SUMMARY
On the basis of analytical results concerning Shostakovich's First Symphony and its relevant musical texts in periodicals, the public reception of the composer and his work was observed. For this purpose, concert programme notes of the Slovenian Philharmonic as well as music reviews in daily newspapers, published from 1947 to 2001, were analysed. All these "cognitions" reflect a rather superficial understanding of the composer and his musical creations. Many judgements mention only "partial truths", whereas only a few manage to present the essential elements of the composer's endeavours, i.e. to understand Shostakovich's place and that of his First Symphony in the history of music by getting to the heart of his compositional thinking, and thus detecting the aesthetics of time and their individual derivative – the composer's poetics.