Alfred Schnittke: biography, interesting facts, videos, creativity.

Alfred Schnittke

Hamburg, Vienna, Zagreb, Budapest, London, Amsterdam - the geography of the cities where Alfred Schnittke's works premiered, includes the whole of Europe. He was one of the few Soviet composers whose works were almost equally performed both at home and abroad. It is connected with his multifaceted talent, the unique author's style, which emerged in roll with the music of Mahler, Bruckner, Shostakovich, and with his multinational and multicultural personality.

A brief biography of Alfred Schnittke and many interesting facts about the composer can be found on our page.

Short biography of Schnittke

Alfred Garrievich Schnittke was born on November 24, 1934 in Engels. His parents had German roots, and it was German that became the first language of the boy. Music education for him began at the age of 12 in Vienna, where his father worked as a correspondent for a newspaper. At the age of 15, Alfred entered the Moscow Musical College at the conductor-choral department. This period includes the first attempts to write music. Biography Schnittke says that in 1953 he became a student at the Moscow Conservatory, where he graduated from the main course and graduate school. From 1961 to 1972, Schnittke taught instrumentation to the alma mater.

The composer had two marriages. With his second wife, Irina Fedorovna Kataeva, he met when she came to take piano lessons from him for admission to the Institute. Gnesinyh. In 1961, they were married, in 1965, the couple had a son, Andrei. In 1986 he received the State Prize of the RSFSR, a year later - the title of Honored Artist of the RSFSR. In 1990, by invitation, the composer went to work in Germany, where he began teaching at the Hamburg High School of Music, collaborated with opera and ballet troupes.

Because of the ensuing stroke and the unstable situation in Russia, he decided to take German citizenship. Since 1994, after another stroke, he was half paralyzed. Especially for him was created a device that helped record music with his left hand. In this state, the composer wrote the Ninth Symphony. August 3, 1998, Alfred Schnittke died. Buried composer in Moscow.

Interesting facts about Schnittke

• Not everyone liked Schnittke's music. Once in Voronezh his Second Violin Concerto was to be performed. On the eve it was canceled, spreading false information about the contractor’s illness. In the evening of the concert, the violinist and the conductor in dress coats stood outside the concert hall, so that the audience could see that the performance did not take place for ideological reasons.
• Despite the fact that A. Schnittke is a composer of the film "Belarus Station", the main song "We need one victory" was written by B. Okudzhava. Schnittke belongs to her arrangement and the idea of ​​including in the final episode of the picture.
• One of the most famous admirers of Schnittke's creativity is choreographer John Neumayer. To the music of the composer, he staged the ballets “Tram“ Desire ”and“ Othello. ”After a personal acquaintance in 1985, the choreographer ordered Schnittke’s ballet“ Per Gunt ”, which premiered in Hamburg on January 22, 1989, the second edition was released in 2015. In 2001, in memory of the composer, Neumayer staged the Sounds of the Blank Pages ballet on his music at the Mariinsky Theater.
• According to the Schnittke biography, in 1965 the composer specifically for the performance of his wife Irina at a concert of modern music at the Institute. Gnesinykh wrote "Variations for one chord".
• In 1977, the Soviet creative team was invited to the Paris Opera to stage "The Queen of Spades" by P.I. Tchaikovsky - director J. Lyubimov, artist D. Borovsky, composer A. Schnittke. A completely new look at the opera was proposed, with the inclusion of Pushkin quotes and the editorial staff of the libretto and the score. A scandal erupted in the Soviet press after a devastating article by the conductor of the Bolshoi Theater A. Zhuraitis. Lyubimov was not allowed out of the country for a dress rehearsal, the theater management refused to play. The "Queen of Spades" in the version of Lyubimov-Schnittke was set up in 1990 in Karlsruhe, in 1993 in Boston, and in 1997 in Moscow.

• One of the main popularizers of Schnittke music is Yuri Bashmet. In 1986, he became the first performer of the Concerto for Viola and Orchestra, under his management in Russia the Ninth Symphony sounded for the first time.
• Contemporary composers had different attitudes to Schnittke's work. His associates were S. Gubaidulina and E. Denisov. Radically negative about the music of Schnittke G. Sviridov, positively - R. Shchedrin, D. Shostakovich.
• Favorite composer Schnittke was I.S. Bah

• The college, of which Alfred Garrievich was a student of the choir department, has been called the Moscow State Institute of Music named after A.G. since 1999. Schnittke. The composer gave the consent to assign the institute his name personally. In 1998, the Schnittke Center was established on the basis of the educational institution, and in 2000 the only composer’s museum in the world was opened.
• The composer's wife described him as an ideal person and husband - kind, fair, honest and caring.

Creativity Schnittke

Alfred Schnittke left a truly voluminous legacy - operas and ballets, 9 symphonies, two dozen concerts, music for plays and films, chamber and vocal works. The main themes of his work are connected with a person - his feelings, emotions, and the search for himself. The composer believed that the tragic and funny are inseparable in our lives, and this was reflected in his music. His unique creative style was formed in the mid-60s. Schnittke one of the first in the Soviet Union began to use the aleatoric method, which gives interpreters great opportunities for improvisation. Such a work was the First Symphony (1974). It is dedicated to the conductor G. Rozhdestvensky - her first performer. Despite the fact that the work had all the necessary approvals, the central philharmonic societies of the country - Moscow, Leningrad, did not dare to present such radical music. The symphony was first played in Nizhny Novgorod. In 1972 at the All-Union Ballet Competition the premiere of the first ballet of the composer was held, "Labyrinths". The idea, libretto and choreography of the work belonged to V. Vasilyev.

In the 70s, Schnittke introduced the term "polystylistics" into musical use. He began to apply this principle everywhere, combining incompatible aesthetics in one piece - Bach and the Novovensk school, Glinka and Wagner. From the Schnittke biography, we learn that the composer wrote the Piano Quintet in memory of his deceased mother in 1972, and the Requiem grows out of it by 1975. In 1977, the composer opened the Concerto Grosso cycle. No. 1 was used many times by the author to create movie tunes.

During this period, Schnittke turns to musical origins, folk, spiritual song. So is born "Der Sonnengesang des Franz von Assisi"on the texts of Francis of Assisi, Minnesang for 52 choristers, based on the poetry of medieval German knights. The second symphony was born under the impression of visiting the Austrian monastery of San Florian, in which A. Bruckner is buried. The Catholic" invisible mass "heard by Schnittke there, predetermined the character and form of this “symphony on a choral background.” The third symphony was written on the basis of German music, and the Fourth was the embodiment of a grandiose design that unites religions. Schnittke described the musical principle by musical means Din ", including the intonation of Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant and synagogue singing.

In 1983, a cantata "The Story of Dr. Johann Faust"The idea to write music for the work of Goethe the composer nurtured for several years. He refused to create an opera, because he believed that music would then conflict with the literary source. The cantata is based on the last chapters of I. Spiess" The People’s Book. " years later, the opera "The History of Dr. Johann Faust" was nevertheless written, and the cantata was included in its third act. Concerto No. 1 for cello and orchestra in 1986 was the first work created by the composer after an illness. According to the plan, the Concert should have another A dream, but Schnittke finished the final melody and amplified the sound of the cello with a microphone.Symphony No. 5 and Concerto grosso No. 4 (1987) became one piece in which these two iconic genres for Schnittke were combined through the prism of the author’s view of the music of G. Mahler. significant choral works were created: Three Choirs on Orthodox Prayers (1984), Concert for Mixed Choir to Poems by G. Narekatsi (1985), "Penitential Poems" (1987).

In the 1990s, four symphonies were written, including the last, the Ninth, two piano sonatas, the operas Life with an Idiot and Gesualdo, commissioned by the Amsterdam and Hamburg operas, Concerti Grossi No. 5 and No. 6.

Alien among his

"I, a German composer from Russia ..." was the name given to a biopic about Alfred Schnittke, released in 1990. A half-German, half-Jewish, born in the Volga region, in whose family spoke exclusively German. Who did the composer feel?

His father, Garry Viktorovich, despite the German surname, was Jewish by birth, was born in Frankfurt am Main, and at the age of 12 he moved with his parents to the USSR. Since 1930, the family settled in Pokrovsk (Engels), where a large community of Volga Germans lived. There he met the composer’s future mother, Maria Iosifovna Vogel, an ethnic German whose mother did not know Russian at all. Alfred spoke Russian with his father, German with his mother. At the age of 16, when receiving a passport in the column "nationality", he wrote "Jew."

The composer himself admitted that he did not fully feel himself a German - because he was born and lived most of his life in Russia, neither a Jew - because he did not speak Yiddish or Russian - because there was not a drop of Russian blood in him. Despite the logical completion of the path in Germany, it turned out to be his last home by accident. In 1989, Schnittke was invited to work in Hamburg, he left with his wife. In 1991, the family of his son moved there. Initially, it was planned that after several years of work, the Schnittke wife would return to Moscow, but the composer’s two strokes did not allow this to happen - he needed constant medical supervision. His family lives in Germany today.

Curse of the Ninth Symphony

Beethoven, Schubert, Dvorak, Bruckner, Mahler ... These musicians are united by the curse of the Ninth Symphony - for all of them it was the last. As for Alfred Schnittke. He wrote it already deeply sick, with his left hand, since the right side of the body was paralyzed, and he almost could not speak, therefore the musical notation required decoding and refinement. The premiere of the essay, interpreted and performed by G. Rozhdestvensky, took place in Moscow on June 19, 1998. Schnitke, seeing the edited score and hearing the recording from the concert, was extremely distressed by the result and forbade the execution of this edition. So ended not only the long-term collaboration - Schnittke wrote for Rozhdestvensky more than 30 works, but also the friendship of the composer and conductor. Relatives of Schnittke even believe that it was these experiences that caused his imminent demise.

Irina Fedorovna asked N.S. Korndorf recreate the symphony according to the husband's score, but in the process, the composer died tragically. Then she turned to A. Raskatov. It was premiered on June 16, 2007.

However, the true mystical work in the composer’s life was not the Ninth Symphony, but “The History of Dr. Johann Faust”. After the end of the cantata, he was struck by the first stroke, and after the end of the opera - the last, from which he had not recovered.

Schnittke music in the cinema

Soviet cinema cannot be imagined without films in which Schnittke’s music plays. Between 1961 and 1984, he wrote music for more than 60 paintings. Among them:

• “Dead Souls” (1984) and “Little Tragedies” (1979) by M. Schweitzer,
• "Fantasy Faryatyeva" (1979) I. Averbakh,
• "The Tale of Wanderings" (1983), "The Crew" (1979) and "The Tale about how Tsar Peter arap married" (1976) A. Mitty,
• "Farewell" and "Agony" (1981) E. Klimova,
• "The Ascent" (1976) L. Shepitko,
• "Hot snow" (1972) G. Egiazarova,
• "Belarus Station" (1971) A. Smirnova,
• "Uncle Vanya" (1970) A. Konchalovsky,
• "Commissioner" (1967) A. Askoldov,
• "Calling fire on ourselves" (1964) S. Kolosov.

Foreign films also used the Schnittke music more than once:

• "Lobster", 2015
• "Island of the Damned", 2010
• "What Dreams May Come", 1998

The 21st century fully opens up the music of one of the last eminent composers of the 20th century. Time shows the inexhaustible interest of researchers and listeners to his work, including little-known and previously unpublished works.