Noise Surgeon

Twisted fingers on the ivory, a grin of cracked veneer
He’s reading scores in blood-red ink, the clef is insincere
A waltz for the guillotine, a tango for the grave
The orchestra is terrified of what the madman gave
He takes a hymn, so pure, so sweet, and shoves it through a grinder
Adds a note of pure atonality just to make it kinder
Polka-dots on the Requiem, a joke for the deceased
The Devil’s in the counterpoint, the angels are released!

Schnittke! You’re the surgeon of the noise!
Schnittke! You’ve shattered all their toys!
You take a fugue and make it bleed
A monstrous, Mozart-murdering creed
With a laugh that cracks the plaster, a twist of the knife
Welcome to the polystylistic afterlife!

The cellist weeps, the flautist sweats, the conductor’s lost his mind
He’s looking for the downbeat in a labyrinth of time
A baroque concerto crashes into a Soviet drone
A Tchaikovsky melody is dying on the phone
You think it’s chaos, think it’s chance, just random noise and dread?
But every dissonant detonation is a thought inside his head
He’s mocking Stalin from the grave, mocking God above
With a furious, furious bow-string scrape—a perverse, perverse love!

Stop! Rewind the tape!
Syncopate the hate!
Hemidemisemiquavers bleeding through the gate
Key change? No, key massacre!
Tempo? It's a farce!
He’s playing all the instruments with broken, rusty stars
The violin screams in pain, the trumpet blows a fuse
He’s writing for the silence that the silence will refuse!

Schnittke! You’re the surgeon of the noise!
Schnittke! You’ve shattered all their toys!
You take a fugue and make it bleed
A monstrous, Mozart-murdering creed
With a laugh that cracks the plaster, a twist of the knife
Welcome to the polystylistic afterlife!

You want a melody? Here's your melody... [plays a single, pure, beautiful note]...
...and now the cockroaches crawl in.
The score is burning.
The conductor is screaming.
But Herr Schnittke... Herr Schnittke is just smiling.
He knows the silence after the final chord...
...is the only honest note.