Alfred Garrievich Schnittke (24 November 1934 – 3 August 1998) was a Soviet and Russian composer. He was one of the most performed and recorded composers of late 20th-century classical music. Musicologist Ivan Moody described Schnittke as a composer who used his music to show the moral and spiritual challenges of modern people in great detail.
Schnittke’s early works were strongly influenced by Dmitri Shostakovich. He developed a technique that used many different musical styles, seen in works like his large Symphony No. 1 (composed between 1969 and 1972) and his first concerto grosso (1977). In the 1980s, Schnittke’s music became more widely known outside the Soviet Union. This happened with the publication of his second (1980) and third (1983) string quartets, the String Trio (1985), the ballet Peer Gynt (1985–1987), his third (1981), fourth (1984), and fifth (1988) symphonies, and his viola concerto (1985) and first cello concerto (1985–1986). As his health worsened, Schnittke’s music became less lively and more quiet and somber.
Biography
Alfred Schnittke’s father, Harry Maximilian Schnittke (1914–1975), was Jewish and born in Frankfurt, Germany. He moved to the Soviet Union in 1927 and worked as a journalist and translator, translating Russian texts into German. His mother, Maria Iosifovna Schnittke (née Vogel, 1910–1972), was a Volga German born in Russia. Schnittke’s paternal grandmother, Tea Abramovna Katz (1889–1970), was a philologist, translator, and editor who worked with German-language literature.
Alfred Schnittke was born in Engels, a region in the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (SFSR). He began his musical training in 1946 in Vienna, where his father was stationed. His biographer, Alexander Ivashkin, wrote that in Vienna, Schnittke “fell in love with music that is part of life, history, and culture, and part of the past that is still alive.” Schnittke said he felt “every moment there” was a connection to history, describing the past as a world of “ever-present ghosts” and himself as someone “not a barbarian without any connections, but the conscious bearer of the task in my life.” His time in Vienna gave him spiritual experiences and discipline that helped shape his future work. He admired the music of Mozart and Schubert more than that of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, using classical styles as a reference point. In 1948, the family moved to Moscow.
In 1961, Schnittke finished his graduate studies in composition at the Moscow Conservatory and taught there from 1962 to 1972. His composition teacher was Evgeny Golubev, and he studied orchestration with Nikolai Rakov. Later, he earned a living by composing film scores, creating nearly 70 scores over 30 years.
After his mother died in 1972, Schnittke began writing his Piano Quintet in her memory. During this time, he found comfort in Catholicism and converted on June 18, 1983. His beliefs in predestination and mysticism deeply influenced his music.
Schnittke and his work were often viewed with suspicion by Soviet authorities. His First Symphony was banned by the Composers’ Union. After he refused to vote in a Composers’ Union election in 1980, he was prevented from traveling outside the USSR.
On July 21, 1985, Schnittke suffered a stroke that left him in a coma. He was officially declared dead on several occasions but later recovered and continued composing. In 1990, Schnittke left the Soviet Union and moved to Hamburg, Germany. His health remained poor, and he suffered multiple strokes before dying on August 3, 1998, in Hamburg at age 63. He was buried with state honors at Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
Music
Alfred Schnittke’s early music was strongly influenced by Dmitri Shostakovich. After meeting the Italian composer Luigi Nono during a visit to the USSR, Schnittke began using a method called serial technique in works like Music for Piano and Chamber Orchestra (1964). However, Schnittke later became unhappy with this approach, which he called the "puberty rites of serial self-denial." He developed a new style known as "polystylism," where he combined and contrasted different musical styles from the past and present. Schnittke once said, "My goal is to unite serious music and light music, even if it costs me a lot." His first major work using polystylism was the Second Violin Sonata, Quasi una sonata (1967–1968). He also used this technique in film music, as parts of the sonata appeared in the 1968 animated film The Glass Harmonica. Schnittke wrote music for the film Commissar, blending European, Russian, and Jewish musical traditions. He continued to develop polystylism in works like the First Symphony (1969–1972) and First Concerto Grosso (1977). Other pieces, such as the Piano Quintet (1972–1976), were more unified in style and were written to honor his mother, who died in 1972.
In the 1980s, Schnittke’s music gained more attention outside the USSR, partly due to the efforts of artists like violinists Gidon Kremer and Mark Lubotsky, cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, and conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky. Despite his health problems, Schnittke created many important works, including the Second (1980) and Third (1983) String Quartets, the String Trio (1985), the Faust Cantata (1983), the ballet Peer Gynt (1985–1987), and symphonies like the Third (1981), Fourth (1984), and Fifth (1988). His music also began to reflect Christian themes, as seen in his choral works Concerto for Mixed Chorus (1984–1985) and Penitential Psalms (1988), and in other pieces like the Fourth Symphony and Faust Cantata.
As Schnittke’s health worsened in the late 1980s, his music became more somber and less complex. Works like the Fourth Quartet (1989) and symphonies Sixth (1992), Seventh (1993), and Eighth (1994) show this change. Some scholars believe Schnittke’s later works will have the greatest influence. After a stroke in 1994 left him nearly paralyzed, Schnittke stopped composing for a long time. He completed a few short pieces in 1997 and wrote the Ninth Symphony, which he composed with great difficulty using only his left hand. The score was hard to read.
The Ninth Symphony was first performed in Moscow on June 19, 1998, in a version arranged by Gennady Rozhdestvensky, who conducted the premiere. Schnittke later wanted the performance canceled after hearing a recording. After his death, others worked to complete the score. Nikolai Korndorf began this task but died before finishing it. Alexander Raskatov completed the work and added a choral movement of his own, Nunc Dimittis (in memoriam Alfred Schnittke), to the symphony. This version premiered in Dresden, Germany, on June 16, 2007. Another version of the Ninth Symphony was created by Andrei Boreyko.