Peter Schmelz | Johns Hopkins University (original) (raw)
Papers by Peter Schmelz
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jun 20, 2019
A focused point for the two soloists, the Cadenza movement of Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso ... more A focused point for the two soloists, the Cadenza movement of Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso no. 1 further engages with its themes of autonomy and control, motion and arrest, consonance and dissonance. This chapter considers the first performances of the Concerto Grosso no. 1, focusing on those by Gidon Kremer and Tatiana Grindenko in both the Soviet Union and Europe, specifically the 1977 European tour of the two soloists with the Lithuanian Chamber Ensemble conducted by Saulius Sondeckis. The chapter also discusses the early performances of the composition by violinists Oleh Krysa and Liana Isakadze, who first recorded it in the Soviet Union in the early 1980s. Schnittke was embarrassed by how well the composition did, telling Kremer that he now would need to write something unpopular, for “it is too dangerous to ride a wave of success.”
Oxford Music Online, 2001
Princeton University Press eBooks, Jun 8, 2021
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jun 20, 2019
This chapter sets in motion the primary themes of the book, tracing briefly Alfred Schnittke’s co... more This chapter sets in motion the primary themes of the book, tracing briefly Alfred Schnittke’s compositional evolution before the Concerto Grosso no. 1, paying special attention to his Symphony no. 1 (1969–72) and his initial ideas about polystylism, as well as the works immediately preceding the Concerto Grosso no. 1, including the Piano Quintet (1972–76), Hymns (1974–79), Requiem (1975), and Moz-Art (1975–76). It also investigates the genesis, construction, and affect of the Preludio of the Concerto Grosso no. 1, focusing on its initial prepared piano chorale together with its other key motives. The chapter further discusses the interpretations of polystylism and postmodernism by such Russian writers as Svetlana Savenko and Alexander Ivashkin. Finally, the chapter sets in place the justification and format for the remainder of the book.
American Music, 2010
... Although the past fifteen to twenty years have seen the emergence of a number of composers wh... more ... Although the past fifteen to twenty years have seen the emergence of a number of composers who chose very different techniquesincluding Michael Gordon, Osvaldo Golijov, Lois V. Vierk,Ricky Ian Gordon, Caleb Burhans, and Mikel Rouseit's absurd to ... By John Brackett. ...
Such Freedom, If Only Musical: Unofficial Soviet Music During the Thaw Peter J Schmelz Following ... more Such Freedom, If Only Musical: Unofficial Soviet Music During the Thaw Peter J Schmelz Following Stalin's death in 1953, during the period now known as the Thaw, Nikita Khrushchev opened up greater freedoms in cultural and intellectual life. A broad group of intellectuals and artists in Soviet Russia were able to take advantage of this, and in no realm of the arts was this perhaps more true than in music. Students at Soviet conservatories were at last able to use various channels-many of questionable legality-to acquire and hear music that had previously been forbidden, and visiting performers and composers brought young Soviets new sounds and new compositions. In the 1960s, composers such as Andrey Volkonsky, Edison Denisov, Alfred Schnittke, Arvo Pärt, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Valentin Silvestrov experimented with a wide variety of then new and unfamiliar techniques ranging from serialism to aleatory devices, and audiences eager to escape the music of predictable sameness typical to socialist realism were attracted to performances of their new and unfamiliar creations. This "unofficial" music by young Soviet composers inhabited the gray space between legal and illegal. Such Freedom, If Only Musical traces the changing compositional styles and politically charged reception of this music, and brings to life the paradoxical freedoms and sense of resistance or opposition that it suggested to Soviet listeners. Author Peter J. Schmelz draws upon interviews conducted with many of the most important composers and performers of the musical Thaw, and supplements this first-hand testimony with careful archival research and detailed musical analyses. The first book to explore this period in detail, Such Freedom, If Only Musical will appeal to musicologists and theorists interested in postwar arts movements, the Cold War, and Soviet music, as well as historians of Russian culture and society.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jan 15, 2021
This chapter advances the argument of Sonic Overload by turning to the interactions between art a... more This chapter advances the argument of Sonic Overload by turning to the interactions between art and popular music in Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1, Requiem (1975), Concerto Grosso No. 1 (1977), Piano Concerto (1979), Symphony no. 3 (1976–81), and Faust Cantata (Seid nüchtern und wachet, 1983), as well as several of his film scores. It considers for the first time Schnittke’s ongoing negotiations between high and low across his entire career, giving careful scrutiny to his declaration in the late 1980s that “pop culture is a good disguise for any kind of devilry.” Schnittke’s change of heart, from embracing popular music—and specifically jazz and rock—from the late 1960s through the 1970s, to expressing grave concerns about its effects a decade later, mirrored the sentiments of many. In the turbulent final years of the Soviet Union, rock supplanted poetry as the conscience of the nation yet it still inspired deep anxiety among those embracing traditional Soviet conceptions of being “cultured.” Schnittke’s apprehensions about popular music in the 1980s stemmed from its growing presence in the fragmented late-Soviet soundscape and its growing prestige among newly influential tastemakers, chief among them younger intellectuals and other cultural figures. The elevation of pop music in the USSR (as in the West) expanded a growing generational divide. Schnittke’s own rejection of popular music seems to have been instigated in part by his son, Andrey, who in the early 1980s was a member of the noted Moscow rock group Center (Tsentr), a fact overlooked by previous scholars.
Choice Reviews Online, Jul 1, 2009
The Cambridge Companion to Serialism
What is serialism? Defended by enthusiastic champions and decried by horrified detractors, serial... more What is serialism? Defended by enthusiastic champions and decried by horrified detractors, serialism was central to twentieth-century art music, but riven, too, by inherent contradictions. The term can be a synonym for dodecaphony, Arnold Schoenberg's 'method of composing with twelve tones which are related only to one another'. It can be more expansive, describing ways of composing systematically with parameters beyond pitch - duration, dynamic, and more - and can even stand as a sort of antonym to dodecaphony: 'Schoenberg is Dead', as Pierre Boulez once insisted. Stretched to its limits, it can describe approaches where sound can be divided into discrete parameters and later recombined to generate the new, the unexpected, beginning to blur into a further antonym, post-serialism. This Companion introduces and embraces serialism in all its dimensions and contradictions, from Schoenberg and Stravinsky to Stockhausen and Babbitt, and explores its variants and legac...
Music and Change in the Eastern Baltics Before and After 1989
Oxford Music Online, 2001
Such Freedom, If Only Musical, 2009
Such Freedom, If Only Musical, 2009
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jun 20, 2019
A focused point for the two soloists, the Cadenza movement of Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso ... more A focused point for the two soloists, the Cadenza movement of Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso no. 1 further engages with its themes of autonomy and control, motion and arrest, consonance and dissonance. This chapter considers the first performances of the Concerto Grosso no. 1, focusing on those by Gidon Kremer and Tatiana Grindenko in both the Soviet Union and Europe, specifically the 1977 European tour of the two soloists with the Lithuanian Chamber Ensemble conducted by Saulius Sondeckis. The chapter also discusses the early performances of the composition by violinists Oleh Krysa and Liana Isakadze, who first recorded it in the Soviet Union in the early 1980s. Schnittke was embarrassed by how well the composition did, telling Kremer that he now would need to write something unpopular, for “it is too dangerous to ride a wave of success.”
Oxford Music Online, 2001
Princeton University Press eBooks, Jun 8, 2021
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jun 20, 2019
This chapter sets in motion the primary themes of the book, tracing briefly Alfred Schnittke’s co... more This chapter sets in motion the primary themes of the book, tracing briefly Alfred Schnittke’s compositional evolution before the Concerto Grosso no. 1, paying special attention to his Symphony no. 1 (1969–72) and his initial ideas about polystylism, as well as the works immediately preceding the Concerto Grosso no. 1, including the Piano Quintet (1972–76), Hymns (1974–79), Requiem (1975), and Moz-Art (1975–76). It also investigates the genesis, construction, and affect of the Preludio of the Concerto Grosso no. 1, focusing on its initial prepared piano chorale together with its other key motives. The chapter further discusses the interpretations of polystylism and postmodernism by such Russian writers as Svetlana Savenko and Alexander Ivashkin. Finally, the chapter sets in place the justification and format for the remainder of the book.
American Music, 2010
... Although the past fifteen to twenty years have seen the emergence of a number of composers wh... more ... Although the past fifteen to twenty years have seen the emergence of a number of composers who chose very different techniquesincluding Michael Gordon, Osvaldo Golijov, Lois V. Vierk,Ricky Ian Gordon, Caleb Burhans, and Mikel Rouseit's absurd to ... By John Brackett. ...
Such Freedom, If Only Musical: Unofficial Soviet Music During the Thaw Peter J Schmelz Following ... more Such Freedom, If Only Musical: Unofficial Soviet Music During the Thaw Peter J Schmelz Following Stalin's death in 1953, during the period now known as the Thaw, Nikita Khrushchev opened up greater freedoms in cultural and intellectual life. A broad group of intellectuals and artists in Soviet Russia were able to take advantage of this, and in no realm of the arts was this perhaps more true than in music. Students at Soviet conservatories were at last able to use various channels-many of questionable legality-to acquire and hear music that had previously been forbidden, and visiting performers and composers brought young Soviets new sounds and new compositions. In the 1960s, composers such as Andrey Volkonsky, Edison Denisov, Alfred Schnittke, Arvo Pärt, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Valentin Silvestrov experimented with a wide variety of then new and unfamiliar techniques ranging from serialism to aleatory devices, and audiences eager to escape the music of predictable sameness typical to socialist realism were attracted to performances of their new and unfamiliar creations. This "unofficial" music by young Soviet composers inhabited the gray space between legal and illegal. Such Freedom, If Only Musical traces the changing compositional styles and politically charged reception of this music, and brings to life the paradoxical freedoms and sense of resistance or opposition that it suggested to Soviet listeners. Author Peter J. Schmelz draws upon interviews conducted with many of the most important composers and performers of the musical Thaw, and supplements this first-hand testimony with careful archival research and detailed musical analyses. The first book to explore this period in detail, Such Freedom, If Only Musical will appeal to musicologists and theorists interested in postwar arts movements, the Cold War, and Soviet music, as well as historians of Russian culture and society.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jan 15, 2021
This chapter advances the argument of Sonic Overload by turning to the interactions between art a... more This chapter advances the argument of Sonic Overload by turning to the interactions between art and popular music in Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1, Requiem (1975), Concerto Grosso No. 1 (1977), Piano Concerto (1979), Symphony no. 3 (1976–81), and Faust Cantata (Seid nüchtern und wachet, 1983), as well as several of his film scores. It considers for the first time Schnittke’s ongoing negotiations between high and low across his entire career, giving careful scrutiny to his declaration in the late 1980s that “pop culture is a good disguise for any kind of devilry.” Schnittke’s change of heart, from embracing popular music—and specifically jazz and rock—from the late 1960s through the 1970s, to expressing grave concerns about its effects a decade later, mirrored the sentiments of many. In the turbulent final years of the Soviet Union, rock supplanted poetry as the conscience of the nation yet it still inspired deep anxiety among those embracing traditional Soviet conceptions of being “cultured.” Schnittke’s apprehensions about popular music in the 1980s stemmed from its growing presence in the fragmented late-Soviet soundscape and its growing prestige among newly influential tastemakers, chief among them younger intellectuals and other cultural figures. The elevation of pop music in the USSR (as in the West) expanded a growing generational divide. Schnittke’s own rejection of popular music seems to have been instigated in part by his son, Andrey, who in the early 1980s was a member of the noted Moscow rock group Center (Tsentr), a fact overlooked by previous scholars.
Choice Reviews Online, Jul 1, 2009
The Cambridge Companion to Serialism
What is serialism? Defended by enthusiastic champions and decried by horrified detractors, serial... more What is serialism? Defended by enthusiastic champions and decried by horrified detractors, serialism was central to twentieth-century art music, but riven, too, by inherent contradictions. The term can be a synonym for dodecaphony, Arnold Schoenberg's 'method of composing with twelve tones which are related only to one another'. It can be more expansive, describing ways of composing systematically with parameters beyond pitch - duration, dynamic, and more - and can even stand as a sort of antonym to dodecaphony: 'Schoenberg is Dead', as Pierre Boulez once insisted. Stretched to its limits, it can describe approaches where sound can be divided into discrete parameters and later recombined to generate the new, the unexpected, beginning to blur into a further antonym, post-serialism. This Companion introduces and embraces serialism in all its dimensions and contradictions, from Schoenberg and Stravinsky to Stockhausen and Babbitt, and explores its variants and legac...
Music and Change in the Eastern Baltics Before and After 1989
Oxford Music Online, 2001
Such Freedom, If Only Musical, 2009
Such Freedom, If Only Musical, 2009