At the Alfred Schnittke Music Museum they put it into collages.

An exhibition dedicated to the composer’s 90th birthday opened

In the Museum of Music S.S. Prokofiev opened an exhibition dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the birth of the Soviet composer Alfred Schnittke. The exhibition includes furniture, personal belongings and music books written by the hand of Alfred Garrievich. His special world echoes music, where the composer combined seemingly incompatible things.

The first thing that catches your eye when entering the hall is the bright colors that fill the room. On the walls hang paintings and photographs from the collections of the Museum of Music, in which the composer stands next to other famous musicians such as Yuri Bashmet, Natalia Gutman, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Valery Polyansky and Mstislav Rostropovich.

A separate section of the exhibition is dedicated to “Faust” in the works of Alfred Garrievich. The composer wrote the cantata “The History of Dr. Johann Faust” and expanded it into an opera of the same name, which premiered in Hamburg on June 22, 1995. A poster for the concert can be found at the exhibition. According to the author’s plan, the main character in the cantata was to be Mephistopheles in a dual guise: the devil-tempter and the devil-punisher. The first acted as a countertenor – a voice intermediate between a male and female sound, and Schnittke wanted to entrust the part of the second to pop singer Alla Pugacheva. For everyone it seemed impossible and strange, but not for Schnittke. Through this story, one can see the composer’s creative vision. The premiere was not allowed immediately, but only a month later at the Moscow Autumn festival, the manuscripts of the cantata were preserved.

A separate section of the exhibition presents illustrations for films and puppets from cartoons with Schnittke’s famous music. In particular, such as “The Tale of How Tsar Peter Married the Blackamoor”, “Crew” and “The Tale of Wanderings” by A.N. Mitts, “Agony” and “Sport, Sport, Sport” by E.G. Klimova, “Little Tragedies” and “Dead Souls” by M.A. Schweitzer, cartoon “Glass Harmonica” by A.Yu. Khrzhanovsky, performance of the Taganka Theater “Revision Tale” directed by Yuri Lyubimov.

The name of the exhibition “Collages of Alfred Schnittke” is not accidental. “Collages” in music are works that combine many different styles and techniques, thereby creating contradictions and ambiguity of the idea that the author wants to convey. This is the peculiarity of Alfred Garrievich’s music. Light and darkness, the clash of good and evil are the main themes of the composer’s work.

– Schnittke is not only a Soviet, but also a modern author. Today’s composers study and study it. In other words, at our exhibition you can find out what kind of modern music is being written now,” Alisa Nasibulina, a researcher at the Museum of Music, told MK.