From: Iain Strachan (iain.strachan@eudoramail.com)
Date: Wed Nov 01 2000 - 13:20:39 EST
On Tue, 29 Oct 2002 20:15:52 Dr. Blake Nelson wrote:
>
>Testimony is certainly evidence and much if not most
>of what scientists do and believe is based on
>testimony every bit as much as Christian belief is
>based on testimony regarding the life, death and
>resurrection of Jesus.
I should like to reply to this idea that testimony is valid evidence
by taking a modern example. I should preface this by saying that
while I consider the gospels to be valid testimony, if I wanted to
play Devil's advocate, then the following example could well be cited.
It concerns the Russian Composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975).
During his lifetime, he was recognised as the leading Soviet
composer, and thought of as a loyal Communist (who perhaps had one or
two ups and downs with the party). Amongst his output, there are
several works that openly praise the Soviet Regime (for example his
12th Symphony, titled "The Year 1917", celebrating the revolution,
and various cantatas in praise of Stalin and Communism). Because of
the appearance of this, reaction to his work in the West was
ambivalent. Whilst it inspired a great following among left-wing
groups, many afficionados regarded him as a mediochre "Soviet Hack",
who was little more than a puppet.
Then, in 1979, the musicologist Solomon Volkov published a book of
memoirs about the composer, titled -coincidentally- "Testimony",
with the sub-title "The memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, as related to
Solomon Volkov". Volkov explains in the preface to the book that he
arranged privately with Shostakovich, towards the end of his life, to
meet several times, during which interviews, Shostakovich would
relate about his life, and Volkov would compile short-hand notes. No
tape recorder was used. At the end, Volkov compiled the masses of
notes into a manuscript, which he passed to Shostakovich, who signed
the front pages of each chapter with "Read. D. Shostakovich".
Photos of these manuscript pages were published in the original
edition of the book, in order to authenticate it.
The book was a sensation, and it is true to say that it completely
revolutionised the way critics regard Shostakovich's music. Far from
being a committed Communist lackey, the character that emerges is a
deeply disillusioned and embittered man, who detested Communism. He
describes his symphonies as Requiems to all the people (est. 75
million) who perished in the Stalinist purges. One of his most
ferocious movements (the second movement of the 10th Symphony), he
describes as "a musical portrait of Stalin". Needless to say the
book vastly enhanced Shostakovich's reputation as a composer, and
inspired a whole new branch of "revisionist" musicology about the
works, always looking for a political subtext, and so forth.
Then, a few years later, the controversy really erupted. Naturally
many musicians in the Soviet Union protested vehemently that the book
was a sham and that Volkov was a liar who had misrepresented
Shostakovich, and so forth. But no-one would listen much to these
protests that were probably orchestrated. But the real damage was
done when an American musicologist, Dr. Laurel Fay, spotted something
that completely undermined the authenticity of the work. What she
noticed was that several passages in the book (which was purportedly
Shostakovich's direct memories related to Volkov), seemed familiar to
her. In the end she was able to track down the passages, which all
came from signed chapter heads, to previously published articles by
Shostakovich. When the originals were tracked down, it was found
that they were identical, word for word, even down to punctuation
marks, and the passages that matched up lasted exactly for the first
page, and then the text would diverge.
Faced with what would otherwise be an incredible coincidence, Fay
concluded that Volkov had deliberately recycled previous material by
the composer, despite the fact that Volkov (who is still alive)
vigorously denies it. The implication was nasty; that Volkov had
recycled (plagiarised?) the earlier material, and had quite possibly
made up the rest in order to make a best-seller.
That looks like an open and shut case of fraud, but since then, many
artists who emigrated from the Soviet Union have equally emphatically
stated that the book is a true picture of Shostakovich; reflects his
private feelings, his attitude towards the Communist regime and so
forth. Even the composer's son Maxim now tends to support the
authenticity of the book, whereas his widow continues to deny the
book's validity. But as a result, any academic article about
Shostakovich that cites "Testimony" always has to qualify it as "the
alleged memoirs".
Now my point is this. If we can't decide whether a book written 23
years ago contains the genuine words of Shostakovich, or whether it
was a fabrication, how can we trust the authenticity of something
that was written the best part of 2000 years ago? The answer is by
faith and our experience. As a lover of Shostakovich's music, I
would say that the picture that emerges from Testimony is one that
seems to ring true and makes sense. The same has to be true of the
Gospels - it is faith and inner conviction by the Holy Spirit,
surely, that leads us to assert that Christianity is true, and that
the Gospel accounts are reliable.
I'd like to finish with a wryly humourous story that occurs right at
the start of the book (on the first page, from a section that was not
tracked down as recycled material). Here "Shostakovich" relates a
story told by one of his artistic friends. It concerns a professor
of law who was giving a lecture to his students. During the lecture,
some hooligans broke into the lecture theatre and created a
disturbance. Eventually they were overpowered and thrown out. The
Professor then got the students, who had all been eye-witnesses to
the event, to describe what had happened. Naturally there were
marked differences between them. It turned out that this had all
been a staged event in order to teach the students about the
unreliability of eye-witness testimonies. To choose such a story to
open a set of memoirs with the title "Testimony" seems highly
appropriate and amusing, whether it was Volkov who fabricated this,
or whether it was the composer himself.
Iain.
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