In many aspects, Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1 is a postmodernist work, showing many of the needed characteristics of the postmodernist “attitude” as proposed by Jonathan Kramer, especially in its obvious stylistic disjunctions and fragmentations.[1]
If, at first glance, Schnittke's Symphony No. 1 would seem to be like any other large-scale symphony – four movements, a very large orchestra and a few soloists – the apparent similarities end there. From the opening note to the last, the Symphony frustrates almost every single expectation of the genre. The first movement builds up to a point of chaos, and then initiates what appears to be a first-movement allegro, built around quotations from Beethoven, which stand alongside waltzes, marches and clusters. The second movement includes Baroque figurations interrupted by an extended "fight" cadenza in a free jazz style. The third movement is serially organized. Finally the fourth movement juxtaposes still more quotations in what becomes a funeral procession ending with the last bars of Haydn's “Farewell” Symphony played from a recording, all this after the musicians have left the stage. Only when silence is finally achieved do the instrumentalists return to the stage, starting over the Symphony which is interrupted one last time by the conductor with a final unison C.
In this presentation, I will show how Schnittke’s polystylistic manifesto is a postmodernist work, whereas Schnittke is not a postmodernist composer. This apparent contradiction will be explained by looking at Soviet context and a thorough analysis of the score.
[1] Kramer, Jonathan. 2002. “The Nature and Origins of Musical Postmodernism.” Current Musicology no. 66 (Spring 1999): 7–20.
