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The Music of Alfred Schnittke

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2010

Extract

In recent years, Alfred Schnittke has seemed to provide a point of focus for interest in Russian music which has been absent since the death of Shostakovich in 1975: not least because he appears in some respects to be the latter's natural successor. Many of Shostakovich's aesthetic as well as technical preoccupations have played a significant part in Schnittke's work. Schnittke has developed these preoccupations, in fact, to a further extreme: his principal inheritance from Shostakovich, the sense of irony and alienation, has become the most obvious trait in the music of a composer who has consistently followed his own star quite independently of any stylistic clique.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

1 Quoted in prefatory note to the score (Boosey & Hawkes HPS 949).

2 Boulez, Pierre: ‘Mahler: Our contemporary’, in Orientations- translation of preface to Gustav Mahler et Vienne by Walter, Bruno, Paris, 1979Google Scholar

3 Schnittke, Alfred: Polstylistic tendencies in modern music, in Music in the USSR, 04/06 1988Google Scholar.

4 Alfred Schnittke: programme note to Symphony no.2.