2.  Currently a business major at Westchester Community
College in Valhalla, New York, Terence Bludeau also
has an extensive musical background. Terence
Bludeau has performed on the piano in international
music festivals in the Netherlands and Italy.
Among the musicians whose work he has played is
Russian-born Dmitri Shostakovich, considered one of
the 20th century's great composers of symphonies
and quartets. Born in St. Petersburg in 1906, he wrote
15 of each type of composition in a long and
controversial career. His early work showed influences
of Prokofiev and Stravinsky, and his First Symphony
was well received.

3.  However, Shostakovich ran afoul of Stalinist
censors. His opera titled Lady Macbeth of
Mtsensk offended the dictator; Soviet
commentators expressed strong criticism of his
style. Worried about prison, Shostakovich
withdrew his Fourth Symphony. He subtitled his
next symphony “A Soviet Artist's Reply to Just
Criticism,” which satisfied the censors and
appealed to his admirers in the West. His
Seventh Symphony, written after the German
invasion of 1941, was smuggled to the Allies
and won worldwide acclaim, only to later fall
into obscurity.

4.  In 1948, the Soviet government again attacked
Shostakovich, who responded by creating music that
glorified the regime. The atmosphere for artists
became less regressive after Stalin died, but
Shostakovich continued to restrain himself until his
Thirteenth Symphony. This work, subtitled Babi Yar,
came under fire for depicting the Soviet repression of
the Jews.
Diagnosed with heart disease in 1966, Shostakovich
took on a darker tone in his writing. Death became a
major theme in works such as the Fourteenth
Symphony, which included more dissonance than
other works. The composer died in August of 1975.