Comments on: Last Night in L.A.: Gubaidulina and Schnittke http://www.sequenza21.com/2007/05/last-night-in-la-gubaidulina-and-schnittke/ The Contemporary Classical Music Community Wed, 22 May 2013 02:29:02 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: zeno http://www.sequenza21.com/2007/05/last-night-in-la-gubaidulina-and-schnittke/comment-page-1/#comment-6004 zeno Thu, 17 May 2007 21:36:04 +0000 http://www.sequenza21.com/index.php/422#comment-6004 Alfred Schnittke, in fact, talked at length, in an 1988 interview with Soviet Radio, about the Marian and ecumenical [Judeo-Christian] aspects of his Symphony #4 [1984]. See:

http://www.schnittke.de/index1b.htm

In a nutshell, besides evoking the five Catholic ‘fortunate, tragic, and miraculous’ episodes in the life of Mary; Schnittke employed tones (4) from a Major Tetrachord to evoke Catholic christianity; tones (4) from a Minor Tetrachord to evoke Orthodox christianity; tones (6) from two Trichords in evoke Lutheran christianity; and two (2) pairs of Minor Seconds linked by a whole step to evoke ‘uralten Synagogengesang’ (the Judaic cantoral tradition).
Together, these superimposed sets of tones evoke a fully pan-chromatic sound world — referred to by Schnittke as a primal, musical ‘infinite clay’.

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