The music of Shostakovich is a source of interest to both the general public and scholars. This text focuses on the musical irony in Shostakovich"s music. It offers methodologies for the semiotic analysis of music, and inspects the ironical messages in Shostakovich"s music independently of political and biographical bias. The book offers a multidisciplinary approach to music and compares musical devices with the artistic principles and literary analyses of satire, irony, parody and the grotesque.