In an essay dated to the 1970s, Alfred Schnittke writes that "a nostalgic sense of the impossibility of achieving conceptual and formal perfection, which had distinguished West European music of the nineteenth century, permeates Berio's Sinfonia." According to Schnittke, Berio seems to be stating, "Just as it is impossible to bring these wonderful memories back to real life, so too is it impossible to restore the living musical form." (Schnittke 223) Schnittke's comments about impossible fantasies of reviving the past in Berio's Sinfonia also resonate with Schnittke's own Concerto Grosso I (1977).

In this paper, I explore a trajectory in musical narrative involving the euphoric fantasy of a utopian past in Schnittke's Concerto Grosso I through the interpretive lens of disnarrative and denarrative strategies. Building on methodologies proposed by music theorists (Michael Klein and Nicholas Reyland) and literary critics (Gerald Prince and Brian Richardson, who coined the terms disnarration and denarration), I trace the musical transformations of a pair of descending and ascending semitones through the work. In my interpretation, this motive acts as part of an expressive, yet hopelessly futile, call to revive the musical past.