1st symphony (Schnittke)
The Symphony no. 1 is the key work in Alfred Schnittke's musical creation. It was written in the years 1969–1972 parallel to the film music for Romm's " And yet I believe " and was premiered on February 9, 1974 in Gorki by the local Philharmonic Orchestra and the jazz ensemble Melodia under the direction of Roschdestwenski , to whom Schnittke also dedicated the work. The performance lasts a good hour.
Plant and shape
Schnittke added a saxophone group , various keyboard instruments , an organ , an electric and a bass guitar and a large percussion apparatus to the orchestra . He also enlarged the woodwinds and the string line-up and increased the number of harps . The symphony also includes dramaturgical elements; some musicians step up and down, the appearance of the orchestra and the conductor is explicitly prescribed. Overall, the work is dominated by polystylistics and collage techniques : musical thoughts often merge with one another, and in many places pieces of music from a wide variety of musical genres appear .
music
At the beginning there is a prologue , with the musicians - after a few chimes and led by a jazz trumpeter - appear in an improvising manner. The instrumentalists who are seated now form a tonal jumble that disappears when the conductor makes an appearance, but finally begins again. After he has become “master of his orchestra” again, the first movement of the symphony begins at a hint from the conductor : there, order merges with chaos, contradicting musical styles are positioned against each other. The beginning of Tutti -C is followed by a cluster of twelve notes. A serious place is parried with a foxtrot , baroque music stands next to film music , artistic overlay with banal, musical tiny chunks collage with each other. Poles of rest arise again and again, which are again extinguished. Towards the end, a theme from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is dealt with, and deep brass instruments together with a solo trumpet conclude .
The second sentence , which Funfairs Scherzo , as it calls itself Schnittke, starts with a baroque-like theme that soon with a colorful, dance medley of waltzes - Landler - march - as well as salon music mixed fragments, so that a polytonal and polyrhythmic , but nevertheless manageable mish-mash emerges, from which sometimes one, sometimes the other party emerges. This is followed by a jazzy improvisation of the piano together with a violin and a saxophone, which leads to a collective improvisation of the entire orchestra. The movement ends with the wind section moving out.
In the following, meditation-like third movement , which is only made up of strings, percussion and keyboard instruments, Schnittke dares an excursion into twelve-tone technique and serial music . In addition, he lets the dynamics of the strings swell up and down in waves; the break-in follows a rearing. While the instruments rearrange themselves in the initial, new onset of chaos, the winds from behind the scenes kick in. After the strings have agreed on a unison E, the winds re-enter and intone a funeral march .
The fourth movement begins seamlessly, resembling the description of an apocalypse and savoring the polystilic means to the full; Schnittke uses quotes from all musical eras : The mix includes patches of a Gregorian chant , stories from the Vienna Woods , Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto , dies irae , a tango , a Beatles song and jazz . This is followed by an organ showerheads and a 66-voice canon about the C major - triad before numerous clusters and dissonances destroy the apparent order and harmony. After a reconciling chord across the full width of the orchestra, the last 14 bars of Haydn's farewell symphony are interspersed. The chimes and the orchestral thuwabohu of the beginning form the end. At this point the conductor has already disappeared.
meaning
Schnittke himself attributed a decisive key role to his first symphony in his work:
“The first is the central work for me, because it contains everything that I have ever had and done in my life, both the worst and the most kitschy - including the film music - as well as the most serious. All of this already occurs in this piece, and all later works are continuations of it and are conditioned by it. "
At another point, Schnittke describes the symphony as the “sum of several creative search actions and problem solutions”, which took up everything he wanted to say “back then about the form of music, the interaction of different styles and genres, and the comparison of serious and popular music”. All of the successor works were, as it were, her continuation.
The premiere in 1974 ended in a scandal, which also raised discussions about the general concept of symphony and the composer's intentions. In 1986 it was on the program for the first time in Moscow . The play still enjoys some popularity and is not infrequently performed again. There are already some CD recordings of the work.
literature
- Harenberg, cultural guide concert . Meyers Lexikonverlag, Mannheim 2006, ISBN 978-3-411-76161-6 .