The Horizons of Otherness. Towards the 85th Anniversary of the Birth of Alfred Schnittke
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Abstract
Alfred Schnittke in his music had prognosed the future on numerous occasions. And one
of his most important prognoses consisted in the increasing danger of the absorption of the
human element by the cosmic. The paths of approaching towards modeling the processes of
cosmization traversed through the ascention towards various types of abstractions and through
the “globalization” of sound material. The fluids of cosmism are also clearly perceptible in the
pantheistic pictures created by the composer. Stemming from such artistic solutions, the composer
had frequently risen towards the heights of extratemporal categories, which undoubtedly marked
his immersion into the sphere of cosmogony. As such, the transformation of earthly civilization
into a cosmic otherness is presented with the greatest tangibility in two compositions. Schnittke’s
electronic piece created by him on the famous “ANS” synthesizer which received the title of
“The Stream” (1969) demonstrates the impendent situation of total absorption of all manifestations
of the human element, making the music a sound-noise analogy of the matter of the universe,
its enigmatic Something and Nothing and suggesting an apocalyptic feeling of the inevitability
of global catastrophe. The examined issue received all-encompasing elaboration in the Second
Symphony (1979), where in a metaphorical form the path of European civilization is traced
out from its sources from Medieval times and up to its inevitable outcome in the hypothetic
future by means of the transition of earthly matter into a certain cosmic dimension, which makes
the present composition a manifest of the already begun process of metamorphosis of human
existence into a dimly perceived otherness.
Keywords: ideas of cosmism in the music of Alfred Schnittke, the Sceond Symphony of
Schnittke, the electronic music of Schnittke.
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