Throughout the course of his life Alfred Schnittke (1934–1998) was wont to observe that, because he was born in Russia in the Volga German city of Engels to a Jewish father and a German mother, he possessed not one drop of Russian blood. Instead, his personal, cultural, and national heritages formed at the confluence of many streams forming a counterpoint with parts that variously fitted together or conflicted, that might reflect the historical diversity of the Soviet Union or the sonic diversity of his compositions. Schnittke's sonic diversity, the sheer profusion of consonance and dissonance at work with each other, came to be known as polystylism, and as the hallmark of his voice as a composer during the late USSR, it is the subject of this book and the single musical work at its core, Schnittke's Concerto Grosso No. 1 (1976/77). Polystylism was recognizable in many rather than fewer forms, and both Schnittke and music critics in the 1970s and 1980s more frequently identified it not by what it was, but rather by what it was not. The distinguished musicologist Peter J. Schmelz traces the many strands of polystylism that coalesced with stunning brilliance in Concerto Grosso No. 1, proving it the turning point in Schnittke's career and establishing it as one of the most important and influential of all musical works composed in the late USSR.

The book under review takes its context from the series, “Oxford Keynotes,” in which each volume presents the study of a single musical composition broadly recognized for singular importance in music history. Doubleness in various guises shapes the metaphors of polystylism in the prose, for example, when Schmelz introduces the image of Peter Schlemihl's shadow and Fedor Dostoevskii's The Nose (1836) as literary precursors for the concerto grosso: the two voices of the solo violins and the dedicatee violinists who premiered and performed the work for decades, Gidon Kremer (b. 1947) and Tatiana Grindenko (b. 1940). Formally, Schmelz employs a chapter structure that bears witness to the polystylism of the concerto grosso. He dedicates each of the six chapters to a movement of the composition—Preludio, Toccata, Recitativo, Cadenza, Rondo, Postludio—and each of these encompasses four narrative registers: an analytical narrative, in which Schmelz attends to details in the music itself; the narrative of Schnittke's life and development as a composer; accounts of challenges to performing the avant-garde in the Soviet Union; and a reception-history narrative.

Schnittke tapped a dizzying abundance of sources to achieve the polystylism of Concerto Grosso No. 1. Some sources were obvious (the Baroque concerto grosso), others incongruent (themes from four of his own movie scores); obeisance could be at times reverent (extensive use of the BACH melodic motif), at other times banal (an exaggerated tango). Together, however, these sources transform shadows into doubleness, darkness into light. Technically, moreover, they reveal the ways in which Schnittke intentionally transforms the narrative signification of thematic reference into the more complex processes he sought and successfully located in Concerto Grosso No. 1: musical dramaturgy.

Peter Schmelz provides essential discographical information at the end of the book, but I might take this opportunity to urge the reader to experience the work visually as well as aurally, for polystylism lives also in the full range of our sensorial experiences. I provide two links below, both to performances with Gidon Kremer and Tatiana Grindenko, the original dedicatees, as soloists. The first link is to a 2004 live performance in Moscow, with Kremer's Kamerata Baltica performing the orchestral parts. In the second, the recording is from 1998, but it follows the score of the concerto grosso, allowing the listener/viewer, regardless of musical experience, to witness the dense yet intricate geometry and architecture of polystylism on the page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE3xPdT5jx8; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaaRk0c-780.

In his book-length analysis of Concerto Grosso No. 1 Peter Schmelz makes it abundantly clear why he is one of the leading scholars of music in the late USSR. He combines analytical acuity with compassion for the composer and passion for the music. With erudition and humanism he moves deftly from minute detail to big picture. He recognizes in the polystylism of Soviet composers the possibility to hear new voices and write new histories.