A Schnittke reader

297 Pages·2002·13.355 MB·English, Russian

by  Ivashkin, Alexander, Schnittke, Alfred, Goodliffe, John Derek

a s c h n i t t k e r e a d e r
RUSSIAN MUSIC STUDIES
Malcolm Hamrick Brown, Founding Editor
Photograph of Alfred Schnittke in the 1980s
by Victor Brel.
A
schnittke
R eader
Bb
Alfred Schnittke
edited by alexander ivashkin
translated by john goodliffe
with a foreword by
mstislav rostropovich
Published with the generous support of the Estate of Allen W. Clowes
through the Indiana University Press Music Fund.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schnittke, Alfred, date
A Schnittke reader / Alfred Schnittke ; edited by Alexander Ivashkin ;
translated by John Goodliffe ; with a foreword by Mstislav Rostropovich.
p. cm. — (Russian music studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-253-33818-2 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Music—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Schnittke, Alfred,
date—Criticism and interpretation. 3. Musicians—Russia
(Federation)—Interviews. I. Ivashkin, A. (Aleksandr) II. Goodliffe, J.
D. (John Derek) III. Title. IV. Russian music studies (Bloomington, Ind.)
ML197 .S2627 2002
780'.92—dc21 2001005133
1 2 3 4 5 07 06 05 04 03 02
C O N T E N T S
Foreword by Mstislav Rostropovich / vii
Translator’s Note / xi
Introduction / xiii
Chronology / xvii
I. SCHNITTKE SPEAKS ABOUT HIMSELF 1
1. From Conversations with Alexander Ivashkin (1985–1994) / 3
II. SCHNITTKE ON THE LENIN PRIZE 39
2. Letter to the Lenin Prize Committee (1990) / 41
III. SCHNITTKE ON HIS OWN COMPOSITIONS 43
3. On Concerto Grosso No. 1 (late 1970s) / 45
4. On the Fourth Symphony (1984) / 47
5. On Film and Film Music (1972, 1984, 1989) / 49
6. On Staging Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades (1977) / 53
IV. SCHNITTKE ON CREATIVE ARTISTS 57
Composers
7. On Shostakovich: Circles of Influence (1975) / 59
8. On Prokofiev (1990) / 61
9. On Gubaidulina (1970s) / 67
10. On Kancheli (1982, 1991) / 68
11. In Memory of Filip Moiseevich Gershkovich (1988) / 70
Performers
12. On Sviatoslav Richter (1985) / 72
13. On Gennadi Rozhdestvensky (1991) / 75
14. Subjective Notes on an Objective Performance (on Alexei Liubimov) (1973) / 79
A Writer
15. On Viktor Yerofeev (1988) / 83
A Painter
16. On the Paintings of Vladimir Yankilevsky (1987) / 84
V. SCHNITTKE ON TWENTIETH-CENTURY MUSIC 85
17. Polystylistic Tendencies in Modern Music (c. 1971) / 87
18. The Orchestra and the New Music (early 1970s) / 91
19. The Problem of Giving Outward Expression to a New Idea (1982) / 94
20. From Schnittke’s Archive (1970s and 1980s) / 98
21. On Jazz (1984) / 100
22. Timbral Relationships and Their Functional Use: The Timbral Scale (1970s) / 101
23. Klangfarbenmelodie—“Melody of Timbres” (1970s) / 113
24. Functional Variability of Line in Orchestral Texture (1970s) / 120
25. A New Approach to Composition: The Statistical Method (1970s) / 125
26. Stereophonic Tendencies in Modern Orchestral Thinking (1970s) / 131
27. Using Rhythm to Overcome Meter (1970s) / 140
28. Static Form: A New Conception of Time (1970s) / 147
29. Paradox as a Feature of Stravinsky’s Musical Logic (1973) / 151
30. Timbral Modulations in Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta (1970s) / 201
vi Contents
31. The Principle of Uninterrupted Timbral Affinities in Webern’s Orchestration of
Bach’s Fuga (Ricercata) a 6 voci (1970s) / 211
32. The Third Movement of Berio’s Sinfonia: Stylistic Counterpoint, Thematic and
Formal Unity in Context of Polystylistics, Broadening the Concept of
Thematicism (1970s) / 216
33. Ligeti’s Orchestral Micropolyphony (1970s) / 225
VI. SCHNITTKE AS SEEN BY OTHERS 229
34. Gidon Kremer (1989) / 231
35. Gennadi Rozhdestvensky (1989) / 236
36. Vladimir Yankilevsky (1989) / 240
37. Mstislav Rostropovich (1990) / 247
38. Mark Lubotsky (1998) / 248
Index of Names and Titles / 257
F O R E W O R D
I believe I have earned the right to provide this introduction, principally because I
knew personally many of the composers of whom Alfred Schnittke writes, and have
played their music many times.
I have read all of Alfred’s essays with enormous interest and enjoyment. To tell
the truth, even though I was his friend, I did not know that he was capable of such
careful and interesting analysis, that he had such a profound insight into the music
of other composers, and that he found in it so many regular features that were
hidden from others.
It is splendid that Schnittke’s essays and ideas on music are finally being
published.
I was particularly interested in the essay on Stravinsky, whose music I worship.
I remember that Shostakovich was once forced to put his signature to a critical article
on Stravinsky published in Pravda, the central Soviet newspaper. At that time I was
already well acquainted with Stravinsky. In the article it was asserted that Stravinsky,
who was so successful in his Russian period, later suffered a marked decline....
When I was studying with Shostakovich at the Conservatory, I played The Symphony
of Psalms, arranged for four hands by Shostakovich himself, who loved the work. For
many years Stravinsky’s music had been banned in the Soviet Union, but at that
period there was already a certain “thawing out.”
Then I arrived in London, where Stravinsky also was at the time. I met him at a
rehearsal. He was rather like Baba Yaga1 and looked at me with a kind of “nasty”
grin. “I’ve read Shostakovich’s article about me,” he said. Then, in a tone of
bitterness, he added: “Tell your friend that, whether or not he likes what I am doing,
each of us has the right to experiment.” I passed on the message to Shostakovich.
When he heard it, he twitched nervously. By what he composed Stravinsky had
indeed demonstrated his right to experiment—by his paradoxicality, in which
Schnittke detects a special kind of logic. When the aging Picasso was asked, “Are
you still searching for something in your work?” he replied, “No, I have already
found something.” Stravinsky, too, had found something in his music.
I like to recall how Schnittke wrote his Concerto for Three. It was his sixtieth
birthday, and I asked him to compose something to celebrate it. “Perhaps I should
write something for those who play my music most,” he said, “and in that case it will
be something ‘for three’2 —for you, [Gidon] Kremer, and [Yuri] Bashmet.” As a
subtitle for the concerto he wrote “Rostropovich will provide,”3 because I commis-
sioned it. When he had finished it, he said, “The three of you will be wildly
successful,” and he wrote the minuet that we were to play as an encore. That minuet
is an example of the “polystylistics” of which he speaks in his essay. The music may
remind you of Lully, but it has to be put in one key. Each instrumentalist plays a
beautiful melody. But the chords that form the harmonies always sound inappropri-
ate. The three players, with the exception of the one playing the melody, seem to
1. Baba Yaga: The witch from Russian folktales. —ed.
2. Na troikh: a common colloquial expression in the Soviet Union, referring to the sharing of a
bottle of vodka by three people. —ed.
3. Meaning that Rostropovich should buy the bottle of vodka. —ed.
viii Foreword by Mstislav Rostropovich
have gone wrong and lost each other. This is precisely where beauty lies.... When
Schnittke analyzed polystylistics, he was doing so for his own work.
In his essay on timbres Schnittke refers to the music of Prokofiev and Shosta-
kovich. This reminds me of my student days, when I tried to introduce one of my
close friends, who later became a well-known singer, a mezzo-soprano, to Proko-
fiev’s music. This was for a concert at the Hall of Columns at the House of Unions
[Dom Soiuzov] in Moscow. I had confessed to Prokofiev that I had a “star turn” and
asked him to listen to the radio broadcast of the concert. He was pleased to do as I
asked. The next morning I hurried round to see him. “I heard your ‘star turn’,” he
said. “It was remarkable, amazing.... I was particularly taken by what she sang as
an encore, [Grieg’s] ‘Solveig’s Song’—her voice sounded just like a clarinet!” This
anecdote is connected with the idea of timbre and the remarkable timbral instru-
mental thinking of Prokofiev. One of his favorite instruments was the tuba. “How
wonderful it is,” he used to say, “when the tuba softly plays a low note! I have the
impression that there is a beetle sitting on the note, and I listen to the note, then pick
up the beetle, and move it onto another note.”
In Prokofiev’s music one finds more timbral effects connected with nature than
in any other composer. In Peter and the Wolf, for example, the clarinet is the cat-
instrument. And its rapid passages are like the cat climbing a tree. In the sound of the
clarinet there is cat fur and fluff. Or—I do not want to offend bassoon-players—but
when I hear a bassoon it always reminds me of the old grandfather [in Prokofiev’s
Peter and the Wolf]. And if the grandfather is cunning, then it has to be the bassoon!
Timbral colors evoke various associations. What can be more birdlike than a flute?
And the wolf is depicted with the tripled timbre of the French horn!
Schnittke writes, “[A]n infinitely differentiated scale of interpolating sonorities
that move one to the next and that include every imaginable richness from the world
of sound can be conceived only in theory.... [O]nly a more or less precisely
graduated illusory scale is possible ... [dependant on] the individuality of the
composer, the individuality of the instrumental ensemble selected, and the indi-
vidual relationship of the performer and his instrument.”4
This is perfectly true. All my life I have tried to achieve a variety of timbres. Of
course, I have studied composition and conducting, and this has helped me consid-
erably. But in practice the three factors listed by Schnittke are always embodied in
the actual and potential performances of music. We performers are remembered
only thanks to the music we play and how far we understand that music. Naturally
what perhaps matters most to us is intuition, but we nevertheless also have to try to
penetrate the depths of the music with the help of analysis. One must admit that in
his analytical essays, Schnittke has clearly penetrated to depths inaccessible to the
vast majority of musicians. It seems as if for his analysis he used a laser and an
electron microscope, but in fact it was simply his genius!
Mstislav Rostropovich
May 1999
4. From Schnittke’s essay “Timbral Relationships and Their Functional Use: The Timbral Scale”
(Chapter 22 in this volume). —ed.
Foreword by Mstislav Rostropovich ix
Note about the Music Examples
When Indiana University Press received the typescript of Schnittke’s unpublished
essays on music from Alexander Ivashkin, many of the music examples accompany-
ing the essays had been hand copied by Schnittke himself. Jeffrey Ankrom, former
Indiana University Press music editor, decided that readers might not only appreci-
ate seeing the examples exactly as Schnittke had notated them, but would perhaps
also learn something from the choices he made when reducing examples from full
score. Unfortunately, the paper Schnittke used had degraded from age and usage,
precluding the possibility of photographing his manuscript “as is” to make plates
for printing. But Mr. Ankrom was committed to his decision to share Schnittke’s
holograph scores with readers of this book, and after his departure from the Press,
he volunteered to take upon himself the exacting task of cleaning up the examples
while painstakingly preserving all the essential features of Schnittke’s original
notation. The consequence of Mr. Ankrom’s generous expenditure of time can be
appreciated in the manuscript music examples scattered throughout the present
volume, which, with the exception of Examples 27.3 and 32.5–32.10, are authentic
facsimiles of Schnittke’s holograph scores. My sincere thanks to Mr. Ankrom for his
extraordinary contribution to this volume.
Some of Schnittke’s manuscript examples could not be salvaged to make fac-
similes. These were expertly recopied by Justin Merritt, a composer and Associate
Instructor affiliated with the School of Music, Indiana University, Bloomington.
Malcolm Hamrick Brown
Founding Editor
Russian Music Studies