Review

Reviewed Work(s): II. Symphonie (St. Florian) by Alfred Schnittke

Review by: Adrian Thomas
Source: Music & Letters, Vol. 65, No. 2 (Apr., 1984), pp. 210-211
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/736996
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versions reveal much about Blow's composition methods and about changing taste in
England during the 1690s. The setting of Abraham Cowley's 'Whilst on Septimius's
panting breast' is radically different in the two publications: the version in The Theater of
Music is for three voices with an extended overture-like symphony for two violins and
continuo, while in Amphion Anglicus there are only two voices, the symphony is replaced by a
shorter prelude and the violins are given a number of passages to play that are thematically
integrated with the voice parts. Evidently the fashion for Italian music in the 1690s enabled
Blow to produce a version with a more satisfactory structure and with a more sophisticated
relationship between the voices and instruments. It is high time that these extended songs
with obbligato instruments, a feature of the later Playford songbooks, were studied
seriously. It is a pity that Robert Spencer only mentions them in connection with the
instrumental ritornellos of theatre songs; he writes that 'some of these songs are of special
interest because of their instrumental ritornels, often heard in the theatre but usually
omitted from printed song-books', but unfortunately produces no evidence to support this
assertion. Of the music by other composers, I was particularly struck by the songs of
Giovanni Battista Draghi, the Italian emigre harpsichordist and friend of Purcell. His
setting of lines from the anonymous play Romulus and Hersilia (1683), 'Where art thou god of
dreams'-a superb Italianate recitative followed by an aria on the passacaglia bass-is
fully worthy of Purcell.
The presentation of this facsimile of The Theater of Music leaves little to be desired.
Robert Spencer's introduction covers the essential historical and musical background
succinctly and offers excellent advice on performance, taken from sources of the period. It is
handsomely bound and well reproduced, allowing for the often murky quality of Playford's
printing. By today's standards, ?34 for 189 songs is not bad value.
PETER HOLMAN

Schnittke, Alfred, II. Symphonie (St. Florian). Score. (Universal, Vienna, 1980, ?21.00.)
[Kalmus]

Alfred Schnittke (b. 1934) is one of the most interesting Soviet composers of his

generation. His eclecticism is at once his strength and his weakness, and his Symphony No

2 ('St. Florian') illustrates the difficulties his compositional approach entails. When t
BBC asked Schnittke for a new work to be performed in 1980, Gennadi Rozhdestvens

suggested a work dedicated to Bruckner, whose Mass in E minor was to fill the second hal

of the programme. As it happened, Schnittke had visited the monastery at St. Flori
much beloved by Bruckner, in 1977 and had experienced there a sung Mass in which

choir was hidden from view. Hence Schnittke's expressed intention of writing 'an "invisib

mass", a symphony with a choral background'. And herein lie the main linguistic an

structural problems of this over-ambitious symphony.

Schnittke's basic source materials are liturgical melodies, given to solo singers

(contralto, counter-tenor, tenor, baritone) or to the chorus. These are so faithful as to seem

over-familiar even when clouded by simple heterophonic splintering. The orchestral

contribution varies from pleasant if undynamic glosses to more impassioned, Brucknerian

commentaries on the vocal material. While there are a number of quietly attractive

passages of orchestral writing, on the whole it rarely rises above the averagely competent.

Exceptions include the curious thudding chorus in the opening 'Kyrie' and the striving

string writing towards the end of the symphony. It is hard to avoid the feeling that there is

something oddly dated about the actual sound Schnittke produces: when he invokes the

ghost of the Symphony of Psalms in the third movement, 'Credo', it is stodgy, not bursting

with vitality. The lack of real movement also rather negates the contrapuntal orchestral
techniques borrowed from Lutostawski. Nevertheless, one should be grateful that the

symphony as a whole is stylistically consistent, its integrity vis-a-vis Bruckner more marked
than Penderecki's recent ventures in this direction.
It is no accident that one mentions Polish composers in connection with this symphony:

another, Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki (b. 1933), has frequently turned in recent years to
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liturgical idioms or sources. He too has had his difficulties in integrating existing melodies
into a symphonic framework, but wisely he has never attempted to transfer foreign
structures as well. One need only compare his Symphony No. 3 ('Symphony of Sorrowful
Songs') (1977) with Schnittke's work (both last about 55 minutes). Gorecki's work has a
deliberate, slow-moving monumentality, a more restricted, personal and anguished
selection of texts than the patent objectivity of the Mass. Furthermore, the minimum
amount of material is expertly handled in both its thematic and formal dimensions.
Unfortunately, it is these very formal considerations that bedevil Schnittke's work. For
all his wish for a chorus with a secondary role, the Mass dominates, generally initiating
such musical argument as there is in each movement. And yet the orchestra, in
personalizing the issue, provides too strong a sonority for the small band of voices to match.
There is a subsequent dichotomy of formal gravitas. The six movements follow conventional
Mass divisions, and quasi-symphonic elements only rarely occur: the gradual accumulation
of the harmonic series on C in the second movement, 'Gloria', is cross-referenced in the
fourth movement. With the exception of the fugato-ostinato principle of the fourth
movement, 'Crucifixus', the blocked-out structures are awkwardly static and too
unmovingly repetitive to allow any intensification of the musical temperature. The
symphonic dimension is virtually non-existent. While one may applaud Schnittke's attempt
to synthesize two distant musical forms, it takes a bolder sense of the ways in which they
may interact for such an essay to be successful.
It should also be added that the quality of the score leaves much to be desired. It is in
the composer's own hand and includes a number of loose leaves. The reason given is: 'for
technical reasons, only a part of this page is reproduced here: the complete page is added in
the appendix.' Need one say more?
ADRIAN THOMAS

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