Russian composer

Alfred Schnittke Alfred Garrievich Schnittke (24 November 1934 – 3 August 1998) was a Russian composer. Among the most performed and recorded composers of late 20th-century classical music, he is described by musicologist Ivan Moody (composer), Ivan Moody as a ...

's Symphony No. 8 was composed in 1994. Its dedicatee

Gennady Rozhdestvensky Gennady Nikolayevich Rozhdestvensky, CBE (; 4 May 1931 – 16 June 2018) was a Soviet and Russian conductor, pianist, composer, and pedagogue. Biography Gennady Rozhdestvensky was born in Moscow. His parents were the noted conductor and pedagog ...

conducted the

Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra The Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra ( or , literal translations, "Royal Philharmonic" or "Royal Philharmonic Orchestra") is a Swedish orchestra based in Stockholm. Its principal venue is the Konserthuset. History The orchestra was foun ...

in the symphony's premiere in Stockholm on 10 November 1994. The symphony is scored for an orchestra of: 3

flute The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...

s, 3

oboe The oboe ( ) is a type of double-reed woodwind instrument. Oboes are usually made of wood, but may also be made of synthetic materials, such as plastic, resin, or hybrid composites. The most common type of oboe, the soprano oboe pitched in C, ...

s, 3

clarinet The clarinet is a Single-reed instrument, single-reed musical instrument in the woodwind family, with a nearly cylindrical bore (wind instruments), bore and a flared bell. Clarinets comprise a Family (musical instruments), family of instrume ...

s, 3

bassoon The bassoon is a musical instrument in the woodwind family, which plays in the tenor and bass ranges. It is composed of six pieces, and is usually made of wood. It is known for its distinctive tone color, wide range, versatility, and virtuosity ...

s, 4

horn Horn may refer to: Common uses * Horn (acoustic), a tapered sound guide ** Horn antenna ** Horn loudspeaker ** Vehicle horn ** Train horn *Horn (anatomy), a pointed, bony projection on the head of various animals * Horn (instrument), a family ...

s, 4

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz musical ensemble, ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest Register (music), register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitche ...

s, 3

trombone The trombone (, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's lips vibrate inside a mouthpiece, causing the Standing wave, air c ...

tuba The tuba (; ) is the largest and lowest-pitched musical instrument in the brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, the sound is produced by lip vibrationa buzzinto a mouthpiece (brass), mouthpiece. It first appeared in th ...

timpani Timpani (; ) or kettledrums (also informally called timps) are musical instruments in the percussion instrument, percussion family. A type of drum categorised as a hemispherical drum, they consist of a Membranophone, membrane called a drumhead, ...

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a percussion mallet, beater including attached or enclosed beaters or Rattle (percussion beater), rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or ...

, 2

harp The harp is a stringed musical instrument that has individual strings running at an angle to its soundboard; the strings are plucked with the fingers. Harps can be made and played in various ways, standing or sitting, and in orchestras or ...

harpsichord A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a musical keyboard, keyboard. Depressing a key raises its back end within the instrument, which in turn raises a mechanism with a small plectrum made from quill or plastic that plucks one ...

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

, and

strings String or strings may refer to: *String (structure), a long flexible structure made from threads twisted together, which is used to tie, bind, or hang other objects Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Strings'' (1991 film), a Canadian anim ...

. The movements are as follows: #

Moderato Moderato may refer to: * ''Moderato'', an Italian musical term; see Glossary of music terminology#M * Moderato Wisintainer (1902-1986), Brazilian footballer generally known as Moderato See also * '' Moderato Cantabile'', a 1958 novel by Mar ...

Allegro Allegro may refer to: Common meanings * Allegro (music), a tempo marking that indicates to playing quickly and brightly (from Italian meaning ''cheerful'') * Allegro (ballet), brisk and lively movement Artistic works * L'Allegro (1645), a poem b ...

moderato #

Lento Lento may refer to: * ''Lento'' (skipper), a genus of skippers in the family Hesperiidae * Lento, Haute-Corse, a French commune located on the island of Corsica * Lento speech, a relatively slow manner of speaking Music * Lento (band), an Italia ...

#Allegro moderato #Lento The playing time is approximately 35 minutes. The first movement begins with a simple 8-bar melody played on the horns. The movement is based on an ''

ostinato In music, an ostinato (; derived from the Italian word for ''stubborn'', compare English ''obstinate'') is a motif or phrase that persistently repeats in the same musical voice, frequently in the same pitch. Well-known ostinato-based pieces inc ...

'' of twenty-two

transposed In linear algebra, the transpose of a matrix is an operator which flips a matrix over its diagonal; that is, it switches the row and column indices of the matrix by producing another matrix, often denoted by (among other notations). The tra ...

repetitions of this melody passed backwards and forwards between different groups of instruments. The first ''Allegro moderato'' acts as an ''

intermezzo In music, an intermezzo (, , plural form: intermezzi), in the most general sense, is a composition which fits between other musical or dramatic entities, such as acts of a play or movements of a larger musical work. In music history, the term ha ...

''. Initially it seems to be a continuation of the ''ostinato'' from the first movement but fast

crotchet A quarter note ( AmE) or crotchet ( BrE) () is a musical note played for one quarter of the duration of a whole note (or semibreve). Quarter notes are notated with a filled-in oval note head and a straight, flagless stem. The stem usually poi ...

s, flourishes, dissonant chords and increasingly dense

tone clusters A tone cluster is a chord (music), musical chord comprising at least three adjacent musical tone, tones in a scale (music), scale. Prototypical tone clusters are based on the chromatic scale and are separated by semitones. For instance, three ste ...

intrude. The dominating movement of the symphony is the central ''Lento'' which takes up nearly half the length of the entire work. Its slow theme, initially heard on the strings, evokes the music of various other composers important to Schnittke, including

Bruckner Joseph Anton Bruckner (; ; 4 September 182411 October 1896) was an Austrian composer and organist best known for his symphonies and sacred music, which includes Masses, Te Deum and motets. The symphonies are considered emblematic of the final ...

Mahler Gustav Mahler (; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism ...

Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, essayist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most o ...

and

Shostakovich Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his Symphony No. 1 (Shostakovich), First Symphony in 1926 and thereafter was regarded ...

.Per F. Broman (2005) ''Liner note from the BIS recording'' The second ''Allegro moderato'' commences with fanfares and, in contrast with the mood of much of the rest of the symphony, attempts at being sprightly but ultimately descends into echoes of Shostakovich-like bleakness. The final ''Lento'' (very short at just two minutes) is effectively a coda dedicated solely to the gradual building of a tone cluster of all of the notes of the

C major C major is a major scale based on C, consisting of the pitches C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. C major is one of the most common keys used in music. Its key signature has no flats or sharps. Its relative minor is A minor and its parallel min ...

scale spread across more than three

octave In music, an octave (: eighth) or perfect octave (sometimes called the diapason) is an interval between two notes, one having twice the frequency of vibration of the other. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referr ...

s which gradually fades.

Recordings

* BIS -

Norrköping Symphony Orchestra The Norrköping Symphony Orchestra () is a Swedish professional symphony orchestra. It is based at the concert hall Louis de Geer konsert & kongress, De Geerhallen, in the center of Norrköping. History The orchestra was founded in 1912, an ...

, Lü Jia (conductor) * Chandos - The Russian State Symphony Orchestra,

Valery Polyansky Valery Kuzmich Polyansky (Russian: ''Валерий Кузьмич Полянский''; born April 19, 1949, in Moscow) is a Russian orchestral and choral conductor. He is a professor of the Moscow Conservatory, People's Artist of Russia (1996), ...

(cond.) * Chandos - The

(cond.)

References

{{Alfred Schnittke 1994 compositions Symphonies by Alfred Schnittke