Dixon, Gavin (ed.) Schnittke Studies (review)

Abstract

SEER, 95, 3, JULY 2017 544 discussions of the post-1932 era benefit greatly from ideas that Clark explored in her book, which provides a more interdisciplinary prism through which to examine Soviet musical life. A similar trope, this time referring to Clark’s other seminal work, Petersburg: Crucible of Cultural Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 1998), would have enriched the book’s overview of 1920s musical culture, particularly given Fairclough’s valuable observation with regard to the importance of Marxist-Leninist historiography for the selection process of Western culture in the early Soviet years (p. 27). Parallels with theatre might also have proved useful for another important episode in the book, concerning the appearance of numerous amateur music groups and composer societies in the 1920s and their subsequent fates (pp. 40–41). The great volume of the research material that provides the building blocks for thisstudyisbothavirtueandadrawback.Thehugenumberofpropernamesand specialist or untranslated Russian terms — such as chastushki and khaltura — might prove off-putting for the non-expert reader. Nor is the inner organization of the chapters always convincing. A number of glaring contradictions — as, for example, regarding the dates of activity of the Leningrad Radio Committee Orchestra during the blockade (p. 176) — suggest a lack of careful copy-editing. There are also some frustrating aspects with regard to referencing the precious archival material; for instance, during the discussion of ticket prices it is not obvious where the information is derived from (p. 41). Even so, Fairclough’s book is a revealing and much-needed study that fills a major lacuna in Soviet music scholarship, providing new perceptions of Soviet musical policies and the mechanisms at work in their implementation. That it appears almost simultaneously with Marina Raku’s study indicates that the subject matter is timely. And one incidental pleasure at the time of writing is to see the term ‘vetting’ used in a scholarly context rather than an ugly political one. Department of Music, Université Paris Sorbonne; Michelle Assay Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies University of Sheffield Dixon, Gavin (ed.). Schnittke Studies. Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2017. xxvii + 273 pp. Figures. Music examples. Notes. Appendix. Bibliography. Index. £95.00. Alfred Schnittke (1934–98), widely regarded as the leading Russian composer after Shostakovich, has a particular association with Great Britain; several of his works received first performances in London, and Alexander Ivashkin(1948–2014),thecharismaticprofessorofRussianmusicatGoldsmiths REVIEWS 545 College, pioneered study of his work and brought a large part of his archive to this country, so that it is entirely appropriate that the collection of essays under review is dedicated to his memory. The first part of Dixon’s preface is a generous tribute to his work, and the final chapter in the book is the dedicatee’s last contribution to Shnittke studies, a very personal piece, ‘The Shnittke Code’ particularly as demonstrated in ‘Klingende Buchstaben’, one of several pieces he dedicated to Ivashkin. The central part of the book is divided into three sections: ‘Interpretative Studies’, ‘Theoretical Studies’ and ‘Russian Perspectives’. Ivana Medić in ‘“Crucifixus etiam pro nobis”: Representations of the Cross in Alfred Schnittke’s SymphonyNo.2,“St.Florian”’demonstratesbyuseofmaterialfromsketchesand drafts of this work Schnittke’s continuation of the practice of J. S. Bach in musical representations of the cross. Emilia Ismael-Simental in ‘Alfred Schnittke and the Znamennyi raspev’ traces with great thoroughness the elements of traditional Orthodox church music in many works, including those that introduce the form of the ancient chant in vocal and purely orchestral passages. A quite different treatment of religion is discussed in Amrei Flechsig’s ‘Negative Spirituality and the Inversion of Christianity as Media of Social Criticism in Alfred Shnittke’s Opera Life with an Idiot’; finally, in the first part is Gavin Dixon’s own fruitful discussion of one of this composer’s best-known features, polystylism, treating it with the help of literary theory, particularly dialogue in Bakhtinian form: ‘Polystylism as Dialogue: Interpreting Schnittke through Bakhtin’, makes particular reference to the composer’s Piano Quartet (1988). The theoretical studies of part two begin with Gordon E. Marsh’s ‘Schnittke’s Polystylistic Schemata: Textural Progression in the Concerti Grossi’, in which he argues that what is sometimes seen as randomly open in...