ANALISIS COMPOSITOR - SCHNITTKE - Solomon Fenton-Miller - Compositional Strategies in Early Polystylism

University of Iowa
Iowa Research Online

Theses and Dissertations
Summer 2016
Compositional strategies in Alfred Schnittke’s early

polystylism
Solomon Fenton-Miller
University of Iowa
Copyright 2016 Solomon Fenton-Miller
This thesis is available at Iowa Research Online: https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/2074
Recommended Citation
Fenton-Miller, Solomon. "Compositional strategies in Alfred Schnittke’s early polystylism." MA (Master of Arts) thesis, University of
Iowa, 2016.
https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/2074. https://doi.org/10.17077/etd.n8esur28
Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd
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COMPOSITIONAL STRATEGIES IN ALFRED SCHNITTKE’S EARLY POLYSTYLISM
by
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the Master of Arts
degree in Music in the
Graduate College of
The University of Iowa
August 2016
Thesis Supervisor: Assistant Professor Jennifer Iverson

Graduate College
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL
____________________________
MASTER'S THESIS
_________________
This is to certify that the Master's thesis of
has been approved by the Examining Committee for

the thesis requirement for the Master of Arts degree
in Music at the August 2016 graduation.
Thesis Committee: _________________________________________

Jennifer Iverson, Thesis Supervisor
__________________________________________
Robert Cook
__________________________________________
Nathan Platte
ABSTRACT
The early polystylism of Alfred Schnittke demonstrates a gradual movement
away from strict serialism towards a more mimetic music of quotations, allusions,
aleatoric techniques, and tonal styles. This thesis investigates three pieces from 1968:
film music for The Glass Harmonica, Serenade for Five Musicians, and Violin Sonata
No. 2, Quasi Una Sonata. The first piece is analyzed as a clash of two ideas, the
transcendent and the grotesque, which are exhibited in the music’s allusions to J. S.
Bach and the presence of twentieth-century aleatory and atonality. The various
technical features of Serenade and Violin Sonata No. 2 show the importance of
dodecaphony and motivic atonality as unifying procedures. Temporal and pitch
indeterminacy are also prevalent but it is perhaps the fleeting tonal references that
hint at how important appropriation of older styles would be for Schnittke’s later
music.
ii
PUBLIC ABSTRACT
The Russian composer Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) is most associated with
polystylism, a term he coined to describe the combination of musical quotation,
stylistic allusion, and original material. Schnittke’s music contains surprising shifts
from Bach-style chorales to excerpts of Beethoven to twentieth-century atonality and
jazz. This thesis examines three early pieces by the composer: film music for The Glass
Harmonica, Serenade for Five Musicians, and Violin Sonata No. 2, Quasi Una Sonata,
all from 1968. The first piece is interpreted as a clash of two ideas, the transcendent
and the grotesque, which are exhibited in both the narrative and the music. The
technical features of Serenade and Violin Sonata No. 2 show the importance of modern
compositional procedures. These pieces demonstrate that Schnittke was experimenting
with references to the past while still unifying his “serious” music with systematic
techniques from the present.
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Examples…………………………………………………………………………………..v
1. Introduction ..............................................................................................................................1
Background ................................................................................................................................. 3
Literature Review ..................................................................................................................... 12
Approaching Schnittke’s Music................................................................................................ 19
2. The Glass Harmonica .............................................................................................................22
Film Plot.................................................................................................................................... 26
The Transcendent ...................................................................................................................... 28
The Grotesque ........................................................................................................................... 35
Film Narrative and Polystylism ................................................................................................ 48
3. Serenade .................................................................................................................................50
Overview of Serenade ............................................................................................................... 52
One: Dodecaphony.................................................................................................................... 53
Two: Temporal Indeterminacy ................................................................................................. 60
Three: Pitch Indeterminacy ....................................................................................................... 65
Four: Quotation ......................................................................................................................... 68
Five: Stylistic Allusion ............................................................................................................. 72
Technical Balance in Serenade ................................................................................................. 74
4. Violin Sonata No. 2 (Quasi Una Sonata) ...............................................................................76
Overview ................................................................................................................................... 79
One: Dodecaphony.................................................................................................................... 80
Two: Motivic Atonality ............................................................................................................ 85
Three: Pitch Indeterminacy ....................................................................................................... 90
Four: Quotation ......................................................................................................................... 93
Stylistic Allusion ....................................................................................................................... 96
Technical Balance ................................................................................................................... 101
5. Conclusion ..........................................................................................................................103
References ............................................................................................................................... 105
iv
LIST OF EXAMPLES
Example 1-1, Schnittke’s Film Work from the 1960s .................................................... 9
Example 2-1, The Craftsman, 2:24 in The Glass Harmonica ....................................... 23
Example 2-2, The Yellow Devil, 3:40 in The Glass Harmonica .................................... 24
Example 2-3, Scene analysis of The Glass Harmonica ............................................... 28
Example 2-4, Excerpt from The Glass Harmonica Suite, I, mm. 1-9 ............................ 30
Example 2-5, Young Boy in Crowd, 2:44 in The Glass Harmonica ............................... 32
Example 2-6, Excerpt from The Glass Harmonica Suite, I, mm. 8-14 .......................... 32
Example 2-7, Excerpt from The Glass Harmonica Suite, II, 9-16 ................................. 33
Example 2-8, Transformation of informant, 14:31 in The Glass Harmonica ................ 34
Example 2-9, Excerpt from The Glass Harmonica Suite, II, 17-24 ............................... 34
Example 2-10, Excerpt from The Glass Harmonica Suite, III, mm. 92-93 .................... 38
Example 2-11, Couple at home, 5:48 in The Glass Harmonica .................................... 38
Example 2-12, Excerpt from The Glass Harmonica Suite, III, mm. 111-115 ................. 40
Example 2-13, Husband’s eyes, 6:15 in The Glass Harmonica .................................... 41
Example 2-14, Citizens dance around statue, 9:35 in The Glass Harmonica................. 42
Example 2-17, Citizen’s face in a window, 13:13 in The Glass Harmonica ................... 47
Example 2-18, Excerpt from The Glass Harmonica Suite, IV, mm. 51-53 ..................... 48
Example 3-1, Chart of compositional techniques in Serenade .................................... 52
v
Example 3-2, Matrix showing all permutations of Serenade’s tone row ...................... 54
Example 3-3, Matrix showing row segments in Serenade .......................................... 55
Example 3-4, Serenade, Mvt. I, R. 10 and 11, row P9: [9,10,4,0,7,6,5,3,2,8,1,11] ........... 56
Example 3-5, Serenade, Mvt. II, R. 1 and 2 ................................................................ 57
Example 3-6, Serenade, Mvt. III, R. 1 ....................................................................... 58
Example 3-7, Serenade, Mvt. III, R. 24 ...................................................................... 59
Example 3-8, Beginning of Serenade, Mvt. I, R. 1 ...................................................... 61
Example 3-9, Serenade, Mvt. III, R. 13-14 ................................................................. 62
Example 3-10, Serenade, Mvt. III, R. 23 .................................................................... 63
Example 3-11, Symphony No. 6, op. 173, Alan Hovhaness ......................................... 64
Example 3-12, Serenade, Mvt. II, R. 1 ....................................................................... 65
Example 3-13, Serenade, Mvt. II, R. 6 ....................................................................... 66
Example 3-14, Serenade, Mvt. III, R. 2-3 ................................................................... 67
Example 3-15, Polymorphia, Penderecki, R. 11-12..................................................... 68
Example 3-17, Tchaikovsky, Piano Concerto No. 1, mm. 60-61, key of D-flat ............... 70
Example 3-19, Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 8, mm. 135-138 ...................................... 71
Example 3-20, Serenade, Mvt. III, R. 7-8 ................................................................... 73
Example 4-1, Violin Sonata No. 2, mm. 101-120......................................................... 82
vi
Example 4-2, Violin Sonata No. 2, matrix used in mm. 101-120 highlighted ................ 83
Example 4-3, Violin Sonata No. 2, mm. 121-124, violin part ....................................... 83
Example 4-6, Berg, Violin Concerto, mm. 15-20, solo violin ....................................... 85
Example 4-7, George Perle’s motivic cells in Bartók’s string quartets.......................... 86
Example 4-8, Cell x in Bartók, String Quartet No. 4, I, mm. 1-2 ................................... 87
Example 4-9, Violin Sonata No. 2, mm. 1-6 ............................................................... 88
Example 4-10, Violin Sonata No. 2, mm. 96-98 .......................................................... 88
Example 4-11, Violin Sonata No. 2, beginning of m. 178 ............................................ 89
Example 4-12, Violin Sonata No. 2, m. 14, piano ....................................................... 90
Example 4-13, Violin Sonata No. 2, second half of m. 92 ............................................ 91
Example 4-14, Violin Sonata No. 2, mm. 121-124 ....................................................... 92
Example 4-15, Violin Sonata No. 2, m. 179 ................................................................ 93
Example 4-16, Violin Sonata No. 2, mm. 209-211, ...................................................... 94
Example 4-17, Webern, Symphony op. 21, Mvt. II, mm. 20-26.................................... 94
Example 4-19, Beethoven, Variations and Fugue in E-flat Major, m. 9-12 .................... 95
Example 4-20, Violin Sonata No. 2, mm. 1-7.............................................................. 97
Example 4-23, The Glass Harmonica Suite, I, mm. 1-9 ............................................... 99
vii
Example 4-24, Violin Sonata No. 2, mm. 257-259 ..................................................... 101
viii
1
1. Introduction
According to Peter Schmelz, the premiere of Alfred Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1
on February 9, 1974, in Gorky, USSR, was the event that “put polystylism into
practice.”1 The symphony combines quotations from popular songs, hymns, jazz, and
classical works with serial, aleatoric, and strictly tonal music.2 Evidently, it was an
altogether shocking experience for the Soviet musicians and music devotees who
attended. The Gorky Worker, an official party newspaper, stated that the symphony
“was innovative in form only, describing satanic evil without showing any positive way
out.” 3 Other contemporary reviews were mixed and the board of the Composers’ Union
heavily criticized the symphony. Future performances were limited until 1986, when it
was finally performed in Moscow and then in England, establishing itself as one of
Schnittke’s most recognized and remarkable compositions.4
But what led up to the First Symphony’s development and Schnittke’s new
compositional approach? How have scholars made sense of music that seems so
persistently disjunct? In this thesis, I take up these questions by studying several of
Schnittke’s pieces from the late 1960s, all examples of music that anticipated
1
Peter Schmelz, Such Freedom, If Only Musical: Unofficial Soviet Music During the Thaw, (Oxford
University Press, 2009), 304.
2
Christopher Mark Segall, “Triadic Music in Twentieth-century Russia,” (PhD diss., The City University
of New York, 2013), 162.
3
Alexander Ivashkin, Alfred Schnittke, (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1996), 121-122.
4
Alex Ross, “Connoisseur of Chaos: Schnittke,” The New Republic, September 28, 1992.
2
Symphony No. 1 both historically and stylistically: the film music for The Glass
Harmonica (released in 1968), Serenade for Five Musicians (1968), and Violin Sonata
No. 2, Quasi Una Sonata (1968).
Schmelz characterizes Schnittke’s early polystylism as a gradual move away
from strict serialism towards a more mimetic music of quotations, allusions, aleatoric
techniques, and tonal styles. He cites Schnittke’s quote from 1964: “It seemed to me
that there was something not quite satisfactory with those techniques: the pretensions
of the people who create it reached such an extreme that you might think that it …
guaranteed quality.”5 By identifying and analyzing the specific compositional strategies
in these pieces, I will nuance Schmelz’s trajectory of Schnittke’s music. I interpret the
film music of The Glass Harmonica as a clash between two opposing styles: the
transcendent and the grotesque. For Serenade and Violin Sonata No. 2 I demonstrate
the pervasiveness of dodecaphony and motivic atonality and the very limited use of
tonal references, among other techniques. In this chapter I review Schnittke’s
biography and compositional trajectory, discuss the existing scholarly literature on
Schnittke and analytical approaches to collage music more generally, and provide a
summary of the main arguments and chapter outlines for the thesis.
5
Schmelz, Such Freedom, If Only Musical: Unofficial Soviet Music During the Thaw, 244.
3
Background
Alfred Schnittke was born in 1934 in the city of Engels, USSR.6 His father, Harry,
and his mother, Maria were non-practicing, ethnically Jewish, Volga Germans.7 Harry
worked as a newspaper writer in Engels and Maria taught German. The family was
ardently communist but faced growing anti-Semitism during and after World War II. In
1945, Schnittke’s father took a job for a Soviet newspaper in Vienna and the family
moved a year later.
Alfred showed an interest in music from a young age. He played the balalaika
and mouth-harp at home even though his father didn’t support these activities. When
he was seven, he auditioned at the Central Music School in Moscow for gifted children
but World War II began and he had to return to his parents. Thus, it wasn’t until he was
twelve in Vienna that he was able to take music lessons. His teacher, Frau Ruber, was a
professional pianist who lived above his parents’ flat. Alfred was a quick learner and
already knew he wanted to become a composer. He attended opera performances,
concerts, and many free chamber recitals where he was able to hear the music of
Mozart, Wagner, Beethoven, Schubert, Debussy, and Stravinsky.
The Schnittke family returned to Moscow in 1948 where Harry found work.
Alfred began studying at the October Revolution Music College with the help of a
recommendation from a family friend. He studied piano and then in 1950 began
6
Ivan Moody and Alexander Ivashkin, “Schnittke, Alfred,” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online.
Oxford University Press, accessed Jan. 20, 2015.
7
Ivashkin, Alfred Schnittke, 13.
4
private lessons with Joseph Ryzhkin, a well-known theorist. Ryzhkin taught him
harmony, form, and composition, including the study of some newer music. Schnittke
composed many pieces modeled after the music of Rachmaninov and Rimsky-
Korsakov. His music was good enough that he was accepted into the Moscow
Conservatory in 1953.
That same year brought great change to Soviet culture when Nikita Khrushchev
became First Secretary of the Communist Party. Censorship of the arts was diminished,
part of a process now called the “Thaw.”8 As Schmelz explains, this period saw a new
freedom in literature, visual arts, music, and film that broke the boundaries of socialist
realism. Young artists were able to work more abstractly, “catch up” on Western
developments, and include aspects of social commentary in their art.9
Nonetheless, musicians still worked in a restrictive environment compared to
the West. Schnittke’s experience as a young composer was often a complicated balance
between artistic desire and official pressure. Schmelz describes the music of Schnittke,
Andrei Volkonsky, Arvo Pärt, Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina, and others as
“unofficial,” meaning music that was neither officially condoned nor outright
banned.10 These composers were all salaried members of the Union of Composers,
under the Ministry of Culture. The Union controlled performances and publishing
rights, policing the activities of its members but not usually banning music outright.
8
9
Ibid., 6.
10
Ibid., 20.
5
Schnittke generally fared better than his colleagues but was still under a considerable
amount of pressure to conform to certain unspoken aesthetic doctrines. For instance,
his Music for Piano and Chamber Orchestra was allowed a successful Warsaw
performance in 1965 but then criticized at an official discussion later that year. The
unofficial composers often resorted to smaller clubs and homes for performances of
their more innovative pieces.
Volkonsky was the first of these unofficial composers to employ serial
techniques. As a student in 1953, he was deemed too modernist and expelled from the
conservatory, ostensibly for possessing scores by Schoenberg and Stravinsky.11 The
young composers were never quite sure how far they could push the aesthetic envelope
while still being tolerated by the administration. Schnittke, several years Volkonsky’s
junior, was afforded a little more freedom. In his biography of Schnittke, Alexander
Ivashkin details how the Moscow Conservatory composition teacher, Evgeny Golubev,
supported Schnittke’s creativity and advised him to write with variation.12 Beginning in
1954, Schnittke had access to scores by Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, and Stravinsky.13
He studied serialism but didn’t often utilize the techniques. Schnittke said that “at first
dodecaphony seemed to me an extraordinarily easy method of composition.”14 His
11
Frans C. Lemaire, “Volkonsky, Andrey Mikhaylovich,” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online.
Oxford University Press, accessed February 20, 2015.
12
Ivashkin, Alfred Schnittke, 60-63.
13
Ibid., 62.
14
6
work at the Moscow Conservatory was more influenced by Shostakovich, Stravinsky,
Kodály, and Orff.
Schnittke wrote many chamber pieces at school, including six preludes,
variations for piano, a suite for string quartet, and various other songs and choral
pieces. His graduation piece was the oratorio Nagasaki. Schnittke submitted the piece
to a festival for young composers organized by the Union of Composers. It was
subsequently criticized for being too “formalist,” perhaps because it includes tone
clusters that represent the explosion of the atomic bomb.15 Despite the absence of an
official aesthetic decree during the Thaw, the Union of Composers director, Tikhon
Khrennikov, led the organization in a very strict and conservative manner. Soviet
composers still needed financial support from the state during the Thaw, and were
thus subject to the unpredictable and changing whims of the officials and boards
serving under the Ministry of Culture. Schnittke and his colleagues were free to some
extent to follow their artistic and creative interests, and had some exposure to Western
modernist and even avant-garde music and discourses. However, they had to
continually calculate their innovations and creative directions against both overt and
subtle official pressures and expectations.
Schnittke continued as a postgraduate student at the conservatory in 1958. His
cantata Songs of War and Peace was successfully performed in 1960 and praised by
15
Ivashkin, Alfred Schnittke, 68-69.
7
Shostakovich, who called it “a remarkable work.”16 This and Schnittke’s electronic
piece Poem about Space led to a positive reappraisal by the Union and he was
commissioned to write an opera for the Bolshoi Opera. That opera, The Eleventh
Commandment, was never performed because of its musical language, and the Union
of Composers never accepted Schnittke as an official member. Instead, he began
teaching part-time at the conservatory in 1961, though never as a full professor because
of his turbulent relationship with officials.17
In 1963 Luigi Nono visited the Soviet Union as a member of the Italian
Communist Party.18 He met with several of the younger Soviet composers, including
Schnittke, and discussed contemporary Western practices. Schnittke was impressed
and began to write strictly serial music, composing the pieces Music for Chamber
Orchestra and Music for Piano and Chamber Orchestra in 1964. These works were
never performed domestically but were both successful abroad and eventually
published. Through the mid-1960s Schnittke began to build a reputation for being an
expert on modern Western music. He gave lectures on Stockhausen and Henri
Pousseur and was criticized at least once by more conservative professors for teaching
dodecaphony.19
16
Alfred Schnittke, A Schnittke Reader, ed. Alexander Ivashkin, trans. John Goodliffe (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2002), xv.
17
18
Schnittke, A Schnittke Reader, xx.
19
8
Despite his interest in serial and other avant-garde Western music, Schnittke
didn’t remain a serialist for long. He began to see disadvantages in the technique: “It
seemed to me that I was writing a sort of new, complicated form of hack-work. Of
course, if you start the composition from only calculations then it is possible to
substitute them for that real creative work that is connected with vagaries, with
torments, with the incomprehension of how to proceed further, and with finding true
solutions.”20 Schnittke began experimenting with aleatoric devices in his 1965 Dialogue
for Cello and Seven Performers and then again in his 1966 Violin Concerto No. 2. The
latter is based on a telling of the Biblical Passion in which instrumental groups
represent characters in the story.21 Schnittke’s written narrative describes the violin
soloist as Christ, the strings as the twelve disciples, and the solo bass as Judas.
At the same time, Schnittke began to supplement his meager teaching income
with outside work. Film composition was not under the jurisdiction of the Union of
Composers and was subject to fewer official constraints. He wrote his first of sixty-six
film scores in 1962, averaging three to four projects per year.22 Table 1 shows films on
which Schnittke worked in the 1960s. Despite this rather large output, he remained
ambivalent about composing for films: “when I was writing mainly film music
(although I liked writing it and much of the work was very interesting) for fifteen years,
I naturally still felt it to be my secondary task…”23 The film work was perhaps more
20
21
Ibid., 246.
22
23
Schnittke, A Schnittke Reader, 22.
9
important for his serious composition than he would admit. In fact, many of
Schnittke’s other pieces from the 1960s and 1970s contain material adapted from this
work.24
Title Year
Introduction 1962
Aim the Barrage at Us 1963
Adventures of a Dentist 1965
Just a Little Joke 1966
The Commissar 1967
The Angel 1968
House and Owner 1968
Day Stars 1968
Used Cartridge Case 1968
The Sixth of July 1968
The Night Call 1968
The Glass Harmonica 1968
The Waltz 1969
Sick at Heart 1969
A Ballerina Abroad 1969
Example 1-1, Schnittke’s Film Work from the 1960s
The music for The Glass Harmonica was written in the mid 1960s, at the same
time as the Concerto No. 2 (1966), Violin Sonata No. 2 (1968), and Serenade (1968).
These pieces show the first signs of polystylism – quick stylistic shifts, quotations, and
musical allusions. Schnittke actually popularized the term “polystylism” himself, using
it to describe his music and that of others in a 1971 essay.25 He said that “in the
beginning, I composed in a distinct style, but as I see it now, my personality was not
24
Jean-Benoit Tremblay, “Polystylism and Narrative Potential in the Music of Alfred Schnittke,” (PhD
diss., The University of British Columbia, Canada, 2007).
25
10
coming through. More recently I have used many different styles and quotations from
many periods of musical history, but my own voice comes through them clearly
now.”26 Though it is counterintuitive, Schnittke was in a sense saying that he created
his own voice by appropriating material from many sources.
He divided polystylism into two parts. The first he called the principle of
quotation, by which he meant either exact quotation from another piece or partial
quotation of some musical aspect, such as chord structure or form. The second is the
principle of allusion, which he considered a more general borrowing of style such as
used in neoclassicist pieces from the early twentieth century. Schnittke cited
Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten, Slonimsky’s A Voice from the Chorus, and Berio’s
Sinfonia as examples of the successful use of polystylistic techniques. The last of these
he considered to be particularly effective: “[Berio’s Sinfonia is an] apocalyptic
reminder of our responsibility for the fate of the world…expressed through a collage of
quotations, that is of musical documents of various epochs, reminding one of cinema
advertising in the 1970s.”27
Schnittke also began to prominently use the cryptogram BACH in his early
music. This procedure involves employing musical ideas that correspond to words or
names. BACH stands for B-flat, A, C, and B-natural in German musical notation.28 This
26
Allan Kozinn, “An Eclectic Mix, through a Contemporary Prism,” The New York Times (22 May
1988), II, 23.
27
28
Paul Griffiths, "Cryptography," The Oxford Companion to Music. Oxford Music Online. Oxford
University Press, accessed May 28, 2016.
11
particular cryptogram, which references the music of J. S. Bach, has a long history of
use by composers such as Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov,
Arnold Schoenberg, and Arvo Pärt.29 Schnittke situates himself in this line of
composers by featuring the motif. Additionally, as will be apparent in later analysis,
the BACH cryptogram can be flexibly incorporated into both traditional and modern
compositional contexts.
Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1 from 1974 is one of his most aggressively
polystylistic pieces. It is a mix of various styles and techniques, even including
directions for the performers to exit the stage and return while playing a funeral
march.30 Schnittke continued with his Piano Quintet from 1976, which combined non-
tonal music with waltz and other popular styles. 31 He was at the successful premiere of
his Concerto Grosso No. 1 (1977) in Vienna, during his first trip abroad in years. The
piece juxtaposes Baroque form and style with highly chromatic sound clusters and
sections of popular music.
Schnittke’s international reputation had been established by the early 1980s and
official Soviet distaste towards his music begin to soften.32 He traveled more and gave
lectures inside and outside of the Soviet Union. His music also began to pull away from
the disjunct shifts of his early polystylism. His Second and Third String Quartets (1980
29
"B–A–C–H," The Oxford Companion to Music. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed
May 28, 2016.
30
31
Moody and Ivashkin, “Schnittke, Alfred.”
32
12
and 1983) are derived from quoted material but remain more consistent in style. And
his later Second (1979), Third (1980), and Fourth (1983) Symphonies are polystylistic
like his first but not as bombastic. Ivan Moody describes the Fourth as “absorbing
[Schnittke’s] quoted material into the foundations of his own language.”33
Literature Review
Alfred Schnittke became popular in the West suddenly. Richard Tiedman,
writing for Tempo in 1992, explained that, “Little more than a decade ago he was the
province of specialists in the contemporary Soviet composers; over the last ten years
the swing of the pendulum to the other extreme has been total.”34 While it is true that
Schnittke became known in the West fairly quickly, English-language scholarship on
Schnittke began slowly in the 1990s and then started to expand after about 2000. There
is one biography, one collection of writings, and several books on Soviet art music after
1950.35 In the literature review below, I will focus on analytical research which includes
only a few dissertations and a handful of published articles.
Ivan Moody and Hugh Collins Rice provide two early overviews of Schnittke’s
composition. In a short article for Tempo from 1989, Moody situates Schnittke as the
heir of Shostakovich: “…recent works have proved ‘polystylism’ to be an efficient
generator of that kind of alienation, expressed in ironic manipulation of various
33
Moody and Ivashkin, “Schnittke, Alfred.”
34
Richard, Tiedman, “The ascendancy of Alfred Schnittke has been phenomenal…,” Tempo 182 (1992),
47-48.
35
See Ivashkin, Schnittke, and Schmelz.
13
stylistic elements, which Schnittke has taken over from Shostakovich.”36 Moody
comments on the “interrelated musical gestures” of the Concerto Grosso No. 1, which
serve as connecting points between quotations. He also gives an introduction to
Schnittke’s symphonies, mentioning how the first was radically disjunct and the others
progressively more unified.
In the following issue of Tempo, Hugh Collins Rice identifies the BACH musical
cryptogram (pitch classes B-flat, A, C, B-natural which represent the letters of J. S.
Bach’s name in German musical nomenclature) and a few of its transformations in the
second violin sonata. Rice says that “procedures of this sort allow all the thematic
material to be presented in all possible guises, and a complex network of resonances
and relationships is established.”37 He also lists several quotations in Schnittke’s String
Quartet No. 3 (1983), from Lassus, Beethoven, and Shostakovich. Rice says that it is
mainly the juxtaposition of material from Lassus’ Stabat Mater with chromatic
tetrachords that give the piece a polystylistic identity.
Ten years later, scholars began to approach Schnittke’s music through more
extensive analysis. Peterson’s 2000 dissertation, “Structural Threads in the Patchwork
Quilt: Polystylistics and Motivic Unity in Selected Works by Alfred Schnittke,” focuses
on shared pitch-classes in the motives of several late polystylistic compositions. She
explains that “while the issue of unity may seem foreign to the conception of such
36
Ivan Moody, “The Music of Alfred Schnittke,” Tempo New Series 168 (1989), 4.
37
Hugh Collins Rice, “Further Thoughts on Schnittke,” Tempo New Series 168 (1989), 13.
14
works, Schnittke’s music consistently uses motivic elements which cut across varying
stylistic layers to form deeper level connections.”38 Peterson, as do many other
Schnittke scholars, is searching for connections within a style of music that doesn’t
provide many.
She demonstrates the effectiveness of pitch-class set analysis for Schnittke’s
music on several excerpts before more fully studying Concerto Grosso No. 1 (1977) and
No. 3 (1985). In Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso No. 1 she identifies set classes [0,1,3] and
[0,1,4] as common trichords which appear often throughout the piece.39 Peterson says
that these are unifying elements but also admits that “… they are not the most audible –
or stylistically diverse – components of the composition.”40 In the Concerto Grosso No.
3 Peterson shows how most of the themes are dodecaphonic. She also indicates the
importance of several basic sets but spends most of her time on the appearance of the
BACH cryptogram throughout the piece, calling it the “structural thread” in the piece.41
Gavin Dixon presents several narrative readings of Schnittke’s music in his 2007
dissertation. He frames his analysis using the concept of dialogue as developed by
Mikhail Bakhtin. In a polystylistic work, this means that various styles serve as voices
that interact with each other.42 The exact meaning of these voices requires
38
Kirsten Peterson, “Structural threads in the patchwork quilt: Polystylistics and Motivic Unity in
Selected Works by Alfred Schnittke” (PhD diss., University of Connecticut, 2000), abstract.
39
Ibid., 142.
40
Ibid., 143.
41
Ibid., 227.
42
Gavin Thomas Dixon, “Polystylism as Dialogue: A Bakhtinian Interpretation of Schnittke’s Symphonies
3, 4, and his Concerto Grosso No. 4/Symphony No. 5” (PhD diss., Goldsmiths College, 2007), 44.
15
interpretation. For instance, a quotation from the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 would
represent Bach’s voice whereas a generic Baroque chorale might represent the
institution of the church.
Dixon’s analysis of Schnittke’s Fourth Symphony approaches the work as the
composer’s perspective on various religious traditions.43 He identifies four themes that
represent the Orthodox, Jewish, Lutheran, and Catholic religious traditions. These
themes are all structured in a form based on the prayers of the rosary (evidenced partly
by an interview that Schnittke had with Alexander Ivashkin)44. The rosary structure
highlights Schnittke’s fundamental commitment to Catholicism at this point in his life.
Yet the combination of all four themes at the symphony’s end represents his
acceptance of their basic unity. Dixon concludes that “The ending of the [Fourth
Symphony] demonstrates that the work’s multi-levelled stylistic heterogeneity is
intended to highlight deeper spiritual unities.”45
Jean-Benoit Tremblay’s 2007 dissertation takes a strongly narrative approach to
Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1, Moz-art à la Haydn, and Concerto Grosso No. 1. Tremblay
posits that when listeners are confronted with stylistic jumps they will “instinctively
attempt to resolve them by construction of a narrative.”46 Tremblay offers possible
readings for each piece, backed up by extensive study of Schnittke’s manuscripts,
43
Ibid., 158.
44
45
Dixon, “Polystylism as Dialogue,” 200.
46
Tremblay, “Polystylism and Narrative Potential in the Music of Alfred Schnittke,” ii.
16
letters, and other writings. Some of the readings are based on programmatic sketches
from Schnittke’s private collection while others are entirely of Tremblay’s own
construction. He extrapolates narrative explanations from the music’s many
quotations, allusions, and stylistic shifts.
For instance, in Symphony No. 1 Tremblay identifies nine stylistic features that
he says “need to be explained”.47 These features include popular music quotations,
allusions to jazz and Baroque music, excerpts of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and a
dodecaphonic series that provides the basis for the third movement. Tremblay narrates
the piece as a struggle between the artist and the banal, each section representing
various battles. He says that whether “the composer had, or did not have, a program in
mind for the symphony at the time of composition is irrelevant. Listeners will feel the
need for one anyway.”48 There is some tension here between Tremblay’s manuscript
research and his focus on listener experience. The latter presents an intriguing
perspective on polystylistic interpretation while the former seems to privilege an
“official” interpretation based on a reconstruction of the composer’s intentions
through Tremblay’s access to Schnittke’s personal papers.
Ivana Medić’s two articles from 2008 and 2010 follow a similar strategy. Her first
from the journal New Sound argues that the various quotations and stylistic sections in
47
Ibid., 40.
48
Ibid., 75.
17
Schnittke’s First Symphony have narrative purpose.49 She says that this symphony
“expressed the composer’s protest against the devaluation of art and music.”50
Improvisatory sections follow more structured and tonal themes and thus, according to
Medić, depict Schnittke’s “frustration and resignation” at the state of contemporary
music. The final movement, which contains no improvisation or aleatoric music, is a
resolution of the tension from the previous movements as the artist overcomes “the
cacophonous sounds of everyday life.”51
Medić’s second article, published in Slavonica, is “I Believe… in What? Arvo
Pärt's and Alfred Schnittke's Polystylistic Credos.”52 Here she is concerned with
polystylism as an expression of religious faith for two Soviet composers. She discusses
the Credo movements from Schnittke’s Requiem (1975) and his Second Symphony
(1979), contrasting the two. In the Requiem she concludes that the layers create an
“eclectic synthesis” that does not contribute to the liturgical narrative.53 In the Credo
from Symphony No. 2 she connects various stylistic sections with the text. The only
movement based on a twelve-tone row corresponds in the text to Christ’s death. This
contrasts with his resurrection in a section of dense polyphony that “depicts people
running over one another in excitement.”54
49
Ivana Medić, “The Dramaturgical Function of the Improvisatory Segments of Form in Alfred
Schnittke’s First Symphony,” New Sound 32 (2008), 210.
50
Ibid., 220.
51
Ibid., 219.
52
Ivana Medić, “I Believe… in What? Arvo Pärt's and Alfred Schnittke's Polystylistic Credos,” Slavonica,
16/2 (Nov. 2010), 96-111.
53
Ibid., 104.
54
Ibid., 106.
18
Most recently, in line with Peterson’s work, Christopher Segall has approached
Schnittke from a more purely analytical perspective. His 2013 dissertation examines,
among other things, Schnittke’s use of major and minor triads in his atonal works. He
argues that Schnittke used triads in such a way as to intentionally avoid tonal function.
In looking at Schnittke’s music from 1974 to 1985, Segall identifies successions of triads
based on four neo-Riemannian relations. These include common roots with different
modes (P), third-related harmonies (R and L), and chords with a common third but
roots a semitone apart (SLIDE). Segall shows examples of these relationships in
Schnittke’s Hymn II, Requiem, and Piano Quintet. He says that his analysis “allows the
triads to be understood without recourse to ‘polystylism,’ a historicizing practice under
which Schnittke’s triads have typically been subsumed.”55
Elsewhere Segall follows the descriptive approach of Rice in studying Schnittke’s
use of musical cryptograms. This technique, which Schnittke used in more than a
dozen works, involves the encoding of names into notes, often of performers or
composers. For instance, in the piece Klingende Buchstaben (1988), Schnittke converts
the first name of his friend Alexander into the notes A, E, A, D, and E (using the
musical letters of the name only).56 He then used these ordered sets as the basis for
motivic material, often in a serial context.
55
Christopher Mark Segall, “Triadic Music in Twentieth-century Russia” (PhD diss., The City University
of New York, 2013), iv-v.
56
Christopher Mark Segall, “Klingende Buchstaben: Principles of Alfred Schnittke's Monogram
Technique,” The Journal of Musicology 30/2 (2013), 253.
19
Approaching Schnittke’s Music
Clearly there are different approaches to analyzing music that is so aesthetically
disjunct. The struggle of writing about twentieth-century music was addressed by
Robert Morgan in a 1977 article in which he identifies music that doesn’t fit into
traditional analytical frameworks: pieces with aspects of chance, improvisation,
serialism, quotation, and allusion. The scholar seems left to describe the surface of this
music in a way that is unsubstantial. Morgan says that “our whole notion of what
analysis is, or should be, may require rethinking.”57
J. Peter Burkholder’s answer is to create a typology for classifying musical
borrowing. He presents twelve ways that Charles Ives used existing music, stating that
“seen in the context of a long tradition of musical borrowing, his approaches can be
understood as continuing this tradition … building on rich precedent, rather than
breaking radically with the past.”58 His labels include common terms such as
“variations,” “paraphrase,” and “medley,” but also “patchwork,” “collage,” and
“cumulative setting.”59 Burkholder gives primary analytical significance to Ives’
quotations, which seems like an appropriate and insightful approach to the music. He
reveals the depth and breadth of Ives’s borrowing practices without resorting to
sweeping generalizations.
57
Robert P. Morgan, “On the Analysis of Music,” Critical Inquiry 4/1 (1977), 35.
58
J. Peter. Burkholder, “The Uses of Existing Music: Musical Borrowing as a Field,” Notes 50/3 (1994),
854.
59
J. Peter. Burkholder, All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing, Yale
University Press (2004), 3-4.
20
Catharine Losada’s approach to twentieth-century collage music is to focus on
connective musical material.6061 Her research shows the techniques by which
composers Luciano Berio, George Rochberg, and Bernd Alois Zimmerman made
“convincing links between disparate source materials.”62 These include overlap,
whereby a shared pitch or textural technique links disjunct elements; chromatic
insertion, meaning moments of newly composed, intense chromaticism that blur the
transition between quoted materials; and rhythmic plasticity, the technique of
matching tempo or rhythmic patterns to smooth transitions. Losada also names a
separate process called chromatic complementation in which various quotations and
motifs do not share pitch material but gradually fill up pitch or pitch-class space until it
is saturated.63 Losada finds unifying aspects in the repertoire but she is careful to
caution that “disjunction clearly constitutes one of the irreducible aesthetic dimensions
of these pieces.”64
I prefer to study Schnittke’s music through an historical perspective, as Schmelz
does in his extensive survey of Soviet music during the Thaw. My analysis considers
compositional strategies individually without relying on a unifying narrative unless
one is explicitly provided, as in The Glass Harmonica. When possible, I also situate
each technique in the context of music with which Schnittke would have been familiar.
60
Catherine Losada, “The Process of Modulation in Musical Collage,” Music Analysis (2008), 295-336.
61
Catherine Losada, “Between Modernism and Postmodernism: Strands of Continuity in Collage
Compositions by Rochberg, Berio, and Zimmermann,” Music Theory Spectrum (2009), 57-100.
62
Losada, “The Process of Modulation in Musical Collage,” 324.
63
Losada, “Between Modernism and Postmodernism,” 61-64.
64
Losada, “The Process of Modulation in Musical Collage,” 326.
21
Finally, I use Schnittke’s own terms, “quotation” and “allusion,” to categorize his
musical borrowing.
Although Schmelz does not engage in detailed analysis, his overall
characterization of Schnittke’s early music largely agrees with this thesis. That is, these
three pieces show evidence of a move away from serialism towards more aleatoric and
mimetic techniques.65 Nonetheless, I will nuance Schmelz’s comments on each piece.
In the second chapter, I offer a more specific interpretation of opposing styles in The
Glass Harmonica (1968), the transcendent and the grotesque, which correspond to very
distinct compositional strategies. The third chapter will contain an analysis of five
techniques in Serenade for Five Musicians (1968), of which dodecaphony is perhaps
more than just a “necessary crutch” for Schnittke.66 Finally, the fourth chapter focuses
on five techniques in Violin Sonata No. 2, Quasi Una Sonata (1968). While dodecaphony
is not extensive in this piece, motivic atonality based on the BACH motif does provide
another sort of systematic unification.
65
Schmelz, Such Freedom, If Only Musical: Unofficial Soviet Music During the Thaw, 216-217.
66
Ibid., 251.
22
2. The Glass Harmonica
The Glass Harmonica (1968) opens with this caption:
Although the events of this film are of a fantastic character, its authors
would like to remind you of boundless greed, police terror, the
isolation and brutalisation of humans in modern bourgeois society.
Long ago a craftsman created a magical musical instrument, and called
it: The Glass Harmonica. The sound of the instrument inspired high
thoughts and fine actions. Once the craftsman came to a town whose
citizens were in thrall to a yellow devil.
The craftsman appears in the first scene, as shown in Example 2-1, waving his hand in
front of the shining “glass harmonica.” Music begins: celesta and organ playing a slow
chorale based on the B-A-C-H motive (B-flat, A, C, B-natural). A group of citizens stands
and listens. They appear in all shapes and sizes, some crudely drawn while others have
detailed, expressive faces. Red orbs float out from the instrument and one transforms
into a rose in the hands of a young man. Suddenly, though, the music stops and a low
brass call warns of a new character – the yellow devil (shown in Example 2-2). This
suited man takes the craftsman by the shoulder and leads him off down a darkened
street. The glass harmonica lays destroyed under the yellow devil’s feet.
There is no dialogue in The Glass Harmonica and the images change abruptly in
style and tone, leaving the narrative somewhat confusing. The film, in fact, was created
at the end of Khrushchev’s Thaw, a period from the 1950s to the mid-1960s when Soviet
censorship and repression was reversed. In her book, Soviet Animation and the Thaw
of the 1960s, Laura Pontieri traces the shift in Soviet animation during the 1960s. She
23
says that directors “departed from the fairy-tale worlds of Stalinist animation and
attempted to bring the audience in contact with a reality that had specific referents in
the Soviet Union under Khrushchev.”67
Example 2-1, The Craftsman, 2:24 in The Glass Harmonica
67
Laura Pontieri, Soviet Animation and the Thaw of the 1960s: Not Only for Children (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2012), 55.
24
Example 2-2, The Yellow Devil, 3:40 in The Glass Harmonica
The 20-minute film was conceived by director Andrei Khrzhanovsky in the mid
1960s with the help of several contemporary Russian artists, including Schnittke.68 The
group targeted an intellectual (and adult) audience through complex images and
symbols, many borrowed from famous works of art. Pontieri says that the film
“signified a rejection of the ‘official’ style that Disney represented during the Stalin
years.”69 Khrzhanovsky was, in effect, exploring the limits of the Thaw’s freedoms at a
time when the Thaw was ending. Khrushchev was replaced as Premier in late 1964 and
68
Ibid., 147.
69
Ibid., 148.
25
Leonid Brezhnev took over as General Secretary, ending many of the cultural and
political reforms.70
The artistic council at the Soyuzmultfilm studio in Moscow asked for multiple
rewrites of the script in order to make it more acceptable. Changes had to be made to
soften the tone of the film and remove any direct references to Russian life. The
council was also worried how audiences would interpret the many dark and disturbing
scenes. It was eventually shown once for a small audience and then banned until the
late 1980s.71 Part of the official misgiving about the film was due to its depiction of
satirically grotesque scenes and characters. The main antagonist is the yellow devil,
represented by a suited man with a bowler hat, black gloves, and mismatched eyes. He
serves as the governor of a bleak town. Khrzhanovsky situated the story as warning
against “boundless greed” but there is a secondary and counter-establishment reading
of authoritarianism versus the artist.72 In this case, the craftsman represents the
dissident artist in Russia, forced to struggle against a repressive government that keeps
citizens in a state of moral degradation.
Schmelz considers the musical opposition in The Glass Harmonica to be an
allegory with two clear sides: aleatory and serialism representing the “evils of
modernity” and the tonality of J. S. Bach as “the saving grace of tradition” and
70
Denis Kozluv and Eleonory Gilburd, The Thaw: Soviet Culture during the 1950s and 1960s, (University
of Toronto Press, 2014).
71
Pontieri, Soviet Animation, 167.
72
26
freedom.73 I find evidence for slightly more distinct themes in both the film’s narrative
and music: the transcendent and the grotesque. I will show how Schnittke’s
compositional choices complemented the film’s narrative through these themes.
Although the story in The Glass Harmonica is disjunct, it still has clear ideas,
characters, and plot points. Schnittke’s music functions as a representation of
transcendence and grotesqueness, enhancing the story.
Film Plot
The craftsman, holding a fantastical glass harmonica, gathers the town citizens
by the central clock tower. He plays his instrument but is interrupted and arrested by
the governor. An informant exposes a young man as one of the craftsman’s
sympathizers and is rewarded with a coin. One young boy watches in despair. The
townspeople dismantle the clock tower as commanded by the governor. Next, a couple
are shown fighting over money and turn into wild animals. The governor calls all the
citizens together but this time they have transformed into monstrous creatures that
dance and fight in a frenzy before exhausting themselves. Finally, the young man
appears with a new glass harmonica which transforms the citizens into beautiful
people. The governor is defeated by a young boy holding a rose and the citizens remake
their clock tower.
Example 2-3 shows my scene analysis of this film. Here I have indicated the
basic musical features and sound effects that correspond to plot elements. I have also
73
27
classified the scenes into themes of the transcendent and the grotesque. The devilish
governor, the informant, and the corrupted citizens act out grotesqueness while the
craftsman, the young sympathizer, the little boy, and the rehabilitated citizens
represent transcendence and goodness. These characters have limited depth but are
also easy to categorize. The music alternates very clearly between the two major
themes.
Time Description Music and Sound Theme

Titles, images of faces, and Violin and sparse
the black hand with gold accompaniment, wind
00:00 coin echo sound effect Grotesque
Titles and image of GH
00:43 (glass harmonica) GH theme on celesta Transcendent
Images of dystopian city
and clock , mechanical Wind sound effect,
01:17 drum calls citizens together drum, other effects Grotesque
GH theme on celesta,
Craftsman stands at center organ, flute, and then
02:24 and plays GH vibraphone Transcendent
Sound effects of drum
Devil takes the craftsman beat, loud hits and
02:58 away percussion Grotesque
GH is destroyed, boy covers
eyes, a good man is taken
by the police after being Dissonant sound effects
03:25 accused by informant and warble, big beats Grotesque
GH theme with effects
Clock tower is dismantled, and mechanical noises,
04:16 citizens move like insects wind noise Grotesque
Boy left alone in open Rising gestures in
05:09 square, picks up rose woodwinds, GH theme Transcendent
Scene with the couple
fighting, animal Effects in perc,
transformations and instruments, electronic
05:33 monsters squeeks Grotesque
Drum beat starts by devil, Demonic march-type
08:44 calls everyone together with many effects Grotesque
28
Boy holding rose climbs Brass, strings, bells and

10:03 street towards the sun vibe Transcendent
Scene after the revel,
everyone asleep, various
10:34 transformations Various effects Grotesque
Butterfly awakes, people
11:26 awake grotesquely GH theme Transcendent
Sun shines at top of street,
young man returns with
GH, faces begin GH theme with counter-
12:29 transforming subject Transcendent
13:18 Society is transformed Baroque dance theme Transcendent
Redemption/transformation
14:28 of informant Dance Transcendent
Rising sequences in
15:34 People flying upwards music Transcendent
Statues, young musician
alone taken by devil, sad
16:34 faces, GH broken again Snake rattle, effects Grotesque
Boy picks up rose, devil
retreats, rose passes from
hand to hand, citizens Harp ostinato and
17:28 remake clock effects Transcendent
GH theme, ends on brass
18:38 Clock is complete chord Transcendent
19:13 Credits with images Dance music in winds Transcendent
Example 2-3, Scene analysis of The Glass Harmonica
The Transcendent
The protagonists in The Glass Harmonica fight the evils of authoritarianism and
greed. They do this through a process of transcendence: the ability to “go beyond,”
especially in a spiritual sense.74 The craftsman, for example, is able to transcend base
inclinations and inspire “high thoughts and fine actions” in corrupted citizens by
74
Ferdia J. Stone-Davis, Music and Transcendence, (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2015), 1.
29
playing the glass harmonica. His music eventually succeeds in purifying the grotesque
forms and actions brought on by the governor. Schnittke’s music represents this idea
by referencing the music of J. S. Bach: a chorale tune using the BACH cryptogram and
Baroque-style dance that is consonant and tonal. Bach’s music came to signify
transcendent greatness after its resurgence in the nineteenth century. For instance, the
biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel (1749 - 1818) said that Bach’s works could only be
mentioned “with a kind of holy worship.”75 Albert Schweitzer calls Bach’s Passions
“transfigured and made immortal by the spirit that breathes through them” and says
that “Bach is thus a terminal point. Nothing comes from him; everything merely leads
up to him.”76 More recently, the scholar Roger Scruton has connected the transcendent
with the experience “familiar from the world of chamber music and from the
instrumental works of Bach.”77
I will demonstrate the transcendent through reference to Bach in two scenes
from the film, one near the beginning and one at the end. My examples come from The
Glass Harmonica Suite, a 2003 arrangement by Frank Strobel.
The glass harmonica theme is shown in Example 2-4. It is first heard during the
opening titles and then again as played by the craftsman at 2:24 in the film. The citizens
are surrounding the musician and the theme is doubled by organ and celesta. The soft
75
Bruce Ellis Benson, “Creatio ex improvisatione: Chretien on the Call,” from Music and Transcendence,
(Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2015), 52.
76
Albert Schweitzer, J. S. Bach Volume I, trans. Ernest Newman, (New York: Dover Publications, Inc.,
1966), 3.
77
Roger Scruton, “Music and the Transcendental,” in Music and Transcendence, ed. Ferdia J. Stone-
Davis (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2015), 83.
30
and bell-like ring of the celesta has an immediate connotation of godliness. The word
celesta, incidentally, comes from the French for “heavenly.” The organ contributes
sustain and perhaps also an association with the church.
The theme is in G minor and its harmony is strictly functional. The G in the bass
of the vii chord in measure 3 might either be a non-chord tone or the 9th of an F#9
chord. The harmonic rhythm of the passage speeds up in its second half and ends with
a V7-I cadence. The smooth voice leading and functional harmony would fit in a
Baroque chorale except for some strange doublings like the two leading tones in the D7
chord in measure 7.
In fact, Schnittke was making an obvious connection to Bach by incorporating
the letters of his name into this theme. The German note names for B-A-C-H are B-flat,
A, C, and B-natural. These notes appear in order in the top line of Example 2-4.
Example 2-4, Excerpt from The Glass Harmonica Suite, I, mm. 1-9
31
As the craftsman plays his glass harmonica, red orbs float out from the
instrument and pass by the faces of many citizens. The meaning of these orbs is
unclear – they seem to somehow represent the goodness of the musician. A young boy
peeks out from the crowd (see Example 2-5) just as a new melody enters. Example 2-6
shows this lyrical section in the flute and vibraphone. The organ lightly holds harmony
underneath with I and V chords. The flute begins by outlining a G minor chord with the
addition of a colorful A-flat. The major seventh interval in the flute adds interest and
foreshadows dissonance to come.
One red orb floats towards a young man and as he touches it, it turns into a red
rose. During this process the vibraphone plays an ascending line that ends as the
young man smells the flower. This line is also simple and diatonic, passing through the
notes of a G chord and ending on a D6. The choice of flute and vibraphone seems to fit
the fleeting character of the red orbs. Suddenly, a brass dissonance erupts sforzando:
D, G, A-flat, and D-flat in the trombones and tuba. The yellow devil has come to take
away the craftsman and the young man.

32
Example 2-5, Young Boy in Crowd, 2:44 in The Glass Harmonica
Example 2-6, Excerpt from The Glass Harmonica Suite, I, mm. 8-14
33
The second, extended depiction of transcendence in the film occurs near the
end after the young man returns with a new glass harmonica. He climbs down from a
staircase in the sky and plays the instrument, transforming the monstrous citizens
back into beautiful people. The citizens hold hands and walk together in a stately
courtyard as the dance theme from Example 2-7 is heard at 13:18.
This theme is in the same key and has an almost identical harmonic progression
to the glass harmonica theme. The last five measures follow a circle of fifths
progression: G to C to F to B-flat to E-flat and then ii-V-I. The flute is accompanied by
steady quarter notes in the strings. Here there also seems to be some connection to the
Baroque, perhaps a dance in 3 with heavy ornamentation in the graceful melody.
Example 2-7, Excerpt from The Glass Harmonica Suite, II, 9-16
Depictions of refined life and happy people continue, surrounded by classical
architecture. There is one other interesting transformation. The crouched informant
who hoards gold decides to give his money and coat to a beggar, depicted in Example 2-
8. The music here (Example 2-9) is another variation on the glass harmonica
34
progression but now in the flutes and clarinets. This time the rising thirds signify the
informant’s moral redemption and physical transformation as he grows in height and
stands up tall.
Example 2-8, Transformation of informant, 14:31 in The Glass Harmonica
Example 2-9, Excerpt from The Glass Harmonica Suite, II, 17-24
35
As demonstrated, all of Schnittke’s “pure” music has an unmistakable stylistic
affinity. It is always in 3/4 meter and the pulse is never hidden. The harmony is simple
and tonal and the voice leading conventional. Three of the previous examples even
have the same basic chord progression, only differing in melodic material and
instrumentation. Most of the melodic movement is stepwise, singable, and presented
in high instruments such as flute and celesta. These features contrast sharply with the
next theme.
The Grotesque
The yellow devil is obviously a source of evil in The Glass Harmonica. But this
evil distinctly represents itself with certain images: distorted humans, monsters, and
wild movement. Wolfgang Kayser’s book addresses what it means to be grotesque. He
traces the history of the term from its origins in Roman ornamentation to the paintings
of Bruegel, fiction of Kafka, and the modern surrealism of Dali. Kayser ultimately
declares that “the grotesque is the estranged world.”78 By this he means the ambiguous
way in which grotesque artwork seems like the natural world and yet is also totally
alienating. Kayser explains that “the grotesque instills fear of life rather than fear of
death.”79
The key feature of such visual art is the transformation of the human form into
something more animal-like. Literature similarly deals with absurd and horrifying
78
Wolfgang Kayser, The Grotesque in Art and Literature, trans. Ulrich Weisstein (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1963), 184.
79
Ibid., 185.
36
transformations. Grotesque art often engages as a satirical device in opposition to
authority.80 Consequently, its use in The Glass Harmonica must have been particularly
troubling for the studio council. The film uses art styles that mimic pieces by Bosch,
Bruegel, and Arcimboldo, all known for their grotesque paintings.81 The frenzied scene
beginning at 8:44 features a whole range of animals, monsters, and half-human
creatures that run around in wild ways. This grotesqueness is almost the total opposite
of the optimism inherent in socialist realism. The director Khrzhanovsky was making a
political statement that was thinly disguised by his criticism of bourgeois greed.
But how does Schnittke’s music relate to the grotesque visuals in The Glass
Harmonica? Esti Sheinberg provides a good framework. Sheinberg says, “in the
musical grotesque, then, the exaggerations are often applied to anthropomorphic
sound-analogies, in accordance with a possible conceptual projection of the human
body on the soundscape.”82 Music that is comfortable for a particular listener or
performer in terms of range, pitch, speed, dynamics, and density will be considered
“human.” If a number of these factors are exaggerated or distorted then the music
becomes grotesque. Additionally, forms of music that can be described physically,
such as dances and marches, will become grotesque when they are similarly altered.83
80
81
Ibid., 150.
82
Esti Sheinberg, Irony, Satire, Parody and the Grotesque in the Music of Shostakovich (Burlington:
Ashgate, 2000), 211.
83
Ibid., 231.
37
The Glass Harmonica pairs Schnittke’s score with images that already have their
own meanings. But despite being directly associated with grotesque imagery, I will
show using Sheinberg’s definitions how Schnittke’s score embodies the grotesque in
purely musical terms in three scenes from the film.
First, an indoor scene at 5:32 portrays the house of a husband and wife who
were seen previously dismantling the clock tower. The wife is drawn with an
exaggeratedly long body. She walks in and must immediately prop up a broken table.
The husband sits down and looks through a keyhole to see the informant from the
beginning of the film with his hoard of gold. The husband gains extra pairs of eyes with
each look of astonishment at the money. Eventually one gold piece rolls free and
escapes through the keyhole to fall at the wife’s feet. She transforms into a
hippopotamus in front of her greedy husband. He attempts to attack her but then runs
away in fear. Finally, he transforms into a rhinoceros and charges into his wife, leaving
the room in disarray.
Schnittke’s music is closely synced with the action onscreen, sometimes even
acting as a series of instrumental sound effects. Examples 2-10 shows the short passage
in piccolo, xylophone, and piano as the table of objects and stolen clock tower parts
begins to tip. The piano triplet and xylophone glissando correspond to the exact
moment that the wife props up the table, shown in Example 2-11. The strings also enter
at the 2/4 bar on a sustained B-flat in all parts.

38
Example 2-10, Excerpt from The Glass Harmonica Suite, III, mm. 92-93
Example 2-11, Couple at home, 5:48 in The Glass Harmonica

39
The accented piccolo A-flat6 is piercing, appearing near the top of the
instrument’s range. It is played simultaneously against an A-natural in the xylophone.
Here the player is asked to improvise the rhythm as the A is played faster and faster
into a tremolo. Then, the xylophone has a glissando downwards while the piano enters
on a 32nd-note triplet. The piano is not playing distinct pitches but rather chord clusters
that jump from three octaves down and then back up again. All three instruments are
at a dynamic of forte or fortissimo. Consequently, these two measures have extremes
of range, speed, dynamic, and dissonance.
The scene continues when the husband sits down at 5:49 and looks through the
keyhole. He watches in amazement as the informant opens a box of gold. The glittering
of coins corresponds to the beginning of Example 2-12. Here the woodwinds play
quickly-moving, chromatic lines in a quasi-canon with entrances staggered by a
sixteenth note. The pitches used are A-flat, G, F-sharp, F, and E, all in the same register
(A-flat5-E5). The strings also accompany with a sound mass that covers all 12 pitches,
each player on a different pitch.

40
The woodwinds and strings create an extremely dense texture at a soft dynamic.
But it isn’t just random dissonance: A-flat is the defining pitch. Each line begins with
41
this note and the oboes hold it over the course of a few measures. The effect is of
hearing a high A-flat that dissolves into a buzzing flurry of chromatic lines. This
micropolyphonic mass is stratified above the more complete sound mass in the strings.
Visually, the grotesqueness of this scene is signified by the transformation of the
husband’s eyes from one pair to three as shown in Example 2-13. Musically, the
overlapping lines convey the same idea of “seeing double.” As the husband’s eyes
multiply, so do the woodwind parts. The saturated pitch space and rapid sixteenth-note
entrances convey a sense of uncomfortableness and a loss of perspective. The husband
has become greedy by seeing all of the informant’s gold. Just as the listener is
overwhelmed by the many voices, so is the husband overwhelmed by the corrupting
money.
Example 2-13, Husband’s eyes, 6:15 in The Glass Harmonica

42
The second grotesque scene begins abruptly at 8:44 after the husband and wife
finish fighting in their home. I call this scene a “frenzied revel.” The governor beats his
drum to assemble all the citizens of the town. All sorts of animals, humanoids, and
other creatures rush towards the central square, marching wildly. Once there,
everyone gathers and dances in front of a statue of a black hand holding a gold coin.
Some creatures chase each other while others fight. Much of the imagery is modeled
after the art of Lenica, Goya, and Bruegel.84 Example 2-14 shows the dance around the
statue.
Example 2-14, Citizens dance around statue, 9:35 in The Glass Harmonica
84
Pontieri, Soviet Animation, 150 and 165.
43
Bass drum and cymbal provide a constant 2/4 march beat at an allegro tempo.
The rest of the orchestra is heard sporadically with various figures and gestures. At
times it seems as if a coherent melody will develop but then this dissolves into
fragments. Example 2-15 contains a passage from 9:32 in the film during which a mass
of moving and unrecognizable creatures fall over each other in a quick burst. Next, an
assortment of dancers stand around a gigantic statue of a black hand holding a gold
coin. It seems as if the transformed citizens are worshipping the statue in some sort of
ceremony.
44
At this moment, the piano is played by striking the string with a mallet, creating
a more percussive and less piano-like sound. The tenor saxophone has triplets and
then a high trill on a G-sharp. The clarinet plays a fast, chromatic descending line and
then an accented, triplet figure that ends with a two-octave leap. Notice the variety of
sound created by only five different instruments in the span of three measures. The
full range of both woodwinds is used and the dynamic is always loud, with the
saxophone ending on a glissando to a punched and sforzando B-flat.
The clarinet and saxophone do demonstrate a pitch class set relationship. The
trichords that begin in the saxophone are inversionally related and share the same
(014) prime form. The chromatic descending line in m. 330 emphasizes the half-step
interval contained in this set. The final triplet in the clarinet also contains the same
intervallic relationships.
Example 2-16 shows the solo violin and contrabass part with percussion from
9:43 in the same scene. The corresponding film images are of several stick-like dancers
moving up and down, including one man with two heads. A female figure without a
face dances in a large cage. Obviously, the strings are presenting some extremes of
range and quick oscillations between high and low notes. Here also, the (014) set
defines the music’s character. The contrabass leaps down from C-sharp to D and then
up from G to F-sharp. These major sevenths and those in the violin are contained
within the set (they invert to half steps). The final triplets in this example have slightly
45
different prime forms but do exhibit the same major seventh or minor second
intervals.
An additional, interesting factor is how the metrical pulse is temporarily
undermined by these two parts. The C-sharp to D in the contrabass begins in sync with
the bass drum but then goes out of phase in its second and third iterations. For many
listeners the beat will be obscured. The violin has a quarter note triplet for three bars
46
which also conflicts with the percussion. Since a march is traditionally associated with
human movement, these moments of ambiguity in the meter may give the listener a
sense of unease.
The third grotesque scene in The Glass Harmonica begins at 12:29 when the
town’s citizens turn into beautiful people through the power of the new musician. This
young man, who appeared in the film’s opening, is seen climbing down a road from the
sky. He is carrying the glass harmonica and he walks to the tune of Schnittke’s theme
music for the film. The glass harmonica theme is recognizable from the one heard
previously, but unlike in the film’s beginning, it has been altered.
Various citizens’ faces appear: some are monstrous while others are made out of
fruit that resemble Arcimboldo paintings. Example 2-17 depicts one such citizen in a
window. The faces transform into beautiful humans, one by one. As each face changes,
the piano enters with a seven-note chord, shown in Example 2-18 with arrows. The
piano chords are jarring because they are accented loudly against the soft strings.
Additionally, they were not present in the same theme music earlier in the film.
These clusters contain the same pitches as the string chords below them but
with additional material. For instance, the cluster on the second beat of Example 18
shares F, A, and C with the strings but adds B-flat, D, E-flat, and G-flat. Notice how
similar the prime form of each cluster is. They all fit diatonically within the key of G
minor (when considering the G-flat as an enharmonic F-sharp). Each engulfs the
simpler F major, E-flat major, and D major harmonies of the glass harmonica theme.
47
The piano represents the last vestiges of a transformation away from the grotesque.
The dense and loud cluster chords give way to the melodious glass harmonica.
Example 2-17, Citizen’s face in a window, 13:13 in The Glass Harmonica

48
Example 2-18, Excerpt from The Glass Harmonica Suite, IV, mm. 51-53
Film Narrative and Polystylism
Schnittke’s polystylistic music for The Glass Harmonica complements the
disjunct plot and images. Two major themes in the narrative of the film, the
transcendent and the grotesque, are represented in different ways by the music. The
first communicates a sense of godly transcendence by referencing J. S. Bach – both by
appropriating aspects of Bach’s composition and by featuring the BACH cryptogram.
This music is tonal, metered, singable, and smooth. The theme of the grotesque is
49
represented by music that is inhuman in nature. At these moments, large leaps, loud
clusters, extremes of register, and other experimental procedures are prominent.
The relationship between modern and traditional compositional techniques is
simplistic but also has an extremely powerful effect on the musical narrative. The
contrast between tonality and atonality is not only one of consonance and dissonance.
The tonal moments directly reference Bach and when, for instance, the chorale is
repeated with added cluster chords, the listener can easily make a connection to a
process of transformation and transcendence.

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3. Serenade
After The Glass Harmonica and very shortly before Violin Sonata No. 2,
Schnittke composed the 10-minute Serenade for clarinet, violin, contrabass,
percussion, and piano (1968). It was written for the clarinetist Lev Mikhailov and his
ensemble: violinist Alexander Mel’nikov, bassist Rustan Gabdulin, pianist Boris
Berman, and percussionist Mark Pekarsky.85 These musicians premiered the piece at a
festival for contemporary music in Vilnius and Kaunas, Lithuania.86 They also played it
several times in Moscow but only in small, closed venues where it would escape wider
attention.
The musicians found the work to be innovative, especially in the way it
incorporated short quotations from famous compositions. Boris Berman recollected
his experience in a 2001 interview with Peter Schmelz:
We rehearsed and we had great fun, and of course it also had a lot of
unusual stuff...First of all the first movement which was written in
these little blocks of snatches of music, and we could vary it, and of
course the snatches of music, it was all from Schnittke’s movie music.
And then there was also playing inside of the piano. And another thing
which was quite novel at that time were the sudden interruptions of
the music by little quotes from Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto [and]
Violin Concerto, the Sonata Pathetique of Beethoven, and Coq d’Or of
Rimsky. And the idea was these things are appearing for a very short
time and appear simultaneously, so the audience doesn’t really have
time to figure out what they hear, just something definitely, painfully
85
Peter Schmelz, Listening, Memory, and the Thaw: Unofficial Music and Society in the Soviet Union,
1956-1974, (PhD diss., University of California, Berkley, 2002), 545-546.
86
51
familiar,...this was another kind of thing which I remember which

struck me as novel.87
Schnittke himself thought Serenade was a first step towards his Symphony No. 1. He
said that it was one of his “first polystylistic experiments, and in its technique…for
example the polyphony of tempos in the second movement…it already clearly
prepared the Symphony.”88
Serenade differs from Schnittke’s later polystylism in two substantial ways.
First, the piece’s triadic material is limited and never really exhibits extended tonal
function while his music after 1972 dwells on tonal mimicry. The Symphony No. 1, for
instance, is full of long (and short) tonal passages. The second movement begins with a
Handel-like concerto grosso, there are sections of waltz, can-can, and march music,
and the symphony ends with fourteen measures of Haydn’s “Farewell” symphony.89
Second, As mentioned earlier, Schnittke avoided these systemic approaches in his
composition after 1972.
Schmelz describes Serenade as a transitional piece that was a “bridge between
aleatory and polystylism that still contained serial moments.”90 He calls the
dodecaphony in Serenade a “crutch” that was necessary for Schnittke to help structure
his newly free use of aleatoric techniques, quotations, and allusions. Certainly the
piece features many aleatoric techniques and several distinct borrowings but the
87
Schmelz, “Listening, Memory, and the Thaw,” 547.
88
Dmitriy Shul’gin, Godi neizvestnosti Al 'freda Shnitke: besedis kompozitorom,
(Moscow: Deiovaya Liga, 1993), 49.
89
Tremblay, “Polystylism and Narrative Potential in the Music of Alfred Schnittke,” 42.
90
Schmelz, “Listening, Memory, and the Thaw,” 250-251.
52
dodecaphony in Serenade, while not strict, is more than simply a limited structural
device.
Example 3-1 shows five compositional techniques that I have identified in
Serenade: dodecaphony, temporal indeterminacy, pitch indeterminacy, quotation, and
stylistic allusion. In this chapter I will give an overview of Serenade and then focus on
individual techniques. I will show examples and offer comparisons to other music,
when appropriate. I do this in order to provide historical context for Schnittke’s
compositional practice. Finally, I will talk about the balance of techniques in Serenade.
Compositional Techniques Movements

Dodecaphony I, II, III
Temporal Indeterminacy I, III
Pitch Indeterminacy II, III
Quotation I, III
Stylistic Allusion III
Example 3-1, Chart of compositional techniques in Serenade
Overview of Serenade
Serenade’s first movement begins with a solo, fortississimo clarinet glissando
followed by the full ensemble in a clash of sounds. There is no discernable pulse and
each part is largely independent. Solo tubular bells intersperse the thick texture several
times before a short succession of statements from each instrument. The movement
ends with a final, loud block of fragments and then a fortissimo cluster on the bells
along with a high, pianissimo C#5 in the clarinet. This note is held out and slowly
crescendos into the next movement.

53
Movement two contrasts strongly with the first. It has a thin texture and a slow
tempo without meter. The clarinet plays throughout with piano accompaniment on a
variety of colorful effects. The other instruments enter sparingly for only a few
moments. The rhythmic density and dynamic increase and then subside before a final
crescendo into three, fff dissonant chords in the piano’s lower register.
The third movement is the longest and most varied. It begins with a short
introduction that alternates between bass drum with cymbal while the full ensemble
plays in between. Shortly thereafter, the pianist strums loudly up and down on the
piano strings. This creates a steady pulse, similar to the sound of brushes on a drum
set. The clarinet features prominently supported by a complementary violin line and
pizzicato bass.
This gives way to a quasi-return of the first movement’s fragments. The
instrumentalists enter one by one in a slow buildup of dynamic and texture. Eventually
a large climax is reached and the full ensemble continues to a short cadenza. The
cadenza begins with a solo in the tubular bells. This is followed by the full ensemble at
a soft dynamic accompanied by a constant drum beat. The texture eventually thins out
and the piece ends with a few notes from the contrabass and clarinet.
One: Dodecaphony
Dodecaphonic techniques appear in every movement of Serenade. As
mentioned in the first chapter, Nono’s 1964 visit inspired Schnittke to study twelve-tone
and serial procedures as seen in the music of Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern,
54
Alban Berg, Igor Stravinsky, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Pierre Boulez. Although he
later rejected serial approaches, the influence of these composers is evident in
Serenade. Schnittke manipulates a single tone row in Serenade, sometimes building it
up in a process of near completion, sometimes juxtaposing complete transformations,
and sometimes incorporating rhythmic aspects. Example 3-2 shows the dodecaphonic
pitch materials that appear in the piece.
I 9 I 10 I 4 I 0 I 7 I 6 I 5 I 3 I 2 I 8 I 1 I 11
P 9 9 10 4 0 7 6 5 3 2 8 1 11 R 9
P 8 8 9 3 11 6 5 4 2 1 7 0 10 R 8
P 2 2 3 9 5 0 11 10 8 7 1 6 5 R 2
P 6 6 7 1 9 4 3 2 0 11 5 10 8 R 6
P 11 11 0 6 2 9 8 7 5 4 10 3 1 R 11
P 0 0 1 7 3 10 9 8 6 5 11 4 2 R 0
P 1 1 2 8 4 11 10 9 7 6 0 5 3 R 1
P 3 3 4 10 6 1 0 11 9 8 2 7 5 R 3
P 4 4 5 11 7 2 1 0 10 9 3 8 6 R 4
P 10 10 11 5 1 8 7 6 4 3 9 2 0 R 10
P 5 5 6 0 8 3 2 1 11 10 4 9 7 R 5
P 7 7 8 2 10 5 4 3 1 0 6 11 9 R 7
RI 9 RI 10 RI 4 RI 0 RI 7 RI 6 RI 5 RI 3 RI 2 RI 8 RI 1 RI 11
Example 3-2, Matrix showing all permutations of Serenade’s tone row
The Serenade twelve-tone row is introduced in the first movement in
progressively larger fragments played by the tubular bells. The row is emphasized
because the bell part consists of solo breaks from the ensemble. At these points, R. 2, 4,
55
6, 8, and 10, the music is marked “senza tempo” and forte or louder. The first
interjection at R. 2 consists of three long notes: B, C, and F# or [11, 0, 6]. The second at
R. 4 is five notes: [0, 1, 7, 3, 10]. The third is seven: [6, 7, 1, 9, 4, 3, 2]. Example 3-3 shows
the full buildup highlighted on a nonstandard matrix consisting of only the prime and
retrograde forms of the tone row.
Interjections Matrix (Prime and Retrograde Only)

P 11 P 0 P 6 P 2 P 9 P 8 P 7 P 5 P 4 P 10 P 3 P 1
First - R. 2 P 11 11 0 6 2 9 8 7 5 4 10 3 1 R 11
Second - R. 4 P 0 0 1 7 3 10 9 8 6 5 11 4 2 R 0
Third - R. 6 P 6 6 7 1 9 4 3 2 0 11 5 10 8 R 6
Fourth - R. 8 P 2 2 3 9 5 0 11 10 8 7 1 6 4 R 2
Fifth - R. 10 P 9 9 10 4 0 7 6 5 3 2 8 1 11 R 9
P 8 8 9 3 11 6 5 4 2 1 7 0 10 R 8
P 7 7 8 2 10 5 4 3 1 0 6 11 9 R 7
P 5 5 6 0 8 3 2 1 11 10 4 9 7 R 5
P 4 4 5 11 7 2 1 0 10 9 3 8 6 R 4
P 10 10 11 5 1 8 7 6 4 3 9 2 0 R 10
P 3 3 4 10 6 1 0 11 9 8 2 7 5 R 3
P 1 1 2 8 4 11 10 9 7 6 0 5 3 R 1
R 11 R 0 R 6 R 2 R 9 R 8 R 7 R 5 R 4 R 10 R 3 R 1
Example 3-3, Matrix showing row segments in Serenade
As Example 3-3 clarifies, each twelve-tone interjection begins (but does not
complete) a prime row from the matrix. The full statement of the row is revealed at
rehearsal number 10. Here, as circled in Example 3-4, the series consists of [9, 10, 4, 0,
7, 6, 5, 3, 2, 8, 1, 11] (including the pizz. B in the contrabass at R. 11). Notice in Example

56
3-3 how the first pitch class of each interjection (going down vertically) forms the
beginning of the P11 row [11, 0, 6, 2, 9, etc.] Additionally, the final pitch class of the full
series is 11, revealed at R. 11. These features show twelve-tone row manipulation and a
slow procedure of completion as the tone row is introduced.
Example 3-4, Serenade, Mvt. I, R. 10 and 11, row P9: [9,10,4,0,7,6,5,3,2,8,1,11]
Movement two even more strongly incorporates twelve-tone material. It begins
with a slow statement in the clarinet of the P1 Serenade twelve-tone row (same as from
the beginning), starting on C#. Example 3-5 shows the first two measures of movement
two with pitch class numbers above their corresponding notes in the clarinet. Notes
that are part of the row are circled in red.

57
Example 3-5, Serenade, Mvt. II, R. 1 and 2
Here the long notes are almost all part of the series with the exception of pitch
classes 10 and 7. The piano also mirrors many of these pitches. The grace notes
ornament the dodecaphonic melody. In the first measure especially, C# appears again
and again despite the series having progressed beyond that pitch class. The repetition
of C# as a momentary pitch center also demonstrates that the row is freely expressed.
Likewise, in later statements some row members are missing from otherwise complete
series.
After one full statement of the I4 (inverted) row form at R. 4, both parts increase
in rhythmic activity. The contrabass and violin enter and exit with short segments of
the series. Eventually the energy level builds to R. 5 where all parts trill on different
pitches. The clarinet continues with a dense and leaping line that is based on the P0
row transposition. The contrabass has an unrelated pizzicato chromatic rise and fall
while the piano plays a few sforzando [0, 1, 5, 6] chords. The final ff chords of the
movement are not dodecaphonic.

58
The clarinet, violin, and contrabass parts in the first measure of movement
three are shown in Example 3-6. Here the violin plays the P1 form of the Serenade
twelve-tone series and the clarinet has its retrograde. The contrabass is also playing a
twelve-tone aggregate but one that is a series of ascending perfect fourths. Chromatic
completion melodies like these appear sporadically throughout. Interestingly, at R. 22
the exact music from the beginning of movement one is repeated but this time without
the tubular bells and their row-based pitches.
Example 3-6, Serenade, Mvt. III, R. 1
At the very end of the piece there is one last and more complex serial procedure.
The whole ensemble enters at R. 24 with a constant eighth-note pulse in the
percussion. The first note of each rhythmic group is a note from the P1 transposition of
the Serenade row: [1, 2, 8, 4, 11, 10, 9, 7, 6, 0, 5, 3]. In Example 3-7 the first four of these
pitch classes in the clarinet part are labeled. Each part begins on the C# and continues
59
the same series. The note heads with x’s are indicated to be played without pitch, as
seen in the clarinet. The other instruments have parts without note heads. The violin
and contrabass play with the back of their bows while the pianist strums rhythmically
on the inside of the piano.
The serialism in this section is created through the combination of the twelve-
tone row with rhythmic groupings consisting of the same number of notes as the
current row pitch class. So, for instance, the series in the clarinet begins 1, 2, 8, and 4
and the motivic groupings begin with a single note, rests, and then two consecutive
notes, rests, and then eight, etc. The clarinet’s motivic grouping pattern matches its
pitch classes in this way but the other instruments have groupings based on other row
forms. The violin’s motivic grouping is an inversion of P1, the bass has a retrograde of
P1, and the piano has a retrograde inversion. All of these instruments play the same
pitch series P1, while the motivic grouping and rhythmic partitions depend upon other
60
formations of the P1 row, including inversion, retrograde, and retrograde inversion.
The actual note lengths are not serialized, only the number of notes in a grouping. The
movement ends after each instrument has played one full iteration through the twelve-
tone series P1 and its own assigned rhythmic series.
Although Schnittke was not writing strictly comprehensive twelve-tone music in
Serenade, the piece shows evidence of tone row completion as a compositional
process, various row transformations used as melodic material, and the extension of
matrix and row logic to condition motivic groupings and phrasing. The same row
appears as a unifying device throughout every movement.
Two: Temporal Indeterminacy
The second compositional technique, temporal indeterminacy, occurs in
movements I and III. The beginning of Serenade, as shown in Example 3-8, has a
distinct character. The music consist of fragments, delineated by brackets in the score.
Some are highly chromatic and linear, others have short repetitions, and some feature
triads and recognizable chord progressions. It is worth noting that a few are similar to
the “grotesque” music in The Glass Harmonica.

61
Example 3-8, Beginning of Serenade, Mvt. I, R. 1
The score contains instructions for performance. Schnittke indicates that “all
the instrumentalists play independently of one another.”91 The performers make short
pauses between the bracketed groups at their own discretion. The durations above
each fragment, given in seconds, indicate estimates of length. In Serenade, the
musicians continue from fragment to fragment until they hear the bells, beginning for
the first time at R. 2. At that point, they immediately cease to play. If a performer
reaches the end of their material before the bells enter then they begin again from the
first fragment. There is no tempo coordination between the parts and despite all being
in simple meter, no pulse emerges. Each performance will have a different sound
depending on the tempos and pause lengths chosen made by the performers.
91
Alfred Schnittke, Serenade (Wien: Universal Edition, 1972), 1.
62
A slightly different kind of temporal indeterminacy occurs midway through the
third movement of Serenade. Example 3-9 shows a series of fragments at R. 13 when
the dynamic has just reached mezzo forte. At R. 14 the contrabass enters and the music
becomes forte and louder. The technique here is a little different from that in
movement I: no tubular bell interruptions and no “looping” of units. Otherwise the
fragments have similar content and are connected by performer-determined pauses.
The first fragments are mostly stepwise but as the music progresses these give way to
more rapid single-note repetitions, glissandi, and trills (seen at R. 14). Eventually each
part contains similar material: large leaps, triplet rhythms, and dissonant, repeating
chords.
Example 3-9, Serenade, Mvt. III, R. 13-14

63
One last example of temporal indeterminacy is shown in the tubular bells in
Example 3-10. Here the performer may determine both the length of pause between
fragments and the pitches played. Stem lengths of the notes implies a sort of relative
pitch but the score is marked “ad libitum.” Rhythmically, most of the measures contain
32nd note values with a couple triplets and 16th notes.
Many twentieth-century composers experimented with indeterminate tempos
and pauses. Some even left the ordering of musical phrases up to the performer, such
as the mobile form in Stockhausen’s Klavierstück XI (1956).92 But Alan Hovhaness’s use
of temporal indeterminacy most closely matches Schnittke’s in Serenade. Example 3-11
demonstrates how a typical “senza misura” passage from Hovhaness’s 1959 Symphony
No. 6 works. Here each instrument has a repeated, independent part and each plays “at
his own individual speed.” Hovhaness employed this technique first in his Lousadzak
92
Paul Griffiths, “Aleatory,” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed
October 1, 2015.
64
of 1944 and then in many other pieces. The key characteristic of the procedure is that
short patterns occur in different parts without coordination of tempo.93
Example 3-11, Symphony No. 6, op. 173, Alan Hovhaness
93
Arnold Rosner and Vance Wolverton, “Hovhaness, Alan,” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online.
Oxford University Press, accessed March 23, 2015.
65
Three: Pitch Indeterminacy
Temporal indeterminacy gives each performance Serenade a substantial degree
of variance in terms of tempo and pause length. There is another aspect of chance
introduced in the piano at the beginning of movement II: pitch indeterminacy. See in
Example 3-12 how the treble piano line at R. 1 consists of a long, curved line. The score
instructs the pianist to play a soft tremolo with fingers on the piano strings. The pitch
contour is indicated graphically through the rise and fall of the line. This notation is
indeterminate because of its imprecision: the curves of the line do not fall on exact
pitches. The performer is left to interpret the exact pitches of the glissando.
Example 3-12, Serenade, Mvt. II, R. 1

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Another occurrence appears at the end of the movement, shown in Example 3-
13. Here, the pianist scratches the strings with his or her fingernails in a back and forth
motion. Pitch is again indicated by a long line, but now in a saw tooth pattern. Could
Schnittke have notated this figure with traditional note heads and glissando lines?
Probably, but the graphic score leaves the decision of exact notes up to the performer
while giving a gestural representation of the relative range of the rising and falling
glissando.
Example 3-13, Serenade, Mvt. II, R. 6
One last instance of pitch indeterminacy is shown in the piano strumming in
Example 3-14. The performer is instructed to play a “rhythmical glissando (no pedal)
over the strings of the lower and lowest register” with any hard object.94 The middle
point of the two glissandi appears to be D3 but the exact upper and lower ranges aren’t
94
Alfred Schnittke, Serenade (Wien: Universal Edition, 1972), 8.
67
known. Additionally, the musician makes the choice of what kind of object to strum the
piano with.
For comparison, see Example 3-15, which shows the same technique in
Penderecki’s Polymorphia from 1961. This piece for 48 strings is an early example of
the composer’s exploration of “noise as sound as music.”95 Penderecki pioneered many
of the practices for notating sound masses, clusters, and microtonal effects that
became popular in the second half of the 20th century. The graphical glissandi in
Serenade closely mirror the style from Polymorphia: single lines placed on a musical
staff. Additionally, other indeterminate practices such as missing note heads and
blocks of sound are shared between the two pieces. By composing music with
95
Peggy Monastra, “Krzysztof Penderecki’s Polymorphia and Fluorescences,” Music History from
Primary Sources: A Guide to the Moldenhauer Archives, ed. Jon Newsom and Alfred Mann (Washington:
Library of Congress, 2000), 1.
68
indeterminate pitch, Schnittke is putting his music in a dialogue with avant-garde,
sound-mass composition.
Example 3-15, Polymorphia, Penderecki, R. 11-12
Four: Quotation
Serenade features two prominent quotations from well-known pieces, both
identified in the Boris Berman quote: Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and
Beethoven’s Sonata Pathétique.96 Both excerpts are very short and appear close to each
other in the third movement.
Examples 3-18 and 3-19 show that the first measure of R. 17 is a quotation from
m. 61 of the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1. The piano has
arpeggios upwards on a series of D-flat major chords. The other instruments also begin
playing triads, the violin on D major, the clarinet on E-flat major, and the contrabass
96
69
on E major seven. Notice that only the piano is excerpted. The rest of the ensemble
plays a new accompaniment that, while triadic, strongly conflicts with the D-flat key of
the original.

70
Example 3-17, Tchaikovsky, Piano Concerto No. 1, mm. 60-61, key of D-flat
The Beethoven quote occurs at R. 19 (Examples 3-20 and 3-21) in a three-
measure piano excerpt from the first movement of Piano Sonata No. 8, “Sonata
Pathétique.” The quotation is a version of the movement’s main motive as stated in
measure 136. Schnittke has paired the excerpt with his own accompaniment that
mirrors the diminished quality of the Beethoven chords but is also much more
chromatic than the original piece.

71
Example 3-19, Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 8, mm. 135-138
Both of these quotations occur during the return of the fragments that begin
Serenade. The fragmented section at the piece’s beginning included a series of tubular
bells interjections. This time, the two quotations take the place of the bells. While both
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excerpts are tonal, Schnittke has written new accompaniments that effectively obscure
any tonal function by quickly progressing through all twelve pitch classes.
Five: Stylistic Allusion
The fifth technique is unique to the beginning of movement three: stylistic
allusion. The main style referenced at this moment is jazz music, or the style of music
originating in African American music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.97 To be
more specific, I consider Serenade to exhibit modern jazz or bebop of the 1940s
because of its fast tempo and experimental nature.98 Nonetheless, the most distinct
characteristics of this style are common in almost all jazz music. These include a
percussive beat with a constant pulse, a walking bass line, and a syncopated solo
melody.
Referring back to Example 3-14, it is clear that the piano provides a constant
eighth-note pulse, acting like a bass drum and ride cymbal groove. This is the longest
section of music in Serenade that can be “tapped to” continuously. At the same time,
Example 3-14 shows how often the meter changes – back and forth between 3/4 and
2/4. Frequent changes, including to 1/4, 3/8, 7/8, and 9/8, continue until R. 6 when 2/4
prevails. Even when the metrical accent isn’t clear the percussion never loses its down
and up beat pattern as shown in Example 3-22. Here the placement of the sixteenth-
note cymbal hits do not agree with the 2/4 meter but the sense of pulse is never evaded.
97
Mervyn Cooke, Jazz, (London: Thames and Hudson, 1999), 47-50.
98
James Lincoln Collier, "Jazz (i)," The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, 2nd ed., Ed. Barry Kernfeld, Grove
Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed February 8, 2016.
73
Starting at R. 3 the contrabass begins a pizzicato series of regular eighth notes
that lasts for the rest of the section. This kind of “walking” line is common to many
types of jazz and generally features both stepwise motion and the freedom to depart
from the main harmony.99 Additionally, there is often a rise and fall contour. Example
3-23 contains a representative excerpt of the bass line from R. 5, midway through the
jazz section. The pitch collection here is actually quite limited in comparison to the
twelve-tone material in the clarinet. But despite not being highly chromatic, it is also
not diatonic. The real character of a walking bass is created by the constant rhythm
and timbre of the contrabass.
The last jazz-like characteristic of this passage is the repeated syncopation in the
clarinet – functioning perhaps as a jazz soloist. In general, the clarinet avoids entering
99
Gunther Schuller, “Walking bass,” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press,
accessed November 12, 2015.
74
on a downbeat. Example 3-24 presents an excerpt from R. 6 in the movement. The line
is highly syncopated and placed in a high and prominent range in the texture. The
quick repetitions from G to A-flat simulate the sort of improvisatory character that a
jazz piece would have. When the violin enters (not shown) it places generally longer
notes as an accompaniment. Only when the clarinet drops out does the violinist receive
more melodic material.
Technical Balance in Serenade
The preceding analysis demonstrated the presence of five primary techniques in
Serenade: dodecaphony, temporal indeterminacy, pitch indeterminacy, quotation, and
stylistic allusion. A single tone row appears in all three movements but is also
manipulated in various ways, demonstrating that while not strict, dodecaphonic
techniques are integral to the piece. A number of passages are constructed to allow
independent tempos between the performers and pauses of unspecified length, both
processes of temporal indeterminacy. Pitch indeterminacy appears throughout
Serenade, often in the form of freely-drawn glissandi but also as various gestural
figures. Two tonal quotations stand out against the largely modern and atonal music
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but because of length and context do not have real tonal function. Finally, a long
section in movement III exhibits three common stylistic characteristics of jazz music.
Considering the balance of these techniques it is clear that the twentieth century
dominates. Triadic fragments are few and short and always set against chromatic and
dissonant music in other parts. While this piece was written four years after Schnittke
negatively commented on dodecaphony,100 it does seem that he was still engaged
deeply with the technique.
100
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4. Violin Sonata No. 2 (Quasi Una Sonata)
Alfred Schnittke wrote his Violin Sonata No. 2 in 1968, not long after Serenade. It
was premiered on February 4th, 1969, in Kazan, then part of the Tatar Autonomous
Soviet Socialist Republic.101 Mark Lubotsky and Lyubov Yedlina, both friends of
Schnittke, played violin and piano respectively. In fact, the composer dedicated the
piece to the two when it was published several years later.102 Schnittke released an
orchestrated version in 1987, attesting to its popularity among his early works.
Violin Sonata No. 2 was well-received by the official Russian press. The critic
Marina Nest’yeva wrote in the 1970 edition of Sovetskaya Muzika that “the second
violin sonata by A. Schnittke is in our opinion a significant step on the evolutionary
path of the artistic consciousness of the composer.”103 The composer Yuriy Butsko said
that the piece demonstrated “new qualities of the personality of the composer” and it
marked a turning point away from Schnittke’s works of the middle 1960s in which he
“even lost for a time... the lapidary and emotional brightness of his early work.”104
The sonata has several notable motivic aspects. Foremost are the use of a
repeated G-minor chord and its alterations and the BACH (B-flat, A, C, B-natural)
motive in many forms. These two ideas are woven throughout what is an otherwise
101
Ibid., 255.
102
Dmitri Smirnov and Guy Stockton, “Marginalia quasi una Fantasia: On the Second Violin Sonata by
Alfred Schnittke,” Tempo New Series 220 (2002), 2.
103
104
Ibid., 555.
77
highly heterogeneous piece. Violin Sonata No. 2 has a slightly greater emphasis on
triadic patterns than Serenade. Schnittke borrowed directly and indirectly from several
Romantic-era composers.105 This material is placed alongside or against various
aleatoric and atonal music. Much of Violin Sonata No. 2 is organized around particular
pitch collections, often highly chromatic and twelve-tone.
A clue to the form of Violin Sonata No. 2 is contained in its interesting subtitle:
“Quasi Una Sonata.” Most obviously, the title relates to Beethoven’s “Sonata quasi una
Fantasia,” (the Moonlight Sonata). This piece famously blurred the lines between
Classical period sonata form and a more improvisatory fantasy. As evidenced by his
own commentary, Schnittke was likely referring to Beethoven by using the words
“quasi una sonata” to indicate how his piece both used sonata form principles and
eroded them at the same time:
This piece is a borderline case of a sonata form. This form is

challenged and at the same time appears not to materialize—by then
the sonata is already over. It is like Fellini’s “8 ½.” The film sees itself
as a narrative on how difficult and impossible it is to make a film. And
they don’t make the film, but in the meantime the film has already
developed and come to exist. For me this sonata is so similar.106
Secondly, Paul Westwood has noted a connection to Theodor Adorno’s 1963
compilation of essays on modern music entitled “Quasi Una Fantasia.” Westwood
argues that Schnittke had read Adorno’s essay “Berg’s Discoveries in Compositional
105
106
Alfred Schnittke, Alfred Schnittke Zum 60 Geburtstag: Eine Festschrift (Hamburg: Hans Sikorski,
1994), 118-19.
78
Technique” from the book, in which Adorno describes new composers as working in
“areas” instead of with themes and theme groups. The idea is that these modern
composers move from area to area without needing a specific plan, hierarchy, or logic.
Westwood thinks that the compositional impetus behind the Violin Sonata No. 2
perfectly exhibits these characteristics and Schnittke used the subtitle “Quasi una
Sonata” as an acknowledgment of or a response to Adorno.107
Schmelz says that Violin Sonata No. 2 is Schnittke’s most important piece from
the 1960s because of its expanded stylistic vocabulary and the degree of mimetic
content it contains.108 He describes the piece as inherently dramatic even though it has
no explicit program, partially because of the shared use of the BACH motif with The
Glass Harmonica. This is only somewhat true because the motif is actually
reharmonized and used much differently in Violin Sonata No. 2. Additionally, although
the piece features much less dodecaphony than Serenade, it is prominently unified by
transformations of the BACH pitches as a sort of motivic atonality. This process is
certainly quite free, but it is still a systematic procedure of pitch manipulation.
I have identified five primary compositional strategies in Quasi una Sonata:
dodecaphony, motivic atonality, pitch indeterminacy, quotation, and stylistic allusion.
Four of these are shared with Serenade while the other is new: motivic atonality. As in
107
Paul Westwood, “Schnittke’s Violin Sonata No. 2 as an Open Commentary on the Composition of
Modern Music,” Seeking the Soul: The Music of Alfred Schnittke, ed. George Odam (London: Guildhall
School of Music and Drama, 2002), 47.
108
79
the previous piece, the triadic aspects are confined to short quotations and distinct but
static patterns. In this chapter I will give a descriptive overview of the piece, analyze
excerpts representative of each of the five compositional strategies that I have
identified, and comment on the overall use of techniques.
Overview
Violin Sonata No. 2 has the same heterogeneous character as Serenade. Both
were composed in the same year (1968) and share a similar mix of surprising textural,
timbral, rhythmic, pitch, and dynamic changes. The piece begins with an sfff G-minor
chord and then a series of unmetered silences and outbursts. The silences are of
varying lengths and include rests, fermatas, commas, and notated pause durations.
The outbursts consist of dense, vertical chords and clusters along with a number of
short figures. At m. 45 the piano begins a semi-regular chromatic pattern in 2/4. The
violin plays leaping sevenths and other dissonant intervals beyond an octave.
The energy level lowers at m. 93 with the BACH motive harmonized with a
chorale-style piano accompaniment. This leads into a long section of violin glissandi
and series of single piano notes, both based on a twelve-tone row. The two instruments
play back-and-forth until the 2/4 rhythmic pattern returns, but now in the violin with
leaps in the piano. A long ad libitum passage of chromatic tremolos follows and then
develops into a slow, chromatic descent in the violin.
The chorale returns two more times, interspersed with quotations (Berg,
Beethoven, and Wagner) and other apparently freely-composed material based on the
80
BACH pitches. The music increases in dynamic and tempo at m. 313 with 16th and 32nd-
note chromatic lines. An fff G-minor chord in the piano punctures the chromaticism. It
is played once, later twice, five times, and then in a seemingly endless pounding (28
times and later 46 times). The violin continues above with rapid and dissonant 2nds,
7ths, 9ths, and their octave equivalents. Finally, at m. 373 the piano ends with a loud,
cluster chord. The violin finishes the piece with a cadenza-like solo and final statement
of the BACH pitches that die away in a long diminuendo.
One: Dodecaphony
Violin Sonata No. 2 contains a few prominent instances of twelve-tone
technique, though not with the frequency found in Serenade. The earlier piece
featured the same row and transformations in every movement. Most of Quasi una
Sonata’s dodecaphony appears in one main section in the piece and the row forms are
transformed but not extended to provide a logic for any process of completion or
additional rhythmic relationship. Other twelve-tone statements function more like
quotations because they are placed against unrelated material.
The longest section of dodecaphonic music is shown in Example 4-1: mm. 101-
120. I have annotated the score with the various row forms, red brackets used for the
violin and green for the piano. All of the pitch material is related except for the piano
right hand which contains 32nd-note groups in an extremely high register.
The violin begins a tone row with the C# after the senza tempo in m. 102 which I
label as the prime row, P1: [1, 11, 0, 10, 7, 9, 8, 6, 5, 2, 3, 4]. (Note that PC 11 is actually
81
missing in the music in this first statement). This is followed by an inversion of the
row, I4, then back to P1, and continuing through different prime and inversion forms.
Of special note is the fact that every statement overlaps by one pitch class with the
previous entry; perhaps to preserve this dovetailing only the P1, P10, I1, and I4 forms
are used.
The logic of the piano part is the same but with retrograde and retrograde-
inversions. It starts with the RI4 row: [1, 2, 3, 0, 11, 9, 8, 10, 7, 5, 6, 4] in m. 102 and is
followed by a chain of RI4, RI1, R1, and R10 row forms. See Example 4-2 for a clear
representation of which pitch classes appear in this passage. As the matrix makes
clear, the outermost rows that Schnittke uses lend themselves to the overlap of
common starting and ending pitch classes.
Measures 101-120 are unique in repeated statements of rows clearly derived
from the same matrix. Other instances in the piece are more akin to quotations. The
first of such begins right at m. 121, as shown in Example 4-3. This row bears almost no
relation to anything in the previous nineteen measures, except that it is also missing
the pitch class 11, shown in parenthesis. Interestingly, this row’s first four pitch classes
are a transposition of the BACH motive - [10, 9, 0, 11].

82
Example 4-1, Violin Sonata No. 2, mm. 101-120

83
I 1 I 11 I 0 I 10 I 7 I 9 I 8 I 6 I 5 I 2 I 3 I 4
P 1 1 11 0 10 7 9 8 6 5 2 3 4 R 1
P 3 3 1 2 0 9 11 10 8 7 4 5 6 R 3
P 2 2 0 1 11 8 10 9 7 6 3 4 5 R 2
P 4 4 2 3 1 10 0 11 9 8 5 6 7 R 4
P 7 7 5 6 4 1 3 2 0 11 8 9 10 R 7
P 5 5 3 4 2 11 1 0 10 9 6 7 8 R 5
P 6 6 4 5 3 0 2 1 11 10 7 8 9 R 6
P 8 8 6 7 5 2 4 3 1 0 9 10 11 R 8
P 9 9 7 8 6 3 5 4 2 1 10 11 0 R 9
P 0 0 10 11 9 6 8 7 5 4 1 2 3 R 0
P 11 11 9 10 8 5 7 6 4 3 0 1 2 R 11
P 10 10 8 9 7 4 6 5 3 2 11 0 1 R 10
RI 1 RI 11 RI 0 RI 10 RI 7 RI 9 RI 8 RI 6 RI 5 RI 2 RI 3 RI 4
Example 4-2, Violin Sonata No. 2, matrix used in mm. 101-120 highlighted
Example 4-3, Violin Sonata No. 2, mm. 121-124, violin part
As it turns out, there are two other twelve-tone statements later in the piece that
begin with the exact BACH pitches (B-flat, A, C, and B-natural). The first occurs at m.
196 as the top line in a chorale texture in the piano (discussed later). The second also
appears in the piano as staccato eighth notes at m. 214, shown in Example 4-4. Both of
84
these rows are transpositionally related to the one at measure 121.
A final example of dodecaphony in Violin Sonata No. 2 is also a reference to
Berg’s Violin Concerto (1935). The pizzicato violin part in Example 4-5 contains this
rising line that mimics the first row statement at measure 15 in Berg’s piece. Example
4-6 shows the original part, also for solo violin. Obviously Schnittke’s quotation is much
altered from the original and is in fact not even a set of twelve unique pitch classes.
Nonetheless, its starting pitches, rising line, and chromatic character are compelling
evidence to connect the two pieces.

85
Example 4-6, Berg, Violin Concerto, mm. 15-20, solo violin
Two: Motivic Atonality
I use the term motive atonality to refer to a type of freely atonal music that
features small motivic cells (pitch-class sets). This style of composition is associated
with the pre-twelve-tone music of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern and also with other
86
composers such as Bartók, Ives, Stravinsky, and Varèse.109 Essentially, motivic atonality
involves the reoccurring appearance of pitch-class patterns that are neither tonal nor
dodecaphonic/serial.
Bela Bartók’s String Quartet No. 4 (1928) is a well-known and relevant example
of the use of motivic cells. This piece departs from traditional major and minor keys,
instead featuring both a high degree of chromaticism and the incorporation of whole-
tone, pentatonic, and octatonic scales.110 George Perle was the first to classify three
important motivic cells in Bartók’s string quartets, which he labeled x, y, and z and
organized according to prime form111 (shown in Example 4-7). Perle identified these
cells melodically and harmonically, appearing either individually or in combination.
For instance, Example 4-8 shows two instances of cell x at the beginning of String
Quartet No. 4. The motive is introduced both melodically and in a combination of two
voices.
Example 4-7, George Perle’s motivic cells in Bartók’s string quartets
109
Paul Lansky, et al., “Atonality,” Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press, accessed March 3, 2016.
110
Elliott Antokoletz, The Music of Béla Bartók: A Study of Tonality and Progression in Twentieth-
Century Music, (University of California Press, 1984), 138–203.
111
George Perle, “Symmetrical Formations in the String Quartets of Béla Bartók,” Music Review 16 (1955):
300-312.
87
Example 4-8, Cell x in Bartók, String Quartet No. 4, I, mm. 1-2112
Violin Sonata No. 2’s entirely chromatic BACH motive (B-flat, A, C, B-natural) is
also a member of the cell x (0123) set. Although the exact BACH pitch classes are
obviously important to create the acrostic reference to J.S. Bach, looking closely
through the piece reveals a considerable amount of pitch material based on more
generalized chromatic intervals of the (0123) tetrachord. The first instance of the set is
shown in Example 4-9, well before the BACH pitches are introduced. Together, the
chords contain pitch classes 8, 9, 10, and 11. The two minor ninths in the violin are
characteristic of the kind of dissonant expression that is a part of the (0123) set. The
set’s position is also important: at the beginning of the piece shortly after the
reoccurring G-minor triad. The set appears again at m. 96, now as a group of minor
seconds in the violin (Example 4-10). The D, E-flat, and C-sharp pairs hint at the
112
Miguel Roig-Francoli, Understanding Post-Tonal Music, (New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 2007), 45.
88
chromatic character of (0123) but the full set is not completed until the sounding of
pitch classes 4 and 5 in m. 98, where the motive is then stated twice.
Example 4-11 demonstrates an even more intense integration of (0123) into the
piece. This passage is from the beginning of a long and unmetered section featuring
back and forth statements between the violin and piano. Every gesture articulates a
(0123) cell. More interesting is the fact that only three sets are used: the BACH pitches,
the tetrachord transposed up four semitones (T4), and the one up eight semitones (T8).
89
In the example, I have indicated which sets use the actual BACH pitches and which are
related by transpositions. Notice that the three sets appear in an orderly cycle over and
over. There is some interesting balance here in that the intervals of transposition are
always the same. Therefore, the twelve-tone aggregate is generated after every third
set.
Example 4-11, Violin Sonata No. 2, beginning of m. 178

90
There are many more instances of the (0123) set in Violin Sonata No. 2. It is
seemingly the most pervasive idea in the piece. Its usage suggests a stylistic connection
to free atonal music, especially that by Bartók, that exhibits the same kind of motivic,
cell-based composition.
Three: Pitch Indeterminacy
Just as in Serenade, Violin Sonata No. 2 contains several types of indeterminate
notation, indicated by special graphics on the score and often with written
performance instructions. Example 4-12 shows two cluster chords at m. 14 in the
piano. The short cluster in the bass is followed by a high one between B-flat4 and A5.
The performer is directed to “gradually release keys of the cluster,” mirroring the
upward slope on the staff. This passage is unmetered and thus the rate of release and
exact range of the lower cluster is not specified.
Example 4-12, Violin Sonata No. 2, m. 14, piano

91
Another form of pitch indeterminacy is shown in Example 4-13. Here, in the
second half of m. 92 the violin is instructed to play a “free note progression
accelerating to the highest note.” The last eight pitches, with x note heads, are chosen
by the performer. The feathered, or sloping, beam of the note group is an indication of
accelerating note values (shorter and shorter).
Example 4-13, Violin Sonata No. 2, second half of m. 92
The freely curving glissandi from Serenade appear again in Quasi una Sonata
and, as pictured previously in Example 4-1, are even more prominent. Another similar
glissando at m. 124 ends a solo phrase. The piano drops out of the texture at m. 121 and
the dynamic reaches ppp as the violin plays a slow, chromatic line that extends to its
highest range. It ends with the faint glissando in Example 4-14 beginning on A#7 and
moving up and down before fading upward into nothingness.

92
See Example 4-15 for one last and unusual indeterminate figure. The wave-like
drawing in the score is marked “ad libitum passage with both hands executing (in slow
alteration) a chromatic tremolo within the range of the cluster.” The music is scored in
four staves for piano and marked “Cadenza.” The extra staves are needed because the
tremolo reaches from the very top of the piano’s range to the very bottom. The hands
alternate while playing small clusters that glide up or down, following the path
indicated. The tremolo clusters begin again in the second system from the very highest
notes and ascend in nine little tremolo groups before a final ascent and fade to ppp.
93
Example 4-15, Violin Sonata No. 2, m. 179
Four: Quotation
There are two pseudo-quotations in Violin Sonata No. 2. Both have been altered
from their original source but are still recognizable. The first is a quotation from
Webern’s Symphony, op. 21.113 It occurs at m. 209 in Violin Sonata No. 2, as shown in
Example 4-16. Here the violin begins a fugue-like passage of constant eighth notes
which alternate in pairs of two minor seconds or major sevenths, thereby representing
113
Dmitri Smirnov and Guy Stockton, “Marginalia quasi una Fantasia: On the Second Violin Sonata by
Alfred Schnittke,” Tempo New Series 220 (2002): 10.
94
the BACH (0123) prime form. The original part, shown in Example 4-17, begins the
second variation of mvt. II in the French horn of Webern’s symphony. This line has the
same rhythm and alternation of interval pairs but the sevenths are not present and the
exact pitches are different.
Example 4-16, Violin Sonata No. 2, mm. 209-211,
Example 4-17, Webern, Symphony op. 21, Mvt. II, mm. 20-26
95
The second quotation is shown in Example 4-18 at m. 246 of Violin Sonata No.
2.114 These four measures, which repeat several times come from the beginning of
Beethoven’s Variations and Fugue in E-flat Major, op. 35., Example 4-19. The Schnittke
example contains the rhythm, dynamic, and repeated B-flat pitches but has an altered
bass. The new pitches, of course, make up the BACH cryptogram. These two quotations
are quite similar to their source material but each has been altered to incorporate
Schnittke’s BACH motive.
Example 4-19, Beethoven, Variations and Fugue in E-flat Major, m. 9-12
114
Ibid., 4.
96
Stylistic Allusion
Violin Sonata No. 2 also includes several distinctive stylistic allusions. They
consist of the repeated G-minor chord and related chords, three chorale-style passages
that harmonize the BACH motive, and two measures in the style of Brahms.
The G-minor chord that begins the piece is shown in Example 4-20. This opening
is followed by another triadic but more dissonant polychord, Fm7 plus A-flatm7. Both
of these sonorities appear throughout Quasi una Sonata and always with the same
register, loud dynamic, and short duration. They are always played alone, often against
very atonal music and never placed in a traditional harmonic context. The only
development of the idea occurs at the end of the piece as shown in Example 4-21. Here
both chords are repeated in a seemingly endless succession while the violin plays
above with totally unrelated pitch material. If the G-minor chord can be heard as a
pitch center it is because of both sheer repetition and its prominent placement at the
beginning and end of the piece.

97
In a sense then, the G-minor chord is a stylistic allusion to the tonal leitmotif.115
It is especially distinctive in comparison to the largely dissonant and atonal character
of the rest of Violin Sonata No. 2. Because the chord is rarely altered and isn’t used in a
functional way, it very much like the reoccurrence of leitmotif, which is traditionally
short and always recognizable.
115
Ibid., 4.
98
As shown earlier, the BACH motive or its transpositions appears in many forms
throughout Violin Sonata No. 2. One of these is as the melody of a chorale-style
harmonization that is played by the piano at mm. 93, 196, and 205. Example 4-22
99
contains the second of these statements. The texture, slow tempo, smooth voice
leading, BACH motive, and G-minor chord recall The Glass Harmonica theme
(reprinted in Example 4-23).
Example 4-23, The Glass Harmonica Suite, I, mm. 1-9

100
But despite these similarities, the Quasi una Sonata example is very different from
the film music. The first two chords in the right hand seem functional: G minor to D
major with added notes in the bass. The third chord, a D half-diminished seventh with G
bass, no longer makes sense in a traditional context. The passage continues with a series
of five-note chords all sharing the (01369) prime form and exhibiting chromatic voice
leading. From there the bass moves down, the soprano goes up, and there is a cadential
movement from D7 to G with added D-flat in the bass. This temporary sense of tonic
disappears when the melodic line continues to an A-flat and the bass jumps down to C
(also coinciding with the entrance of the violin).
The bass and soprano sound so complementary in this progression because they
are exact retrogrades of one another. In fact, both are twelve-tone rows. The inner voices
move almost entirely by step and often by half-step. The result is a clever and perhaps
ironic combination of the BACH motive, dodecaphony, and triadic part-writing within
the chorale texture. G is even implied as a pitch center, especially considering that the
violin lingers on the pitch in the next measure (not shown).
The last example of a stylistic allusion in Violin Sonata No. 2 is actually only two
measures long (Example 4-24). It’s a short progression at m. 257 that theorists such as
Valentina Kholopova and Christopher Segall have identified as being written in the style
of Brahms.116 The passage is internally tonal in the key of E, as shown by the roman
116
Christopher Mark Segall, “Triadic Music in Twentieth-century Russia,” (PhD diss., The City University
of New York, 2013), 15.
101
numerals below. But while the listener expects a very traditional elaborated dominant
to E in m. 259, instead they hear an abrupt change to Allegro fff and a dissonant BACH
motive. Consequently, the two measures are only a glimpse of functional tonality,
distorted almost as quickly as being heard.
Technical Balance
I have identified five primary compositional techniques in Violin Sonata No. 2:
dodecaphony, motivic atonality, pitch indeterminacy, quotation, and stylistic allusion.
The dodecaphonic aspects involve one 20-measure passage based on row
transformations, three BACH rows including those used in the chorales, and a
reference to Berg’s Violin Concerto. The piece is also organized around the (0123) set,
the prime form of the BACH motive. This set can be found throughout in many unique
102
forms as demonstrated by a long passage at m. 178. Pitch indeterminacy in Violin
Sonata No. 2 makes each performance unique. Clusters, ad libitum sections, and
graphical glissandi are interpreted by the musicians. The piece contains two quotations
from Webern and Beethoven that have both been altered to feature the BACH pitches.
Finally, several stylistic allusions appear, including the motivic G-minor chord and its
alterations, three piano chorales, and a short reference to Brahms.
Obviously, the technical balance in Violin Sonata No. 2 is heavily weighted
towards the modern but there do seem to be more prominent quotations and allusions
than in Serenade. Perhaps most interesting, in the chorale-style passages Schnittke has
juxtaposed good, conventional voice leading with a dodecaphonic row based on Bach’s
name. The result is a chorale that masquerades as a chorale. Despite these references,
the systematic procedures of dodecaphony and especially motivic atonality are still
quite prominently woven into the piece.

103
5. Conclusion
The spectacle of Alfred Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1 has overshadowed his
earlier music. Although that piece may have “put polystylism into practice” the musical
heterogeneity of the symphony didn’t appear spontaneously. It was developed over
time through experimentation with different compositional strategies. And as
demonstrated in this thesis, the process was not necessarily a simple one.
The Glass Harmonica exhibited two, opposing themes: the transcendent and the
grotesque. The BACH chorale’s smooth voice leading and diatonic progression
reference the Baroque and the transcendence implied through J. S. Bach. On the other
hand, extremes of register, dissonance, dynamic, and tempo through the use of
modern techniques give the music a sense of inhumanness that complements the
grotesque imagery. When combined near the end of the film, the transformation
occurring in the story is mirrored in the music.
Serenade and Violin Sonata No. 2, although written at the same time as the film,
don’t have this same narrative relationship. The first piece contains five techniques:
dodecaphony, temporal indeterminacy, pitch indeterminacy, quotation, and stylistic
allusion. Each features prominently but the dodecaphony is particularly important in
unifying the piece and must be considered more than a structural tool. Quotations
from Tchaikovsky and Beethoven reference tonal music but are both set against
104
unrelated and highly chromatic passages. One distinctive stylistic allusion to jazz music
spans a large part of the third movement.
The Violin Sonata No. 2 has a slightly greater emphasis on quotation and
allusion although the modern techniques of dodecaphony, motivic atonality, and pitch
indeterminacy are still the most prominent. Motivic atonality, as seen through the
BACH motif, goes very far in unifying the piece by appearing in many different forms
throughout. The G-minor chord and its transpositions reference the tonal leitmotif.
Additionally, the BACH chorales, despite being tonally nonfunctional, create irony
through their combination of traditional voice leading and chorale rhythm with
dodecaphonic statements.
Schmelz’s characterization of Schnittke’s early polystylism as a gradual move
away from strict serialism towards a music of quotations, allusions, aleatoric
techniques, and tonal styles is correct as shown in these three pieces. A close study,
though, does reveal the extent to which dodecaphony, serialism, and motivic atonality
were still integral in the late 1960s. The Glass Harmonica, Serenade, and Violin Sonata
No. 2 provide a valuable context for Schnittke’s later works. They show evidence of all
the compositional strategies that he would employ in later pieces.

105
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ANALISIS COMPOSITOR - SCHNITTKE - Solomon Fenton-Miller - Compositional Strategies in Early Polystylism

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Compositional strategies in Alfred Schnittke’s early

Copyright 2016 Solomon Fenton-Miller

This thesis is available at Iowa Research Online: https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/2074

Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd

Part of the Music Commons

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment

Thesis Supervisor: Assistant Professor Jennifer Iverson

This is to certify that the Master's thesis of

has been approved by the Examining Committee for

Thesis Committee: _________________________________________

The early polystylism of Alfred Schnittke demonstrates a gradual movement

dodecaphony and motivic atonality as unifying procedures. Temporal and pitch

The Russian composer Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) is most associated with

polystylism, a term he coined to describe the combination of musical quotation,

from Bach-style chorales to excerpts of Beethoven to twentieth-century atonality and

compositional procedures. These pieces demonstrate that Schnittke was experimenting

techniques from the present.

Example 1-1, Schnittke’s Film Work from the 1960s .................................................... 9

Example 2-1, The Craftsman, 2:24 in The Glass Harmonica ....................................... 23

Example 2-3, Scene analysis of The Glass Harmonica ............................................... 28

Example 2-8, Transformation of informant, 14:31 in The Glass Harmonica ................ 34

Example 2-11, Couple at home, 5:48 in The Glass Harmonica .................................... 38

Example 2-13, Husband’s eyes, 6:15 in The Glass Harmonica .................................... 41

Example 3-1, Chart of compositional techniques in Serenade .................................... 52

Example 3-3, Matrix showing row segments in Serenade .......................................... 55

Example 3-5, Serenade, Mvt. II, R. 1 and 2 ................................................................ 57

Example 3-6, Serenade, Mvt. III, R. 1 ....................................................................... 58

Example 3-7, Serenade, Mvt. III, R. 24 ...................................................................... 59

Example 3-8, Beginning of Serenade, Mvt. I, R. 1 ...................................................... 61

Example 3-9, Serenade, Mvt. III, R. 13-14 ................................................................. 62

Example 3-10, Serenade, Mvt. III, R. 23 .................................................................... 63

Example 3-11, Symphony No. 6, op. 173, Alan Hovhaness ......................................... 64

Example 3-12, Serenade, Mvt. II, R. 1 ....................................................................... 65

Example 3-13, Serenade, Mvt. II, R. 6 ....................................................................... 66

Example 3-14, Serenade, Mvt. III, R. 2-3 ................................................................... 67

Example 3-15, Polymorphia, Penderecki, R. 11-12..................................................... 68

Example 3-16, Serenade, Mvt. III, R. 17 .................................................................... 69

Example 3-18, Serenade, Mvt. III, R. 19 .................................................................... 71

Example 3-19, Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 8, mm. 135-138 ...................................... 71

Example 3-20, Serenade, Mvt. III, R. 7-8 ................................................................... 73

Example 3-21, Serenade, Mvt. III, R. 5 ...................................................................... 73

Example 3-22, Serenade, Mvt. III, R. 6 ...................................................................... 74

Example 4-1, Violin Sonata No. 2, mm. 101-120......................................................... 82

Example 4-4, Violin Sonata No. 2, mm. 214-218......................................................... 84

Example 4-5, Violin Sonata No. 2, mm. 236-238......................................................... 85

Example 4-7, George Perle’s motivic cells in Bartók’s string quartets.......................... 86

Example 4-9, Violin Sonata No. 2, mm. 1-6 ............................................................... 88

Example 4-10, Violin Sonata No. 2, mm. 96-98 .......................................................... 88

Example 4-11, Violin Sonata No. 2, beginning of m. 178 ............................................ 89

Example 4-12, Violin Sonata No. 2, m. 14, piano ....................................................... 90

Example 4-13, Violin Sonata No. 2, second half of m. 92 ............................................ 91

Example 4-14, Violin Sonata No. 2, mm. 121-124 ....................................................... 92

Example 4-15, Violin Sonata No. 2, m. 179 ................................................................ 93

Example 4-16, Violin Sonata No. 2, mm. 209-211, ...................................................... 94

Example 4-18, Violin Sonata No. 2, mm. 246-249 ....................................................... 95

Example 4-20, Violin Sonata No. 2, mm. 1-7.............................................................. 97

Example 4-21, Violin Sonata No. 2, mm. 322-333 ....................................................... 98

Example 4-22, Violin Sonata No. 2, mm. 196-201 ....................................................... 99

Example 4-23, The Glass Harmonica Suite, I, mm. 1-9 ............................................... 99

According to Peter Schmelz, the premiere of Alfred Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1

Schnittke’s most recognized and remarkable compositions.4