Melanie Turgeon

Composing the Sacred in Soviet and Post-soviet Russia: History and Christianity in Alfred Schnittke's Concerto for Choir Melanie Turgeon

Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) is commonly considered the most prolific and popular Russian composer of the late twentieth century. In addition to contributing to all major compositional genres, Schnittke was a prolific composer of choral music. A detailed survey of his entire choral output is provided in chapter one. Regardless of his political surroundings, Schnittke found ways of composing sacred music in both Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia, thus his sacred choral works outnumber his secular ones. Schnittke's famous Concerto for Choir is a work that stems from the Russian Orthodox choral tradition. Included is a brief historic overview of Russian sacred music in order to determine how Schnittke's Concerto continues the tradition of this sacred genre in Eastern Europe, which began in the seventeenth century with Mykola Dylets'kyi and reached ultimate heights in the concertos of Dmytro Bortniansky. A thorough analysis of Schnittke's Concerto for Choir is included in Part II. The book's interdisciplinary content creates appeal to a broad audience, and it is absolutely vital for conductors and choristers wanting to successfully perform this monumental twentieth-century composition.