Schnittke A. Concerto for mixed choir a cappella (Coll. Works. S. 4, Vol. 8)

The Alfred Schnittke Collected Works Edition is a joint project of Compo-zitor • Saint Petersburg and the Alfred Schnittke Archive at Goldsmiths College, University of London. In this critical edition, each score has been checked against Schnittke’s manuscripts and existing publications of his music аnd has been edited by leading performers who collaborated with the composer.

 The Concerto for mixed choir to verses by Gregory of Narek (Krikor Narekatsi, c. 951-1003), an Armenian monk, theologian, and saint of the Armenian Apostolic Church and Catholic Church, was completed in the summer of 1985 (the third movement was written in 1984). This period of Schnittke’s life, the first half of the 1980s, was a time of intense spiritual enquiry. In the summer of 1983, while visiting Vienna, the composer was baptized into the Catholic Church, his ancestral faith. However, dialogue with the Orthodox Church was no less important for him, and, significantly, while in Russia he continued to make confession to an Orthodox priest, Nikolay Vedernikov.

Contents:

A page from the autograph of the Concerto for mixed choir
Preface
Editorial Notes
On transcription

CONCERTO FOR MIXED CHOIR

I. O Master of all living

II. This collection of songs, where every verse is full to the brim with black sorrow

III. To everyone who will go deep into my sorrowful words

IV. This work which I began in hope

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