Musical Offerings, Spring 2019

Musical Offerings ⦁ 2019 ⦁ Volume 10 ⦁ Number 1 3 these “penciled scribbles,” as he called them, in Testimony . 8 He described the process in Testimony as such: “I divided up the collected material into sustained sections. . .then I showed these sections to Shostakovich, who approved my work.” 9 Malcom Hamrick Brown, in his work entitled A Shostakovich Casebook , reveals the opinion of the composer’s widow, Irina Shostakovich, who cast further doubt on Testimony ’s authenticity and Volkov’s methods in a 1979 interview. 10 She stated, as quoted by Brown, that “Volkov saw Dmitrich three or maybe four times. . . . I don’t see how he could have gathered enough material from Dmitrich for such a thick book.” 11 Though it is possible that Irina was not aware of subsequent meetings, Brown reminded his readers that at the time of the interviews in question (1971-74), Shostakovich was not well and depended on his wife for every need, and she never left his side. 12 In speaking of Volkov’s experiences with Shostakovich and the method he used to obtain his information, Fay calls it “a complicated process which, at crucial points, remains essentially unverifiable.” 13 David Fanning, a supporter of Fay and her research, in his review of Shostakovich Reconsidered , pointed out that “unfortunately, the one piece of decisive evidence, Volkov's shorthand notes of his conversations with Shostakovich, is, according to Volkov, now lost,” those notes having been sold to a private collector. 14 The second and strongest piece of evidence for Testimony ’s authenticity is that Shostakovich’s signature appears only on the first page of each chapter, where he wrote “ Chital D. Shostakovich” (“ Chital ” being translated as “read”). 15 Shostakovich signed the first page of each section, thereby giving his stamp of approval and declaring the young journalist’s work to be factual. However, Fay pointed out that a staggering total of seven out of the eight chapters contain passages which “are verbatim or near-verbatim reproductions of memoirs previously 8 Shostakovich and Volkov, Testimony , xvii. 9 Ibid. 10 Malcom Hamrick Brown, ed., A Shostakovich Casebook (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 3. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid., 4. 13 Fay, “Shostakovich versus Volkov,” 487. 14 David Fanning, “Review of Shostakovich Reconsidered , by Allan B. Ho Dmitry Feofanov,” Music & Letters 80, no. 3 (1999): 489. do i: 10.1093/ml/80.3.489 . 15 Fay, “Shostakovich versus Volkov,” 487.