Alfred Schnittke's "Faust Cantata" and Philosophy of Polystylism

In: Voprosy Filosofii, Heft 12, S. 62-72

Abstract

For Alfred Schnittke (1934–1998), a representative of the Soviet musical avant-garde, the story of Faust was a life-defining text. A particularly important role in his biography was played by the novel Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, which became a kind of encyclopedia of the composer's life and works. Mann's novel reflects his philosophy of music, which was greatly influenced by Theodor Adorno's reflections on modern music. Schnittke considered Mann's main char­acter Leverkuhn to be his musical alter ego and throughout his life followed the musical pursuits of this fictional composer. This article describes in parallel the musical evolution of Leverkuhn and Schnittke. The Soviet composer has re­alized in his life Leverkuhn's musical pursuits: the important elements in the de­velopment of Schnittke's music, such as serialism, monogram and polystylism, were a reflection of Leverkuhn's musical experiments in the novel. The author of this article, analyzing the peculiarity of genre and musical, as well as meta-musical structure of Schnittke's Faust Cantata, explains the composer's polystylism as a polyphony and also investigates his philosophy of music. For Schnittke, mu­sic was not so much an imitation of natural sounds, an expression of human feel­ings and emotions, or a representation of absolute harmony, as a kind of semiotic system within which there happens a free dialogue between musical forms, meta-musical reflections on musical languages, intellectual plays with abundant musical material. The pinnacle of Schnittke's musical evolution Faust Cantata was a realization of his philosophy of music as a polyphony not only in art, but also in life.