- Date: 1985
- Composer: Alfred Schnittke
- Period: Contemporary (1950- )
Review
"The piece should be played in a concert of Shakespeare settings, though it has no direct connection with Shakespeare. Yet it is not for that reason that it is called (K)ein Sommernachtstraum ("(Not) A Midsummer Night's Dream"). And that is all there is to say about my Mozart-Schubert related rondo"You have to love a composer who speaks in such a tangled, self-negating way about his music, especially a piece as provocative -- some might say obnoxious -- as (K)ein Sommernachtstraum. Yet Schnittke often writes music as he writes words -- as a series of negations which cancel each other out. Material grows out of combat and reversal, out of the scary holes between material, out of the ambiguous stuff between the lines.
This "ambiguous stuff" in (K)ein Sommernachtstraum comes, as Schnittke said above, from Mozart and Schubert -- but not quite. Schnittke adds: "I should like to add that I did not steal all the 'antiquities' in this piece; I faked them." This fake Viennese Classicism free-floats in the composer's works of the late 1970s and 1980s. Some works carry the fake Mozart-Schubert mark as fatal wound, like the Violin Concerto No. 4 and Concerto for Viola and Orchestra; other works, like Schnittke's famous String Trio, entirely inhabit the Mozart-Schubert complex like a squatter in a burnt out building.
In the case of (K)ein Sommernachtstraum, Schnittke had actually written its main structure out completely the year before, as a Gratulationsrondo ("Congratulatory Rondo") for violin and piano, celebrating violinist and friend Mark Lubotsky's fiftieth birthday. This little chamber work comes off almost perfectly as a sonata-rondo movement from the 1780s, complete with catchy primary and secondary themes, a development, "ideal" modulations, and a complete recapitulation.
Yet not everything sits right: under the surface of this Rondo, Schnittke marks this work as a forgery, with parallel fifths, congested bass lines, odd major-minor shifts, and so on. And it is these signatures of the inauthentic that ferment into the Molotov cocktail of (K)ein Sommernachtstraum. With the help of a huge orchestra, Schnittke here magnifies the cracks in his classical mask; tiny fissures become gaping holes, filled with the most garish and unseemly dissonances, and the most suffocating agglomerations of themes and motives. Solid 18th-century melodies now spin into raunchy, vicious circus marches; solos come from unseen soloists; modulations occur in five keys at once. The whole affair reeks of carnival, and carnival's intent on literally turning the world upside down.
But carnivals are also loads of fun, and Schnittke manages to tread the line between horror and a good time. The atmosphere reminds one of The Sorcerer's Apprentice -- not composer Paul Dukas' work, but Disney's animation of it in Fantasia, where a single broom comes alive, multiplies uncontrollably, and turns from cutesy creature into a sprawling monstrous menace.
Inevitably, things lead to disaster -- you must pay for your fun -- and (K)ein Sommernachtstraum climaxes on a disgusting smear of cluster chords and sleigh bells, after which the opening melody returns, bearing deep trauma. The effect of this piece (its "what") is as clear as a stop sign, and certainly explains to some degree Schnittke's popularity. But understanding the "why" of a piece like this isn't simple; Schnittke has confessed many times to loving the music he parodies, especially that "Mozart-Schubert" sound. Perhaps he rails not against the music itself, but the world that uses it, a world far more harmful than Schnittke's own audacious pastiches. ~ Seth Brodsky, Rovi
Albums with Complete Performances of the Work
| (K)chaone, for super marimba | |
| (Kat! Heath!) Remix (after G. Prokofiev's Concerto for Turntables & Orchestra) |
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