Polistylism
Polistylism
Polistylism
46
Pregledni rad
Rukopis primljen 16. VII. 2018.
Prihvaćen za tisak 16. XI. 2018.
Baiba Jaunslaviete
Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music
baiba.jaunslaviete@jvlma.lv
The aim of this article is to discuss some essential concepts related to polystylism – a term first
defined by Alfred Schnittke in 1971 and widely used within the post-Soviet cultural space.
In the research conducted by various English-speaking musicologists, the term polystylism
appears rarely and mostly in relation to Schnittke’s own music, whereas the related concepts
of collage and borrowing are covered much more comprehensively. However, collage can be
viewed as only a part of polystylism, because it includes only sharp stylistic juxtapositions
and does not reflect other forms of stylistic interaction that could be described as diffuse,
or symbiotic, polystylism. The theory of borrowing, for its part, covers a chronologically
wide range of music (cantus firmus technique, quodlibet, paraphrase, etc.) but does not
reflect the specifics of the 20th/21st-century music. The ability to cover these specifics is an
advantage of polystylism and related terms, and therefore their broader integration into the
international musicological lexicon should be encouraged.
1. Introduction
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It is well known that the term polystylism in relation to music was first defined
by Soviet composer Alfred Schnittke in 1971.1 When developing the term, he
foresaw potential criticism and therefore raised a rhetorical question, which he
answered himself: “But should one use the term polystylistic (...)? The polysty-
listic tendency has always existed in concealed form in music, and continues
to do so, because music that is stylistically sterile would be dead. So is it worth
even discussing the subject? I believe it is essential to do so, because in recent
times the polystylistic method has become a conscious device. Even without
making direct quotations, a composer often plans a polystylistic effect in ad-
vance” (Schnittke [1971] 2002: 89).2
Schnittke defined the two main principles of polystylism as quotation and allu-
sion. The understanding of qu o t a t i o n is quite broad, including not only exact
quotations but also the technique of adaptation (“the retelling of an alien musical
text in one’s own musical language [analogous to modern literary adaptations of
1
In the original (Russian) version, the term is полистилистика, and in the English version of the essay by
Schnittke (‘Polystylistic Tendencies in Modern Music’: Schnittke [1971] 2002) it is translated as polystylistic.
However, the term polystylism used in this article (except quotations from the above-mentioned essay) is
more common in the English language.
2
The quotation is given in the English translation (Schnittke [1971] 2002), and here a small difference
from the original should be mentioned. In the fourth sentence Schnittke uses the phrase ‘in the last decade’
(for the Russian version, see: Шнитке [1971] 1990: 327) and not ‘in recent times’. This is important from the
viewpoint of the chronological borders of polystylism, a topic that will be discussed later in this article.
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2000: 154). This does not mean that Schnittke avoids this term – for example, he
characterises Hymns by Karlheinz Stockhausen as “a ‘super-collage’ mosaic of
the modern world” (Schnittke [1971] 2002: 87). However, a further clarification
of the term collage is not offered.
3
Andrej Kudrjashov (1964 – 2005) was a musicologist, a former student of Valentina Holopova, and the
author of the monograph Теория музыкального содержания (‘Theory of Musical Content’, 2006), which
includes a chapter on polystylism. The monograph is based on the course Kudrjashov taught at the Moscow
Conservatory.
4
Evgenija Chigareva and Valentina Holopova are authors of the first monograph on Schnittke, published
in 1990. In it, they explain the concept of polystylism mainly based on the terminology used by Schnittke
himself (Холопова, Чигарева 1990: 39–41). Chigareva significantly developed this concept further
in a chapter of the collective monograph Теория современной композиции (‘Theory of Contemporary
Composition’, Чигарева 2007).
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B. Jaunslaviete: The Theory of Polystylism as a Tool for Analysis of Contemporary Music in the Post-Soviet Cultural Space
the language of polystylistic dialogue between contemporary ‘I’ and past ‘You’,
becomes the view of Harmony and Disharmony as the basis of human existence”
(Кудряшов 2006: 386).
The new term by Holopova, partially inspired by polystylism, can be perceived
as an interesting tool for the analysis of contemporary music because it creates
an arch between two different approaches to analysis: the structural and the
semiotic.
5
One of the most recent examples is the dissertation Полистилистика как феномен европейской
художественной культуры (‘Polystylism as a Phenomenon of European Artistic Culture’, by Natalja
Ilichjova: Ильичёва 2015), whose theoretical base also includes the cited research by Chigareva (2007).
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Of course, there has been much research on different kinds of stylistic interac-
tions in the music of the 20th – 21st centuries, from Charles Ives (Metzer 2003:
15–46, etc.) to Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Luciano Berio and George Rochberg
(Losada 2004, etc.). The theoretical principles highlighted in these works could
be a separate topic for research. This article, however, will only try to show the
extent to which English-speaking musicology’s dominant approach is compat-
ible, or incompatible, with the concept of polystylism. For this reason, it is com-
pared with the terminology of borrowing.
J. Peter Burkholder has developed this topic the most, dedicating to it several
papers (Burkholder 1985, 1994), a book (Burkholder 1995) and an article in The
New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Burkholder 2001a). He has also
attempted a systemisation of various borrowing techniques from the Middle
Ages (cantus firmus technique, intabulations, etc.) through the 20th century, a
period that offered some innovations in the field of borrowing:
• collage (Ives, Berio);
• jazz improvisation;
• jazz contrafacts (tunes written on borrowed chord changes);
• avantgarde collage (Cage, Kagel);
• tape and electronic reworking (Burkholder 1994: 870).
As we see, classical music is represented in this list only by collage as well as
tape and electronic reworking. Thus, it does not cover several manifestations of
stylistic interaction in the 2 0 t h – 21 s t century music that are neither collage nor
reworking. The term polystylism, on the contrary, highlights specifics of this
time period; its characteristic is the ability of various musical parameters to rep-
resent radically different styles, even without the use of quotations. For example,
an atonal melody may be rhythmised as a baroque dance, a romantic song-like
texture may serve as a basis for tone-clusters, etc. It would be impossible to
describe such phenomena characteristic for music of the 20th – 21st centuries by
using terms from the theory of borrowing only.
Collage is a common concept in the theories of polystylism and borrowing,
but its interpretation remains different to an extent. Chigareva defines collage
as “stylistically contrasting (or even alien) fragments united in a single work”
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B. Jaunslaviete: The Theory of Polystylism as a Tool for Analysis of Contemporary Music in the Post-Soviet Cultural Space
(Чигарева 2007: 437). Burkholder, on the other hand, describes collage in The
New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians as “(...) the juxtaposition of mul-
tiple quotations, styles or textures so that each element maintains its individual-
ity and the elements are perceived as excerpted from many sources and arranged
together, rather than sharing common origins” (http://www.oxfordmusiconline.
com/subscriber/article/grove/music/53083?q=collage&search=quick&pos=1&_
start=1#firsthit). The key words that highlight the difference of Burkholder’s
definition are multiple and many. This position differs from the viewpoint of
Chigareva and other researchers of polystylism; in their opinion, a composi-
tion based on only two contrasting styles could also be described as collage.
Of course, the form of such a piece will also develop differently than the one in
which a mosaic of many styles is used. To separate these two types of collage,
we can use two terms created after an analogy with the selective and pluralistic
polystylism mentioned by Kudrjashov, namely, selective collage (for example,
the alternative form of Pärt’s Sarabande from Collage sur B-A-C-H) and plural-
istic collage (for example, the third movement of Berio’s Sinfonia).
6. Conclusions
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References:
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