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When this article was first mooted, Shostakovich was alive and working—on a Sixteenth Symphony. Quite apart from one's personal feelings about the man, the death of such an artist is bound to affect one's relationship with his work. At its simplest, this is the end of the line, the closing of the frontier; the knowledge that the old will not again be ‘modified’ by the new. For the first time, there is the possibility of seeing the work as a whole. However, so far as I am aware, the principal way in which the new situation has a bearing on this article is entirely non-productive: I find myself wondering in a rather different way how much we shall ever know of the discussions and heart-searching that preceded the withdrawal of the Fourth Symphony and the composition of the Fifth. Did Shostakovich leave any diaries, or a personal memoir, or …? But my intentions are strictly factual; as factual, that is, as critical scrutiny can make them.