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The String Quartet No. 8 by Dmitri Shostakovich was written during 3 days (July 12- 14) in 1960. It is in the key of C minor.
The piece was written shortly after Shostakovich was diagnosed with myelitis. According to the score, it is dedicated "to the victims of fascism and war" but Shostakovich's daughter, Galina, stated that Shostakovich secretly dedicated it to himself. Shostakovich's friend, Lev Lebedinsky, said that Shostakovich thought of the work as his epitaph and that he planned to commit suicide around this time. Finally, in her biography of the composer, Laurel Fay suggests an even darker autobiographical significance. In the spring of 1960, just before his trip to Dresden, Shostakovich was named head of the Union of Composers of the Soviet Federation. The Russian government clearly expected such a position to held by a party member. Under pressure to join the party, the composer reluctantly agreed, joined the Party, but then was overwhelmed by regret and guilt. There is evidence that he intended that the Eighth Quartet, a work full of autobiographical meaning, should be his final composition. He believed that he had composed, "an ideologically deficient quartet nobody needs."
The work was written in Dresden, where Shostakovich was to write music for the film Five Days, Five Nights, a joint Cold War propaganda project by Russian and East German filmmakers. The quartet, extreemly compact and focused, is in five interconnected movements and lasts twenty minutes:
- Largo
- Allegro molto
- Allegretto
- Largo
- Largo
The work is filled with quotes of other pieces by Shostakovich: the first movement quotes his Symphony No. 1 and Symphony No. 5; the second movement uses a Jewish theme first used by Shostakovich in his Piano Trio No. 2; the third movement quotes the Cello Concerto No. 1; and the fourth movement quotes a 19th century revolutionary song and Shostakovich's opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk District.
