Alfred Schnittke Biography

Alfred Schnittke was a Russian composer famous for his unique approach of composing music known as ‘polystylism’. He was a genius at producing scores using his newly developed polystylistic technique. He fell in love with music during his early years living in Vienna, where music is a part of history and culture. Eventually, he pursued music composition as his profession and produced various symphonies and string quartets along with numerous violin, piano, cello and viola concerts. During his lifetime, he composed nine symphonies, six concerti grossi, four violin concertos, two cello concertos, concertos for piano and a triple concerto for violin, viola and cello, as well as four string quartets and many other chamber music scores, ballet scores, choral and vocal works. He was a creative and confident composer with a keen sense of contemporary music through which he exemplified a unique genre of music in a stylized manner. He was a talented composer who created everlasting tunes. His forte was not just creating the compositions; instead, it was also the way how he incorporated different, often contradictory, music styles to develop dark-toned musical works in accordance with his artistic imagination.