Ivana Medić FROM POLYSTYLISM TO META-PLURALISM Essays on Late Soviet Symphonic Music Supported by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia Ivana Medić FROM POLYSTYLISM TO META-PLURALISM ESSAYS ON LATE SOVIET SYMPHONIC MUSIC Institute of Musicology Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts Ivana Medić FROM POLYSTYLISM TO META-PLURALISM Essays on Late Soviet Music Institute of Musicology Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SASA) Knez Mihailova 36/IV, Belgrade Reviewers Melita Milin, PhD, Senior Research Fellow Institute of Musicology SASA, Belgrade Academician Dimitrije Stefanović, PhD Fellow of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts Professor Miodrag Šuvaković, PhD Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade Book cover image Svetlana Bakushina’s poster for the 2003 Russian premiere of Alfred Schnittke’s opera Life with an Idiot at the Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Copy-editor Jelena Janković-Beguš Technical editor Dejan Medić Printed by Colorgrafx, Belgrade First published 2017. Non-commercial edition. Circulation: 200 copies ISBN 978-86-80639-30-7 This book is a result of the project Serbian Musical Identities within Local and Global Frameworks: Traditions, Changes, Challenges (No. 177004) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia The publisher of this book has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate and appropriate. Contents Note on Transliteration 7 Preface 9 INTRODUCTION 11 POLYSTYLISM 16 The Godfather of Polystylism 21 Origins of Schnittke’s Polystylism 25 Luciano Berio: ‘Sinfonia’ 38 Alfred Schnittke: Symphony No. 1 43 Boris Chaikovskii: Symphony No. 2 67 Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 15 72 Postlude to Polystylism 83 TOWARDS POSTISM VIA SPIRITUALISM 85 From Poly- to Monostylism 89 Arvo Pärt: Symphony No. 3 96 Galina Ustvol’skaia: Symphony No. 2 ‘True and Eternal Bliss’ 107 Sofia Gubaidulina’s Spiritualism 117 Postlude to Spiritualism 138 META-PLURALISM 139 Alfred Schnittke: Symphony No. 3 149 Valentin Sil’vestrov: Symphony No. 5 186 Boris Tishchenko: Symphony No. 5 196 Postlude to Meta-Pluralism 206 List of Scores 209 Bibliography 211 Note on Transliteration Russian text is transliterated using a simplified version of the Library of Congress romanisation system, as presented below. Russian names have also been rendered according to this system, although exceptions have been made for names that are well known in the West and have taken on conventional spellings. As for Alfred Schnittke, his name is presented in its ‘German’ form except when directly referencing a Russian publi- cation, in which case it is transliterated as Al’fred Shnitke. Exceptions have also been made for quotations, which have been left in their original form. A a A a П п P p Б б B b P p R r В в V v С с S s Г г G g Т т T t Д д D d У у U u Е е Е е Ф ф F f Ё ё Io io Х х Kh kh Ж ж Zh zh Ц ц Ts ts З з Z z Ч ч Ch ch И и I i Ш ш Sh sh Й й I i Щ щ Shch shch К к K k Ъ ъ ” ” Л л L l Ы ы Y y М м M m Ь ь ’ ’ Н н N n Э э E e О о О о Ю ю Iu iu Preface Seven years have passed since I defended my PhD dissertation on Alfred Schnittke’s symphonies in the context of late Soviet music.1 During this period, I disseminated my findings in a number of journal articles, book chapters and conference papers, where I mostly focused on various facets of Alfred Schnittke’s oeuvre.2 In this monograph I wish to offer a broader context and to discuss Schnittke’s achievements alongside those of his Soviet contemporaries. Although the largest portion of the material in this book is published for the first time,3 the text has benefited immensely from the many collegial exchanges during the past seven years, which have helped me to rethink and revise my conclusions. 1 Ivana Medić, Alfred Schnittke’s Symphonies 1-3 in the Context of Late Soviet Music. PhD dissertation supervised by Prof. David Fanning. University of Manchester, United Kingdom, 2010. Funded by the Overseas Research Award (ORS), Graduate Teaching Assistantship and School of Arts, Histories and Cultures Award. 2 These include: Ivana Medić, ‘Crucifixus etiam pro nobis: Representation of the Cross in Alfred Schnittke’s Symphony No. 2 St Florian,’ in: Gavin Dixon (ed.), Schnittke Studies, Abingdon/New York, Routledge, 2016, 3–29; ‘Revised Catalogue of Alfred Schnittke’s Sketches in the Juilliard Manuscript Collection’ in: ibid., 209–257; ‘Opera i kraj komu- nizma: Život s idiotom Alfreda Šnitkea’ [Opera and the End of Communism: Alfred Sch- nittke’s Life with an Idiot], The Annual of the Institute of Theatre, Film, Radio and Television 28, Belgrade, Faculty of Dramatic Arts, 2015, 59–74; ‘Irony, Satire, Parody and Grotes- que in Alfred Schnittke’s Opera Historia von D. Johann Fausten’, paper read at the Sympo- sion zum 80. Geburtstag von Alfred Schnittke: Emigration, Integration und künstlerische Produkti- vität – Alfred Schnittke in Hamburg, 1990–1998, Alfred Schnittke Akademie International Hamburg, 27–29 November 2014 (publication forthcoming); ‘The Sketches for Alfred Schnittke’s Symphony No. 3 and What They (Don’t) Tell Us’, Muzikologija/Musicology 15, 2013, 169–213; ‘“I Believe… In What?” Arvo Pärt’s and Alfred Schnittke’s Polysty- listic Credos,’ Slavonica 16/2, November 2010, 96–111. 3 Portions of three chapters previously appeared as articles; these are marked in the text. I am greatly indebted to a number of my teachers, coworkers and friends who have assisted me during the various stages of preparation of this book. Some of them have influenced and inspired my thinking on late Soviet music, while others have assisted me in obtaining musical scores, as well as a range of primary and secondary sources, or been there to offer friendly and professional support. My heartfelt thanks go to: Tamsin Alexander, Philip Ross Bullock, Barry Cooper, Gavin Dixon, Pauline Fairclough, David Fallows, David Fanning, Amrei Flechsig, Marina Frolova-Walker, James Garratt, Jane Gottlieb, Srđan Hofman, Katerina Levidou, Sonja Marinković, Melita Milin, Ivan Moody, Danica Petrović, Leslie Ruthven, Peter J. Schmelz, Dimitrije Stefanović, Chris- tian Storch, Danijela Špirić-Beard, Miodrag Šuvaković, Richard Taruskin, Katarina Tomašević, Mirjana Veselinović-Hofman, Arnold Whittall, Stephen Wilford and Patrick Zuk. Two of my guiding lights, Alexander Ivashkin and Noëlle Mann are no longer among us, but memories will live forever. My twin sister and fellow musicologist Jelena Janković-Beguš has read my text at various stages of gestation, and the book has benefited greatly from her sharp eye and critical acumen. I would like to thank the extraordinary artist, photographer, film producer and musician Svetlana Bakushina, who has kindly allowed me to use her artwork – the poster for the 2003 Russian premiere of Schnittke’s opera Zhizn s idiotom [Life with an Idiot] directed by Henryk Baranowski at the Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre – for the cover of this book. Finally, I am deeply grateful to my husband Dejan and son Bojan for their endless patience and warm encouragement. ^10 INTRODUCTION In this book I identify and discuss the main trends of late Soviet music – the period roughly encompassing a quarter-century (from the late 1960s to the dissolution of the Soviet Union). These trends – polystylism, spiritualism and meta-pluralism – overlapped, yet exhibited specific distin- guishable traits. They permanently changed the profile of Soviet music, while they also revived several older musical traditions that had fallen out of focus in the decades predating this period. In order to illustrate these trends, I analyse symphonic – and a few vocal-instrumental – works by (then) Soviet composers. Aside from Alfred Schnittke (1934– 1998), whom I regard as the central figure of the late Soviet period, I discuss the works by his great predecessor Dmitrii Shostakovich (1907– 1975), as well as his contemporaries Galina Ustvol’skaia (1919–2006), Boris Chaikovskii (1925–1996), Sofia Gubaidulina (b. 1931), Arvo Pärt (b. 1935), Valentin Sil’vestrov (b. 1937) and Boris Tishchenko (1939– 2010). While the terms polystylism and spiritualism (or religious revival, the label that I used in my doctoral dissertation for the latter phenomenon)1 have been common in discussions of late Soviet music, meta-pluralism is my own label – coined in the absence of an established umbrella term in the literature – for a tendency that is commonly (but wrongly) equated with Western postmodernism. Instead, meta-pluralism should be equated with postism – the half-serious term coined by Richard Taruskin in his seminal book Defining Russia Musically.2 Taruskin is doubtful about the appropriateness of use of the term postmodernism in the late Soviet context. Namely, the emergence of Soviet polystylism coincided with 1 Medić, Alfred Schnittke’s Symphonies 1–3…, op. cit. 2 Richard Taruskin, ‘After Everything,’ in: Defining Russia Musically. Historical and Hermeneutical Essays, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1997, 100. the dawn of postmodernism in the West. At that point, it became increasingly difficult to distinguish composers who began as tradi- tionalists or moderated modernists and went on to embrace some avant- garde techniques, from those who started off as avant-gardists, but grew dissatisfied with using novel devices alone and started introducing elements of older styles. The fact that tendencies overlapped played in the Soviet composers’ favour; their polystylistic works, which sounded similar to some of the early examples of Western musical postmoder- nism, brought them recognition abroad and made them internationally relevant.