Suite in the Old Style

music is neither old nor modern: it is either good or bad music and the date at which it was written has no significance whatsoever. All old music was modern once, and much more of the music of yesterday already sounds more old-fashioned than works which were written three centuries ago. All good music, whatever its date, is ageless – as alive and significant today as it was when it was
Peter Warlock 1926

Schnittke is well-known for his postmodern practice of featuring direct quotations of or allusions to historical music, in particular baroque music. He borrowed not only rhythmic, melodic and harmonic features from the baroque, but also formal structures as in his famous six Concerti Grosssi. Some of his works employ virtually all the formal devices associated with the baroque style with modern features superimposed or juxtaposed within the baroque framework.

The Suite in the Old Style is however a genuine pastiche and a listener unfamiliar with Schnittke’s tricks would be hard put to guess the composer, certainly for the first four movements, only in the last movement does the façade slip and the twentieth century suddenly makes its uneasy presence felt. Soviet composers could sometimes only make a living as a film composer for even when their regular compositions were banned, it seemed to be acceptable for them to work in the film industry. Schnittke wrote something like sixty film scores and, believe it or not, the first three movements of this delicious music were first used in a film called Adventures of a Dentist, which, again, believe it or not, managed to upset the authorities – a politically incorrect film about a dentist has to be some achievement.