A Schnittke Reader. .

A Schnittke Reader. By Alfred Schnittke. Edited by Alexander Ivashkin. Translated by John Goodliffe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. [xxv, 258 p. 0-253-3318-2. $45]. Music examples, illustrations, chronology, index.

If A Schnittke Reader had been published in the Soviet Union it would probably have been called something like Alfred Schnitthe: Articles, Reminiscences, and Materials, a title that would have better reflected its contents. Like many similarly titled Soviet books, it is a generally celebratory miscellany of recollections and articles by and about its subject rather than an introductory volume of representative articles about the composer. Yet despite its unevenness, it offers a wealth of materials for readers; its importance for scholars of Soviet and Russian culture, Schnittke's music, and postwar European music cannot be overstated.

The jacket copy and promotional materials for the volume claim that it was "one of the composer's last works." Yet Schnittke was heavily incapacitated in his last years as a result of the many strokes he suffered, and toward the end of his life he was unable to speak, requiring his intentions to be interpreted by his wife, pianist Irina Schnittke. It seems more likely, therefore, that the ultimate responsibility for the volume fell on the shoulders of its editor, the cellist Alexander Ivashkin, who was also the author of the first general English-language biography of the composer (Alfred Schnittke [London: Phaidon, 1996]). Most of the book is culled from Ivashkin's earlier volume Besedi s Al'fredom Shnitke (Conversations with Alfred Schnittke [Moscow: RIK Kul'tura, 1994], all trans. mine), which included his interviews with the composer supplemented by selections from other sources. Ivashkin also wrote the introduction to the present book, editorial comments throughout, and a chronology of Schnittke's life. With only three exceptions--the essay on Stravinsky ("Paradox As a Feature of Stravinsky's Musical Logic"), which had previously appeared only in an earlier Soviet collection; an interview with Mstislav Rostropovich; and a memoir by violinist Mark Lubotsky--the remainder of A Schnittke Reader is taken from a volume of theoretical essays written by Schnittke that apparently made it to the proof stages in the 1970s but was never published (p. xv).

The volume is divided into six sections: Schnittke Speaks about Himself, Schnittke on the Lenin Prize, Schnittke on His Own Compositions, Schnittke on Creative Artists (Composers, Performers, A Writer, A Painter), Schnittke on Twentieth-Century Music, and Schnittke As Seen by Others. These sections are not all of equal value, though each contains important passages.

At the outset the reader is plunged into a heady dialogue between Schnittke and Ivashkin constructed out of interviews vaguely dated "1985-1994" (p. 3). It consists of an intricate, often abstract discussion of several topics, including morality, religion, literature, and Russian culture, with unfortunately little specific mention of Schnittke's music. Ivashkin and Schnittke were close (they used the informal you (ti) with one another) and this "interview" reads like a friendly conversation at the kitchen table, fueled by an excess of tea. While exhilarating to read, its esoteric contents and disjointedness all too frequently leave the reader struggling to keep up (and here the translator, John Goodliffe, must be praised for his admirable job with a very dense and thorny text--the difficulty is not in the translation). Questions like the following from Ivashkin are typical: "Still, the question remains: How does one define the reservoir from which humanity draws new ideas? Does the new exist, or is it merely the Devil trying to put us in a false position?" (p. 27) For the uninitiated this can be daunting stuff and might have been improved by better editing, yet to one familiar with Schnittke's music it presents a fascinating portrait of the composer. If nothing else, Schnittke's answers afford a glimpse of his mental state and intellectual preoccupations at this period in his life, as in his poignant comments about his changed perception of time following his first stroke in 1985 (p. 5). The best responses force us to reevaluate our received opinions about the composer, such as his attitude towards popular music: "Nowadays what is often called 'pop culture' is the most direct manifestation of evil in art. Evil in a general sense. ... And pop culture is a good disguise for a kind of devilry, a way of creeping into your soul. So I can see no way of expressing evil in music other than by using elements of pop culture" (p. 22). Though these comments certainly jibe with the devilish tango at the end of the Faust cant ata ("Seid nuchtern und wachet," 1983), they throw an unexpected light on the quotations of rock and jazz in works like the First Symphony.

While other portions of the volume, like the passages on Sofia Gubaidulina and Gia Kancheli in section 3 or the reminiscences by Rostropovich and Vladimir Yankilevsky in section 6, are only of passing interest, several excerpts stand out, among them Schnittke's recollection of Prokofiev's funeral. Schnittke's sketches of composer Filipp Gershkovich, pianist Sviatoslav Richter, and conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky in the same section are also significant portraits of these artists. Section 6, "Schnittke As Seen by Others," includes important contributions by violinists Gidon Kremer and Mark Lubotsky, both dedicatees of multiple works by the composer. Lubotsky in particular fills in crucial information regarding his role in the premieres of several early works like the Second Violin Concerto.

But it is in section 5, "Schnittke on Twentieth-Century Music," that the real heart of the volume lies, and not only because the bulk of the material was previously unavailable in either Russian or English. This section includes Schnittke's seminal essay "Polystylistic Tendencies in Modern Music" (Polistilisticheskiye tedentsii sovremennoy muziki). It also features lengthy discussions of timbre in twentieth century music, serialism ("statistical composition"), "polystylism," and "static form," in essays that focus on the most influential composers for Schnittke: Anton Webern, Bela Bartok, Igor Stravinsky, Luciano Berio, Gyorgi Ligeti, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. These essays are all accompanied by countless, wonderfully reproduced music examples in Schnittke's hand.

The essays in section 5 are important both for their analytical details (and Schnittke was an astute and insightful thinker about music) and the attention they call to Schnittke's own compositional interests. As with most composers, Schnittke's analyses reveal his own preoccupations. This is nowhere clearer than in his lengthy treatment of Stravinsky ("Paradox As a Feature of Stravinsky's Musical Legacy") in which, among other topics, he addresses Stravinsky's own polystylism. When Schnittke describes the Symphony in C, there is no question that he is thinking of his own quasi-sonata (Violin Sonata no. 2, "Quasi una sonata") and his own quasi-symphony (the First): "The irony of both the formal conception ('Symphony') and the tonal conception ('in C') is obvious: this is only the shell of a symphony, filled with surrogate thematic and tonal development. A quasi-symphony. A quasi-tonality" (p. 169).

What is frustrating about this section of the book, however, especially for those unfamiliar with Schnittke's music, is the lack of certainty regarding the dates of most of the essays (reminiscent of the vague dating of the interviews in section 1) and the lack of commentary connecting the essays to Schnittke's own works. Most of the essays are dated "1970s," but judging from the subject matter, and particularly the compositions that Schnittke discusses (e.g., Ligeti's Lontano and Berio's Sinfonia), I would suggest they were written sometime between 1970 and 1974, when he was composing and completing the polystylistic First Symphony (started in 1972) and embarking on the shift of direction signaled by the Piano Quintet (started in 1972 and completed in 1976). As most of these essays were written for publication in the Soviet Union but rejected, there must be concrete information regarding at least the date of submission or the date of rejection. If Ivashkin does not know this information himself, it should b e contained somewhere in Schnittke's personal archive.

Because of the transitional nature of this period in Schnittke's output, these essays also beg for more contextualization and more editorial commentary on the relationship between them and Schnittke's compositions of the period. The essays reflect not only Schnittke's compositional concerns at the time of writing, but also those of the recent past. He is dealing with topics that he had already explored in many of his works from the mid-to-late 1960s like Music for Chamber Orchestra (1964), Music for Piano and Chamber Orchestra (1964), the Second Violin Concerto (1966), the First String Quartet (1966), Pianissimo (1968), and the Double Concerto for Oboe and Harp (1971), works rarely performed and rarely discussed until now in the literature on the composer. The essays send the informed reader back to those scores searching for further connections between Berio and the First Symphony or Ligeti and the Double Concerto. Uninformed readers need such connections to be drawn explicitly. For example, when Schnittke mentions his 1969 electronic composition (page 95), it would have been helpful if its title had been provided: Polok (or Elektronniy polok) or in English, Stream or Electronic Stream.

Another disappointing aspect of the volume is the almost complete absence from the editorial commentary of discussion of Schnittke's music and its broader historical and social contexts. Apart from the first Concerto Grosso, section 3, "Schnittke on His Own Compositions," neglects the composer's most important works. Nowhere is the First Symphony mentioned, nor the Second Violin Sonata ("Quasi una sonata"), the Third String Quartet, the Viola Concerto, or the Piano Quintet. While we]l known by listeners familiar with Schnittke, these works deserve mention for the many uninitiated listeners who will also certainly wish to turn to this volume. Thankfully, Schnittke did provide his own detailed comments on the genesis and construction of these compositions in other writings, like an earlier volume drawn from interviews that were conducted in the early 1970s by Russian musicologist Dmitriy Shul'gin. Godi neizvestnosti Al'freda Shnitke (The Unknown Years of Alfred Schnittke, Alfred Shnitke and Dmitriy Shul'gin [M oscow: Delovaya Liga, 1993]) includes information about Schnittke's family background, schooling, and early career, as well as analytical commentary on most of his compositions before 1976 (up to but not including the first Concerto Grosso). Selections from Shul'gin's volume or other published interviews, like Schnittke's 1988 Sovetskaya muzika interview "Real'nost' kotoruyu zhdal vsyu zhizn'. . ." (A Reality for Which I Have Waited My Whole Life, Alfred Schnittke, Yuliya Makeyeva, and Gennadiy Tsipin, Sovetskaya muzika [October 1988]:17), or other seminal "official" publications, like the 1974 roundtable discussion of his First Symphony, "Obsuzhdayem Simfoniyu A. Shnitke" (We Discuss the Symphony of A. Schnittke, Sovetskaya muzika [October 1974]:12), would have helpfully complemented the excerpts in A Schnittke Reader. These other articles would also have made the book the introductory volume that its title suggests it to be.

In general the editorial apparatus might have been expanded--a worklist and updated bibliography would have been especially beneficial. The chronology of Schnittke's life that is provided unfortunately contains numerous errors, as do several of the footnotes in the body of the text. There are some obvious slips: Mstislav Rostropovich left the U.S.S.R. in May 1974 not 1973 (p. xxi), and Schnittke's fellow unofficial composer, Andrey Volkonsky, emigrated in May 1973 not 1972 (p. 14 n. 10; see also Michael Kurtz, Sofia Gubaidulina: eine Biografie [Stuttgart: Urachhaus, 2001], 153).

Other statements in the chronology are more troubling. For example, the assertion that in 1962 "Schnittke is then blacklisted by the Composers' Union and remains so until the mid-1980s" is patently untrue. Regardless of the difficulties of determining whether composers were banned orally or in writing during the Soviet period, and specifically during the 1960s, Schnittke did receive numerous open performances at venues like the Small and Large Halls of the Moscow Conservatory in addition to other official and semi-official venues in both Moscow and Leningrad, particularly Grigory Frid's Moscow Youth Musical Club (Moskovskiy molodyozhniy muzikal'niy klub) and the Kurchatov Institute for Atomic Research from late 1963 onwards (see Leonid Talochkin and Irma Alpatova, eds., "Drugoye iskusstvo": Moshva 1956-76, 2 vols., Outsider Art [Moscow: Moskovskaya Kollektsiya, 1991], 1:121; and Peter J. Schmelz, Listening, Memory, and the Thaw: Unofficial Music and Society in the Soviet Union, 1956-1974 [Ph.D. diss., Univer sity of California, Berkeley, 2002]). These performances belie assertions that he was blacklisted, whatever that term may mean. Schnittke continued to write music for film and his works received performances; the First String Quartet, for one, was performed many times by the Borodin Quartet, as cellist Valentin Berlinsky showed me in his detailed performance diary when I interviewed him in Moscow in February 2001. Blanket assertions that Schnittke was blacklisted should not be allowed to pass in a volume that will be read by many interested in, but unfamiliar with, either Schnittke's music or his contemporary social and artistic situation in the Soviet Union.

Readers expecting a general introduction to the composer, his compositions, and his writings might be disappointed by A Schnittke Reader, for any book that purports to be a "reader" should be more comprehensive and contain more explanatory material. These problems aside, the book presents a fascinating and multifaceted portrait of its composer. I hope that it will spur a resurgence of serious scholarship on Schnittke, his music, and his cultural, social, and political environment, as well as the translation of the many other significant Russian language texts on the composer.