Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto for Choir

A Cellular Deconstruction

Tucker Bilodeau

Choral Literature 3; Dr. Habermann

March 22, 2016

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Alfred Schnittke was born on November 24th, 1934 in the Russian city of Engels. He was

born into a German-Jewish family, and the mix of his Russian, German, and Jewish heritages

finds its way into his music through the genres that he composed in. Schnittke’s first exposure to

music lessons was in Vienna while his family was living there from 1946-1948. In 1953, when

his family moved to Moscow, Schnittke entered the Moscow Conservatory and studied

composition with Yevgeny Golubev. While at the Conservatory, Schnittke’s primary musical

influences were Shostakovich and Mahler. When Nikita Khruschev came to power and sparked a

cultural “thaw” of Russia, outsider influences were finally allowed into the country after being

banned during Joseph Stalin’s rule. This “thaw” meant that Schnittke suddenly had access to

music of composers such as Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky.

Because of his study of these composers, Schnittke began experimenting with serialism.

Around the time of his graduation from the Moscow Conservatory, Schnittke wrote the oratorio

Nagasaki which was criticized by the Russian Union of Composers as being too “modernist”.

This criticism began a life-long spat with the Soviet Composers’ Union, especially when

Schnittke eschewed becoming a Union member (and subsequent state-supported and recognized

composer) to study and compose music in the Western avant-garde style.

This decision resulted in Schnittke being constantly attacked in official Soviet arts

publications. To combat this, Schnittke began to work as a composer of film music; something

that he would cite as the cause of his polystylism and would be explained in a presentation of his

essay “Polystylistic Tendencies in Modern Music” in 1971. The central tenets of this essay

appeared in his first concert work in 1972, the First Symphony. The head of the Soviet

Composers’ Union, Tikhon Khrennikov, condemened the piece and ultimately led to its

unofficial performance ban until Mikhail Gorbachyov came to power in 1985. Coinciding with
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this, Schnittke was also allowed to travel to performances of his works outside the Soviet Union.

Schnittke died in 1998 after complications from the five strokes that he suffered in the span of

1985-1998 in Hamburg, Germany.

These strokes did not limit him or his compositional output at all, but his music became

more austere and concerned with mortality. This austerity is one of the defining features of the

sacred choral concerto in the Russian Orthodox liturgy – composers did not want the music to

take away from the message that was being transmitted through a piece of music. Schnittke’s

Concerto for Choir is a direct descendent of this idea through his use of harmonic, melodic, and

rhythmic cellular constructions for each of the piece’s four movements.

Russian Orthodox Sacred Concerti and Gregory of Narek’s Book of Lamentations

Schnittke’s Concerto for Choir falls in line with a tradition of sacred concerti in the

Russian Orthodox church that reached its heights with Dmitry Bornianski in the early 19th

century. Russians began importing Italian forms of music into Peter the Great’s court, bringing

opera, oratorio, motets, madrigals, and the aforementioned sacred concerti. Trained under Italian

tutelage, Bortnianski carried on musical traditions that tsar brought in through Italian

kappelmeisters. The sacred concerti contained sacred, non-liturgical texts for their use in the

orthodox church service. Filling a function similar to the motet in the Catholic tradition, sacred

concerti allowed Orthodox Christians to clearly and (most often) serenely hear a text related to

the activities of the church that day. The convention of a cappella singing stems from the

Orthodox church’s mandate for unaccompanied music. Since the Italians brought musical genres

that were inherently a cappella, the tradition of the sacred concerti was firmly rooted in future

Russian Orthodox liturgical practices. Even though the text of the Concerto for Choir is both
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sacred and non-liturgical, Schnittke clearly meant the Concerto for concert performance as it was

dedicated to the Soviet state’s chamber choir under Valery Poliansky.

Saint Gregory of Narek (or Grigor Narekatsi) was an Armenian monk, poet, mystical

philosopher, and theologian that lived from 951-1003 AD. He performed his monastic duties at

the monastery of Narek in Armenia, and he is considered Armenia’s first great poet. The Book of

Lamentations is a book of prayers (formatted in a similar fashion to the Biblical Psalms) that

represents his whole idea of religion and theology. These 95 prayers are split up into five

sections in the original Armenian text, although the Russian translation that Schnittke would

have used only presents four sections (despite all 95 prayers being present). The Book of

Lamentations is Gregory’s effort to answer the question “what can we as humans offer to God?”.

The prayers are written expressions of human suffering and humility thought to be pleasing to

God, with the answer being the ”sighs of the heart”. Schnittke’s selection of texts all come from

the third chapter (as per the Russian translation) and the subsequent musical treatment of them

emulate this idea.

The Concerto for Choir

Each movement of the Concerto for Choir has an overall form that is defined by the

cellular motives that Schnittke weaves through the composition. These cells are defined textually

and then presented visually for the ease of understanding of the reader. While the movements of

the Concerto are not formally titled (only listed as I, II, III, and IV in the score), the first line of

the text(s) can be considered the titles. To properly analyze each movement, an overview of the

form is provided, followed by a summary of the text before zooming into the individual cells that

comprise each part of the movement’s overall form.

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The first movement of the Concerto for Choir is set to the text of the first poem of the

third section in the Book of Lamentations. Therefore, the first movement is colloquially entitled

“O Master of all living”. The movement is in a simple ABA form, with each section being made

up of a four-measure melodic idea that carries varying harmonic implications with it:

The first cell that Schnittke uses occurs at the outset of the piece:

The melody is in lines 1 and 5 – the rest of the voices form pedal points and harmonic structures against it.

The melody is present in the soprano 1 and tenor 1 voice parts with all other voice parts

sounding perfect fifths below it, giving the opening statement a hollow B/F# pitch center in

which to work. While the first movement of the Concerto is decidedly tonal, it carries with it

echoes of Schnittke’s polystylism – even with a distinct melodic motive, the harmonic treatment

varies from pitch to pitch. Some voices will hold either a B or F# drone that creates a natural

dissonance against the melody. To follow this opening statement, Schnittke builds a texture that
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involves stacks of pitches in the B minor scale (in either thirds or fifths) that create a dissonant,

yet tonal, structure with which carries textual implications of the “priceless gifts” that Gregory’s

text speaks of. Schnittke uses similar madrigalisms in order to express the raw emotion of

Gregory’s supplication throughout the Concerto.

The B section of the first movement begins a litany to God. Schnittke sets this by using

the following cell in a variety of key centers with connective material in between them:

The second voice from the top contains descending melodic thirds that are accompanied with the F# pedal.

The basic building block of this cell is the drone that underlies the melody of the A section with

the descending melodic thirds below it. As previously stated, this motive is presented in a variety

of keys and harmonic centers, creating inherent musical interest and tension when these

harmonic centers abruptly change. Each line of the text presents the above cell with its own

harmonic structure, the mood of the last words of the line determine how Schnittke sets the

music. For instance, before the return of the A section, Schnittke writes a thickly voiced Bb

major chord with the top soprano part soaring above the rest of the choir with its own melody to

depict the word “rejoice”. That Bb major then immediately resets to the initial cell’s harmonic

structure of the B/F# drones:

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The return of the A section features the same melody in lines 1 and 5 harmonized in the same manner as before.

Schnittke truncates the return to the opening A section musically due to the text being shorter

than before the litany of the B section. The movement ends with an emphatic prayer to God

through a build-up to a final B Major chord that recalls the few measures of music that directly

precede the return of the A section.

The second movement of the Concerto, titled “I, an expert in human passions,” continues

the third chapter of the Book of Lamentations with a prayer to God that Gregory’s verses will

reach Christians all over the world. Musically, this divides into an ABC form in which each

musical section shares a cell that shows up in three distinct permutations for each new section of

the text.

The A section states why he (Gregory) wrote the poem(s), the B section describes who he

wrote them for, and the C section asks God to give the words as a guide to others in the future.

The opening A section is characterized by an ostinato in the male voices:

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6 part men carry this ostinato figure throughout almost the entirety of the A section.

that accompanies a chromatic semitone melody that is passed around the women’s voices:

This Eb – D semitone motion is transposed at various intervals and passed around the women’s voices in the A
section.

The men’s quasi-antiphonal “alleluia” ostinato underneath Gregory’s poetry exhibits a

monastic quality that is intensified through the intense chromaticism of the melody. The B

section turns this on its head by changing the rhythm of the ostinato (to straight quarter notes)

and putting it in the inner voices while the bass voice carries on the semitone melody:

The opening ostinato figure is presented in diminution in the upper 3 voices while the baritones carry the melody.
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The C section goes a step further by adding a pedal to the ostinato of the men’s voices,

largely retaining the original half-note rhythmic values. While the altos have a distinct melody to

convey the final portion of the text, the sopranos maintain the chromatic semitone movement that

began in the A section.

The ostinato reappears in a form closer to its original; the sopranos carry the semitone melodic motion with a new
melody in the altos.

The third movement of the Concerto, entitled “God, grand deliverance from sin,” is by

far the longest movement that carries a quasi-ritornello form with it:

All of the A sections sections are characterized by a chant-like melody that is set against a pedal:

The initial A section: the chant melody is presented against an E pedal. Later, this will be transposed to be against a
G pedal and then an A pedal in the final return.
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The rhythm of the pedal is determined by the rhythm of the text, which is unlike other

sustained pedal points that Schnittke uses elsewhere in the Concerto. The above cell is altered

later on in the movement with the amount of voices that take part in the music: the first return

adds the tenors to the basses with soloists, and the final return adds the women of the choir.

Schnittke does not concern himself with ensuring that altered tones are carried through a bar in

all parts; often times a natural note (E natural in the figure) will be written against a flatted

version of that note that better fits the chant melody. The B section is characterized by a chorale-

esque setting of the text in the men’s voices with a high pedal soaring over it:

Three part soprani carry the pedal with upper and lower neighbor motion while four-part men have a chorale-like
setting of the poetry.

Schnittke makes minor deviations to a true pedal point with the upper and lower neighbor

tones that the top and bottom soprano solo voices sing. The C section is characterized by 4 note

chromatic semitone passages that occur in every voice at various points in order to show the

struggle with sin:

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Beginning with the tenors, the semitone melodic motion is passed around voice parts; later this culminates in
Schnittke beginning different voice parts in different parts of the chromatic scale with the same melodic motion.

Later in the section, an ostinato in the basses is set underneath the 4 note chromatic

semitone “melodies” that occur in 4-part divisi SAT that all begin on different pitches in the

chromatic scale. The final D section involves half-step oscillating motion that is passed around

various voice parts while the others sing the text in a chorale setting.

The sopranos and altos have more of the chromatic semitone motion while the tenors and basses have a simpler
chorale-type setting of the text.
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The last movement of the Concerto, simply titled “Complete this work,” is a final prayer

that that is hopeful and contemplative in nature. It is the shortest movement and is divided into

three textual sections including a final amen.

Schnittke follows mostly four-bar phrases that evoke more simplistic and austere musical

characteristics. The voice-leading is mostly step-wise and diatonic, which is most likely the

reason that this movement is often excerpted from the Concerto as a whole. Unlike the harmonic

exploration of the previous three movements, the final movement tends to stay in a central

tonality that is punctuated by a dominant ninth chord.

The A section is a b-minor setting of a melody against an upper pedal point:

The second sopranos and second tenors carry the melody against the pedal tones of the other voice parts.
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The B section differs in terms of rhythmic drive due to the implications of the text,

meaning that the section forms a sort of extended chorale. Schnittke also changes the harmonic

center to c minor after ending the A section with a G9 chord.

Similar music to the A section – pedal points with melodic motion around them.

The resolution into the C section’s final amen differs from the A to B sections in that

there is no clear tonic-dominant resolution. The section as a whole somewhat elicits Arvo Pärt

and his tintinnabuli style of composition. Entirely written in D Major, each of the individual

voice parts either sustains a chord tone or leaps to another chord tone. This, paired with an

immensely dense vocal texture, creates an aural effect of Christians in all corners of the world

saying a final amen over the words of the Book of Lamentations.

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A portion of the Concerto’s final amen. The dense vocal texture is complimented by simplicity of its harmony.
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Conclusion

Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto for Choir is by no means an easy work for an ensemble to

learn and digest. His polystylism allows him to write individual cells of music and connect them

in various ways. From chant-like melodies to chorale settings, Schnittke evokes many idioms of

sacred music that have permeated both Russia and the western world for centuries. In roughly

forty minutes of music, the extremes of human emotion are conveyed through the extremes of

harmonic complexity and vocal ability. These extremes form a sincere supplication to the

almighty God, and Alfred Schnittke frames Gregory of Narek’s text in such a way that

completely reflects his original intentions with the Book of Lamentations. It is the hope of this

author that any ensemble capable of fielding the singers required by the piece undertake what

would be required for a performance of this magnificent work.

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Jennings, Mark D. “Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto for Choir: Musical Analysis and Historical
Perspectives.” Ph. D. diss., Florida State University, 2002.

Morosan, Vladimir, ed. Monuments of Russian Sacred Music. Vol. 1,

One Thousand Years of Russian Church Music: 988-1988. Washington, DC: Musica
Russica, 2006.

Morosan, Vladimir. Choral Performance in Pre-Revolutionary Russia. Ann Arbor, Michigan:

UMI Research Press, 1986.

Schnittke, Alfred. A Schnittke Reader. Edited by Alexander Ivashkin. Translated by John

Goodliffe. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002.

Schnittke, Alfred. Concerto for Choir. Hamburg, Germany: Sikorski Musikverlage. 2000.

Turgeon, Melanie E. ”Composing the Sacred in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia: History and
Christianity in Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto for Choir.” D.M.A. diss., University of
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