Alfred Schnittke's Concerto Grosso no. 1

Abstract This book provides for the first time an accessible, comprehensive study of Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso no. 1 (1977). One of Schnittke’s best-known and most compelling works, the Concerto Grosso no. 1 sounds the surface of late Soviet life, resonating as well with contemporary compositional currents around the world. This innovative monograph builds on existing publications about the Concerto Grosso no. 1 in English, Russian, and German, augmenting and complicating them. It adds new information from underused primary sources, including Schnittke’s unpublished correspondence and his many published interviews. It also engages further with his sketches for the Concerto Grosso no. 1 and contemporary Soviet musical criticism. The result is a more objective, historical appraisal of this rich, multifaceted composition. The Concerto Grosso no. 1 provided a utopian model of the contemporary soundscape. It was a decisive point in Schnittke’s development of the approach he called polystylism, which aimed to contain in a single composition the wide range of contemporary musical styles, including jazz, pop, rock, and serial music. Thanks to it and his other similar compositions, Schnittke became one of the most-performed and most-recorded living composers at the end of the twentieth century. The novel structure of this book engages the Concerto Grosso no. 1 conceptually, historically, musically, and phenomenologically: the six movements of the composition frame the six chapters. The present volume thus provides a holistic accounting of Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso no. 1, its influences, and its impact on subsequent music making in the Soviet Union and worldwide.