Ivana Medić

FROM POLYSTYLISM TO META-PLURALISM

Essays on Late Soviet Symphonic Music

Supported by the Ministry of Education, Science and

Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia
 Ivana Medić

FROM POLYSTYLISM
TO META-PLURALISM
ESSAYS ON LATE SOVIET SYMPHONIC MUSIC

Institute of Musicology
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
Ivana Medić
FROM POLYSTYLISM TO META-PLURALISM
Essays on Late Soviet Music

Institute of Musicology
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SASA)
Knez Mihailova 36/IV, Belgrade

Reviewers
Melita Milin, PhD, Senior Research Fellow
Institute of Musicology SASA, Belgrade
Academician Dimitrije Stefanović, PhD
Fellow of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
Professor Miodrag Šuvaković, PhD
Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade

Book cover image

Svetlana Bakushina’s poster for the 2003 Russian premiere of Alfred
Schnittke’s opera Life with an Idiot at the Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and
Ballet Theatre. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.

Copy-editor
Jelena Janković-Beguš

Technical editor
Dejan Medić

Printed by
Colorgrafx, Belgrade

First published 2017. Non-commercial edition.

Circulation: 200 copies

ISBN 978-86-80639-30-7

This book is a result of the project Serbian Musical Identities within Local and
Global Frameworks: Traditions, Changes, Challenges (No. 177004) funded by the
Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the
Republic of Serbia
The publisher of this book has no responsibility for the persistence or
accuracy of URLs for external or third-party websites referred to in this book,
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate and appropriate.
 Contents

Note on Transliteration 7
Preface 9
INTRODUCTION 11
POLYSTYLISM 16
The Godfather of Polystylism 21
Origins of Schnittke’s Polystylism 25
Luciano Berio: ‘Sinfonia’ 38
Alfred Schnittke: Symphony No. 1 43
Boris Chaikovskii: Symphony No. 2 67
Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 15 72
Postlude to Polystylism 83
TOWARDS POSTISM VIA SPIRITUALISM 85
From Poly- to Monostylism 89
Arvo Pärt: Symphony No. 3 96
Galina Ustvol’skaia: Symphony No. 2 ‘True and Eternal Bliss’ 107
Sofia Gubaidulina’s Spiritualism 117
Postlude to Spiritualism 138
META-PLURALISM 139
Alfred Schnittke: Symphony No. 3 149
Valentin Sil’vestrov: Symphony No. 5 186
Boris Tishchenko: Symphony No. 5 196
Postlude to Meta-Pluralism 206
List of Scores 209
Bibliography 211
 Note on Transliteration

Russian text is transliterated using a simplified version of the Library of

Congress romanisation system, as presented below. Russian names have
also been rendered according to this system, although exceptions have
been made for names that are well known in the West and have taken on
conventional spellings. As for Alfred Schnittke, his name is presented in
its ‘German’ form except when directly referencing a Russian publi-
cation, in which case it is transliterated as Al’fred Shnitke. Exceptions
have also been made for quotations, which have been left in their
original form.

Aa Aa Пп Pp

Бб Bb Pp Rr

Вв Vv Сс Ss

Гг Gg Тт Tt

Дд Dd Уу Uu

Ее Ее Фф Ff

Ёё Io io Хх Kh kh

Жж Zh zh Цц Ts ts

Зз Zz Чч Ch ch

Ии Ii Шш Sh sh

Йй Ii Щщ Shch shch

Кк Kk Ъъ ””

Лл Ll Ыы Yy

Мм Mm Ьь ’’

Нн Nn Ээ Ee

Оо Оо Юю Iu iu
 Preface

Seven years have passed since I defended my PhD dissertation on Alfred

Schnittke’s symphonies in the context of late Soviet music.1 During this
period, I disseminated my findings in a number of journal articles, book
chapters and conference papers, where I mostly focused on various
facets of Alfred Schnittke’s oeuvre.2 In this monograph I wish to offer a
broader context and to discuss Schnittke’s achievements alongside those
of his Soviet contemporaries.
Although the largest portion of the material in this book is published
for the first time, 3 the text has benefited immensely from the many
collegial exchanges during the past seven years, which have helped me to
rethink and revise my conclusions.

1 Ivana Medić, Alfred Schnittke’s Symphonies 1-3 in the Context of Late Soviet Music. PhD
dissertation supervised by Prof. David Fanning. University of Manchester, United
Kingdom, 2010. Funded by the Overseas Research Award (ORS), Graduate Teaching
Assistantship and School of Arts, Histories and Cultures Award.
2 These include: Ivana Medić, ‘Crucifixus etiam pro nobis: Representation of the Cross in
Alfred Schnittke’s Symphony No. 2 St Florian,’ in: Gavin Dixon (ed.), Schnittke Studies,
Abingdon/New York, Routledge, 2016, 3–29; ‘Revised Catalogue of Alfred Schnittke’s
Sketches in the Juilliard Manuscript Collection’ in: ibid., 209–257; ‘Opera i kraj komu-
nizma: Život s idiotom Alfreda Šnitkea’ [Opera and the End of Communism: Alfred Sch-
nittke’s Life with an Idiot], The Annual of the Institute of Theatre, Film, Radio and Television
28, Belgrade, Faculty of Dramatic Arts, 2015, 59–74; ‘Irony, Satire, Parody and Grotes-
que in Alfred Schnittke’s Opera Historia von D. Johann Fausten’, paper read at the Sympo-
sion zum 80. Geburtstag von Alfred Schnittke: Emigration, Integration und künstlerische Produkti-
vität – Alfred Schnittke in Hamburg, 1990–1998, Alfred Schnittke Akademie International
Hamburg, 27–29 November 2014 (publication forthcoming); ‘The Sketches for Alfred
Schnittke’s Symphony No. 3 and What They (Don’t) Tell Us’, Muzikologija/Musicology
15, 2013, 169–213; ‘“I Believe… In What?” Arvo Pärt’s and Alfred Schnittke’s Polysty-
listic Credos,’ Slavonica 16/2, November 2010, 96–111.
3 Portions of three chapters previously appeared as articles; these are marked in the text.
 I am greatly indebted to a number of my teachers, coworkers and
friends who have assisted me during the various stages of preparation
of this book. Some of them have influenced and inspired my thinking
on late Soviet music, while others have assisted me in obtaining musical
scores, as well as a range of primary and secondary sources, or been
there to offer friendly and professional support. My heartfelt thanks go
to: Tamsin Alexander, Philip Ross Bullock, Barry Cooper, Gavin Dixon,
Pauline Fairclough, David Fallows, David Fanning, Amrei Flechsig,
Marina Frolova-Walker, James Garratt, Jane Gottlieb, Srđan Hofman,
Katerina Levidou, Sonja Marinković, Melita Milin, Ivan Moody, Danica
Petrović, Leslie Ruthven, Peter J. Schmelz, Dimitrije Stefanović, Chris-
tian Storch, Danijela Špirić-Beard, Miodrag Šuvaković, Richard Taruskin,
Katarina Tomašević, Mirjana Veselinović-Hofman, Arnold Whittall,
Stephen Wilford and Patrick Zuk. Two of my guiding lights, Alexander
Ivashkin and Noëlle Mann are no longer among us, but memories will
live forever.
My twin sister and fellow musicologist Jelena Janković-Beguš has read
my text at various stages of gestation, and the book has benefited
greatly from her sharp eye and critical acumen.
I would like to thank the extraordinary artist, photographer, film
producer and musician Svetlana Bakushina, who has kindly allowed me
to use her artwork – the poster for the 2003 Russian premiere of
Schnittke’s opera Zhizn s idiotom [Life with an Idiot] directed by Henryk
Baranowski at the Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Ballet
Theatre – for the cover of this book.
Finally, I am deeply grateful to my husband Dejan and son Bojan for
their endless patience and warm encouragement.

^10
 INTRODUCTION

In this book I identify and discuss the main trends of late Soviet music
– the period roughly encompassing a quarter-century (from the late
1960s to the dissolution of the Soviet Union). These trends – polystylism,
spiritualism and meta-pluralism – overlapped, yet exhibited specific distin-
guishable traits. They permanently changed the profile of Soviet music,
while they also revived several older musical traditions that had fallen
out of focus in the decades predating this period. In order to illustrate
these trends, I analyse symphonic – and a few vocal-instrumental –
works by (then) Soviet composers. Aside from Alfred Schnittke (1934–
1998), whom I regard as the central figure of the late Soviet period, I
discuss the works by his great predecessor Dmitrii Shostakovich (1907–
1975), as well as his contemporaries Galina Ustvol’skaia (1919–2006),
Boris Chaikovskii (1925–1996), Sofia Gubaidulina (b. 1931), Arvo Pärt
(b. 1935), Valentin Sil’vestrov (b. 1937) and Boris Tishchenko (1939–
2010).
While the terms polystylism and spiritualism (or religious revival, the label
that I used in my doctoral dissertation for the latter phenomenon) 1 have
been common in discussions of late Soviet music, meta-pluralism is my
own label – coined in the absence of an established umbrella term in the
literature – for a tendency that is commonly (but wrongly) equated with
Western postmodernism. Instead, meta-pluralism should be equated
with postism – the half-serious term coined by Richard Taruskin in his
seminal book Defining Russia Musically.2 Taruskin is doubtful about the
appropriateness of use of the term postmodernism in the late Soviet
context. Namely, the emergence of Soviet polystylism coincided with

1 Medić, Alfred Schnittke’s Symphonies 1–3…, op. cit.

2Richard Taruskin, ‘After Everything,’ in: Defining Russia Musically. Historical and
Hermeneutical Essays, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1997, 100.
the dawn of postmodernism in the West. At that point, it became
increasingly difficult to distinguish composers who began as tradi-
tionalists or moderated modernists and went on to embrace some avant-
garde techniques, from those who started off as avant-gardists, but grew
dissatisfied with using novel devices alone and started introducing
elements of older styles. The fact that tendencies overlapped played in
the Soviet composers’ favour; their polystylistic works, which sounded
similar to some of the early examples of Western musical postmoder-
nism, brought them recognition abroad and made them internationally
relevant. However, Taruskin asserts that the career trajectories of
Schnittke and his Soviet peers were entirely different from those of the
first postmodernists, and thus describes their style as ‘postism, after-
everythingism, it’s-all-overism.’3
******
Among Anglo-American authors of general histories of music, Taruskin
is the only one who pays due attention to Soviet music.4 On the other
hand, several German and Russian music historians have recognised the
three main tendencies that are in the focus of this book; however, they
interpret them in different ways. Dorothea Redepenning identifies
‘pluralism’ as the crucial feature of the late Soviet music, and delineates
two major trends within it: polystylism and religious music. Redepenning
adopts Tamara Levaia’s5 label late thinking [spätes Denken]6 for what
Taruskin has dubbed postism; she discusses the late thinking with respect
to polystylism and correctly observes that it does not simply amount to
postmodernism, but rather to a revisionist approach to various styles
from the past, from diverse artistic positions.

3 Ibid.
4Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, Volume IV: The Early Twentieth
Century; Volume V: The Late Twentieth Century; New York/Oxford, Oxford University
Press, 2005.
5 Tamara Levaia, ‘Sovetskaia muzyka: dialog desiatiletii,’ in: Sovetskaia muzyka 70-80-kh
godov: Stil’ i stilevye dialogi [Soviet Music: the dialogue of the decades; Soviet music from
the 1970s and the 1980s: Styles and stylistic dialogues], Moscow, Gnessin Institute,
1985, 9–29.
6Dorothea Redepenning, Geschichte der russischen und der sowjetischen Musik, Band 2 ‘Das
20. Jahrhundert,’ Laaber, Laaber-Verlag, 2008, 683–684.

^12
 Levon Hakobian divides the entire post-war period in Soviet music
(he calls it ‘the Bronze Age’) into four periods, the first ending in the
early 1960s, while the demarcation points for the remaining three
periods are 1974–1975 (the premiere of Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1
and Shostakovich’s death) and ca. 1982 (the acceptance of the ‘avant-
garde,’ as marked by the Denisov-Schnittke-Gubaidulina concert at the
Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory).7 Hakobian does not think in
terms of stylistic divisions, and although he does acknowledge the
existence of relatively independent stylistic streams, he argues that the
culture created by the joint efforts of ‘leftists,’ ‘moderates,’ ‘conserva-
tives,’ ‘outsiders’ and ‘provincials’ was ‘an integral phenomenon whose
foundations lay deeper than any individual idiosyncrasies, any
consciously elaborated ideological or aesthetical platform;’8 moreover,
he believes that these foundations lay in the Soviet ‘gnosticism’ and its
philosophical and moral subtext.
While Francis Maes does not even examine works by Schnittke and
his peer group and finishes his history of Soviet music with a chapter on
Shostakovich,9 Peter Schmelz’s 2009 history of ‘unofficial’ Soviet music
focuses precisely on the artists of Schnittke’s generation and provides
very valuable observations. He analyses the social, political and aesthetic
contexts within which the young composers attempted to learn avant-
garde techniques. Similarly to Redepenning, Schmelz recognises two
main trends: ‘the shift from abstraction to mimesis’ – closely related to
the emergence of polystylism – and ‘a related set of conversions […] of
an explicitly religious nature.’10 However, he discusses issues related to
postmodernism in the Soviet context very briefly, because he ends his

7 I have used the old Swedish edition of Hakobian’s seminal book: Levon Hakobian,
Music of the Soviet Age: 1917–1987, Stockholm, Melos Music Literature, 1998, 219–223.
(The second, revised edition has recently been published by Routledge: Levon
Hakobian, Music of the Soviet Era: 1917–1991, Abingdon/New York, Routledge, 2017.)
8 Ibid., 219.
9 Francis Maes, A History of Russian Music (From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar), (trans.
Arnold J. Pomerans and Erica Pomerans), Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, University
of California Press, 2002.
Peter J. Schmelz, Such Freedom, If Only Musical: Unofficial Soviet Music During the Thaw,
10

Oxford/New York, Oxford University Press, 2009, 220–221.

^13
study with Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1, which he regards as the work
that marked the end of the ‘musical Thaw.’ 11
My decision to focus on symphonic music was primarily motivated
by the overall importance of the symphonic genre in Soviet cultural life.
A seminal 1979 book by Mark Aranovskii,12 in which he analysed a vast
body of Soviet symphonies written between 1960 and 1975, provides
valuable clues on the ways in which music was written, analysed and
understood at that time. As many passages of this book indicate,
symphony was considered a supreme genre, the crown of composers’
achievements; moreover, the most important feature of a symphony for
theorists and practitioners of the time was the semantic/symbolic
meaning both of its separate movements and of the cycle as a whole:
‘The symphony becomes a complex construction of signs, a statement,
consisting of “words” with certain meanings.’13 It was such statements
that inspired Eric Roseberry’s remark that Soviet theorists measured
symphonies according to Beethovenian standards, since the entire
ideology of ‘historicism’ in Marxist-Leninist musical aesthetics was
essentially Beethoven-oriented. Roseberry aptly cited Shostakovich’s
friend Ivan Sollertinski’s words: ‘The very terms “Beethovenian” and
“symphonist” are not really separable.’14
Aranovskii understood Symphony as a ‘substitute’ for the Mass in the
atheist contemporary world and, accordingly, constructed an ‘ideal’
model of a symphonic work, with each movement assigned a special
role in the overall dramaturgy. According to Aranovskii, the four
movements of the symphony, by means of the relations between their
semantics and structure, describe the four different aspects of Man:
Homo agens (action), Homo sapiens (contemplation), Homo ludens

11 Ibid., 322.
12Mark Aranovskii, Simfonicheskie iskaniia – Problema zhanra simfonii v sovetskoi muzyke
1960-1975 godov [Symphonic Quests – Problems of the Symphonic Genre in the Soviet
Music 1960–1975], Leningrad, Sovetskii kompozitor, 1979, 14–17.
13 Ibid., 160.
14Eric Roseberry, Ideology, Style, Content, and Thematic Process in the Symphonies, Cello
Concertos, and String Quartets of Shostakovich, PhD diss., New York/London, Garland
Publishing Inc., 1989, viii.

^14
(play) and Homo communis (man as a member of a larger collective).15
He admitted that this ideal model was rarely embodied in the actual
works; however, Aranovskii considered it an ‘invariant’ and claimed that
any given work employed a different variant of the ideal model, the
essence of which was nevertheless preserved. 16 Aranovskii also outlined
four main symphonic tendencies in the period between 1950 and 1975:
1) ‘renaissance’ of the (traditional) symphonic canon; 2) an alternative
canon (this mostly applies to the music of the ‘unofficial’ generation); 3)
chamber symphonies; and 4) vocal symphonies. Aranovskii discussed
Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1 (at that time still only named ‘Symphony’)
as a pinnacle of the ‘alternative canon,’ whilst Shostakovich’s Symphony
No. 15 and, to a lesser extent, Boris Chaikovskii’s Symphony No. 2
(both of which will be analysed below) were singled out as examples of
the ‘renaissance of the symphonic canon.’

15 Aranovskii, Simfonicheskie iskaniia, 27.

16 Ibid., 25–35.

^15
 POLYSTYLISM

The term polystylism (or polystylistics, in original полистилистика

[polistilistika]) was made (in)famous by Alfred Schnittke, who first used it
in his 1971 paper ‘Polystylistic Tendencies in Contemporary Music.’1 His
aim was to define, classify and analyse the major new tendency of the
time, namely the shift towards eclecticism and an aspiration to over-
come the idea of stylistic purity. The term polystylism is nowadays
usually employed to refer to the works by Schnittke and his ‘non-confor-
mist’ peers, whose styles evolved from the fascination with the West-
European avant-garde techniques, in the direction of re-assessing the
entire traditions of European artistic, popular and folk music(s), mixing
and merging their avant-garde experience with elements of other styles.
However, Schnittke neither invented the term polystylism, nor had his
own oeuvre exclusively in mind when introducing this catchword into
his theoretical discourse. Instead, he used it as a broad and flexible
umbrella term for various manifestations of the tendency to employ,
within a single piece, creative tools drawn from diverse styles and tradi-
tions. Moreover, he applied it to a vast number of works written around
that time by composers both old and young, Soviet and ‘Western,’
‘moderate’ and ‘avant-garde.’
Hakobian coined the term ‘Second avant-garde’ in analogy with
Russian ‘first’ avant-garde from the beginning of the twentieth century.2
The emergence of the ‘Second avant-garde,’ whose exponents were
composers born around 1930 and educated after the Thaw, was
facilitated by a ‘defrosting’ of ideological pressures since the mid-1950s.
However, while the first avant-garde spread well beyond the borders of

1 Alfred Schnittke, ‘Polystylistic Tendencies in Contemporary Music,’ in: Alexander

Ivashkin (ed.), A Schnittke Reader (trans. John Goodliffe), Bloomington/Indianapolis,
Indiana University Press, 2002, 87–90.
2 Hakobian, Music of the Soviet Age, 30.
Russia and became internationally relevant, the second wave was borne
out of isolation and restriction. This generation felt the urge to discover
‘new’ sound worlds, whether those of pre-war modernism, post-war
Western avant-garde or their country’s own modernist past – in short, all
kinds of music that had been dubbed formalist and banned for decades.
During the 1950s and early 1960s the young Soviets slowly gained
access to previously forbidden scores by avant-garde composers from
the Second Viennese School to Stockhausen and Boulez, and also redis-
covered Russia’s own suppressed avant-garde past.3 In their urge to taste
the forbidden fruit, they began trying out and adopting the entire avant-
gardist spectrum of expressive means, starting off with dodecaphony,
and quickly moving towards pointillism, aleatory and sonoristics. There-
fore the seeds of future eclecticism were sown at their first encounter
with avant-garde music. The reason why they initially turned to the
twelve-note technique was because they had two role-models – Andrei
Volkonskii (1933–2008) and Philip Gershkovich (1906–1989). Both of
them were ‘domestic foreigners’ – Gershkovich an immigrant from
Austria, and Volkonskii born in exile, in Geneva, and repatriated in
1949. Unlike their Soviet-born contemporaries, they owned the forbid-
den scores, and Volkonskii even remained in touch with the world
‘outside the Iron Curtain’ via his Swiss friends.4 Volkonskii was the first
young Soviet composer to write a twelve-note piece and was quickly
recognised as the most influential figure and the leader of the
generation.
Notable is the speed with which the young Soviets assimilated ‘new’
techniques, but also the fact that they used them quite idiosyncratically.

3On the young Soviets’ early dodecaphonic works see Peter J. Schmelz, ‘Shostakovich’s
“Twelve-Tone” Compositions and the Politics and Practice of Soviet Serialism,’ in:
Laurel E. Fay (ed.), Shostakovich and His World, Princeton/Oxford, Princeton University
Press, 2004, 308–353.
4 On their importance for the generation of Soviet avant-gardists, see Yuri Kholopov,
‘Andrei Volkonsky – the initiator: a profile of his life and work,’ in: Valeria Tsenova
(ed.), Underground Music from the Former USSR, Amsterdam, Harwood Academic
Publishers, 1997, 1–20; Yuri Kholopov, ‘Philip Gershkovich’s search for the lost
essence of music,’ in: ibid., 21–35; Peter J. Schmelz, ‘Andrey Volkonsky and the
Beginnings of Unofficial Music in the Soviet Union,’ Journal of the American Musicological
Society 58.1 (Spring 2005), 139–208.

^17
What made this group of composers look avant-garde in the eyes of
their Soviet contemporaries were not only the (relatively) new techniques
that they introduced, but even more so, their anti-conformist attitude,
rebellion against establishment, and the courage to learn banned techni-
ques. Their music also sounded ‘new’ because, at least in the beginning,
they departed from realist gestures and turned to abstract, ‘formalist’
compositional methods. The fact that these composers were soon
pushed into an ‘unofficial’ status only contributed to their separation
from the establishment and strengthened their avant-gardist aura.
The breakthrough of the ‘Second avant-garde’ in the 1960s was a
major shock not only for the representatives of the official socialist
realist line, but also for prominent moderated modernists of the older
generation because, just fresh from being castigated for ‘formalism,’ they
found themselves old-fashioned and irrelevant to the youngest genera-
tion of composers and their partisan audiences. A key example here is
Dmitrii Shostakovich himself, and his very personal late adoption of
note rows might have been an attempt to re-bond with the youth and
become relevant again.5 Hakobian even includes Shostakovich in the
‘Second avant-garde’ as a ‘senior colleague of Gubaidulina, Schnittke,
Sil’vestrov, and Pärt;’ however, Shostakovich never gave up his official
status and never employed the avant-garde techniques to the extent that
his younger colleagues did.6
Although stylistic eclecticism and the use of various types of musical
references had been a feature of Russian (and later, Soviet) music
throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was Schnittke and
his peers who turned mimetic polystylism into a fully-fledged idiom.
Their fascination with serialism and other contemporary techniques did
not last long; already by the mid-1960s they had lost the appeal of a
forbidden fruit, and the young composers grew dissatisfied with using
avant-garde devices alone. They were torn between the official condem-
nation of ‘formalist’ music and the realisation that their works would

5On the possible influence of the young avant-gardists on Shostakovich’s music see
Schmelz, ‘Shostakovich’s “Twelve-Tone” Compositions,’ 303–330.
6 See Levon Hakobian, ‘The Nose and the Fourteenth Symphony: An Affinity of
Opposites,’ in: Laurel E. Fay, ed., Shostakovich and His World, Princeton/Oxford,
Princeton University Press, 2004, 179.

^18
always sound dated and epigonic compared to those by their Western
contemporaries. Hence they began to explore the expressive and
associative possibilities of the most diverse compositional devices and
their potential to convey meaning and transmit political, philosophical
and ethical messages. Schmelz makes a distinction between two phases
of ‘unofficial’ music. In the first, ‘abstract’ phase, composers employed
serial techniques to withdraw from the social demands of socialist
realism. In the second, ‘mimetic’ phase, from 1965 onwards, as noted by
Schmelz, they moved ‘from serial techniques to aleatory devices and a
range of familiar tonal gestures and harmonies, including direct
quotations of familiar compositions from the past.’7
Just as Shostakovich’s adoption of 12-note rows was probably inspi-
red by the works of the ‘unofficial’ generation, one could also assert that
the young composers’ eventual return to the concept of dramatic music
was a return to an essentially Shostakovichian idiom, embroidered with
allusions, quotations, and hidden messages craving for hermeneutical
interpretation. The main difference was that the young composers used
a wider variety of contemporary compositional techniques and often
juxtaposed them in a deliberately crude manner.
The young composers’ turn to polystylism was undoubtedly con-
ditioned by their attempts to navigate between the contradictory require-
ments of Soviet cultural life. On the one hand, they were expected by
the officialdom to write accessible music, which they associated with
academicism and conformism. On the other hand, a majority of them
were earning a living by composing music for film and theatre, which
often required an eclectic employment of various styles and genres.
Their attempts at pursuing their own, self-taught and inevitably idio-
syncratic brands of avant-gardism were systematically frustrated by the
officialdom. Besides, it was not just avant-garde music that was officially
condemned in the USSR, but also religious music,8 early music,9

7 Schmelz, Such Freedom, If Only Musical, 12.

8 On the intensified campaign against religion by the Soviet government from 1957
onwards, see Robert Conquest, ‘Religion Since Stalin’s Death,’ in: idem. (ed.), Religion in
the USSR, London, The Bodley Head Ltd, 1968, 45–66.
9On the reception of early music in the Soviet Union see Paul Hillier, Arvo Pärt,
Oxford/New York, Oxford University Press, 1997, 66.

^19
improvised music,10 as well as Western rock, pop and jazz.11 Although
none of these were strictly banned (at least not after 1953),12 the official
attitude towards them vacillated between relative tolerance and increased
vilification. Navigating between these Scyllas and Charybdes was
anything but easy, and Alfred Schnittke confessed that he often felt like a
split personality,13 forced, like many of his contemporaries, to write one
type of music to make a living and another type to satisfy his intellectual
and creative urges.
What distinguishes the first polystylistic works by Soviet composers
from earlier historical examples (as in for instance, Mahler, Berg or
Stravinsky) is that the stylistic interaction itself provides the basis and
the main constructive tool for a new work. Furthermore, the composi-
tional techniques of various provenances are assigned different pro-
grammatic roles. In other words, samples or simulations of various
styles are selected according to their mimetic and dramatic potential. At
their best, polystylistic works are multidimensional, dynamic and enga-
ging; furthermore, as Gordon E. Marsh has recently shown, the multi-
plicity of styles can itself be an effective structuring tool.14

10 As noted by Michael Kurtz, in the Soviet totalitarian regime in which ‘any individual
freedom was seen as a threat to the system,’ performances of improvised music were
strictly monitored by the cultural authorities, because this type of music ‘could not be
controlled.’ See Michael Kurtz, Sofia Gubaidulina – A Biography (trans. Christoph K.
Lohmann), Bloomington/Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 2007, 146; 122.
11On the ups and downs of the official reception of rock and other popular music
genres in the Soviet Union, see Timothy W. Ryback, Rock Around The Bloc: A History of
Rock Music in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, Oxford/New York, Oxford University
Press, 1990, especially chapters 7, 10 and 14.
12 However, in some areas of Soviet cultural life, the bans persisted; for example, the
works of Russian religious philosopher Nikolai Berdiaev (1874–1948) were forbidden
in the USSR up to the post-Soviet time. Vera Lukomsky, ‘“Hearing the Subconscious”:
Interview with Sofia Gubaidulina,’ Tempo 209, 1999, 30.
13 See Kholopova, Valentina and Chigariova, Evgenia, Al’fred Shnitke – Ocherk zhizni i
tvorchestva [Alfred Schnittke – A study of his life and work], Moscow, Sovetskii
kompozitor, 1990, 93–94.
14Gordon E. Marsh, ‘Schnittke’s Polystylistic Schema: Textural Progression in the
Concerti Grossi,’ in: Gavin Dixon (ed.), Schnittke Studies, Abingdon/New York,
Routledge, 2016, 103–136.

^20
The Godfather of Polystylism
Alfred Schnittke occupied a special place within his peer group because,
although he did not singlehandedly invent any ‘new’ creative strategies,
his first three symphonies reflected the main tendencies of that time and
played crucial roles in establishing and popularising them; in particular
his Symphony No. 1 became a milestone and a model for numerous
works by other Soviet composers.15 As noted by Redepenning:

Schnittke had formulated the question of a [composer’s] place in

history so emphatically in his Symphony No. 1 that reflection about
types and styles and playing with formal conventions became the
general characteristic of Soviet music since the 1970s.16

Although Schnittke’s output does not reflect all trends of late Soviet
music (e.g. he was almost completely unaffected by the so-called ‘neo-
folkloristic wave,’ or ‘neo-primitivism’,17 and his increasingly hostile
attitude towards popular music was probably a reaction to the success of
the ‘Third Direction’ [tretye napravlenie] with Soviet audiences),18 by the
early 1970s Schnittke had assumed the role of the most prominent
‘avant-garde’ or ‘unofficial’ Soviet composer of his generation. This title
had previously ‘belonged’ to Volkonskii until the mid-1960s, and to
Edison Denisov (1929–1996) from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s.
However, unlike Volkonskii and Denisov, Schnittke had the same ability
as Shostakovich to absorb various tendencies of the time, filter them
through his own artistic prism and make them his own, which contribu-
ted to his promotion into the central figure of his generation and

15 Medić, Alfred Schnittke’s Symphonies 1–3…, 13–14.

16 Redepenning, Geschichte der russischen und der sowjetischen Musik, Band 2, 701–702.
17 On these overlapping tendencies, see Redepenning, 712–713; Svetlana Savenko,
Istoriia russkoi muzyki XX stoletiia ot Skriabina do Shnitke [A History of Russian 20th-
Century Music from Scriabin to Schnittke], Moscow, Muzyka, 2008, 207; Hakobian,
Music of the Soviet Age, 247–255.
18This style was distinguished by the merger of serious and rock music; see
Redepenning, Geschichte der russischen und der sowjetischen Musik, Bd. 2, 699–700.

^21
enabled his advocates to regard him as Shostakovich’s successor.19 Apart
from the influence he exerted over his peers, Schnittke was one of the
first Soviet composers of this generation to gain prominence in the
West, thanks to famous performers such as Gidon Kremer, Tatiana
Grindenko, Mstislav Rostropovich et al. who championed his works.
Schnittke’s own infatuation with serialism only lasted about five years
(1963–1968), which can be regarded as his period of apprenticeship. As
the 1960s neared the end, Schnittke increasingly felt the urge to commu-
nicate his messages more directly and expressively. He realised ‘the ne-
cessity to desist from any kind of “technological enthusiasm” (including
that for the twelve-tone technique)’20 and later assessed his serial scores
from the early 1960s (such as Music for Chamber orchestra, Music for Piano
and Chamber Orchestra, Improvisation for piano, Fugue and Variations on a
Chord for piano) as ‘dead music.’21
Dmitrii Smirnov observes that Schnittke was not the first Soviet
composer to combine diverse styles into a single work:

The idea of ‘polystylism’ had already been represented by Rodion

Shchedrin (Second Piano Concerto, 1966), Boris Chaikovskii (Second
Symphony, 1967), by Sofia Gubaidulina (Piano Sonata, 1965), by
Edison Denisov (Silhouettes, 1969) and especially by Arvo Pärt (Collage
on the theme B-A-C-H, 1964; Pro et contra, 1966; Second Symphony,
1966; and Credo, 1968).22

Nevertheless, it was Schnittke who provided a theoretical foundation for

the new ‘style’ and he soon emerged as its most outspoken and prolific

19 See Aranovskii, Simfonicheskie iskaniia, 161; Alexander Ivashkin, Alfred Schnittke – A

Biography, London, Phaidon Press, 1995, 123; Taruskin, ‘After Everything,’ 100–101;
Hakobian, Music of the Soviet Age, 282; Ivan Moody, ‘Schnittke [Shnitke], Alfred
(Garrievich),’ Grove Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/
article/grove/music/51128; Schmelz, Such Freedom, If Only Musical, 319.
20 See Hakobian, Music of the Soviet Age, 273.
21Interview with Hannelore Gerlach, quoted in: Schmelz, Such Freedom, If Only Musical,
241.
22Dmitrii Smirnov and Guy Stockton, ‘Marginalia quasi una Fantasia: On the Second
Violin Sonata by Alfred Schnittke,’ Tempo, New Series, 220 (April 2002), 2.

^22
representative. In other words, it was Schnittke who turned polystylism
into a brand. He wrote: ‘By the polystylistic method I mean not merely
the “collage wave” in contemporary music but also more subtle ways of
using elements of another’s style.’23 He confessed to not knowing ‘where
the boundary lies between an eclectic and a polystylistic method, or
between the polystylistic method and direct plagiarism.’24
Schnittke attempted to define two different principles: the principle
of quotation and the principle of allusion.25 However, his grouping is
rather inconsistent. He argued that ‘The principle of quotation manifests
itself in a whole series of devices, ranging from the quoting of stereo-
typical micro-elements of an alien style, belonging to another age or
another national tradition (characteristic melodic intonations, harmonic
sequences, cadential formulae), to exact or reworked quotations or
pseudo-quotations.’ 26 His examples range from samples of national
anthems in Stockhausen’s Hymnen, to a piece like Shostakovich’s Piano
Trio, where there are no samples at all, but some mannerism of the
eighteenth century music is merely simulated. Hence the last example
would better fit into Schnittke’s category of allusion, which he defined as
‘the use of subtle hints and unfulfilled promises that hover on the brink
of quotation but do not actually cross it’ – which is precisely what
Shostakovich does in his Trio.
Schnittke’s next category is that of ‘adaptation – the retelling of an
alien musical text in one’s own musical language,’ or ‘a free development
of alien material in one’s own style.’ His understanding of the adaptation

23 Schnittke, ‘Polystylistic Tendencies in Modern Music,’ 87.

24 Ibid., 90.
25 Mirjana Veselinović-Hofman defines four types of ‘musical paradigms:’ sample [exact
quotation], pattern [sample which has been modified, worked on/with; paraphrase], faux
sample [forgery, ersatz quotation] and model [simulation, imitation, without an obvious
reference]. See Mirjana Veselinović–Hofman, Fragmente zur musikalischen Postmoderne
(trans. Vlastimir Peričić), Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, 2003. Her understanding of
‘modelling’ is different from J. Peter Burkholder’s, whose detailed classification of
methods of borrowing has separate categories for modelling a work or section on an
existing piece, and stylistic allusion, alluding ‘not to a specific work but to a general style
or type of music.’ Compare: J. Peter Burkholder, All Made of Tunes – Charles Ives and the
Uses of Musical Borrowing, New Haven/London, Yale University Press, 1995, 3–4.
26 Ibid., 87.

^23
generally equates to paraphrase, 27 and this technique is present in several
of the works that Schnittke singles out – Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, Webern’s
Fuga Ricercata, and Pärt’s Credo. Of course, the extent to which a
composer may alter someone else’s music is impossible to predefine, and
Schnittke does not even try.
Schnittke’s description of a ‘quotation not of musical fragments but
of the technique of an alien style’ is again dubious, as this is really no
different from his technique of allusion. Schnittke’s examples here include
‘the reproduction of the form, rhythm, and texture of music of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and earlier periods, by the neo-
classicists (Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Orff, Penderecki) or devices taken
from choral polyphony of the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries
(isorhythm, hocket, antiphony) in serial and postserial music.’ 28 It is
difficult to regard any of these examples as quotations, as they contain
neither verbatim quotations, nor paraphrases, but only simulations.
Schnittke also introduces the term polystylistic hybrids to refer to works
that contain elements of three, four, or more styles. However, the very
term poly-stylistic suggests that there are always several styles at stake, so
polystylistic hybrids is a pleonasm.
As a whole, Schnittke’s attempt at systematising quotational procedu-
res in polystylistic works is quite unsatisfactory. He makes the mistake
pointed to by Burkholder, who has warned that many writers use the
term ‘quotation’ arbitrarily to refer to a variety of ways of basing a new
piece on a pre-existing musical work. 29 What is valuable, however, is
Schnittke’s observation that polystylistic elements have long existed in
European music – not just overtly in parodies, fantasies, and variations

27 Richard Sherr defines paraphrase as a compositional technique whereby a pre-

existing melody is subjected to rhythmic and melodic ornamentation but not obscured.
See: idem., ‘Paraphrase,’ Grove Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/
subscriber/article/grove/music/20882?q=paraphrase
This description matches Veselinović-Hofman’s definition of pattern cited above; while
Burkholder’s understanding of paraphrase implies that an existing tune is used to form a
new melody, theme or motive. J. Peter Burkholder, ‘Borrowing,’ Grove Music Online,
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/52918.
28 Schnittke, ‘Polystylistic Tendencies in Modern Music,’ 88.
29 Burkholder, All Made of Tunes, 2–3.

^24
but also at the heart of ‘monostylistic’ genres. Schnittke argued that only
in recent times has the polystylistic method become a conscious device;
thus he opted to give examples of musical borrowing as seen in the
works of his exact contemporaries, e.g. Stockhausen, Berio, Ligeti, et al.
rather than to refer to composers from the past.30 In hindsight, what
Schnittke actually noticed was the shift towards what would be defined
as postmodernism in the West; however, at the time when he wrote his
essay, this term was virtually unknown in the USSR.

Origins of Schnittke’s Polystylism

Schnittke’s biographical circumstances offer some clues as to why he
embraced the polystylistic method. The first important impulse was pro-
vided by his music for film and theatre. He explained his refusal to con-
form to any kind of single style by his unwillingness to estrange his
‘serious’ oeuvre from his activities as a composer of incidental music:

From the musical point of view I found myself with a split persona-
lity. I had my own interests – an interest in modern musical techni-
ques, in new compositions [...] But life saw to it that for about
seventeen years I worked in the cinema much more and more often
that I ought to have done [...] Eventually I began to feel uncomfor-
table, as though I were divided in half. At first the situation was that
what I was doing in the cinema had no connection with what I was
doing in my own compositions. Then I realized that this would not
do: I was responsible for everything I wrote. This kind of split was
inadmissible, and somehow I had to revise my views of both kinds
of music. [...] I realized that there was something radically abnormal
in the split that exists in modern musical language, in the vast gap
between the laboratory ‘top’ and the commercial ‘bottom.’ 31

Schnittke admitted that sometimes he ‘was compelled to write absolute

rubbish,’ but also realised that he ‘gained a great deal from cinema:’32

30 See Schnittke, ‘Polystylistic Tendencies in Modern Music,’ 90.

31 Alfred Schnittke, ‘On Film and Film Music,’ in: A Schnittke Reader, 50.
32 Ibid.

^25
 the actual treatment of the inferior material inevitably dictated by the
cinema may prove useful for a composer [...] I can transfer one or
another of the themes into another compositions, and by contrast
with the other material in that composition, it acquires a new role.33

Thus Schnittke began to look for a ‘universal’ musical language aiming

to reconcile the highbrow and middlebrow, advanced and moderate,
profound and entertaining:

I have this dream of a unified style where fragments of serious music

and fragments of music for entertainment would not just be scat-
tered about in a frivolous way, but would be the elements of a diverse
musical reality: elements that are real in the way they are expressed,
but that can be used to manipulate – be they jazz, pop, rock, or serial
music (since even avant-garde music has become a commodity). An
artist has only one possible way of avoiding manipulation – he must
use his own individual efforts to rise above materials that are taboo,
materials used for external manipulation. In this way he will gain the
right to give an individual reflection of the musical situation that is
free of sectarian prejudice, as, for example, in the case of Mahler and
Charles Ives.34

Ivashkin draws parallels between Schnittke’s ‘serious’ and film music and
points to the fact that Schnittke’s film music was his artistic laboratory,
where he could explore various compositional techniques:

Schnittke used random, serial and sonoristic elements in his very first
[film] scores of the early 1960-s, written for thrillers. At this time he
was unable to introduce such elements into his serious music […]
The combination of different styles and genres […] is very clear in
many of Schnittke’s works of the 1970s. Expressive stereotypes first
used in his film music become the idioms of the language he uses in
his symphonies and concerti grossi.35

33 Ibid.
34 Alfred Schnittke, ‘On Concerto Grosso No. 1,’ in: A Schnittke Reader, 45.
35 Ivashkin, Alfred Schnittke, 114–115.

^26
Ivashkin notes that a new period for Schnittke started in 1968 with his
work for the director Andrei Khrzhanovskii and argues that Schnittke’s
‘music for [Khrzhanovskii’s cartoon] Glass Accordion is probably the first
consistently polystylistic score in post-war European music.’36 Indeed,
Schnittke not only road-tested the novel idioms in his incidental scores,
but he also freely transferred many pages of his incidental music to his
‘serious’ works and vice versa.
Gavin Dixon interprets Schnittke’s polystylism drawing on the
writings of the literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975) and argues
that ‘Dostoevsky’s dialogue and Schnittke’s polystylism both imbue the
concept of style with semantic potential. The primary mechanism in
both cases is the multiplicity of styles within a single work, which for
Bakhtin guarantees the presence of dialogue.’37
Schnittke’s own analysis of Igor Stravinsky’s oeuvre proves that he
found Stravinsky’s oeuvre significant and influential. Speaking of the
absence of stylistic consistency in Stravinsky’s music and ‘the parado-
xical character of his musical ideas, the way he turns the unexpected into
normal,’ Schnittke argued that Stravinsky’s creative method was ‘the
quickest and the most logical way to encompass the musical space of
past and present from various directions’38 and admired him for
‘“admitting” anyone at all into himself, while retaining his own iden-
tity.’39 Schnittke’s observation that in Stravinsky’s Orpheus ‘an organic
synthesis of opposing stylistic resources is achieved’40 could apply to
Schnittke’s own works from the mid-1970s onwards; he aptly described
the most significant feature of Stravinsky’s oeuvre as ‘a tragic quality
stemming from the impossibility in principle of repeating the classical

36Ibid., 110–111. He adds: ‘The logic of development in his music is very similar to
the principles of film structure: juxtapositions of contrasts instead of smooth and tidy
development, lack of proportion, harsh and expressive contrasts which resolve into
new unity. All these were definitely derived from the cinema.’ Ibid., 115.
37 Gavin Dixon: ‘Polystylism as Dialogue. Interpreting Schnittke through Bakhtin,’ in:
idem. (ed.), Schnittke Studies, Abingdon/New York, Routledge, 2016, 75.
38Alfred Schnittke, ‘Paradox as a Feature of Stravinsky’s Musical Logic,’ in: A Schnittke
Reader, 151.
39 Ibid., 180.
40 Ibid., 153.

^27
models today without falling into absurdity […] The only possible solu-
tion is to parody these grand forms or to seek new ones.’ 41 Schnittke
admired the works such as Apollon musagète, Symphony in C and
Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments in which ‘a complex and
indivisible synthesis of characteristics from various “times” and “styles”
is achieved, because of the almost surrealistic mixture of times inciden-
tally remembered from music history or more precisely the simultaneity
of these times: on the “Mount Olympus of Music,” Haydn can meet
Tchaikovsky, Vivaldi can meet Weber, and Handel can meet Rimsky-
Korsakov.’42 When describing Stravinsky’s early serial works, Schnittke
explicitly called him a ‘polystylistic’ composer, and even put an equals
sign between neoclassicism and polystylism: ‘The transitional works –
Agon, Canticum Sacrum, Three Songs from William Shakespeare – are
dualistic; in these works the familiar neoclassical polystylistic method of
the mature Stravinsky coexists with separate serial and dodecaphonic
episodes.’43 One may add that Stravinsky’s idiosyncratic approach to
serial method anticipated (although it did not directly influence) the
Second avant-garde’s own idiosyncratic adoption of serialism.
The second important influence on Schnittke’s polystylism is that of
Leningrad modernists from the 1920s. David Haas has done important
research on the origins of the term polystylism and what it meant in the
1920s and 1930s, when it first became a part of the curriculum. Haas’
study of the interrelationships of contemporary musical thought and
music in the creative work of Leningrad’s four renowned modernists
from the first half of the twentieth century (Boris Asaf ’ev, Vladimir
Shcherbachiov, Dmitriii Shostakovich and Gavriil Popov) shows that
stylistic eclecticism had a long tradition in Russian music, and was
theoretically established as an artistic methodology in the 1920s.44
Haas singles out Shcherbachiov’s compositional school and Asaf ’ev’s
influential theoretical views as the overpowering influences on the young

41 Ibid., 168.
42 Ibid., 170.
43 Ibid., 181.
44David Haas, Leningrad’s Modernists: Studies in Composition and Musical Thought, 1917–
1932, New York, Peter Lang Publishing Inc., 1998.

^28
Leningrad composers of the time, including Shostakovich.45 Shcher-
bachiov was the one who coined the term polistilistika to signify the kind
of stylistic diversity that he considered essential to a mature compo-
sitional technique:

A hybridization of elements drawn from widely divergent styles can

produce the most unexpected results, provided it is prompted by a
sharp intellect and a sharp ear and provided it emerges from a deep
comprehension of the logic of musical thought.46

Haas thus observes: ‘Here then was an aesthetic for a consciously

heterogeneous style, which could only arise from a methodical compa-
rative study of styles,’47 and after examining the syllabi of Shcherbachiov
and his colleagues, he concludes that the goal was not eclecticism but ‘a
highly individualized and flexible “metastyle” in which stylistically
marked passages could be juxtaposed, contrasted, and like any simpler
or stylistically ambiguous material, be submitted to a developmental
process.’48 This is quite similar to the qualities Schnittke admired in
Stravinsky’s oeuvre; and although Stravinsky left St Petersburg 49 and
Russia before Shcherbachiov’s school was established, there are nume-
rous common traits shared by these composers.
Many works analysed by Haas (especially Gavriil Popov’s Septet op.
2, 1926–1927) demonstrate a similarity with Schnittke’s later polystylistic
works: be it in the employment of West-European avant-garde techni-
ques mixed with elements of jazz and popular urban music, or the use
of verbatim or ersatz quotations and ‘naturalistic’ sound effects, or the

45 Ibid., 50. Haas also discusses G. Orlov’s influential monograph Russian Soviet Sympho-
nism, in which Orlov demonstrated how various modernist influences, intermixed with
the continuation of traditions, could coexist within symphonic music. Ibid., 49.
46 Quoted in: ibid., 90.
47 Ibid., 90-91.
48Shcherbachiov insisted that two rigorous conditions be met: first, that the com-
poser’s own signature be discernible in any and all borrowed material; second, that the
borrowed material be integrated into the work’s developmental process. Ibid., 102.
49The city’s original name St Petersburg was changed to Petrograd in 1914, and then to
Leningrad in 1924.

^29
‘linearist’ layering of mutually independent musical streams. Although
this line of Soviet modernism was gradually suppressed by exponents of
the official ideology from the 1930s onwards, this creative methodology
survived, thanks to the fortunate fact that one of the young composers
to fall under the influence of Asaf ’ev’s and Shcherbachiov’s ideas back
in the 1920s was Dmitrii Shostakovich.
Despite the fact that Shostakovich seemingly ‘abandoned’ modernism
after the denunciation of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District in
1936, many elements of Shcherbachiov’s method survived even in his
later works. These include: the diversity of musical themes derived from
various ‘stylistic’ sources and their ‘dialogical’ development and interac-
tions; linear chromaticism; the employment of recurring themes/motifs,
which are subjected to constant development and transformation; the
avoidance of verbatim repetitions and symmetry; an understanding of
symphony as a musical drama, complemented by a careful construction
of conflicts and tensions to depict this drama; finally, the employment
of various (more or less obvious) musical references, symbols, signals,
leitmotifs – all of them impregnated with semantic meanings and
utilised to support and affirm the main dramatic idea(s). Hence I pro-
pose a clumsy, yet fitting oxymoron organic eclecticism to describe Shcher-
bachiov’s (and consequently Shostakovich’s) concept of polistilistika,
wherein everything ‘must flow from a concept of the whole’ and yet can
contain ‘the broadest and sometimes the most unexpected associations
and parallels.’50 This is a feature of all Shostakovich’s symphonies, from
the early modernist/experimental ones, to the deeply synthetic and auto-
reflexive Symphony No. 15, which will be analysed later.
Shostakovich’s taste for eclecticism, just like Schnittke’s, was fuelled
by his work as a cinema composer.51 Since his teenage days Shosta-
kovich worked in the cinema as a pianist and tested a variety of compo-
sitional devices in his film scores. Furthermore, his work for the films
helped him devise musical symbols suitable for conveying various
moods and depicting external phenomena, and he applied these

50 Shcherbachiov, quoted in Haas, Leningrad’s Modernists, 102.

51 On the parallels between Shostakovich and Schnittke see Alexander Ivashkin,
‘Shostakovich and Schnittke: The Erosion of Symphonic Syntax,’ in: David Fanning
(ed.), Shostakovich Studies, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994, 256.

^30
signifying ‘codes’ extensively in his ‘serious’ scores. Schnittke himself
acknowledged Shostakovich as one of the main influences on genera-
tions of Soviet composers and praised Shostakovich (and Stravinsky) for
their ability to absorb various styles and make them their own:

Different composers – completely individual, with quite distinct

features, at almost opposite poles, like Sviridov and Peiko, Weinberg
and Levitin, Ustvolskaya and Boris Chaikovsky, Galynin and
Meerovich, Denisov and Nikolaev, Tishchenko and Banshchikov, and
many more besides, branched out in their own musical ways from the
trunk of Shostakovich’s music, while the trunk itself kept growing
and putting out new branches. 52

Another important influence on Schnittke’s polystylism was Gustav

Mahler.53 Just like Mahler, Schnittke spent a good part of his creative life
in search for his ethnic and religious identity; thus, Gavin Dixon argues
that, just like Mahler’s, Schnittke’s own engagement with a wide range of
cultural and spiritual issues is motivated by a need to address his distance
from his cultural and spiritual roots.54 As observed by Maria Kostakeva:

In Russia he was called a Jew and a German; in Germany he was also

a foreigner, born in Russia and well known as a Russian composer; he
was a Jew who could not speak his own language; and he was a
German who had lived in the Soviet Zone […] Schnittke searches for
answers to the fundamental question of identity at all levels –
national, religious, socio-political, cultural and existential – with his
polystylistic method. 55

52 Alfred Schnittke, ‘On Shostakovich: Circles of Influence,’ in: A Schnittke Reader, 59.
53On Schnittke’s admiration for Mahler and the similarities between them see Georg
Borchardt, ‘Alfred Schnittke and Gustav Mahler,’ in: George Odam (ed.), Seeking the
Soul – The Music of Alfred Schnittke, London, Guildhall School of Music and Drama,
2002, 31.
54See Gavin Dixon, Polystylism as Dialogue: A Bakhtinian Interpretation of Schnittke’s
Symphonies 3, 4, and his Concerto Grosso No. 4/Symphony No. 5, PhD diss., Goldsmiths
College, University of London, 2007, 23–24.
55Maria Kostakeva, ‘Artistic individuality in Schnittke’s oeuvre,’ in: George Odam, ed.,
Seeking the Soul – The Music of Alfred Schnittke, London, Guildhall School of Music and
Drama, 2002, 21–22.

^31
One may thus conclude that Schnittke developed his all-encompassing,
cross-breeding polystylistic intertextuality for the purpose of depicting
his various and often conflicting ethnic, spiritual, religious, social, poli-
tical, cultural and existential identities, and as a means of coping with his
inner experiences of rootlessness and homelessness.
Aside from these circumstantial similarities, Schnittke also revered
and absorbed Mahler’s musical textures – both directly, as analysed by
several authors, 56 and tangentially – as mediated by Dmitrii Shosta-
kovich.57 Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 (1953), the first (and the
only) considerable musical work written in the early years of the Thaw,
was an embodiment of the Mahlerian model.58 Although the eclectic
musical language of this symphony is by no means daring, the
complexity of symphonic process, the web of allusions and references,
and the avoidance of straightforward affirmation, made the work sound
modern(ist) enough to challenge the cultural criteria in the early 1950s.
The work’s reception was highly significant for the moment,59 and it
remained a model for Soviet composers aiming to be accessible yet
credible – until the emergence of Schnittke’s generation which changed
the paradigms of ‘moderate(d)’ and ‘modern.’
Schnittke’s affinity for another Viennese composer, Alban Berg, is
easily discernible. Aside from directly paraphrasing Berg in several of his
works, Schnittke was also inspired by various elements of Berg’s style,
among them: a free, undogmatic treatment of 12-note technique, often
verging on tonality; the dialectic of precise constructivism and sponta-

56See Chapter 5 of Dixon’s doctoral dissertation, ‘Concerto Grosso No. 4/Symphony

No. 5: Epic and Novel,’ esp. 213–230; and Lisa Brooks Robinson’s discussion of the
second movement of the same work and its relation to Mahlerian models: idem.,
Mahler and Postmodern Intertextuality, PhD diss., Yale University, 1994, 178–220.
57On the importance of Mahler’s work for Shostakovich see Pauline Fairclough, A
Soviet Credo: Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2006, 54–63.
58Already in the mid-1930s, i.e. as the dogma of socialist realism was spreading all over
the Soviet music community, Shostakovich – aided by his friend, musicologist Ivan
Sollertinskii, who published an influential monograph on Mahler [Ivan Sollertinskii,
Gustav Maler, Leningrad, Triton, 1932] – discovered in his oeuvre a prototype for a new
symphonic model, which allowed him to maintain his creative credibility and dignity.
59See Hakobian, 216; for a detailed discussion of this work see David Fanning, The
Breath of the Symphonist – Shostakovich's Tenth, London, Royal Music Association, 1989.

^32
neous expression, with strong dramatic overtones; an affinity for nume-
rical symbolism; the frequent employment of monograms and other leit-
themes to represent certain people and events within instrumental
dramas; finally, a penchant – inherited from Mahler and shared with
Shostakovich – for employment of popular music and dance and other
‘low’ genres for the purpose of depicting certain social strata.60
While in the cases of Mahler, Berg, Stravinsky, Shostakovich and
Leningrad modernists one may speak of a direct influence on Schnittke,
in the case of Charles Ives the similarities between his proto-polystylistic
works and Schnittke’s earliest attempts at polystylism are almost certainly
accidental, although no less striking. Given Ives’s relative obscurity at the
time, especially in the Soviet Union, it is unsurprising that Schnittke
insisted that he was unfamiliar with Ives’s oeuvre when he was writing
his early polystylistic works, including the Symphony No. 1.61 However,
by the time he embarked on writing his Concerto Grosso No. 1 (1977)
Schnittke was already well familiar with Ives and he praised him and
Mahler as the composers who were ‘free of sectarian prejudice’ and who
used fragments of entertainment music as elements of ‘a diverse musical
reality.’ 62
Authors of recent studies of Ives’s output, such as Philip Lambert,63
Larry Starr64 and especially J. Peter Burkholder have proved that Ives
was more attached to tradition than previously believed, and that even
the most extraordinary of his compositional techniques, such as collage
and cumulative setting, are simply extensions of traditional procedures.
Burkholder’s classification of Ives’s use of music by other composers
will serve as a model for my own classification of the various techniques

60 See Aranovskii, 75.

61See Dmitrii Shul’gin, Gody neizvestnosti Al’freda Schnitke (Besedy s kompozitorom) [Alfred
Schnittke’s obscure years (Conversations with the composer)], 2nd edition, Moscow,
Kompozitor, 2004, 66.
62 See footnote 76.
63Philip Lambert, The Music of Charles Ives, New Haven/London, Yale University Press,
1997.
64Larry Starr, A Union of Diversities – Style in the Music of Charles Ives, New York,
Schirmer Books, 1992.

^33
of borrowing that Schnittke employed in his symphonies.65 More
importantly, Burkholder has demonstrated that Ives was a much more
skilled and versatile craftsman than he is usually given credit for; that his
seemingly random, redundant and chaotic scores often unfolded ac-
cording to elaborate designs, and that every musical borrowing in his
works had a precise symbolic meaning.
The analyses that follow will hopefully demonstrate that the same
could also be said of Schnittke and that, far from being crude and
unsophisticated patchworks of mutually unrelated episodes, his sympho-
nies are carefully structured and musical events are selected and placed
according to their dramatic potential and codified symbolical meanings.
Even after Schnittke dissociated himself from serialism, a certain degree
of constructivism, often based on non-dodecaphonic numerical symbo-
lism, is preserved in his works. Unlike the exponents of experimental
aesthetics, Schnittke did not rely on chance operations, and the drama-
turgy of his most disturbingly polystylistic works is never arbitrary, but
usually based on minute plans and precise calculations, which are
complemented with his fine sense of dramatic timing and a broad
symphonic rhetoric ‘inherited’ from Shostakovich.
Table 1 below contains Burkholder’s classification, with some minor
adjustments, and supplemented with my comments intended to point to
the instances where Burkholder’s categories overlap, or where his
explanations differ from those offered by other authors (e.g. Richard
Sherr and Mirjana Veselinović-Hofman, cited above). Burkholder him-
self acknowledges that some of his categories are methods of adaptation
(variation, paraphrase, cantus firmus and transcription); others are roles
the existing music may play (as a model, as a theme, as part of a humorous
quodlibet, or as a programmatic element); still others are musical forms as
well as ways of using material (variation, setting, medley, cumulative
setting, extended paraphrase).66

65 See Burkholder, All Made of Tunes, 3–4.

66 Ibid., 4–5.

^34
Table 1. J. Peter Burkholder’s classification of methods of borrowing

PROCEDURE J. PETER BURKHOLDER’S I. MEDIĆ’S COMMENT

EXPLANATION

Modelling Modelling a work or section on Burkholder’s explanation that

an existing piece, assuming its some pieces allude directly to
structure, incorporating part the musical material of the
of its melodic material, model, while in others Ives
imitating its form or avoids quotation and
procedures, or using it as a emulates non-melodic
model in some other way. aspects of his source is
Modelling is the seminal rather confusing, because
technique, underlying many of any modelling is akin to
the later procedures. Some paraphrasing various aspects
pieces use a single model, of an entire piece, not just its
others several. melodic content.
Thus, paraphrase and
modelling are closely related.

Variations A set of variations on a given A traditional procedure.

tune.

Paraphrase Paraphrasing an existing tune Burkholder’s definition is

to form a new melody, theme, somewhat different from R.
or motive; i.e., a borrowed Sherr’s understanding of
melody or passage is paraphrase as quotation that
reshaped to create a new one. has been altered, but left
recognisable.
Burkholder admits that if little
is changed, the result may
strike someone who knows
the source as a direct
‘quotation,’ yet if the
transformation is more
complete, the new tune or
passage may sound only
vaguely familiar.

Setting Setting an existing tune with a A traditional procedure;

new accompaniment. a quotation has been worked
on/altered.

Cantus firmus A given tune is presented in A traditional procedure;

long notes against a more a quotation has been worked
quickly moving texture. on/altered.

^35
Medley Stating two or more existing A traditional procedure; it can
tunes, relatively complete, involve both the literal and
one after another in a single modified quotations, i.e. both
movement. ‘samples’ and ‘patterns.’

Quodlibet Combining two or more A traditional procedure; it can

existing tunes or fragments in involve both the literal and
counterpoint or in quick modified quotations, i.e. both
succession, most often as a samples and patterns.
joke or technical tour de A precursor for collage.
force.

Stylistic Styllistic allusion, alluding not This is something akin to

allusion to a specific work but to a modelling, but without an
general style or type of music. obvious model.
It equates to emulation or
simulation, or to what
M.Veselinovic-Hofman
understands as modelling.

Transcription Transcribing a work for a new A traditional procedure;

/arrangement medium a quotation has been worked
on/altered.

Programmatic Quotation fulfils an Burkholder does not specify

quotation extramusical program or whether he refers only to
illustrates part of a text literal quotations, or to
modified quotations as well.
Furthermore, he fails to add
that any other type of
musical reference from his
classification can also fulfil an
extramusical role, depending
on the context.

Cumulative A complex form in which the Burkholder suggests that this

setting theme, either a borrowed procedure was invented by
tune or a melody paraphrased Ives himself, and later
from one or more existing explains that cumulative
tunes, is presented complete setting combines paraphrase,
only near the end of a variation, and setting with
movement, preceded by sonata-style development.
development of motifs from
the theme, fragmentary or
altered presentation of theme,
and exposition of important
countermelodies.

^36
Collage Quoted and paraphrased Burkholder suggests that this
tunes are added to a musical procedure was invented by
structure based on modelling, Ives himself.
paraphrase, cumulative He elaborates that in a
setting, or a narrative collage only some of the
program. borrowings are themes,
The ideas of quodlibet and leading melodies, or principal
programmatic quotation blend countermelodies, and others
with modelling, paraphrase add further layers to the
and cumulative setting. music. The omission of these
What distinguishes collages added tune fragments might
from other procedures is that simplify the texture and
tune fragments are overlaid weaken the effect, but it
atop a musical structure that would not harm the basic
is already coherent without musical structure.
them.

Patchwork Fragments of two or more This is essentially a

tunes are stitched together, somewhat more complex
either elided through version of medley, often
paraphrase or linked by combined with paraphrase.
interpolations.

Extended The melody for an entire work This is a more complex type
paraphrase or section is paraphrased from of paraphrase (as understood
an existing tune. by Burkholder).

SUPPLEMENT EXPLANATION COMMENT

Quotation A sample copied verbatim and Burkholder only mentions

transferred from a pre-existing exact quotations when they
work into a new one. are assigned programmatic
function.

Ersatz (false) A forgery; something that The false quotation behaves

quotation simulates a style of a pre- like an actual quotation, in
existing work so closely that it that its borders are clearly
tricks us into believing that it visible, and it is interpolated
is a quotation, although it is into an alien musical context.
not.

^37
Luciano Berio: ‘Sinfonia’

Although Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia (1968) is regarded by many as a model

for Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1, Schnittke himself asserted that the idea
of the Symphony No. 1 had come to his mind several years before he
got acquainted with Berio’s work.67 However, already by 1970 Schnittke
was familiar with Berio’s Sinfonia sufficiently to be able to analyse its
third movement for a collection of essays on the subject of the techni-
ques of modern composition.68 While Schnittke agreed with Ivashkin
that his Symphony No. 3 actually resembled Berio’s Sinfonia more closely
than the First,69 the comparison to the latter is still more compelling.
The third movement of Berio’s Sinfonia is a fascinating collage, which
uses the Scherzo from Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, quoted in its entirety,
as its underlying texture. On top of this, Berio piled and interweaved
dense layers of quotations and paraphrases; he selected music written by
other virtuoso orchestrators (Berlioz, Debussy, Ravel, Strauss, Stravin-
sky), by the Three Great Bs (Bach, Beethoven, Brahms), the Second
Viennese School (Schoenberg, Berg, Webern), as well as Berio’s own
Darmstadt cohorts.70 In his analysis of this work, Schnittke consistently
refers to Berio as a ‘polystylistic’ composer and believes that the most
interesting feature of Sinfonia is that ‘each quotation serves a thematic
function […] the semantic unit is not confined to an intonation as such,
with its conventional expressive responsibility, but rather to an entire
intonational bloc (the quotation), an intonational coalition with an
enormous range of emotional, stylistic, and historical associations.’71 He
analyses the factors that ensure the overall unity of this movement (va-
rious ‘affinities’), and concludes that ‘the most subtle unifying factor,

67 Hakobian, Music of the Soviet Age, 275–276.

68Alfred Schnittke, ‘The Third Movement of Berio’s Sinfonia – Stylistic Counterpoint,
Thematic and Formal Unity in Context of Polystylistics, Broadening the Concept of
Thematicism,’ in Ivashkin, ed., A Schnittke Reader, 216–224.
69 ‘From Schnittke’s Conversations with Alexander Ivashkin (1985–1994),’ in: A
Schnittke Reader, 17.
Berio’s Sinfonia has been analysed in great detail in: David Osmond-Smith, Playing on
70

Words – A Guide to Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia, London, Royal Music Association, 1985.
71 Schnittke, ‘The Third Movement of Berio’s Sinfonia,’ 216.

^38
which imbues the work with a tragic quality, is the precise correspon-
dence between the ephemerality of Mahler’s scherzo, as it flows rapidly
through the work, and the deliberately imperfect form of the whole.’72
While writing on Berio, Schnittke reaffirms his own method:

A nostalgic sense of the impossibility of achieving conceptual and

formal perfection, which had distinguished West European music of
the nineteenth century, permeates Berio’s Sinfonia. As though identi-
fying himself with the dying individualistic humanism of the art of
the past, the composer revives in a ‘death-bed review’ images of
nineteenth- and twentieth-century music from Beethoven to Stock-
hausen, and even himself (thereby relegating himself to the past as
well) […] And he proves his point with an experiment designed to
generate and bring about the premature destruction of the new
polystylistic form.73

In another text, Schnittke discussed the possible ‘programme’ of this

movement: ‘we hear an ominous apocalyptic remainder of our genera-
tion’s responsibility for the fate of the world, expressed by means of a
collage of quotations, of musical “documents” from various ages, re-
minding one of cinema advertising in the 1970s.’74 But he also notices
that ‘Berio’s super-collage symphony is an adequate demonstration of
both the individual and national identity of the composer (the richness
of the collage polyphony in this work is similar to the mixing of street
sounds we hear on the soundtracks of Italian neorealistic films).’75
In yet another article, Schnittke discussed the procedures applied in
Berio’s ‘super-collage’ third movement:

Berio follows a scale of increasing deconstruction of collage: (a)

literal quotation of a Mahler scherzo; (b) quotation, but with added,
stylistically unrelated, counterpoints; (c) ‘punctuated’ [i.e. segmented]
quotation that preserves the thread of the cantus firmus in a hidden

72 Ibid.
73 Ibid.
74 Schnittke, ‘Polystylistic Tendencies in Modern Music,’ 90.
75 Ibid., 89.

^39
 ‘counting out’ of its temporal relationships; (d) fragmentary quota-
tion, but without preserving the thread; and, finally, (e) prolonged
absence of quotation. […] As we listen to Berio’s Symphony, it is not
so much that we distinguish his own music in the third movement
from the music he quotes from other composers, but that we draw a
distinction between the music of the atonal school and tonal music.
We hear principally the contrast between the music of Berio,
Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Stockhausen and Globokar, and the
music of Mahler, Ravel, Strauss and Beethoven. 76

These articles testify that Schnittke considered Berio’s work extremely

important. However, a comparison of the scores of Berio’s Sinfonia and
Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1, which will be analysed later, does not prove
that Schnittke was directly influenced by his Italian contemporary. First
of all, Berio’s Sinfonia was written after a commission issued by the New
York Philharmonic in connection with its 125th anniversary in 1967,77
while Schnittke’s work originated from his association with Mosfilm.
Schnittke conceived his work as a ‘proper’ Symphony and modelled it
after a traditional four movement cycle, with all movements loosely
following traditional models. On the other hand, Berio’s symphonic
cycle emerged gradually – the composer actually incorporated his earlier
work ‘O King’ (1967) as the symphony’s second movement,78 and only
added the fifth movement much later; of all Berio’s five movements,
only the third is in a traditional form (Scherzo). Sinfonia employs notably
smaller orchestral forces and does not contain the theatrical element: it
is a vocal-instrumental piece, containing both sung and spoken text,
while Schnittke’s First is a piece of ‘instrumental theatre,’ without text.
While Schnittke found inspiration in theatre, film and various public
spectacles, as well as the everyday life in the Soviet Union, Berio relied
on models from literature and philosophy (structuralism, existentialism,

76Alfred Schnittke, ‘A New Approach to Composition – The Statistical Method,’ in: A

Schnittke Reader, 128.
77 Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, Vol. 5, 346.
78 Richard Taruskin notes that ‘Berio had written O King in 1967 as a tribute, and
decided, after [Martin Luther] King’s martyrdom, to adapt the piece (originally scored
for a single singer and a chamber ensemble) for the large forces of Sinfonia to serve as a
commemoration.’ Ibid., 348.

^40
anthropology, the concepts of ‘open work’ and ‘work in progress,’ etc.).
The list of authors whose texts Berio used in Sinfonia includes Claude
Lévi-Strauss, Samuel Beckett, Paul Valéry – luminaries of the Western
modernist, elitist culture. Ivashkin claims that Berio was assisted by
Umberto Eco while working on this symphony;79 David Osmond-Smith
emphasises the influence of James Joyce.80 As we shall see, in the collage
of the second movement of his own Symphony No. 1 (which, at first
glance, resembles Berio’s ‘Scherzo’), Schnittke’s ‘stitching’ method is akin
to cinematic montage, rather than a Joycean ‘stream of consciousness.’
Soviet/Russian authors who compared Berio and Schnittke claimed
that Berio’s approach was more abstract, intellectual, detached, while
Schnittke was the ‘ethically concerned’ one.81 What led them into such a
conclusion is a very obvious lack of realist musical gestures in Berio’s
work. Hence, despite containing important philosophical and literary
texts and explicitly dealing with myths ancient and modern, Berio’s work
actually seemed to them less ‘topical’ and they heard it as a purely
formalist show-off. However, Taruskin argues that ‘Berio intended a
new commentary on the eternal question of the relation between the
present and the past’ and adds that ‘Berio’s collage was a panorama of
the moment of historical disruption and unrest that was “the sixties.”’82
Berio only borrows pre-existing music in the third movement (while
in Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1 the only movement sans quotations is
the third). The rest of Sinfonia revolves around post-serial, post-avant-
garde procedures (even the collage in the ‘Scherzo’ actually sounds
[post-]avant-garde), as opposed to Schnittke’s work where one finds a
much greater variety of stylistic allusions. Both composers look up to
Mahler, but for different reasons: while Schnittke only echoes Mahler’s
blunt, banal and embarrassing musical narratives, Berio builds the entire
edifice on the basis of ‘Scherzo’ from Mahler’s Symphony No. 2.

79 ‘From Schnittke’s Conversations with Alexander Ivashkin,’ 17.

80 Osmond-Smith, Playing on Words, 4.
81 E.g. Hakobian says: ‘It is important to underline that the element of ethically rele-
vant collision constituting the core of the Symphony No. 1 by Schnittke is absent in
the “mythologizing” Fourth Symphony by Ives, let alone in the more superficially illustrative
collage symphony by Berio.’ Hakobian, Music of the Soviet Age, 277. [emphasis mine]
82 Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, Vol. 5, 347–348.

^41
 Unlike Schnittke, who aims towards a mix of high-brow, middle-
brow and low-brow musical materials in his Symphony No. 1, Berio only
quotes landmark works of classical canon: his collage reflects his elitist
taste and training, untainted by popular kitsch – because he did not grow
up surrounded by ‘music for the masses.’ Furthermore, the way Berio
introduces quotations and paraphrases is much more sophisticated, with
complex links established between Mahler and the superposed or
interpolated fragments – and between the fragments themselves. By
means of his skilful, sophisticated, intellectual and elitist collage, Berio
speaks with a voice of a smart-aleck member of a ‘superior’ Western
culture; while Schnittke’s blunt, banal, cheeky or overtly sarcastic
utterances reveal an irritated, deprived, riotous and repressed artist from
a ‘stagnant’ country whose political system favoured uniform thinking.
Although Berio’s ‘re-engagement’ with triads and ‘return to classics’
are often seen as symptoms of simplification of his avant-gardism, in
Sinfonia he actually works at the limits of comprehensibility. Schnittke’s
Symphony No. 1 is, on the surface, more accessible; but in reality the
piece was intended to produce an ‘avant-garde’ impact in the Soviet
cultural life, and it succeeded.
Berio’s work is postmodern in that it reflects on the most radical
phase of Western musical modernism, which has come to a (dead)end.
An artist such as Berio, whilst facing the information overload at the
dawn of the computer era, the political disillusionment following the
1968 events, the end of history (in fact the end of historicism), and the
(temporary?) impossibility of further artistic progress, nostalgically
reflect upon the avant-garde glory days, of which he was an active
protagonist. Schnittke’s motivation for employing quotations is much
different, as he is unable to reflect nostalgically on that heady period.
Having grown up in a society where avant-garde had been suppressed by
the proponents of official utopia, all he is capable of is either resigned
irony or bitter polemic with the officially approved kitsch; instead of
pursuing a utopian dream, he feels obliged to tell-it-like-it-is, and in
order to do so he employs the full range of realist gestures available.

^42
Alfred Schnittke: Symphony No. 1

Schnittke’s seminal Symphony No. 1 83 (1968–1972) makes it possible to

dissect his ‘brand’ of polystylism and numerous related phenomena,
including the interpenetration of his ‘serious’ output and incidental
music scores, as well as the semiotic/signalling aspect of the composer’s
methodology and merits of the hermeneutical interpretative method.
Even when reacting to socialist realism, Soviet composers of
Schnittke’s generation often employed similar narrative strategies and
musical symbols, thus inspiring Taruskin to correctly label their ‘style’ as
‘socialist realism minus socialism.’84 Ivashkin stated that this artistic
position was a result of a deeply-rooted belief that ‘a work of art never
exists as a fact of pure art,’85 since in the Soviet Union of the time
‘music (like the other arts) was obliged to replace the spiritual values of
real life.’86 Similarly, Hakobian uses the term ‘gnosticism’87 to describe
this artistic tendency according to which the works of art always refer to
something outside themselves and contain a philosophical and moral
subtext. Hakobian describes this as the artists’ concern ‘with the
transforming power of artistic creation, with the mission of the artist as
ruler of thoughts, and with the artist as a bearer of some higher
knowledge, working as a mediator between our empirical world, and the
world of transcendental values.’88
The controversial Symphony No. 1, completed in 1972 and premi-
ered in 1974, marked a turning point in Schnittke’s career, not only in
terms of promoting his polystylistic compositional method, but also in
terms of securing his status of a leading avant-garde composer in the

83 Schnittke’s first attempt at writing a symphony was actually a student piece, written
ca. 1955–1956 and nowadays commonly known as his ‘Zero’ Symphony. Just like
Schnittke’s ‘proper’ First, this symphony has remained unpublished to this day, but a
recording was commercially released on CD BIS 1647.
84 Taruskin, ‘After Everything,’ 99.
85 Ivashkin, ‘Shostakovich and Schnittke: The Erosion of Symphonic Syntax,’ 256.
86 Ibid., 267.
87 Hakobian, Music of the Soviet Age, 219.
88 Ibid., 333.

^43
USSR. Although the symphony was a manifesto of Schnittke’s polysty-
lism in the realm of symphonic music, the compositional method
applied in this large-scale orchestral work was developed in some of
Schnittke’s chamber, concert and film music scores that preceded it,
such as Three Poems by Marina Tsvetaeva for female voice and piano (1965),
Dialogue for cello and ensemble (1965), Concerto No. 2 for violin and
chamber orchestra (1966), Sonata No. 2 for violin and piano Quasi una
sonata (1968) and Serenade for five instrumentalists (1968).89
Schnittke considered (but eventually abandoned) several (sub)titles,
e.g. ‘K[eine] Sinfonie’ or ‘Symphony-Antisymphony/Antisymphony-
Symphony;’90 these titles testify that Schnittke was aware that his work
was deeply rooted in the symphonic tradition but, at the same time,
constituted a radical break from this tradition. Although it is possible to
analyse the Symphony No. 1 as an autonomous work of art, it was not
produced within a cultural context where the autonomy of artistic
artefacts was the dominant ideology. Quite the opposite, Schnittke’s
artistic decisions are manifestations of a deliberately anti-autonomous
aesthetics. As explained by Ivan Moody:

If the criticism might be made that Schnittke’s expressionistic all-

inclusiveness could lead to the near-suppression of purely musical
argument, this was perhaps inevitable in a composer who was
concerned in his music to depict the moral and spiritual struggles of
contemporary man in such depth and detail.91

In the very first publication dedicated to this symphony, Iuri Korev

explicitly called it a ‘programmatic symphony’92 and insisted that
Schnittke’s way of developing his motifs did not adhere to musical laws,
but rather to the principle of cinematic montage.93 Indeed, the genesis

89On these works see Shul’gin, Gody neizvestnosti Al’freda Shnitke, 41–55; Schmelz, Such
Freedom, If Only Musical, 250–259; Dixon, Polystylism as Dialogue, 21–25.
90 Kholopova and Chigariova, Al’fred Shnitke, 73–74.
91 Moody, ‘Alfred Schnittke,’ op. cit.
92Korev’s contribution in: V. Blinova, S. Savenko et al., ‘Obsuzhdaem Simfoniu A.
Shnitke’ [Discussing a Symphony by A. Schnittke], Sovetskaia muzyka 10, 1974, 24.
93 Ibid., 25.

^44
of Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1 coincided with his work on the score for
Mikhail Romm’s film I vsyo-taki ya veruy… [And Yet I Believe],94 which
was conceived as a panoramic overview of the twentieth century and
aimed to reflect the diverse problems of the world as perceived in the
late 1960s, such as students’ demonstrations, Maoism and China’s
‘cultural revolution,’ the Vietnam War, famines in Africa, widespread
drug abuse, environmental problems etc. Schnittke claimed: ‘If I had not
seen all these shots in the film, I would never have written this
symphony.’95 In this light, his Symphony No. 1 can be seen as a
kaleidoscopic (and apocalyptic) panorama of the twentieth century,
painted by musical means. 96 Hence, there is no point in treating this
symphony as an abstract work of absolute music; the very context in
which it was written, as well as its musical structure and dramaturgy,
encourage us to indulge in attempts to decode its ‘meaning(s).’
The Symphony No. 1 was a riotous work of an author forced into an
underground status domestically, whose attempts at pursuing an
international career were constantly undermined by the officials. This
work, which effectively negated all premises of the ‘official symphony’ –
its compulsory optimism, futuristic utopianism, bombastic triumphalism
and propagandist inspirationalism – was intended to cause a major stir in
the Soviet Union, and it succeeded. After its 1974 premiere,97 the
symphony was immediately blacklisted and only performed once more
in the Soviet Union until perestroika (in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, in
1975). Despite this, the work did not end up in obscurity; in fact, the

94Mikhail Romm’s original title for this film was Mir segodiia [World Today]. Romm died
in 1971, and the film was finished by his students Elem Klimov, Marlen Khutsiev and
German Lavrov.
95Schnittke’s Preface for the score of Symphony No. 1; reprinted in V. Blinova, S.
Savenko et al., ‘Obsuzhdaem Simfoniu A. Shnitke,’ 13.
96 Although very little of Schnittke’s original score for World Today actually ended up in
the Symphony No. 1, there are references to his other incidental scores, which will be
discussed later. Another Schnittke’s work, Voices of Nature for ten female voices and
vibraphone originated from Schnittke’s music for this film: see Shul’gin, Gody
neizvestnosti Al’freda Shnitke, 65.
97 The symphony was premiered in Gorki [Nizhni Novgorod], the city closed to fo-
reigners, on 9 February 1974; the dedicatee of the symphony Gennadi Rozhdestvenskii
conducted the Gorky Philharmonic and Melodia jazz ensemble.

^45
ban only contributed to its cult status.98 One could even say that, with
this symphony, Schnittke singlehandedly changed the course of late
Soviet music. As explained by Ivashkin: ‘For many musicians and music
lovers it was a stimulating shock. They had never heard anything like it
before. […] Most of the critics had little doubt that the work marked the
beginning of a new era in Russian music and that it suggested
completely new ideas for the genre.’99
As noted by Schmelz, the work was warranted ‘two open discussions
at the Union of Composers in late February 1974 (with Schnittke
present) in addition to an extended treatment in Sovetskaia muzyka in the
October 1974 issue based on another discussion that Schnittke did not
attend.’100 Schnittke himself acknowledged the importance of this work
and confessed that everything he did after the Symphony No. 1 was ‘an
offshoot from it, a continuation of its ideas and tendencies.’101 Schmelz
sums up the elements of the symphony that all critics – whether
favourably disposed towards this work or not – fixated on: ‘its
theatricality, the moments of improvisation, the use of collage and
quotation, and the relationship of the symphony to “tradition,” both
Soviet and Western.’102
The Western reception was less favourable: as reported by Ivashkin,
at the symphony’s London premiere in 1985 it was dubbed ‘Russian
vaudeville,’ ‘deadpan comedy,’ ‘symphonic anarchy’ and ‘crazy, chaotic,

98 According to Soviet witnesses, the recording of the symphony was bootlegged and
distributed in a manner akin to samizdat literature. Schmelz, Such Freedom, If Only
Musical, 318.
99Ivashkin, Alfred Schnittke, 120–121. Hakobian also asserts that the premiere of this
Symphony was nothing short of ‘sensational’ and a ‘symbolic date’ in the history of
Soviet music; Hakobian, Music of the Soviet Age, 221. Michael Kurtz calls this premiere
‘one of the key events of Soviet musical history in the 1970s;’ Kurtz, Sofia Gubaidulina,
109. Peter Schmelz argues that the premiere of this piece marked the end of the
musical Thaw in the Soviet Union; Schmelz, Such Freedom, If Only Musical, 297; 304.
100 See Schmelz, Such Freedom, If Only Musical, 311–319, where the author presents an
overview of these discussions, as well as the overall critical reception of the Symphony
in the Soviet press at the time.
101 Quoted in: ibid., 306.
102 Ibid., 317.

^46
exuberant construction;’103 and on occasion of its 1988 Boston perfor-
mance, the audience booed and walked out.104 In essence, the criticism
directed towards this piece was based on the premises that the
symphony was an unsophisticated and blunt collage, that the composer
employed familiar music in an attempt to mask his inability to develop a
coherent musical language, that the complex avant-garde machinery was
used unskilfully; etc.105 Due to these objections, the symphony has not
become a part of the canon – the way some other works by Schnittke
have – and nowadays it is performed only sporadically. 106
Whatever its future in the concert hall, the Symphony No. 1 is defen-
dable from such objections, when seen in the context of Schnittke’s
output and Soviet music at the time. First of all, one must recall that the
Soviet composers of Schnittke’s generation struggled to learn the latest
Western compositional techniques, being prevented from travelling
abroad and denied access to scores and recordings of ‘formalist’ music.
Schnittke’s creative laboratory was Mosfilm, and he ‘tested’ various tech-
niques in his film scores first: consequently, the sound effects produced
by them and the various moods conveyable and illustratable by them
became a matter of importance to Schnittke, and not the technical,
formal(ist) perfectionism. Furthermore, Symphony No. 1 was a product
of Russian ‘realist’ aesthetics, in which music was not understood as an
abstract and self-sufficient intellectual activity, but as a vehicle for
transmitting philosophical, moral and political messages. Related to this
was the fact that in the Soviet anti-elitist context new music was written
for a broad audience and not just for sophisticated experts in the latest
compositional trends; hence musical symbols and intonational codes
were employed to facilitate communicativeness and accessibility of new

103 See Ivashkin, Alfred Schnittke, 123.

104 See Kurtz, Sofia Gubaidulina, 199.
105Schmelz provides a detailed account on the Western reception of the Symphony
No. 1: see Schmelz, Such Freedom, If Only Musical, 320–322. See also Ivashkin, Alfred
Schnittke, 123–124, where the author discusses the issues of the (mis)understanding of
Schnittke’s work in the West.
106However, the symphony reached wider audience as the music for the second act of
John Neumeier’s successful ballet A Streetcar Named Desire (after T. Williams). See
Jürgen Köchel, liner notes to CD Alfred Schnittke: Symphony No. 1, BIS CD 577, 8–9.

^47
works. Considering all these, a pure technical tour de force in avant-garde
writing was hardly to be expected from Schnittke – and it was not his
intention either.
When deciding to apply the polystylistic method consistently thro-
ughout this symphony, Schnittke knew that he could be accused of
plagiarism and lack of invention on the one hand, and a mere striving
for superficial effects without any deeper substance on the other.107 He
was also aware that listeners’ ears would be drawn more to the stylistic
references than to the structure, and that the work could sound in-
coherent.108 However, Schnittke argued that the merits of his polysty-
listic method were obvious:

It widens the range of expressive possibilities, it allows for the inte-

gration of ‘low’ and ‘high’ styles […] In it we find the documentary
objectivity of musical reality, presented not just as something
reflected individually but as an actual quotation […] And finally it
creates new possibilities for the musical dramatization of ‘eternal’
questions – of war and peace, life and death.109

Schnittke also asserted that he was looking for universalism, a ‘link

between the ages,’ and the variety of employed styles enabled him to
erase temporal and spatial boundaries, but also to merge his ‘serious’
output with his work for cinema. By incorporating the entire musical
soundscape of the Soviet Union into his kaleidoscopic First, Schnittke
invited the audience to listen to all the various musics around them
actively, thus turning this work into something akin to a ‘maximalist’
version of John Cage’s 4’33”. However, Schnittke’s general attitude to
music making also reflected typical neo-Platonistic ideas: he believed
that in the twentieth century it was impossible to ‘create’ music – a
composer could only pick up what lies around him and become a
medium for spiritual communication.110

107 Schnittke, ‘Polystylistic Tendencies in Modern Music,’ 89–90.

108 Ibid., 90.
109 Ibid.
110 See Alfred Schnittke, ‘The Problem of Giving Outward Expression to a New Idea,’
in: A Schnittke Reader, 94–96.

^48
 ******
Since Schnittke’s ambitious symphony readily offers itself to various
interpretations, I shall briefly overview some of them. Among authors
who have analysed it, Victoria Adamenko is the most convinced of a
religious inspiration behind this seemingly secular piece. Adamenko’s
answer to the question ‘What might save the symphony?’ is – the
(re)engagement with religious/mystical/theurgic aspects of music
making, i.e. ‘resacralization.’ She finds clues for a religious (and more
specifically, Christian) interpretation throughout the symphony, ranging
from the opening bell chime (which, according to her, evokes Wagner’s
Parsifal), the analogies with the biblical Creation story, Schnittke’s
application of numerology, as well as his employment of 14 Sanctus
melodies and the sequence ‘Dies irae.’111 Also, in his description of the
form of the third movement as a ‘dynamic triangle’ Adamenko finds
analogies with Golgotha and the crucifix.112 However, according to
Ivashkin, at the time of writing this symphony Schnittke was not
interested in Christianity, but in various alternative philosophical and
mystical systems and doctrines: anthroposophy, cabbala, I-Ching, etc. 113
Of course, prior to perestroika, it was not possible (or, at least, not
desirable) for Soviet scholars to investigate Schnittke’s suspected reli-
gious motivation. A fairly typical Soviet interpretation is offered by Mark
Aranovskii, who argued that the main conflict unfolds between the
different levels of culture, different ‘musics’ which carry different
‘ethical indices;’ in his view, Schnittke relegates the role of the bearer of
highest moral values to art music, as opposed to various other musics
which embody the moral and spiritual decadence of contemporary

111Victoria Adamenko, Neo-Mythologism in Music – From Scriabin and Schoenberg to Schnittke

and Crumb, Hillsdale, Pendragon Press, 2007, 163; 158; 192–194; ‘“Faith Through
Skepticism:” Desacralization and Resacralization in Schnittke’s First Symphony,’ in:
Gavin Dixon, ed., Schnittke Studies, Abingdon/New York, Routledge, 2016, 161–176.
112 Adamenko, Neo-Mythologism in Music, 259. However, it is equally plausible to relate
this form to Kandinsky’s theory of dynamic triangle, related to theosophical teachings.
See Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art (trans. M.T.H. Sadler), New York,
Dover Publications, 1977.
113 Ivashkin, Alfred Schnittke, 156–160.

^49
world.114 The ‘tragic hero of this symphony’ i.e. music, ceases to be art
and becomes immersed into the noise of the raucous real life, thus
turning into noise itself.115
Similarly to Aranovskii, Kholopova and Chigariova believe that the
main ‘plot’ of the symphony deals with an artist’s role in the contem-
porary world; an artist adherent to the humanist tradition originating
from Beethoven asks himself what is the role of art and whether there
is a point in composing music in a dangerous and disordered world.116
They argue that the ‘Symphony No. 1 actively protests against the deva-
luation of art to the level of furniture and ornament.’117 Ivashkin also
believes that the Symphony No. 1 ‘represents the search for a key to the
unlikely interweaving of opposites which the twentieth century has
brought to the human race.’118
Richard Taruskin argues that the main impulse for creating this
symphony was the composer’s feeling of ‘cultural alienation in which
nothing can claim allegiance.’119 Taruskin also emphasises the ‘semiotic’
or ‘signalling’ aspects of Schnittke’s musical handwriting and adds:

With a bluntness and an immodesty practically unseen since the days

of Mahler, Schnittke tackles life-against-death, love-against-hate,
good-against-evil, freedom-against-tyranny, and (especially in the
concertos) I-against-the world.120

In Peter Schmelz’s view, Symphony No. 1 was ‘a musical documentary

of the 1960s and 1970s, a compendium of the many tendencies, both
foreign and domestic, that confronted the ‘young composers’ as they

114 Aranovskii claims that the main ‘hero’ of this work is art music: ‘the stratum of
“acculturated,” “learned” sound, which does not embody the physical but the spiritual
side of contemporary civilisation.’ Aranovskii, Simfonicheskie iskaniia, 161.
115 Ibid., 163–4.
116 Kholopova and Chigariova, Al’fred Shnitke, 87.
117 Ibid., 86–87.
118 Ivashkin, Alfred Schnittke, 120–121.
119 Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically, 100.
120 Ibid.

^50
had tried to catch up with Western modernism while still fighting to
discover their own compositional voices.’121 Thus Schmelz asserts that
‘Schnittke’s First Symphony dealt directly with the stylistic mess of late
1960s and early 1970s Soviet culture.’122
I will now focus on the various methods of borrowing the pre-
existing music employed in this symphony, but also offer some expla-
nations for Schnittke’s creative decisions and highlight their significance
in the Soviet context. In doing so, I will rely on a classification of
methods of borrowing devised by J. Peter Burkholder in his book dedi-
cated to Charles Ives’s music, with certain modifications – mostly where
Burkholder’s categories overlap, or where his explanations differ from
those offered by other authors. Burkholder acknowledges that some of
his categories are methods of adaptation (variation, paraphrase, cantus
firmus and transcription); others are roles the existing music may play (as a
model, as a theme, as part of a humorous quodlibet, or as a program-
matic element); still others are musical forms as well as ways of using
material (variation, setting, medley, cumulative setting and extended
paraphrase).123
******
Surprisingly for a piece conceived as an ‘anti-symphony,’ and accused of
being a ‘crazy, chaotic, exuberant construction’ by the critics quoted
above, Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1 actually unfolds in a logical manner,
with a clear disposition of all movements. It follows the traditional four
movement symphonic frame, and the thematic unity of the entire cycle
is achieved by means of transferring material from one movement to
another, by employing the same thematic core in all movements (except
the second), and by using identical cadential gestures in the outer
movements. If we confront Burkholder’s definition of ‘model’ with
Schnittke’s intention to write an ‘anti-symphony,’ we might conclude that
Schnittke modelled his First after classical symphonies; however, although
all main features of the traditional form are preserved, everything is
turned upside down and/or ridiculed.

121 Schmelz, Such Freedom, If Only Musical, 309.

122 Ibid., 322.
123 Burkholder, All Made Of Tunes, 4–5.

^51
 The first movement, Senza tempo–Moderato–Allegro–Andante, unfolds in
a sonata form (figures in square brackets refer to rehearsal numbers in
the autograph score):

Introduction [1] The Musicians’ Entry

[30] The Conductor’s Entry

Exposition [33] First theme – C minor

[43] Transition
[48] Second theme – G minor
[81] Conclusion – Cadenza for Trombone solo

Development [82-102]

Recapitulation (condensed, no Second theme)

[103] Quotation of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5
[104] First theme
[two bars after 105] Transition

Coda [107] based on the second theme and the Introduction

The symphony begins with a theatricalised entry of the musicians. The

scenic action is an important feature of this score, and reveals Schnittke
as an experienced composer of music for film and theatre. The work
could be compared to a slideshow, or a documentary: different ‘frames’
are conveyed by fragments of different sound sceneries. The very first
instrument to be heard, the bells, instantly alert the listeners that
something non-standard is about to happen, because of their association
with the long-taboo church music. This ‘tintinnabulation’ is counteracted
by trumpet, an instrument connoting military music, which might
indicate that religion (symbolised by the bells) is suppressed by the state
(symbolised by the ‘military’ trumpet). The remaining musicians arrive,
each playing their own music; the composer sketches out their entries,
but then lets them improvise. Schnittke notes that entire section up to
rehearsal 33 can be completely improvised. This arbitrary mass of
sound/noise was seen by Soviet authors as a symbol of chaos – as if the
composer says: we live in a crazy, chaotic world and it is impossible –

^52
and pointless – to try to write ordered, beautiful music. 124 The element
of scenic realism also serves as a reminder that a performance does not
start with its first notes, but earlier; Schnittke deconstructs and
demystifies the institution of concert performance, thus crossing the
barrier between art and reality and getting listeners involved with the
drama unfolding before them.
When the chaos reaches its climax, the conductor – the authority –
appears and tries to establish order; the musicians begin to tune up.125
But the momentum of the preceding chaos is so strong that it starts all
over again, and the conductor only succeeds at the third attempt. Apart
from signifying chaos, the aleatoric mass of sound can now be read as a
sign of rebellion against uniform thinking, and the musicians’ refusal to
conform to the conductor’s instructions may be interpreted as advo-
cating resistance towards authority. The subversion continues: Schnittke
now deconstructs and demystifies the compositional process, because
the thematic materials of the exposition are formed right in front of the
listener. The first recognisable tonal centre is C minor at rehearsal 33,
the key of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 – the work that Schnittke will
indeed quote by the end of this movement, probably as a signifier of
fate and heroism. Another reason for channelling Beethoven might be
his reputation of an independent individual, a free spirit, someone who
also rebelled against the authorities.
Yet another subversive feature is that orchestral musicians ‘sabotage’
any attempt at establishing ‘normal’ symphonic thematism. At rehearsal
34 twelve layers of trivial tunes are played simultaneously, creating the
first Ivesian collage in this symphony (among them one finds a ragtime in
piano, several marches in brass, etc.). Since the drafts for the Symphony
No. 1 were not available to me (I am not aware if they exist), I could not

124 For example, Aranovskii claims: ‘The formation of music as an ordered sequence
of sounds is translated to the realm of realistic scenic action. […] Music […] emerges
from chaos and then gets shaped into organised forms.’ Aranovskii, Simfonicheskie
iskaniia, 159. Kholopova and Chigariova assert that ‘The group of the themes of
“harmony” is represented by particles of the sound world of classical symphonism.
The group of the themes of “disharmony” is represented by the “zone of chaos” and
the collage of quasi-quotations.’ Kholopova and Chigariova, Al’fred Shnitke, 77.
125This ‘trick’ was first used by Rodion Shchedrin in his Symphony No. 2: Aranovskii,
Simfonicheskie iskaniia, 158, footnote 2.

^53
determine which of these tunes are quotations, self-quotations, and/or
paraphrases. In any case, Schnittke’s intention was not to make these
melodies clearly recognisable, but to emphasise their triviality by cram-
ming them all in a collage.
When the first theme is finally formed at rehearsal 36, it is a chro-
matic ‘recitative’ that gradually takes the shape of a twelve-note row:
C – E♭ – D – B – A♭ – G – F – G♭ – B♭ – A – C#– E

Schnittke revealed that this theme (which also appears in the final move-
ment) was taken from his own serial Violin Sonata No. 1 (1963); hence
this is the first instance of a self-quotation in the symphony.126 For a long
time, 12-note music was anathemised in the Soviet Union; by quoting
from his early serial work, Schnittke again pokes a finger in the ‘official’
eye. The last three notes of the series form an A major chord – but
instead of ending the theme there, Schnittke adds a C minor chord, thus
affirming C minor as the main key.127 This decision to repeat three notes
(C, E flat and G) confirms that, at this stage of his career, Schnittke was
not interested in adhering strictly to the rules of dodecaphony, but
instead he employed this ‘twelve-tonish’ theme as a symbol.
The theme is then ‘developed’ by means of sparse, disjointed, ‘anti-
phonic’ fragments in different orchestral groups, with constant changes
of metre and tempo. Schnittke alternates between four types of textures
in this movement: the brief thematic sections are usually followed by
longer ‘sonoristic’ sections, which in turn occasionally morph into im-
provisational sections and collages. The most common cadential gesture
is a crescendo and decrescendo on a single note or a cluster: this type of
‘cadence’ plays a prominent constructive role not only in this symphony
but in Schnittke’s Symphony No. 2 as well.
The transition is dominated by the repetitive ‘licks’ of rock and other
trivial music genres, layered in a collage and ending with a massive clus-
ter at rehearsal 47. According to Aranovskii, among the quoted (in fact,

126Shul’gin, Gody neizvestnosti Al’freda Shnitke, 68. In the Sonata, the theme appears in
the violin, and in the symphony it is also played by violins.
127 Adamenko regards these two chords as Schnittke’s monogram [AlfrEd eSChnittke].
However this is not very plausible because Schnittke does not employ all possible
letters/notes (no D, no B i.e. H, no repeated E).

^54
paraphrased) tunes one finds: a cancan, the song ‘Reve ta stohnye Dnepr
shirokiy’ [Roar and Groan, Broad Dnepr], choruses of ‘estrada’ songs
etc.; some of these popular songs could have been well known to
Schnittke’s original audiences.128 Schnittke himself indicated that many
themes used in collages of the Symphony were borrowed from his
incidental music scores; however, he did not specify which melodies he
quoted or paraphrased.129 Although many authors equate Schnittke’s
employment of popular music with depicting the forces of evil, I would
argue that the rock beats here also serve a subversive/rebellious purpose
– because rock music was one of the stigmatised genres in the Soviet
Union, as it was accused of promoting Western cultural values. Amidst
these rock influences, Schnittke preserves links with the first theme,
either by repeating melodic fragments (the melody in the oboe at
rehearsal 39 is repeated in violins at 46 and two bars after 105, and one
of the marches from the first collage, first heard in the trumpet at
rehearsal 34, is repeated at 79) or by basing some of the ‘layers’ on the
main series (for instance, the series is varied in bells at rehearsal 47).
The second subject is even more hopeless than the first: it consists of
one note only, G, which constantly fails to develop into a theme.
Schnittke here further undermines the heroism of the symphonic genre,
by admitting his own impotence; the irony is strengthened by the fact
that the first and second subjects are, nominally, in the traditional tonal
disposition – tonic/dominant. It is as if he is saying: ‘I do want to write
a proper symphony, but it is impossible!’ After this anti-theme, the
second subject morphs into a constantly expanding sonoristic section:
the church bells reappear, but here they sound as judgment day music,
because they are surrounded by cacophonous chaos. To emphasise this
effect, Schnittke paraphrases the ‘Dies irae’ sequence, which will play a
very prominent role in the final movement. The culmination at rehearsal
77 features another self-reference: Schnittke quotes a march from the third
movement (Allegretto) of his 1968 Serenade for five instruments. In
Burkholder’s classification, this self-reference would qualify as a

128 Aranovskii, Simfonicheskie iskaniia, 167.

129Shul’gin, Gody neizvestnosti Al’freda Shnitke, 70. Ivashkin specifies that a ‘polka from
the film How Tsar Peter Got The Black Man Married starts a chain of chaotic quotations in
the first movement.’ Ivashkin, Alfred Schnittke, 115.

^55
transcription, because in the Serenade the march appears in the clarinet,
while here it is presented in Trumpet 2, but also as a paraphrase, because
the theme is truncated. Even the employment of bells solo at the
beginning of the symphony can be seen as a reference to Serenade,
because the bells play a prominent role in the final movement of this
crassly polystylistic work.
The exposition ends in an equally disturbed tone: at rehearsal 81
Schnittke prescribes a cadenza for trombone solo; the cadenza is written
out in the score, but it can also be completely improvised. Since every
attempt at establishing ‘proper’ symphonic thematicism has failed, the
composer finally ‘gives up,’ allowing the soloist to play whatever s/he
likes. This could be a further proof of Schnittke’s unwillingness or ina-
bility to write a ‘proper’ symphonic exposition, but it can also be seen as
another act of rebellion, because improvised music was also seen as
troublesome in the Soviet Union. In a culture where artistic production
was closely scrutinised and expected to glorify socialist progress, the
incorporation of segments that allowed musicians to play as they
pleased represented the composer’s act of resistance and an expression
of his urge for artistic and personal freedom. Schnittke’s Symphony was
by no means the first Soviet work to contain improvisational segments,
but what strikes us here is their sheer amount and variety: the symphony
contains aleatoric sections performed by the entire orchestra, formulaic
improvisations for an incorporated jazz ensemble, fuzzy rock licks, as
well as improvised cadenzas for individuals and groups of soloists.130
To sum up, Schnittke crammed together everything that was unde-
sirable in the Soviet musical culture into this movement’s exposition:
church bells, a 12-note theme, rock music, improvisation, while at the
same time demystifying the process of composing a symphonic
exposition and poking fun at the notion of triumphant symphonism.
The development proceeds in a similar manner; fragments of the
first theme occasionally break through the sonoristic layers, improvised
chaos and collages of banalities; all of these combine into a nightmarish
soundscape. Throughout the development the strings play an aleatoric
vibrant cluster in the high register: since this instrumental group has
been codified in Schnittke’s works (especially in concertos and sonatas)

130 Medić, ‘The Dramaturgical Function of Improvisatory Segments of Form,’ op. cit.

^56
as a substitute for human voices, these clusters can be heard as human
moans, cries, squeals, aching, surrounded by a menacing chaos. They are
again counteracted by the trumpet, the instrument associated with
marches and other ‘official’ music. The message here could be that the
state/military/police oppress the moaning mass. However random the
development may seem, Schnittke claimed that he constructed it on the
basis of the Eratosthenes Row, the sequence of prime numbers (1, 2, 3,
5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, etc.), which determines the combinations of various
motifs and their hybrids. Here we can observe the dialectics of rigid
control and apparent chaos, typical of a number of Schnittke’s scores.
At rehearsal 100 the entire orchestra rebels: musicians are allowed to
talk, or do whatever else they like, in the ultimate act of independence
from symphonic conventions and official prescriptions. At rehearsal 102
Schnittke finally manages to establish the subdominant and dominant of
C minor/major, thus preparing the recapitulation and making way for –
Beethoven. Namely, Schnittke here quotes the last bars of the transition
leading into the finale of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, as well as the
first four bars of the finale itself. Schnittke possibly brings in Beethoven
as an authority who could bring some order into this completely anar-
chic symphonic movement. Alas, Beethoven’s optimistic ethos, represen-
ted by this verbatim quotation, cannot save the day: at rehearsal 104 the
quotation morphs into Schnittke’s own 12-note first theme, and only a
few bars later, the recapitulation is brutally interrupted. This time the
theme is played out as a full twelve-note series, ending in the same way
as in the exposition – with the last three notes forming an A major
chord, to be followed by a C minor chord. The final act of subversion is
that the movement ends with the evocation of the unsuccessful second
theme in G, presented as a pedal in low trombones131 – there is no tonal
resolution, just leftovers of what could have been a symphonic theme,
mixed with the obnoxious trumpet first heard in the Introduction.
Gennadi Rozhdestvenskii, the dedicatee of the Symphony, supplied the
idea that, after the end of the finale, the improvisatory beginning of the
first movement (until the conductor enters) should be repeated;132

131Schnittke was inspired by the sound of airplane engines that he heard at the
Vnukovskii airport in Peredel’kino. See Shul’gin, Gody neizvestnosti Al’freda Shnitke, 65.
132 See Alfred Schnittke, ‘On Gennady Rozhdestvensky,’ in A Schnittke Reader, 76–77.

^57
Schnittke confirmed that the idea to combine the Gorky Philharmonic
with the Melodia jazz ensemble also came from Rozhdestvenskii.
******
The second movement unfolds in a similar vein, but contrasts are even
cruder, stylistic clashes even more ridiculous and, in accordance with the
dramaturgical role of the scherzo, the entire movement is a grotesque
joke. This movement is an excellent example of several complex met-
hods of manipulating pre-existing music material, although it does not
reference music by any other composers; instead, Schnittke based the
entire movement on his own earlier scores. He described the form of
this movement as ‘some kind of a hybrid of rondo and double variati-
ons’.133 However, I prefer to define it as a mixture of rondo and ABA:

A (a) [1–7] Scherzo – ‘concerto grosso’ (ritornello): Allegretto, D major

Joined by other stylistic allusions:
[4] ‘the skeletons’ dance’
[5] ‘foxtrot’
[6] ‘ragtime’
[1 bar before 7] – ‘military march’ in C minor
b [7] ‘jazz’ & ‘Webern’
The echo of ‘march’ [two bars after 13]
a1 [16–22] ‘concerto grosso’ (ritornello)
Joined by other stylistic allusions
b1 [22] ‘jazz’ & ‘Webern’
Again with an echo of ‘march’ [26]
a2 [31–36] ‘concerto grosso’ (ritornello);
from [33] paired with the march from Serenade (here in E flat major)
b2 [36–42] ‘march’
b3 [42–57]

B [57] Trio – Cadenza

Transition [59] ‘sonorika’

A1 (a) [61–67] Scherzo – ‘concerto grosso’ (ritornello)

Coda [68] – The Exit of Musicians (the winds)

133 Quoted in Shul’gin, Gody neizvestnosti Al’freda Shnitke, 65.

^58
The movement begins with a bright quasi-baroque concerto grosso in D
major, scored for strings and harpsichord. In Burkholder’s classification,
this is a stylistic allusion, i.e. pastiche – a faithful simulation of an older
style, but without the obvious reference. At the same time, this is a self-
reference, because Schnittke took this theme from the second movement,
‘Ballet,’ of his Suite in the Old Style, completed just a few months before
the symphony; moreover, as Schmelz has pointed out, the theme was
previously used in Schnittke’s scores for Elem Klimov’s films Adventures
of a Dentist and Sport, Sport, Sport.134 Schnittke’s treatment of the theme
amounts to transcription (because in ‘Ballet’ it is scored for violin and
piano, while here it is transcribed for the mock-baroque orchestra), but it
also provides a basic structure, a background onto which Schnittke piles
layers of a massive collage, in a manner akin to Ives’s ‘The Fourth Of
July’ from Holidays Symphony or the third movement of Berio’s Sinfonia.
The carefree beauty of the concerto grosso is unsustainable, and it is
soon suffocated by a mash of stylistic allusions (most of them actually
self-quotations and paraphrases, taken from Schnittke’s incidental music
scores), resembling the noise heard while turning a radio knob:135 one
hears a waltz, a ‘skeletons’ dance,’ foxtrot, ragtime, and the most intimi-
dating one – a crass military march in C minor, sounding as if extracted
from a socialist realist parade, and most likely employed here for the
purpose of representing the oppressive, aggressive, militant state. The
march asserts itself several times, and eventually manages to overwhelm
all other materials. Thus, the Scherzo resembles Burkholder’s description
of cumulative setting, because the march is initially only hinted at, but it
gradually expands, and it is only stated in its entirety at the end of the
first Scherzo section, at rehearsals 41–42. Aside from this one, another
march plays a prominent role from rehearsal 33: it is the same march
that was borrowed from Schnittke’s Serenade and featured at rehearsal 77

134 Schmelz, Such Freedom, If Only Musical, 306–308. In the 1965 film Adventures of a
Dentist [Pokhozhdeniia zubnogo vracha], this theme appears approximately 15 minutes
into the film, when the young dentist who can perform dental procedures painlessly,
becomes a local celebrity.
135Paul Griffiths stresses ‘the importance of radio as a metaphor for composers as
they moved away from the search for a new language to the discovery of the many
languages already existing.’ Idem., Modern Music and After: Directions Since 1945, Oxford,
Oxford University Press, 1995, 167.

^59
of the first movement; hence this is the first instance of Schnittke
transferring material from one movement to another.
The complex of the second theme/episode consists of cool jazzy
rhythms and chords intertwined with atonal utterances a la Webern.
These are sharply opposed both to one another and to the merry con-
certo grosso. The banal waltz rhythm undermines any attempt at estab-
lishing a link (via Webern) to serious modernist music. This coexistence
of incompatible elements is further parodied with interpolations of the
intimidating C minor march.
The satirical and parodist character of this movement is further
emphasised by the fact that the conventional Trio section (or episode C
in a rondo) is substituted by a cadenza ad libitum. The cadenza can be
performed either by a solo instrument, or a group of instruments, or the
entire orchestra; it can be based on the themes provided by the
composer or completely improvised. According to Schnittke, at the
Gorky premiere this was a completely free improvisation by the jazz
ensemble, while at the 1975 Tallinn performance conducted by Eri Klass
it was an improvisation of the strings and the organist. 136 One might say
that here Schnittke again ‘gives up’ composing – either as an act of
subversive anarchy, or for the purpose of conveying his loss of faith in
the possibility of creating art in the cacophonous and oppressive world.
In the recapitulation (A1), all the various materials from the Scherzo
section are recalled at small distances, forming an increasingly dense
texture; the merry concerto grosso is suffocated by the conglomerate of
banalities. Schnittke quotes another march from his incidental music
portfolio: the A major march that dominates the end of the movement
(rehearsals 64–67) was originally a part of his 1965 music for the
spectacle Gvozdi [Nails].137
In the ensuing Coda Schnittke’s way of ‘getting rid’ of the wind
instruments and their raucous march is by literally removing them from
the stage. The flautist leads the entire wind ensemble and, as they leave

136Shul’gin, Gody neizvestnosti Al’freda Shnitke, 68. The acclaimed 1988 live recording
with Rozhdestvenskii conducting the Russian State Symphonic Orchestra, released by
Chandos on CD CHAN 9417, features the duo of violinist Tatiana Grindenko and
pianist Alexei Liubimov playing a hilarious collage-ish cadenza.
137 Ibid., 69.

^60
the stage, they improvise on the basis of the melody played by the flute.
Although the ‘departing’ improvisation is designed with the entire wind
ensemble in mind, Schnittke allowed the possibility that, if the stage is
small, only the flute and brass may participate in the improvisation.

******
Since Schnittke removed wind instruments from the orchestra at the end
of the second movement, the third movement is principally scored for
the strings. It unfolds in an arch form:

Part 1 ‘Ascent’ [1-12]

Culmination (axis) [1 bar before 12]

at [12], the winds join in from behind the stage

Part 2 ‘Descent’ [two bars after 12 until the end]

The initial motif of the first movement’s main theme – the minor third,
C–E flat – is the basic constructive element here. The entire movement
unfolds as a continuous stretch of strings divisi, which form a slow
vibrant cluster. The lengthy first part, ‘ascent’ (120 bars out of 180),
presents several stages of constantly growing textural waves. If we recall
that in Schnittke’s expressive vocabulary the strings usually stand for
human voices, then we might say that in the beginning of the movement
people gradually awake and begin to ‘sing’ in a high register, louder and
louder. This ever-rising sonic wave is occasionally challenged by other
instrumental groups, but never interrupted – or at least not until a
bright, celestial A major chord is reached.
This moment of bliss is crudely interrupted by an ominous C minor
chord performed by the winds from behind the scene. 138 Since the C
minor has already been codified as representing ‘fate’ or ‘doom’, the
symbolism here is obvious – if there was ever hope of free speech, it is
now extinguished. Thus a massive slump in the strings begins, giving the
entire movement a dramatic shape of a rise-and-fall. This interpretation

Obviously here Schnittke replicates the ending of the main theme from the first
138

movement i.e. the chords of A major and C minor in succession.

^61
is supported by Schnittke’s own explanation that this movement
represents ‘lyrical sufferings;’ 139 thus Schmelz correctly observers that
the third movement is not far removed from the symbolic structuring of
Schnittke’s earlier orchestral work Pianissimo, in which serialism was
equated with brutal punishment.140 In the symphony, the entire third
movement (just like the ‘serialised’ portions of the first movement) is
based on the Eratosthenes Row. As observed by Schmelz, ‘Schnittke’s
reliance in this movement on the Eratosthenes Row is significant be-
cause the greatest impression of the First Symphony is one of a barely
contained chaos, the freely cacophonic episodes standing out as emble-
matic of the whole.’141 Obviously, this impression is false, and in this
movement Schnittke calculated ‘everything that was possible to calcu-
late.’ 142 Schmelz provides a detailed analysis of the serial method based
on the Eratosthenes Row as employed by Schnittke in this movement.143

******
As if to emphasise the ‘defeat’ of the strings, the winds (which represent
the oppressive forces) return to the stage in a slow procession at the
beginning of the fourth movement, thus continuing the theatrical line
of the symphony. They play a collage: a conglomerate of funeral marches,
grotesquely piled atop of one another. Among them one finds several
different sections from Chopin’s ‘Funeral March’ – the third movement
of his Piano Sonata in B flat minor; Grieg’s ‘The Death of Asa’ from his
Peer Gynt suite; a popular Soviet march ‘Behind the corner’144 etc. The
composer claimed that he was inspired by his experience at the funeral
of Mark Lubotskii’s father, where he had heard several funeral marches
simultaneously played at different parts of the cemetery. Although such
a procedure is very similar to Ives’s ‘stream of consciousness’ collages,
Schnittke claimed that he was not familiar with Ives’s Holidays Symphony

139 Quited in Shul’gin, Gody neizvestnosti Al’freda Shnitke, 71.

140 Schmelz, Such Freedom, If Only Musical, 311.
141 Ibid., 309.
142 Shul’gin, Gody neizvestnosti Al’freda Shnitke, 69.
143 Schmelz, Such Freedom, If Only Musical, 310.
144 Shul’gin, Gody neizvestnosti Al’freda Shnitke, 69.

^62
or any other collage-based symphonic work when he conceived the
finale.145 The funeral marches are coupled with other trademarks of
socialist realist kitsch – including classical ‘hits’ (Johann Strauss’s waltz
‘Tales from the Viennese Forest’ and the beginning of Tchaikovsky’s
Piano Concerto no. 1 – both presented in their original instrumentation,
i.e. as outright quotations), folk dances etc. All unresolved tensions of the
previous movements explode in this raucous finale, which is structured
as follows:

Introduction The first collage:

[1–4] funeral marches
[2] round dance
[5] ‘Tales from the Viennese Forest’
[5 + 1] Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto
[7] jazz
[8] round dance
[9] cluster, leading into a ‘sonoristic’ section

Exposition [14] First theme as a 12-note series

[22] ‘Dies irae’
[26] Transition
[34] Second theme – 14 different ‘Sanctus’ melodies
[38] Conclusion

Development [40] ‘Dies irae’

[53 + 2] First theme

Recapitulation [80] First theme

[83] Second theme of the first movement
[89] Transition
[90] Second theme – a new one

Coda [96]

145 Ibid., 65–66.

^63
The first sonata theme begins as a twelve-note series, with its pitches
copied from the first movement’s main theme:

C – E♭ – D – B – A♭ – G – F – G♭ – B♭ – A – C#– E

However, in the final movement the row occurs fully formed and it is
presented as a canon on the background of bells. As if to emphasise the
feeling of doom, created by the 12-note series and the ominous bells,
gradually the theme morphs into the ‘Dies irae’ sequence. The employ-
ment of ‘Dies irae’ here amounts to paraphrase, because the original
sequence is written for male voices and contains lyrics.
To counteract this gloomy predicament, Schnittke employs an unu-
sual and, in this context, completely unexpected second theme, carrying
the highest ‘ethical index’146 – fourteen ‘Sanctus’ melodies played simul-
taneously and supported by a C major chord.147 The depiction of the
‘forces of good’ by religious music would become a staple of Schnittke’s
later works; however, this is the first time ever that he created a quodlibet.
Just like other good and beautiful themes in this symphony, this oasis
of serenity is quickly destroyed. What follows is a development mostly
based on ‘Dies Irae,’ alternatively presented in grotesque, gloomy and
spooky outfits. The pathos of this sequence collides with all sorts of
‘alien’ materials, ranging from echoes of the classics to ‘estrada’ songs,
rock solos, a cheesy tango (the majority of these stylistic allusions
paraphrased from Schnittke’s music for theatre) and, most remarkably, a
lengthy, partially improvised jazz episode (from rehearsal 59 to 68).148 In
terms of quotational procedures, this episode also belongs to stylistic
allusions. Although a majority of authors who have analysed this

146 Aranovskii, Simfonicheskie iskaniia, 167. The term ‘ethical indices’ was later
appropriated by Levon Hakobian in his analyses of Tishchenko’s and Schnittke’s
works: see Hakobian, Music of the Soviet Age, 246; 277.
147Schnitte took these ‘Sanctus’ melodies from Masses gathered in the volume Graduale
de Tempore et de Sanctis (Ratisbonae, 1877, 8–54); see Kholopova and Chigariova, Al’fred
Shnitke, 84, note 14.
148Schnittke has remarked that the ‘Dies irae’ theme shares two pitches with a melody
of a popular ‘Schlager’ which he used in the development; thus, in his own words,
‘“Dies irae” and the diabolic banality [teuflische Banalität] interlock here.’ Cited in:
Adamenko, Neo-Mythologisation in Music, 258.

^64
Symphony believe this episode to be an epitome of commercial banality
which destroys the contemporary artistic music, I have already quoted
Schnittke’s high opinion on jazz; hence it is possible to interpret this
episode as another act of subversion/rebellion, since jazz was also one
of the genres officially condemned in the USSR because of its
American roots and because it was entertainment music unusable for
propaganda purposes. Besides, jazz was based on ‘uncontrollable’
improvisation. Still, in the context of the funeral marches from the
beginning of the movement and the doomsday announced by the ‘Dies
irae,’ these jazzy grooves do sound banal and tasteless, like dancing at a
funeral. From rehearsal 68 the march rhythms return, followed by
ominous drumming and organ chords and ending at rehearsal 80 with
the main theme of the symphony transformed so as to resemble ‘Dies
irae’ – thus firmly establishing the gloomy predicament of the
symphony.
After a brief but loud transition, resembling various ‘themes of
doom’ from Romantic symphonies, Schnittke does not repeat any of the
fourteen Sanctus melodies, but provides another Sanctus melody in a
similar idiom,149 again in C major, in a multi-voiced canon, beginning in
the strings and spreading across the entire orchestra. This ‘apotheosis,’
beginning at rehearsal 91, is the final attempt at establishing positive
thematicism and concluding the movement in a triumphant manner; or
maybe here Schnittke mocks the notion of triumphant, bombastically
optimistic apotheoses in major keys expected from Soviet symphonic
composers. Either way, at rehearsal 96 the apotheosis crumbles:
Schnittke’s documentary (or rather, mockumentary) symphony is not
likely to end happily. Schnittke recalls several themes from the previous
movements, and then quotes the last 14 bars of Joseph Haydn’s
‘Farewell’ Symphony No. 45 in F# minor. This is such an outright
quotation that Schnittke does not even bother to write out Haydn’s music,
but only provides a written instruction that the last 14 bars of the
‘Farewell’ Symphony should be performed!
The orchestral musicians exit the stage and two violins are left alone
to sing a sad farewell. But then the beginning of Schnittke’s symphony is
repeated verbatim, up to the moment when the authority (i.e. the

149 Shul’gin, Gody neizvestnosti Al’freda Shnitke, 69–70.

^65
conductor) re-establishes control and silences the crowd. The symbo-
lism here should be pretty obvious: there is no escape from oppression
and dictatorship. The entire symphonic course is utterly pessimistic –
there is no room for enthusiastic progress, no getaway; everything
beautiful shall crumble and dissolve; every riot is silenced.
This may be the moment to quote Benjamin Boretz’s definition of
‘masterpiece culture:’

In masterpiece culture, musical behaviour is strictly the symbolic

behaviour of abstract ideas, idealized Figures, and schematized
structures of quantified sonic particles […] It is only when music is
seen as something that is done by and among people, as a form of
people’s behaviour among other forms of behaviour, that real-time,
people-size circumstances of history, culture, and experience become
indispensably relevant, both as input to and as output from, our
conceptions and practices of music.150

It is possible to say that, with his Symphony No. 1, Schnittke created an

‘anti-masterpiece’: a blunt work firmly rooted in real life experiences and
circumstances and intended to challenge every member of his audience.
Schnittke’s Symphony puts forth a strong argument that it is not only
pointless, but also morally and spiritually harmful, to try to write beau-
tiful and ordered music in the ugly and chaotic world. And the words
that Boris Groys used to describe Ilya Kabakov’s paintings could serve
as a summary of Schnittke’s aspirations imprinted on this symphony:

He views everyday life not as a set of stable forms, but as interwoven

images, discourses, ideological attitudes, styles, traditions, and revolu-
tions against traditions, all of which eternally comment upon each
other.151

150 Quoted in Griffiths, Modern Music and After, 251.

151 Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism, 86.

^66
Boris Chaikovskii: Symphony No. 2

Born in 1925, Boris Alexandrovich Chaikovskii (or Tchaikovsky) was a

Soviet/Russian composer, pianist, teacher and professor. Although he
was awarded the title of People’s Artist of the USSR in 1985, he still
awaits a Western (re)discovery such as the one that has recently befallen
his friend and contemporary Miecyslaw Weinberg. Chaikovskii studied at
the Moscow Conservatory with Shostakovich, Nikolai Miaskovskii, Vis-
sarion Shebalin and Lev Oborin. One of Shostakovich’s favourite stu-
dents, he was held in high regard as a symphonist; however, his oeuvre
mostly belongs to the ‘lyrical,’ moderately modernist branch of Soviet
symphonism, making him an ‘heir’ of Miaskovskii and the likes. A
prolific composer of symphonic, concertant and chamber music, Chai-
kovskii taught composition at the Gnessin Russian Academy of Music.
He died in 1996. A comprehensive internet source dedicated to his life
and work is maintained by Obshchestvo Borisa Chaikovskogo [The Boris
Chaikovskii Society].152
I chose to discuss Chaikovskii’s Symphony No. 2 (1967) here because
a number of Soviet writers (including Schnittke himself) considered it
one of the earliest examples of Soviet polystylism, as well as Chaikov-
skii’s standout piece.153 The symphony was premiered on 17 October
1967 at the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory Great Hall, with
Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Kirill Kondrashin. In
1969 Chaikovskii was awarded the State USSR Award for this work, and
the orchestral score was published by the Moscow branch of the state
publishing house Sovetskaia muzyka in 1970.
Symphony No. 2 is the only one in which Chaikovskii employed
paraphrases – and only in its first movement, Molto allegro; thus, it will be
the only movement analysed here. The second movement of this sym-
phony is a Mahlerian Largo, but its melodic content is enriched with
typically Russian inflections; and the third movement is unmistakably
Shostakovichian. Despite only having three movements, in performance
the symphony typically lasts about an hour.

152 http://www.boris-tchaikovsky.com
153Aranovskii described Chaikovskii’s Symphony No. 2 as ‘one of the best and most
colourful Soviet symphonies of the late 1960s.’ Aranovskii, Simfonicheskie iskaniia, 63.

^67
 Exposition (in strings, harp and vibraphone)
[1] First theme in D – Molto allegro, 4/4
[10] Transition – very similar material, but varied
[23] Second theme in F#, 3/2 – similar material
[36] Conclusion

Exposition – repeated (in winds and percussion)

[39] First theme
[48] Transition
[54] Second theme
[65] Conclusion

Development – in several stages

[68] First stage
[82] Second stage – new theme in celesta
[106] Third stage – preparation for the paraphrases
[113] Paraphrase 1 –
W. A. Mozart, Clarinet Quintet K. 581
[115] Paraphrase 2 –
L. van Beethoven, String Quartet in C minor Op. 18 No. 4
[117] Paraphrase 3 –
J. S. Bach, ‘Erbarme dich’ from ‘St Matthew Passion’
[118] Paraphrase 4 –
R. Schumann, ‘Des Abends’ (from ‘Fantasiestücke’)

Recapitulation – compressed
[120] First theme in D
[123] Transition
[127] Second theme in G
[129] Coda in D

The first movement begins with a Prokofievian brio. Chaikovskii uses

short, laconic motives, in many invariants; the tonal centre is D, but
‘major’ and ‘minor’ vacillate all the time, in the tradition of Russian
‘peremennyi lad’ [shifting mode]. There is hardly any motivic difference
between the first theme, transition and the second theme (although the
latter does establish a new tonal centre, F#). A peculiar feature of the

^68
exposition is that it is heard twice – the first time in strings, harp and
vibraphone only, and then repeated almost verbatim but scored for
winds and percussion. Chaikovskii employs a massive orchestra, but not
for the sake of sound amplification: what he aims for is a constant inter-
change of bright, relatively independent, differently coloured episodes.
A ‘lyrical’ episode which concludes both expositions (at rehearsals 36
and 65 respectively) will reappear again in the crucial moment of
development, at rehearsal 106.
This non-conflicting, vibrant exposition is not contradicted by the
ensuing development, which proceeds in a very similar manner, pro-
viding another set of episodes, ‘variations’ on the familiar motives,
different each time but nevertheless recognisable. A new theme in the
celesta is introduced at rehearsal 82; it reappears again at rehearsal 108,
after the ‘lyrical’ episode that ended the exposition. Chaikovskii seems to
be preparing for a recapitulation; but instead he ‘digresses’ and offers a
new episode consisting of a medley of paraphrases. Chaikovskii
paraphrases the following pieces: Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet K. 581 (the
second theme of the first movement), Beethoven’s String Quartet in C
minor Op. 18 No. 4 (the beginning of the first movement), J.S. Bach’s
‘Erbarme dich’, No. 47 from his St Matthew Passion (the instrumental
introduction, here assigned to the flute instead of the violin) and
Schumann’s piano piece ‘Des Abends’ from Fantasiestücke Op. 12 (here
performed by the strings).154
Levon Hakobian notes that, at the epoch preceding Shostakovich’s
Symphony No. 15 and Schnittke’s No. 1, this ‘island of nostalgia’ made
an impression of ‘something radically new’ in Soviet music; however, he
observes that in Chaikovskii’s oeuvre ‘this essay in “polystylistics” avant
la lettre remained unique.’155 Aranovskii believes that these themes by
great classics ‘embody the principle of wholeness, which contrasts the
disjointedness of author’s thematicism,’ and represent ‘signs of the inner
peace of the composer, something organically belonging to him,

154Hakobian correctly identifies the composers paraphrased by Chaikovskii; however

he does not specify which exact portions of the original pieces are recalled, and he
erroneously states that Chaikovskii paraphrases ‘Agnus Dei’ from Bach’s Mass in B
Minor, instead of ‘Erbarme dich.’ Hakobian, Music of the Soviet Age, 244.
155 Ibid., 243; 245.

^69
something hidden which infiltrates his artistic life.’156 Pyotr Klimov
claims that the ‘feeling of internal emptiness is suddenly resolved by the
appearance of small fragments of music by Mozart, Beethoven, Bach,
and Schumann. The small excerpts, which are deliberately inexact in
their rendition of the great composers, appear to come from the depths
of the composer’s subconscious as the image of incorruptible beauty.’157
Aranovskii also notes that

only after the episode with quotations we discover the unusual idea
of the composer: the many-sided intonational elements which inhabit
the entire exposition are, surprisingly (in some of their variants),
revealed as related to the quoted themes. The form is turned upside
down: it begins with what should be reached in the farthest stages of
development – with short motifs, with small discretely organised
structures, and arrives to what it should have started with – the whole
themes. 158

Chaikovskii’s method therefore loosely resembles Burkholder’s cumulative

setting; on the other hand, the four paraphrased themes form a medley.
Since this medley ‘usurps’ the place where recapitulation should have
been, the actual recapitulation is highly compressed, summarising all
main motifs of the movement and ending with a brusque Coda.
When compared directly, the differences between Chaikovskii’s Sym-
phony No. 2 and Schnittke’s No. 1 are striking. In Chaikovskii’s work,
only the first movement contains paraphrases, which are (in accordance

156Aranovskii, Simfonicheskie iskaniia, 67. However, he believes that this episode actually
belongs to the recapitulation, since he argues that the development ends much earlier:
for him, the ‘zone of return to initial materials’ begins approximately at rehearsal 87.
However, he admits that the materials are modified and appear in a different order
than in exposition, and he even claims that ‘the gradual introduction of the initial
thematic components, their intonational proximity, creates the impression that the
recapitulation only prolongs the development.’ Hence, I argue that it is impossible to
speak of a recapitulation at that point, as it is neither analytically nor aurally perceived
as a return to the beginning. Compare: ibid., 66–67.
157Pyotr Klimov, ‘The Symphonies of Boris Chaikovsky’ (trans. Tatiana Klimova), CD
Boris Chaikovsky: Symphony no. 2 – Symphony with Harp, Relief, 2005, 15.
158 Aranovskii, Simfonicheskie iskaniia, 67.

^70
with his overall non-conflicting dramaturgy) gradually prepared and
thematically related to his own themes; hence the entire ‘intonatsiia’ of
this movement does not appear schizophrenically disunited. Chaikovskii
himself said: ‘Overall, I have always been somewhat suspicious of
citations and collages, and I still am… Nonetheless, I thought I could go
that route this time, although I never used citations since then.’ 159
While Schnittke’s numerous, often crass and flamboyant quotations,
self-quotations and paraphrases corrode the entire form, in Chaikovskii’s
work the classical medley is visibly isolated from the rest of the musical
course – like an oasis, or a sanctuary. Chaikovskii lovingly embraces the
classics; Schnittke throws the entire conglomerate of different musics
into his ‘stew’ and lets it ‘boil’ and ‘spill over.’ Unlike Chaikovskii, Sch-
nittke is anything but moderate(d); he ridicules the sonata form (preser-
ved, if modified, by Chaikovskii), especially in the first movement, with
his futile attempts to construct a ‘proper’ form. Finally, Chaikovskii’s
symphony contains no theatrical element, and overall, the themes
representing ‘positive forces’ prevail – while the ‘moral’ of Schnittke’s
symphony remains ambivalent, and instead of indulging in nostalgia, he
plunges into (self-)doubt, mockery, sarcasm and desperation.
To sum up, it is hardly justifiable to apply the adjective ‘polystylistic’
to Chaikovskii’s Symphony No. 2, at least not in the sense that Schnittke
theoretically defined and practically demonstrated it. Namely, although
Schnittke’s definition is broad enough to embrace such a work, what is
decisively lacking in Chaikovskii’s symphony is the risqué aspect of poly-
stylism, the deliberate incongruity of the quoted material with the com-
poser’s ‘original’ themes, and an exploration of the narrative potential of
this incongruity. Hence Symphony No. 2 remains an oddity (if a suc-
cessful one) within Chaikovskii’s oeuvre, and in the 1970s he decisively
distanced himself from Schnittke and his brand of ‘avant-gardism.’

159 Quoted in Klimov, ‘The Symphonies of Boris Chaikovsky,’ 17.

^71
Dmitrii Shostakovich: Symphony No. 15

Dmitrii Shostakovich’s final Symphony No. 15 in A major, Op. 141

(1971) merits comparison to Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1 not only
because the two symphonies were written around the same time, but
also because Shostakovich employed musical ‘mementos’ in his final
venture into the genre – albeit in a manner quite different from
Schnittke’s own. Hailed by Aranovskii as ‘the pinnacle of Soviet
symphonism of recent years,’160 the Fifteenth provides a good reference
point as to what was the symphonic mainstream at the time when
Schnittke launched his riotously polystylistic Symphony No. 1. Another
reason for comparing these two works is that almost all authors whose
contributions were published in the 1974 issue of Sovetskaia muzyka
dedicated to Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1 (V. Blinova, S. Savenko, G.
Rozhdestvenskii, I. Barsova, B. Getselev, A. Kurchenko, M. Iakubov and
Iu. Korev) compared this work to Shostakovich’s No. 15, confirming
again that it was the standard against which all other symphonic works
at that time were measured.161
Symphony No. 15 is remarkably different from Shostakovich’s pre-
vious two symphonies in that it reestablishes the symphonic canon.
While Nos. 13 and 14 are genre-bending works, embracing elements of
the genres of cantata and/or song cycle, No. 15 is, on the surface, a
‘proper’ instrumental symphony, unfolding in four movements, with the
main theme of the first movement reappearing in the finale. However,
with its emphasis on the scherzo-sphere and the lack of a triumphant
conclusion, its symphonic cycle is a rather idiosyncratic one. The three
sonata movements (the first, third and fourth) all gravitate towards the
model of a ‘demonic,’ macabre scherzo, characterised by grotesque
musical imagery. 162 Shostakovich plays dangerous games in his scherzos,
and nowhere is this more obvious than in his Symphony No. 15, a work
which is believed to be addressing the issues of mortality and summing
up one’s lifetime achievements. Hakobian notes that ‘with the Eighth

160 Aranovskii, Simfonicheskie iskaniia, 68.

161 V. Blinova, S. Savenko et al., ‘Obsuzhdaem Simfoniu A. Shnitke,’ 12–25.
162Soviet authors describe this as a ‘typical St Petersburgian trait;’ e.g. Aranovskii,
Simfonicheskie iskaniia, 69.

^72
Quartet, Shostakovich opened the peculiar series of “Requiems” written
by him in memory of his own […] All his large-scale works composed
during the last six years of his life contain nostalgically coloured
quotations, allusions, other enigmatic “secret signs”.’163 Symphony No.
15 was a work of an aging and ailing composer; and, being an atheist,
Shostakovich did not seek comfort in religion and promise of an eternal
life – for him, death was the definitive end.
The symphony unfolds as a unified whole; the second, third and
fourth movements are played continuously. The first movement nomi-
nally establishes the main key, A major. However the minor mode
actually prevails – both in this movement and the rest of the symphony.
The form of the first movement, ‘Allegretto,’ is as follows:

Exposition beginning – [8] First theme, A major/minor

[8] – [9] Transition
[9] – [15] Second theme & closing group, E major

Development [15] – [36];

from [30] Culmination
from [33] Transition towards Recapitulation

Recapitulation [36] – [39] First theme, A major/minor

[39] – [4 bars before 41] Transition
[41-4] – [47] Second theme, G major
[43] First theme reappears

Coda [47] – end

* paraphrases of Rossini appear at [4], [14], [26 - 4], [38] and [51]

Although Shostakovich himself stated in the foreword to the symphony

that the first movement described ‘childhood – just a toy shop, with a
cloudless sky above,’ there are reasons to doubt his claim. The first

163 Hakobian, Music of the Soviet Age, 229; 238–239.

^73
theme, the ‘leit-theme’ of the entire symphony,164 contains a dance-like
rhythm in 2/4, resembling a polka; however, far from being an irre-
verent dance, in Shostakovich’s oeuvre the influx of trivial genres usually
has a negative connotation.165 After being initially performed by a solo
flute, from rehearsal 4 onwards the theme appears in bassoon solo. The
popular dance is burdened with chromaticism – and indeed, near the
end of the movement the theme will morph into a 12-note row.
The second theme, nominally in the dominant key of E major, re-
aches its full chromatic potential immediately – the theme consists of
three consecutive 12-note rows (the first and third rows are the same).
However, these rows are not subjected to a full dodecaphonic treatment,
instead serving just as chromatic melodies.166 Besides, the rhythm of the
bizarre polka is maintained; thus the second theme brings in limited
thematic contrast. Throughout the symphony, twelve-note themes
abound; however, Shostakovich completely ignores serial orthodoxy, and
the not-quite-12-note themes are treated in the exact same manner as
the de-facto-12-note themes.
At rehearsal 12 Shostakovich introduces a paraphrase (i.e. a slightly
altered quotation) of Rossini’s William Tell overture, which is to reappear
four more times in the course of the movement, always in the dominant
key of E major. Although this musical reference is instantly recog-
nisable, it is actually carefully prepared both rhythmically, tonally and
texturally by the preceding musical course, thus offering no real contrast
either; in Shostakovich’s musical universe, polkas, 12-note rows and the
heroic William Tell sound quite similar. As for the reason for para-
phrasing Rossini, one can only speculate that Shostakovich is playing
with (and potentially mocking) the notion of heroism – including his

164Aranovskii notes that ‘the semantics of the leit-theme has two sources: the syntactic
function of the cadential formula, and the intonational layer of town music.’
Aranovskii, Simfonicheskie iskaniia, 76.
165 Aranovskii states that ‘if we listen carefully to the main theme of the first move-
ment […] and hear the elements of modal deformation (replace E flat with E, A flat
with G sharp), we discover under the surface a link to a popular town tune from the
1920s.’ Ibid., 73. This tune must have been known to members of Shostakovich’s origi-
nal Soviet audiences, especially to those who were of the same age as the composer.
166On Shostakovich’s employment of 12-note themes in his works from the 1960s and
1970s see Schmelz, ‘Shostakovich’s “Twelve Tone” Compositions.’

^74
own.167 To emphasise this (auto-)irony, Shostakovich employs a variety
of self-references, most notably to his long-blacklisted Symphony No. 4,
as well as the Symphonies Nos. 5 and 10168 – the two works that helped
him reestablish his reputation after the 1936 and 1948 denunciations
respectively. These self-references are not exact, i.e. they are paraphrases;
Shostakovich employs them as reminiscences.
The development begins with a stylistic allusion to a military fanfare,
performed by trumpets and a small drum. However, this short bout of
heroism is again subjected to trivialisation, as it is followed by solos for
xylophone and piccolo. The interplay of dance and march rhythms,
based on the first and second themes, denies both any seriousness, and
makes them sound like the ‘popular kitsch’ extracted from the everyday
Soviet context. The appearance of the transposed second subject after
the third Rossini quote is a quiet anticlimax of the development,
followed by a culmination plateau, in which the first theme morphs into
12-note rows. The reappearance of the fanfare first heard at the
beginning of the development at rehearsal 32, followed by the second
theme, initiates the transition towards the recapitulation, which unfolds
in a manner more or less similar to the exposition, except for the fact
that the two main themes are brought even closer together: the first
subject embraces elements of the second, while the second theme is
transposed to G and followed by the augmented first.
The second movement (Adagio – Largo – Adagio) quickly establishes
a sharp contrast to the mock-heroic first; it starts with a funebre chorale
in brass in F minor. The form of the movement can be said to consist
of three parts (A B A1), with each one of them featuring various
shorter segments in alternation:

167 Shostakovich said: ‘I don’t myself quite know why the quotations are there, but I could
not, could not, not include them.’ Story of a Friendship: The Letters of Dmitri Shostakovich to Isaak
Glikman, 1941–1975 (trans. A. Phillips), Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2001, 315.
168The beginning of the development resembles the Coda of the second movement
of No. 4. The parallel thirds in the development (3 bars after rehearsal 18) and
aggressive chords in brass at rehearsal 43 recall the ‘Scherzo’ from No. 10. Eric
Roseberry also discovers a reference to the rhetorical figure that builds up to the
recapitulation of the third movement of No. 5 at rehearsal 23. See Aranovskii,
Simfonicheskie iskaniia, 77; Roseberry, Ideology, Style, Content, and Thematic Process, 221.

^75
 A – chorale
a [52] – [53] chorale in brass, F minor
b [53] – [56] 12-note theme, cello solo
a1 [56] – [57] chorale
b2 [57] – [60] 12-note theme (transposed)
c (transition) [60] – [62] a new 12-note theme in violin+chorale

B – funeral march
a flutes + low strings, B minor [62] – [64]
b low brass + Cb. [64] – [65]
a1 [65] – [66]
transition [66] – [67]
b1 [67] – [68]
a2 [68] – [69]
c the same 12-note theme as in Ac [69] – [70]
b2 (culmin.) [70] – [74]
a2 (transition) [74] – [75]

A1
a [75] – [76]
b [76] – [78] 12-note theme from Ab invert.+another row
transition [78] – [79]
coda [79] – [80] based on Aa
transition [81] – [82]

Just as in the first movement, the treatment of 12-note themes does not
abide by the rules of Schoenbergian dodecaphony. The expressive 12-
note themes introduced by the solo cello and solo violin at rehearsals 53
and 60 respectively are based on ascending broken triads, and bear un-
mistakable tonal connotations. Throughout the movement the composer
applies familiar intonations associated with depictions of tragic, mourn-
ful and sorrowful subjects – a high point of the latter being the 12-note
cello theme itself. The tendency to employ self-references continues
here. Aranovskii observes that this movement ‘fascinates with a wealth
of associations to other pages of Shostakovich’s music. Its very first
sounds – the tragic thirds – bring to mind some pages from the Fifth
and Eleventh Symphonies, and the Twelfth Quartet.’169 Also, the minor

169 Aranovskii, Simfonicheskie iskaniia, 78.

^76
second ‘sighs’ ten bars after rehearsal 52 resemble the beginning of
Symphony No. 10,170 while the funeral march (one bar after rehearsal
62) recalls the first movement of Symphony No. 6.
The third movement, ‘Allegretto,’ predominantly unfolds in G major,
the key first introduced in the recapitulation of the first movement. This
is another scherzo in the sonata form and an even time signature (2/2):

Exposition [81] – [89] First theme, G major

[89] – [90] Transition
[90] – [95] Second theme, E minor
[95] – [96] Transition

Development [96] – [102]

Recapitulation [102] – [106] First theme, G major

[106] – [107] Transition
[107] – [109] Second theme, G# minor
[109] – [110] Transition

This movement is short and its developmental section rather insigni-

ficant, thus giving the entire movement the character of an intermezzo
between the grievous Adagio and the hefty finale. The first theme begins
with four consecutive 12-note themes played by a clarinet (a b a b1 – b
being the inversion of a; b1 its variation). After the transition, the 12-
note rows are repeated by the first violins, and followed by a brief
thematic development – again, Shostakovich completely disregards the
dodecaphony rulebook. The second theme is not based on rows.
However it is related to the first theme in terms of rhythm and
instrumental colours. The asymmetric melody is first performed by the
first violins, and after a brief transition containing the composer’s
monogram D-S-C-H (transposed) in brass, the theme is given to the
clarinet – thus the same instruments perform both themes, only in
reverse order.
The development is based on two short motives, one of which is
new, the other based on transitions between the two appearances of the

170On Shostakovich’s ‘obsession’ with the minor semitone see Roseberry, Ideology, Style,
Content, and Thematic Process, 331–333.

^77
first subject in the exposition. Apart from the D-S-C-H motto, the
movement contains Mahlerian allusions (e.g. four bars after rehearsal 86)
and more auto-references, since the beginning of development and the
transition towards finale recall the last pages of the second movement
of Shostakovich’s own Symphony No. 4. Despite this movement’s
unpretentiousness, the fact that the composer’s monogram only appears
here makes it important within the symphony’s overall fatalistic mood.
However, it is the final movement (Adagio – Allegretto – Adagio –
Allegretto) that boasts the greatest wealth of musical references, starting
from the very first bar.

Introduction [110] – [113] References to Wagner’s Ring and Tristan

Exposition [113] – [119] First theme, A minor

from [116] references to Wagner
[119] – [120] Transition, based on the ‘Ring’ motif
[120] – [124] Second theme, E minor with elements of the first
[124] – [125] Conclusion based on the ‘Ring’ motif

Development [125] – [130] Passacaglia

a 14-bar theme in G# minor appears 5 times
[130] – [134] Development proper
from [133+4] Chorale from the beginning of the second mov.
[134] – [136] Passacaglia – culmination;
[136] – [138] Codetta
[138] – [139] Transition – monogram B-A-C-H in strings

Recapitulation – themes appear in reverse order 171

[139] – [142] Second theme, B flat minor
[142] – [143] Transition based on the ‘Ring’ motif
[143] – [146] First theme, A major
[146] – [147] Transition

Coda [147] – end; sums up materials from the entire symphony

171Aranovskii vaguely defines the form of this movement as ‘consisting of four major
sections’ with a Coda. See: idem., Simfonicheskie iskaniia, 79. However, I prefer to
interpret this movement as a sonata form with themes in reverse order in the
recapitulation.

^78
The introduction is based on Wagner: the ‘motif of fate’ (presented as a
chorale in brass, followed by timpani, as in the third act of
Götterdämmerung) is coupled with Tristan’s motif in strings. Apart from its
symbolic meaning and significance, the ‘fate’ motif also performs a
purely formal role in this movement, as it functions as a means of
punctuation, separating the various segments of form. The motif also
shares the first three notes with the (transposed) B-A-C-H monogram,
and indeed B-A-C-H will appear in its untransposed form in the further
course of the movement. Shostakovich gradually incorporates the two
Wagner leitmotifs into his own melodic fabric; hence, just as in the case
of the Rossini paraphrase in the first movement, he adopts these familiar
themes and makes them his own.172 By self-identifying with these
motifs, Shostakovich elevates the final movement of his final symphony
into the realm of ontological reflections on the subject matters of death
and fate (represented by references to Tristan and The Ring) and eternal
values (represented by J. S. Bach’s monogram).
The first subject is a beautiful, song-like, elegiac melody in A minor
(although the key initially appears to be D minor). Aranovskii notices
that the melody bears resemblance to Glinka’s elegy ‘Ne iskushay menya
bez nuzhdï’ [‘Do not tempt me needlessly’]; therefore Schostakovich
here paraphrases the ‘father’ of Russian music, possibly with the purpose
of reinforcing the lasting artistic achievements.173 As the theme deve-
lops, the Wagner quotations merge with it (from rehearsal 116 onwards);
just like in the previous movements, Shostakovich transforms them into
his own music, and even uses the ‘Ring’ motif as a means of punc-
tuation. The second theme does not introduce a great deal of contrast,
instead continuing the overall elegiac mood.
The development presents us with a surprise, as its main theme is an
obvious paraphrase of the ‘invasion’ theme from Shostakovich’s Sym-
phony No. 7. The invasion theme is melodically distorted, its rhythm
trivialised to resemble a waltz, and it is assigned to murky low strings;
obviously not much is left of Shostakovich’s heroic pathos.

172 Several authors who analysed Symphony No. 15 noticed this: see Ivashkin, ‘Shosta-
kovich and Schnittke: The Erosion of Symphonic Syntax,’ 254; Roseberry, Ideology,
Style, Content, and Thematic Process, 76.
173 Aranovskii, Simfonicheskie iskaniia, 71.

^79
 The ensuing passacaglia contains five appearances of this theme;
from rehearsal 130 it is augmented and presented in its original and
inverted forms simultaneously. A chorale in horns (4 bars after rehearsal
133+4), recalling the beginning of the second movement, announces the
culmination, which is again based on the passacaglia theme. The tran-
sition spells the monogram B-A-C-H in strings, and the recapitulation is
reversed: the second theme is repeated before the first. The key of the
second theme is B flat – probably utilised to establish symmetry with the
G sharp from the development (as compared to the main key of A).
The first theme is subjected to a change of mode: instead of A minor, it
is in A major: even the ‘Tristan’ motif which precedes it is transformed
in this way!
The Coda recalls several motifs from previous movements: the passa-
caglia, two random 12-note rows, the first theme of the first movement,
after which the rows are repeated. The final bars belong to the passa-
caglia’s rhythmical pattern, which slowly dies away, in a way comparable
to Prokofiev’s final Symphony No. 7. Shostakovich’s instruction to the
conductor to perform the ending morendo suggests that, after revisiting
his musical memories, from the ‘toyshop’ remembered from his child-
hood, to his heroic days, the composer is ready to face death. As obser-
ved by Roseberry: ‘This symphony is, perhaps of all [Shostakovich’s]
works, a late self-portrait […] The idées-fixes are symbols of childhood
and death; the quotations from his own works a review of past
achievements in serious or satirical vein.’ 174
There are numerous similarities between Shostakovich’s Symphony
No. 15 and Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1, at least on the surface level.
Both symphonies are highly referential, impregnated with quotations,
self-quotations, paraphrases, stylistic allusions, as well as other means of
musical mimesis; nevertheless, the exact ‘meaning’ of all these is elusive
and open to interpretation. Both composers use recurring motifs or
‘idées fixes’ for the purpose of achieving sometimes haunting, some-
times downright comic or grotesque effects. Both works display a cine-
matic quality, with different frames pieced together – which comes as no
surprise, given that both Shostakovich and Schnittke spent many years
writing music for film and theatre. Both works unfold in the seemingly

174 Roseberry, Ideology, Style, Content, and Thematic Process, 221–224.

^80
traditional four movement instrumental cycles; but while one can notice
Shostakovich’s desire to reestablish a symphonic cycle after the pro-
grammatic and/or vocal excesses of his previous four symphonies (Nos.
11–14), Schnittke conceives his work as an anti-symphony: the basic
outlines of all traditional movements are there, but they are thoroughly
shaken from the inside, to the point of completely negating historical
models. Schnittke asks himself and the audience whether there is a point
in writing symphonies today. Judging by the fact that he went on to write
eight more symphonies, his ultimate answer would be a resounding ‘Yes!’
The general ‘intonatsiia’ of both works is largely based on popular
tunes, as embodiments of everyday kitsch. Schnittke’s approach, how-
ever, is by far the more radical one: not only does he use more musical
references (and self-references), but the way in which they are stitched
together usually results in their heavy distortion. Both composers adhere
to the Mahlerian ideology of representing the forces of ‘good’ with
references to the classics; Roseberry argues that in Shostakovich’s No. 15
tonality plays a life-affirming role, while atonal sections, especially 12-
note rows, symbolise death/evil/destruction.175 A similar treatment of
12-note themes can also be seen in the finale of Schnittke’s symphony.
In both symphonies the scherzo elements abound, as well as the elegiac/
funebre ones; however, in Shostakovich’s work, scherzos stand for the
sardonic, black humour of the elderly, atheist composer saying farewell
to life and reminiscing, either lovingly or regretfully, events from his life.
On the other hand, Schnittke’s polystylistic clashes and mashes are crass
jokes of a rebellious young composer for whom, at this point of his life,
nothing is taboo.
Both composers borrow pre-existing music: Shostakovich only refe-
rences the ‘classics’ – Rossini, Wagner, Glinka, Mahler, Bach – and
employs numerous self-references which are easily recognisable, because
they refer to his hugely popular works. On the other hand, Schnittke
quotes and paraphrases many more composers, from Thomas de Celano
to Johann Strauss; as for auto-references, they mostly stem from his
obscure film and theatre music scores, and thus they serve more as the
composer’s internal joke than something that would be obvious to an
average listener. Both composers paraphrase popular tunes, but while

175 Ibid., 353–355.

^81
Shostakovich transforms them to resemble his own idiom, Schnittke
deliberately leaves them to contradict each other and the rest of his
symphonic fabric. As observed by Ivashkin: ‘When in Shostakovich the
images of his own musical past meet up in collages with images from
the history of music an astonishing effect of objectivisation occurs, of
introducing the individual to the universal.’ 176 Unlike him, Schnittke does
not achieve objectification, because he does not even try.
In his final venture into the symphonic genre, by means of the nume-
rous self-references, the elderly and ailing Schostakovich reaffirmed his
style and reevaluated his own importance. Having established his
authorial voice long ago, Shostakovich was aware of his legacy and felt
no need for innovation. Thus, despite the allusions and quotations, the
symphony sounds unmistakably Shostakovichian; and its anti-hero – the
composer himself – is granted a lyric, elegiac finale.
On the other hand, Schnittke, still only in his thirties at the time of
writing his Symphony No. 1, had no intentions of leaving this world
anytime soon. He was still searching for his own personal ‘style,’ having
just turned his back on serialism, whilst attempting to escape from
several overpowering influences: those of Shostakovich himself and the
academicism of his epigones; of Denisov and his overt advocacy of
serialism; of the officially favoured accessible, educational and spirit-
lifting music; and finally, of the flux of popular musics ranging from
modernised folk dances to rock and jazz. But instead of isolating
himself from these influences, Schnittke brought them all together and
confronted them. The anti-hero of his symphony is really anti- i.e.
against everything, and is accordingly assigned a most raucous and self-
deprecating finale. Over the course of years, Schnittke would develop
the mixture of styles into his own (poly-)style; the ingredients in his sty-
listic mashes would continue to change, and yet, their very combination
would make them sound unmistakably Schnittkean.

176 Ivashkin, ‘Shostakovich and Schnittke,’ 254.

^82
Postlude to Polystylism

Alfred Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1 played a key role in establishing the

idiosyncratically Soviet brand of polystylism. However, while his own
theoretical foundation of polystylism was broad enough to embrace
various works by composers both old and new, maverick and moderated,
Russian/Soviet and Western, my analysis of the ways Schnittke actually
put his theory into practice, and a comparison of his symphony with
other contemporary works have made it possible to revise and narrow
down his definition and to determine more precisely the key features of
a polystylistic work.
First of all, the very presence of stylistically diverse borrowed mate-
rial does not automatically mean that a work will be polystylistic. Two of
the works analysed above, Chaikovskii’s Symphony No. 2 and Berio’s
Sinfonia, each contain only one movement that employs a variety of
stylistic references, while the remaining movements unfold in ‘uniform’
styles typical of their composers. Even the movements that do contain
borrowings actually do not stray from the composers’ basic styles –
moderated modernism177 in the case of Chaikovskii, and post-avant-
garde in the case of Berio. Furthermore, the borrowed material might
be treated in such a way that its introduction into the work is carefully
prepared and thematically related to the composer’s own material, which
enables a seamless merger; and, as the example of Shostakovich’s
Symphony No. 15 has demonstrated, the borrowed material may in fact
reinforce the authorial presence. Therefore, for a work to sound poly-
stylistic, a degree of incongruity must be present; the ‘old’ and ‘new’, the
‘foreign’ and the ‘author’s own’ should not be joined in a loving
embrace, but thrown together. Besides, in a ‘true’ polystylistic work, the
collision of styles must constitute the basis of the entire work; thus,
despite the presence of the medley of classics in Chaikovskii’s
symphony, a collage on Mahler in Berio’s, and a web of references in
Shostakovich’s, in all these works their respective composers’ personal
styles actually prevail.

177For a discussion of Russian/Soviet moderated modernism after 1950 see Ivana

Medić, ‘Moderated Modernism in Russian Music After 1953,’ in Dejan Despić and
Melita Milin (eds.), Rethinking Musical Modernism, Belgrade, Institute of Musicology,
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 2008, 195–204.

^83
 On the other hand, although riotous incongruity is one of the basic
ingredients of Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1, the work does not come
across as a schizophrenically disjointed, Frankenstein-like patchwork,
due to the fact that Schnittke achieves a careful balance between order
and chaos. The order is maintained by means of employing recurring
motifs, transferring thematic material from one movement to another,
employing the same cadential gestures in several movements, and by
serialising some portions of the symphony.
In a polystylistic work, the tension between musical materials of
different origin emphasises their respective qualities and reinforces their
narrative potential. The very reason for confronting diverse styles in a
polystylistic work is not a mere desire to create an acoustic experiment
or a formalist exercise; instead, these ‘styles’ need to be chosen for their
dramatic/mimetic/associative potential, i.e. with respect to their ability
to represent certain phenomena and to ‘narrate’ stories. Often present is
a cinematic, documentary quality in the way these musical ‘frames’ are
put together. Schnittke’s symphony also contains theatricalised segments;
however, these are not ‘compulsory’ and in a majority of his polystylistic
works Schnittke does not indulge in such overt theatricality.
The employment of complex procedures of manipulating borrowed
material such as collage, again, does not guarantee that a work will be
polystylistic. In fact, one may note that the importance of collage in
Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1 is greatly overstated. Extraordinary as it
may be, collage is just one of the many methods employed by Schnittke
in this symphony. In fact, in this work he used almost all procedures
listed by Burkholder: quotation and paraphrase (both of his own and of
other composers’ music), modelling, quodlibet, stylistic allusion, transcription,
cumulative setting and collage. More importantly, it is not the sheer quantity
of these procedures that makes a polystylistic work, but the fact that
they are applied in a way that emphasises their mutual incongruity and
increases their semiotic/signalling potential. Thus, in his Symphony No.
1 Schnittke successfully employed the polystylistic idiom to tell the tale
of a repressed artist struggling to find his voice in the chaotic world
surrounding him and realising the futility of writing ‘beautiful’ and
‘orderly’ music.

^84
 TOWARDS POSTISM VIA SPIRITUALISM

In recent years I have written a number of articles dedicated to one of

the most remarkable tendencies in late Soviet music: a fascination with
religious and mystical topoi. 1 This trend, commonly referred to as
spiritualism, was distinguished by attempts at reconnecting with a
supposedly lost religious past and reviving the spiritual side of art. The
sheer number of ‘religious’ pieces composed in the Soviet Union in this
period – something over 100 – testifies to the impact of this trend
(although this number is still fairly small compared to the endless lists of
‘official’ works). The spiritual quest was quite urgent in a society in
which atheism rooted in dialectical materialism was the official doctrine
and whose citizens had been, more or less, deprived of religious
comfort for many decades. Thus, it is not surprising that numerous
Soviet ‘unofficial’ composers renounced dialectical materialism, searched

1 These include: Medić, ‘Crucifixus etiam pro nobis: Representation of the Cross in Alfred
Schnittke’s Symphony No. 2 St Florian;’ ‘The Challenges of Transition: Arvo Pärt’s
‘Transitional’ Symphony No. 3 between Polystylism and Tintinnabuli’, Musikgeschichte in
Mittel- und Osteuropa, Heft 16, Institut für Musikwissenschaft der Universität Leipzig,
2015, 140–153; ‘On Stolen Sketches, Missing Pages and Playing a Musical Detective:
Catalogue of Alfred Schnittke’s Sketches from the Juilliard Manuscript Collection,’ in:
Mirjana Veselinović-Hofman et al. (eds.), Music Identities on Paper and Screen, Belgrade,
Faculty of Music, 2014, 348–361; ‘Idioti, đavoli i grešnici: opere Alfreda Šnit-
kea’ [Idiots, Devils and Sinners: Alfred Schnittke’s Operas], Muzički talas 42, 2013, 10–
22; ‘Gubaidulina, Misunderstood’, Muzikologija/Musicology 13, 2012, 103–123; ‘Skriveni
rekvijemi i mise Alfreda Šnitkea: Klavirski kvintet, Rekvijem iz muzike za Šilerovog Don
Karlosa i Druga simfonija Sveti Florijan’ [Alfred Schnittke’s Hidden Requiems and
Masses: Piano Quintet, Requiem from the Stage Music for Schiller’s Don Carlos, and
Symphony No. 2 St Florian], in: Sanja Pajić and Valerija Kanački (eds.), Jezik muzike –
Muzika i religija [The Language of Music – Music and Religion], Kragujevac, Faculty of
Philology and Art, 2012, 25–39; ‘“Drugarice” Ustvolska i Gubajdulina: O statusu
kompozitorki u Sovjetskom Savezu’ [‘Comrades’ Ustvol’skaia and Gubaidulina: The
Status of Female Composers in the USSR], Genero 14, 2010, 69–92.
for spiritual values and developed a fascination with the powerful taboo
that was religion. Schnittke explained this ‘spiritual awakening’ in these
words: ‘Our current fascination with what we were deprived of for
decades is the fascination people feel for what they have been starved
of.’2 This religious revival was part of a broad trend in Soviet society,
especially among the intelligentsia, who had lost belief in the viability of
the communist system.3 Religion (in the broadest sense of the word)
offered an intellectual and moral stimulus, an alternative to official
prescriptions and proclamations. George Kline observed in 1968:

The genuinely religious surrogate for traditional religion is limited to

a small but apparently growing group of young Soviet intellectuals –
mainly poets, writers, and artists – and an increasing number of
university students. Their position may be defined, tentatively, as a
‘philosophical’ and non-ecclesiastical theism, in some cases quite
close to pantheism. 4

Kline noted that the young intellectuals found role models in ‘three
giants of twentieth-century Russian literature:’ Marina Tsvetaeva, Boris
Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova. 5
Victoria Adamenko discussed prohibitive state politics towards reli-
gion during the periods of the Khrushchev Thaw and the Brezhnev
Stagnation, which ‘saw new assaults on religion, despite a general
opening-up of society during the “Thaw” (1954–1964),’ and asserted
that ‘religious persecution continued until Gorbachev’s Perestroika.’6 She

2 ‘From Schnittke’s Conversations with Alexander Ivashkin,’ 7.

3 On the relationship between the church (especially Russian Orthodox Church) and
the Soviet state, and the official attitude towards religious music, see Michael John, Auf
dem Wege zu einter neuen Geistigkeit? Requiem-Vertonungen in der Sowietunion (1963–1988),
Berlin, Verlag Ernst Kuhn, 1996, 10–37.
4George L. Kline, Religious and Anti-Religious Thought in Russia, Chicago/London,
University of Chicago Press, 1968, 168–171.
5Ibid. See also: Dimitry V. Pospielovsky, ‘(Orthodox) Religious Revival and (Russian)
Nationalism’ in Soviet Studies on the Church and the Believer’s Response to Atheism,
Basingstoke/London, Macmillan Press, 1988, 146–175.
6 Adamenko, ‘Faith Through Scepticism,’ 166.

^86
observed that ‘state-imposed atheism clashed with reemerging, sponta-
neous religiosity in private intellectual and artistic lives.’7
It is not surprising that music (and art in general) played a special role
in the society that had witnessed the horrors of war, purges and gulags,
and in which artists and their audiences jointly suffered, so that the latter
turned to the former for guidance and comfort. Among prominent
Soviet composers, Shostakovich in particular was regarded as the chro-
nicler of his time. As explained by Gennadi Rozhdestvenskii, ‘he was
not just the composer, but the Pimen;’8 and young ‘unofficial’ compo-
sers, Schnittke in particular, were eager to step into Shostakovich’s shoes.
Throughout the 1970s the composers of the ‘unofficial’ clique gained
anti-conformist credibility in the eyes of the ‘generation of the sixties’
by acting as moral and spiritual guiding lights; and several composers
embraced the roles of spiritually evolved creators, practising believers,
ascetically devoted to their art. Whether these composers did so out of a
deep psychological necessity, ‘hungry’ curiosity, or because it was in
vogue is hard to determine. In any case, the ‘starved’ Soviet intelligentsia
readily bonded with them and concert performances of ‘unofficial’
music became intellectual and spiritual substitutes for religious worship,
the sites for pilgrimage or mass exorcism.
Michael Kurtz observed that ‘in Russia, especially Moscow, illustrious
artists command admiration and fervor bordering on religious devo-
tion’9 and that this reverence extended beyond composers to some
performers as well: for example, he notes that the pianist Maria Iudina
(who was closely associated with the unofficial composers) ‘usually wore
a dark dress resembling a nun’s habit’10 on stage, and that ‘people came
to her performances as to church services.’11
Ivashkin observed that in the 1970s and 1980s Schnittke enjoyed an
enormous and unusual popularity:

7 Ibid., 167.
8Gerard McBurney, ‘Encountering Gubaydulina’, The Musical Times, Vol. 129 No. 1741,
1988, 121.
9 Kurtz, Sofia Gubaidulina, 44.
10 Ibid., 24.
11 Ibid.

^87
 All performances of Schnittke’s music were important events for
Russian listeners: in it they found the metaphysical ideas and spiritual
values which were lacking in life during the seemingly endless years
of revolution, terror, thaw, Cold War, or stagnation. 12

In his recent book Modernism and Orthodox Spirituality in Contemporary

Music Ivan Moody provides comprehensive discussion of the Russian/
Soviet composers’ responses to the challenges posed by the ‘change of
icons’ after the October Revolution. He analyses selected works by
Georgii Sviridov, Rodion Shchedrin, Galina Ustvol’skaia, Arvo Pärt,
Edison Denisov, Alfred Schnittke, Sofia Gubaidulina, Giia Kancheli and
other composers who referenced Russian Orthodox tradition (although
some of them were not Orthodox Christians). 13 Dorothea Redepenning
offers an extensive, though incomplete list of Soviet ‘religious’ works
from the 1960s onwards. Her list comprises 80 compositions (some of
which, such as Kabalevskii’s 1962 Requiem, have nothing in common
with spiritualism except the title); yet it omits numerous important
works, including, for example, all of Pärt’s tintinnabuli works and
Alemdar Karamanov’s symphonies.14 Such omissions are unsurprising,
given that, as a result of the official intolerance of religious music, many
works by Soviet composers had to be ‘renamed in Soviet,’ as
Gubaidulina aptly put it.15 For example, Gubaidulina’s own work Seven
Words was published in Moscow as ‘Partita for cello, accordion and
string orchestra,’ and the subtitles were removed; Pärt’s 1976 works
Sarah Was Ninety Years Old and By the Waters of Babylon We Sat Down and
Wept were renamed Modus and In Spe respectively; and Karamanov had
to conceal religious inspiration behind his numerous symphonic works
and to declare them to be ‘pure’ works of absolute music.

12 Ivashkin, Alfred Schnittke, 215.

13Ivan Moody, Chapter 5 ‘Icons Inverted: Russia and Beyond,’ in: Modernism and
Orthodox Spirituality in Contemporary Music, Joensuu/Belgrade, International Society of
Orthodox Church Music and the Institute of Musicology SASA, 2014, 96–159.
14Redepenning, Geschichte der russischen und der sowjetischen Musik, Bd. 2, 735–737. On the
genre of Requiem in the Soviet Union see John, Auf dem Wege zu einter neuen Geistigkeit?,
1996.
15 McBurney, ‘Encountering Gubaydulina,’ 120.

^88
From Poly- to Monostylism

Throughout the 1970s, Alfred Schnittke displayed an interest in liturgical

genres, such as requiem, mass or hymn. As revealed in his conversations
with Shul’gin, Ivashkin and others, his main philosophical concern at
that time was the dialectics of life and death and the idea of overcoming
death. Schnittke introduced a new, ‘meditative’ type of dramaturgy,16
which in many cases replaced the sharp conflicts characteristic of his
earlier works. He put an emphasis on the intuitive side of the creative
process and stated: ‘The change of my relation towards music meant not
only that I changed the technique. The main thing was that it stopped
being the matter of primary concern to me and became secondary.’17
When describing the difficulties he ran into while composing the
Piano Quintet (1972–1976) Schnittke admitted that he was only able to
finish the work after he had given up thinking about the technique(s)
and started to write whatever he liked.18 However, Schnittke’s alleged
preference for a more intuitive method of composing music does not
apply to all his works written in this period; and the detailed sketches for
the simultaneously written Symphony No. 2 (1979), Passacaglia for
orchestra (1980) and Symphony No. 3 (1981) prove that Schnittke by no
means abandoned the method of controlling portions of his works (or,
in the case of Passacaglia, an entire orchestral work) by elaborate (quasi-)
serial procedures.19 The sketches for Passacaglia are especially detailed
and they prove that even the most randomly sounding portions of this
work are strictly calculated; the serialisation does not apply to pitches
only, but first and foremost to parameters such as rhythm, durations,
instrumental colours and dynamics.

16 Kholopova and Chigariova, Al’fred Shnitke, 93.

17 Quoted in ibid.
18 Shul’gin, Gody neizvestnosti Al’freda Shnitke, 74–75.
19 I have analysed Schnittke’s sketches for these three orchestral works and how they
relate to finished scores in: Medić, ’Crucifixus etiam pro nobis: Representation of the
Cross in Alfred Schnittke’s Symphony No. 2 St Florian;’ ‘Тhe Sketches for Alfred
Schnittke’s Symphony No. 3 and What They (Don’t) Tell Us;’ ‘‘The Tide is High: Alfred
Schnittke’s Passacaglia for large orchestra’, paper read at the 10th ICMSN Surrey MAC
Conference, Guildford, University of Surrey, 11–14 September 2017.

^89
 A majority of scholars who analysed Schnittke’s post-First-Symphony
output claimed that he simplified his musical language; however, this is
another generalisation that does not apply to all of his works, and not in
an equal measure. Schnittke’s aim for a greater accessibility, ‘simplifica-
tion’ and ‘democratisation’ of his musical language was almost certainly
inspired by his goal to bridge the gap between his ‘serious’ music on the
one hand and his work for film and theatre on the other. In 1977 he
stated: ‘Everything we write is our own. What we do for cinema is a
musical material, it is a subculture too, but it’s still one musical world.’20
Schnittke’s ‘change of course’ was not a wholly personal phenome-
non, because it reflected the general tendencies of those years: ‘Some-
thing changed in the air’21 – as the composer stated himself. Svetlana
Savenko observed that ‘the severe self-restriction in the full freedom to
choose the preferred expressive means, lyricism and simplicity – could
be noticed not only in Schnittke’s output, but also in the work of other
composers, both domestic and foreign.’22 Of course – with hindsight –
this coincided with the onset of postmodernism in the West.
Among the important works that precede Schnittke’s Symphony No.
2, some are obviously polystylistic, such as Concerto Grosso No. 1
(1977), while others, such as the Requiem from the Stage Music for
Schiller’s Don Carlos (1975) or Piano Quintet aim towards a profounder
synthesis of contrasting musical layers. Therefore, a majority of authors
who have engaged with Schnittke’s output after Symphony No. 1 claim
that the presence of various stylistic layers no longer constitutes
polystylism, i.e. that he more-or-less abandoned it around the mid-1970s
and opted for a more synthetic style, often dubbed monostylism or
monostylistics.

20 Quoted in: Kholopova and Chigariova, Al’fred Shnitke, 94.

21 Quoted in: ibid., 92.
22Quoted in: ibid. Alexander Ivashkin notes: ‘At about the same time one may observe
similar changes in the music of other post-avant-garde composers who had started
their musical careers in the 1960s with compositions which audiences found shocking.
Arvo Pärt and Krzysztof Penderecki are two such examples. Both of them were
accused, like Schnittke, of “commercial primitivism” and of copying old idioms.
However, neither the Stabat Mater by Penderecki nor Tabula Rasa by Pärt merely
borrows the old ideas of Gregorian chant; they give new meaning to the older forms in
a modern context.’ Ivashkin, Alfred Schnittke, 131.

^90
 It was probably Galina Grigor’eva (Russian musicologist and Edison
Denisov’s wife) who coined the term monostylistics in her 1989 book,23
and her ideas were developed in a book on Schnittke’s symphonies by
her student Dziun Tiba. He asserted that ‘Schnittke’s new style, labeled
by Grigor’eva as monostylistics actually grew out of the change of the
composer’s approach to the interrelation between tonality and atonality;’
and quoted Schnittke’s comment on the Violin Concerto No. 3 (1978):

For a long time I was occupied with the interaction between tonality
and atonality. Here I have tried to establish a uniform informational
system, which organically unites both sound worlds, i.e. not only
through contrasting actions such as day-night, but also through
mediatory transitions, such as morning-evening, universal nuances
and colour modulations.24

Other Russian scholars also adopted the term monostylistics, or coined

similar ones; for example, Kholopova and Chigariova argue that in
works such as Requiem and Piano Quintet ‘one witnesses a peculiar kind
of monostylistic organisation that picks contrasting layers and synthesi-
ses them.’25 They also state that in some works from the 1970s Schnittke
achieved a synthesis of ‘incompatible discursive layers – tonal and
atonal, polystylistic and monostylistic etc.’ 26 Obviously, these authors
drew on Schnittke’s own commentary, quoted above; however, by the
late 1970s it had already become pointless to regard tonality and
atonality as ‘incompatible’ sound spheres, not to mention that here they
contradict their own claim that ‘monostylistics’ was a late, more syn-
thetic phase of polystylistics.

23 Galina Grigor’eva, Stilevye problemy russkoi sovetskoi muzyki vtoroi poloviny XX veka
(50-80-e gody) [Problems of style in Russian Soviet music of the second half of 20th
century (from 1950s to 1980s)], Moscow, Sovetskii kompozitor, 1989, 138. See also
Galina Grigorjewa, ‘Polystylistik und Monostylistik in der sowjetischen Musik der
achtzige Jahre’ in Hermann Danuser, Hannelore Gerlach, Jürgen Köchel (eds.),
Sowjetische Musik im Licht der Perestroika, Laaber, Laaber Verlag, 1990, 91–99.
24 Tiba, Simfonicheskoe tvorchestvo Al’freda Shnitke, 67, footnote 25.
25 Kholopova and Chigariova, Al’fred Shnitke, 94.
26 Ibid., 96.

^91
 Svetlana Savenko notes that ‘Schnittke’s new musical language does
not disturb with its semantic wealth, as is the case with polystylistics, but
streams towards wholeness.’27 Alexander Ivashkin argues that ‘[f]rom the
polystylistic surface of his earlier compositions Schnittke goes deeper
into the sphere of a new musical language in which all the various
stylistic elements are combined into a single homogeneous whole.’28
Later Ivashkin clarifies that over the years Schnittke’s style ‘has become
more monolithic. Obvious quotations and allusions have been disap-
pearing as his approach to stylistic colouring has changed.’ 29 Hakobian
states that ‘[t]he writing in the Requiem is emphatically concise and
simple, almost exempt of any “polystylistics” (Schnittke himself calls it
“naïve”).’30 Redepenning, possibly under the influence of Russian wri-
ters, also adopts the term ‘monostylistics’ for this ‘smoothing of stylistic
differences.’31
While all these authors have correctly noticed Schnittke’s changed
attitude towards stylistic interplays, in my opinion it is a gross over-
statement to say that he abandoned his previous creative methodology
in favour of ‘monostylistics.’ His ‘new’ style from the mid-1970s may be
more contained than the overt theatrics of his Symphony No. 1, but it is
nevertheless eclectic and all-inclusive. Besides, Schnittke’s own definition
of polystylism is flexible enough to include works such as Requiem,
Piano Quintet or Symphony No. 2. Although they lack the remarkable
collages as seen in Symphony No. 1, they do fulfil the basic conditions
for a polystylistic work, i.e. they comprise a multitude of different
stylistic layers which are brought together in various, often incongruous
combinations for the sake of fully utilising their narrative potential.
As for Schnittke’s reasons for toning down the excesses of his first
symphony, Richard Steinitz’s observation on George Crumb’s quotation-
filled compositions is applicable here; he argues that quotations

27 Quoted in Ibid., 113.

28 Ivashkin, Alfred Schnittke, 131.
29 Ibid., 138.
30 Hakobian, Music of the Soviet Age, 278.
31Redepenning, Geschichte der russischen und der sowjetischen Musik, Bd. 2, 689. See ibid.,
699, for further observations on monostylistics.

^92
 worked only as long as tonal and atonal were strictly separate
categories, implying a similarly strict separation between ancient and
modern. Once composers began re-establishing tonality, and working
again in traditional genres […] such quotations as Crumb’s lost the
shock, the inadmissibility, on which their sentimental effect de-
pended.32

This is a valid point, and in this respect, it is possible to argue that

Schnittke reduced the number of quotations and other direct musical
references in his later works because they had lost the ability to surprise
and excite, and because their continued employment would have
resulted in the works sounding dated and predictable.
Schnittke’s Piano Quintet, began in 1972 was the first of his works to
employ the ‘meditative dramaturgy’.33 The Quintet’s five movements are
unified by a single musical thought; apart from thematic unity, there is
an overall uniformity of dynamics, tempo and character of the entire
cycle, and all movements are joined attacca. Ivashkin observes that ‘[t]he
music generally sounds quite traditional, but it is impossible to say which
tradition comes to mind,’ and he eventually labels it ‘a post-avant-garde
presentation of the Romantic interpretation of a Baroque ideal.’34 The
fifth movement is cathartic and triumphant; Schnittke has explicitly
linked this ‘brightening’ of mood towards the end with the idea of
‘overcoming death.’35 The Quintet is dominated by the motif B-A-C-H,
which would find great use in Schnittke’s later works. Apart from this
monogram, the sequence ‘Dies irae’ also features prominently – thus
establishing a link to Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1.36

32 Quoted in Griffiths, Modern Music and After, 160.

33 Kholopova and Chigariova use another term, ‘non-conflicting dramaturgy’,
introduced by V. P. Bobrovskii. See Kholopova and Chigariova, Al’fred Shnitke, 114.
According to them, this is not a dramaturgy of action, overcoming difficulties, quali-
tative transformation, but a dramaturgy of stasis, remaining/existing in a chosen mode.
34 Ivashkin, Alfred Schnittke, 131.
35 Kholopova and Chigariova, Al’fred Shnitke, 113–114; Shul’gin, Gody neizvestnosti
Al’freda Shnitke, 75–76.
36I have analysed sketches for the Quintet in: Medić, ‘On Stolen Sketches, Missing
Pages and Playing a Musical Detective.’

^93
 The Concerto Grosso No. 1 for two violins, harpsichord, piano and
string orchestra is another important work predating the Symphony No.
2. With its profusion of quotations and simulations, superposition of
different styles, contained within a resurrected old Baroque genre, the
Concerto Grosso follows the theatrical polystylistic line as seen in the
Symphony No. 1. Three stylistic layers collide in the Concerto Grosso:
the composer’s own music, the layer of quotations, ersatz-quotations
and stylistic allusions to the music[s] of the past, and the paraphrases of
the banal music of everyday world – which, again, recalls the Symphony
No. 1. However, the overall form of the Concerto Grosso anticipates
that of the Symphony No. 2, as both works unfold in six movements
that constitute more-or-less symmetrical cycles.
Schnittke’s Symphonies Nos. 2 and 4 (1984) are closely related, not
only because both works belong to the genre of vocal symphony (quite
common in the Soviet Union at the time), but also because both deal
with religious topoi and, by means of quotation, paraphrase or simu-
lation, engage with sacred music. However, in the Second Schnittke rela-
tes to the Catholic tradition, while the Fourth reveals his ecumenical
conviction. As discussed by Emilia Ismael-Simental, the traditions
represented in this work include:

Russian Orthodox music as represented by a major tetrachord taken

from Butsko’s model of the extended Znamennyi mode […] plus
references to the style of processional hymns. Catholic Church music
is evokd by a minor tetrachord and allusions to plainchant. The
Protestant faith is invoked through a six-step scale (B-C#-D-E#-F#-
G#) plus textural features from Lutheran chorales. Jewish synagogue
music is hinted at with a chain of trichords (A#-B-C, D#-E-F and so
forth) transposed a fourth each time.37

Although Schnittke was not an ethnic Russian, Ismael-Simental shows

that he made extensive use of the Znamenny rospev, one of the main
systems of chant in the Russian Orthodox Church, in a number of his
works starting from 1966 until the late 1980s.38

37Emilia Ismael-Simental, ‘Alfred Schnittke and the Znamennyi rospev’, in Gavin

Dixon (ed.), Schnittke Studies, Abingdon/New York, Routledge, 2016, 33.
38 Ibid., 30–58.

^94
 Schnittke’s Symphony No. 2 offers an uneasy mix of the genres of
mass and symphony. Schnittke occasionally allows the two genres to
blend in together (by means of thematic, harmonic and structural con-
nections), only to separate and confront them again; and the polystylistic
mixture comes almost as a side-effect. This symphony demonstrates a
shift from the overtly theatrical polystylism typical of its predecessor
towards a less flamboyant idiom, which nevertheless embraces and
juxtaposes various pre-tonal, tonal and post-tonal styles, ranging from
quasi-archaic polyphony to serialism and micropolyphony. The quotations
of Gregorian chant form the basic thematic core of the symphony.
However, Schnittke also employs quodlibets, paraphrases, modelling and
stylistic allusions. All these references to various historical styles or specific
works are assigned a precise semiotic purpose, i.e. the composer selects
musical codes and styles most appropriate for the depiction of a Biblical
narrative. In particular, the central segment of the symphony, ‘Credo,’
showcases an almost cinematic representation of Christ’s life and death,
with quotations of Gregorian chants utilised for the initial and final
declarations of faith and encompassing the harshly dissonant 12-note
passacaglia of the Crucifixion and the micropolyphonic reverberation of
the Resurrection. Throughout the work Schnittke employs a variety of
compositional devices to represent the symbol of the Cross and convey
religious imagery. 39 In several movements he does not even attempt to
integrate chants into the symphonic fabric; this is related to his idea of
‘crossing’ two sound worlds, which are gradually brought closer together
towards the middle sections of the symphony, only to be separated
again in the final two movements. This idiosyncratic half-mass/half-
symphony reflects Schnittke’ quest for his elusive national, cultural and
religious identities. He felt cut off both from the symphonic matrix of
the German/Austrian symphonic tradition (exemplified here by the
composer who inspired him – Anton Bruckner), and from the Catholic
confession and its cultural heritage. Thus, the symphonic tissue
represents Schnittke’s comments and reflections on the Mass: sometimes
genuinely faithful, sometimes doubtful, sometimes joyful, sometimes
ecstatic and sometimes unrelated to the mass – like afterthoughts.

39I have analysed Schnittke’s depiction of the Cross in the Symphony No. 2 in: Medić,
’Crucifixus etiam pro nobis: Representation of the Cross in Alfred Schnittke’s Symphony
No. 2 St Florian’.

^95
Arvo Pärt: Symphony No. 3
Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (born in 1935) wrote his first three
symphonies between 1966 and 1971. Each one of them is unique and
quite different from the Shostakovichian symphonic model that was
prevalent among this generation. In particular, Pärt’s Symphony No. 3 is
an unusual and striking work, unlike anything else written in the USSR at
that time.40
Arvo Pärt showed an early promise already in 1959 when he won the
first prize at the All-Union Young Composers’ Competition. By the time
he graduated from the Tallinn Conservatory in 1963, he could already be
considered a professional composer, because he had been working as a
recording engineer with the Estonian Radio and writing music for the
stage and film. In spite of living in the ‘provincial’ Baltic republic of
Estonia, Pärt was at the forefront of the belated ‘second avant-garde’,
and his 1960 Nekrolog op. 5 was one of the first compositions in the
USSR to employ serial technique; moreover, his music was well known
in the Soviet capital Moscow, at least among his fellow non-conformist
composers. Pärt continued to use serialism until the mid-1960s, albeit
combined with other compositional methods. His 1964 Collage über
BACH was one of the first examples of what was to become known as
Soviet polystylism.41
Written in 1971, Pärt’s Symphony No. 3 is often dismissed as a
product of his creative crisis. It is the only work completed during the
otherwise unproductive eight-year period between Credo (1968), Pärt’s
final polystylistic piece,42 and a rush of works from 1976–1977 which

40Some parts of this chapter were previously published in: Medić, ‘The Challenges of
Transition: Arvo Pärt’s ‘Transitional’ Symphony No. 3 between Polystylism and
Tintinnabuli,’ 140–153. Reprinted with permission granted by the publisher.
41For a comparison of the role and significance of polystylism in Pärt’s and Schnittke’s
oeuvres see Medić, “‘I Believe… In What?,’ 96–111.
42 Credo is one of Pärt’s numerous ‘Bach’ works: it is based on the C major Prelude
from the first volume of J. S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. Pärt’s other ‘Bach’ works
include the already mentioned Collage über B-A-C-H for oboe and strings, as well as
Wenn Bach Bienen gezüchtet hätte for piano, wind quintet, string orchestra and percussion
(1976) and Concerto piccolo über B-A-C-H for trumpet, string orchestra, harpsichord and
piano (1994).

^96
introduced his new tintinnabuli style. In the early 1970s, Pärt wrote a few
‘transitional’ compositions in the spirit of early European polyphony,
but the Symphony No. 3 is the only finished work that he did not
withdraw. He also continued to write applied, incidental music to make a
living, however he excluded these works from his catalogue.
According to Paul Hillier, in the mid- to late-1960s Pärt developed a
keen interest in Orthodox Christianity; he found a role model in Heimar
Ilves, one of the most outspoken (and overtly religious) professors at
the Tallinn Conservatory, who was dismissive of contemporary music.43
His view of atonal music as music without the presence of Divine Spirit
‘powerfully fuelled Pärt's own growing disenchantment with the avant-
garde.’44 Pärt’s Credo caused a furore after its premiere, not because of
the employment of avant-garde techniques (which by 1968 had already
become old hat), but because of its obvious religious connotations.45 In
spite of the abundance of avant-garde techniques, paired with an overall
constructivist procedure, Credo revealed Pärt’s ‘loss of faith’ in serialism
and other avant-garde techniques (which are here used to depict ‘the
evil’) and anticipated his evolution from serial constructivism to the
minimalist constructivism of his tintinnabuli works. As I have observed
in my analysis of Credo, the explicit and implicit dualisms confronted in
this work – tonality versus atonality, order versus chaos, construction
versus destruction, peace versus war, forgiveness versus vindictiveness,
Christianity versus atheism, affected the composer very intensely; his
future works would not be based either on traditional tonality, serialism,
or aleatorics – it seemed that Pärt had exhausted these techniques in
Credo and had no intention of ever using them again.46 Thus he began
looking for other alternatives to the socialist realist canon.

43On Ilves’s influence on Pärt see Paul Hillier, Arvo Pärt, Oxford University Press,
1997, 67–68.
44 Ibid. In contrast to Pärt, some of his non-conformist contemporaries, such as
Nikolai Karetnikov, were happy to continue writing serial music despite undergoing
religious conversion and becoming practising believers.
45On the circumstances surrounding the premiere and reception of this work see
Hillier, Arvo Pärt, 58; Nick Kimberley, ‘Starting from Scratch’, Gramophone Vol. 74, No.
880, 1996, 14.
46 Medić, ‘I Believe… In What?,’ 102.

^97
 In order to develop his abstractly-tonal (but, actually, not functionally
tonal) tintinnabuli style and to dissociate it completely from socialist
realism, Pärt had to return to the origins of tonality. Thus, after
completing Credo, he immersed himself into a study of pre-tonal music
including Gregorian chant and French and Franco-Flemish choral music
from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries: Guillaume de Machaut (c.
1300–1377) Johannes Ockeghem (c.1410–1497), Jacob Obrecht (c.1457–
1505), Josquin des Prez (c.1450–1521) et al. This music was literally
unknown in the USSR at that time and was only in the early stages of its
revival by the newly-founded ensembles such as Volkonskii’s Madrigal.
Hence in the Symphony No. 3 serialism, aleatorics and tonality are
bypassed in favour of old church modes and various pre-classical
polyphonic techniques.
This transitory phase did not entirely satisfy the composer and he
entered into another five-year period of creative silence, while he
resumed his study of early music. Finally in 1976 Pärt re-emerged with a
new compositional technique that he invented and to which he has
remained devoted to this day. He called it tintinnabuli (in Latin, ‘little
bells’) and said:

I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully

played. This one note, or a silent beat, or a moment of silence,
comforts me. I work with very few elements – with one voice, two
voices. I build with primitive materials – with the triad, with one
specific tonality. The three notes of a triad are like bells and that is
why I call it tintinnabulation.47

Having found his new voice, there was a rush of new works: Für Alina,
Fratres, Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, Tabula Rasa etc. As Pärt’s
music began to be performed in the West, whilst his frustration with
Soviet officialdom grew, in 1980 he and his family emigrated, first to
Vienna and then to Berlin, where he still lives.
Symphony No. 3 is cast in three movements, played without a break.
David Fanning has described it as a study in rhythmic layering which

47Cited in: Richard E. Rodda, liner notes for Arvo Pärt Fratres, I Fiamminghi, The
Orchestra of Flanders, Rudolf Werthen (Telarc CD-80387).

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translates the archaic statements into modern terms. 48 As such, this
symphony is unique both in the context of Pärt’s oeuvre and Soviet
symphonism in general, although it does bear certain resemblances to
Pärt’s previous two symphonies. The movement titles in his Symphony
No. 1 (1964) suggest pre-classical polyphonic models (‘Canon,’ ‘Prelude
and Fugue’). Pärt employs a variety of polyphonic techniques for the
purpose of creating neo-stylistic syntheses, and then mixes them with
freely employed twelve-note segments and almost minimalistic repetitive
passages. In that respect, especially remarkable is the ‘Fugue’, which
does not sound like a fugue at all, and occasionally resembles early
minimalist works (although it actually predates them).
The differences between Pärt’s Symphonies Nos. 2 and 3 are more
remarkable. Similarly to Credo, his Symphony No. 2 is characterised by a
free employment of twelve-note rows, quotations, sonoristic effects,
neo-baroque forms, all of these presented on the background of a
quirky interplay of tonality and atonality. Remarkable is a quotation of
Petar Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s children’s piece Sweet Daydream towards the
end of this predominantly bleak and tragic piece. As observed by Merike
Vaitmaa: ‘The naïve beauty of the Tchaikovsky quotation […] sounds
fragile and defenseless in the immediate presence of an aggressive
nightmare created by modern expressive means.’49
In his Symphony No. 3, Pärt does not set the tonal and atonal forces
in confrontation. All main motifs are modelled on Gregorian tunes,
featuring a narrow intervallic span and gradual movement in seconds;
moreover, a majority of them are mutually related and/or derived from
one another. However, as mentioned, Pärt does not employ actual
quotations. If we add to this equation the odd minimalistic-repetitive
moment, and the unusual effect produced by the Ars Nova cadential
turn known as the ‘Landini cadence’,50 the overall impression is that of a
mock-archaic early modernism. The most obvious role model is Igor

48 David Fanning, ‘The Symphony in the Soviet Union (1917–91),’ in: Robert Layton
(ed.), A Guide to the Symphony, Oxford University Press, 1995, 292–325.
49Merike Vaitmaa, liner notes to CD Arvo Pärt: Symphonies 1–3 – Cello Concerto – Pro et
Contra – Perpetuum Mobile (BIS CD 434).
50 David Fallows, ‘Landini Cadence,’ Grove Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusic-
online.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/15943

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Stravinsky (1882–1971) – from his early neo-classical works including
the Symphony of Psalms (1930) to the late ‘religious’ works, such as
Canticum Sacrum (1955) and Requiem Canticles (1966). One also finds
echoes of an earlier Northern European symphony, Jean Sibelius’s
Symphony No. 6, completed in 1923 and influenced by Palestrina.
Moreover, some of Pärt’s homophonic textures closely resemble Erik
Satie’s (1866–1925) ‘religious’ works written during his Order of the Rose
and Cross period, while the relentless, repetitive textures anticipate early
minimalism.
The symphony’s three movements are joined attacca, emphasising its
seamless flow and organic development. The form of the entire cycle
can be argued to be a combination of sonata form and sonata cycle. The
form of the first movement falls into following sections: introduction
(from rehearsal 1) containing the main theme, exposition (rehearsal 3),
and development (rehearsal 9) with a brief coda (rehearsal 14).51 This
formal division is merely provisional, because the exposition is actually
developmental, and the entire movement is based on a free interplay of
short motifs, all of them closely related to one another. Pärt employs
polyphonic and homophonic textures in alternation, in order to produce
some contrast; however, the overall thematic and harmonic unity of the
movement decisively contributes to a predominantly non-conflicting
dramaturgy of the piece.
The introduction contains two motifs, the first one ‘a’ based on an
embellishment of a single note, performed by oboe and clarinet in
unison, with an addition of a trumpet from bar 7 emphasising the
intervals of perfect fourths and fifths, while the second motif ‘b’ is
derived from it, but contains a leap upwards and contrasts the ‘a’ with
the brutish sound of low brass. The motif ‘a’ is actually an old musical
trope known as the ‘circular figure’ (circulatio); according to Tim Smith,
this figure, characterised by departures and returns to the central note,
was first described in 1650 by Atanasius Kircher as the aural equivalent
of the circle, representing either God or the Sun.52 Smith argues that

51My analysis differs from Hillier’s in several important respects. Compare to Hillier,
Arvo Pärt, 68–73.
52Tim Smith, ‘Circulatio as Tonal Morpheme in the Liturgical Music of J. S. Bach,’ Ars
Lyrica: Journal of Lyrica Society for Word Music Relations 11, 2000, 78.

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Bach was familiar with this extra-musical connotations of this figure at
least since 1732, and that he employed it rather consistently in
conjunction with the words ‘Christus’ (Christ) and ‘Kreuz’ (Cross).53
And since Bach was one of Pärt’s role models and a common point of
reference, it is hardly a surprise that he would often draw on Bach’s
musical symbolism.
Gottfried Eberle has discussed the use of the circulatio trope in
Schittke’s Piano Quintet,54 while I have discussed Schnittke’s depiction
of the Cross by various means, including the circulatio, in his Symphony
No. 2 St Florian.55 However, the employment of the circulatio by Arvo
Pärt in the Symphony No. 3 actually predates both Schnittke’s works by
several years. And while it is possible that Pärt’s employment of this
figure was merely accidental, I would argue that, in the light of the fact
that the Symphony No. 3 was preceded by the Credo, a work which
expressed Pärt’s admiration for Christ’s teaching, and followed by his
spiritually infused tintinnabuli works, it is very plausible that the circulatio
figure is employed in the Symphony No. 3 deliberately and with a full
awareness of its connotations, i.e. with the purpose of representing
Christ’s suffering and crucifixion. This, in turn, lends a wholly new
extra-musical undercurrent to this work of ‘absolute music’. While it is
not my intention to offer a ‘programmatic’ reading of this symphony,
the reader should be aware of the fact that the dramaturgy of the piece
might have been inspired by Christ, and that some of the formal
idiosyncrasies could be explained by this hidden programmatic content.
Both motifs from the introduction, ‘a’ and ‘b’, end with an Ars Nova
cliché, the ‘Landini cadence’. The circulatio and the Landini produce a
remarkably archaic effect, although it is unclear which exact past they
evoke, as these influences are actually separated by several centuries.

53 Ibid.
54Gottfried Eberle, ‘Figur und Struktur von Kreuz und Kreis am Bespiel von Alfred
Schnittkes Klavierquintet,’ in: Jürgen Köchel et al. (eds.), Alfred Schnittke zum 60.
Geburtstag, Hamburg, Hans Sikorski, 1994, 46–54.
55 See Medić, ‘Crucifixus etiam pro nobis: Representations of the Cross in Alfred
Schnittke’s Symphony No. 2 St Florian.’

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 I movement

Introduction beginning – [3] Motifs ‘a’ and ‘b’ in G# minor

Exposition [3] – [6] First theme (‘c’) in B♭ minor, followed by a fugato

[6] – [9] Second theme (‘d’) in G# minor

Development [9] – [14]

Closing group [14] – [16] ends in F minor

II movement (begins attacca)

Development [16] – [30] begins in D minor, ends in F minor

III movement (begins attacca)

Continuation of Development
Section 1 [30] – [37] in D minor
Section 2 [37] – [46] in D (Phrygian)

Recapitulation [46] – [48] Introduction (‘a’) in B minor (Dorian)

[48] – [50] First theme (‘c’) in G# minor
[50] – [51] Second theme (‘d’) in G# minor

Coda [51] – end G# minor

The exposition of the first movement begins with the motif ‘c’ also
derived from ‘a’, performed by clarinets in parallel octaves and
distinguished by a swift movement in triplets; it takes up the role of the
first theme of the sonata. A fugato ensues with different instrumental
groups imitating the theme: however, all imitations are at the interval of
prime/octave, so there is no contrast between propostae and rispostae. The
second theme ‘d’, starting from rehearsal 6, although also based on
minor seconds, achieves a degree of contrast by being presented in a
homophonic texture of majestic chords and perfect fifths. The quasi-
archaic sound-world of this exposition is given an ironic twist by being
placed in decidedly non-archaic keys (B flat minor for ‘c’ and G sharp
minor, already announced in ‘b’, for ‘d’).

^102
 The development begins at rehearsal 9 with the return of ‘c’ in an
even faster motion, with the keys gradually sliding down from G# to G
minor and F minor while approaching the culmination at ten bars after
rehearsal 13. Pärt employs the fugato technique to build up the tension,
which is only resolved by a general pause just before rehearsal 14. There
is no recapitulation, only a brief closing section based on augmented ‘c’
in F minor. This conclusion is pretty inconclusive, and the development
is expected to continue in the next movement – which, indeed, happens.
The second movement begins attacca at rehearsal 16; it extends the
first movement and utilises the same materials, only in a slower tempo.
The textures and the alternation of polyphonic and homophonic
segments ending with Landini cadence also replicate those from the first
movement. Thus, in comparison to the first movement, the main
contrast is timbral, achieved by means of a sombrer orchestral sound,
featuring the high woodwinds and strings. If one should relate it to the
extra-musical ‘meaning’ of the circulatio trope, this could be the depiction
of Christ’s final moments and the mourning by the believers.
The initial theme (at rehearsal 16) is derived from the inverted and
augmented motif ‘a’; I have labelled it ‘a1’.56 From rehearsal 17 it is
added a counterpoint in semibreves, also derived from ‘a’. These motifs
are developed in free imitation until the culmination is reached at
rehearsal 22 with the return of ‘b’ from the first movement, followed by
‘a1’. The motif ‘c’ then returns at rehearsal 23 with its distinctive triplets;
however, it is transposed to D minor, the ‘tonal’ centre of the second
movement. At rehearsal 24 the ‘a’ from the first movement returns.
After slowing the musical course down to achieve maximum tranquillity
(with ‘little bells’ in celesta at rehearsal 25 followed by a ‘lament’ in
strings), the second movement ends with sudden ominous chords in the
full orchestra and a dramatic solo for timpani in F which prepares the
third movement. If one should relate it to the biblical narrative, this
would be the moment of Christ’s death at the Cross.
The third movement starts at rehearsal 30 with the motif ‘a’ in D
minor, and its ‘antiphone’ responses in woodwinds, based on a

56Tim Smith has shown that the compressed versions of the circulatio, such as this one,
are also frequently found in J. S. Bach’s works. Smith, ‘Circulatio as Tonal Morpheme in
the Liturgical Music of J. S. Bach.’

^103
syncopated motif ‘a2’ derived from ‘a’ and ‘d’. The first section (until
rehearsal 37) is mostly based on ‘a’ and ‘a2’, ending with the ‘Landini
cadence’ in D, which then becomes a basis for the next, polyphonic
segment. It begins at rehearsal 37 with an augmented ‘c’ in double-bass
solo in D (Phrygian), followed by a free imitation moving swiftly
through many tonal centres but without settling for any particular key.
The recapitulation on the level of the entire symphonic cycle begins
at rehearsal 46 with a return of the motif ‘a’ from the introduction in ff
in B minor (Dorian). At rehearsal 48 Pärt repeats the first sonata theme
of the first movement ‘c’, in G# minor, with counterpoint based on
motifs ‘a’ and ‘d’. It is followed by the second theme ‘d’ at rehearsal 50,
and then by a Coda from rehearsal 51 with the final hint of ‘d’ in the last
two bars. It is very tempting to interpret the recapitulation, with its
reappearance of the circulatio, as the moment of Christ’s resurrection.
Aside from the thematic unity of the entire cycle, harmonic progres-
sions also support the interpretation of this cycle as a unified whole.
The main key is G# minor, but the first movement actually ends in F
minor. The second one begins in D minor (the key a tritone apart from
G#, i.e. its polar tonality), but also ends in F. The third movement
returns to G#, thus emphasising the recapitulative effect; moreover,
both in the first and the final movement (i.e. the exposition and the
recapitulation) both sonata themes are in the same key, G# minor.
Pärt’s musical rhetoric in this work is seemingly anti-Romantic: this
clean-cut symphony demonstrates his penchant for conciseness and
reductionism, suggests an affinity with Stravinsky’s modernist aesthetics
and anticipates early minimalist works. While Pärt aims towards objecti-
fication, there are musical ‘signs’ that suggest an ‘extra-musical’ meaning,
although musical symbolism is not nearly as obvious as in Pärt’s Credo or
in Schnittke’s Symphony No. 2, the two works that closely follow biblical
narratives. Pärt’s Symphony can be labelled ‘polystylistic’ only
conditionally: although he pours the simulations of plainchant into a
classical symphonic mould, this results in a restoration of old music in a
modern context, rather than a deliberate and incongruous clash of
aesthetically and diachronically opposed styles, as was the case with his
older polystylistic works. To overview once again the symptoms of
Pärt’s ‘transition’ from polystylism to tintinnabuli, we could say that Pärt’s
Soviet and polystylistic past is revealed in the following features:

^104
- the employment of the genre of symphony – quite typical of Soviet
aesthetics, which regarded the symphony as a supreme genre;57
- a free interplay of different stylistic traits, without committing to any
particular one;
- the employment of musical ‘signs’ – although, in contrast to what
Pärt had done in Credo, here they do not follow an overt narrative;
- unlike the majority of Pärt’s Soviet contemporaries who relied on
Shostakovich’s symphonic model, the most obvious influence on his
symphony is Stravinsky’s late oeuvre.

As to the features that anticipate Pärt’s tintinnabuli style, one may observe
the following:
- the employment of a minimum of thematic material – all main
motifs are derived from one another and/or mutually related;
- the entire work unfolds by means of developing these laconic motifs.
There is hardly any thematic contrast between the movements, and
the development transgresses the boundaries of individual move-
ments; hence the formal divisions are merely provisional;
- this principle of diminishing thematic contrast leads to repetitiveness,
which would become one of the key traits of Pärt’s tintinnabuli style;
- harmony is vaguely tonal, but there are no customary tonal cadences,
and the distribution of keys seems quite arbitrary; this is achieved by
means of bypassing the major/minor dichotomy in favour of old
church modes and pre-tonal cadential turns;
- finally, by referencing the plainchant and the Ars Nova polyphony,
Pärt confirms his interest in Christianity, which would infuse his
tintinnabuli works.

If one should summarise the ‘meaning’ of this symphony, it could be

argued that the composer seeks inspiration and solace in the idealised
distant past, but also uses it as a means of ‘reviving,’ ‘purifying’ and
reaffirming the symphonic genre. However, Pärt’s employment of a
covert but nevertheless readable musical symbolism (in particular when
seen in the context of his works that surround this Symphony) makes it
very tempting to hear this work as a continuation of the topic already

57 See the chapter on Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1 in this book.

^105
explored in the Credo, i.e. the depiction of the holy figure of Jesus Christ
and of his death and resurrection.
While in his Symphony No. 2 St Florian Schnittke quotes Gregorian
tunes, Pärt only models his themes to resemble them, and then subjects
those quasi-Gregorian themes to a full symphonic treatment – while
Schnittke treats his Gregorian quotations as entities quite separate from
the main symphonic course, and only occasionally allows them to mix
and merge with his own themes.
Pärt’s rhetoric is generally anti-Romantic, as it demonstrates his pen-
chant for conciseness, effectiveness and reductionism, while Schnittke
frequently goes over the top. Pärt’s symphony comprises three closely-
knit movements, which utilise identical thematic material, and the formal
design features a fusion of sonata form and sonata cycle. Schnittke’s
Symphony, on the other hand, contains six movements (and some of
them consists of several independent sections), and his extended
symphonic cycle embraces highly contrasting thematic materials.58 Pärt’s
clean-cut symphony suggests an affinity with Stravinsky’s modernist
aesthetics and anticipates early minimalist works, while Schnittke reveres
the German-Austrian models, from Bach to Berg (although the
influence of Stravinsky is not to be overlooked). Schnittke focuses on
the narrative/expressive potential of various styles and techniques, while
Pärt aims towards objectification and avoids direct expressiveness.
In the final analysis, Arvo Pärt’s Symphony No. 3 can be considered
polystylistic only conditionally: although the composer pours simula-
tions of Gregorian melodies into a classical symphonic mould, the result
is more that of a restoration of old music in a modern context than a
deliberate and incongruous clashing of aesthetically and diachronically
opposed styles.

58 See Medić, ‘Crucifixus etiam pro nobis.’

^106
Galina Ustvol’skaia: Symphony No. 2 ‘True and Eternal Bliss’

Born in 1919 (died in 2006) and some 10–15 years older than the
‘generation of the sixties,’ Galina Ustvol’skaia can hardly be considered a
member of the ‘Second avant-garde,’ although she did share a decisively
non-conformist attitude with some of these composers. A pupil of
Shostakovich, Ustvol’skaia tried her best to escape from the shade of his
overpowering personality, and later in her life she severed all profes-
sional and private ties with her mentor. She claimed that she had no role
models and that her music was a completely unique phenomenon;59 in
order to reinforce such a statement, she deliberately distanced herself
both from the establishment and the avant-gardists.
Her early life did not indicate that she would evolve into ‘the lady
with the hammer.’60 As her official biography states,61 from 1926 to 1936
she studied composition and cello at the Leningrad Capella; afterwards,
she took composition lessons at the Leningrad College for two years. In
1939 she entered Shostakovich’s composition class at the Leningrad
Conservatory. After the war broke out, she was evacuated to Tashkent,
then to Komi ASSR where she was getting combat rations serving as a
sentry. In 1944 she returned to Leningrad and finished her
undergraduate and postgraduate studies. The traumas of the war,
including the catastrophic two-and-a-half year siege of her native city of
Leningrad, left a deep mark on her creative work, which is profoundly
tragic. From 1947 to 1977 she taught at the Leningrad Rimsky-Korsakov

59 Many authors have accepted the composer's own assessment: see Hakobian, Music of
the Soviet Age, 241; Frans C. Lemaire, ‘Galina Ivanovna Ustvolskaya,’ liner notes to CD
Galina Ustvolskaya – Four Symphonies, Megadisc MDC 7854, 2; Viktor Suslin, ‘Preface’ to
the Catalogue of Ustvol’skaia works, http://www.sikorski.de/, 1; Frank Denyer, liner
notes to CD The Barton Workshop Plays Galina Ustvolskaya, Etcetera KTC 1170, 2. For
example, Lemaire states: ‘nothing like it was ever written, not by anyone. These are
truly unique pages, written without any compromise whatsoever. They constitute a
clean break with musical history.’ While not entirely untrue, such a statement is
certainly exaggerated.
60Elmer Schönberger, 1992, cited in Ian McDonalds, ‘The Lady with the Hammer.
The music of Galina Ustvolskaya,’ Music Under the Soviet Rule, http://www.siue.edu/
~aho/musov/ust/ust.html
61 ‘About the composer,’ http://ustvolskaya.org/eng/

^107
College of Music. Although she was held in high esteem by her students
at the college, she was never offered a teaching post at the Leningrad
Conservatory.
As one of the very few female composers active in the Soviet Union,
Ustvol’skaia unwittingly drew attention to herself.62 Aside from being
described by various authors as ‘barbaric,’ ‘minimalist,’ ‘ascetic,’ ‘austere,’
‘non-lyrical,’ ‘uncompromising,’ ‘fanatical,’ ‘piercing,’ ‘absolutistic,’ ‘edgy,’
‘tense,’ ‘fierce,’ ‘urgent,’ etc. Ustvol’skaia’s style is commonly dubbed –
‘unwomanly’ or ‘unfeminine’.63 Levon Hakobian pegged her as an
‘unclassifiable outsider;’64 Viktor Suslin compared her to ‘a lonely rocky
island in the ocean of twentieth-century compositional trends;’65 and
Frans Lemaire called her ‘the most ferocious and enigmatic Russian
composer of the twentieth century.’66
On the other hand, David Fanning observes that Ustvol’skaia, to-
gether with almost all of her Soviet contemporaries, did show ‘affinities
with deeper-lying aspects of Shostakovich’s musical language: which is
to say, with its extremes of motion and non-motion, and with its various
kinds of musical symbolism’.67 Hakobian also admits that she inherited
from Shostakovich ‘the penchant for consistent elaboration of motivic
“embryos” bringing to the rise an “intense dramaturgy of large
spaces”,’68 and notes that Ustvol’skaia shared with her contemporaries
‘the elemental “gnosticism” and the consciousness of being “more than

62Medić, ‘“Drugarice” Ustvolska i Gubajdulina. O statusu kompozitorki u Sovjetskom

Savezu,’ 69–92.
63 See Valentina Kholopova, ‘Boris Tishchenko: striking spontaneity against a
rationalistic background,’ in: Valeria Tsenova (ed.), Underground Music from the Former
USSR, Amsterdam, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997, 51; Hakobian, Music of the
Soviet Age, 243, MacDonald, ‘The Lady with the Hammer – The Music of Galina
Ustvolskaya;’ Suslin, ‘Preface,’ 1.
64 Hakobian, Music of the Soviet Age, 219.
65 Suslin, ‘Preface.’
66 Lemaire, ‘Galina Ivanovna Ustvolskaya,’ 1.
67David Fanning, Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 8, Aldershot/Burlington, Ashgate,
2004, 8.
68 Hakobian, Music of the Soviet Age, 240.

^108
a…” deeply rooted.’69 The list of other composers who could have
inspired Ustvol’skaia includes Bartók, Stravinsky, Orff, early Hindemith,
Messiaen, as well as her Polish contemporaries Andrzej Panufnik,
Henryk Górecki and the Polish school in general. However, all these
influences are merged into a style that is idiosyncratic and instantly
recognisable as Ustvol’skaia’s own.
Her first mature works date from 1949 (Trio for piano, clarinet, and
violin and the Piano Sonata No. 2): Hakobian argues that ‘[t]he manner
of writing peculiar to Ustvolskaya has remained practically unchanged
since. Hence, every separate piece of hers gives a complete idea about
her language and her idiosyncrasies.’70 Hakobian also states:

This persistently dissonant music, exempt from every element of

anecdote, bewitching by its rhythmic ostinatos and tone-clusters, rich
in long, intense, suggestive pauses, shocking by abrupt transitions
from fortissimo to pianissimo and vice versa, could bring to its
author but the most serious troubles.71

There has been a great deal of speculation on the exact nature of

Ustvol’skaia’s relationship with Shostakovich and the reason(s) why she
rejected him so ferociously later in life.72 It is known that Shostakovich
valued Ustvol’skaia’s work very highly and said of her:

I am convinced that the music of G. I. Ustvolskaya will achieve

worldwide renown, to be valued by all who perceive truth in music to
be of paramount importance.73

It is also known that Shostakovich sent some of his unfinished works to

Ustvol’skaia, attaching great value to her comments, and that he cited
her music in his own: for example, he employed the second theme of

69 Ibid., 219.
70 Hakobian, Music of the Soviet Age, 240–241.
71 Ibid., 243.
72 E.g. MacDonald, ‘The Lady with the Hammer – The Music of Galina Ustvolskaya.’
73 Cited in: http://ustvolskaya.org/eng/

^109
the Finale of her Trio throughout the String Quartet No. 5 and in the
Michelangelo Suite (No. 9).74 While many biographers have implied that
the reasons for Ustvol’skaia’s dismissal of Shostakovich were of a
personal nature, it is also possible that the rift between them was caused
by her professional and moral concerns.
It is likely that Ustvol’skaia perceived Shostakovich’s readiness to
compromise as a symptom of his political and moral weakness. In the
beginning of her career she wrote a number of socialist-realist works –
cantatas, tone poems, choruses and various incidental scores. Some of
them were performed by leading musicians at the most prestigious
concert halls of the city; for example, Stepan Razin’s Dream for bass and
symphony orchestra opened four successive seasons at the Leningrad
Philarmonic’s Grand Hall.75 But gradually her name disappeared from
the concert repertoires; she became isolated, ‘since she did not want to
participate in social and political life, and her music was too far from the
Soviet ideals.’76 She excluded her socialist-realist works from her first
catalogue, published in 1990 by Sikorski. This catalogue originally
contained 21 compositions, only comprising about six hours of music
that was deeply personal, hermetic, and thus destined to stay in the
drawer for many decades. Sometime later, four less radical older scores
were also added: Stepan Razin’s Dream (1948), Suite for orchestra (1955),
and two symphonic poems originally entitled The Lights of the Steppes
(1948) and The Exploit of the Hero (1959); however, these two poems
were stripped off of their socialist-realist monikers and renamed
Symphonic Poems Nos. 1 and 2.77
A specific treatment of religious or spiritual topoi can be seen in
Ustvol’skaia’s Symphonies 2–5; her Symphony No. 1 (1955) is the only

74 Ibid.
75 Ibid.
76 Ibid.
77On Ustvol’skaia’s selection of compositions for the catalogue, see Viktor Suslin, ‘The
Music of Spiritual Independence – Galina Ustvolskaya,’ in: Valeria Tsenova (ed.), Ex
Oriente… I: Ten Composers from the Former USSR, Berlin, Verlag Ernst Kuhn, 2002, 108–
109.

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one without a religious subtext. 78 All of Ustvol’skaia’s instrumental
pieces written from the early 1970s onwards and alternately called
Compositions (1970–1975) and Symphonies (1979–1990) carry religi-
ous (sub)titles. I have chosen to discuss here Ustvol’skaia’s Symphony
No. 2 True and Eternal Bliss, for orchestra and solo voice. In his piece – as
well as in its successors, Symphonies No. 3 Jesus Messiah, Save Us for
orchestra and narrator (1983) and No. 4 Prayer for trumpet, tam-tam,
piano and contralto (1985–1987) – she uses texts written by Hermanus
Contractus de Reichenau (1013–1054), a Benedictine monk of noble
origin. He was disabled and almost unable to speak – hence his name
(Hermann the Cripple). However, he was renowned for his knowledge
in diverse fields, ranging from mathematics and astronomy to pietistic
poetry and music. He was beatified in 1863.79 In the Introduction to the
score of the Symphony No. 2 Ustvol’skaia revealed that she found
Hermanus’ writings in the volume Monuments of Mediaeval Latin Literature
from the Tenth to the Twelfth Centuries, published in Moscow in 1972.
All of Ustvol’skaia’s symphonies based on Hermanus’s texts consist
of one short movement each, and they are not scored for a full
orchestra. Instead, Ustvol’skaia opts for unusual instrumental combi-
nations and adds a human voice that does not sing, but recites, pleads
and sighs.80 Even in her early Symphony No. 1 which is, outwardly,
‘more symphonic,’ she favours wind instruments (possibly inspired by
Stravinsky's Symphonies for Wind Instruments and Symphony of Psalms) while
young boys sing the verses by Italian communist poet Gianni Rodari.
On the other hand, Ustvol’skaia’s ‘religious’ symphonies are the exact
opposites of the Soviet ‘great symphony’; her musical statements are
extremely condensed and concentrated, and devoid of traditional broad
symphonic rhetoric.
As to her attitude towards religion, Ustvol’skaia has stated:

78In recent years more attention has been paid to Ustvol’skaia’s specific position in the
Soviet cultural context; see the list of recent books and films dedicated to her work at
http://ustvolskaya.org/films_books.php
79 Lemaire, ‘Galina Ivanovna Ustvolskaya,’ 3–4; Suslin, ‘The Music of Spiritual
Independence,’ 106.
80However, Ustvol’skaia has said: ‘My music is never chamber music, not even in the
case of a solo sonata!’ Quoted in: Suslin, ‘The Music of Spiritual Independence,’ 108.

^111
 My works are not, it is true, religious in a liturgical sense, but they are
infused with a religious spirit, and to my mind they are best suited to
performance in a church, without scholarly introductions and ana-
lyses. In the concert hall, that is, in secular surroundings, the music
sounds different…81

When refusing commissions for new works, Ustvol’skaia stated: ‘I would

gladly write something, but that depends on God, not me.’82 Thus Frank
Denyer has remarked:

The vision is predominantly religious but nevertheless full of bleak

despair and obsessional violence. Her prayers, despite their incredible
intensity, never cause the heavens to open and choirs of revelatory
angels to descend in light, but on the contrary, she seems to turn to
God because in extremity there is nowhere else to turn. We do not
know if her agonizing appeals are heard but we cannot but be torn
by the heartrending desperation of them. 83

Although Ustvol’skaia’s symphonies contain religious titles and texts (in

the case of her Symphony No. 5, the Lord’s Prayer), Ian MacDonald has
aptly noted:

That her concept of God is both vividly apprehended and thoro-

ughly idiosyncratic is clear from the absence of tenderness and
redemption in her music, which seems predominantly apocalyptic in
tone and outlook. 84

Ustvol’skaia’s Symphony No. 2 unfolds in a free, arch-like form, with a

single culmination. The form comprises a series of sections, all of them
developed from the same thematic core, consisting of just a few short
motifs. This ascetic material is given an equally ascetic treatment. The
text is also extremely condensed and aphoristic, consisting of utterances
‘Ay!’ and three verses:

81 Quoted in: Suslin, ‘Preface,’ 2.

82 Quoted in: Lemaire, ‘Galina Ivanovna Ustvolskaya,’ 1.
83 Denyer, The Barton Workshop Plays Galina Ustvolskaya, 2.
84 MacDonald, ‘The Lady with the Hammer.’

^112
 Istinnaia i blagaia vechnost’.
Vechnaia i blagaia istina.
Istinnaia, vechnaia, blagost’!

Truthful and blissful eternity.

Eternal and blissful truth.
True, eternal, bliss!85

At first glance, the score even looks odd. The rhythmic pulse consists
almost exclusively of crotchets; dynamic contrasts are extreme, with
abrupt juxtapositions of pppppp and ffffff. This music is violently dis-
sonant from the beginning to the end, its intervallic content limited
almost exclusively to the intervals of seconds, sevenths and ninths, with
addition of clusters. By employing sparse, ascetic motifs and a uniform
rhythm, Ustvol’skaia shuns all rhetorical gestures, all socialist realist
grandeur, and creates a work charged with almost unbearable tension.
The first motif ‘a’ consists of fierce piano and percussion ‘hits,’ while
the second section at bar 12 introduces the motif ‘b’ derived from ‘a’
and consisting of clusters in woodwinds and brass. The ‘melody’
outlined by these clusters bears some distant generic resemblance to
church chants, as it consists of seconds in gradual movement. The entire
ensuing orchestral course is derived from these two short motifs. At 25
the piano takes up the motif ‘b’ and transforms its regular pulse in
crotchets into a somewhat ‘limping’ rhythm. In the third section (bar 33)
the winds perform ‘b’ in ppp(p), while the piano confronts them.
The fourth section, starting at bar 53 with a new motif ‘c’, introduces
a greater degree of contrast, because the vocalist/narrator recites
‘Gospodi!’ (or exclaims ‘Ay!’ in the original Soviet score). The fifth
section at 71 marks a return of ‘a’ in the trombone, to be followed by
the final motif ‘d’ consisting of a single note played crescendo. The sixth

85 The composer’s intention was to have exclamations ‘Gospodi!’ [Lord!] before the
verses. In the score published by Sovetskii kompozitor in 1982, the word ‘Gospodi’ is
consistently replaced with ‘neutral’ cries ‘Ay, ay, ay!’ Only in the revised score published
by Sikorski the invocations of the Lord have been reinstated.
Lemaire wrongly states that ‘the interjection Gospodin (Lord) and the words Vechnost
(eternity) and Istina (truth) are thrice repeated and that is all.’ See Lemaire, ‘Galina
Ivanovna Ustvolskaya,’ 4.

^113
section (bar 91) features various versions of ‘a’, ‘b’ and ‘d’ and it is
framed by transitions based on motif ‘c’.
The seventh section (bar 111) is the longest and contains the culmi-
nation. The piano performs ‘a’ and ‘d’ while the winds play versions of
‘b’, in an increasingly louder dynamics, supported by heavy battery, and
the section ends in ffffff at bar 155, followed by a general pause. The
following section introduces a startling contrast, because the vocalist
recites Hermanus’s hermetic, haiku-like verses. In the ninth section (bar
182) the reciting ends, and for the first time Ustvol’skaia introduces
dotted rhythm. In the concluding tenth section (bar 213), all motifs are
joined together, leading into a Coda (bar 249) where the soloist utters
‘Gospodi’ for the last time.
This blow-by-blow description can by no means do justice to Galina
Ustvol’skaia’s powerful work. In her musical universe, more is less: she
achieves maximum expression through a maximum compression of her
musical means and makes a most terrifying yet impressive declaration of
faith in the Lord. Ustvol’skaia spent her entire life in St Petersburg – the
city that had seen some of the worst horrors of the twentieth century;
hence, the violent orchestral music that surrounds the narrator can be
interpreted as a kind of musical exorcism. One could also argue that
Ustvol’skaia self-identifies with the severely disabled Hermanus, whose
daily existence must have been a constant agony. Since he could barely
speak, his cries were sparse and heartrending; and yet, he indulged in
religious ecstasy and experienced ‘true, eternal bliss.’ MacDonald even
presumes that ‘the extremity of Hermannus’ [sic] predicament appeals to
a corresponding extremity – perhaps even a martyr-complex – in
Ustvolskaya.’86 In any case, one cannot deny a powerful, brutal, yet
cathartic impact of this work.
If one compares Ustvol’skaia’s dark masterpiece to a work such as
Schnittke’s Symphony No. 2 St Florian,87 the differences are striking,
despite the fact that both works belong to the genre of vocal symphony
and fail to conform to Soviet symphonic standards both in form and
content. While Schnittke’s symphony is polystylistic, Ustvol’skaia’s is

86 MacDonald, ‘The Lady with the Hammer.’

87For a detailed analysis of Schnittke’s symphony see Medić, ‘Crucifixus etiam pro
nobis’, 3–29.

^114
uncompromisingly monostylistic and monolithic; she only uses expres-
sive codes that evoke fear, anguish, terror, forcefulness and refuses to
employ quotations, or anything that could resemble someone else’s
music. Her music is dissonant, disturbing and expressive from the
beginning to the end; she refuses to conform and cuts out all ear-
pleasing solutions. Schnittke quotes Gregorian melodies in an attempt to
establish a dialogue with the tradition he feels he had been alienated
from, while Ustvol’skaia neither quotes nor evokes religious rites of any
kind; she takes up an a-historical (or anti-historical) stance, erecting her
own pedestal of independence from all influences. However, the
relentless insistence on the same material and a uniform rhythmic pulse
give Ustvol’skaia’s work a peculiar ritualistic quality; despite the lack of
obvious religious references, her symphony is no less a statement of
faith.
Schnittke has a penchant for broad symphonic rhetoric which utilises
diverse descriptive/illustrative/narrative codes; a variety of musical ma-
terials are delivered by immense orchestral forces complemented with
mixed chorus and soloists. In contrast, Ustvol’skaia’s music is quite ‘stiff,’
elemental, ‘primitivist’ even; she works with the most basic materials.
Her textures are dense, coarse and sparse, and just like her motifs, her
orchestration is stripped down, economical and efficient. Ustvol’skaia
compresses the entire symphony into one short, monolithic movement,
while Schnittke needs no less than six diverse movements to fully convey
his idea.
Frans Lemaire mistakes Ustvol’skaia’s a-historism for postmodernism
and claims:

By using this anti-anthropomorphic compositional method, by dis-

secting musical history in this particular fashion, the composer from
St Petersburg has, before the word was even invented, inadvertently
written the first postmodern compositions of the twentieth century. 88

This is an entirely wrong assessment, because Ustvol’skaia never actually

attempted to dissect musical history; she did not evoke or analyse earlier

88 Lemaire, ‘Galina Ivanovna Ustvolskaya,’ 5.

^115
styles, and her compulsive, fanatical urge to remain independent from
trends and only do what nobody else had done before confirmed her
stubbornly modernist attitude. She said:

Originality is essential in creative work. Every talent, even the most

modest, is only interesting when it finds its own path. And it
immediately becomes uninteresting if it cannot produce anything
original. 89

Nothing is more alien to a postmodern attitude towards creation than

Ustvol’skaia’s ‘manifesto’ cited above. If anything, one may argue that
she questioned the tradition by deliberately distancing herself from it.

89 Quoted in Suslin, ‘The music of spiritual independence,’ 109.

^116
Sofia Gubaidulina’s Spiritualism

The critics provoked by Galina Ustvol’skaia’s ‘unfeminine’ personality

were probably relieved when introduced to the work of another Soviet
female composer to whom they could attach stereotypes associated with
the ‘écriture féminine’. The creative output of the remarkable composer
Sofia Asgatovna Gubaidulina embodies not only spiritualism, which
imbues her entire oeuvre, but also all three main features of late Soviet
meta-pluralism, which will be discussed later: its all-inclusiveness, auto-
reflectiveness and anti-progressivism. However, Gubaidulina’s attitude
towards tradition is quite different from that of her contemporaries.90
Gubaidulina’s ‘otherness’ when compared to the dominant paradigms
of that time (male, socialist-realist, traditionalist, bombastic-utopian) was
amplified by her ‘exotic’ background. She was born in 1931 in
Chistopol, Autonomous Tatar Republic, in a then-unusual marriage bet-
ween a Tatar man and a Russian woman. Her paternal grandfather was a
Muslim mullah and, although her parents were atheists, Gubaidulina
later stated that, even as a child, she was fascinated with religion.91
Although she eventually chose to be baptised in the Russian Orthodox
Church, Gubaidulina’s relationship towards religion was never strictly
based on Christian doctrines; instead, it incorporated elements of many
other religious, spiritual and mystical teachings, resulting in a peculiar
pantheistic synthesis. Moreover, she transferred her memory of Muslim
worship, with its alternation of melismatic reading of parts from Koran
with periods of meditative silence, to her works – even to those (such as
Introitus and Offertorium) explicitly based on Christian themes. Unlike
Ustvol’skaia, who battled her demons in her music, Gubaidulina imbued
her music with spiritual ideas and equated her creative act with piety.
As a woman in a ‘male’ profession, a practicing believer in the athe-
istic Soviet Union, a person of mixed Tatar-Russian background in a
largely xenophobic society, a member of non-conformist, partisan artis-
tic groups in a state-controlled culture, Gubaidulina spent several deca-
des fighting stigmatisation and exclusion. The fact that she was banned

90Some parts of this chapter were published in: Medić, ‘Gubaidulina, Misunderstood,’
103–123. Reprinted with permission granted by the publisher.
91 Kurtz, Sofia Gubaidulina, 60.

^117
from travelling to the West to attend premieres of her works until
198492 is just one example of the harrasment that she was subjected to.
In spite of being treated as a ‘black sheep’ due to her biological, cultural,
racial, confessional and political ‘otherness’ – or maybe because of it –
Gubaidulina created a distinctive personal style. The fact that she was
considered an ‘outsider’ and thus stayed off the official Soviet radar for
a long time actually meant that she could dodge the prescribed rules and
favoured solutions, and write music in accordance with her ‘inner need’,
to use Wassily Kandinsky’s term.93
Gubaidulina is commonly regarded as one third of the leading trium-
virate of what Hakobian has labelled ‘Moscow avant-garde,’ together
with Schnittke and Denisov.94 Still, Gubaidulina’s brand of ‘avant-
gardism’ is quite accessible and fully rooted in tradition. Her ‘unofficial’
position was mostly conditioned by her links with the Moscow dissident
circles.95 She started studying composition in Moscow after graduating
in piano in Kazan, and she was several years older than her colleagues.
As mentioned before, Gubaidulina and her Soviet peers were introduced
to techniques of both pre-war and post-war avant-garde simultaneously
in the early 1960s; however, unlike her peers, already in the 1960s
Gubaidulina saw dodecaphony and serialism as finished styles/traditions
and expressed her doubts about the merits of the rigid employment of
these compositional methods:

Musical theory explains us that dodecaphony appeared as a result of

the evolution of musical language. But why a system based on the
identical value of pitches is preferable to that organized hierar-
chically? […] The technique of dodecaphony was born as an answer
to the suffering of the atonal musical material; it flattens the surface
in order to prepare a sounding ground for the properties of the
future condition of music. 96

92 Kurtz, Sofia Gubaidulina, 177.

93 Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 19.
94 Hakobian, Music of the Soviet Age, 284.
95 On her connection with the Moscow dissidents, see Kurtz, Sofia Gubaidulina, 68.
96 Quoted in Hakobian, Music of the Soviet Age, 286–287.

^118
Although Gubaidulina did eventually study and assimilate the entire
spectrum of contemporary techniques and experimented with free
improvisation and electronics, she distilled those influences through her
artistic temperament and resented the appeal of novelty per se.97 In many
interviews Gubaidulina voiced her opposition to labelling her art ‘avant-
garde’ and stated her reservations about the very concept of constant
innovation in music.98 She has refused to ascribe the ‘avant-garde’
techniques any kind of supremacy (moral, spiritual, technical) over more
traditional artistic means; in her view, all compositional methods are
equally valid and all can be employed as desired.
Gubaidulina is commonly considered a polar opposite to Ustvol’skaia
because her music lacks the qualities of forcefulness and aggressiveness,
so typical of her older colleague. 99 Gubaidulina’s music is unrestrainedly
beautiful, plastic, arabesque, despite the abundance of contemporary
compositional techniques; the composer’s ‘exotic’ origin and her gender
made it easy for critics to dwell upon the ‘feminine’ qualities of her
music, as opposed to Ustvol’skaia’s supposed ‘unfemininity.’ Gubaidulina
herself can be said to have encouraged such an interpretation, because
her discourse on music often refers to musical material as a living being
that needs care, nourishment and ‘curing.’ For example:

I experience the material as very aggressive substance. Its richness is

in its excess. I call this an illness. The material requires the artist to
find a solution for healing the pain. To the extent of my ability, I
want to cure the material with the process I just described. I am
absolutely convinced that resolving dissonance to consonance with
regard to time proportions heals the material. 100

On Gubaidulina’s ‘belated’ turning to the study of twelve-note music see Kurtz, Sofia
97

Gubaidulina, 65. On her attitude towards the notion of ‘novelty’ see ibid., 138.
98 Vera Lukomsky, ‘“My Desire is Always to Rebel, to Swim Against the Stream!”
Interview with Sofia Gubaidulina,’ Perspectives of New Music 36/1, 1998, 5–41, esp. 8–10.
99 ‘[Ustvolskaya’s] art – in contrast to that of the another great female composer, Sofia
Gubaydulina – lacks in such aesthetical categories as plasticity, charm, constructive
clarity…’ Hakobian, Music of the Soviet Age, 243.
100 Lukomsky, ‘Hearing the Subconscious,’ 29.

^119
A majority of Gubaidulina’s compositions employ a bare minimum of
thematic material, which is then allowed to develop. She fully believes in
the spiritual purpose of art and, for her, the employment of traditional
expressive means is conditioned neither by disillusionment nor by disori-
entation. She does not think in categories of style; instead, she regards
music matter as a unified sonic substance in the broadest of terms, and
when choosing her material she is predominantly concerned with its
symbolism. 101 Although this is not to say that Gubaidulina is uncon-
cerned with maintaining musical integrity, the knowledge of her sym-
bolism is crucial for a complete understanding of her creative objectives.
******
Since the early 1980s Gubaidulina has gradually achieved recognition in
the West, mostly due to the immense success of her violin concerto
Offertorium, championed by Gidon Kremer. In the past four decades she
received numerous prestigious commissions, became a member of the
German and Swedish Academies of Arts, received honorary doctorates
from the Universities of Chicago and Yale, and won numerous prizes.
Her music was released on the Deutche Gramophon, Phillips, Sony
Classical and other prestigious labels. But while Gubaidulina’s music has
won approval of listeners worldwide, reviews of her works have often
been resoundly negative. Western critics in particular are baffled by her
penchant for (over)long durations, blatant dualisms, her employment of
seemingly literal musical symbolism verging on the kitsch and, last but
not least, the composer’s religious fervour. Using as a starting point the
reviews of the two ambitious events that took place in 2006 and 2007
and served as introductions of Gubaidulina’s music to British audiences,
I will address the main objections directed at her oeuvre. Then, I will
analyse Gubaidulina’s major works written before the dissolution of the
USSR and discuss how these works responded to the cultural challenges
of that time and place. I will argue that Gubaidulina’s idiosyncratic
compositional aesthetics has been misunderstood by Western critics and
that her works cannot be appreciated without taking into consideration
the context from which they originated.

101Lukomsky, ‘Hearing the Subconscious’; idem., ’My Desire is Always to Rebel’;

idem., ‘“The Eucharist in My Fantasy”: Interview with Sofia Gubaidulina,’ Tempo 206,
1998, 29–35.

^120
 The mini festival titled Dancers on a Tightrope – Beyond Shostakovich,
which took place between 13 and 15 October 2006 in London’s South-
bank Centre, showcased the music of Gubaidulina among her other
prominent (post-)Soviet peers – Russians Galina Ustvol’skaia and Alfred
Schnittke, Ukraininan Valentin Sil’vestrov, Georgian Giia Kancheli and
Estonian Arvo Pärt – as well as their common ‘ancestor’, Shostakovich.
While on this occassion Gubaidulina’s works were not reviewed indivi-
dually, the critics pointed to the overall impression of ‘sameness’102 and
‘mawkishness’103 of the music of Shostakovich’s musical ‘offspring.’
In January 2007, The BBC Composer Weekend subtitled A Journey of
the Soul offered a retrospective of Gubaidulina’s entire career; most
importantly, it was the first significant exposure of British audiences to
her orchestral music. It was also the first time that this long-running an-
nual series spotlighted a female composer. While the BBC press release
stated that she was chosen on the basis of being ‘one of the world’s
most original, respected and emotionally powerful musical voices’ and
‘the most important Russian composer since Shostakovich’,104 a critic
for The Independent has pointed out that the decision to feature
Gubaidulina was also ‘a loud riposte to those offended by the absence
of female composers from last year’s Proms.’105

102 ‘However, one prevailing feeling left with us is that most of the powerfully
expressive works chosen to represent them are better heard standing alone or in mixed
programmes.’ Peter Grahame Woolf, ‘Review of Dancers on a Tightrope – Beyond
Shostakovich,’ Musical Pointers, 16 October 2006, http://www.musicalpointers.co.uk/
festivals/uk/dancerstightrope.htm.
103‘Yet, if Dancers on a Tightrope has proved anything, it is that blanket programming of
these composers does them no favours. Heard in isolation, several of these pieces
might have seemed a powerfully personal statement of despair. In relentless
succession, they began to seem merely mawkish.’ Erica Jeal, ‘Review of Dancers on a
Tightrope,’ The Guardian, 19 October 2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2006/
oct/19/classicalmusicandopera/print.
104BBC Press Office, ‘A Journey of the Soul – The Music of Sofia Gubaidulina’, 31
October 2006, http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/
2006/10_october/31/composer.shtml.
105 Anna Picard, ‘A Journey of the Soul: The Music of Sofia Gubaidulina,’ The
Independent, 21 January 2007, http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/
music/reviews/la-fille-du-regiment-royal-opera-house-covent-garden-londonbra-
journey-of-the-soul-the-music-of-sofia-gubaidulina-barbican-london-433089.html

^121
 The event comprised three days (12–14 January) of concerts, talks,
screenings of films dedicated to her music etc. The BBC Singers, BBC
Symphony Chorus, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Kremerata Baltica and
London Symphony Orchestra, with a host of renowned soloists and
conductors, performed a selection of Gubaidulina’s works, focusing on
the composer’s post-Soviet period. The following pieces were perfor-
med: Triptych Nadeyka, dedicated to the composer’s late daughter: The
Lyre of Orpheus, The Deceitful Face of Hope and Despair, A Feast During the
Plague; The Canticle of the Sun: Fairytale Poem; Offertorium; Pro et Contra; The
Light of the End; Under the Sign of Scorpio; and Alleluia. Approximately one
half of these works were either British or European premieres.
Although the event received substantial coverage in the press, reviews
were overwhelmingly negative; in particular, Gubaidulina’s recent works
fared poorly compared to the music from her Soviet period. Richard
Whitehouse noted that ‘Gubaidulina’s music is best heard in small and
strategically programmed doses.’106 Tim Ashley’s quip that ‘the more one
listens to Sofia Gubaidulina’s music, the less one likes it’ is based on his
observation that the illumination of extremes of despair and elation
constitutes ‘her sole mode of perception and expression’ and that the
outcome is a ‘sermonising rant rather than visionary spirituality.’107
Anthony Holden complained about Gubaidulina’s ‘hectoring religiosity’
which resulted in music that was ‘highly derivative and reeking of
incense’. 108 Ivan Hewett bluntly compared her religious music to ‘hot air’
and concluded that ‘[a]ll Gubaidulina had achieved with her bullying
symbolism was to crush the spiritual impulse that music always has,
when given the freedom to be itself.’109 Anna Picard objected to

106Richard Whitehouse, ‘Feature Review – A Journey of the Soul: The Music of Sofia
Gubaidulina (Orchestral and Choral Works),’ The Classical Source, January 2007, http://
www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_features.php?id=4105
107 Tim Ashley, ‘Gubaidulina,’ The Guardian, 16 January 2007, http://www.guar-
dian.co.uk/music/2007/jan/16/classicalmusicandopera.albumreview
108Anthony Holden, ‘Life and Tortured Soul of the Party,’ The Observer, 21 January
2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/jan/21/classicalmusicandopera
109Ivan Hewett, ‘A Composer Crushed by her own Symbolism,’ The Telegraph, 16
January 2007, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalmusic/3662587/A-
composer-crushed-by-her-own-symbolism.html

^122
Gubaidulina’s didacticism and lack of humour, and asserted that ‘her
Weltanschauung is unremittingly dour.’110
One might conclude that these critics’ distaste for Gubaidulina’s
music was provoked by her bombast musical symbolism and the
unreservedly bleak outlook on life. The main issue may actually be that,
while the composer has resided in Germany since 1992, she has stayed
true to the method established during her Soviet years. By disregarding
the change of political and personal circumstances, Gubaidulina has not
done favour to her earlier works, because her entire oeuvre has started
to look somewhat uniform. Therefore, I will now attempt to restore the
original context of her landmark ‘spiritual’ works and, by doing so, to
question some of the critics’ harsher assessments.
******
One of Gubaidulina’s most dramatic works is Hour of the Soul, based on
the poetry of the remarkable Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva. This work
can be said to belong to the genre of concerto because of its prominent
part for a solo percussionist; however, the inclusion of a mezzo-soprano
part towards the end brings it closer to the genre of cantata. The first
version for wind orchestra and mezzo-soprano was completed in 1974;
however, Gubaidulina had no chance of having it performed. Therefore,
she rewrote the piece for a solo percussionist, mezzo-soprano and large
orchestra (1976) and dedicated it to the exceptional percussion player
Mark Pekarskii, who managed to obtain a permission to perform the
piece. This second version was again revised in 1986 and published by
Sikorski; it is now considered the definitive version of the piece. By
choosing the poetry of the tragic Tsvetaeva who was persecuted by the
Soviet state and who committed suicide in 1941, Gubaidulina chose to
speak about all oppressed artists, all outsiders, all victims of the regime:

I feel a very special connection to Marina Tsvetaeva. Marina ended

her own life (in suicide) in the small town Elabuga, very close to
Chistopol, my place of birth [...] Her fate was extremely tragic: she
was destroyed by the vulgarity of Soviet ideology, the aggressiveness
of the Soviet system.111

110 Picard, ‘A Journey of the Soul: The Music of Sofia Gubaidulina.’

111 Lukomsky, ‘The Eucharist in My Fantasy,’ 30–31.

^123
Gubaidulina has chosen the second of the three songs that form
Tsvetaeva’s cycle, written in August 1923.112 The poem, which ends with
the verses ‘Make bitter: darken / Grow: reign’ only appears in the Coda,
in a haunting mezzo-soprano part, as a summary of the triumph of a
free spirit over adversity. The rest of Gubaidulina’s piece unfolds as an
instrumental drama, in which Tsvetaeva's soul is tormented by the world
around her.
Hour of the Soul belongs to the period when Gubaidulina was still
searching for her own compositional voice. The fact that Gubaidulina,
just like a majority of her ‘unofficial’ peers, earned a living by writing
music for film and theatre, enabled her to experiment and gain profi-
ciency in writing music saturated with symbolism and capable of illu-
strating diverse phenomena. Gubaidulina was not particularly interested
in polystylism as exhibited by Schnittke and Pärt; instead, she typically
only used quotations as ‘epigraphs.’ However, in Hour of the Soul she
confronted two different styles to represent two opposing protagonists
– Tsvetaeva and the Soviet state. The result is a polystylistic drama akin
to Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1, in which destructive forces are represen-
ted by trivial music genres. Gubaidulina attended both performances of
Schnittke’s work (in Gorky, 1974, and in Talinn, 1975) and was deeply
impressed with it. When asked whether she was inspired to use the
popular songs in Hour of the Soul in a manner similar to Schnittke’s,
Gubaidulina confirmed and added: ‘At that time I had no idea or
expectation that polystylism would become so fashionable, I just decided
to try it – in just this one episode.’113
In Hour of the Soul, Marina Tsvetaeva’s ‘irrationality and mysticism’
are represented by aleatoric music for percussion instruments, while her
musical antagonists are Soviet popular and patriotic songs; in the
composer’s words, they represent ‘vulgarity and the aggressiveness of
the common crowd as bred by the Soviet system.’114 Gubaidulina
explained that she chose percussion instruments to represent Tsvetaeva

The English translation of this poem is available in: Marina Tsvetaeva, In the Inmost
112

Hour of the Soul. Selected Poems by Marina Tsvetaeva (trans. Nina Kossman), New York,
Humana Press, 1989, 107.
113 Claire Polin, ‘Conversations in Leningrad, 1988,’ Tempo 168, 1989, 19.
114 Lukomsky, ‘The Eucharist in My Fantasy,’ 31.

^124
not only because the poet allegedly had a personal preference for
percussion, but also because she found the ‘mystical’ and ‘rebellious’
quality of percussion suitable to represent the mystical and protesting
soul of the poet; and also because, in Gubaidulina’s view, Tsvetaeva had
a dominant masculine side.115 In order to emphasise Tsvetaeva’s mascu-
linity and somewhat repressed femininity, Gubaidulina instructed that
the mezzo-soprano should be hidden amongst the orchestra throughout
the piece, and only make herself visible in the Coda. At the same time,
the male percussion player is required to travel in a circle around the
orchestra: in the beginning of the piece, he is standing at the right-hand
corner of the stage at the timpani; then he travels to other percussion
instruments (cymbals, bells, tom-tom, piano).
The music that depicts Tsvetaeva is confronted with a crude polysty-
listic episode, a mélange of popular and mass songs, certainly familiar to
Gubaidulina’s Soviet listeners. This episode, very similar to the episodes
of ‘chaos’ found in the first, second and fourth movements of
Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1, begins at rehearsal 60 and lasts until
rehearsal 71, when it is finally silenced by a solo cadence on the tom-
tom. Throughout the episode the soloist only plays glissandi on the
strings of the piano, while the pianist is pressing the sustain pedal.
Critics such as Hewett were unhappy with this polystylistic episode,
stating that ‘the lame little swing-jazz phrases tossed into the Hour of the
Soul’ were ineffective and banal; Hewett interpreted this episode as the
composer’s intention to demonstrate how ‘banality intrudes into the
spiritual quest.’116 However, the composer’s actual intention was to
represent ‘a terrible destructive force;’ she has explained:

When the percussionist begins his solo, I feel in the sounds of the
tom-tom his indignation and protest. It is Tsvetaeva’s protest against
the vulgarity and aggressiveness of the people, of the entire society.
Vulgarity and aggressiveness are the murderers that killed the poet.117

115 Polin, ‘Conversations in Leningrad, 1988,’ 19.

116 Hewett, ‘A Composer Crushed by her own Symbolism.’
117 Lukomsky, ‘The Eucharist in My Fantasy,’ 31.

^125
While Tsvetaeva’s life ended tragically, in Gubaidulina’s piece the poet’s
soul overcomes the polystylistic chaos and triumphs over adversity, thus
denying the critics’ observation that Gubaidulina’s works are gloomy and
pessimistic. The solo percussionist completes the full circle and finds
himself in front of the orchestra, standing next to the female singer and
playing a Chinese instrument chang, while the singer interprets the verses
that proclaim Tsvetaeva’s spiritual indepedence. The poet’s feminine and
masculine side, the Yin and Yang, the Animus and Anima, are show-
cased together, thus rounding up Tsvetaeva’s musical portrait.

******
The first work by Sofia Gubaidulina to gain international fame was
Offertorium, the violin concerto written for Gidon Kremer and premiered
in Vienna in 1981. Since then, it has become one of the most popular
contemporary concertos, due to the astounding virtuosity of the violin
part and brilliant orchestration, which can be said to continue Russian
tradition dating as far back as Tchaikovsky and The Five. The concerto
was revised twice, and the final 1986 version is the one that is usually
performed today. Arguably Gubaidulina’s best work, Offertorium is a tri-
umph of dramatic intensity and spiritual power. Although the concerto
does not contain quotations or paraphrases of religious music, its title is
a reference to a part of the Proper of the Mass, sung just after the
Credo, while the priest is preparing the bread and wine and offering
them upon the altar. Gubaidulina was inspired by the notions of sacri-
fice and offering: ‘The musician’s sacrifice of himself in self-surrender
to the tone […] The sacrificial offering of Christ’s crucifixion... God’s
offering as He created the world…’ 118 When she told her partner,
musicologist and conductor Piotr Meshchaninov about the central idea
of ‘offering’ for her violin concerto, he suggested that she use the ‘royal
theme’ of Frederick the Great, immortalised by Johann Sebastian Bach’s
Musical Offering BWV 1079. 119 Gubaidulina agreed, and built the con-
certo on the basis of ‘sacrificing’ and ‘resurrecting’ this theme.
A majority of Gubaidulina’s works are organised according to the
principle of basic oppositions, such as horizontal/vertical, chromati-

118 Kurtz, Sofia Gubaidulina, 149.

119 Ibid.

^126
cism/diatonicism, dissonance/consonance, staccato/legato, movement/
stasis etc. These musical polarities were codified in Gubaidulina’s cham-
ber and orchestral works from the 1970s onwards, including Concordanza
for ensemble (1971), Rumore e silenzio for harpsichord and percussion
(1974), Introitus for piano and chamber orchestra (1978), In croce for cello
and organ (1979), Seven Words for cello, bayan and string orchestra (1982)
etc. She regards these antitheses as the oppositions of the ordinary
(earthly) and spiritual (transcendental) phenomena respectively.120
Gubaidulina has singled out the mysticism of Nikolai Berdiaev as the
most decisive influence; in particular, she was attracted to his thoughts
on artistic creation. According to Berdiaev, God created man in his own
image, hence man is a ‘theurg,’ a divinely inspired creature who partici-
pates in the endless creative process. Of course, Berdiaev equates ‘man’
with ‘male’; nevertheless, Gubaidulina has recognised the connection
between his teachings and her own understanding of the creative
process.121 Moreover, Gubaidulina has described musical material as a
living being, as a ‘child’ that needs nurturing and care, in order to grow
and develop: ‘Musical material is a living organism. It has a history, an
evolution of its own […] We do not invent it; it is like soil, like nature,
like a child – it asks for, it wants, it needs something…’122 One could say
that Gubaidulina sees herself as a life-giving goddess, the ‘Mother’ who
gives birth to musical material, nurtures it and allows it to develop its full
potential. In her artistic consciousness music and religion merge into a
single, spiritually-infused creative experience. She has said: ‘Art is the re-
ligio (connection) to God in our fragmented, quotidian life,’123 and ‘I am
convinced that serious art can be distinguished from the ephemeral by
its connection to God […] any convincing form of worship is a path to
His Throne. Music is a form of worship.’124
Offertorium is distinguished by constructive clarity; its simple formal
design is in perfect accordance with Gubaidulina’s spiritual idea. The

120 Hakobian, Music of the Soviet Age, 287.

121 Lukomsky, ‘Hearing the Subconscious,’ 30.
122 Hakobian, Music of the Soviet Age, 287.
123 Kurtz, Sofia Gubaidulina, 96.
124 Claire Polin, ‘The Composer as Seer, but not Prophet,’ Tempo 190, 1994, 16.

^127
concerto unfolds in a single movement; it consists of three sections and
a brief Coda. At the beginning of the first section, the theme from
Musical Offering (Example 1) is stated in Anton Webern’s ‘punctualistic’
orchestration;125 thus Gubaidulina pays homage to the two composers
who have inspired her, J. S. Bach and Webern.126 The theme is quoted in
its entirety (in D minor) except for the final note D; instead, it finishes
with the minor second E-F, and this semitone becomes the entry point
for the soloist at rehearsal [1]. The theme is then repeated nine times,
but each time it is shortened from both ends – i.e. it is ‘sacrificed’.

Example 1: J. S. Bach, Musical Offering, Ricercar theme (in C minor)

Theme of ‘Offertorium’ (in D):

D – F – A – B♭ – C# – A – A♭ – G – G♭ – F – E – E♭ – D – C# – A – D – G – F – E – D

Section I (Exposition)
Beginning – [57] the main theme is stated and then ‘sacrificed’

Section II (Cadence)
[57] – [60] an elaborate soliloquy for the soloist

Section III (Reverse Recapitulation)

[60] – [134] the main theme is gradually rebuilt

Coda
[134] – end the theme is stated in its entirety, but retrograde

125Webern orchestrated Fuga (Ricercata) a 6 voci (Fugue No. 2) from J. S. Bach’s Musical
Offering in 1934–1935.
126Anders Beyer and Jean Christensen (eds.), The Voice of Music: Conversations with
Composers of Our Time, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2000, 51.

^128
Section I (Exposition):

Beginning
The entire theme minus the finalis D; begins with D and ends with E
Var. 1 – Reh. [8]
The theme has lost D (at the beginning) and E (at the end); it begins with F,
ends with F

Var. 2 – 3 bars after reh. [17]

The theme has lost F and F; begins with A, ends with G

Var. 3 – Reh. [25]

The theme has lost A and G; begins with B♭, ends with D

Var. 4 – 1 bar after reh. [38]

The theme has lost B and G; begins with C#, ends with A
Var. 5 – 2 bars after reh. [43]
The theme has lost C# and A, (but H and C# are also omitted); begins with
A, ends with D
Var. 6 – 2 bars after reh. [53]
The theme has lost A and H; begins with A♭, ends with C# (D♭)

Var. 7 – Reh. [54]

The theme has lost A♭ and D (but not C#); begins with G, ends with C#
(D♭)127

Var. 8 – Reh. [55]

The theme has lost G and C#; begins with G♭, ends with E ♭

Var. 9 – 6 bars after reh. [55]

The theme has lost G♭ and E♭; the only remaining notes are F and E

Var. 10 – Reh. [56]

The theme has lost F; the only remaining note is the central E

The first six statements of the theme are separated by lengthy ‘dialo-
gues’ of the soloist and the orchestra, built out of the same thematic
material. However, from the Variation 6 onwards, as the theme becomes
very short, it is repeated five times in close succession. The final two

127I do not know if this is a printing error in the score or the composer’s own decision
to substitute D with D flat (i.e. C#).

^129
notes remaining are E and F, which recall the first entry of the soloist at
rehearsal 1. At rehearsal 57, the fff of the orchestra and the soloist’s
dramatic leaps depict the moment of Crucifixion and anticipate a remar-
kably tragic solo cadence which, in the composer’s own words, sym-
bolises Christ’s suffering at the Cross. I believe that the exact moment
of Christ’s death is represented just before rehearsal 60, as the soloist
reaches a static F# and remains on that note until the end of rehearsal
60, for a total of 17 bars. This moment also announces the beginning of
the third section, in which the theme is gradually rebuilt – ‘resurrected’ –
in a process reverse to that seen in the Section I. While the resurrection
does not unfold as systematically as the sacrifice, the segments of the
theme are still clearly heard in various instrumental groups, separated by
sonoristic passages. From rehearsal 115, the theme can be heard in the
solo violin accompanied by low strings, in a mournful chorale
resembling Russian Orthodox Church music.
In the third section, fragments of the theme can be heard both in
direct and retrograde movements: for example, at rehearsals 124–125,
the segment from the tenth to the sixteenth note of the theme (F to D)
can be heard in direct motion in the piano and harps, while at the same
time the solo violin plays the ascending chromatic movement reminis-
cent of the second half of the theme, but in retrograde motion. The
final statement at rehearsal 134 (which announces the beginning of the
short Coda) is the only appearance of the complete theme; however, it is
retrograde. In Gubaidulina’s own words, this is the moment of Transfi-
guration: ‘The theme has returned, but nobody can recognise it.’128
In her review of the Gubaidulina weekend, Anna Picard has claimed:

Pro et contra, the Nadeyka Triptych, The Light of the End, and even
Offertorium all promote the same message: that this world is one of
torment and travail, and the next is one of bliss. […] But Gubai-
dulina says it in musical flash-cards, alternating three-minute sections
of apocalyptic terror with three-minute sections of radiance, and a
dash of glissandi – often in contrary motion – to distract the listener
as she switches from one to the other. 129

128 Lukomsky, ‘My Desire is Always to Rebel,’ 27.

129 Picard, ‘A Journey of the Soul: The Music of Sofia Gubaidulina.’

^130
However, as the analysis above has shown, Offertorium is not based on
random use of these musical images, but on a clearly stated and consis-
tently executed constructive principle. Furthermore, Gubaidulina does
not attempt to blatantly illustrate the events described in the Gospels,
but only to evoke Christ’s final moments and to remind the listeners of
his sacrifice; the composer’s message is not the promise of eternal bliss
after death but, quite the opposite, the overcoming of death. A less
misinformed critic Tim Ashley reads Offertorium as ‘a massive theology
lesson that weaves together the musical iconography of different
Christian traditions in a broadly ecumenical manner.’130
Furthermore, the concerto should not only be read through religious
imagery, but also as a parable of any suffering and oppressed individual,
forced to sacrifice his or her identity to the collective. The fact that
Gubaidulina’s protagonist manages to rise from the ashes and rebuild
himself/herself is a testimony to the composer’s faith in the individual’s
inner strength. Gerard McBurney also points to the essentially opti-
mistic, darkness-to-light trajectory of Offertorium.131 Instead of indulging
in self-loathing or predicting doomsday, Gubaidulina offers hope and
solace. For Soviet citizens, living under an oppressive regime, this hidden
message was particularly poignant.

******
Written in 1986, Stimmen… verstummen… [Voices... silenced...] was Sofia
Gubaidulina’s first major symphonic work and a perfect embodiment
both of her aesthetics of ‘poverty’,132 characterised by an ability to
generate enormous energy from the most elementary sound substance,
and of her penchant for blunt dualisms. Just like Offertorium, the sym-
phony Stimmen… verstummen… (which can also be dubbed a ‘Concerto
for conductor and orchestra,’ because of a prominent ‘solo’ for the
conductor) belongs to the group of large-scale works from the late
1970s to mid-1980s, which established Gubaidulina as a distinctive

130 Ashley, ‘Gubaidulina.’

Gerard McBurney, ‘It Pays to be Poor’, The Guardian, 12 August 2005, http://
131

www.guardian.co.uk/music/2005/aug/12/classicalmusicandopera.proms20051?
INTCMP=SRCH
132 Ibid.

^131
compositional voice throughout Europe. These works are very typical
of Gubaidulina’s mature style, and each one of them gives us a complete
picture of all her idiosyncrasies.
In Gubaidulina’s artistic consciousness, the basic polarity of horizon-
tal and vertical is best embodied in the symbol of Cross; she finds it
necessary ‘to crucify the vertical of the multidimensional divine sense
against the horizontal of time […] That’s why any work of art appears
to me as a crucifix.’133 This also applies to her understanding of the
difference between the full vibrating sound (especially of a string instru-
ment) and the flageolet:

Sound can have an earthly, only too ‘human’ expressiveness. And yet
if you touch the same spot of the string in another way, if you chan-
ge a bit your attitude, you are carried away from earth to heaven. 134

An understanding of these musical polarities, codified in her numerous

chamber and orchestral works from the mid-1970s onwards, is crucial
for the interpretation of her 1986 symphony, because the duality of
contrasting spheres of ‘earthly’ and ‘divine’ is the fundamental feature
of this work. As observed by McBurney, ‘her interest in sheer sound and
in the symbolism of religion are to her indivisible, allowing her a whole
vocabulary of what she calls “musical metaphor” or “instrumental
symbolism”.’135
The entire twelve-movement symphony Stimmen… verstummen… is
built out of several diminutive motifs: a D major triad represents the
sphere of the ‘divine,’ while the ‘earthly’ sphere of martyrdom and
suffering is represented by chromatic movements and glissando. The
basic outline of the symphony is very simple. It consists of twelve
movements in which these two spheres alternate; hence, the form is that
of double variations. Another prominent duality is that of sound and
silence, as indicated by the very title of the work, which originated from

Quoted in: Valentina Kholopova and Enzo Restagno, Sofia Gubaidulina, Moskva,
133

Kompozitor, 2008, 64.

134 Ibid., 38.
135 McBurney, ‘Encountering Gubaydulina,’ 120.

^132
the final verse in Gubaidulina’s 1983 work Perception, the text of which is
based on her correspondence with the poet Francisco Tanzer.
The odd movements (Nos. 1, 3, 5, 7) are almost completely static and
impenetrable: the celestial perfection, the cosmic harmony depicted by
the ‘twinkling’ of the D major chord in high registers of strings and
winds, does not require any modification or development. However,
these ‘heavenly’ movements get progressively shorter and culminate in –
silence. In the ninth movement, Gubaidulina prescribes a silent ‘solo’ for
the conductor. On the other hand, the even movements (Nos. 2, 4, 6, 8)
are progressively longer and more ominous; the silence of the ninth
movement is an outcome of the apocalyptic predicament presented in
the longest, and the most dramatic, eighth movement. After the ninth
movement, the situation is reversed: the even movements are now asso-
ciated with the celestial major chords and the odd eleventh movement
with chromaticism.
This unusual disposition of movements is based on proportions
related to the ‘Golden section’ and the Fibonacci sequence, both of
which are among Gubaidulina’s favourite means of organising rhythmic
and metric proportions of a piece. Gubaidulina assigns a symbolic/
mystic significance to the Golden section and to the Fibonacci sequence,
in which every number is the sum of the previous two:
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, etc.

Gubaidulina believes that the rhythms based on the Fibonacci sequence

reflect the laws of life.136 The ‘silent’ ninth movement coincides with the
point of the Golden section of the entire symphony. Also, the
progressively decreasing number of quavers in the ‘heavenly’ move-
ments corresponds with the numbers of the Fibonacci sequence.
Gubaidulina has said:

The Ninth movement is a ‘rest’: it is a solo for the conductor. It is as

if music had come to ‘zero’: in the first movement there was 55
quarters [sic], in the third – 34, in the fifth – 21, in the seventh – 13,
and, finally, in the ninth – zero.137

136 Kholopova and Restagno, Sofia Gubaidulina, 111–112.

137 Lukomsky, ‘Hearing the Subconscious,’ 30.

^133
However, I have actually counted 55 dotted quavers of the D major
chord in the third movement, 34 in the fifth, and 21 in the seventh. It is
not known to me whether the composer was misquoted, or she made a
mistake. Either way, these numbers still correspond to the Fibonacci
sequence.
While the conductor ‘performs’ the rhythm of the silence in the
ninth movement, the constantly changing metre comprises bars that
contain the numbers of crotchets related to the Fibonacci row:

3/4, 5/4, 8/4, 13/4

Near the end of the ‘solo’, the conductor is instructed to make progres-
sively wider movements with his/her hands, to correspond to the
following time units:

1–2–1; 1–2–3–2–1; 1–2–3–5–8–13–8–5–3–2–1

Again, Gubaidulina structures time according to the Fibonacci series in

an attempt to reinstate the cosmic balance, destroyed in the previous
movements. However, the reinstatement is not embodied by a D major
chord; in the beginning of the tenth movement the organ and violins
play a G major chord in high register. According to the composer, the G
major triad symbolises ‘eternal light’ which begins to shine after the
catastrophe in the cleared lucid space.138
The ‘earthly’ movements, on the other hand, are characterised by a
disjointed linear movement: the chromatic, micropolyphonic canons and
menacing glissandos. The brief ‘tonal’ centres are interspersed with
rising and falling chromatic scales: as if Gubaidulina is hinting at the
possibility of the existence of ‘heaven on Earth,’ but then quickly
denying it. In the eighth movement, the ‘apocalypse’ is depicted by
aleatoric passages, chromatic lines clashing with one another, harsh
polytonal chords, and from rehearsal 70 with diatonic and pentatonic
passages in organ. The movement ends with the glissandos that the
second movement had begun with.
The final confrontation of the two spheres takes place in the twelfth
movement. The ‘earthly’ sphere dominates the movement, but the

138 Ibid., 31.

^134
‘heavenly’ D major chord makes a return at rehearsal 29 and concludes
the symphony; thus, the outcome of the confrontation between good
and evil is left ambiguous, though potentially optimistic. One could
argue that the composer’s message is that the two spheres are destined
to coexist, sometimes crossing paths, with the earthly realm of human
activity occasionally trying to emulate the celestial perfection, and
occasionally trying to disturb the cosmic order; but the divine sphere
remains unaffected.
However, the symphony Stimmen… verstummen… can also be read
entirely differently, as a political metaphor for the oppression and the
brutal ‘silencing’ of the voices of Soviet citizens. Written at the dawn of
perestroika, the symphony reflects on the gloomiest days of terror, but
also shows that the Soviets have managed to survive and to have their
voices heard again. While the composer herself has never hinted at this
as being her hidden ‘programme,’ the very title of the piece, as well as its
dramaturgy, readily offer it to such an interpretation and rebuke Ivan
Hewett’s claim that the main problem with Gubaidulina’s music is that
‘idea and effect are locked into a pre-set pattern by the composer’ and
that the listeners are ‘deprived of any freedom to interpret what we
heard.’139
When compared to the works of her exact contemporaries, fellow
‘spiritualists’ and ‘postists’, one could say that the sound world that
Gubaidulina creates in the symphony Stimmen… verstummen… is rather
similar to the apocalyptic postism of Valentin Sil’vestrov’s Symphony
No. 5, which will be discussed below; however, unlike Sil’vestrov, Gu-
baidulina does not employ obvious stylistic allusions. Although her
music is as beautiful as Sil’vestrov’s, it lacks the desolate ‘creepiness’ of
his Symphony No. 5.
In a ‘realist’ manner very typical of the representatives of Hakobian’s
‘Second avant-garde’, Gubaidulina employs compositional techniques of
heterogeneous origin to narrate cosmological stories. In that sense, her
approach bears no significant difference to Sil’vestrov’s or Schnittke’s.
However, a closer comparison of Gubaidulina’s Stimmen… verstummen…
to Schnittke’s works reveals the specific features of these composers’
personal responses to a common artistic ‘mission.’ For Schnittke,

139 Hewett, ‘A Composer Crushed by her own Symbolism.’

^135
European classical tradition has reached a (dead-)end; he refers to
various historical styles with a mixture of worship, pathos and mockery.
None of this can be seen in Gubaidulina, who regards musical material
as a unified sonic substance in the broadest of terms, and feels free to
use any portions of that substance as she sees fit. In comparison to her
peer group, Gubaidulina became involved with serialism much later, and
she perceived it as a finished tradition, which could be utilised and
manipulated in an impartial way.
Although both Schnittke and Gubaidulina came from mixed ethnic
and religious backgrounds, Schnittke had a more complex relationship
with his heritage and with his status as a Soviet/Russian composer.
Gubaidulina has never identified with any single tradition; her pan-
theistic meta-pluralism, inspired by the Russian mysticism from the early
twentieth century, elevates this concept by offering consolation in the
form of a mystical union with divine forces, which are conveyed by
numerical proportions and major chords.
As my discussion above has hopefully shown, despite Gubaidulina’s
readiness to provide mystical ‘programmes’ for her works, her actual
symbolism is never entirely literal and banal. The harsh criticism directed
towards her works was a consequence of Western critics’ unwillingness
to view her works in appropriate contexts and to understand the
composer’s messages. In a closed and paranoid Soviet system, where all
cultural values were redefined and all art expected to contribute towards
the new socialist society, Gubaidulina courageously wrote music inspired
by her religious and moral convictions and voiced her protest against
persecution of creative artists, but also of common people. The three
analysed works can be read as religious parables, but they also provide a
commentary on life under tyranny and problematise the relationship
between the individual and the system. In all three works, the forces of
good are battered and bruised but not entirely defeated; there is hope
amidst despair. And the resurrection that Offertorium ends with signifies
that, while it is impossible to recreate something in its original form, it is
possible to revive its main features and to transform them into a new
creation. This could well be a summary of Gubaidulina’s mission as a
creative human being.

^136
Postlude to Spiritualism

All composers whose works were discussed in this chapter employed

compositional techniques of heterogeneous origin to narrate cosmo-
logical stories. The composers’ spiritual quests corresponded with the
Soviet intelligentsia’s desire to reengage with its long-taboo religious
heritage(s) and to find substitutes for the discredited communist ideo-
logy. The (re)discovery of various church music traditions (Orthodox,
Gregorian, Lutheran) and the revival of the early twentieth-century
mysticism not only enabled the composers to take up the roles of moral
and spiritual guiding lights, but also enriched the scope of creative
solutions and compositional techniques. Stylistic artefacts extracted from
various contexts were put in the service of the narratives that were
considered problematic and/or challenging in the Soviet context; at the
same time, they offered a viable alternative to the still reigning official
canon. Moreover, the works by these new believers were diverse enough
to avoid potential accusations of uniformity. Namely, although Pärt’s,
Ustvol’skaia’s and Gubaidulina’s works analysed in this chapter were
products of the same cultural and aesthetic stance, the actual ways in
which these composers expressed their faith were quite diverse and
resulted in highly individual, if sometimes blunt and manneristic works.
While such works would have been quite indigestible if written in a
different society, in the context of late Soviet music they are entirely
justified. As I wrote in my discussion of Schnittke’s and Pärt’s Credo
works:

It may be that the blunt immediacy with which these narratives are
expressed may hinder their status as canonic works; yet the
composers’ courage in the context of their times is clear, and the raw
communicative power of these declarations of faith remains as
impressive testament to their creative imperatives. 140

140 Medić, ‘I Believe… In What?’, 107.

^137
 META-PLURALISM

As I have mentioned in the Introduction to this book, I chose meta-

pluralism as an umbrella term for a late Soviet stylistic tendency that is
habitually mistaken for postmodernism. To my knowledge, this is the
first time that this term has been used in musicology, although it has
been widely used in philosophy, politics, literary theory, legal science and
other disciplines.1
For example, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy offers a definition
of metapluralism as ‘pluralism about pluralism:’

The preference for one kind of pluralism over another is typically

motivated by epistemic virtues or constraints. Metapluralism, plu-
ralism about pluralism, is obviously conceivable in similar terms, as it
can be found in the formulation of the so-called pluralist stance
(Kellert, Longino and Waters 2006). The pluralist stance replaces
metaphysical principles with scientific, or empirical, methodological
rules and aims that have been ‘tested’…2

In addition to being auto-reflective, meta-pluralism also implies thinking

beyond pluralism and offering multiple perspectives on an already plu-
ralistic worldview. Richard Sylvan argues for a ‘radical pluralism’ as ‘an
alternative to realism, anti-realism and relativism’3 and states:

1 In the available literature, the term is also spelled ‘metapluralism’ or ‘meta pluralism.’
2Jordi Cat, ‘The Unity of Science’ in Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-unity/.
3Richard Sylvan, ‘Radical Pluralism – An Alternative to Realism, Anti-Realism and
Relativism,’ in Robert Nola (ed.), Relativism and Realism in Science, Dordrecht, Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 1988, 253.
 Pluralism thus comes in two distinct forms: theory or meta-pluralism
[emphasis mine], according to which there are many correct theories
(especially larger philosophical positions) but at most one actual
world; and radical or deep pluralism which goes to the root of these
differences in correctness, to be found in things, and discerns a
plurality of actual worlds as well as of theories. 4

In his substantial review of Wayne S. Booth’s book Critical Understanding:

The Powers and Limits of Pluralism,5 James Phelan asks himself and his
readers: ‘Is genuine pluralism possible, or does it soon become either
sophisticated monism or relativism? […] On what grounds does one
pluralistically relate different pluralisms to each other?’6 Moreover,
Darren Hutchinson warns of the danger of ‘developing a meta-
pluralism that would govern and set the law for all the rest.’7 On the
other hand, in their broad definition of legal pluralism, Sue Farran and
Niklas Hultin argue that pluralism ‘can refer both to the state of affairs
as well as the discursive articulation and sense making of that state of
affairs.’8 Consequently, they highlight

the importance of a kind of ‘meta pluralism’, or how different legal

discourses themselves identify and view pluralism […] every defini-
tion of legal pluralism and the attendant assessment of the various
compenent of that pluralism originate in a particular legal tradition
and/or context. 9

4 Ibid.
5Wayne S. Booth, Critical Understanding: The Powers and Limits of Pluralism, Chicago,
University of Chicago Press, 1979.
6James Phelan, ‘Pluralism and Its Powers; Metapluralism and Its Problems,’ College
English Vol. 46 No. 1, 1984, 64.
7Darren Hutchinson, ‘The Performance of Pluralism and the Practice of Theory (For
Richard Rorty),’ The Pluralist, Vol. 9 No. 2, 2014, 103.
8Sue Farran and Niklas Hultin, ‘Introduction’, Special Section: Legal Pluralism and its
Contribution to the Global South – Global North Paradigm, The Journal of Legal
Pluralism and Unnoficial Law, Vol. 48 No. 3, 347.
9 Ibid., 349.

^140
 My introduction of the term meta-pluralism into the discussion of
late Soviet symphonic music was a result of my attempt to understand
how Soviet composers experienced and interpreted their own position(s)
at the moment when multiple stylistic options became available to them.
At that point they were forced to reflect both on the lack of historical
stylistic continuum, caused by the decades-long reign of the socialist-
realist doctrine, and on their own attempts to overcome this ahistoricity,
as well as their exclusion from European currents. The biggest problem
with equating this late Soviet style to Western postmodernism is the fact
that in the Soviet context it did not emerge as a critique of radical
modernism.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s boundaries of the officially pro-
moted socialist realism gradually stretched and eventually dissolved; the
‘Second avant-garde’, polystylism and spiritualism played important roles
in this process. Meta-pluralism was a reaction both to the maverick
progressivism of the Western avant-garde, whose apologists dismissed
the creative efforts of their Soviet contemporaries as epigonic and
historically irrelevant, and to the stale post-historicist stance of socialist
realism. Here I rely on the work by the art historian Boris Groys who
argued that the Soviet project of socialist realism was both ‘a total work
of art’ and a mature post-historical culture.10 Groys highlights the
dialectics of cultural streams, which has decisively contributed to the
development of Soviet meta-pluralism.
While many different labels were used by various authors to point to
the essentially same phenomenon – e.g. postism (Taruskin), late thinking
(Levaia, Redepenning), stylistic pluralism (Kholopova and Chigariova) etc.
– I suggest meta-pluralism as the most appropriate umbrella term for
various manifestations of late Soviet composers’ desire to (re)engage
with the past(s). The word ‘pluralism’ is broad enough to encompass the
entire scope of the composers’ responses to this artistic challenge, while
the first part of this term points to the fact that they offered
commentaries on the ‘already completed’ traditions, but also on their
modernist critiques. The ‘generation of the sixties’ was exposed to
advanced twentieth-century compositional techniques simultaneously
and belatedly, hence they could only assimilate them and comment on

10 Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism.

^141
them from a meta-perspective. Western postwar musical avant-garde,
which at some point had served as a source of inspiration and liberation
for the young Soviet ‘avant-gardists,’ thus came to be treated as a
finished tradition, something that belonged to a museum, together with
all other historical styles. As members of the ‘Second avant-garde’
started to break from their ‘underground’ status and reach broader
audiences, they started to merge avant-garde techniques with elements
of more accessible styles. Consequently, the Second avant-garde spilled
over into the all-inclusive, but nevertheless challenging polystylism,
although it still maintained the role of the critique and/or an alternative
to the soundworlds of socialist realism and populist kitsch – while the
cultural context itself was inevitably changing. The result of this merger
can be argued to be a return to Scherbachiov’s original concept of
polistilistika:

[a] highly individualized and flexible ‘metastyle’ in which stylistically

marked passages could be juxtaposed, contrasted, and like any sim-
pler or stylistically ambiguous material, be submitted to a develop-
mental process.11

Moreover, meta-pluralism resulted in the rapprochement of formerly

separated compositional camps; namely, some of the composers who
eventually embraced meta-pluralism had not started as avant-gardists at
all, but as moderated modernists, and they gradually broadened their
expressive range by assimilating elements of compositional techniques
associated with the avant-garde, until they arrived at a style very similar
to the one adopted by the (former) avant-gardists.
While these groups of composers reached meta-pluralism by follo-
wing different paths, they shared a common urge to (re)establish the
historical continuum, to (re)engage with various traditions and to
(re)assess their own historical positions. The loss of faith in progressivist
modernism in the West conveniently coincided with the Soviet
composers’ efforts to become internationally relevant and encouraged
them to revisit old styles (and, in some cases, to disassociate themselves
from their older avant-garde efforts).

11 Haas, Leningrad’s Modernists, 102.

^142
 In her books Theory of quotations12 and Paradigms of the 20th Century –
Avant-garde and Postmodernism13 Croatian literary theorist Dubravka Oraić
Tolić defined four quotational procedures: two of them characteristic of
modernism, the other two of postmodernism. The modernist models
are ‘Polemic with the Institutions of European Art and Culture’ and
‘Dialogue with the Treasury of European Cultural Values,’ while the
postmodern models are ‘Museum of Modern Art’ and ‘Catalogue of
Contemporary Civilisation.’ The postmodern models originate from the
modernist ones, but they are functionally different. All four models
follow each other diachronically, however, based on some of their
features, they actually establish a symmetrical pattern, because polemic is
analogous to catalogue, and dialogue to museum.
According to Oraić Tolić, exponents of the polemic model were artists
at the centre of the avant-garde culture in the 1910s, whose texts did not
relate to other individual texts, but to the entire institution of European
art and culture. This quotational procedure is characterised by an
abandonment and denial of European cultural tradition and its institu-
tional(ised) forms and meanings, using the principle of aleatoric montage.
Its aggressive monological consciousness aims towards a utopian future
and a ‘revaluation of all values’ (Nietzche), which should result in the
demolition of the European civilisation as we know it.14
In Oraić Tolić’s view, exponents of the dialogue model were artists
working in the broader zones of modernism; it was prevalent in the
1920s and 1930s. This quotational procedure is characterised by a con-
struction of new intercultural meanings using the principle of intellectual
montage. Its impersonal consciousness is oriented towards the reader and
aims for a revaluation of European cultural tradition, wishing to
preserve it on a new level.15

12Dubravka Oraić Tolić, Teorija citatnosti [Theory of Quotations], Zagreb, Rotulus/

Universitas – The Graphic Institute of Croatia, 1990.
13Dubravka Oraić Tolić, Paradigme 20. stoljeća: avangarda i postmoderna [Paradigms of the
20th Century: Avant-garde and Postmodernism], Zagreb, The Institute for the Science
on Literature of the Faculty of Philosophy, 1996.
14 Ibid., 92–95.
15 Ibid., 95–98.

^143
 According to Oraić Tolić, the museum model emerged in the 1960s, at
the dusk of the mega-culture of modernism; it gathers together all
modernist and avant-garde art using the principle of anthological montage.
Thus the intertextual relation is usually established between one’s own
text and the very institution of modern(ist) and avant-garde art. Its
nostalgic consciousness recalls its own modernist and avant-garde past
and wishes to include modernist and avant-garde art into the treasury of
the ‘eternal’ European cultural values. Hence this model reconstructs the
avant-garde quotational dialogue in the new (i.e. postmodern) context. 16
Finally, Oraić Tolić argues that the catalogue model appeared in the late
1960s and blossomed in the postmodern art and culture of the 1970s
and 1980s. It gathers together all available remnants of modern
civilisation, completely stripped off of their meaning, using the principle
of catalogue montage. Its dispersed nomatic consciousness with no sense
of time aims to store the entire modern civilisation in a gigantic archive.
This model deconstructs the avant-garde quotational polemic.17
When this theoretical model is applied to the Soviet cultural context,
one realises that their ‘order of appearance’ was somewhat different
than the one sketched out by Oraić Tolić, and conditioned by external
circumstances. The works of the early Leningrad modernists of
Shcherbachiov’s school serve as good examples of the dialogue model,
which chronologically matched the occurrence of this model in other
arts throughout Europe. The artists of this group aimed at embracing
the entire treasury of European art music, and employing it for the sake
of creating new artworks of eternal value. On the other hand, the early
output of the musicians gathered around the Association of Proleterian
Musicians (RAPM), which confronted modernism from the late 1920s,
was a kind of polemic, because the RAPM-ists adopted a militant, anti-
bourgeois and anti-institutional stance, and claimed to be writing music
for ‘a new man.’ Thus Taruskin makes a plausible argument that the
‘first’ avant-garde in Russia/Soviet Union was embodied by composers
of the RAPM group.18

16 Ibid., 98–101.
17 Ibid., 101–103.
18 Taruskin, ‘Safe Harbors,’ in: Defining Russia Musically, 86–96.

^144
 As for the subsequent socialist realism, it does not belong to any of
these theoretical pigeonholes (because it was neither modernist/avant-
garde nor postmodern). However, as pointed out by Groys, the socialist-
realist thinkers argued that they were selecting politically progressive
elements from the entire history to create a mature, post-historical
culture.19 Thus, paradoxically, their ideology most closely resembles the
model of the postmodern catalogue: whilst making an essentially post-
historical or a-historical proclamation that there was no need for further
progress (because the utopian project of building an ideal society had –
allegedly – already been completed), proponents of socialist realism
efficiently extinguished both modernist models – the polemic of the
RAMP group and the dialogue of the Shcherbachiov school.
Since socialist realism promoted itself as a post-historical culture,
what was left for the artists who matured after the Thaw and wanted to
confront this cultural and ideological construct? Post-post-historicism?
Meta-historicism? In a way, yes; but more than anything, the time was
ripe for a fresh polemic with the official ideology, and in that sense
Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1 indeed re-actualised the model of avant-
garde polemic, albeit in a completely different manner from what the
artists of the RAPM circle had been doing. As noted earlier, in the
Soviet context, theatricalised clashes of styles and an employment of
various musical references in Schnittke’s early polystylistic works did not
imply a quest for accessibility; instead, it was an avant-garde riot. Thus,
one might argue that Schnittke’s quotation-fueled Symphony No. 1
engaged in an avant-garde polemic with the immediate past, i.e. with
Soviet triumphant symphonism, but also with other types of officially
approved Soviet kitsch.
One may now apply Oraić Tolić’s model to Schnittke’s subsequent
symphonies as well: thus, his Symphony No. 2 St Florian can be said to
engage in a modernist dialogue with the tradition that Schnittke feels he
should have been a part of. Schnittke overcomes his need for denial, as
showcased in the Symphony No. 1, and instead exhibits a ‘hungry’
curiosity directed at a long-tabooed tradition of religious music; hence
his ‘dialogue’ in the No. 2 is aimed at transcending temporal and cultural
barriers.

19 Groys, Total Art of Stalinism, 42; 46–47.

^145
 As for Schnittke’s Symphony No. 3, as the ensuing analysis will show,
the situation is more complex. In his discussion of musical post-
modernism, Paul Griffiths states that the most important feature of
modernism was the ‘project of perpetual revolution’; but in the post-
modern world, ‘the individual composer is no longer a partner in the
grand enterprise of music [...] the composer stands outside, as observer
rather than participant.’20 Griffiths assumes that ‘[t]he postmodern
composer is free to make use of everything except the most advanced
music of the last hundred years;’21 but the examples of Berio’s Sinfonia
and Schnittke’s Symphony No. 3 prove otherwise. In fact, when dis-
cussing the composers who have situated ‘their quarrel with modernism’
on the ground of ‘unbridled fancy and audience appeal,’22 Griffiths
actually describes the fourth stage of Oraić Tolić’s systematisation, that
of the postmodern catalogue; while Schnittke’s No. 3, as we shall see,
corresponds to the model of the museum.
In the Symphony No. 3, the dialogue with the past is no longer
possible, but only an acknowledgement of the stalemate situation. Just
like the exponents of the museum model, Schnittke treats modernism and
avant-garde as finished projects, and approaches them from a distance.
He attempts to reaffirm the ideal order of musical styles and to
determine his own place in history; by doing so, he wishes to add
himself to the long list of ‘historically relevant’ German composers and
to secure his place in the museum. However, unlike true exponents of
the museum model, i.e. the early Western postmodernists such as Berio or
Ligeti, who had been active participants in the postwar avant-garde
exploits and who could comment on their immediate past with a
mixture of nostalgia and curatorial reverence, Schnittke and his Soviet
peers embraced all avant-garde techniques at once, as ready-mades, and
already from a vantage perspective. They could only reflect on
modernism and avant-garde in opposition to the canon of socialist
realism, because they did not participate in the avant-garde cultural
process in the broader European context, but only locally.

20 Griffiths, Modern Music and After, 263.

21 Ibid.
22 Ibid., 265.

^146
 On the other hand, the model of the postmodern catalogue is com-
pletely alien to Schnittke and his Soviet contemporaries. Schnittke never
denied either the causal relations among his musical references or their
original contexts. Although Schnittke did share the belief that the
institution of modern art has come to an end with the exponents of the
catalogue model, he assembled and edited the remains of this institution
into an anthology of greats. Musical references employed in his
Symphony No. 3 are not deprived of their original meanings; instead,
they maintain their semiotic/signalling power and enable the composer
to indulge in his meta-pluralistic, historiographic narrative.
With regard to the Symphony No. 3, my main concern is Schnittke’s
attitude towards tradition, especially the great German/Austrian sym-
phonic tradition which he worships, questions and mourns in equal
measures. One could argue that this symphony should be regarded as
part of the broader European postmodern context because, at this point
of his career, Schnittke was no longer writing music for Soviet audiences
only: the Third was written for a German (albeit, East German) institu-
tion, and thus could be regarded as a reaction to the European cultural
‘state of play’ at the time.
In his 1997 book Defining Russia Musically, Richard Taruskin argued
that Schnittke’s early polystylistic scores (including the Symphony No. 1
and Concerto Grosso No. 1) were ‘securely modernist in attitude.’23
However, in his 2005 Oxford History of Music, he includes Schnittke in his
chapter on postmodernism, stating that the Symphony No. 1
‘contradicts modernist assumptions’ and that the Concerto Grosso No.
1 suggested ‘the postmodern way out:’

The Concerto Grosso established the pattern that would distinguish

Schnittke’s version of postmodernist collage. No longer despairingly
helter-skelter like the First Symphony, Schnittke’s polystylism now
took shape through bald, easily read contrasts.24

23 Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically, 100.

24 Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, Volume V, 465–466.

^147
For Taruskin, the most important signifier of Schnittke’s (and generally
Soviet) ‘postmodernism’ from 1977 onwards is the fact that ‘nothing
was off-limits any longer’ and ‘one could construct contrasts of a
previously inconceivable extremity.’25 However, this contradicts the
general consensus that in the Symphonies Nos. 2 and 3 (and other
works from the late 1970s onwards) Schnittke actually toned down
stylistic contrasts, as compared to his earlier polystylistic works (such as
Serenade, Violin Sonata No. 2 or Symphony No. 1). For Paul Griffiths,
the main issue here is Schnittke’s ‘panic at the collapse of history into a
meaningless simultaneity, and the trepidations of a man belonging to
and reporting from a culture passing from tight constraint into
unchecked freedom.’26
Kholopova and Chigariova claim that in this symphony Schnittke
achieved ‘neither polystylism not collage, but stylistic pluralism – a total
mixture of all styles framed by the individual artist’s style.’27 However,
these authors never explain to what extent they consider polystylism
different from either collage or ‘stylistic pluralism’ (or ‘monostylism’ for
that matter). The ensuing analysis will attempt to resolve some of these
issues.

25 Ibid., 467.
26 Griffiths, Modern Music and After, 252.
27 Kholopova and Chigariova, Al’fred Shnitke, 178.

^148
Alfred Schnittke: Symphony No. 3

Throughout his career Alfred Schnittke often problematized his

complex national, cultural and religious identities. 28 Being of German
extraction, and having spent some of his formative years in Vienna,
Schnittke possibly felt that he should have been a part of the great
German/Austrian musical tradition; however, his life circumstances
forced him to approach it as an alien observer instead.
Schnittke’s Symphony No. 3 for large orchestra (1980–1981),
commisioned for the inauguration of the new Gewandhaus concert hall
in Leipzig,29 seemingly offers a straightforward narrative – the composer
searches in vain for his own ‘lost’ Germanness and attempts to establish
a link between himself and the ‘pantheon of greats’ who he considers
his predecessors, by including references to landmark German
composers from J. S. Bach to Karlheinz Stockhausen. However, is it
really so?
My analysis of Schnittke’s Symphony No. 3 is based on my study of
his sketches from the Juilliard Manuscripts Collection. On the one hand,
they provide plenty of information on Schnittke’s manipulation of
thematic material and the overall constructive principles. On the other
hand, although the sketches fail to broach a coherent narrative, or to
give a definite answer to the imminent question ‘But what does this all
mean?’, they do hint at Schnittke’s hidden intentions and provide clues
for an informed reading of this idiosyncratic work and its possible
meanings. While it is generally considered that the work represents a
celebration of German music and culture in general, I will argue that
Schnittke’s homage to German musical tradition is rather ambivalent
and disturbing, and that Schnittke here ‘narrates’ two related stories, the
first one being of the development of German music and its
‘degeneration’ into serialism, and the second – of the decline of the
entire German nation and its culture in the twentieth century.

28 Several large portions of this chapter were previously published in the following
article: Medić, ‘The Sketches of Alfred Schnittke’s Symphony No. 3, and What They
(Don’t) Tell Us,’ 169–213. Reproduced with permission granted by the publisher.
29 Köchel (ed.), Alfred Schnittke zum 60. Geburtstag: Eine Festschrift, 87.

^149
 Although my reading of the symphony will be partially based on the
hermeneutical method, which is nowadays considered somewhat
‘outmoded,’ I find Lawrence Kramer’s concept of ‘close reading’30
entirely appropriate for the analysis of Soviet music, saturated as it is
with various types of ‘intonatsiia’ – to use Asaf ’ev’s term for the
smallest semantic unit in instrumental music.
Schnittke’s extravagant scores have often been criticised; Robin
Holloway declared to be ‘appalled’ by Schnittke:

Throw in a sardonic yet arbitrary snatch of Haydn, Beethoven,

Johann Strauss, subvert with more baleful rent-a-crowd expressio-
nism, juggle all these ingredients for half-an-hour or so till everyone
is convinced that they’ve undergone a deeply pulverising and
meaningful experience… 31

Anna Picard is equally harsh in her assessment of Schnittke:

After identifying the musical influences much as you might spot the
hidden words in a puzzle book (a post-modern game for post-
modern music), clocking the use of electric guitars and harpsichord
in a symphony orchestra (gosh!) and agreeing with the composer’s
extensive argument that B against C is discordant (double gosh!), I
found nothing. Take away the quotations and the page is bare.32

However, my encounter with Schnittke’s sketches from the Juilliard

Manuscript Collection proved that his seemingly random, redundant and
chaotic scores actually unfolded according to elaborate designs and

30 Cf. the exchange between Lawrence Kramer and Gary Tomlinson on the pages of
Current Musicology 53, 1993 (Tomlinson, ‘Musical Pasts and Postmodern Musicologies:
A Response to Lawrence Kramer,’ 18–24; Kramer, ‘Music Criticism and the
Postmodernist Turn: In Contrary Motion with Gary Tomlinson,’ 25–35; ‘Tomlinson
responds,’ 36–40).
31Robin Holloway, ‘Appalled by Schnittke’, On Music: Essays and Diversions, Claridge
Press, 2003, 301.
32 Anna Picard, ‘Classical Music – Desperately seeking the soul of Schnittke,’ The
Independent, 21 January 2001, http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-5148711.html

^150
precise calculations. Since I have already recounted the story of my
discovery and ‘deciphering’ of Schnittke’s sketches from the Juilliard
Manuscript Collection in several articles (most recently in my contri-
bution to the book Schnittke Studies),33 I will just note that there are 63
sketches for the Symphony No. 3 (Nos. 181, 183–208, 213, 235, 459–
490 and 497–498), which is one of the largest batches in the collection.
By 1981, the year in which the Symphony No. 3 was completed,
Schnittke’s style had already undergone several major changes and
incorporated many different influences. Even as Schnittke minimised
the employment of collages of quotations in his works from the
mid-1970s onwards, he still refused to conform to a single creative
ideology and continued to combine ready-made styles. Although the
Symphony No. 3 does not contain outright quotations, it still qualifies as
a polystylistic work, due to the range of styles alluded to, in particular in
its second and third movements. These styles have enabled Schnittke to
execute his historicist idea and to demonstrate how the tradition that is
the subject of his symphony was changing during the centuries of its
development.
In spite of its wealth of stylistic references, the symphony is essen-
tially conceived as a whole, following the mainstream four-movement
design based on the principle of recurring themes and motifs. The
overtone-based theme serves as a primary thematic material and unites
all the other themes. Schnittke said:

I imagined music related to the scale of natural overtones, achieved

by the piling up of the overtone spectrum, where groups of notes
derived from higher overtones appear and then separate themselves
from the gravity of their original note and pass into an acoustical
modulation. This was a Utopian plan […] A part of this idea could,
however, be realized in the final version of the symphony (which was
to be my Third), namely in the first movement, although only in
tempered approximation. 34

33Ivana Medić, ‘Revised catalogue of Alfred Schnittke’s Sketches in the Juilliard

Manuscript Collection,’ in: Gavin Dixon (ed.), Schnittke Studies, Abingdon/New York,
Routledge, 2016, 209–257.
34 Köchel, Alfred Schnittke zum 60. Geburtstag: Eine Festschrift, 87.

^151
Aside from this main theme, Schnittke also incorporates paraphrases of
German and Austrian music, as well as thirty-four ‘monograms’ –
twenty-eight composers’ names and six symbolic words: ‘Erde,’ ‘Deut-
schland,’ ‘Leipzig,’ ‘Thomaskirche,’ ‘Gewandhaus’ and ‘das Böse’ (‘evil’;
rendered as ‘das Boese’). The use of a monogram to represent a com-
poser’s name (or any other noun) is a device widely used by composers
from J. S. Bach to Shostakovich; however, never have the monograms
been used with such an abundance and with such a straightforward
narrative purpose as in Schnittke’s Symphony No. 3.
In order to increase the number of available notes, Schnittke not only
employs the nine Latin letters that can be ‘converted’ to notes: C, D, S
(i.e. E♭), E, F, G, A, B (i.e. B♭) and H (i.e. B) – but also E# (i.e. Eis, as
in ‘Eisler’), D♭ (Des, as in ‘Dessau’), A♭ (As, as in ‘das Boese’), F as Ph
(in ‘Joseph’) and D as R (in ‘Erde’). The monograms are treated
differently in each movement; Schnittke does not use them mechanically,
but treats them as true musical (leit-)themes.
Although only a few of the available sketches for the Symphony No.
3 are dated, they still reveal numerous details as regards Schnittke’s com-
positional process. Sketches Nos. 480, 497 and 498 show that Schnittke
drafted monograms of some of his Soviet compatriots (and his own
too), furthermore, monograms of musical greats from earlier epochs,
twentieth-century modernists, and even some writers (Table 1). While
there is no firm evidence that these monograms were drafted for the
Symphony No. 3, it is almost certainly so, because the type of paper and
handwriting are consistent with a majority of other sketches for this
work, and because the monograms of Hindemith, Orff, Eisler et al. the
same as the ones that Schnittke did include into the finished score.
(Examples 1a, 1b) These sketches suggest that Schnittke’s ‘museum’ of
greats initially had room for many more artists; however, as the idea of
homage to the Gewandhaus crystallised in his mind, he eventually nar-
rowed the scope down to German/Austrian composers from J. S. Bach
and G. F. Handel to Bernd Aloys Zimmermann and the naturalised
German Maurizio Kagel. The fact that Schnittke employs 28 composers’
monograms, but not his own, serves to emphasize a distance between
him and the ‘pantheon of great Germans:’ he admires his heroes, but he
cannot entirely self-identify with them.

^152
Table 1. Sketches from the Juilliard Manuscript Collection – Schnittke’s
preliminary plan for the monograms to be included in the Symphony No. 3

SKETCH MONOGRAMS NAMES

NO.

498 Schnittke’s Dmitrii Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Alfred

Soviet Schnittke, Edison Denisov, Alemdar Karamanov,
contemporaries Andrei Volkonskii, Aleksandr Rabinovich, Sergei
(including Slonimskii, Boris Tishchenko, Arvo Pärt (Paert),
himself) Roman Ledenev, Sofia Gubaidulina, Rodion Shchedrin,
Boris Chaikovskii, Moses (Moisei) Weinberg, Georgii
Sviridov, Aram Khachaturian, Evgeni Golubev, Valentin
Sil’vestrov, Leonid Grabovskii and Boris Schnapper.

480 European Wolfram von Eschenbach, Walter von den Vogelweide,

497 composers from Gottfried von Strassburg, Hartmann von Aue, Heinrich
XV to XIX von Ofterdingen, Neidhart von Reuenthal, Heinrich
centuries von Morungen, Konrad von Würzburg, Hans Sachs,
Adam Puschmann, Michael Behaim, Hans Rosenblüt,
Hans Folz, Heinrich Isaac, Ludwig Senfl, Michael
Praetorius, Hans Leo Hassler, Johann Hermann
Schein, Samuel Scheidt, Heinrich Schütz, Dietrich
Buxtehude, Johann Pachelbel, Johann Jacob
Froberger, Johann Kuhnau, Johann Matthesonn, Georg
Philip Telemann, Johann Adolf Hasse, Frescobaldi,
Josef Matthias Hauer, Claudio Monteverdi, Domenico
Scarlatti, Alessandro Scarlatti, Francois Couperin,
Antonio Vivaldi, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Carl Philip
Emanuel Bach, Johann Christian Bach, Antonio Salieri,
Franz Lehar, Frederic Chopin and Franz Liszt.

497 XX-century Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bártok, Edgar Varèse, Claude

498 modernists and Debussy, Charles Ives, Heinz Holliger, Witold
avant-gardists Lutosławski, Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, Friedrich Cerha,
John Cage, György Ligeti, Krzysztof Penderecki, Henri
Pousseur, Claus Huber, Bogusław Schaeffer, Pierre
Schaeffer, Luc Ferrari and Heinrich Schubel.

498 Writers and Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Paul Celan, Margareta
artists Malyschewa, and Schnittke’s own grandmother Thea
Schnittke, who was an editor of German-language
books for the Moscow publishing house Progress.

^153
Examples 1a and 1b. A. Schnittke, Sketches Nos. 498 and 480 from the
Juilliard Manuscript Collection — preliminary monograms

All sketches reproduced with permission granted by Jane Gottlieb, Vice President for Library
and Information Resources of the Juilliard School

1a. Sketch No. 498 from the Juilliard Manuscript Collection

^154
1b. Sketch No. 480 from the Juilliard Manuscript Collection

^155
The sketch No. 190 shows that Schnittke initially intended to use 28
monograms based on composers’ surnames only; he worked out the
melodic shape of the monograms, but also their rhythmical profiles,
instrumental colours, possible harmonisations etc. However, Schnittke
probably realized that some monograms based only on surnames would
be musically limited (for example, ‘Mozart’ would consist of a single
note A), hence he decided to expand them by using the composers’ full
names. The elaborate calculations of rhythms, intervals, durations and
instrumentation prove that the need for rational planning prevailed in
this stage of Schnittke’s career.

******
The first movement opens with a tide of strings playing the ‘overtone’
theme, dubbed by Richard Taruskin as ‘Wagner’s Rheingold prelude cubed
and cubed again’35 (Example 2):

Example 2. A. Schnittke, Symphony No. 3, 1st movement: ‘overtone theme’

Copyright Edition Peters. No. 10340. Reproduced with permission.

The first monogram is ‘Erde’ [sic], possibly another reference to

Rheingold (although Wagner’s character is called ‘Erda’), but also to
Mahler’s Song of the Earth. There are other analogies with The Ring
tetralogy: apart from the role of first movement as the ‘prelude’ to the
rest of the cycle, Schnittke treats the monograms as ‘leitmotifs’ repre-
senting the symphony’s protagonists, i.e. the great German and Austrian
composers. These leitmotifs will undergo significant changes throughout
the symphony.
The movement unfolds in four ‘phases’; each of the first three
phases comprises a rising wave based the overtone theme, a series of

35 Taruskin, ‘After Everything,’ 102.

^156
monograms, and a transition which announces the key of the next phase
(the keys being C major, D major and B major respectively). One could
argue that, at the beginning of the movement, ‘Mother Earth’ (‘Erde’)
gives birth to a new German nation (‘Deutschland’) which, in turn, gives
birth to successive generations of talented offspring, as the three tides
of composers’ monograms are presented on the background of the
primordial, major, ascending ‘overtone’ theme.36 The monograms are
aurally almost indistinguishable, because the ‘overtone’ theme in deep
strings dominates the musical course. After a steady ‘ascent,’ the final
phase is based on the inverted, declining theme in C minor, dubbed by
Kholopova and Chigariova ‘the undertone theme.’37 Characteristically, in
Schnittke’s previous two symphonies the most important segments of
form also unfolded in C major/minor; in particular, the transition that
anticipates the ‘undertone’ theme, with its prominent C minor chord in
brass accompanied by the ubiquitous bells, resembles the first theme of
Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1. By establishing this auto-reference in the
first movement of his Symphony No. 3, Schnittke prepares ground for
the overtly pessimistic narratives of its third and fourth movements.
Also, the pattern of a ‘rise-and-fall,’ established in the first movement, is
perpetuated throughout the symphony in different ways.
The three ‘waves’ of monograms are performed by different instru-
mental groups; most notably, the third phase, dedicated to the twentieth-
century composers and starting with Schoenberg’s monogram, is
assigned to a combination of keyboard instruments, electric guitars and
percussion, which has been frequently used by Schnittke (Table 2).38

36 When designing monograms, Schnittke tried not to repeat letters/notes within a

certain monogram, unless it was necessary (e.g. if a monogram was too short, like
‘Erde’). The reason for not repeating letters will become clear in the fourth movement.
37 Kholopova and Chigariova, Al’fred Shnitke, 174.
38 The available sketches do not indicate why Schnittke interpoated Bruckner’s mono-
gram to disrupt the more-or-less chronological order. Also, Schnittke omitted Carl
Maria Weber’s monogram from the first movement, perhaps because his monogram is
very similar to Anton Webern’s. As to Bach’s monogram, by presenting it in its
‘surname only’ form, Schnittke possibly referred to the entire Bach family, and not just
to Johann Sebastian Bach.

^157
Table 2. A. Schnittke, Symphony No. 3: three ‘waves’ of monograms in the
first movement 39

WAVE MONOGRAMS INSTRUMENTS

1 Erde (E-D-D-E, Reh. 5), Deutschland (D-E-E♭-C- Woodwinds, from flutes

(‘Erde’) and piccolos
B-A, Reh. 6), Leipzig (E-G, Reh. 7), Thomaskirche
(‘Bach’) to bassoons
(B-A-A♭-E♭-C-B-E, Reh. 8), Bach (B♭-A-C-B, (‘Georg Friedrich Handel’),
and paired with marimba,
Reh. 9), Georg Friedrich Handel (G-E-F-D-C-B-A,
vibraphone and celesta
Reh. 10), Josef Haydn (E♭-E-F-B-A-D, Reh. 11), (‘Joseph Haydn’ and
‘Wolfgang Amadeus
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (F-G-A-D-E-E♭, Reh.
Mozart’)
11+4).

2 Ludwig van Beethoven (D-G-A-B♭-E-B, Reh. 17), Brass, starting from the
tuba (‘Ludwig van
Anton Bruckner (A-B♭-C-E, Reh. 18), Franz Beethoven’) and moving
Schubert (F-A-E♭-C-B-B♭-E, Reh. 19), Johannes upwards in register
towards clarinets
Brahms (B-A-E-E♭-B♭, Reh. 20), Robert
(‘Richard Wagner’) and
Schumann (B♭-E-E♭-C-B-A, Reh. 21), Richard high strings (‘Robert
Schumann,’ ‘Felix
Wagner (C-B-A-D-G-E, Reh. 22), Felix
Mendelssohn’)
Mendelssohn Bartholdy (F-E-D-E♭-B-B♭-A, Reh.
23), Johann Strauss (B-A-E♭-[A-E♭], Reh. 24.

3 Gustav Mahler (G-E♭-A-B-E, Reh. 30), Richard Keyboard instruments,

electric guitars and
Strauss (C-B-A-D-E♭, Reh. 31), Max Reger (A-E-
percussion
G, Reh. 32), Arnold Schoenberg (A-D-E♭-C-B-E-
B♭-G, Reh. 33), Alban Berg (A-B♭-E-G, Reh. 34),
Anton Webern (A-E-B♭, Reh. 35), Paul Hindemith
(A-B-D-E, Reh. 36), Hans Eisler (B-A-E♭-E, Reh.
37), Paul Dessau (A-D♭-E-E♭-A, Reh. 38), Carl
Orff (C-A-F, Reh. 39), Karl Amadeus Hartmann
(A-D-E-E♭-B-A, Reh. 40), Karlheinz Stockhausen
(A-B-E-E♭-C, Reh. 41), Hans Werner Henze (B-A-
E♭-E, Reh. 42), Bernd Alois Zimmermann (B♭-E-
D-A-E♭, Reh. 43), Mauricio Kagel (A-C-E, Reh.
44).

39 Compare to Kholopova and Chigariova, Al’fred Shnitke, 174, footnotes 26, 27 and 28.

^158
 ******
The second movement temporarily obscures Schnittke’s pessimistic
predicament. In this movement Schnittke recounts the last two centuries
of German/Austrian classical music by pouring numerous stylistic
allusions into a stable sonata frame. The two sonata themes are
modelled on Mozart (the first movement of his Piano concerto in A
major K 414)40 and Wagner (the already used Rheingold-inspired ‘over-
tone’ theme) respectively. These two themes are mutually related, since
both begin with a rising broken major chord.
The sketch No. 185 indicates that Schnittke was working on this
movement in July 1980; however, by the time he drafted No. 200 (dated
3 September 1980) he did not yet have a clear idea of the disposition of
themes within the sonata form. He intended to use the Mozart theme as
the ‘Hauptthema’ (main material), the medley of monograms (from
Bach to Schumann) as the ‘Nebenthema’ (subsidiary theme), and the
overtone theme as the closing section of the exposition. The
development would then have been based on the remaining monograms
(from J. Strauss to Stockhausen); Schnittke intended to employ three-
part counterpoint here, with an unspecified cantus firmus. The draft also
shows that Schnittke was unsure of the structure of recapitulation and
Coda and whether they were necessary at all; moreover, he wrote (in
German): ‘The [sense of] fulfilment (false-fulfilment) must be brought
to absurdity – or [left to be] dramatically desired (but not too short, or
the third movement will not be anticipated).’
Finally, Schnittke found a fine solution, eliminating the monograms
from the exposition and recapitulation and preserving them only for the
relatively ‘free’ sections of the sonata form – i.e. the development and
Coda. As a result, the movement does not sound like a disjointed corpus
of randomly appearing monograms, but as a rounded whole – thanks to
melodic links among the themes and a strict hierarchy of thematic
materials. Sketches for this movement (and for other orchestral works)
reveal that Schnittke usually began by sketching rhythmical values and
calculating rhythmic variations and canons. Then, he planned harmonies
and pitches, and the instrumentation was the very last element to be

40 Kirsten Peterson, Structural Threads in the Patchwork Quilt: Polystylistics and Motivic Unity
in Selected Works by Alfred Schnittke, PhD diss., University of Connecticut, 2000, 109.

^159
determined – Schnittke would simply scribble intended instrumentation
in the margins. (Example 3).

Example 3. A. Schnittke, Symphony No. 3, 2nd movement — Sketch No.

486 from the Juilliard Manuscript Collection

^160
The ‘Mozart’ theme begins in D major – the key of the second ‘phase’
of the first movement – and consists of several segments: ‘a’, ‘b’ (Reh.
2), ‘c’ (Reh. 3), ‘c1’ – ‘chorale’ (Reh. 4), ‘b1’ (Reh. 5). Mozart’s style is
simulated by the elegant melody in strings; however, the swiftly
modulating harmonic content of Schnittke’s theme is alien to Mozart’s
style and actually akin to Wagner’s ‘endless’ melodies and harmonies
(Example 4).

Example 4. A. Schnittke, Symphony No. 3, 2nd movement: ‘Mozart’ theme

Copyright Edition Peters. No. 10340. Reproduced with permission.

The second theme begins at rehearsal 12; it is presented both in its

‘overtone’ and ‘undertone’ outfits. It ends abruptly two bars before
rehearsal 16, to make way for – Bach. The development begins with
Bach’s monogram followed by a paraphrase of Bach’s C major prelude
from Well-Tempered Clavier I (transposed to G minor) in the harpsichord
part; conveniently, the motif is also based on the broken chord. It is
coupled with the ‘chorale’ announced in the first theme, which has by
now morphed into the monogram of G. F. Handel. What follows is a
series of monograms, dubbed by Taruskin ‘a potted history of classical
music.’41 Thus, Schnittke casts Bach as the originator of the long line of
great German composers, ending with Zimmermann (at least in this
movement). The monograms, which are constantly supported by the
Bach paraphrase in the harpsichord, occupy the largest portion of the
development; as in the first movement, they unfold more or less
chronologically.
Earlier analyses of the employment of monograms in this movement
(including my own) were not fully accurate, because several monograms
in this ‘medley’ were not identified (in most cases because they were

41 Taruskin, ‘After Everything,’ 102.

^161
presented as chords, rather than melodies).42 The sketch No. 488 from
the Juilliard Manuscript Collection has enabled me to locate all pre-
viously missing monograms (Table 3).

Table 3. A. Schnittke, Symphony No. 3, 2nd movement: The correct order of

monograms in the Development and Coda

SEGMENT OF MONOGRAMS
FORM

Development Bach (B♭-A-C-B, rehearsal 15+2), Georg Friedrich Handel (G-E-F-

D-C-B-A, Reh. 16+4), Joseph Haydn (E♭-E-F-B-A-D, Reh. 17),
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (F-G-A-G-A-D-E-E♭ [some letters are
repeated], Reh. 17+4), Ludwig van Beethoven (D-G-A-B♭-E♭-B,
Reh. 18+3), Carl Maria Weber (C-A-E-B♭, Reh. 19), Felix
Mendelssohn Bartholdy (F-E-D-E♭-B-B♭-A, Reh. 19+2), Johann
Strauss (B-A-E♭, Reh. 19+4), Franz Schubert (F-A-E♭-C-B-B♭-E,
Reh. 19+6), Robert Schumann (B♭-E-E♭-D-B-A, Reh. 20+2),
Richard Wagner (C-B-A-D-E [should be g; e is probably an error]-E,
Reh. 20+3), Brahms (B♭-A-B-D♭ [surname only], Reh. 20+5),
Anton Bruckner (A-B♭-C-E, Reh. 20+6), Gustav Mahler (G-E♭-A-
B-E, Reh. 21), Richard Strauss (C-B-A-D-E♭, Reh. 21+1), Max
Reger (A-E-G-E [E is repeated], Reh. 21+3), Arnold Schoenberg
(A-D-E♭-C-B-B♭-E-G, Reh. 21+4), Alban Berg (A-B♭-E-G, Reh.
25), Anton Webern (A-E-B♭, Reh. 25+2), Paul Hindemith (A-B-D-
E, Reh. 26), Karl Amadeus Hartmann (A-D-E-E♭-B, Reh. 28 –
repeated at 29 and 30), Carl Orff (C-A-F, Reh. 28+3), Karlheinz
Stockhausen (A-B-E-E♭, Reh. 29), Bernd Alois Zimmermann
(B♭-E-D-A-E♭, Reh. 31).

42Compare to: Kholopova and Chigariova, Al’fred Shnitke, 176; Dixon, Polystylism as
Dialogue, 103–104, figure 3.10; Medić, Alfred Schnittke’s Symphonies 1–3 in the Context of
Late Soviet Music, 171–172.

^162
 Coda Georg Friedrich Handel (Reh. 49+4), Joseph Haydn (Reh. 49+6),
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Reh. 49+7), Ludwig van Beethoven
(Reh. 50+1), Carl Maria Weber (Reh. 50+3), Franz Schubert (Reh.
50+5), Brahms (Reh. 50+7), Richard Wagner (Reh. 51), Robert
Schumann (Reh. 52), Anton Bruckner (Reh. 52+7), Gustav
Mahler (Reh. 53), Arnold Schoenberg (Reh. 53+2), Alban Berg
(Reh. 54), Anton Webern (Reh. 54+4), Karlheinz Stockhausen
(Reh. 55), Hans Werner Henze (Reh. 55-2), Bernd Alois
Zimmermann (55+3).

In comparison to the first movement, these themes-monograms are

notably different, because here they mimic personal styles (or even
specific works) of their composers; in other words, aside from being
treated as leitmotifs, they have evolved into allusions or, in some cases,
even paraphrases. One can hear echoes of Mendelssohn’s Variations
sérieuses, Schumannesque dense piano arpeggios, a typical Straussian
waltz, Stockhausen’s angular Klavierstücke etc.
From rehearsal 25 the flow of monograms continues, starting with
‘Alban Berg’. It is noticeable that, compared to the first movement, the
monograms of Paul Dessau, Hans Eisler, Hans Werner Henze and
Maurizio Kagel are omitted – possibly because Schnittke found it
difficult to model their monograms in a way that would instantly evoke
these composers’ personal styles; however, Henze’s monogram appears
in the recapitulation. Also, some monograms have been altered or
repeated; Schnittke follows his musical intuition rather than strictly
obeying the self-imposed rules.
Kholopova and Chigariova argue that ‘the recapitulation starts in the
zone of culmination [at rehearsal 49] with the main theme in bells and
piano;’43 however, I agree with Dixon that the recapitulation begins at
rehearsal 32.44 In the Coda (rehearsal 49), almost all monograms from
the development reappear against the background of the ‘Mozart’
theme and ‘Bachian’ arpeggios. However, they do not reappear in the
exact same succession; a few monograms are omitted, and almost all of
them are rhythmically compressed (see Table 3 above). Schnittke again

43 Kholopova and Chigariova, Al’fred Shnitke, 176.

44 Dixon, Polystylism as Dialogue, 97–98.

^163
follows his musical imagination, instead of mechanically repeating the
monograms as they appeared in the development. Sketch No. 488 shows
that Schnittke intended to interpolate Kagel’s monogram between
Zimmermann’s and the final cluster before the recapitulation, but it is
missing from the finished score.
The final surprise is a reappearance of the first theme, which has
been ‘rewritten’ in an ersatz late eighteenth-century style (Example 5).
This image of untainted beauty and harmony reveals the full extent of
Schnittke’s admiration for the classics. The theme is joined by the
‘cubed’ overtone theme in quiet canon, from rehearsal 57 until the end.

Example 5. A. Schnittke, Symphony No. 3: Coda of the 2nd movement

Copyright Edition Peters. No. 10340. Reproduced with permission.

******
The beginning of the third movement instantly crushes this idealised
picture that the second movement has ended with. Once again Schnittke
presents the historical succession of styles in their chronological order.
However, while in the second movement the monograms were modelled
in such a way that they resembled their composers’ styles, in the third,
Schnittke creates diverse stylistic allusions on the basis of a single
theme/monogram: ‘das Böse’. The harsh, apocalyptic theme with its
prominent ‘demonic’ tritone is initially presented in the tuba, with every
note amplified in the rest of brass, and against the background of the
organ and a fuzzy electric guitar (Example 6).

^164
Example 6. A. Schnittke, Symphony No. 3: beginning of the 3rd movement
– the ‘evil’ theme
Copyright Edition Peters. No. 10340. Reproduced with permission.

This theme bears some generic kinship with the ‘beautiful’ themes from
the previous two movements, based on broken major chords; in fact, as
observed by Dixon, it sounds like a ‘distorted and cruelly mutated’
version of the overtone theme. 45 While serving as a basis for stylistic
allusions/variations, the ‘evil’ theme also acts as cantus firmus throughout
the movement; Schnittke preserves the material of the previous
variation(s) while constantly piling new layers onto it. This procedure
closely resembles the fourth movement ‘Crucifixus’ from Schnittke’s
Symphony No. 2 St Florian, where the 12-note series serves as an
ostinato/cantus firmus to which new layers are constantly added.
However, while the ‘Crucifixus’ unfolds as a steady linear build-up, in
the ‘evil’ movement of his Symphony No. 3 Schnittke applies a more
complex procedure. Sketches from the Juilliard Manuscript Collection
have again proved very useful here and enabled me to uncover that,
when it comes to the disposition of thematic material, this movement is
almost entirely symmetrical.

45 Dixon, Polystylism as Dialogue, 118–119.

^165
 The ‘evil’ theme is transformed throughout the movement in order
to create allusions to various historical styles, as well as to some
landmark composers’ personal styles, or even to their particular works.
If one were analysing a work by a composer less obsessed with the
dichotomy of good and evil, one could argue that Schnittke is playing
with various musical tools for representing evil forces, and that his
stylistic allusions actually parody various ‘scenes of doom’ from the
history of music. The available sketches do not reveal which styles
Schnittke intended to allude to; however, according to Kholopova and
Chigariova (who possibly discussed this issue with the composer
himself) they unfold in the following order: organum [rehearsal 2],
hoquetus [6], faux-bourdon [7–8], Lutheran chorale [9–10], military
march [12], Bach [17], Mozart [18], Beethoven [19], Wagner [20], jazz
[21], Hindemith and Weill [22], Mahler [24], and the avant-garde [27].46
Kholopova and Chigariova argue that Schnittke ‘borrowed’ this idea
from Henri Pousseur, because in the ‘Fantastic Gallop’ from his opera
Votre Faust Pousseur also tried to represent the developmental path of
European harmony; the episode starts ‘from Gounod,’ goes through
paraphrases of Liszt, Wagner, Schoenberg, and ends with Pousseur
himself. 47 Kholopova and Chigariova correctly observe that some of
these transformations of the ‘evil’ theme are actually paraphrases of
certain works (for example of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D minor K
466 at rehearsal 18, or Beethoven’s Egmont at rehearsal 19). However,
they do not relate the order of appearance of these stylistic layers to the
higher structure of the movement. Sketches Nos. 469–476 indicate that
Schnittke conceived the overall form of the movement as an alternation
of segments marked with ‘A’ and ‘B’ (Table 4; Example 7).

Table 4. A. Schnittke, Symphony No. 3: form of the third movement

SEGMENTS OF FORM A1* B1 A2 B2 A3 B3 CODA

REHEARSAL NUMBERS 1 2 17 21 24 28 37

*marked as A1, B1 etc. (not A, B, etc.) by Schnittke himself

46 Kholopova and Chigariova, Al’fred Shnitke, 171–172.

47 Ibid.

^166
Example 7. A. Schnittke, Symphony No. 3: Sketch No. 469 from the Juilliard
Manuscript Collection – segment ‘B1’ in the third movement

^167
The ‘A’ and ‘B’ segments are not distinguishable by their thematic
content, because the entire movement is based on various transfor/
mations of the ‘evil’ theme; instead, they simply indicate different stages
of the variational/developmental process, which unfolds in several
‘waves’. The A1 segment contains the exposition of the main theme; B1
denotes the wave of pre-tonal styles, which is interrupted by the first
appearance of a military drum; A2 is dedicated to the landmark
German/Austrian composers – Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner;
B2 signifies the infiltration of the popular/jazz idiom into ‘serious’
music; A3 draws a line from Mahler to the avant-garde; and B3 marks
the axis of thematic symmetry.
Kholopova and Chigariova (and those authors who rely upon their
analysis) argue that there are 18 different layers of stylistic allusions, and
that they appear simultaneously for the first time at rehearsal 37.48
However, my study of the sketches has revealed that Schnittke actually
intended to have 15 different stylistic layers: I have summarized the
order of appearance of these layers and the transformations of the evil
theme in Table 5. As the movement progresses, some of the stylistic
layers are merely repeated, with or without modifications. For example,
the B2 segment is entirely based on layers that have already been
introduced previously – only at this point they are transformed/
distorted. There is also one unnumbered ‘layer’, the martial rhythm in
percussion; Schnittke probably left it unnumbered because it is not
based on the ‘evil’ theme and because, once introduced, it does not stop
until the end of the movement; therefore, it is not dependent on the
symmetrical pattern established by the ‘numbered’ layers.

48Kholopova and Chigariova, Al’fred Shnitke, 177. Moreover, in his PhD dissertation
Gavin Dixon identified no less than 32 ‘themes,’ i.e. transformations of the main
theme; cf. Dixon, Polystylism as Dialogue, 122–127.

^168
Table 5. A. Schnittke, Symphony No. 3, 3rd movement: transformations of
the ‘evil’ theme

LAYER MUSICAL CONTENTS – VARIATION OF THE ‘EVIL’ STYLE SEGMENT FIRST SYMMETRY
NO. THEME (beginnings only) ALLUDED TO OF FORM APPEARS (REH. NO)
AT (REH.
NO)

1 ‘Evil’ theme A1 [1] [36]

^

2 Organum B1 [2] [35]+2

^

3 Hoketus [3] [35]

4 Faux- [7] [34]+3

bourdon
^

5 Chorale [9] [34]

6 Chorale [9] [33]

7 Chorale [10] [33]-2

-- Martial rhythm in drums March [12] --

8 Bach A2 [17] [32]

9 Mozart [18] [31]

^169
10 Beethoven [19] [30]+2

11 Wagner [20] [30]

-- Jazz B2 [21] --
(based
on ‘old’
-- Hindemith/ [22] --
material)
Weill(?)

12 Mahler A3 [24] [29]+3

13 ? (maybe [26] [29]+1

Hindemith
^
and Weill
14 here) [26] [29]
^

15 Avant- [27] – continues

garde until the end of
(serialism) the movement
^

All themes/layers return in reverse order, from 15 to 1 B3 [28] = AXIS

All themes/layers reappear simultaneously Coda [37]

The logic of exposition of the layers leads me to conclude that at

rehearsal 26 Schnittke intended another stylistic allusion. I would
suggest that this is actually where the allusion to Hindemith and Weill
takes place, rather than at rehearsal 22 (as argued by Kholopova and
Chigariova), because two layers at rehearsal 26 are based on syncopated
ragtime and martial rhythms, both of which could evoke certain aspects
of Hindemith’s and Weill’s styles. The last layer to appear is No. 15 at
rehearsal 28; from that point onwards the layers are piled onto one
another in reverse order, from No. 15 to No. 1. While some of the

^170
layers are almost identical to their original presentations, others are
heavily transformed; this is in line with Schnittke’s already mentioned
procedure where he constructs a firm frame, but then allows occasional
deviations.
As shown in Table 5 above, the process of reverse repetition of all
15 ‘numbered’ layers ends at rehearsal 36, where all of them (plus the
martial rhythm) appear simultaneously for the first time. Then, at
rehearsal 37 – the culmination of the entire movement – they are
rearranged, and some of them duplicated, while other layers revert to
their original ‘outfits’ i.e. as they appeared in the first half of the
movement.
At rehearsal 37, which marks the beginning of the Coda, all layers are
repeated ad libitum in ff dynamics until they grind to a halt on a single
B♭ – the first note of the finale’s initial (and main) monogram, ‘Bach.’
While Schnittke has explored the potential for the musical repre-
sentations of evil in numerous works, this is the first time that he has
employed an explicitly named ‘evil’ theme. Since the evil theme is
presented within a symmetrical formal frame and used to represent
almost ten centuries of music history, from medieval monody to
present-day avant-garde, perhaps Schnittke’s moral here is that evil can
be found even in the noblest of times and the noblest of arts, that it has
always existed and always will. In addition to this theme, Schnittke
employs martial rhythms highlighted by a ‘military’ drum as signifiers of
war-related evil. On the other hand, the inclusion of jazzy rhythms and
of electric and bass guitars – instruments commonly associated with
pop music – brings to mind Schnittke’s negative opinion on popular
music which, in his view, promoted conformism and subservience.49
Taruskin emphasises the role of popular music here:

Absolute evil is represented by references to raucous popular music:

its apotheosis comes in the third movement of the Symphony No. 3
[...] where a platoon of anarchic rock guitars spewing feedback
distortion attacks a panorama of German classics... 50

49 Alexander Ivashkin, Besedy s Al’fredom Shnitke, Moscow, Klasika, 2005, 192–193.

50 Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, Vol. V, 2005, 467.

^171
However, the instruments that actually dominate this movement are the
noisy low brass and Schnittke’s trademark combination of keyboards,
percussion and guitars, which has been coded in some of his earlier
works – most notably in the Symphony No. 2 – as related to the sphere
of evil.51 If we now recall that in the first movement of the Symphony
No. 3 Schnittke employs this instrumental combination to represent the
avant-garde composers from Schoenberg to Kagel, it is possible to argue
that Schnittke makes a drastic statement: namely that classical tradition
has degenerated into ‘evil’ serialism and self-destructed.
Moreover, Schnittke’s narrative on the rise-and-fall of German music
and culture, presented in the first and third movements of this sym-
phony, shows a kinship with his favourite literary work, Thomas Mann’s
Doctor Faustus, which deals with the corruption and decline of German
culture and society in the twentieth century. Schnittke has confessed to
being ‘obsessed’ with Doctor Faustus since his early teenage years:

I have read Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus at least five times. The first
time – in 1949–1950 – it had only just come out, and somehow my
father had acquired it, not permanently, but just to read. Since then,
although I read it all the time, I’ve never fully grasped it.52

It is possible to argue that Schnittke wrote his Symphony No. 3 as an

echo of Mann’s critique of Germany, the country that had ‘sold its soul
to the Devil’. Being half-Jewish, half-German, Schnittke must have
contemplated the horrors of the twentieth century, in particular World
War II and the crimes against humanity. Since the Nazis (ab)used
Schnittke’s beloved classics for the purpose of war propaganda and
demonstration of German alleged superiority, it is plausible to argue
that Schnittke used the ‘evil’ third movement of the symphony – with its
references to German classics, but also to military marches and popular
music as symbols of tyrants and their blind followers respectively – to

51For example, in the ‘evil’ fourth movement of the Symphony No. 2, the theme of
the passacaglia, which depicts Christ’s crucifixion, is performed by 2 vibraphones, 3
tam-tams, bass guitar and harp, accompanied by strings. See Medić, ‘Crucifixus etiam
pro nobis,’ 22–25.
52 Ivashkin, A Schnittke Reader, 38.

^172
recall the country’s tragic past and ‘lost’ greatness, and to remind his
listeners that the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust must never
be repeated.
******
The final movement is structured freely, as a series of variations based
on the monograms and a number of related themes. The sketches from
the Juilliard Manuscript Collection reveal how Schnittke converted
monograms into 12-note rows and how he manipulated them. The first
monogram is ‘Bach’: Schnittke casts Bach in the role of the originator
of the entire German tradition.
While Kholopova and Chigariova argue that Schnittke included the
monograms of Bach’s three sons in the violin parts which complement
the Bach monogram in lower strings,53 a comparison of the opening
lines in Violins I and II to Schnittke’s sketch No. 468 proves that there is
no similarity between these lines and Schnittke’s intended monograms
for Bach’s sons:

Johann Christian B-A-C-B-E♭-A

Philip Emanuel B-E-A-E

Wilhelm Friedemann B-E-F-E-D-E-A

Instead, the violin lines complement the Bach monogram until it

completes the 12-note row (Example 9).
Throughout the exposition, the monograms are either presented as
12-note rows, or paired with contrapuntal lines which help complete the
12-note aggregate. (Table 6) Now it becomes clear why Schnittke avo-
ided repetitions of notes in monograms used in previous movements: in
a 12-note row no note can be repeated, so Schnittke evidently wanted
the monograms to stay similar to their original versions even after they
are extended into rows in the finale. Several motifs that are deliberately
left shorter, such as ‘Bach’ (B-A-C-B♭), ‘Wagner’ or ‘Kagel’ (A-G-E)
and ‘Brahms’ (B♭-A-B-E♭), serve as accompanying figures throughout
the exposition and fill the ‘gaps’ between monograms.

53 Kholopova and Chigariova, Al’fred Shnitke, 179.

^173
Example 9. A. Schnittke, Symphony No. 3: beginning of the 4th movement
Copyright Edition Peters. No. 10340. Reproduced with permission.

In the light of the fact that Schnittke all but disowned his serial scores
from the early 1960s, one could argue that Schnittke here trivialises 12-
note music by demonstrating that it is possible to derive rows from
something as arbitrary as musical monograms. At the same time, the
transformation into 12-note rows deindividualises and dehumanises the
composers, because the rows no longer bear any similarities to their
personal styles.

^174
Table 6. A. Schnittke, Symphony No. 3: Exposition of monograms in the
beginning of the fourth movement

NAME FIGURE INSTRUMENT

Bach* beginning in Vcelli, with counterpoint in Vni I

Georg Friedrich Handel 2 in Vni I, with counterpoint in Ob. 1

Joseph Haydn 3 in Ob. and Fg. 1

Wolfgang Amadeus 3+3 in Vni II, as a 12-note row

Mozart

Beethoven* 4 in Vni I and II, paired with rows in Cl. 1

and Ob.1

Schubert* 5+2 in Cl, paired with a row in Vn. solo

Robert Schumann 6 in Fl, as a 12-note row

Wagner* 7 in Arpa, paired with rows in Vni I and II

Brahms* 7+2 in Tbn. 1

Richard Strauss 9 in Fl. 1, as a 12-note row

Gustav Mahler 10 in Vni II, as a 12-note row

Max Reger 11 in Fl. 2, as a 12-note row

Arnold Schoenberg 12 in Fl. 1 and 2, as a 12-note row

Carl Orff 15 in Vni. II, as a 12-note row

Hartmann* 16 in Fg. 1, with counterpoint in Vib.

Stockhausen* 17 in Tbn. 1, with counterpoint in Vni. II

Kagel* 17+4 in Ob. 1, with counterpoint in Vni. II

Zimmermann* 18 in Tbn. 1

Anton Bruckner 18 in Harp. and Cel.

* surname only

^175
From rehearsal 19 the second stage of the movement begins. All 28
composers’ monograms are now extended into 12-note rows and
presented in a stretto-like multi-layered texture. They are supported by a
succession of alternate major and minor chords in organ, arranged
according to the circle of fifths. At rehearsal 27 sixty orchestral parts
participate in the culmination, among them all 12-note rows derived
from monograms. Sketches Nos. 191, 192, 194, 199, 201 and 206 reveal
how Schnittke planned the order of monograms, harmony and rhythm,
as well as the instrumentation, all on the basis of the similarities
between the composers’ names and surnames (Examples 8a – 8d).

Examples 8a, 8b, 8c and 8d. A. Schnittke, Symphony No. 3, fourth

movement: Sketches Nos. 199, 191, 194 and 206 from the Juilliard
Manuscript Collection

Example 8a: Sketch No. 199 from the JMC

^176
Example 8b – Sketch No. 191 from the JMC

^177
Example 8c – Sketch No. 194 from the JMC

^178
Example 8d – Sketch No. 206 from JMC

^179
The final version of the movement deviates to an extent from the
structure outlined in the sketches; nevertheless I have located all the
monograms used in the culmination (Example 9) and summarized the
structure of this segment of form in Table 7.

Example 9. A. Schnittke, Symphony No. 3, 4th movement: 28 monograms

as 12-note rows
(continues on the next page)

^180
Example 9. All monograms as 12-note rows (continued)

^181
Table 7. A. Schnittke, Symphony No. 3, 4th movement: all 28 monograms as
12-note rows

NAME REHEARSAL INSTRUMENT HARMONY REASON FOR GROUPING

Woodwind: C major
Alban Berg 19 Cl. 1 g minor name begins with A

Bernd Aloys Zimmermann 19 Fl.

Arnold Schoenberg 19+2 Ob. D major

Alban Berg (2) 19+2 Cl. basso Berg & (Schoen)Berg

Alban Berg (3) 19+3 Fg. 2 a minor surname begins with B

Anton Bruckner 19+4 Cl. 2 & Cl. basso

Brahms (Johannes) 19+4 Fg. 1 E major

Ludwig van Beethoven 19+4 Cor. ing. b minor

Anton Bruckner (2) 20 Cor. 1 F# major name Anton

c# minor
A flat maj.

Anton Webern 20+3 Cl. 2 e flat min. surname begins with W

Carl Maria Weber 20+3 Tr. 1 (brass) B flat maj.

Richard Wagner 20+3 Ob.

Richard Wagner (2) 20+5 ‘basso’ instr.: C. f minor name Richard

fag.

Strings:
Richard Strauss 21 C. basso C major

Johann Strauss 21+1 Vle. g minor surname Strauss

name Hans, Johann(es)

Richard Strauss 21+2 Vni. II D major

Hans Werner Henze 21+3 Vcelli a minor

Bach (Johann Sebastian) 21+4 Vni. I E major

FROM B MIN.
TO B FLAT
MAJOR

Brahms (Johannes) (2) 21+4 Vla. solo f minor

Hans Werner Henze (2) 21+6 Vni. II C major

Richard Strauss (3) 21+6 Vcello solo surname begins with S

Robert Schumann 22 Vni. II g minor (initials RS)

^182
Karlheinz Stockhausen 22+1 Vni. I D major
a minor

Franz Schubert 22+1 Vni. I E major

Karlheinz Stockhausen (2) 23 Vcelli b minor name Carl, Karl(heinz)

Karl Amadeus Hartmann 23 Vcelli

Carl Orff 23 Vle.

Carl Maria Weber (2) 23+1 Vle. F# major

Karl Am. Hartmann (2) 24-1 Vni. I c# minor surname begins with H

Paul Hindemith 24 Vni. II A flat maj.

Joseph Haydn 24+1 Vni. II e flat min.

Hans Werner Henze (3) 24+2 Vni. I B flat maj.

PAUL HINDEMITH (2) 24+2 Vni. II f minor name Paul

Hans Werner Henze (4) 25 Vle C major name Hans

Hans Eisler 25 Woodwind: Cl.

Hans Eisler (2) 25+1 ‘basso’ instr.: g minor

Cl. Basso D major

PAUL DESSAU 25+1 C. basso

STRINGS+WOOD: a minor
Karl Am. Hartmann (3) 26-1 VNI. I AND FL. E major middle name Amadeus

Wolfgang Am. Mozart 26/01/11 Brass: Cor. b minor

Wolfgang Am. Mozart (2) 26+1 VNI. II, OB., CL. F# major surname begins with M

Gustav Mahler 26+1 Cor.

Wolfgang Am. Mozart (3) 26+2 Cor., Tbn., Tuba c# minor

Felix Mendelssohn 26+3 Tr. 1 A flat maj.

Max Reger 26+3 VNI. II AND FL. e flat min. name begins with M

Maurizio Kagel 26+4 Piccolo (the B flat maj.

‘foreigner’!) f minor

Table 7. All 28 monograms as 12-note rows (continued)

^183
At rehearsal 28 this mass of sound ‘returns to the source’ i.e. to the
‘Bach’ theme in the unison of 32 violin parts. Schnittke had already
utilised the idea of ‘returning to Bach’54 in his Prelude in Memory of Dmitri
Shostakovich (1975); moreover, he employed Bach’s monogram in a host
of other works including his Violin Sonatas No. 1 (1963) and No. 2
(1968), the music for Glass Accordion (1968), Piano Quintet (1975),
Symphony No. 2 St Florian (1979), Concerto Grosso No. 3 (1985) etc.
In almost all of these works, including the Symphony No. 3, Schnittke
casts Bach as a saving grace against dissonant evil forces. This reference
to Bach is followed by reminiscences to several motifs from previous
movements, including ’Deutschland’, the ‘Mozart’ theme and ‘Erde’,
paired with the somber, resigned, descending ‘undertone’ theme. But
just as it seems that the symphony is about to end on a pessimistic note,
Schnittke repeats the ‘Deutschland’ motif, followed by the initial, ascen-
ding ‘overtone’ theme, played by a solo flute, while the strings perform
the row of harmonics up to the 16th partial. After the ‘overtone’ theme,
the flute turns again to the ‘Bach’ motif, and finishes on the note C# –
the 17th partial of the overtone row, which, as Kholopova and Chigarëva
have observed, had not been a part of this theme before.55 Hence, the
composer’s message here might be that the end is at the same time a
new beginning, and that the only way for German/Austrian music (and
culture in general) to regain vitality and credibility is to return to its
primordial state and to start completely anew.

******
The study of available sketches for Alfred Schnittke’s Symphony No. 3
provides a new insight into the composer’s creative process and the
types of creative decisions that he was making at different stages of
writing this symphony. The sketches from the Juilliard Manuscript
Collection reveal the genesis of this work, from the vague initial idea of
working with the overtone series, through the development of themes
and ‘monograms’ and the overall design of individual movements, to the
finished work. These sketches also help reveal the hitherto hidden
structure of the third and fourth movements of this symphony and

54 Shul’gin, Gody neizvestnosti Al’freda Shnitke, 89.

55 Kholopova and Chigariova, Al’fred Shnitke, 180.

^184
demonstrate that Schnittke carefully planned even the most minute
details of this complex work. Additionally, they suggest that, although
the work was supposedly written as a celebration of a German
orchestra, it contains a clandestine critique of German culture, because
Schnittke regards it as a culture that has reached its pinnacle and has
been in the state of decline since the onset of modernism and avant-
garde. While the diachronic disposition of monograms and the pattern
of a gradual ascent and decline are reiterated throughout the symphony,
the work is not repetitive because Schnittke constructs all movements
differently and transforms the monograms in various ways. The possible
reason why Schnittke did reiterate some facets of the work is his desire
to strengthen the communicative power of his musical symbols and to
ensure that all listeners have grasped his message.
While in a host of Schnittke’s works the Apollonian ideals of balance
and beauty played a subordinate role to the political and moral state-
ments that he wanted to make – which sometimes led him to leave his
works without a sleek finish – in the Symphony No. 3 Schnittke’s
overzealous communicative urgency is tempered by a clear yet ingenious
constructive principle. And while a brilliant conception cannot guarantee
value in a work of art, my analysis of Schnittke’s sketches (as well as the
finished work) has hopefully demonstrated a high level of sophistication
at the intentional level. As to the definitive meaning of the symphony, it
remains elusive and ambiguous, but at least it is certain that Schnittke's
admiration for the ‘great Germans’ was by no means unconditional, and
that he saw German culture as being in a state of malaise that could only
be cured by returning to its ‘roots’ and starting anew.

^185
Valentin Sil’vestrov: Symphony No. 5

Born in Kiev in 1937, Valentin Sil’vestrov is one of the most interesting

composers to emerge from the former Soviet Union. He belongs to the
same generation as Schnittke and the rest of Soviet ‘non-conformists’.
Having lived in a conservative Ukraine, he was forced into an almost-
dissident status. 56 However, this did not discourage Sil’vestrov from
assimilating the entire ‘avant-gardist spectrum of expressive means: first,
classical dodecaphony, […] the post-Webern pointillistics, sonoristics,
and aleatory.’57
From the very beginning of his career Sil’vestrov used avant-garde
devices in a programmatic/realist manner and explored their potential
for conveying philosophical, metaphysical and political messages. When
these devices were finally ‘officially approved,’ Sil’vestrov abandoned
them in favour of a retrospective style. Sil’vestrov’s first ‘retro’ works
resemble Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1 in that they confront various,
mutually incompatible stylistic layers with the intention of depicting the
cultural – and, perhaps, social – apocalypse.
Savenko argues that ‘Sil’vestrov treats the polystylistics not only as a
cultural-historical “human” conflict but as a global collision of cosmic
magnitude’58 – which brings him into the realm of Scriabinesque ideas.
Sil’vestrov’s works from 1972, Drama and Meditation, lacked the quota-
tional and improvisational madness typical of Schnittke’s No. 1; still,
they were no less polystylistic and, to his Soviet listeners, they sounded
disturbing enough to be perceived as avant-garde.
However, Sil’vestrov’s next creative phase, from 1974 onwards, shoc-
ked his contemporaries, critics and supporters alike, because he settled
into ‘a “metaphorical” style in the vein of new traditionalism or neo-
romanticism’ – as aptly described by the composer himself, who even

56On Sil’vestrov’s early years and his status of an ‘avant-gardist’ in the Soviet Ukraine,
see Svetlana Savenko, ‘Valentin Silvestrov’s Lyrical Universe,’ in: Valeria Tsenova (ed.),
Ex Oriente... II: Nine Composers from the Former USSR, Berlin, Verlag Ernst Kuhn, 2003,
66.
57 Ibid., 67.
58 Ibid., 70.

^186
coined a term ‘weak style’ for his works.59 According to Savenko,
professional musicians regarded Sil’vestrov’s works such as Kitsch Music
for piano (1974) and Quiet Songs for voice and piano (1974–1977) as ‘a
betrayal of the avant-gardist ideals and as renunciation of his own
individuality.’60 This is not unlike the comments provoked by the early
postmodern works by George Rochberg or Krzysztof Penderecki, who
also baffled their first listeners by turning to a deliberate and unapolo-
getic eclecticism and neo-romanticism respectively. However, Sil’vestrov
insisted that he was staying true to his own creative impulses and
refusing to conform to expectations: ‘I have to write what I like but not
what the others like, not what is dictated by the times...’ 61
In his works from the mid-1970s Sil’vestrov freely recycled Romantic
clichés – in Kitsch Music the model for stylistic allusions was Romantic
piano music by Schumann, Brahms and Chopin, while the Quiet Songs
were modelled after Russian sentimental romances from the nineteenth
century. However, as observed by Redepenning, these neo-Romantic
works did not only evoke the good old times; rather, they problematised
the distance. 62
Aside from indulging in neo-Romanticism, Sil’vestrov was also ex-
panding the concluding sections of his works, which eventually evolved
into an independent genre of postlude. Similarly to his first retrospective
and ‘kitsch’ works, Sil’vestrov tested this new artistic methodology in the
realm of chamber music, starting with Postlude DSCH (Homage to Dmitrii
Shostakovich)63 for chamber ensemble. Sil’vestrov’s post- and meta-works
include: Postlude DSCH for soprano, violin, cello and piano (1981);
Postlude for violin solo (1981); Postlude for cello and piano (1982);
Symphony No. 5 – Postsymphony (1982); symphonic poem Postludium for

59 Quoted in: ibid., 70; 72.

60 Ibid., 71.
61 Quoted in Ibid., 66–67.
62 Redepenning, Geschichte der russischen und der sowjetischen Musik, Bd. 2, 720–721.
63 Sil’vestrov’s Postlude DSCH (Hommage to Dmitrii Shostakovich) is, predictably,
based on the motto theme – Shostakovich’s monogram. However, unlike B. Tishchenko
– whose Symphony No. 5, also written on occasion of Shostakovich’s death, will be
analysed below – Sil’vestrov writes a gentle and reflective homage.

^187
piano and orchestra (1984); Postscriptum, Sonata for violin and piano
(1990); and Metamusic for Piano and Orchestra (1992). The genre of
postlude reached its full potential in Sil’vestrov’s Symphony No. 5 Post-
symphony. David Fanning calls it ‘one of the best-kept secrets of the ex-
Soviet symphonic repertoire’ and ‘the finest symphony composed in the
former Soviet Union since the death of Shostakovich.’64 Peter Grahame
Woolf describes it as ‘an extensive orchestral monologue, “after-music,”
“end-music,” music from beyond…’65 The composer’s own definition of
the genre of ‘postlude’ reads like a true manifesto of ‘postism:’

There has now arisen a new situation in music, perhaps we are on the
threshold of the all-embracing universal style. Having reached, to a
large extent thanks to the avant-garde, the boundaries of the acoustic
world, we have perceived and even overstepped them…
The author’s text blends with the world that is incessantly speaking.
Therefore, I believe that in the advanced artistic consciousness there
can hardly emerge now the texts beginning, figuratively speaking,
‘from the beginning’. A postlude, to my mind, represents a collection
of reverberations, a form which presumes the existence of a certain
text not actually included in a given context but interrelated with it.
Therefore, a form is exposed, not at the end, which is more habitual,
but at the beginning.
A postlude is […] virtually a certain state of culture when the forms
reflecting a life-music by analogy with a life-novel, for instance, a
music drama, come to be replaced by the forms commenting on it.
And this is not the end of music as an art, but the end of the music
in which it may stay for a very long time. 66

64David J. Fanning, review of CD Valentin Silvestrov: Symphony No. 5 – Postludium, Sony

Classical SK 66825, http://home.wanadoo.nl/ovar/sovrev/silvestrov/si66825.htm
65 Peter Grahame Woolf, review of CD Valentin Silvestrov: Symphony No. 5 – Symphony
‘Exegi Monumentum,’ Megadisc MDC 7836, http://home.wanadoo.nl/ovar/sovrev/
silvestrov/meg7836.htm
66Quoted in: Savenko, ‘Valentin Silvestrov’s Lyrical Universe,’ 75. This article was
published in a rather poor English translation, so Sil’vestrov’s words may have been
somewhat altered.

^188
Here Sil’vestrov emphasises three main features of meta-pluralism: its
all-inclusiveness, auto-reflexivity and anti-progressivism. Although these
features have already been obvious in Schnittke’s Symphony No. 3,
Sil’vestrov’s Symphony No. 5 elevates them to a whole new level.
While in his earlier symphonies Sil’vestrov explored a variety of so-
noristic and serial devices and experimented with non-standard orche-
stral forces, his No. 5 is post-romantic from the beginning to the end.
Sil’vestrov turns its single movement into a 45-minutes long Mahlerian
‘Adagi(ett)o,’ and evokes the late Romantic master by writing expansive,
nostalgic melodies. However, while in Mahler’s symphonies the mo-
ments of peace are frequently intercepted by disturbing, tragic or banal
passages, in Sil’vestrov’s Fifth, such unsettling passages are rare, occur-
ring only twice – at the very beginning of the piece, and in the central
section of the arch form. The music ‘explodes’ in the very first pages of
the score, leaving behind dispersed fragments, which are left to glide
peacefully in all directions and provoke reflection and contemplation.
They cannot be put back together; hence the disjointed feel of this
music, which circulates freely and seems capable of stopping at any
point. (Of course, this is just an aural experience; a closer look into this
score reveals that the form is carefully planned.) Instead of evoking a
sense of progression and directness, the composer creates an immense,
fluid ambience, filled with wrecked Romantic gestures and textures. This
is a postlude to the entire Romantic tradition, and especially to Mahler.
Fanning observes that Sil’vestrov’s Symphony No. 5 is deliberately
nostalgic:

a symphony composed, as it were, after the death of the genre and

consisting only of poignant memories. In musical terms those
memories are of the melodic and accompanimental figures charac-
teristic of nineteenth-century song; so the structure consists of
quietly ecstatic extended melodies spaced by even more ecstatic
efflorescences of piano-accompaniment-derived textures.67

Savenko traces the origins of the Symphony back to Sil’vestrov’s Quiet

Songs (although there are no self-quotations, but only stylistic

67 Fanning, review of CD Valentin Silvestrov: Symphony No. 5 – Postludium.

^189
allusions),68 while Redepenning observes that ‘the conceptual tags such
as “neo-Romanticism” or “meditative music’ seem to apply only partially
[…] the addition of the prefix “neo-” points to a stylistic direction
which is basically foreign to the work.’69
Redepenning is right in that there is really nothing ‘neo’ (i.e. new) in
this music and, in his ‘manifesto of postism’, the composer negated the
possibility of creating anything new. Redepenning compares Sil’vestrov
to some of his peers from the Caucausus and remarks that

[b]ecause of the clear relation to the West-European type of history,

[Sil’vestrov’s] symphony originates from completely different condi-
tions than the one-movement symphonies by Giia Kancheli and Avet
Terterian, which are rooted in Georgian and Armenian traditions
respectively. While Sil’vestrov’s meditative mood looks back to what
he feels is a finished tradition, both Caucasian symphonists under-
stand themselves as parts of vividly felt traditions.70

Sil’vestrov’s symphony is structured as a single movement that com-

prises nine sections, creating an arch-like, symmetrical form, with its
central section V serving as the axis (Table 1). Savenko argues that ‘one
can easily discern in his symphony the contours of sonata form;’71
however, this is not plausible, since the symphony lacks both thematic
dualism and the development.

68 See Savenko, ‘Valentin Silvestrov’s Lyrical Universe,’ 76.

69 Redepenning, Geschichte der russischen und der sowjetischen Musik, Bd. 2, 711–712.
70 Ibid., 712.
71 Savenko, ‘Valentin Silvestrov’s Lyrical Universe,’ 76.

^190
Table 1. Form of Silvestrov’s Symphony No. 5

Part Rehearsal no. Material Tonality

I beginning – [7] Clusters, whole-tone motifs, perfect A minor, whole-

fifths, semiquaver sextuplets tone scale

II [7] – [20] Tritone, broken chords, melody in Whole-tone

solo violin; Impressionistic scale,
diminished
(octatonic) scale

III [20] – [1 bar Broken chords, figurations; F sharp / G flat,

before 34] Impressionistic, but with a ‘chorale’ but never
in low brass confirmed

IV [1 bar before 34] The same as in Part III, plus a The most ‘tonal’
– [45] Mahlerian melody in strings section; E flat
(mostly)

V [45] – [2 bars Piano sextuplets, clusters, perfect The most

after 61] fifths etc. from Part I ‘atonal’ section

VI [2 bars after 61] – ‘Barcarola’ in piano and flute, plus G minor

[1 bar before 67] bits from Parts I and V (mostly)

VII [1 bar before 67] The same as part II The same as

– [4 bars after 75] part II

VIII [4 bars after 75] – The same as before, plus a new G major
[3 bars before 85] ‘folkish’ melody in clarinet (mostly)

IX [3 bars before 85] Solo violin from Part II

– end [2 bars before 92] perfect fifths
from Part I
[3 bars after 93] ‘Impressionistic’
flute
[3 bars after 94] Folkish melody
from Part VIII

^191
As the table above shows, the central, fifth section repeats material from
the introductory section, and serves as the dramatic and dynamic
culmination of the symphony. From that point on, several materials
from the previous sections are repeated. The final, ninth section serves
as a Coda, as it sums up the material from the entire movement. As the
scheme above indicates, some sections are more ‘tonal’ than the others;
but even in the ‘tonal’ sections, Sil’vestrov often makes the key very
ambiguous, by employing the symmetrical whole-tone and octatonic
scales and emphasising their ‘axis’ i.e. the tritone. Of course, from time
to time Sil’vestrov does use major and minor chords, thus making the
tonality slightly more obvious, but the overall feeling is that of fluid
tonal ambiguity.
Although Sil’vestrov does not employ actual quotations or paraphra-
ses, he alludes to several composers’ recognisable personal styles: aside
from Mahler (whose presence is obvious in the long violin melodies in
IV), we are also reminded of Debussy (for example, in the ‘ornaments’
of flutes and harps in III), Stravinsky (in the ‘brassy’ segments of V),
Tchaikovsky (the ‘barcarola’ at rehearsal 62, VI), and Mahler again (the
pastoral melody in Cl. in VIII). Another overwhelming influence is that
of Alexander Scriabin’s late orchestral music, and many pages of
Sil’vestrov’s symphony are strikingly similar to works such as Prometheus
– Poem of Fire or Mystery.72
Sil’vestrov displays mastery in writing slow and sparse music: altho-
ugh the score is filled with lengthy passages in ppp, long rests, and the
same short motifs repeated all over again, the composer manages to ma-
intain interest and even tension. In a bid to explain this quality, Savenko
has analysed Sil’vestrov’s unconventional treatment of the following
features: 1) the employment of rests, 2) incoherence, 3) infinite varia-
tion, 4) harmonisation, and 5) the texture of themes;73 (however, she

72Scriabin died in 1915 before he could finish his ambitious, utopian Mystery, and its
prefactory act, Preparation for the Final Mystery. He left 72 pages of sketches, on the basis
of which Alexander Nemtin reconstructed the work – a task that took him 28 years to
accomplish. A recording of Preparation for the Final Mystery with Vladimir Ashkenazy
conducting the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester was released by in 1999 (DECCA
466329 1–3).
73 Savenko, ‘Valentin Silvestrov’s Lyrical Universe,’ 76.

^192
analyses them in the context of sonata form, which I have chosen to
disregard). The most interesting observation deals with the textural
specifics of the themes:

The melodic line is constantly ‘spotlighted’ by the kindred and

resonant timbres [...]
These textural ‘doubles,’ however, are not precisely following the
principal voice, there arise heterophonic variants, with separate notes
‘being held up,’ among them the most ‘inadequate’ ones, such as the
subsemitonal and passing notes. 74

Savenko calls this type of texture ‘sonoristic monody,’ ‘pedal envelop-

ment’ and ‘notated reverberation.’ These ‘reverberations’ visually resem-
ble Sil’vestrov’s older, ‘sonoristic’ scores, heavily influenced by Gyorgy
Ligeti and the ‘Polish School’ (for example Sil’vestrov’s Symphony No. 3
Eschatophony, 1966), although they sound very different when placed in a
new, tonal context. Moreover, they resemble similar ‘reverberations’
from Schnittke’s works such as Symphony No. 2 or Requiem. It is
difficult to determine whether Schnittke influenced Sil’vestrov or vice
versa, but their musical kinship is undeniable. Speaking of their com-
mon traits, Schnittke and Sil’vestrov share the same starting point – a
belief that the great European symphonic tradition has come to an end.
However, they deal with this ‘fact’ quite differently, and resort to two
different types of postism. Schnittke’s Symphony No. 3 suggests that
this tradition degenerated into serialism and died, so all we can do is
mourn the loss and hope for a rebirth. On the other hand, Sil’vestrov’s
Symphony No. 5 suggests that the tradition imploded, and all we can do
is meditate on what is left of it, i.e. the directionless, meaningless
remnants. Despite the variety of employed motifs/monograms,
Schnittke’s Symphony No. 3 is essentially based on a single theme – the
overtone row. Sil’vestrov effectively compresses Schnittke’s concept,
thus his entire Symphony No. 5 is a single, broad, Coda-like movement.
Alexander Ivashkin argued that Schnittke’s Symphony No. 3 could be
regarded as a huge coda/postlude to the symphonic tradition:

74 Ibid.

^193
 Schnittke, just like Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky, might end a work
with a long, unstructured slow movement or, at the most extreme,
completely turn the whole movement or even the whole work into a
massive and slow ‘postface.’ This happened in the Third Violin
Concerto, the epilogue from Peer Gynt, the Viola Concerto, and in
the Third, Fourth and Fifth Symphonies. 75

However, when compared to an actual Coda-work such as Sil’vestrov’s

No. 5, Schnittke’s No. 3 comes across as a much more dramatic sym-
phony; in Asaf ’ev’s terms, it is ‘more symphonic.’ Schnittke confronts
various historical styles, musics standing for various ‘ethical indices’; the
themes are subjected to different types of transformation and often
violently contrasted. On the other hand, Sil’vestrov’s dramaturgy is non-
conflicting, static, repetitive and almost self-indulgent, with only two
points of increased tension – one placed at the very beginning of the
work, the other at its central spot. While Schnittke employs the overtone
series to represent the natural state of things and to demonstrate how
the ‘natural’ was mediated by the ‘cultural,’ Sil’vestrov evokes the sounds
of nature by pastoral, quasi-folk melodies and chorales in wind instru-
ments; he treats them as remnants of a distant, idealised, unreachable
past, and merges them with the ‘cultural’ context in which they act as
reminiscences.
Schnittke pays respect to the entire tradition of European art music,
although his main point of reference is the classic/romantic symphonic
tradition. On the other hand, Sil’vestrov alludes to the composers who
worked in the last decades of the nineteenth and the first decades of the
twentieth century: Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Scriabin, Debussy.
Schnittke reserves the most obvious evocation of Mahler for the Coda-
like Finale of his Symphony No. 3 (although he uses Mahler’s mono-
gram throughout the score), while Sil’vestrov mixes Mahler’s sentimental
ethos with echoes of Tchaikovskian sentimental romances, impressio-
nists’ fauns and nymphs and Scriabinesque apocalyptic soundscapes.
Both works are historicist: but while Schnittke places various historical
styles next to one another as if exhibited in a museum or gathered in an
anthology, Sil’vestrov’s historical remnants are so shattered that they are

75 Ivashkin, Alfred Schnittke, 166.

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almost undistinguishable. Schnittke’s pessimistic approach to the ‘death’
of the symphonic tradition pushes him to write deliberately ‘ugly,’
dissonant, disturbing, apocalyptic, mournful music. On the other hand,
Sil’vestrov’s attitude towards the lost tradition is nostalgic, if slightly
morbid, and he opts to write ear-pleasing music, verging on the kitsch.
Although by the early 1980s Schnittke’s polystylism evolved into a
less flamboyant style, his Symphony No. 3 can still be regarded as a
polystylistic work, due to the range of styles alluded to in its second and
third movements. In this work Schnittke is still tormented by the dua-
lism of good and evil, by the state and status of music in contemporary
world, and by his own feelings of rootlessness and alienation.
Sil’vestrov’s No. 5, though not without ‘external’ references, can hardly
be categorised as a polystylistic work, because his musical handwriting is
a lot more synthetic, devoid of stylistic clashes. One might say that, after
the polystylistic drama of his works from the early 1970s, Sil’vestrov
achieved peace with(in) himself; he no longer suffers from an identity
crisis and feels no need to cast himself in a role of an heir of any
particular tradition (except the broadly understood European classical
tradition). Consequently, he is happy to stay in the Coda zone for as long
as needed – perhaps forever.

^195
Boris Tishchenko: Symphony No. 5

Born in 1939, Boris Tishchenko was the youngest of the composers

profiled in this book. At the age of 15 he entered the Leningrad Musi-
cal College, where his first composition teacher was Galina Ustvol’skaia.
After studying at the Leningrad Conservatory with Vadim Salmanov,
Victor Voloshinov and Orest Evlakhov, he took a postgraduate course
with Shostakovich from 1962 to 1965. Upon completing his studies,
Tishchenko began teaching at the conservatoire, where he remained
until his death in 2010. Shostakovich and Tishchenko held each other in
very high regard; as asserted by Gerard McBurney: ‘he was probably the
last pupil of Dmitri Shostakovich extremely close to that elusive master,
trusted and guided by him, and treated with fatherly affection and
concern.’76 Tishchenko dedicated his Symphony No. 3 to Shostakovich,
and after his revered professor died, he wrote the Symphony No. 5 as a
monumental tribute to him. This symphony embodies the all-inclusive,
auto-reflexive and anti-progressivist tendencies of meta-pluralism in a
peculiar way. Namely, while Schnittke and Sil’vestrov reflect on the loss
of entire traditions, Tishchenko reflects on the loss of a single person –
Shostakovich; and by doing so, he revisits his own oeuvre and discloses
the extent of his indebtedness to his mentor.
Valentina Kholopova lists among the main features of Tishchenko’s
style ‘an exceptional gradualness of musical process, imperceptible chan-
ges in quality, and formation of contrasts exclusively at a distance.’77 She
also discusses Tishchenko’s manneristic dramatic pattern, found in
almost all of his large-scale works:

The first [stage] constitutes the ripening of an inner contrast within

the organically growing homogeneity. The second stage amounts to
attaining a culmination point through piling up or, conversely, the
decomposition of his musical material. The third stage involves the
alienation of this material, its comparison with something too remote

76 Gerard McBurney, ‘Boris Tishchenko obituary,’ The Guardian, 16 December 2010,

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/dec/16/boris-tishchenko-obituary
77Valentina Kholopova: ‘Boris Tishchenko: striking spontaneity against a rationalistic
background,’ in Valeria Tsenova (ed.), Underground Music from the Former USSR, 51.

^196
 and unpredictable […] The fourth stage brings about the reappraisal
of values, a transition into another dimension, as if making a transfer
from the world of objective realities to the world of purely ethical
notions.78

Although numerous Soviet composers wrote works on the occasion of

Shostakovich’s death, Tishchenko’s No. 5 (1976) surpasses them all both
in its scope and in terms of how profoundly the composer identifies
with the object of his dedication. This comes as no surprise, since his
entire output demonstrates an explicit and unapologetic kinship with
Shostakovich’s oeuvre; but nowhere is this kinship more obvious than in
this symphony. Its five movements – ‘Prelude,’ ‘Dedication,’ ‘Sonata,’
‘Interlude’ and ‘Rondo’ – all contain the monogram D-S-C-H (or its
derivations), as well as numerous references to Shostakovich’s works,
intertwined with paraphrases of Tishchenko’s own. Quite unexpectedly,
some of Tishchenko’s most tiresome mannerisms – the heightened
pathos, the abundance of lengthy ‘monologues’ of solo instruments,
intertwined with occasional violent expressionistic outbursts, glissandos
and figurations based on triads, and last but not least, the unapologetic
faithfulness to Shostakovichian models – actually find a very good
expression in this work, thus making it one of Tishchenko’s finest. The
very fact that the work is dedicated to the memory of his deceased hero
justifies both Tishchenko’s reliance upon his master’s music, and the
overblown emotionality of his musical statements.
Just like the other ‘postist’ works discussed in this book, Tishchenko’s
No. 5 is united by the same thematic material dispersed and developed
throughout its five movements. The formal scheme of the first move-
ment, ‘Prelude’ is as follows:

Lament 1 (Cor. ing.) beginning – [5]

Tutti 1 [5] – [6]
Lament 2 (Cor. ing.) [6] – [11]
Tutti 2 [11] – [13]
Lament 3 (Fl., Cl., Cor) [13] – [18]
Tutti 3 [19] – [23]
Codetta [23] – end

78 Ibid., 62.

^197
The first movement is based on juxtapositions of two types of material:
the laments in solo instruments, and the violent tutti outbursts construc-
ted mainly on the basis of the movement in fourths. The fact that these
are two of Tishchenko’s favourite types of thematicism has inspired
Boris Katz to dub the first movement the composer’s ‘self-portrait.’79
However, Tishchenko is not alone in this musical portrait. The
movement begins with two commonplace (leit-)motifs performed by the
English horn: the ‘sigh’ (i.e. descending minor second) and the ‘question’
motif, made famous by Wagner and also quoted by Shostakovich in the
finale of his Symphony No. 15. At rehearsal 1 Tishchenko introduces
whole-note ascending tetrachords, also to be widely used in the
symphony, and three bars later he quotes Shostakovich’s monogram D-
S-C-H for the first time. The first tutti section, on the other hand, begins
with an inverted and transposed monogram, to be followed by sharply
accented consecutive descending fourths, which were not only
Tishchenko’s, but also Shostakovich’s favourite device.80
The motif with fourths also appears in the second lament, both in
ascending and descending motions. The monogram D-S-C-H reappears
four more times: at rehearsal 7, then one bar after 12 (in inversion),
three bars after 22 (transposed), and finally at rehearsal 23 in its original
form in the tuba. As the movement unfolds, laments and tuttis get
progressively longer, though they remain based on the derivations of the
same thematic material.
In the third lament, which begins as a dialogue between a flute and a
clarinet, but then expands into a heterophony of various flutes, clarinets
and horns, Tishchenko introduces yet another prominent motif – a
dotted crotchet followed by a broken chord in triplets, in upward or
downward motions. These motifs are developed and expanded, and at
rehearsal 16, according to Katz, Tishchenko introduces the first self-

79 Boris Katz, O muzyke Borisa Tishchenko, Leningrad, Sovetskii kompozitor, 1986, 151–
152. Katz’s analysis of Tishchenko’s Fifth, although lacking in detail, is very useful
because the author identifies numerous paraphrases of Tishchenko’s own works. Since
a majority of these scores were not available to me, I will rely here on Katz’s ‘identi-
fications’ of Tishchenko’s self-references.
80See Roseberry, Ideology, Style, Content and Thematic Process, 337–340 where he discusses
Shostakovich’s employment of the motifs based on the intervals of fourths.

^198
quotation, from his Piano Sonata No. 5.81 At the same time, the increa-
singly heterophonic texture in woodwinds strongly resembles similar
pages from the instrumental portions of Schostakovich’s Symphony No.
2; although this is not a direct reference, the spirit of Shostakovich is
very much present. Katz notices that the opposition between the
horizontal and vertical musical dimensions is the main constructive prin-
ciple in this symphony.82 While I have discussed a similar procedure in
Gubaidulina’s Stimmen… verstummen… as related to the representations
of the spheres of the earthly and the divine phenomena respectively, in
Tishchenko’s case one can only speculate about the dualism of the
earthbound vs. heavenly, because the composer never gave us any hints
about this being his intention.
******
As mentioned earlier, ‘Prelude’ ends with the monogram D-S-C-H, and
it becomes the basis for the main theme of the second movement,
‘Dedication,’ although throughout the movement the monogram never
appears in its original form. The main theme in the violin solo compri-
ses all motifs outlined in the first movement: it begins with C-H-D-E,
derived from the monogram, which now reveals its kinship with the
‘sigh’ and the ‘question’ motifs; besides, Es (S) is replaced with E; the
theme continues with the whole-note tetrachord (D-E-F#-A♭).
This is followed by a motif consisting of a longer note followed by a
triplet, and then the ‘sigh’ is repeated, with a counterpoint in a solo
horn. Katz calls this a ‘timbral quotation’ because the same combination
of instruments (violin and horn) was used by Shostakovich in the
recapitulation of the second theme from the first movement of his
Symphony No. 5. Katz also suggests that the outline of the main theme
of ‘Dedication’ corresponds to the melodic complexes usually employed
by Tishchenko to depict lyrical revelation and declarations of love.83
The movement unfolds in a free form; just like in the third ‘lament’
in the first movement, the heterophonic texture is gradually expanded by

81 Katz, O muzyke Borisa Tishchenko, 151.

82 Ibid., 148–149.
83 Ibid., 152.

^199
additions of new instruments – new ‘mourners.’ Variants of the
monogram appear at rehearsal 27 (C-H-D-S, transposed) and one bar
before 28 (H-C-S-D, transposed); furthermore, another famous
monogram, B-A-C-H, also appears twice (four bars after 28 and at 31),
although both times transposed. This cannot be a coincidence, because
the B-A-C-H motif will reappear in later movements; its programmatic
role here might be to suggest that Shostakovich has joined the pantheon
of greats symbolised by J. S. Bach. The movement ends with a
Stravinskian brio, which alludes to the ‘Danses des Adolescentes’ from
Le sacre du printemps.
******
The third movement, ‘Sonata’, begins attacca. Despite its title, the move-
ment does not unfold in a conventional sonata form, although its rudi-
mentary contours can be identified:

Exposition
[beginning – 44] First theme, based on D-S-C-H
[44] – [45] Transition reference to Tishchenko’s No. 3 plus D-S-C-H
[45] – [50+4] Second theme, quotation from Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 8

Development
[50+4] – [61] uses material from the first and second movements

Recapitulation
[61] – [64] First theme; D-S-C-H in inversion, plus self-references
[64] – [67] Second theme; citation from Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10
[67] Codetta – transition (ends with B-A-C-H transposed)

The first theme contains several already familiar motifs: the monogram
D-S-C-H, the fourths, the whole-note tetrachord, plus a new ‘martial’
motif consisting of three identical quavers preceded by a rest. The ‘rota-
ted’ monogram (C-H-D-S) also reappears at rehearsal 41.
In the Transition, Tishchenko reverts to the original monogram,
preceded by ‘echoes of the third movement of his Concerto for flute
and piano,’ as noted by Katz.84 Apart from establishing a ‘dialogue’

84 Ibid., 151.

^200
between himself and his master, Tishchenko also reveals that the theme
from his Concerto is based on ascending fourths – and consequently
discloses all fourths-based motifs previously used in the symphony as
self-references. The ‘dialogue’ continues when, in lieu of the second
theme, Tishchenko employs a lengthy paraphrase from the third move-
ment (‘Toccata’) of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 8 in cellos; as obser-
ved by Katz, Tischenko supplements the Shostakovich reference with a
counterpart (‘bourdon’) in double-bass, modelled after bourdons he had
previously used in his ballet Yaroslavna and other works.85 The develop-
ment, once again, reverts to the kind of heterophony already seen in the
first and second movements, potentially modelled on Shostakovich’s
Symphony No. 2.
The recapitulation is modified: the first theme can only be identified
by the monogram, which is inverted and rhythmically stretched; at the
same time, the paraphrase of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 8, which
stood for the second theme, is here replaced by a paraphrase of the
famous ‘martial’ culmination from the ‘Scherzo’ of Shostakovich’s
Symphony No. 10. Katz points out that this paraphrase is preceded by
an episode of ‘onslaught’ very typical of Tishchenko’s dramatic works,
and especially of his Symphony No. 3; and at rehearsal 63 Tishchenko
explicitly references his Third, while simultaneously revealing its kinship
with the ensuing theme from Shostakovich’s Tenth.

******
The third movement ends with the monogram B-A-C-H (transposed)
heard in piccolo flute, which leads directly into the fourth movement,
‘Interlude,’ filled with references to Shostakovich. First of all, the form
of the passacaglia was probably modelled after the fourth movement of
Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 8, despite the fact that Tishchenko’s
ostinato in strings is not entirely consistent throughout the movement.86
The very beginning of the movement, with trills and glissandos in the
entire orchestra, probably emulates the final act of Shostakovich’s Lady
Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (the scene of Katarina’s realisation of

85 Ibid., 153.
86The first three occurrences of ostinato, until rehearsal 70 are identical; after that the
ostinato somewhat changes.

^201
Sergei’s and Sonia’s betrayal), but it also echoes Mussorgsky’s ‘Gnome’
from the Pictures at an Exhibition (which might have served as a model
for Shostakovich himself). Boris Katz points to another possible model
for both Shostakovich and Tishchenko: the scene of Liudmila’s abduc-
tion from the first act of Glinka’s Ruslan and Liudmila.87 At rehearsal 69
the fanfare in horns allude to Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 2,
while the solo in the cor anglais at rehearsal 71 recalls several Shosta-
kovich’s works (for example, the finale of his Symphony No. 10, the first
movement of the Symphony No. 11, the development from the first
movement of his Symphony No. 6). The fanfare reoccurs three more
times at regular intervals (at rehearsals 72, 75 and 78) interspersed with
‘monologues’ in solo instruments. Before the final monologue, which
reinstates the beginning of the first movement, Tishchenko presents his
own ‘signature’ – a single note B flat (‘B’ for Boris) in bells.88

******
The final ‘Rondo’ is a quirky dance, resembling Shostakovich’s gavottes,
polkas and other stylised dances; moreover, the overall mood of the
movement recalls the finale of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15. The
form of the movement is as follows:

Introduction beginning – [86]

A (Rondo theme) [86] – [91]
Episode 1 [91] – [103]
A (Rondo theme) [103] – [106]
Episode 2 [106] – [117]
Transition [117] – [118]
A (Rondo theme) [118] – [126]

Coda [126] – end

87Katz, O muzyke Borisa Tishchenko, 154. This is all the more plausible because, as we
have seen, Shostakovich referenced Glinka in the finale of his Symphony No. 15; and
the finale of Tishchenko’s No. 5 would also recall this Glinka connection.
88This entry is remarkable because the bells only appear twice in the score, both times
sounding the single note B flat (i.e. ‘B’ in German nomenclature) – evidently the
composer wants his signature to be distinguishable. See ibid., 152.

^202
The movement is thematically related to the preceding four, and the two
episodes which occur between the entries of the Rondo theme do not
introduce a great degree of thematic contrast. The Rondo theme itself is
based on the ‘sigh’ motif, combined with the monogram.
Katz finds similarities between the descending thirds at two bars after
87 with Glinka’s romance ‘K nei’ [To Her] and with the chorus of
Naina’s maidens from the fourth act of Ruslan and Liudmila.89 Although
this would have been in tune with Shostakovich’s paraphrase of Glinka
in the finale of his Symphony No. 15, Katz’s argument is not entirely
persuasive, because the only slight similarity with Glinka’s romance is
seen in the sliding harmonies in the last verse of the song; and they do
not correspond either harmonically or texturally to Tishchenko’s work.
The first episode begins with arpeggiated perfect fifths in strings,
possibly modelled after Shostakovich’s very last work, the Viola Sonata.
The episode is based on the same material as the Rondo theme, and four
bars after rehearsal 94 one also notices a melody in cellos, which is
possibly a paraphrase of the ‘Scherzo’ from Shostakovich’s Symphony
No. 8, already referenced in the third movement. The second episode is
more interesting, because it begins with a ‘choral’ section in strings.
While Katz argues that this is an allusion to a Monteverdian madrigal,90
this mournful chorus can also be heard as a rather generic reference to
the music of the Russian Orthodox Church funeral rite, the ‘panikhida.’
The episode continues with another ‘solo’ in horns, which features
familiar motifs of ‘sigh’ and rising fourths. It continues with a quotation
from the finale of Tishchenko’s Symphony No. 3 four bars after 109 as
a solo for the horn, paired with the monogram D-S-C-H in its original
form in the violin solo. As we recall, this pairing of violin and horn is a
‘timbral quote’ from Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5; furthermore,
Tishchenko’s theme from his own Symphony No. 3 – the work dedi-
cated to Shostakovich – actually begins in the same way as the finale of
Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 8; and this theme can also be regarded as
a version of the monogram.

89 Ibid.
90Ibid., 154. Since Katz’s book was published in Soviet times, it is possible that he was
not supposed to write about the Orthodox connection.

^203
 According to Katz, the next solo (rehearsal 113) features a quotation
from Tishchenko’s Piano Concerto;91 unsurprisingly, the auto-quotation
in the violin is soon paired with the horn, whose melody reinstates the
motifs of ‘sigh’ and rising fourths. And in the last two bars of the
symphony Tishchenko again couples the monogram D-S-C-H in the
piccolo with his own signature B flat in bells, as a final farewell to his
hero.
In his Symphony No. 5, Tishchenko reveals how much he actually
borrowed from Shostakovich; he is not afraid to disclose that some of
his most famous themes were modelled after Shostakovich’s own. At the
same time, he also reveals some of their mutual influences, especially
Russian masters such as Glinka and Mussorgsky. Moreover, Tishchenko
shows a kinship with Stravinsky (and, to some extent, with Pärt’s and
Sil’vestrov’s post-polystylistic works) by incorporating the ‘alien’ influ-
ences and making them his own. In the case of his Symphony No. 5, his
task is all the easier because his own style resembles Shostakovich’s to
the point of complete (self-)identification, which makes it almost impos-
sible to discern where Shostakovich ends and Tishchenko begins and
vice versa.
A comparison between Tishchenko’s Symphony No. 5 and Sch-
nittke’s Symphony No. 3 reveals many similarities on the contextual and
technical levels. Both composers are ‘paying their dues’ to the masters
who have inspired them. However, Schnittke cannot decide how to deal
with the defeat of the tradition and is concerned with finding his place
in the history, while Tishchenko openly and unapologetically sings praise
to his teacher and assures his listeners that Shostakovich’s art, aside from
taking its well deserved place in the museum of the twentieth century,
would also continue to live through the music of his many admirers.
Schnittke’s approach is less individualised: his Symphony No. 3 still
qualifies as a polystylistic work, while Tishchenko’s No. 5 does not. Even
as he alludes to composers such as Glinka and Mussorgsky, Tishchenko
treats these references as ‘epigraphs’ (as Gubaidulina would put it). What
Schnittke and Tishchenko have in common is their meta-historical
awareness; they see themselves not as isolated, self-sufficient artists, but
as the la(te)st representatives in the long chain of composers. But while

91 See ibid., 151.

^204
Tishchenko self-identifies with his Russian compatriots and sees himself
as a successor to the line stretching from Glinka to Shostakovich,
Schnittke wants to cast himself in the role of a successor of the
German/Austrian tradition; however he realises that the tradition he
wishes to identify with is not only geographically remote, but also worn
out and doomed. This observation is proved by the composers’
employment of monograms as a means of identifying personalities in
their musical dramas. Tishchenko works extensively with Shostakovich’s
monogram, employs the ubiquitous B-A-C-H monogram as a
commonplace signifier of ‘eternal values’, and finally leaves his own
imprint with a single B flat. On the other hand, Schnittke employs
almost thirty composers’ monograms, but not his own – as if to
emphasise a distance between himself and the ‘pantheon of greats.’
Furthermore, while Tishchenko worships his hero, and by means of
quotations, paraphrases and allusions completely immerses himself into
his master’s music, Schnittke is much more ambivalent; in the ‘evil’ third
movement, his ‘heroes’ (i.e. their monograms) do not confront evil, and
the composer concludes that the only way for German/Austrian music
to regain vitality and credibility is to start completely anew.

^205
Postlude to Meta-Pluralism

In retrospect, the works analysed in the first part of this book, such as
Boris Chaikovskii’s Symphony No. 2 and Dmitrii Shostakovich’s
Symphony No. 15 can be regarded as early specimens of meta-pluralism.
This label is broad enough to encompass such diverse poetics as
Shostakovich’s late introspectiveness, Schnittke’s riotous polystylism,
Gubaidulina’s pantheistic evolutionism, Chaikovskii’s sentimental mode-
ratedness, Pärt’s (re)discovery of early music, Sil’vestrov’s Scriabinesque
cosmogony, Tishchenko’s unapologetic epigonism, as well as Giia
Kancheli’s orientalism, Rodion Shchedrin’s eclecticism, Nikolai Karet-
nikov’s faithfulness to dodecaphony, Georgi Sviridov’s neo-primitivism,
and many other individual styles that have not been discussed in this
book. Among the composers profiled here, only Galina Ustvol’skaia’s
oeuvre is neither all-inclusive nor historically reflexive, which is probably
why Hakobian pegged her as an ‘unclassifiable outsider.’
I would argue that Alfred Schnittke emerged as the most prominent
Soviet composer of his generation because his works perfectly embo-
died all three major trends of late Soviet music discussed in this book.
The only composer comparable to him in this respect is Arvo Pärt,
whose 1964 polystylistic ‘manifesto’ Collage sur B-A-C-H actually pre-
dates Schnittke’s early essays in polystylism by several years, and whose
1968 Credo can be regarded as a work that launched the trend of
spiritualism in the domain of music.
Although Pärt’s works were immensely influential on Schnittke and
the rest of the Moscow composers,92 and possibly served as a source of
inspiration for Schnittke’s first polystylistic (and later, religious) efforts,
there are several reasons why Pärt was not promoted into a central
figure of Soviet music. First of all, Pärt lived and worked in the
‘provincial’ Baltic republic of Estonia, which meant that he was
geographically separated from the main cultural centres. A good deal of

92 As reported by Peter Schmelz, Valentina Kholopova testified that ‘in the early 1960s
all the composers knew about Pärt and had seen his scores, even if most of them
remained unperformed. His name was so well known among the composers in
Moscow, in fact, that Schnittke was shocked to learn that Kholopova was unfamiliar
with Pärt.’ Schmelz, Such Freedom, If Only Musical, 245, footnote 64.

^206
his pioneering polystylistic and religious works remained unperformed
for many years, or were banned immediately after the premiere (as was
the case with Credo), and his scores were only distributed via ‘unofficial’
channels. Furthermore, Pärt was neither an outspoken advocate of
novel artistic causes nor an influential professor; he went into a self-
imposed creative exile after completing Credo, and he only wrote one
work between 1968 and 1976 (Symphony No. 3). When Pärt finally
reemerged from exile, he distanced himself from polystylism and meta-
pluralism, thus reinforcing his outsider status, and just a few years later
he left the Soviet Union for good. Thus, the place that could have been
his was taken by Alfred Schnittke, a prolific composer and an influential
writer on music, who emerged as a central figure among the Muscovites
and who took over the role of Shostakovich’s successor. Schnittke’s
works struck a chord with the cultural, moral, spiritual and political
needs and concerns of the society, and inspired a host of other Soviet
composers to enter into a polemic with the Soviet cultural context, to
engage in a dialogue with traditions old and new that had previously been
off-limits, to reassess their own historical positions both in the local
Soviet and the broader European contexts, and to try and secure their
own places in the museum of ‘great composers.’

^207
 List of Scores

Berio, Luciano, Sinfonia, Vienna/London, Universal Edition, UE 13783, 1982.

Chaikovskii, Boris, Vtoraia Simfoniia [Symphony No. 2], Moscow, Sovetskii
kompozitor, 1970. (facsimile edition)
Gubaidulina, Sofia, Stimmen… Verstummen…, Sinfonie in 12 Sätzen, Hamburg,
Musikverlag Hans Sikorski, 1986. (facsimile edition)
Pärt, Arvo, Credo für Klavier, gemischten Chor und Orchester, Vienna,
Universal Edition, UE 33033, 1982.
Pärt, Arvo, Sinfonie Nr. 3, Leipzig, Edition Peters, No. 5775, 1978. (study score)
Shnitke, Al’fred, Simfoniia v 4 chastiakh [Symphony in 4 movements (Symphony
No. 1)], unpublished manuscript. (A photocopy is preserved in the Alfred
Schnittke Archive, Centre for Russian Music, Goldsmiths, London)
Schnittke, Alfred, Requiem: aus der Bühnenmusik zu dem Drama ‘Don Carlos’ vom
Schiller, Musikverlag Hans Sikorski, Nr. 2257, 1977.
Schnittke, Alfred, II. Symphonie ‘St. Florian’ für Kammerchor und großes
Orchester, Vienna, Universal Edition, UE 17188, 1980. (facsimile edition)
Schnittke, Alfred, 3. Symphonie, Leipzig/Dresden, Edition Peters, No. 10340,
1983. (facsimile edition)
Schostakowitsch, Dmitri, Symphonie Nr. 15, Op. 141, Hamburg, Musikverlag
Hans Sikorski, No. 2917, 1972. (study score)
Shostakovich, Dmitrii, Simfoniia No. 14, Op. 135 – Simfoniia No. 15, Op. 141,
Moscow, Muzyka, No. 9856, 1980.
Sil’vestrov, Vladimir, Simfoniia No. 5, Kiev, Muzichna Ukraina, 1990.
Tishchenko, Boris, Simfoniia No. 5 dlia bol’shogo simfonicheskogo orchestra
[Symphony No. 5 for full symphony orchestra], Leningrad, Sovetskii
kompozitor, No. 766, 1989. (facsimile edition)
Ustvol’skaia, Galina Ivanovna, Simfoniia No. 2, Moscow, Sovetskii kompozitor,
No. 889, 1982.
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Народна библиотека Србије, Београд

785(47+57)"1960/1990"
78.071.1(47+57)"19":929

MEDIĆ, Ivana, 1975-

From Polystylism to Meta-Pluralism : essays on

late Soviet symphonic music / Ivana Medić. -
Belgrade : Institute of Musicology Serbian Academy
of Sciences and Arts (SASA), 2017 (Belgrade
: Colorgrafx). - 219 str. : ilustr. ; 24 cm

"This book is a result of the project Serbian Musical

Identities within Local and Global Frameworks:
Traditions, Changes, Challenges (No. 177004)
funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and
Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia."
--> kolofon. - Tiraž 200. - Napomene i bibliografske
reference uz tekst. - List of Scores: str. 209. -
Bibliografija: str. 211-219.

ISBN 978-86-80639-30-7

a) Симфонијска музика - СССР - 1960-1990

b) Композитори - СССР - 20в

COBISS.SR-ID 247785740