The early polystylism of Alfred Schnittke demonstrates a gradual movement away from strict serialism towards a more mimetic music of quotations, allusions, aleatoric techniques, and tonal styles. This thesis investigates three pieces from 1968: film music for The Glass Harmonica, Serenade for Five Musicians, and Violin Sonata No. 2, Quasi Una Sonata. The first piece is analyzed as a clash of two ideas, the transcendent and the grotesque, which are exhibited in the music’s allusions to J. S. Bach and the presence of twentieth-century aleatory and atonality. The various technical features of Serenade and Violin Sonata No. 2 show the importance of dodecaphony and motivic atonality as unifying procedures. Temporal and pitch indeterminacy are also prevalent but it is perhaps the fleeting tonal references that hint at how important appropriation of older styles would be for Schnittke’s later music.

Thesis (D.M.A.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-06, Section: A, page: 2239. Adviser: Donna Buchanan. Includes Grigory Gerenstein's English translation. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 217-231) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

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As part of my doctoral research on Alfred Schnittke’s symphonies I analysed countless symphonies written not only by Schnittke ([Al’fred Šnitke] 1934–1998) himself, but also by a host of his Soviet contemporaries including Galina Ustvolskaya ([Galina Ustvol’skaâ] 1919–2006), Boris Chaikovsky ([Boris Cajkovskij] 1925–1996), Nikolai Karetnikov ([Nikolaj Karetnikov] 1930–1994), Sofia Gubaidulina ([Sofiâ Gubajdulina] born 1931), Valentin Silvestrov ([Valentin Silvestrov] born 1937), Boris Tishchenko ([Boris Tiˆsenko] 1939–2010) and many others. Among them, the symphonies by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (born 1935) really stood out, because each one of them is unique and quite different from the Shostakovichian symphonic model that was prevalent among this generation.