The Music of Alfred Schnittke - I. Moody (1989)

The Music of Alfred Schnittke Author(s): Ivan Moody Source: Tempo, New Series, No. 168, 50th Anniversary 1939-1989 (Mar., 1989), pp. 4-11 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/944851 . Accessed: 19/06/2014 14:00 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

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Ivan Moody The Music of Alfred Schnittke

In recent years, Alfred Schnittke has seemed to provide a point of focus for interest in Russian music which has been absent since the death of Shostakovich in 1975: not least because he appearsin some respectsto be the latter'snatural successor. Many of Shostakovich's aesthetic as well as technical preoccupations have played a significant part in Schnittke's work. Schnittke has developed these preoccupations, in fact, to a further extreme: his principal inheritance from Shostakovich, the senseof irony and alienation, has become the most obvious trait in the music of a composer who has consistently followed his own star quite independently of any stylistic clique. In his earliest works, such as the oratorio Nagasaki of 1958, Schnittke could be said to inhabit terrain somewhere between Shostakovich and Mussorgsky. The grand rhetorical gestures of this work are very much in the nationalistoratorio traditionof the 19th century. Most of his music at that time was in similar style, programmatic and nationalistic in intent. A nationalelement has never been entirelyabsent from Schnittke's music, even in his most 'absolute' works: there have always been aspects - often simply melodic or harmonic characteristics - that relate his output very firmly to the 'mainstream' of Russian music of the previous century. In the period following Nagasaki(writtenjust after he had graduated from the Moscow Conservatoire), Schnittke began intensive researchinto western music. This absorption of new techniques led, after serious concentration on serial writing, to such works as the Serenade of 1968, whose sense of openness to all styles and sound-phenomena presages Schnittke's later, more consistent employment of'polystylism'. What the Serenadedoes is to treat some rather weighty techniques of the moment - aleatoricism, all-inclusive stylistic foraging, extended instrumental techniques - in a way that might be considered flippant, and which is certainly devoid of the formidable pretentiousness of many works of the period. The tone of the Serenadeis fundamentally lightweight, though

not rootless or merely humorous. (See Ex. 1.) More recent works have proved 'polystylism' to be an effecient generator of that kind of alienation, expressed in ironic manipulation of various stylistic elements, which Schnittke has taken over from Shostakovich. The Piano Quintet of 1976 (reworked as the orchestral In memoriam)is a peculiarly intense example of this: in juxtaposing non-tonal material of profound blacknesswith nostalgic reminiscences of other types of music - a Viennese waltz, for example, or very simple 'lamenting' tonal gestures - the feeling of isolation and bereavement is made almost physically unbearable. In the orchestral version of this piece, as in so many others, Schnittke relies heavily on the emotive, associative power of the strings. Such is his mastery that this never seems an unsatisfactorydependence, even though the use of them in this way is such a genuinely 19thcentury trait: though they would perhaps not comprehend his vocabulary, both Tchaikovsky and Mahler would have recognized the weight and emotional significancewith which Schnittke endows these instruments. Earlier works, such as the Concerto for Oboe, Harp, and String Orchestra of 1971, had made use of far more fragmented string writing: the dramatic nature of the orchestralgestures in the Concerto create an intensity of effect quite different from that of the Piano Quintet. This is in fact very much the essence of the Concerto, in that it was written in memory of two deceased friends. The funereal lament of the opening pages is slowly transformed into a barely controlled outburst of sorrow as the melodic writing becomes ever more frenetic. Stasis is achieved with startling suddenness in the work's final section, furnishing one of the most moving examples of Schnittke'suse ofjuxtaposition both of materials and of emotional states. The reverseside of such penetratingalienation is of course levity, or at least wit: both of these are found in abundance in the Concerto Grosso No. 1 of 1977. The work is really a commentary on the idea of the Baroque concerto grosso, almost as though Schnittke did not quite dare

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The MusicofAlfredSchnittke

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of interrelatedmusical gestures and interweaves them with quotations from his own music (his film scores, unknown in the West) and from older music, especially Bach. Quotation is a featureof several of Schnittke's works, and the material upon which he feels formulas and forms of Baroque music; free able to draw is very diverse in its origins. The andbanalpopular chromaticismandmicro-intervals; is built almost entirely on No.2 Quartet String musicwhichentersas it werefromtheoutsidewith a Russian sacred music from the Middle Ages (a ' effect. disruptive ratherloose term insofar as Russia is concerned, The intention is once more to achieve the effect since it may be considered to have lasted a very of alienation, to explore the tension between long time and since in any case this repertoire several irreconcilable musical 'worlds', but has not so far proved susceptible to precise Schnittke manages to undercut this by granting dating) which is remarkable for its extreme a tangible sense of musical connexion between dissonance. The Quartet was written in 1980, all the movements. Each section works with the commissioned by Universal Edition and same material, but treats it in a different way so dedicated to the memory of the film director that the impression is of a set of variations. The Larissa Shepitko, a close friend of Schnittke's. recurring material is announced at the very There is certainly an elegiac quality about much beginning of the work by two solo violins after of the work, though as usual it is contrasted the mysterious introductory music of the with music of considerable instability in the prepared piano (Example 2). From such second and third movements. The textures of unpromising ideas Schnittke builds a network the opening of the second movement look at first glance rather like some of Ligeti's writing for the medium (in his own Second Quartet), ' Quoted in prefatory note to the score (Booscy & Hawkes but the effect here is rathermore histrionic - one HPS 949).

write a real one. It is constructed in a sequence of stereotyped movements: Preludio, Toccata, Recitativo, Cadenza, Rondo, and Postludio. Each one of these manages to combine several elements, as the composer makes clear:

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6

The Musicof AlfredSchnittke

Ex.2 (Concerto Grosso 1)

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would be tempted to say that the emotions run deeper. The quotations are clearerin the slower outer movements, where the melodic and harmonic movement is more static, though the tendency is nevertheless to exaggerate the already bizarre nature of the original material. The fourth and last movement quotes extensively from a setting of the Kheruvimskaya piesn (Cherubic Hymn) which is sung at the Great Entrancein the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom of the Orthodox Church - it speaks of the angels escorting the 'King of All' to earth. It is here that Schnittke's music is at its most tranquil and, it seems, its most personal. The final bar is markedpppppp,and the music is made magically to fade away in barely audible harmonics: Example 3. Ex.3

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Mahler's aggressive sarcasm can even give such passages a characterof unreality or fantasy, the smudgedoutlinesof an X-ray photographthat we findpuzzlingandalarming- a worldnot of fleshbut of rattlingbones, realisticallydescribedby strange, grotesqueinstrumentalcombinations,a nightmare, shadow-world,colourless,ashen,andinsubstantial.2 All of this is as applicable to Schnittke as to Mahler. In both cases the ambiguous territory between sentimental nostalgia and savage irony is trod by means of direct quotation, or by conscious stylization without such direct reference. All Schnittke's symphonies employ these methods, and his own comments on the uses of them reveal his intentions: For all the difficulties and dangers inherent in polystylistics, its indisputablemerits are already

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Schnittke's widest frame of stylistic reference obvious.Thesearethefurtherexpansionof themusical is to be found in his four symphonies: these, meansof expression,the greaterease of integrating probably his best-known works in the West, the 'exalted'andthe 'base'styles, the 'banal'andthe - in a word,a morecomprehensive musical take on the mantle of the Mahleriansymphonic 'recherche' ideal - embracing the world. In speaking of universeandanoverallstylisticdemocratization.3 Mahler's symphonies, Pierre Boulez has observed that 'Nostalgia is an undeniablefeature of Mahler's musical world, but it somehow 2 Pierre Boulez: 'Mahler: Our contemporary', in Orientations coexists with a critical attitude, even with translation of preface to Gustav Mahler et Vienne by Bruno Walter, Paris, 1979 sarcasm',and aftersome discussionof the nature 3 Alfred Schnittke: Polstylistic tendencies in modern music, of musical sarcasm, he says: in Music in the USSR, April/June 1988.

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The Musicof AlfredSchnittke The First and Third Symphonies (1972 and 1980 respectively) both build their musical universes from a wide range of materials. Written during the period of the Serenade,the FirstSymphony takes the principlesof that work much further, and in doing so can be seen as a pivotal point in Schnittke's output between the relatively conventional serial path he had been following and the inception of'polystylism' in unequivocal terms. Schnittke's earlier sketches for the Symphony in fact date from six years before its final completion, which he has said was a period of some difficulty for him. In no other work has the conflict of styles and quotations been so clear and so penetrating. Music by Beethoven, Haydn, Grieg, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, andJohann Straussis quoted and brutally interrupted and transmuted. One of the most memorable of these moments is the vicious cutting-off of a quotation from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Jazz also makes an appearance:there is a cadenza for jazz violin and piano whose expressive rangeis remarkable, and which would indeed make a fine independent work. The iconoclastic nature of the Symphony is visual as well as aural. At the opening, there are only three players on the platform; after the music has begun - on the tubular bells - a solo trumpeterenters, followed by the other players, who proceed to improvise in chaotic fashion until the conductor signals them to stop. At the end, the musicians leave the stage, as in Haydn's FarewellSymphony, but after a reminiscence of that work by the solo violinist, the playersreturn and begin the Symphony again. They are interrupted on this occasion by the conductor, who brings the music to an unexpected close. Though less radicalthan the FirstSymphony, the Third works with quoted material and stylistic reference in exactly the same way. It is in some ways a more heterogeneous creation in that, since it does not try to be quite so allembracing as the First, its range is more circumscribed and its impact accordingly more concentrated. This is not to deny the profound emotional impact of earlierwork: the difference between them is one of intent, not of achievement.

The Second and Fourth Symphonies, though also partaking of the now habitual stylistic parody technique, are concernedwith a different usage of it. If the Third Symphony is more deliberately restricted as to aim than the First, then the remaining two take this concentration one step further, each having one clear purpose and one clear source for its extra-musical

7

associations and thereby its quotations. The Second is entitled St Florian, and is a specific homage to Bruckner. Schnittke has explained its genesis ...as the result of a visit with friends to the Monastery of St Florian in Austria, where Bruckner had been a pupil and chorister and where he is now buried. We arrived at St Florian towards evening. The entrance to Bruckner's grave was shut. However, it was an unforgettableimpression: the cold, darkenedBaroque church was filled with a mystical charge. Somewhere behind the wall a small choir was singing at evening Mass - a Missa invisibilis. No-one else was around apart from the three of us, and after entering the church we separated so that each could pursue his

thoughtsundisturbedand communewith the dark and powerful space surrounding us.4 A commission a year later from the BBC for Gennadi Rozhdyestvensky to conduct in April

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more to the fore, since Rozhdyestvensky wanted a work dedicated to Bruckner. The 'invisible Mass' which Schnittke heard at Bruckner's resting-place dictates the form of the Symphony: it is a sequence of six movements the sections of the following of the Roman Catholic Mass, a chorus Ordinary and four soloists providing the liturgical material (the texts are sung to chant melodies) upon the spiritual and emotional content of which the orchestra meditate. The chant material weaves in and out of the orchestral texture, and provides musical 'cues' for the players' commentary (Example 4). The us of older music, even liturgical chant, has never prevented Schnittke from combining such material with the uncompromising harmonic elements of his music as it has developed since his serial works of the early 1960s. This is evident in the Second Symphony and also in the recent Fourth (1983). This Symphony too uses liturgical chants as its basis, but the scope of the material is much wider than in the earlier work. In an interview given after the premiere, Schnittke observed that In my work I strive to find the general in the dissimilar. In my Symphony I set myself a task of uniting various cultural layers. I decided to stylize the ritual music of three religions: Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant.In the Symphony there are certainelements of the Znamenny chant, the Lutheran chorale, the jubili of Gregorian chant, and also Synagogue cantillation, seeking to find one common basis in their diversity. To realize my idea I chose three intonation systems typical of the ritual music of these religions. 4 Alfred Schnittkc: programllle

note to Symphony

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The 'intonation systems' arenot immediately evident to the ear, absorbed as the chant fragments are by the orchestral texture of the work. It could be said that the Symphony works toward the revelation of these chants, since it is in the last pages of this one-movement piece that the four solo singers come together though there are moments of vocalise earlier, using just one singer on each occasion - to present wordlessly their 'stylizations' of the chants (Example 5). The 'oecumenical' nature

.terial. This is, of course, a parody technique :en to a region into which Shostakovich did t travel. What Schnittke has done is to make otation and stylization of other music a nuine and natural element in his musical guage to a degree unparalleledin the work of y other composer. Even Ives, the archoter, always used quoted material 'on the rface'- with Schnittke it is absorbed into the indations of his own language and rendered more powerful for that.

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of this idea has enabled Schnittke to write a highly moving work. As always in his music, the scoring is subtle and makes its points by the use of deftly-chosen instrumentalcombinations (such as the passage at the beginning for celesta, harpsichord, and piano) and the unexpected alternation of textural densities. It is the polyphonic nature of the writing that creates the increase of intensity in the music. Each group of instruments pursues its own path, sometimes coinciding with another group, but more often overlapping it with complementary

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Schnittke's recent concerti have explored similar ground to the symphonies, though they have tended by theirnatureto be more virtuosic, outrageous works. The Third Violin Concerto was written in 1978, the year preceding the St FlorianSymphony. It is much more extrovert than the Symphony, and more wide-ranging in its scope. It presents an amalgam of violin styles (though often by implication, not explicitly). There is neo-Bachian figuration, for instance, throughout the Concerto; there are references to the grand 19th-century Concerto tradition,

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The Musicof AlfredSchnittke

9

AlfredSchnittke

again by the use of specific kinds of figuration; and the shadow of Berg's Violin Concerto occurs at several points, especially as a reminiscence of its organ-like accompanying wind instruments. Even more eclectic is the Fourth Violin Concerto, dating from 1982. This work exploits the alienating effect of 'polystylism' in a devastating, theatrical manner. In each movement the soloist works through his material in combination with a few other instruments, as though Schnittke is working through each colour available to him from the orchestra. When the tutti passages occur (and they are deliberately infrequent), the full dramatic force of the work can be appreciated. In the final movement, near the end, the orchestrabecomes so loud that the soloist cannot be heard:he is left on stage miming the gestures of the virtuoso but making no music. This is something that can, of course, only be entirely effective when the work is performedin concert, but that is true of all good theatre. Both these concerti, and also the Viola Concerto of 1985, follow the precedent of the First Concerto Grosso in announcing the essential elements of the musical material at or near the beginning of the work; as with a theme and variations, this ensures that future reference to that material, especially in 'undeveloped' form, possesses the immediacy of impact necessary to the sense of drama inherent in the design of a concerto. For all the power and intensity so much a part of these recent instrumental compositions, it is

in a work for voices that Schnittke has achieved what is perhaps his most emotionally concentrated writing. The Kontsiertdlya smieshannovo khorana stikhi GrigoraNariekatsi(Concerto for mixed chorus on verses of Grigor Narekatsi) dates from the mid-1980s. It is not a concerto in any traditional sense - indeed, its breadth suggests that is rathermore of a symphony - but a suite lasting some 40 minutes setting words by the Armenian poet Gregory of Narek, who lived from c.951 to c. 1003 and is considered one of the most outstanding figures of Armenian literature,even though almost nothing is known about him. He wrote several books of scriptural commentary and works of a devotional nature, but his masterpiece is the Book of Lamentations, whence Schnittke draws his texts. As is usual with Schnittke, the work derives much of its power from contrast. In this case, verses in praise of God's glory are set against contemplative, elegiac words. The second and fourth movements partakeof the latter qualities, while the first and third are concerned with grandeur and monumental majesty. The handling of the chorus is masterly. There are very strong echoes of the Russian sacred repertoire, and this imparts a sense of belonging to a tradition which in turn provides much of the work's strength. The treatment of long, chant-like melodic lines revolving around essentially homophonic textures is what creates this impression: these techniques are found in Rakhmaninov's Vigil Service (Vespers), and

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10 The Musicof AlfredSchnittke indeed are the compostional basis for nearly all Russian Church music since the early 19thcentury. The very opening of the Concerto, in a rich, static B minor, brings that repertory to mind (Example 6). Ex.6

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Church music; but there are consistent forays into more dissonant harmonic areas, usually achieved through the establishment of an harmonic polarity which is then resolved through the simple expedient of the retreat of one of the poles. The result is, curiously, not

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There are naturallyelements in the work that do not derive from the Russian sacredtradition, but which complement it and enable Schnittke to sustain the intensity of the music for its lengthy duration. One of these is the ostinato figure which appearsduring the first movement as a kind of descant in the soprano part. This is in turn related to a descending choral sequence that appears throughout the work and which is first hinted at in the opening bars. Harmonically the music is constructed from essentially simple diatonic, triadic material, as is appropriate in

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unreminiscent of some of Herbert Howells's most imaginative moments in his unaccompanied Church music, such as the Requiem.It is not overstating the case to say that Schnittke has, in the Concerto for Chorus, given the 20th century one of its most significantchoral works. The range and depth of the music is something which can be obtained only by a composer with a genuine mastery of voices. It is difficult to speak of the diversity of Schnittke's output without giving a false impression of superficiality;yet that diversity is

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The Musicof AlfredSchnittke 11 its richness, that carefully developed all- music and in that of Western music as a whole, embracing technique a source of a profound in which he may be seen to be assuming originality, a music of daring power and considerable prominence. emotional and spiritual substance. It is evident that wherever Schnittke's next compositions I shouldliketo acknowledge thegenerousassistanceof take him, his future development will be of Julia Wrightat Boosey& HawkesandEricForderat enormous interest both in the context of Soviet UniversalEditionin thepreparation of thisarticle.

Extracts are reproduced by permission ofBoosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd on behalf of Chant du Monde (Symphony No.4), Universal Edition (Serenade, String Quartets 2 and 3, Symphony No.2, Quasi una Sonata) and Anglo-Soviet Music Press Ltd (Concerto Grosso No.1, Concerto for Chorus)

Boosey &HawkesMusicPublishersLimited

Alfred

Schnittke

Workson sale

Concerto for Cello and Orchestra Fullscore Concerto for Oboe and Harp Fullscore Concerto Grosso No 1 Pocket score Fullscore Dialogue I Full score and parts Hymn HymnIl/Canonin memoriamIS Fullscore and parts Fullscore and parts HymnIII Pianissimo Fullscore Piano Quintet Score and parts Praeludium/Moz-Art Parts Quasi Una Sonata Score and part Serenade Fullscore Pocket score String QuartetNo 2 Pocket score String QuartetNo 3 Fullscore Symphony No 4 Three Madrigals Score and parts ViolinConcerto No 3 Pocket score

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