2009, B. Pontin, “Climate change agnosticism - its meaning and implications”, in Environmental Law and Management, volume 21, number 2, ISSN 1067-6058, pages 55-57:

Ay at the end of seven years, We pay a tiend to hell,

Previous to the offering up of prayer, however, the persons chosen for this office [of praying for the people] had divested themselves of their boots and put on list slippers, their hands being washed by the descendants of Levi at a basin near the Holy of Holies.

Inevitably Dmitri Shostakovich is the emblematically contorted figure, moving from derisory laughter at the very idea of having to explain the socioeconomic dimensions of the music of Chopin and Liszt to an uncomfortable accommodation with the state that both facilitates and threatens his work.