Biography
Alfred Schnittke was a Soviet and Russian composer. He wrote the score for Larisa Shepitko's The Ascent (1977), as well as for The Commissar (1967), Air Crew (1980) and other films.
Born in Engels in 1934, Schnittke studied music in Vienna from 1946 to 1948 and later at the Moscow Conservatory. He produced more than sixty film scores between 1961 and 1984, alongside concert works that often employed a polystylistic technique.
Schnittke received the Praemium Imperiale in 1992. He died in Hamburg in 1998.
