String Quartet No. 3 (1983)

Programme note by Nicholas Williams, from Schnittke: A Celebration, Wigmore Hall/Barbican Hall, London, 17 February – 8 March 1990

Andante : Agitato : Pesante

The striking juxtapositions of disparate material to be found in the music of Alfred Schnittke frequently have a quality of bathos and irony, and the intention of incorporating past styles within a musical language of the present. But what is to be made of the particularly bold choice of quotations which open the Third String Quartet, including within the first eight bars a phrase from a Stabat Mater by Lassus, the theme of Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge, and the personal musical monogram of Dmitri Shostakovich, DSCH?

The reference to Shostakovich, and in particular the DSCH idea, provides a clue. In his Eighth Quartet, for example, it not only forms the motivic substance for much of the work, but can also be identified with themes from other works by the same composer. Similarly, Schnittke’s quotations, although in one sense symbolic of two past masters of the string quartet idiom, are carefully chosen for their motivic correlation – the DSCH motive being no more than a transposition of the first four notes of the Beethoven. From this kind of musical wit grows an opposition between the contemporary world they represent and the diatonic world of Lassus, then the consequent synthesis of the two, which is achieved in the third movement as the turn figure of the opening tonal cadence is progressively incorporated into the chromatic language of the former.

Once these basic themes have been identified, the overall structure explains itself on a descriptive level. Schnittke characteristically interrelates separate movements by shared material, and the saturation of the texture by these three elements makes the Third Quartet a model for this kind of activity. Within this thematic unity there are allusions to a number of different historical musics, from the points of canonic imitation in the first movement to the nineteenth century Waltz-Scherzo of the second. At the same time, the opening cadence by Lassus returns in its original form at important junctures throughout the piece, like a punctuation mark containing the overall diversity of style.

Symphony No. 3 (1981)

Viola Concerto (1985)