The Musical Oeuvres of Alfred G. Schnittke
The previous issues of the journal featured publications of lectures about such outstanding 20th century Russian composers as Sergei Rachmaninoff, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofi ev, Nikolai Myaskovsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, Aram Khachaturian, Georgy Sviridov, and Rodion Shchedrin. This series is being continued with a lecture about the music of Alfred G. Schnittke. The fi rst part of the lecture (“National ‘Fermentations’ and Early Works”) examines the questions of the genesis of the composer’s personality and the initial stage of his artistic formation with a drastic reorientation from a traditional style to avant-garde experiment. The second part (“The Middle Period”) is devoted to Schnittke’s explorations in the direction of contacts with wide audiences, which went along various lines of democratization of his artistic approach. The conclusive part (“The Late Style”) is directed towards the composer’s immense contribution to the formation of the stylistic realities of the Postmodern aesthetics. During the course of the lecture’s exposition fragments of musical compositions are offered with recommended performances of them, in their sum providing a perception of the most substantial sides of Alfred G. Schnittke’s musical output.