Free Dodecaphonic, Canon, Quotation And Collage

Alfred Schnittke is one of the Soviet Union's foremost contemporary composers. He created a great deal of music work with diverse form in his whole life. His work has received growing acclaim not only in his own country but also abroad. Schnittke's string quartet, as well as being a vehocle for his most intimate thoughts, also served as a kind of laboratory for refining proceducres which were then used on a larger scale in other works. This text which takes all four string quartets as analytical research objects, want to find the character of schnittke's own music language. The First String Quartet (1966) employs free dodecaphonic vocabulary. Schnittke's approach to twelve-note writing was always unorthodox. The Second String Quartet (1980) is built almost entirely upon medieval Russian sacred music which is quoted relatively clearly in the outer movements, the already idiosyncrctic harmonic and melodic character of the quoted material is refracted and distorted in the second and third movements as though it formed a part of Schnittke's own language. Similarly, the Third String Quartet (1983) takes as its material three quotations. All three themes undergo a gradual transformation and reconciliation in Schnittke's own musical language. And its polyphonic density is shown by the Fourth String Quartet (1989). The four string quartets of Schnittke are tangible evidence of his current stylistic and compositional preoccupations. He has always demonstrated an awareness of tradition; and although he has charted his own path to a variety of modern compositional techniques, he never pursued innovation for its own sake. What is new in Schnittke's work is his personal perception of the "old" and his forceful creative urge to incorporate it as an enrichment of his own musical language. This is nowhere more clearly demonstrated than in his four String Quartets.