Alfred Schnittke - String Quartet No. 3 (w/ score) (1983)

Borodin Quartet

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[tonal]

Two violins, a viola, a cello, they create a universe, they summarize human experience.

[sunesmith]

The music is amazing. Every time I hear Schnittke, I become more admirer. Alfred can do something with the music, he is brilliant and quite unparalleled, just want to hear more of him.

[seaotter]

Alfred Schnittke's Third String Quartet from 1983 is already one of the most performed works in the post-1945 repertory. This may be due on the one hand to Schnittke's considerable reputation, and perhaps also to the Quartet's use of older, more recognizable musical models. But the work's popularity may also be a result of its enormous concentration. It is one of those remarkable works that perfectly synthesizes form and content, ends and means, and in doing so rightfully earns the mantle "classic."

This achievement is particularly notable with a composer like Schnittke, so justifiably known for his "anti-classical" or "polystylistic" approach; most of Schnittke's works, this one included, depend on shattering classical norms of balance, purity, and wholeness for a multiplicity of styles. Schnittke's Third Quartet shatters all three within its first minute. We hear only broken pieces from other times and other works -- first from Orlando de Lassus's Stabat Mater (later 1500's), then from Beethoven's Grosse Fuge for String Quartet, Op. 133 (1825), and finally from Dmitri Shostakovich's famous "musical signature" D-E flat-C-B (in German notation D-S-C-H, hence D. SCHostakovich), first used in Shostakovich's Fifth String Quartet of 1952. Schnittke takes these three musical modules, from disparate traditions traversing half a millennium, and puts them directly after one another, only to have the whole thread snap and fall to the ground.

Hardly "balanced, pure, and whole." And yet what Schnittke does with this historical flotsam is not only expressive, but extraordinarily resourceful, intricate, and interrelated; indeed, Schnittke eventually reveals that the Lassus, Beethoven, and Shostakovich cells are motivically intertwined, one yielding to another through fluid transformations, "developing variations." If this approach is reminiscent of Brahms, Schnittke's motivic concentration throughout the remainder of the Quartet is Beethovenian. In the "Agitato" second movement in particular, almost every note, figure, and expressive gesture is derived from the main motives and thus tied to the whole movement and the entire Quartet. And even as this "Agitato" hurls itself inevitably toward catastrophe, it follows a strict sonata-form plan of ABA (exposition of material-development-return of exposition). In its structure, compression, and expressive but controlled violence, this movement offers a striking chamber-music foil to the opening "Allegro con brio" of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Likewise, the funereal "Pesante" last movement returns to and develops the motley shards of the first movement into a single lachrymose plaint, bringing the whole Quartet to a culmination and closure. So the whole Quartet mirrors its middle movement's ABA-form.

And yet what makes Schnittke's Third Quartet most remarkable is not this "classicism, " but rather this "classicism despite itself." For while the Quartet holds itself together so tightly, it also achieves the expressive opposite: its emotional world is constantly falling apart, by turns confused, manic, hysterical, depressed, bitter, and utterly despairing. And though the Quartet is so motivically unified and closed, at the same time it is referentially wide open, embracing an overwhelming number of musical and extra-musical sources, including the entire string quartet tradition (from Franz Josef Haydn to Beethoven to Alban Berg and Béla Bartók) and the idea of the string quartet as artistic confession (for at the time of their respectively quoted quartets, Beethoven and Shostakovich were both consummately isolated creators, one through deafness and the other through political dissidence).

Above all, though, Schnittke's Third Quartet astounds though the unresolved tension of these opposites, the passage of great art into wreckage, back into great art. A work of such effective contradiction deserves the contradictory label "Classic Polystylism."
From Allmusic

[stephenhall]

The sheer scope of this music -- from just 4 instruments -- is astounding in dynamics, direction, harmonic language (with open string harmonics) and the signature "polystylism" of Schnittke making for a work which never goes stale.
Some of the best aspects of his concerti grossi are this quartet and it is just so sure footed and subtle in using the 'worlds' of Beethoven, Shostakovich, Bartók and Bach etc but without being a parasitic composer as so many late 20th century could be.
They were fragmentary but Schnittke was a supreme craftsman with a love of sheer sound which Shostakovich admired so much about his fellow Russian.
In this work we get symphonic proportions, delicate single instrument harmonics and absolutely no self-indulgence.

[PhilippeTapon]

Many thanks for posting the score and this magnificent interpretation.

[SachinShukla]

Schnittke is so much fun to listen to and read. He has a wonderfully expressive and varied tonal language and his scores are so analytical but simultaneously accessible

[FeonaLeeJones]

I LOVE that he mixes the old with the new...baroque sounding polyphonic material with modern textures. Very cinematic!!!

[tooxicfox]

Just simply awsome.... from the beginning to the end

[stueystuey]

Dude seems to be a patent genius.

Time flies. Three years after this comment and a foray into many many other ultra modernist composers, Xenakkis, Ferneyhough, Maderna, continued exploration of Carter ( my current favorite composer), Knuasen, and still more born in the 1970's and later, I still find Schnittkes vibrant blend of baroque, Germanic sturm und drang, Russian bathos, French eclecticism, palatable and enjoyable.

[isaiahcruz]

Schnittke has to be one of my favorite composers.

[MrInterestingthings]

Schnittke embraces a beguiling charm here . He draws us in with a restlesness, leaves themes for ideas quickly - there is true creative joy here. Very different from most of his work or really the same just more light and obvious tenderness . all of his works display many sides so it is unfair of me to say this is different but it emits so much radiance and the textures in the 1st movement sometimes close sometimes open leave one listening rapt at the diversity of sound and timbre . I have no idea what he is doing with so many contrasts and quoting music from different times and cultures but it is an experience worth reseraching informed commentary on . It is unlike the 2 previous quartets or the famous piano quartet .

[Ignat]

this is such a genius piece! I cannot believe this... I've just listened to it in one take during my brake.
Amazing!

Bravo!!!

[tonal]

This is one of my favorite pieces of music, and the Borodin Quartet does it the best. Thank you for posting this incredible music.

[zbouaerg]

1. Andante 00:00
2. Agitato 05:55
3 . Pesante 14:08

[gillesmathivet]

Thank you for posting. It's so
much better to followthe score when listening.This is great music, made to last for generations. Must be awfully difficult to play!

[stueystuey]

yeah, this is clearly one of the greatest String Quartet's ever composed. To quote Beethoven is so bold and irreverent. Not to cross the boundary of art forms but it is on a par with David Foster Wallace's great novel Infinite Jest. Schnittke's polystylism is genius, pure genius.

[marticosta]

0:25 isn't this the theme of the Grosse Fuge of Beethoven?

[assodispade]

Sounds like Bachtóven, and I love it!

[wrob]

Does anyone know if there are faster interpretations here on YouTube? About 15 years ago I heard a group of young performers play this at break-neck speed in live performance and have never really gotten over the adrenaline kick. I'm enjoying this recording btw, but wondered if anyone else has done a throw-caution-to-wind version.

[SenicoOcines]

What a surprising grosse fugue reference