REQUIEM BY ALFRED SCHNITTKE
•Composer's name and birth/death dates: Alfred Schnittke (Russian, German/Jewish, 1938-1996) •Full title of composition: Requiem (from the stage music to Don Carlos by Friedich von Schiller) •Placement in the timeline of the composer’s career: 1974/75. Apparently •Estimated duration:. 35-40 min. •Source of the text: Requiem Mass, plus a Credo! •Author of the text and his/her dates: Catholic liturgy •Language: Latin •Text
•Instrumentation as stated by the composer:
The context •influences by other composers –Shostakovich, Luigi Nono •contemporary cultural context (politics, economics, social forces, etc.) –Maneuvering against Soviet Socialist Realist style, against the “narcissism” of the avant-garde; conversion to Christianity; memory of Stalinist repression and forced atheism. Other forbidden music: early music, jazz • contemporary professional context: Socialist Realist aesthetic usually implied control by the state, but this had diminished over time. Many composers who had re-embraced Christianity were considered “non-conformist” and had also adopted polystylism. Other composers include Sofia Gubaidulina (b.1931), Alemdar Karamanov (b.1935), and Valentin Silvestrov (b.1937). Coincidentally, Arvo Pärt also wrote a Credo in 19568, in a polystylistic style. This work caused his ostracism in Estonia and provoked ultimately the change to tintinnabuli. In the context of the Soviet Union, being religious was controversial and innovative. •influence of other artists and disciplines (poets, painters, philosophers, etc): Music for film and theatre. Divulged in the West by violinist Gidon Kremer and other performers. •aesthetic or technical innovations represented in this work: polystylism • impact the work on future compositions by the same composer or other composers: polystylism pioneers post- modernism •To which stylistic stream after 1900 do you think this work belongs? You may name more than one. Russian composers at the end of the Soviet Union used polystylism to remain innovative while staying close to popular sensibilities.
Stylistic and technical matters to observe
Article by Ivana Medic on polystylism and religion in the Soviet Union
Quoting Schnitke: “Our current fascination with what we were deprived of for decades is the fascination people feel for what they have been starved of.” Medic: Without dwelling too much upon the social, political and nationalistic reasons for this spiritual revival, it is worth noting thattheir turning to religion was a part of a broader trend in Soviet society, especially among the intelligentsia, who had long since lost belief in the viability of the communist system. Religion (in the broadest sense of the word) offered an intellectual and moral stimulus, an alternative to official prescriptions and proclamations.5 On the other hand, music (and art in general) had always played a special role in a society that had witnessed the horrors of war, purges and gulags, and in which artists and their audiences had jointly suffered under tyranny, so that the latter turned to the former for guidance and comfort.
Definition of Polystylism, by Schnittke as quoted by Medic:
“An umbrella term for various manifestations of the artists’ tendency to employ, within a single piece, creative tools drawn from diverse styles and traditions.9 What distinguishes Soviet polystylism from earlier historical examples of stylistic interplays (as in, for instance, Mahler, Berg, Stravinsky et al.) is that the stylistic interaction itself provides the basis and the main constructive tool for a new work; furthermore, compositional techniques of different provenance are assigned different programmatic roles, in other words the samples or simulations of various styles are selected according to their mimetic potential. At their best, polystylistic works are multidimensional, dynamic and engaging; at their worst, they can easily turn into superficial patchworks.”
Styles in Schnittkes Requiem
Neoclassicism (Requiem) Free serialism, monogram motives, peeudo-orthodox choral voicing, and reduced/sui generis orchestration in the manner of Stravinsky (Kyrie, Agnus Dei) Spoken texts, like Lutoslavsky/Penderecki. (Tuba Mirum) Theatre incidental music, projecting “scenes, also influencing the instrumental “band”. Motoric, modular, repetitive, stratified, music in the manner of Orff’s Carmina Burana (Rex tremendae) Gregorian-chant emulations and medieval (but also serialist) polyphony (Recordare) Rock and Roll /American musical theater - A Credo in the Requiem!