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A Schnittke Reader. .(Book Review)-

Article Excerpt
A Schnittke Reader. By Alfred Schnittke. Edited by Alexander Ivashkin. Translated by John Goodliffe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. [xxv, 258 p. 0-253-3318-2. $45]. Music examples, illustrations, chronology, index.

If A Schnittke Reader had been published in the Soviet Union it would probably have been called something like Alfred Schnitthe: Articles, Reminiscences, and Materials, a title that would have better reflected its contents. Like many similarly titled Soviet books, it is a generally celebratory miscellany of recollections and articles by and about its subject rather than an introductory volume of representative articles about the composer. Yet despite its unevenness, it offers a wealth of materials for readers; its importance for scholars of Soviet and Russian culture, Schnittke's music, and postwar European music cannot be overstated.

The jacket copy and promotional materials for the volume claim that it was "one of the composer's last works." Yet Schnittke was heavily incapacitated in his last years as a result of the many strokes he suffered, and toward the end of his life he was unable to speak, requiring his intentions to be interpreted by his wife, pianist Irina Schnittke. It seems more likely, therefore, that the ultimate responsibility for the volume fell on the shoulders of its editor, the cellist Alexander Ivashkin, who was also the author of the first general English-language biography of the composer (Alfred Schnittke [London: Phaidon, 1996]). Most of the book is culled from Ivashkin's earlier volume Besedi s Al'fredom Shnitke (Conversations with Alfred Schnittke [Moscow: RIK Kul'tura, 1994], all trans. mine), which included his interviews with the composer supplemented by selections from other sources. Ivashkin also wrote the introduction to the present book, editorial comments throughout, and a chronology of Schnittke's life. With only three exceptions--the essay on Stravinsky ("Paradox As a Feature of Stravinsky's Musical Logic"), which had previously appeared only in an earlier Soviet collection; an interview with Mstislav Rostropovich; and a memoir by violinist Mark Lubotsky--the remainder of A Schnittke Reader is taken from a volume of theoretical...