# Schnittke and the Eastern European approach to extended tonality



## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

The Germanic "atonal" line:
1. undercut the sense of key and tonal center
2. eliminated the triad (standard major, minor and diminished chords) as the basic unit of harmony
3. suspended or loosened the gravitation that comes with key and traditional voice-leading

The Eastern European line: 
1. undercut the sense of key but facilitated new and systematic ways of establishing pitch centrality 
2. kept the triad as the basic unit
3. exploited gravitation between unrelated triads by preserving and extending aspects of traditional voice-leading

As an illustration of how this works consider the basic triadic progression underlying Schnittke's Concerto for Piano and Strings:









You can see how my example relates to the actual piano part by examining the score in this youtube performance, to which the timings below are keyed:






None of the six triads defining the principal theme in Example 1 exists in the same key as those preceding or following it, but each connects smoothly with the others by stepwise voice-leading, and some of the connections (2-3, 5-6) have an intense sense of resolution akin to a traditional cadence. The complex chords in mm. 4 and 5 of the example, which are created by stacking two triads, each have a strong, quasi-dominant attraction to the C minor triad (m. 6) because of this style of parsimonious voice-leading. The conspicuous use of these stacked chords is one way in which C minor (and then major) becomes the gravitational center of the concerto's whole first section. (In the video, hear a deceptive cadence on C at 2:59, a strong cadence on C minor at 3:32, all anticipating the climactic I-V-I progression in C major at 4:11. Another way is by analogy of progression. The first three chords go to D minor, the second three to G minor, establishing an overall progression by fifths(!) By analogy, the next step is C minor.

Note that Schnittke's language grew organically out of the harmonic language used by Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Miaskovsky, et alia. Essentially, what these composers did was to systematically exploit every possible non-diatonic triadic relationship with root motion by second or third, using maximally smooth, parsimonious voice-leading. This is what defines this school of composition and makes their method of undercutting the traditionally concept of key wholly different from the Germans.

Example 2 shows one way Schnittke increases harmonic tension in the development by stacking all sets of two adjacent triads from Example 1. Note that each set of stacked triads moves smoothly to the next by stepwise motion. As a point of interest, Schnittke derives a tone row from the basic triadic progression, consisting of four trichords, all permutations of 0,2,3. The tone row is used prominently as the bass line of a waltz (P10) at 11:45 and all twelve of its pitches hang in the air at the end of the concerto. The row statement (P0) begins at 21:24. The magical effect of this ending, however, has to do with the fact that every pitch in the row carries a memory of the triadic context from which it emerged.[/QUOTE]


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## JosefinaHW (Nov 21, 2015)

Word Game-Schnittke link says "Page Not found"

Have been listening to this piece on ClassicsOnline for the past week. This is an amazing piece of music; I love it. First time I listened to it a knew I had heard the first melody in the andante section before: Michael Dana used it in the soundtrack to Breach. He only used the melody line in the soundtrack.


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