p Right at the beginning of the year (8 January) Shostakovich accepted Vsevolod Meyerhold’s offer of the post of musical director and pianist at his theatre in Moscow. This work interfered with his composing,, however, and in the spring he returned to Leningrad. In the summer he completed his opera The Nose and also compiled a suite from the opera for soloists and orchestra. In June the State Theatre Board signed a contract with him on the staging of the opera.

p It was at this time that the first of Shostakovich’s articles appeared in the press. The magazine Novy Zritel and the evening newspaper Krasnaya Gazeta published what he had to say about his new opera.

p In the autumn the composer started composing a vocal suite to the words of Japanese poets (completed in 1932). At the beginning of November he acquainted Nikolai Malko with his opera The Nose, and on 25 November the conductor included some of Shostakovich’s latest compositions in a concert at the Moscow Conservatoire: the suite from the opera The Nose, an orchestral version of the foxtrot Tahiti Trot and two pieces by Domenico Scarlatti (Pastorale and Capriccio) rearranged for wind instruments. In December Shostakovich signed a contract for music to be played during performances of the film New Babylon—something unheard of in those days of silent films.

p Shostakovich regularly saw the critic Ivan Sollertinsky, who had become one of his closest friends, and also Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Commander of the Leningrad military district (they had first met in Moscow, while Shostakovich was preparing for the Chopin Competition).

p Shostakovich was gaining fame in America: on 2 November his First Symphony was performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski,, and shortly afterwards it was conducted in New York by Artur Rodzinski.

p I was attracted to The Nose because of its fantastic, absurd content, presented by Gogol in a very realistic manner. I did not feel the need to back up the satire in Gogol’s text with irony or parody in the music—- indeed, on the contrary, the musical accompaniment is perfectly serious. The contrast between the comic action and the serious symphonic music is meant to create a special theatrical effect; this device seems all the more justified since Gogol himself describes all the comic incidents in the plot in an intentionally serious, elevated tone. The language of The Nose is the most expressive of all Gogol’s ’Petersburg Stories’, and I was very attracted to the challenge of expressing the feel of Gogol’s words in music-and that was my basic principle. While composing the opera I was guided least of all by the fact that opera is concerned with music. In The Nose the elements of action and music are equal: neither one nor the other predominates. In this way I hoped to create a synthesis of music and theatre.

p The music is not divided into numbers, but is written as an unbroken symphonic stream, but with no system of leitmotifs. Each Act is a movement of a unified musical-dramatic symphony. An important part is played by the choir and ensembles (the yardkeepers’ octet).

p The orchestra is greatly reduced in size, with only one of each of the 16 wood-wind instruments, and only one trumpet, one French horn and one trombone in the brass section. On the other hand, many percussion instruments are used (there is a separate interlude for nine percussion instruments). The orchestra also includes domras  [16•* , balalaikas and a flexatone.

The main thing required of the performers is crystal-clear enunciation. The most important parts are the Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov ( baritone), Ivan Yakovlevich (bass), Praskovia Osipovna (soprano), the policeman (tenor-altino) and the Nose (tenor).^^1^^