The C reative S earch
It was possible, for the time being, to receive primary and even secondary special music education in Engels, since there were a music school and a music college. But that opportunity seized after the Volga Germans deportation in August of 1941. The memories of those hard times made the composer dedicate his best memorial work, the Piano Quintet, to his mother, after her death.
Therefore, it is an indisputable fact that Alfred got into music pretty late if we mean systematic music studies and a professional career. However, according to the biography details, it turns out that his steps to the art were taken in early childhood. They were generously contributed by the creative atmosphere at home.
Alfred’s father, while in Engels, cooperated with local newspapers and magazines, writing short stories and essays about the town literature and theatre life. His mother wrote poetry in her spare time, keeping it to herself, but, nevertheless, showing artistic nature. Due to their experience, his parents believed Alfred should link his fate with literature. Their wish came true, not about Alfred, but about his younger brother Victor, who later became a famous poet.
There was the episode remained in Schnittke’s memory when in 1941, while visiting his grandparents in Moscow at the age of six, he was taken to the audition for a music school. He could not remember where exactly he was taken to — the Gnesin State School of Music or the Central Music School at the Moscow Conservatory, that later became Schnittke’s Alma mater. There were scraps of information as if he was admitted into a preparatory class, and if he was supposed to stay at his grandparents on the father’s side. “However, the war started that summer, and I was sent back to my hometown. In Engels, during the war, when the radios that had been at first confiscated from everyone, were returned, I began listening to music and fell in love with all sorts of opera arias, and tried to sing along. I sang Lensky’s aria in a terrible voice.” (A. Schnittke)
