dying, he is still able 
to appreciate beauty. But the 
plot simply isn’t strong enough 
to warrant the exploration of 
these large themes.

While “Our Little Sister” 

examines so many beautiful 
and touching themes, the nar-
rative is so minimal it is diffi-
cult to maintain interest in this 
rather sluggishly paced film. 
The soft focus compositions of 
the Japanese countryside seem 
like paintings, lending a fantas-
tical aura to “Our Little Sister.” 
These shots are true highlights 
throughout the film. The movie 
feels like a fable. But every 
good fable has not only strong 
themes, but a strong narrative 
through which those themes 
can be explored.

FILM REVIEW

INTERSCOPE

We found her in action!

ALBUM REVIEW

C-

AIM

M.I.A.

Interscope

B-

Our Little 
Sister

Toho

A large part 
of me wants 
to believe the 
compelling lie.

“A thing may 
happen and be 
a total lie,” says 
Tim O’Brien.

It was June 1937 

in Moscow.

