Yu 1

Kevie Yu

Professor Reinhart

Music Theory VI

June 7, 2017

Analysis of Schnittke Concerto Grosso No. 1, Preludio and Toccata

Alfred Schnittke, a composer of Jewish-German descent, was born in Russia in 1934.  He

studied at the Moscow Conservatory and was from an early age largely drawn to string

compositions, and throughout his life he wrote nine symphonies, six concerto grossi, four violin

concertos, two cello concertos, concertos for piano and a triple concerto for piano, viola, and

violin, and many string quartets.1  Although he eventually departed with the twelve-tone and

aleatory techniques he experimented with in the early 60s, his more traditional music retains

traces of the modernist techniques.2 His music is best known for its polystylism, the

incorporation of a number of genres and styles.  Schnittke has in the past been compared Dmitri

Shostakovich for their shared use of high emotions and musical narratives, but Schnittke’s music

utilizes more juxtapositions of various styles in order to create what he calls “fundamental effects

of tension”.  Schnittke has been quoted expressing that he would spend his entire life bridging

the gap between “Ernstmusik” (serious music) and “Unterhaltung” (entertainment music) if he

had to, and his attempts were evident in the way he uses similar music for both his film score and

classical compositions.3

1
Michael Cookson, “Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998),” accessed June 5, 2017, http://www.musicweb-
international.com/classrev/2006/May06/Schnittke_CDMAN175.htm.
2
Peter Schmelz, “Alfred Schnittke.” Oxford Bibliographies. Accessed June 5, 2017.
http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com.turing.library.northwestern.edu/view/document/obo-
9780199757824/obo-9780199757824-0127.xml.
3
Tom Service, “A guide to the music of Alfred Schnittke,” The Guardian, April 29, 2013, accessed June 5,
2017. https://www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2013/apr/29/alfred-schnittke-
contemporary-music-tom-service.
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Concerto Grosso No. 1 is a five-movement work for two solo violins, harpsichord,

prepared piano, and string orchestra.  The concerto grosso, commissioned by violinists Gidon

Kremer and Tatiana Grindenko, was completed in early 1977 and premiered that March.4  The

piece merits its title of a concerto as it is concertante in its dialogue between tutti and the

soloists.  Its formal structure also models that of a Baroque sonata de chiesa— where the order of

the movements is slow, fast, slow, fast— in its Preludio, Toccata, Recitative, and Rondo.  While

it is clear that this concerto incorporates multiple styles—most explicitly the Baroque, modern,

and the “banal” (what is popular or trite) —this analysis will focus on the modern elements more

so than the other two.

The Preludio is in three parts after an introduction section, with explicit expository and

cadential materials in each.  The movement begins with a prepared piano melody, the “prologue

theme,” reminiscent of a popular Soviet Union song, and it is from this theme that the rest of the

piece will develop.5  Despite the Baroque elements of the piece, the first sounds are anything but

Baroque.  Though the rhythmic makeup of mostly eighth notes and quarter notes feels traditional

and classically familiar, the sound of the C minor theme is altered by the wedging of coins (or

pieces of rubber) between the three strings of each key as instructed.  The introduction ends by

the end of m. 11, with the solo violins entrances at m. 12, playing to each other in intervals of

minor seconds.

The first section can be considered to be from mm. 12-31 (as the second theme comes in

at m. 32), where the key generally remains in C minor.  Similar to the way the introduction is

“tempered” by way of the prepared piano altering the traditional pianistic sounds, the seemingly

traditional A section is stripped of sounds that may be considered Baroque or Classical by the

4
Alfred Schnittke, Concerto Grosso (New York: G. Schirmer, Inc., 1977).
5
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timbre produced.  With the solo violins playing non-vibrato and the string orchestra entering

with either sul tasto or natural harmonics, the sound is still and thin until a cadenza-like section

with the two solo violins in m. 26, which begins the cadential material from mm. 27 to 31.

The second section begins in m. 32 as a new theme is now played in G.  The texture is

now a melody-dominated homophony, which later changes into a polyphony dominated by two

melodies with the entrance of the second solo violin and then the harpsichord, but the

chromaticism in the harmonies is still keeping the sound more “modern” to the ears.  Here an

eight-bar chromatic theme (m. 32-39) is repeated twice, the first time imitated by the solo violins

and the second time (m. 48-55) supported by the Prologue theme in the harpsichord from the first

section.  

Section three begins with the loudest dynamic the piece has seen so far.  The key of D

major is hinted at, and it contains augmented repeats of the micro-intervals from the first section

and the beginning of the theme from the second section.  The cadence then uses the same

material.

Although the two movements are starkly different in terms of texture and timbre, there

are elements that link the Toccata to the Preludio.  The “prologue theme” in the beginning of the

preludio especially connects the two (and the rest of the piece) by making its appearance

throughout these movements, sometimes chromatically altered. Throughout the movements, the

dynamics written are often not the dynamics a listener may hear due to the different number of

players entering and exiting within the same dynamic marking. This is much more explicit in the

Toccata, as the movement involves many canonic passages with all players having the same

dynamic marking but entering slightly behind each other.

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The start of the Toccata is almost mockingly Vivaldi-like.6  The two solo violins take off

in an A minor canon until the rest of the string orchestra joins beginning in m. 8, each part

phased by an eighth note.  However, as the tutti imitation of the mostly-stepwise melodic contour

of the A minor canonic theme is separated only by an eighth note each of the twelve times, the

Baroque-like guise quickly dissolves into a sea of dissonance.  The register of the music does not

expand as it is contained within the major ninth range (A4 to B5) of the A minor theme, but the

harmony becomes denser with each of the entrances.  This perceived dissonance is due to the

combination of the relatively scalar nature in the beginning of the A minor theme and the way

each entrance is phased so closely to each other.  For example, the first beat of m. 7 alone

contains a C, D, E, F, A, and B all in the same octave, as does the first beat of m. 9. Then from

mm. 14-30, the chromatic sixteenth note passages are alternated between the tutti and solo

violins (with the harpsichord playing eighth notes).  A series of alternation between violin solos

and harpsichord and orchestra follows (mm.14-30), with the theme chromaticized and focused

first around F sharp minor, then B minor, then E minor, and finally A minor.

The B section begins in m. 31 with a C sharp minor theme in the solo violins

accompanied by the harpsichord. This is an abrupt change from the previous passage (mm.14-

30) that is intense in both its dynamic and dissonance and ends in a twelve pitch class chord to C

sharp minor to the most tonal writing since the opening of the movement.  However, the tonality

soon dissipates into dissonance once again with many secundal harmonies temporally, like in m.

40 the B against A in solo violins, the cluster of E, E-flat, D, D-flat in violins I and C, B, B-flat,

and A in violins II.

6
Seth Brodsky, “Alfred Schnittke,” AllMusic, accessed June 5, 2017,
http://www.allmusic.com/composition/concerto-grosso-no-1-for-2-violins-harpsichord-prepared-piano-
21-strings-mc0002371046
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The first theme reappears at m. 51, marking another A section. This time the canon does

not begin top-to-bottom in the order of the score (first violin, second violin, and all the way

down to the cello), but instead starts in the cello parts and is then is joined by the violas. The

double bass plays the same theme but rhythmically augmented.  On top of playing the theme at

half the speed, the double bass also plays it in C sharp minor, a half-step up from the C minor

played by the cellos, which is a half-step up from the theme in B minor played by the violas.  All

these details have the effect of blurring the previously-recognizable theme into a chromatic,

dissonant, frenzy that crescendos into the “prologue theme” that once again makes an appearance

(mm.109-135), this time in the harpsichord part as an augmented version in C major while the

orchestra holds a C major chord, another tonal reprieve from the previously insistent dissonance.

Section C constructs the alternation of two contrasting materials from mm. 78-108.  Here

Schnittke exhibits the Modern sphere of his composition by employing twelve-tone serial

technique for four bars (mm. 78-81) which is then interrupted by a measure of clusters built on

seconds in the orchestra.  The music returns to twelve-tone with the solo violin parts switched

and then the pulsing seconds in the orchestra injects once again. This alternation occurs a few

times with the theme from section A, especially the eighth-two-sixteenth notes rhythm gradually

being added in.  

The prologue theme appears one last time in this movement in m.109, this time altered

bi-tonally in the right hand of the harpsichord while the left hand plays eighth-note figures are

metrically in three. Finally, the movement closes using material, albeit augmented, from section

A in the solo violins and violas and material from section B. All these elements divide the

Toccata into a sort of modified ABA(A)C(A)A, with (A) being the prologue theme from the

Preludio. 
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Schnittke weaves Baroque, modern, and popular styles with different degrees of

integration into this composition. While many of the modern elements are discernible by the ear

due to the dissonance, a closer inspection reveals that even the Baroque sections are tinged with

modern ideas.  Even though much of the rhythms are Baroque, the abounding chromaticism that,

when used simultaneously in multiple voices, often leads to dissonance drives the modern

tendencies in this work.  Furthermore, the sections that are Baroque in both rhythm and

harmonies do not last long before the atonality takes over once again. The juxtaposition of one

style with another, of what is dissonant (often achieved through secundal harmonies in this

piece) with what is consonant, of new extended techniques (prepared piano) with traditional ones

(harmonics), presents a work that is modern in its amalgamated nature, as it is not wholly one

style or another.
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Works Cited

Brodsky, Seth. “Alfred Schnittke.” AllMusic. Accessed June 5, 2017.

http://www.allmusic.com/composition/concerto-grosso-no-1-for-2-violins-harpsichord-
prepared-piano-21-strings-mc0002371046.

Colon-Hernandez, Edgar. “Alfred Harrievich Schnittke (1934-1998): Concerto Grosso No. 1.”
Accessed June 5, 2017. https://alfredschnittke.wordpress.com/2007/07/02/concerto-
grosso-no-1/.

Cookson, Michael. “Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998).” Accessed June 5, 2017.

http://www.musicweb-
international.com/classrev/2006/May06/Schnittke_CDMAN175.htm.

Schmelz, Peter. “Alfred Schnittke.” Oxford Bibliographies. Accessed June 5, 2017.

http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com.turing.library.northwestern.edu/view/document/ob
o-9780199757824/obo-9780199757824-0127.xml.

Schnittke, Alfred. Concerto Grosso. New York: G. Schirmer, Inc., 1977.

Service, Tom. “A guide to the music of Alfred Schnittke.” The Guardian, April 29, 2013.
Accessed June 5, 2017.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2013/apr/29/alfred-schnittke-
contemporary-music-tom-service.