Shostakovich's Ninth String Quartet had a difficult creation process, with at least one completed version being destroyed by the composer in 1961, as described by Elizabeth Wilson 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.'"
Tempo | Allegretto |
Date of composition | 1960 (first movement of a projected string quartet hat was rediscovered in 2003.) |
Premiered | 2005, January 15th |
Type | String Quartet |
Tonality | E-flat Major |
Approx. duration | 8 minutes |
Instruments | String Quartet |
Autotranslations beta |
Dmitri Chostakovitch: Quartet Movement en mi bémol majeur Dmitrij Šostakovič: Quartet Movement in mi bemolle maggiore Dmitri Dmitrijewitsch Schostakowitsch: Quartet Movement Es-dur |