Alfred Schnittke's Concerto Grosso No. 1

Concerto Grosso no. 1 is one of Alfred Schnittke's best-known and most compelling works, sounding the surface of late Soviet life while resonating with contemporary compositional currents around the world such as postmodernism. It marked a decisive point in Schnittke's development of the approach he called polystylism, which aimed to contain in a single composition the wide range of contemporary musical styles, including jazz, pop, rock, or serial music. Thanks to it and his other similar compositions, Schnittke became one of the most-performed and most-recorded living composers at the end of the twentieth century.

Peter J. Schmelz's Alfred Schnittke's Concerto Grosso no. 1 represents the first accessible and comprehensive study of this composition. The novel structure of the book engages with the piece conceptually, historically, musically, and phenomenologically, with the six movements of the composition framing the six chapters. Augmenting and complicating the insights of existing English, Russian, and German publications on the Concerto Grosso no. 1, the book adds new information from underused primary sources, including Schnittke's unpublished correspondence and his many published interviews. It engages further with his sketches for the piece, and with contemporary Soviet musical criticism, resulting in a more objective, historical account of this rich, multifaceted composition, its influences, and its impact on music making in the USSR and worldwide.


The latest book in the Oxford Keynotes series offers a thoughtful and detailed analysis of one of Schnittke's best-known works and the piece that helped to make his compositions known in the West.This...book makes an admirable addition to the Oxford Keynotes series, and deserves to be purchased by many libraries as well as by readers who wish to know more about one of the pieces at the very centre of avant-garde musical culture of the last fifty years. -- Arnold McMillin, The Slavonic and East European Review

This is peak Schmelz, refracting Schnittke's iconic piece through crystalline prose, meticulous scholarship, and keen analysis. A must-read for those who don't know Concerto Grosso No. 1, and even more essential for those who think they do -- Joy H. Calico, author of Arnold Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw in Postwar Europe