String Quartet No. 9 (Shostakovich)
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Dmitri Shostakovich's
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....

 String Quartet No. 9 in E flat major (Op. 117) was composed in 1964 and premiered by the Beethoven Quartet
Beethoven Quartet
The Beethoven Quartet was founded between 1922 and 1923 by graduates of the Moscow Conservatory: violinists Dmitri Tsyganov and Vasily Shirinsky, violist Vadim Borisovsky and cellist Sergei Shirinsky...

. The Ninth Quartet was dedicated to his third wife, Irina Antonovna Shostakovich, a young editor whom he had married in 1962.

Shostakovich rarely changed or revised his works, but the Ninth Quartet is one of the rare exceptions. Elizabeth Wilson writes in her biography Shostakovich: A Life Remembered, "Shostakovich finished the first version of the Ninth Quartet in the autumn of 1961. In a fit of depression, or, to quote his own words, 'in an attack of healthy self-criticism, I burnt it in the stove. This is the second such case in my creative practice. I once did a similar trick of burning my manuscripts, in 1926.'"

Shostakovich took three years to complete the new Ninth Quartet, finishing it on May 28, 1964. The premiere was by the Beethoven Quartet in Moscow on November 20, 1964. The Beethoven Quartet had the exclusive rights to perform all of Shostakovich's string quartets. Dimitri Tsyganov, the first violinist, recalled that Shostakovich told him that the first Ninth Quartet was based on "themes from childhood", and the newer Ninth Quartet was "completely different".

The piece has five movements, which are played without pause:
  1. Moderato con moto -
  2. Adagio -
  3. Allegretto -
  4. Adagio -
  5. Allegro


Its duration is approximately 24 minutes.

Uses in other contexts

In 2002, choreographer Henri Oguike used the third, fourth and fifth movements for his piece Front Line.

External Links

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