Symphony No. 1 (Schnittke)

The Symphony No. 1 by Alfred Schnittke was composed between 1969 and 1974. It is scored for a large orchestra. The symphony is recognised^{[by whom?]} as one of Schnittke's most extreme essays in aleatoric music.^{[dubious – discuss]} From the outset the piece is loud, brash, and chaotic, and it quotes motifs from all parts of the Western classical tradition.

Schnittke includes a

Music

The symphony is in four movements:

The second movement opens with a faux-

Ross regards it as surprising that the work was ever passed by the Soviet authorities, even though by the 1970s the regime had become less hardline. Schnittke himself noted:

While composing the symphony for four years, I simultaneously worked on the music to M. Romm's film I Believe…. Together with the shooting crew I looked through thousands of meters of documentary film. Gradually they formed in my mind a seemingly chaotic but inwardly orderly chronicle of the 20th century.^[2]

Somehow, Ross notes, the authorities saw this as an endorsement of the Soviet regime. He argues that in this piece:

Western musical history is re-created as a barrage of garbled transmissions, a radio receiving many stations on one channel. Despite its veneer of goofiness, this triumph of planned anarchy has a simple and serious effect. It produces the sound of music, rather than music itself—what is overheard by a society that no longer knows how to listen. The society in question need not be Soviet.^[1]

The symphony was premiered on 9 February 1974, in Gorky (