A ll composers somehow reflect their times; some composers do little more. Schnittke is a separate case. Conditions in Russia [were], indeed, dreadful, but that is the least surprising news that this composer brings. He represents not only a moment in the history of Russia, but also a moment in the history of music. To put it simply, he will not vanish when his times are up. The multiplicity of styles, of schools, of genres; the overbearing weight of an impressive past; the overshadowing brilliance and energy of present-day ‘popular’ modes seemingly alien to the classical tradition; the possibilities of a future in which parochial barriers will crumble away—all this is acutely observed in Schnittke’s music, and at times epiphanically reconciled. He is nothing less than the composer of our climate.”
— Alex Ross, New Republic, 28-SEP-1992.
CMT: I think the musicologists and music theorists who study Schnittke are not accustomed to reading ‘small’ fiction—miniatures like ‘sudden fiction’ and ‘flash fiction’ and ‘microfiction.’ And, of course, there’s a tendency of the smallest of small fiction to be enigmatic or koan-like. These aren’t stylized stories with formulaic structures and predictable, ironic-twist endings.
DSM: Some microfiction idioms are constrained by the rules to be 55 words or less. They fly in the face of the conventional model for fiction, with heroic individuals making momentous decisions over long periods of time. They’re ‘thrown’—hurled—everything happens in seconds.
T heir driving source was not the need that created the novel but an older urge—the same need that created Norse kennings, Zen koans, Sufi tales.”
— Russell Banks.
CMT: There are now two variants—the term ‘sudden fiction’ now refers to pieces that are 4 to 8 pages in length (1,500 to 4,500 words) while ‘flash fiction’ refers to pieces that are 1 to 4 pages (500 to 1,500 words). Microfiction is nominally 250 words or less—less than half a page. And the shorter the piece is, the more subversive and alienated it tends to be. You need to have a look at Shapard’s and Thomas’s new anthology to see what I mean. And much of Schnittke’s music is like this. Especially the more ‘cinematic’ pieces, like the String Quartet No. 3. Schnittke may have been forced by circumstance to make a living writing film and cartoon soundtrack music, but you have to admit—it suited him. I think his temperament would’ve gravitated in this direction regardless what financial or political constraints were placed upon him.
DSM: Shorter equals more alienated, yes. But it also equals more referential to the things from which he asserts he’s alienated. References can be constructed in a variety of ways: allusions—inflections within a discourse—and quotations—incorporation of one discourse in another. Intertextual references have a different status from the surrounding discourse: they’re on another level. For instance, references aren’t directly attributable to the composer in question, but bring in another imaginary subject whose music we’re made believe we’re hearing—a musical persona. The same is true in the other arts—literature, painting, film. It’s in this sense that reference leads to representation. In small pieces, establishing the reference occupies a major percentage of the piece—the reference
is the representation.
CMT: Let’s look at Schnittke’s Quartet No. 3, which quotes Beethoven and Lassus and Shostakovich.
E ach cited element breaks the continuity or the linearity of the discourse and leads necessarily to a double reading: that of the fragment perceived in relation to its text of origin; that of the same fragment as incorporated into the new thing, a different reality.”
— Perloff, Collages: Revue d’ Esthétique 1978; 3-4: 34f.
DSM: You know, Bakhtin didn’t distinguish between author and narrator—that’s a differentiation established later in literary theory. The ‘implied author’ is a later innovation. These days, Bakhtin’s ‘author’ would be called a narrator. Much of Schnittke’s writing seems to be from an alienated narrator—Schnittke composed as though he were a Bakhtinian ‘author’.
CMT: Bakhtin’s theory of the novel says that individual discourses in a fictional work aren’t isolated from one another but interact. If characters or narrators report or reflect on somebody else’s discourse, they inevitably orient themselves toward it in some way: someone else’s words introduced into our own speech inevitably display our own interpretations and become subject to our evaluation of them; that is they become multivocal. This ‘meta-discourse’ or ‘multivocality’ is discourse with an orientation toward someone else’s discourse. So the same words take on a different meaning if they are, say, the object of parody. As a writing technique, multivocality aims to mimic real life—including turns of events and hindsight. So, yes, I suppose Schnittke was a Bakhtinian.
DSM: As a detached observer/narrator, Schnittke feels less responsibility for insuring that what happens is coherent. The material—the musical collage—is simply represented as historical fact. This is a reportorial Schnittke; a Schnittke-as-collector. Schnittke gives us a collage—an anthology—of found objects whose deeper meaning, if any, Schnittke doesn’t elucidate. The collage is merely comprised of ‘facts’ about ‘others’. The interpretation’s left entirely to the listener.
CMT: But just as the concept of ‘other’ is called into question by the dialogue between ‘authorial’ and ‘represented’ discourses, so is the notion of ‘self’ called into question. The reportorial Schnittke isn’t letting us understand much about himself, is he?
DSM: I suppose that’s true. With his reportorial, narratorly stance, he does give up the conventional, privileged ‘authorial’ voice—or feigns giving it up. With his String Quartet No. 3 (1983), Schnittke embarks on this new stylistic path. While in earlier pieces his musical quotations and borrowings have an ‘irritating’ effect and seem to have been introduced as alien presences, in Quartet No. 3 the motifs he uses (from Beethoven and Lassus and Shostakovich) are introduced benignly into the musical flow and brought into a relationship with one another. It’s not alienation so much as touchy coexistence. I wonder, too, whether his own sense of self was not disrupted by the ongoing series of strokes he suffered during the years he composed the Quartets Nos. 3 and 4 . . .
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