Schnittke, Alfred.

an extensively annotated draft score of the three-act ballet, from the sixth (unnumbered and untitled) number of Act I onwards ["Musik der kleinbürgerlichen Welt"], ending with the great Epilogue to Act III [here entitled "Coda"], comprising a facsimile of Schnittke's initial draft score, extensively annotated, revised and corrected by the composer, some pages entirely or mostly autograph, notated in pencil, with exhaustive details of scoring entered into the score itself and with the required instruments for any one passage listed and totted up in the margins, containing a number of autograph scene titles ("Zweite Premierenparty...Bühne wird Film-Atelier...Tanz mit Peitsche...Peer Gynt als Kaiser der ganzen Welt...Peer wird wahnsinnig...Teufelstanz") and a few annotations in Russian, with many autograph cancellations, revisions and corrections, some music written on hand-drawn staves written in the margins, 69 pages in all [on 2 unnumbered and 65 numbered leaves ("9"-"73")], four without autograph entries (fols. '9', '10', '11' and the unnumbered leaf before fol. '29'), large folio (41.7 x 29cm), contemporary wrappers, the Act III prelude dated [no place,] 16 January 1987, page 14 detached, a few other pages loose

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This is an extensive composing manuscript for the work widely regarded as Schnittke's masterpiece.

The ballet score for Peer Gynt has been described as perhaps Schnittke's most all-embracing composition, his highly personal magnum opus. With its use of ragtime, Hollywood film music and even Russian choral music, it is also a locus classicus for the composer's famous polystylistic approach to composition. It was between the writing of the first three acts and the celebrated Epilogue, with its use of wordless choral voices on tape, that Schnittke suffered his first stroke in 1985 - and it is with the music of the visionary Epilogue that the austere sound world of the composer's final compositions is ushered in.

First performed at the Hamburg State Opera on 22 January 1989 with choreography by John Neumeier, the ballet is freely based on Ibsen's play, unfolding in four "Kreise", or spheres of activity: the first three representing Peer's childhood in Norway, his retreat into an illusory shadow world, his disillusioning return home; in the fourth "Kreis", the Epilogue, Peer contines the search for his elusive self in one of Schnittke's most seamless structures where, as Andrew Marr notes, 'all the themes in this ballet float in and out, somehow reconciled in the mystery of Eternity and in the human questioning that still persists as we seek to live under the judgment of Eternity'. This emotionally powerful movement which caused the composer to break down in tears during the dress rehearsal, would continue to resonate in Schnittke's imagination, his final years seeing not only an independent orchestral version (1987) but also an intimate chamber version for violoncello, piano and tape (1993; see lot 162). 

The copious alterations, revisions and elaborations contained in this complex and highly detailed manuscript, which reveal the composer developing, orchestrating and fleshing out his initial short-score draft, are a testament to a massive act of creative will, a triumph of the composer's mind over his weakened body.