Testimony- The memoirs of Shostakovich, as related to & edited by Solomon Volkov

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

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text excerpt

Muradeli began making appearances at various organizations. He came to the people and repented: I was a so-and-so, a formalist and cosmopolite. I wrote the wrong lezghinka, but the Party showed me the way in time. And now I, the former formalist and cosmopolite Muradeli, have stepped onto the righteous road of progressive realistic creativity. And in the future I am determined to write lezghinkas that will be worthy of our great epoch. / Muradeli said all this in an agitated manner, with Caucasian temperament. The only thing he didn’t do was dance the lezghinka. And then he sat at the piano and played excerpts from his future, yet-to-be-written works worthy of our great epoch. The excerpts were melodious and harmonious, quite like the harmony exercises from the Conservatoire textbook. / Everyone was satisfied, the workers saw a live formalist, they had something to tell their friends and neighbours. Muradeli earned good money and met the Composer’s Union’s plan on self-criticism. / Why am I spending so much time on Muradeli? In a musical sense he was a rather pathetic figure and as a man he was extremely malignant. An excess of temperament might lead Muradeli to perform a good deed, but only by accident.

excerpt from 'Testimony- The memoirs of Shostakovich, as related to & edited by Solomon Volkov' pp. 109 (208 words)

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