Art & Creativity Quote by Alfred Schnittke

Schnittke sounds almost stubborn here, but the stubbornness is strategic. In the late-Soviet ecosystem, emigration wasn’t just a personal choice; it was an aesthetic verdict. To leave could read as admitting your work needed Western validation to exist at all. Schnittke flips that script: he insists on being heard on the home frequency first, even if the signal is distorted by committees, quotas, and the constant suspicion that “formalism” is a political ailment.

The phrasing is telling. “Not facing the problem” isn’t denial; it’s triage. He’s naming emigration as a “problem” because the state made it one, turning mobility into a moral test. Yet he refuses to let that test become the headline. The real battle, he implies, is recognition: not celebrity, but legitimacy. For a composer whose polystylism stitched together sacred music, film cues, baroque ghosts, and modernist abrasion, acknowledgment at home meant something sharper than applause. It meant his language could survive the official demand for clarity and optimism.

“After that, we shall see” carries a dry, almost bureaucratic fatalism. He knows the conditions could force urgency later; he’s also signaling patience as leverage. Get the work anchored in local institutions, audiences, and performers first, then emigration becomes an option rather than an escape hatch. The subtext is pride mixed with caution: I’m not running; I’m negotiating the terms under which my music gets to exist.