Requiem for myself On the Internet I came across a publication where Shostakovich’s Eighth Quartet in C minor was called “most brilliant.” I remembered how I attended the first audition of this quartet at the Composers' Union. The date is recorded in my “Stenography”: October 7, 1960. More than half a century ago! My now deceased friend, a wonderful, still underrated composer Mikhail Marutaev, called me. A lot of people gathered in the small hall.