Along with the Symphony No. 8, Shostakovich's eighth string quartet is his most poignant expression of personal wartime experience, and remains one of his most popular and haunting pieces. The Eighth was written following a trip to Dresden, where Shostakovich saw the aftermath of German Fascism. The passionate music returns to the war by means of self-quotation: It revives a cry of personal mourning, a whirling outburst of grief (strangely, in a breakneck tempo) that he had employed in his Second Piano Trio. He dedicates this quartet to the "victims of Fascism" yet fills it with self-quotation, including the then-recent highly recognizable theme of his Cello Concerto No. 1 and the barely known tune from his suppressed opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Since that melody, itself, lay suppressed by official Soviet condemnation, it might be said that Shostakovich is portraying himself as a victim of tyranny. The work's five contiguous movements are dominated without exception by a four-note motto based on the composer's initials, DSCH (D-Eb-C-B in German notation). The opening Largo, lush and pensive, builds up massive amounts of nervous energy which is eventually released in the furious, motoric second movement, Allegro molto, which portrays the inevitability and violence of the war machine. The demented, capering waltz that follows is where the cello concerto theme is first heard and is linked to another Largo movement by a brief quote of the Dies irae melody from the Catholic liturgy. In that fourth movement, the concerto theme is again used, along with a revolutionary song, "Languishing in Prison," and the tune from the opera. The final movement, also Largo, incorporates the original motto theme in the style of the first movement with the addition of a rich, almost restful countermelody.

The music of this quartet burns throughout with a passionate yearning and angry outbursts. The impact of the work, while it is technically complex and demanding, is wholly emotional, and is best heard with the composer's words kept in mind: "I feel eternal pain for those who were killed by Hitler, but I feel no less pain for those killed on Stalin's orders. I suffer for everyone who was tortured, shot, or starved to death. The majority of my symphonies are tombstones. Too many of our people died and were buried in places unknown to anyone, not even their relatives. Where do you put the tombstones? Only music can do that for them. I'm willing to write a composition for each of the victims but that's impossible, and that's only why I dedicate my music to them all."



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