The book is devoted to Shostakovich's most controversial symphony, composed at the height of Stalin's Purges. It rescued Shostakovich from official disfavour and deeply moved audiences. The critics recognized it as a masterpiece, but they were perplexed by its ambiguities, especially at the end of the Symphony: some imagined it as the joyful final victory of socialism, while others heard the triumph instead of a sinister and oppressive force. The second interpretation was pushed into the backgro...

• Acknowledgements
• About the Companion Website
• Note on Transliteration
• List of Themes
• Prelude
• Chapter 1. From the Fourth to the Fifth
• "This is Chaos, Not Music"
• (Not) The Fourth Symphony
• The Birth of the Fifth
• Three Streams of Reception
• Chapter 2. Musical Contexts
• Beethoven and Tchaikovsky
• Hindemith and Mahler
• Shostakovich's "Eclecticism"
• Chapter 3. The Phantom Program
• Intelligentsia and Revolution
• "Maturation of Personality"
• Chapter 4. The Faul...