Schnittke, Alfred

a working manuscript, signed on the autograph title in Cyrillic and Roman script ("...Alfred Schnittke...3. Sonate für Violine und Klavier...in 4 Sätzen"), notated in pencil and black ink, mostly on systems comprising three or four staves, with autograph heading, original autograph dedication, in Russian, to Mark and Jedlina Lubotsky at head of music deleted, with autograph movement numbering and tempo markings ("I Andante...(II)...Adagio III...['Presto': cancelled] Senza tempo (Tempo libre, ma inqueto) IV"), and containing a few deletions and corrections, 7 pages, plus blanks, large folio (42 x 30cm), 32-stave ("Star Nr.37") paper, no place [Hamburg], 1994

Condition is described in the main body of the cataloguing, where appropriate.
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This is a fine autograph manuscript of a complete work by Schnittke, one of his final compositions.

This terse and passionate work, in which Schnittke abandons his customary polystylistic mode of composition, was dedicated to the great Russian violinist Mark Lubotsky, who had studied together with the composer at the Moscow Conservatory. A lifelong friend of Schnittke, Lubotsky had advised the composer on technical matters relating to the Violin Concerto no.1 of 1957; to him Schnittke also dedicated his second violin concerto (1966) and the first two violin sonatas (1963 and 1968, respectively). The dedication to Mark and Jedlina Lubotsky at the head of the music sadly required correcting following the death of the latter in a car accident.

In common with other works written after Schnittke's second stroke in 1991, the sonata has a serious and austere quality which reflects the composer's increasing preoccupation with mortality. The rather shaky, yet nevertheless clear and purposeful, appearance of the manuscript's handwriting bears poignant witness to the difficulty Schnittke had in writing with a hand affected by paralysis. Two especially interesting features of the autograph are: the notation of bb.41-52 of movement I out of sequence, not at the end of the movement on page 1 where they belong, but at the head of page 3 of music, in the middle of the score of movement II; and the existence of six drafted but unused bars between bb.104 and 105 of movement III. The sonata was first performed by the dedicatee and the composer's wife, Irina, in Moscow on 10 October 1994.