Biography A GNITA
His father, Harry Viktorovich Shnitka, was born in Frankfurt-on-Main, where his parents moved from Libava in the year. In the year, some sources indicate a year together with his parents moved to Moscow, in the year - to Pokrovsk, where he joined the party and worked as a journalist in Soviet German publications; Stories and correspondence from the front in Russian printed in the newspaper Bolshevik.
Mother, Maria Iosifovna Vogel - came from German colonists who moved to Russia in the year and settled in the village of Kamenka; She worked as a German language teacher. In the year of the father of the future composer, he was called up to the front, and Alfred and his younger brother were subsequently as a poet, prose writer and translator V. Schnita, they were sent to Moscow, where his grandfather and grandmother, engineer Viktor Mironovich, and editor Abramovna Shnitka, lived with her grandfather and grandmother.
Thera Abramovna nee Katz, - worked as an editor in the State Publishing House of Foreign Literature, was engaged in German philology and translations into German, including the author of the textbook "Grammar of the German Language" with E. Fadeeva “The Last of the Udege” and A. Chakovsky “Weither Leuchtet Ein Stern” together with his son, Harry Schnitsky, Schnitsky’s parents spoke German among themselves, and German became the first language of the composer, but later he turned to his mother in German, and to his father in Russian.
A musical education for A. upon returning to Moscow in the year the family settled in Valentinovka, Moscow Region, and the mother and father got a job at the newspaper Neues Leben later in the same newspaper, the younger sister of Alfred Irina also published in it, his brother Victor was also published. Father was engaged in translations of Soviet literature into German for the literature publishing house in foreign languages "Progress".
In the year, Shnitka graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in the class of composition by Evgeny Golubev, and then graduate school. From the year, Schnitsky taught instrumentation and reading scores at the Moscow Conservatory, had only one student in the composition of R. since the year especially actively in E GG. In the years, the Berlin Scientific Collegium provided Alfred Schnitsky scholarship.
In the year, the composer moved to Germany with his family. He began teaching at the Hamburg Higher School of Music. In the last years of his life, the health of Schnitka has sharply worsened: the composer suffered three strokes, but nevertheless retained creative activity until the end. Schnitka died in Hamburg on August 3.
Source: Wikipedia.