Review: The subject of this research is the musical-expressive means of Russian romance to the poetic text by A. S. Pushkin “The Rose” of the three authors – M. Glinka, N. Medtner, V. Serebrennikov. The goal is to determine the continuity of traditions of the Russian romance of the XIX century in works of composers of the early XX and XXI centuries. The author examines the means of musical expressiveness, used by a composer for conveying one or another psychological state, hues, feelings and emotions. Special attention is paid to the diverse musical images created by the composers to a single poetic text. The applied interpretational method allows unveiling Pushkin’s text from various facets in work of the composers of the early XIX, XX and XXI centuries. An important role in the course of the research is attained by comparative method, essential for demonstrating the peculiarities of manifestation of the Russian romance of the late XX – early XXI century. The author concludes that the fundamental attributes of Russian romance remain: the beginning of the XXI century marks a reversion to the simple and accessible to the audience types of musical expression. The author’s special contribution consists in the attempt to analyzes the romances that have been composed almost a century apart. The scientific novelty is defined by the use of organizational approach towards creating a musical image in the oeuvres of three composers.

Keywords: organizational approach, word and music, Russian romance, Serebrennikov, Medtner, Glinka, Pushkin, means of musical expressiveness, romance melody, modal forms of thinking

Review: The object of this research is the “sacred woman’s world” in the traditional culture of Yakut people. The author examines such aspects of the topic as the determination of the role and place of a woman in organization of life space; consideration of mythological female images involved in domestication of the living space and symbolic representations of “thing world” of a dwelling associated with the female theme. Particular attention is turned to the comprehensive analysis of the scared figure of a potter woman, clay as a creational raw material, and pottery as a replica of cosmogonic technology. Methodological foundation contains the historical-anthropological approach, focusing on studying behavioral motives and strategies, as well as mentality of people of the past. The priority research methods became the semiotic and structural-functional analysis for interpreting the phenomena of woman’s world and sacred meanings of feminine images. The conclusion is made that if the expansion of domesticated space is a result of actions of a man (through the development of landscape), than the organization of living space belongs to a woman, as her image is endued with the creational functions. The author detects the sympathetic connections between the cult of a goddess-mother, female shamanism, and sacred figure of a potter woman; as well as analyzes the femininely saturated loci and things in a living space, possessing a marginal characteristic and allowing to reveal the boundaries between the world of nature and the world of people.

Keywords: cult of mother goddess, female shamanism, feminine symbolism, female world, mythological and ritual space, creation myths, ethnosemiotics, raditional culture, space domestication, spirits and deities

Review: The subject of this research is the intonation of highly emotive texts in the English film discourse. The object of this research is the communicative meanings of intonational models of rhema as one of the key components of the communicative structure of a sentence. The author thoroughly examines such aspects of the topic as the prosodic means of expressing emotivity, giving special attention to the semantics of nuclear tones in rhematic sections of emotive speech of the characters participating in the English film discourse. The dependence of intonational variability on the type of discourse along with the level of its emotivity is determined. The following conclusion were made in the course of this study: 1) textual fragments of emotive speech of the English film discourse are not associated with the certain types of tones in rhematic sections, which is substantiated by the need for translating the diverse emotional states of the communicants and is contextually specific for each of the illocutionary act; 2) Intonational variability of the uttered speech depends on the type of discourse and level of emotivity. The author’s special contribution lies in combination of the instrumental and perceptive methods of research with the method of contextual analysis, which allowed viewing the prosodic qualities of the uttered speech from the perspective of intonology, as well as social linguistics. The scientific novelty consists in studying the prosodic qualities of the emotive texts of English film discourse in the context of communicative sectioning of a sentence.

Keywords: emotiveness, rema, communicative values of intonation, intonational variation, psycholinguistics, intonology, semantics, social liguistics, prosody, nuclear tone

Review: This article is dedicated to life cycle rites of the Volga Germans in the 1920’s. The timeframe is selected due to its contrariety, which can be characterized as the struggle between the previous cultural values and socialistic ideals. The key question in the analysis of German ritualism is the reflection of the category of “own” and “alien”, which manifest as the centerpieces for the ritual scenario. They clearly define the symbolism of life circle rites designating the real and sacred. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that for the first time the life circle rites of the Volga Germans are analyzes as the clash point of the “own” and “alien”, impacting the worldview of the German colonists and predetermining their fate. From the structural perspective, the article contains a brief characteristic of the concept of “own” and “alien”, description of the ways of manifestation of both in life circle rites of the Volga Germans, as well as examination of the German ritual texts considering the presence of these categories. The results demonstrate that the system “own – alien” influences the perception of the elements of other cultures by Volga Germans. The theoretical significance of the article consist in expansion of representations about the life circle rites of Volga Germans. The materials may be used for preparing the targeted programs for preservation of cultural heritage of the Volga Region.

Keywords: daily culture, life cycle rites, traditions, them, us, cantons, the Volga region, the Germans, ritual text, fear of the unknown

Review: The subject of this research is the modern state of sociocultural space, including on a global dimension. The author examines the problems of knowledge acquisition by the young generation, in a heterogeneous and chaotically vectored information flow, coding and decoding of ambiguous meanings of the object of cultural-historical heritage. Formation of the model of inheritance as a choice by different generations of its various parts is analyzes. The field of scientific knowledge is viewed as a combination of the accumulated by humanity systematized objective knowledge. The article examines the role of science focused on the rational, substantiated, and reliable knowledge of people about their circles and themselves, which intersubjectively, may be divided and translated by the people in communicative processes. The author also assesses the importance of cultural heritage, including scientific, which for the new generation is just an illustrative information, unrelated to the current realities, requiring actualization – the rational acquisition for the purpose of using in solving the vital tasks. The scientific novelty lies in the analysis of possible introduction of communicative potential of the electronic and digital technologies into the practice of transmission of the cultural heritage. It is underlined the such technologies should not replace the narrative ways of translating sociocultural and scientific heritage, and its development should consider the fact that the primary and permanent qualities of classical science until the XXI century in modern science were complemented by the secondary that lead to reassessment of the quantitative methods and classifications.

Keywords: deconstruction of cultural texts, scientific heritage, stratification of society, representative model of culture, sociocultural meaning of heritage, information technologies, scientific cognition, Sociocultural knowledge, significance of heritage, meaningful context

Review: This article is dedicated to the analysis of a small album “Photography is Not an Art” created in 1937 by the French painter and photographer of American descent Man Ray in collaboration with the leader of surrealism André Breton. The selection of images and their inscriptions along with the poetic preamble of Breton represent a distinct artistic concept, which yet remains insufficiently studied and open for multiple interpretations. The study explores a number of questions related to the discourse on the art of photography, which gained relevance due to the growing interest of avant-garde artists, as well as the attitude to this topic of one of the prominent representatives of modernism. Attention is focused on the unique visual row in the context of creative ideas of the 1930’s: Dadaism, surrealism, and “new thingness”. The scientific novelty consists in presentation of the author’s original conclusions on correlation between the personal aesthetic program of an artist and cultural practices of the era. Rhetoric and semantics of photography as a “specific art” is associated with its unique descriptive ability to be not just straightforward and truthful, but also ambiguous and illusory. The album images actually demonstrate the possibility to make visible something that does not belong to the row of visible, and thus notional. The author concludes that a “banal”, often not deserving particular attention of the researchers Man Ray series of photographs is not secondary, and the project itself, brought to life by a modernist artist possessing a high level of competence in the area of cultural marketing, demonstrates a new specificity of “creative production, its relevance to aesthetic, ideological, or commercial visual model.

Keywords: new objectivity, surrealism, dadaism, art, photography, André Breton, Man Ray, rayography, cultural marketing, brand

Review: The subject of this research is a group of artworks of the Venetian Renaissance, united by depiction of the same creative theme – the image of Saint Jerome, Christian writer and priest, among the rural nature. Its composition in the local school is associated with the spread within Venetian society of the humanistic ideal of contemplative recreation, embodies in the image of the Saint, at times, identified with the persona of Renaissance humanist. Special attention is given to the works of the leading artists of the local school of painters – Giovanni Bellini, Lorenzo Lotto, Titian, which reflect the evolution of such image, since the influence of the principles of humanism, and later affected by ideological orientations of Counterreformation. The research method consists in examination of the various iconographic types of image of the Saint, giving special attention to the analysis of artistic construct of the demonstrated scene and principles of compositional organization surrounding the landscape, as well as the combination of landscape and human figure in format of a painting. The scientific novelty is defined by the fact that the author is first to trace the historical evolution of depiction of Saint Jerome in the Venetian art, as well as demonstration of appearance of the new iconographic scheme, which represented the Christian theologian contemplating among the nature, similar to a classical philosopher. Its realization was limited by the first two decades of the XVI century, after which the painters came back to depiction of Saint Jerome corresponding with the requirements of the religious dogmatics.

Keywords: Lorenzo Lotto, Giorgione, Giovanni Bellini, saint Jerome, landscape, painting, Renaissance, Venice, Titian, Northern Renaissance