Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich was born on September 25th, 1906 in St. Petersburg, Russia. His father, Dmitri Baleslavovich Shostakovich, was a consultant engineer who worked with the eminent scientist Mendeleev. His mother, Sofia Vasilyevna, was a professional piano teacher who studied at the St. Petersburg conservatory as a young girl. Mitya, as nicknamed by his family, had two siblings, an older sister, Marusya, and a younger sister named Zoya.

Growing up, the children were all taught piano by their mother; Dmitri was unwilling at first, but soon discovered that he had perfect pitch and a knack for memorizing notes and sightreading. At age ten, Mitya started going to a private music school, but he continued his regular schooling because his father still planned on Dmitri going into engineering or science, being as he was an excellent student. “I was always a diligent student. I wanted to be a good student, I liked getting good grades, and I liked being treated with respect. I’ve been like that since childhood” (Testimony, 5). It was at this age that Shostakovich composed his first piece, a piano composition entitled ‘Soldier’ that was dedicated to the memory of those that fell in the October Revolution.

In 1919, he enrolled in the Petrograd Conservatory and studied under Leonid Nikolayev. Because of the 1917 Revolution, life at the Petrograd Conservatory had become very difficult; classes were sporadic and oftentimes the teachers lacked the heart to show up, and the classrooms were unheated. Shostakovich was a very dedicated student, but even he could not contend with the difficulty of living under the Soviet regime. His father, suffering from severe malnutrition, died of pneumonia in 1922 and all three children were forced to get jobs to support the family. Dmitri got employment at the local movie theatre, becoming an accompianist to silent films. He despised this simplistic music, and to make matters worse, while he was working, he caught pneumonia, which left him weak for an entire decade.

Shostakovich continued his education at the conservatory, and for his senior project, he wrote his first symphony in 1925. Shostakovich's assessment of the piece was given in Volkov's Testimony: "It was an attempt at profound content, a picture of a young man, strong, loving life, but who is really beginning to examine the life around him. Although the work is immature, it is from my point of view valuable because of the sincere desire to reflect life and reality"(156).The First Symphony was an instant success and was later performed in Berlin, London, and New York. Shostakovich balked at this instant fame and became afraid of losing his identity, so he burned many of his manuscripts and works-in-progress.

His second symphony was published in 1927 and was much like the piece that he composed in childhood, a tribute to those victims of the Revolution. He met the musicologist Sollertinsky in 1927, who was to become his best friend and whose humor would often keep Shostakovich going when life seemed to be taking a turn for the worst. His Third Symphony, published in 1929, was entitled 'May First'. This symphony was not as popular as his first two had been, and so, he began to doubt his abilities and the audience response.

In 1932, Dmitri married Nina Varzar. They had two children: Galya, born in 1936, and Maxim, born in 1938. Shostakovich wrote his Fourth Symphony between 1935 and 1936, but it was not performed until after Stalin's death. The reason for this was that Shostakovich had fallen out of Stalin's favor after Stalin attended and left (fuming) Shostakovich's opera Lady MacBeth of Mtsensk District because of the contemporary (and therefore anti-communist) sound of the piece.