Symphony No. 4

Abstract

It's ironic that the most instinctive metaphors for Alfred Schnittke's Fourth Symphony (1984) are ones of connection. The far greater part of Schnittke's output is a testament to disconnection, to the inevitable atrophy, entropy, and dissolution of any musical material. But the wisdom of paradox tells us that the skeptic often conceals the most fervent believer, and that the best unravelers are, at heart, even greater weavers.

That is the strange logic behind Schnittke's Fourth, perhaps his most tightly knit work. It bears all the metaphors of wholeness: the pledge, the oath, the seal, threads which interlace in a fabric of virtuosic density, single seeds which cross-pollinate and disseminate, and roots that extend deep and wide into separate traditions. Out of the discordant, Schnittke spins an intricate harmonic web.

Analyzing (literally, "loosening up") this web is a real challenge, however. The Fourth Symphony's "surface," on a symbolic level, contains four separate religious traditions: on one hand, three braids of Christianity (Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant), and on another, their implied precursor, Judaism. Schnittke calls forth each of these disparate strands as a particular musical line, hymn-like and stepwise, each varying from the other two only in subtle degrees of intonation. Schnittke adds to these three discrete modes a fourth "Semitic" mode in semitones, echoing ancient synagogue chant.

With these four musical pillars, Schnittke constructs a three-fold "plot" for the entire Symphony based on the Catholic rosary. The rosary concentrates on the Virgin Mary, recounting the story of Christ's life through her eyes in a series of three expressive states—the Joyful, the Sorrowful, and the Glorious. Each of these states further consists of five episodes: the Joyful thus recounts the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, Jesus's Presentation in the Temple, and the Finding of Jesus in the Temple; the Sorrowful presents among other events the Crowning with Thorns, the Carrying of the cross, and the Crucifixion; and likewise, the Glorious relates the Resurrection and so on.

Schnittke's task in this work-both awesomely rigid and seamlessly lyrical—is to musically reconstruct each of these events in an unbroken, single-movement chain. In the process, Schnittke relies upon a Baroque-like continuo of piano, harpsichord, and celesta, again reflecting the rosary's triple-structure and the three Christian denominations. These keyboards form the Symphony's spine, following each other in a relentless, unbreakable canon whose strange dissonances emit a pearly luminescence. And as each keyboard's line moves in one of the "denominational" modes (that is, Orthodox, Lutheran, or Protestant), the three in combination ubiquitously sound the chromatic, "Jewish" fourth mode. The sound-world of this continuo group fill the entire work; as Schnittke himself has said, "The whole work is yoked into this bent space of intonation."

In addition to the keyboards, Schnittke also employs vocal solos at three key structural moments—a tenor roughly one third through the work, a countertenor two-thirds through, and, to end the Symphony, a choral setting of the Ave Maria, synthesizing all previous motives in a single diatonic mode. Schnittke originally had to suppress this text; its religious nature would have disallowed it performance in the Soviet Union (only after Schnittke left Moscow for Hamburg did he notify his publishers of the text).

Yet even after this concealment is made explicit, Schnittke's Fourth still bears the marks of a secret rite; it weaves far too many levels, layers, and patterns into its hazy, melancholic space to be entirely comprehensible. But like Schnittke's other works of spiritual affirmation and connection, few as they are, the Fourth Symphony follows not the logic of clarity, but the conviction of scarred, fervid prayer.

© Seth Brodsky, All Music Guide