Alfred Schnittke

Good luck finding this fellow in the New Groves 1980 edition: he is filed under Shnitke, Al'fred (Garriyevich), which is not today's standard spelling of his name at all! Of course, the trouble is he's Russian and therefore immediately falls foul of the awful twists of Russian-to-English orthography! In Cyrillic, his name is Альфре́д Га́рриевич Шни́тке which transliterates to “Alfred Garriyevich Shnitke”, so New Groves would seem to have some backing for their version of his surname with its single-T and lack of 'C', though sticking an apostrophe in his first name (presumably to indicate stress or to attempt to indicate the soft-sign after the 'l' in it) is completely bogus. I'm not entirely clear if [https://schnittke.org/en/index.html the Schnittke website] is in any way official, but it certainly thinks an 'S-C-H' is needed for the surname, along with a double-T. If we look at the covers of some of his scores (which he presumably saw to press within his own lifetime), we also [https://schnittke.org/en/sheetmusic.html see a repeated use] of 'S-C-H' and double-T. So, on this occasion, I'm declaring the New Groves is wrong and the correct spelling of his name is a patronymic-less Alfred Schnittke. Happily, that happens by far to be the most common spelling you'll see on CD covers and the like, too.

He was born in 1934 in Engels, a small town perched on the east bank of the Volga river, in the deep south of Russia, only 150km or so from Kazakhstan. Of course, in 1934, all of that territory and its surrounds were part of the Soviet Union. His Jewish father had moved there from Germany in the 1920s; his mother was a native-born Russian, though of German-Jewish ancestry. In 1947, when he was aged 13, Schnittke's father was posted to Vienna for work: the young Alfred went with him and there began his musical education with private lessons. He attended the Moscow Conservatory from 1953 to 1958 and became a post-graduate student there until 1961. After that, he taught instrumentation, score-reading, counterpoint and composition as a professor of the Conservatory until 1972; subsequently, he earned his living mostly by writing film scores (some seventy of them over a thirty year period or so). He converted to Catholicism in 1983 and was a devout, somewhat mystical, believer thereafter.

Schnittke's music is marked by clarity of design and expression, dramatic development, breadth of scale and a preference for dialogue and competition between parts. Orchestration is important: the textures are rich and varied. His approach has been called 'polystylistic', in the sense that it is neither atonal nor conventionally tonal, whilst also combining elements of popular and serious music in the same piece. He will quote Beethoven, write imitation Baroque music, throw in some jazz band music or cook up a stylized modern dance with equal aplomb, for example. The atonal elements can disconcert by their astringency, but the overall impression is of engaging, well-crafted and completely enjoyable music. There are nine symphonies (though the score of the ninth could barely be read because he had written it with his left hand after suffering a severe stroke); four violin concertos; assorted piano concertos; four string quartets; six Concerti grossi; a requiem; ballets and operas (one intriguingly called 'Life with an Idiot'!); plenty of chamber music …and much else besides. His output was extensive and in most genres, basically. As he aged, his music became simpler, bleaker perhaps, and yet somewhat more accessible. He is generally considered to be amongst the most significant and influential composers of the late Soviet and post-Soviet eras.

He died aged just 63 in 1998, in Germany (whence he had emigrated in 1990), after suffering a series of strokes. He was nevertheless buried in Moscow: a Jewish/Christian German/Russian Tonal/Atonal man of everywhere and nowhere to the end!

An interesting documentary about Schnittke (which lasts around an hour) includes interviews with the man himself, along with his friends and colleagues, and performances of various of his works:

(If the video doesn't display or play in-line, right-click the player area and select 'download video': the file is around 243MB in size).

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