Alfred Garrievich Schnittke (Russian: Альфре́д Га́рриевич Шни́тке, ISO-9, Al'fred Garrievič Šnitke; 24 November 1934 – 3 August 1998) was a Russian composer of Jewish-German descent. Among the most performed and recorded composers of late 20th-century classical music, he is described by musicologist Ivan Moody as a "composer who was concerned in his music to depict the moral and spiritual struggles of contemporary man in [...] depth and detail."
Schnittke's early music shows the strong influence of Dmitri Shostakovich. He developed a polystylistic technique in works such as the epic Symphony No. 1 (1969–1972) and his first concerto grosso (1977). In the 1980s, Schnittke's music began to become more widely known abroad with the publication of his second (1980) and third (1983) string quartets and the String Trio (1985); the ballet Peer Gynt (1985–1987); the third (1981), fourth (1984), and fifth (1988) symphonies; and the viola concerto (1985) and first cello concerto (1985–1986). As his health deteriorated, Schnittke's music started to abandon much of the extroversion of his polystylism and retreated into a more withdrawn, bleak style.
Schnittke's father, Harry Maximilian Schnittke (1914–1975), was Jewish and born in Frankfurt. He moved to the Soviet Union in 1927 and worked as a journalist and translator from the Russian language into German. His mother, Maria Iosifovna Schnittke (née Vogel, 1910–1972), was a Volga German born in Russia. Schnittke's paternal grandmother, Tea Abramovna Katz (1889–1970), was a philologist, translator, and editor of German-language literature.
Alfred Schnittke was born in Engels in the Volga-German Republic of the Russian SFSR. He began his musical education in 1946 in Vienna, where his father had been posted. It was in Vienna, Schnittke's biographer Alexander Ivashkin writes, where "he fell in love with music which is part of life, part of history and culture, part of the past which is still alive."
"I felt every moment there," the composer wrote, "to be a link of the historical chain: all was multi-dimensional; the past represented a world of ever-present ghosts, and I was not a barbarian without any connections, but the conscious bearer of the task in my life."
Schnittke's experience in Vienna "gave him a certain spiritual experience and discipline for his future professional activities. It was Mozart and Schubert, not Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, whom he kept in mind as a reference point in terms of taste, manner and style. This reference point was essentially Classical ... but never too blatant."
In 1948, the family moved to Moscow. Schnittke completed his graduate work in composition at the Moscow Conservatory in 1961 and taught there from 1962 to 1972. Evgeny Golubev was one of his composition teachers. Thereafter, he earned his living chiefly by composing film scores, producing nearly 70 scores in 30 years.
After his mother's death in 1972, he began to compose his Piano Quintet in her memory. During its composition, he began to seek solace in Catholicism; he converted on 18 June 1983. He possessed deeply held beliefs in predestination and mysticism which influenced his music.
Schnittke and his music were often viewed suspiciously by the Soviet bureaucracy. His First Symphony was effectively banned by the Composers' Union. After he abstained from a Composers' Union vote in 1980, he was banned from travelling outside the USSR. On 21 July 1985, Schnittke suffered a stroke that left him in a coma. He was declared clinically dead on several occasions, but recovered and continued to compose.
In 1990, Schnittke left the Soviet Union and settled in Hamburg, Germany. His health remained poor, however. He suffered several more strokes before his death on 3 August 1998, in Hamburg, at the age of 63. He was buried, with state honors, at Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

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