The Routledge Handbook to the Music of Alfred Schnittke Gavin Dixon

Abstract

Alfred Schnittke (1934–98) is arguably the best known, most often performed and recorded, and most frequently discussed Russian composer of the post-Shostakovich generation. Yet despite such international renown, Schnittke scholarship thus far has for the most part followed a trajectory noticeable in research on his less famous colleagues, in that it has been dominated by what one might call ‘data-gathering’ types of publications, such as biographies and collections of primary sources, including historical documents, transcriptions of interviews with the composer, and translations of his own journalistic and musicological writings. We also see a concerted effort to issue critical editions of Schnittke’s principal scores and, to a lesser extent, to conduct analytical studies—some brief, others more expansive—of individual compositions. While rarely judged to be the most exciting type of musicological research, especially these days, this positivistic ‘fact-finding mission’ is a necessary endeavour, as it provides a solid foundation for the more contextually rich and interpretatively adventurous scholarship to come. It is within this tradition of ‘plowing the virgin soil’, to use the appropriately Soviet lingo for this initial phase of scholarly enquiry, that the present publication belongs.