Review Summary: well-composed, full and impactful, and drenched in multiplicity
Recently, “anti-classical” has been thrown around to talk about minimalism, because it is ostensibly reshaping classical music by finding and filling undiscovered musical spaces, at least in Western classical music's context - evoking wholly different images and senses than classical enthusiasts usually enjoy. Although this process appears to reject traditionalism, rather than act paradoxical, minimalism (as we know it today) has pretty much separated from classical music, deriving strength from totally different sources. Classical music's fundamental component is arguably complexity, but minimalism's is simplicity, which makes it perplexing to reason minimalism anti-classical, considering it doesn't want to be classical, but
minimal.
In my opinion, non-specific contemporary classical compositions seem better-equipped to satisfy this label, as they clearly originate from traditionalism, conforming to fundamental complexity, yet restructuring themselves to form distinctly new features, which only slightly echo past pieces. They strive to be
difficult by contrasting "archaic" lyrical melodies and rhythmical structures. However, amidst this harsh and unrelenting difficulty, still they sound familiar, resonating as part of some coalesced, trans-generational sound, which is plainly heard in Alfred Schnittke's 1983
String Quartet No. 3. The quartet strides, calculated pacing emerging notwithstanding ubiquitous lack of harmony, which balances a disparity between agreement and disagreement. Also, contemporaneous dissonant harmonies seem countered by older, church-sounding post-medieval tones. Schnittke combined defining sounds of various ages and placed them inside a discordant, but striking shell. He achieved this kind of diversity by sampling compositions from the 1500s to the 1900s, interlocking them to form recurring, harmonious and sustained motifs, which only briefly pull through until punctured by dissonant violin, thereby falling back into disagreement.
String Quartet No. 3 rebuilds those structured, pieced-together arrangements that previously were seen as essential to producing a “perfect” composition. It expands former boundaries, opening them, reorganizing but still retaining every essence composing them, and eventually reunites all detached parts. By drenching this composition in multiplicity that was drawn from olden boundaries, Schnittke formed a full, impactful and diverse composition. And stylistically jumbled as it is,
String Quartet No. 3, for as long as time entitles, is inverted in precisely an anti-classical way.
Listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PlQPv2Ugn8
