„Each person builds his own cultural centre ...“ - 85th Birthday of Alfred Schnittke
”It is a constant awareness that there was always something before you – that always existed – and that one’s entire individual musical development is a continuation along the path that has been there for a long time, one which is far broader than your own path”, as Alfred Schnittke once said. “You can pursue this path, in the same direction or a different one, but it is always a small deviation from the great path.”Alfred Schnittke pursued his path consistently, even when this path became stonier during his final years, when despite suffering three strokes he continued to find the way back into his creative work. Schnittke was born on 24 November 1934 in Engels, the capital city of the former Volga- German Republic. He began his musical education in 1946 in Vienna, however, where his father (originally from Frankfurt/Main) worked for a Russian newspaper for two years. Then the family returned to Russia, where Schnittke studied composition at the Moscow Conservatory. The composer was then himself employed as a teacher at the Moscow Conservatory from 1962 to 1972, during which time his works became more wi-dely known in the West. Finally, in 1991, Schnittke changed his permanent residence to Hamburg, teaching a composition class at the Hamburg Music Academy until 1994. The Alfred Schnittke Society has its headquarters in Hamburg today; its aim is to promote the composer’s oeuvre and support musi-cological study of his works. Marked by severe illness during his final years, Schnittke died on 3 August 1998.Schnittke’s extraordinary musical language – from its early origins and the emergence of polystylism up to the three music-theatrical works of the later years entitled Life with an Idiot, Gesualdo and History of D Johann Fausten – arose from a highly individual view of the composer in our world, and also of the extensive legacy of music history.“Each person builds his/her own cultural centre in the world,” Schnittke once said. “That doesn’t mean that he/she necessarily lives in Paris, in Darmstadt, Berlin or any other particular place. But it’s true. I have the feeling that this cultural centre lies in a meeting place that doesn’t exist in reality. Namely a meeting place between East and West, more pre-cisely between Russia and Germany – this meeting place is somewhere there. I don’t exactly know what that is, but that is the general sense of it.”
A Rich Treasure of Works
There is a great deal to discover in the revised and newly reissued works catalogue of Alfred Schnittke. The symphonic repertoire is extensive and contains many well-known works such as the nine symphonies and the Gogol Suite for orchestra, as well as hidden treasures such as the Five Fragments to Pictures of Hieronymus Bosch for tenor, violin, trombone, harp-sichord and strings, Ritual and the Hommage à Griegfor orchestra. The instrumental concertos, ranging from the violin concertos and cello concertos to the piano concertos, enjoy as widespread popularity as do the frequently performed chamber works, inclu-ding the work series Hymnus I-IV for various com-binations composed during the years 1974 to 1979. Our publishing house has recently issued a printed edition of the Scherzo for orchestra (SIK 8840). This early work of Alfred Schnittke had been preserved in the composer’s private archive for a long time. According to the composer’s widow Irina Schnittke, the work was probably written in 1957 at the time of his instrumentation studies with the Russian composer Nikolai Rakov during the course of the orchestration of his First Piano Quintet of 1954/55. The Scherzo was given its world premiere on 24 January 2016 by the Polish Radio Orchestra under Michal Klauza in Warsaw.The Scherzo was composed during a phase during which the composer took troubles to emancipate himself from his musical models at that time in order to strike out on his own paths. As he once said whilst reminiscing in 1986, composition is not only a rational matter, nor is it merely a game. “I have this feeling, even though I cannot explain it exactly, that all of music is based on something that exists outside the sphere of music – on an order that is not only musi-cal. Music is one of many possible reflections of this higher order. For this reason, all musical works are attempts at revealing a small part of this order.”
