Sample Solution

Parts of this symphony were composed during the actual siege during air raids and attacks.   During the first few weeks of the siege, Shostakovich refused to evacuate and continued writing.  He hoped that he would create a piece that would boost the morale of the Russian people. The Leningrad Symphony as a whole, while sharing some similarities with its earlier counterpart, is stylistically quite different and shows a slightly different side to Shostakovich’s writing. The Fifth Symphony contains melodies that are lush and flowing. It reflects Shostakovich’s transformation as a good Soviet composer. The overall mood of the Seventh Symphony can be viewed as more nationalistic, reflecting what was occurring at this time in Soviet history.  There are fewer flowing melodic lines, and he also plays with meter much more in this symphony, experimenting with more inconsistent meters like 7/4. Each movement of the symphony also contains a number of what can be described as battle scenes, no doubt reflecting the environment in which Shostakovich was composing at the time.  For example, in the first movement the music becomes more and more frantic until the trumpets loudly introduce the arrival of the Germans with scales that ascend and descend consecutively.  As the tempo increases the brass imitate the air raid sirens.  In addition, the repetition of themes and ostinatos in the first movement seem to represent the stupidity of war according to Sheinberg.    The statement of the first theme, which makes numerous appearances in various forms throughout the work, makes it clear that this is going to be a work representative of the Russian people as a whole: strong, resilient and united. The theme itself contains sev