A Schnittke Reader (review)

If A Schnittke Reader had been published in the Soviet Union it would probably have been called something like Alfred Schnittke: Articles, Reminiscences, and Materials, a title that would have better reflected its contents. Like many similarly titled Soviet books, it is a generally celebratory miscellany of recollections and articles by and about its subject rather than an introductory volume of representative articles about the composer. Yet despite its unevenness, it offers a wealth of materials for readers; its importance for scholars of Soviet and Russian culture, Schnittke's music, and postwar European music cannot be overstated.

The jacket copy and promotional materials for the volume claim that it was "one of the composer's last works." Yet Schnittke was heavily incapacitated in his last years as a result of the many strokes he suffered, and toward the end of his life he was unable to speak, requiring his intentions to be interpreted by his wife, pianist Irina Schnittke. It seems more likely, therefore, that the ultimate responsibility for the volume fell on the shoulders of its editor, the cellist Alexander Ivashkin, who was also the author of the first general English-language biography of the composer (Alfred Schnittke[London: Phaidon, 1996]). Most of the book is culled from Ivashkin's earlier volume Besedï s Al'fredom Shnitke (Conversations with Alfred Schnittke [Moscow: RIK Kul'tura, 1994], all trans. mine), which included his interviews with the composer supplemented by selections from other sources. Ivashkin also wrote the introduction to the present book, editorial comments throughout, and a chronology of Schnittke's life. With only three exceptions —the essay on Stravinsky ("Paradox As a Feature of Stravinsky's Musical Logic"), which had previously appeared only in an earlier Soviet collection; an interview with Mstislav Rostropovich; and a memoir by violinist Mark Lubotsky—the remainder of A Schnittke Reader is taken from a volume of theoretical essays written by Schnittke that apparently made it to the proof stages in the 1970s but was never published (p. xv).

The volume is divided into six sections: Schnittke Speaks about Himself, Schnittke on the Lenin Prize, Schnittke on His Own Compositions, Schnittke on Creative Artists (Composers, Performers, A Writer, A Painter), Schnittke on Twentieth-Century Music, and Schnittke As Seen by Others. These sections are not all of equal value, though each contains important passages.

At the outset the reader is plunged into a heady dialogue between Schnittke and Ivashkin constructed out of interviews vaguely dated "1985-1994" (p. 3). It consists of an intricate, often abstract discussion of several topics, including morality, religion, literature, and Russian culture, with unfortunately little specific mention of Schnittke's music. Ivashkin and Schnittke were close (they used the informal you (tï) with one another) and this "interview" reads like a friendly conversation at the kitchen table, fueled by an excess of tea. While exhilarating to read, its esoteric contents and disjointedness all too frequently leave the reader struggling to keep up (and here the translator, John Goodliffe, must be praised for his admirable job with a very dense and thorny text—the difficulty is not in the translation). Questions like the following from Ivashkin are typical: "Still, the question remains: How does one define the reservoir from which humanity draws new ideas? Does the new exist, or is it merely the Devil trying to put us in a false position?" (p. 27) For the uninitiated this can be daunting stuff and might have been improved by better editing, yet to one familiar with Schnittke's music it presents a fascinating portrait of the composer. If nothing else, Schnittke's answers afford a glimpse of his mental state and intellectual preoccupations at this period in his life, as in his poignant comments about his changed perception of time following his first stroke in 1985 (p. 5). The best responses force us to reevaluate our...