Russian composer Alfred Schnittke's Symphony No. 8 was composed in 1994. Its dedicatee Gennady Rozhdestvensky conducted the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in the symphony's premiere in Stockholm on 10 November 1994. The symphony is scored for an orchestra of: 3

flute The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...

s, 3 oboes, 3

clarinet The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound. Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...

s, 3

bassoon The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family, which plays in the tenor and bass ranges. It is composed of six pieces, and is usually made of wood. It is known for its distinctive tone color, wide range, versatility, and virtuo ...

s, 4

horn Horn most often refers to: *Horn (acoustic), a conical or bell shaped aperture used to guide sound ** Horn (instrument), collective name for tube-shaped wind musical instruments *Horn (anatomy), a pointed, bony projection on the head of various ...

s, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, 2

harp The harp is a stringed musical instrument that has a number of individual strings running at an angle to its soundboard; the strings are plucked with the fingers. Harps can be made and played in various ways, standing or sitting, and in orche ...

harpsichord A harpsichord ( it, clavicembalo; french: clavecin; german: Cembalo; es, clavecín; pt, cravo; nl, klavecimbel; pl, klawesyn) is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a trigger mechanism ...

, piano, and

strings String or strings may refer to: *String (structure), a long flexible structure made from threads twisted together, which is used to tie, bind, or hang other objects Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Strings'' (1991 film), a Canadian anim ...

. The movements are as follows: #

Moderato Moderato may refer to: * ''Moderato'', an Italian musical term; see Glossary of music terminology#M * Moderato Wisintainer (1902-1986), Brazilian footballer generally known as Moderato See also * ''Moderato Cantabile ''Moderato Cantabile'' is ...

Allegro Allegro may refer to: Common meanings * Allegro (music), a tempo marking indicate to play fast, quickly and bright * Allegro (ballet), brisk and lively movement Artistic works * L'Allegro (1645), a poem by John Milton * ''Allegro'' (Satie), an ...

moderato #

Lento Lento may refer to: * ''Lento'' (skipper), a genus of skippers in the family Hesperiidae * Lento, Haute-Corse, a French commune located on the island of Corsica * Lento speech, a relatively slow manner of speaking Music * Lento (band), an Itali ...

#Allegro moderato #Lento The playing time is approximately 35 minutes. The first movement begins with a simple 8-bar melody played on the horns. The movement is based on an ''

ostinato In music, an ostinato (; derived from Italian word for ''stubborn'', compare English ''obstinate'') is a motif or phrase that persistently repeats in the same musical voice, frequently in the same pitch. Well-known ostinato-based pieces include ...

'' of twenty-two

transposed In linear algebra, the transpose of a matrix is an operator which flips a matrix over its diagonal; that is, it switches the row and column indices of the matrix by producing another matrix, often denoted by (among other notations). The tr ...

repetitions of this melody passed backwards and forwards between different groups of instruments. The first ''Allegro moderato'' acts as an '' intermezzo''. Initially it seems to be a continuation of the ''ostinato'' from the first movement but fast crotchets, flourishes, dissonant chords and increasingly dense tone clusters intrude. The dominating movement of the symphony is the central ''Lento'' which takes up nearly half the length of the entire work. Its slow theme, initially heard on the strings, evokes the music of various other composers important to Schnittke, including Bruckner, Mahler, Wagner and Shostakovich.Per F. Broman (2005) ''Liner note from the BIS recording'' The second ''Allegro moderato'' commences with fanfares and, in contrast with the mood of much of the rest of the symphony, attempts at being sprightly but ultimately descends into echoes of Shostakovich-like bleakness. The final ''Lento'' (very short at just two minutes) is effectively a coda dedicated solely to the gradual building of a tone cluster of all of the notes of the

C major C major (or the key of C) is a major scale based on C, consisting of the pitches C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. C major is one of the most common keys used in music. Its key signature has no flats or sharps. Its relative minor is A minor and ...

scale Scale or scales may refer to: Mathematics * Scale (descriptive set theory), an object defined on a set of points * Scale (ratio), the ratio of a linear dimension of a model to the corresponding dimension of the original * Scale factor, a number ...

spread across more than three

octave In music, an octave ( la, octavus: eighth) or perfect octave (sometimes called the diapason) is the interval between one musical pitch and another with double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been refer ...

s which gradually fades.

Recordings

* BIS - Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, Lü Jia (conductor) * Chandos - The Russian State Symphony Orchestra,

Valery Polyansky Valery Kuzmich Polyansky (Russian: ''Валерий Кузьмич Полянский''; born April 19, 1949 in Moscow) is a Russian orchestral and choral conductor. He is a professor of the Moscow Conservatory, People's Artist of Russia (1996), ...

(cond.) * Chandos - The Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Gennady Rozhdestvensky (cond.)

References

{{Alfred Schnittke 1994 compositions Symphonies by Alfred Schnittke