h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

An entry on Shostakovich! wonderful! Lengthy, but that's ok in my book.
I can't correct the factual information (I don't know anything about him, I just love his music), but I'll try to catch the typos

(all right, all right, I stole the tea thing from Galaxy Babe, but you have to admit it's pretty cool)


"walked to his his piano teacher's house for lessons whenever he failed to turn up."

delete one of the 'his'es
and also, this means whenever the piano teacher failed to turn up, right?

"could be argued to have had an influence on his music and he dedicated many of his pieces to them;"

a comma after 'music' might be useful

"However, Shostakovich withdrew the work almost at the last minute - why he did so remains unclear: while"

Akh, the punctuation storm ist confusing me! What about "...almost at the last minute. Why he did so remains unclear - while"

"Soon after he withdrew his Fourth Symphony, Shostakovich then started work"

remove 'then'

"In 1937, Shostakovich also began teaching at the Leningrad Conservatoire, which made him financially secure but also interfered with his composition."

You could remove the first 'also'

"cost him his job at the Leningrad Conservatoire, applied an effective ban on most of his music and his fears of arrest were renewed."

-->"cost him his job..., applied an effective ban...and renewed his fears of arrest."

"in East Germany for bicentennial of the death of JS Bach"

insert 'the' before 'bicentennial'


Phew! Sorry, Ive got some finals to study for, but I'll try to get back on in a couple days, once they're over.

Great article so far!

I just checked all your links - they're all good except that 'Music under Soviet rule: Shostakovichiana' and 'Shostakovich being questioned by an NVKD officer' don't seem to work. They're both from the same site (siue.edu), though, so maybe it's just me.

wow, I know a lot more about shostakovich now!

OK - I've corrected all the typos you've highlighted.

Not sure why the links to the Shostakovichiana pages (which includes the 'Shostakovich being questioned' page) aren't working - they usually are very reliable. They might be OK in a day or so, though, so I'll keep them in.

Yep, they're working fine now!