Review: The research subject is music texts with montage organization of a verbal text. The study covers a range of works of Russian composers of the late 20th century, including The Fourteenth Symphony by D. Shostakovich, Light Sorrow and Styx by G. Kancheli, requiems by V. Silvestrov, V. Artemov, A. Popov, V. Platonov. Analyzing the 20th century composers’ work with texts, the author gives special attention to the western composer Luciano Berio’s attitude to a text. The author formulates the main principles of montage organization of a verbal text on the base of the research of Yu. Lotman, M. Yampolsky, R. Bart and C. Levi-Strauss. These works serve as a methodological background which helps reveal the specificity of a montage-oriented verbal text. As a result, such a text is interpreted not as a bearer of an integral semantic code, but as a crossing of the plurality of codes which, in its turn, defines its characteristic features - fractionality, laconicism, associativity, and paradoxicality of correlation of verbal phrases. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the consideration of a poorly studied issue, in the choice of research methodology, and in the revelation of specific features of a verbal text functioning in the context of montage dramaturgy. The author systematizes and generalizes the results of the analysis of music texts with montage organization of a verbal text.   

Keywords: openness, fragmentation, composition, montage, verbal text, work, twentieth century, musical art, context, sign

Review: The research subject of this interview is the creative work of a modern Astrakhan composer Yu.P. Gontsov, and the object is the history of Astrakhan music culture. The interview genre gives an opportunity to study musical creativity in great detail, from the inside, through the composer’s view of the influence of the music and non-music milieu. The author of the research gives special attention to Gontsov’s individual stylistic features (melodics, intervalics, rhythmics, harmonic plan, etc.), defining the style of his notating, and attempts to classify his vocal pieces. The author uses the method of interviewing (in-depth interview), the ideographic method (to prepare the materials), and systematization (to analyze the composer’s works). As the article is an interview, it doesn’t contain an explicit problematics which is to consider the composer’s creative work as an integral process of social interconnections. The questions used in the interview are essential as they help trace back the composer’s evolution - from direct influences to independent work. The author’s special contribution is the attempt to systematize the style language of the composer, and to classify his vocal pieces. The scientific novelty consists in a new method of studying such music material.   

Keywords: vocal compositions, melodic interval, melodic pattern, Gontsov, musical style, composer, music, melody, harmony, rhythmic

Review: The research object is a piano cycle by a Moscow composer Ivan Sokolov About Cage. The author uses the comprehensive approach to reveal the key composition and performance patterns such as the combination of a music and a verbal principles, emphasizing the manifestation of instrumental theatre, the improvisation style, and the synthesis of music idioms typical for both composers  - the one who is the object of the analyzed piano cycle, and its author and performer. The research methodology is based on the analytical method which helps to understand the specificity of Ivan Sokolov’s work in the context of vanguard ideas of American composer-innovator John Cage. The author attempts to compare the composition innovations of both authors so vividly embodying the traits of one of the most popular genres of the late 20th century - instrumental theatre - in their compositions. The article is directed to professional musicians and modern music enthusiasts.

Keywords: stage dramaturgy, fine art, the content of art, musical art, theory of music, philosophy of music, musicology, art history, 20th century music, modern composition

Review: The author considers one of the five operas performed at the 2019 festival “Archstoyanie” in the village of Nikola-Lenivets, Kaluga oblast. In the natural environment, among meadows, trees, barrows, and basins, artists build art objects in which young composers perform their works. Artiom Pyś, the Moscow Conservatory alumnus, performed an hour and a half opera “teo/TEO/Theo”.  The article analyzes the idea and the concept of the piece; the author analyzes the music text and raises the question about the future of opera as a music genre. The author uses the method of comprehensive analysis which includes a brief characteristics of the work of a young composer, the structural, compositional and conceptual analysis of the music text. The scientific novelty consists in the first and the only review of one of the projects of the Contemporary Music Laboratory, in the analysis of an original piece of music which can be in the vanguard of Russia’s artistic achievements. Based on the research, the author makes suggestion about the discovery of a new direction in opera art, connected with both narrative moves (the opera’s lead character is virtual Teo/TEO/Theo), and a postmodern mixture of music genres, opera patterns and sound experiments including those involving human voice.   

Keywords: arch standing, musical ecosystem, voice lab, modern art laboratory, avant-garde vocals, opera, Artyom Pyss, music quotes, allusions, Natalya Pshenichnikova

Review: The research subject is one of the first published drums playing learning guide, while previously this skill had been transmitted orally from one generation of performers to another. That is why the first published guides are so valuable. The article contains the translation of the tractate “Brief easiest guide to drum along with seven notated plays and marches, with the musician’s annotations” (Ludwig Winter’s widow’s edition, Berlin, 1777) from German into Russian, as well as the comments to it from the viewpoint of a modern performer. The tractate describes technical and stylistical musical techniques typical for Western Europe of the middle of the 18th century. The tractate can be of interest to practicing musicians and “all drums enthusiasts”.  The research method includes the traits of philological, cultural and pedagogical studies. The author searches for analogies in modern traditions of different cultures and brings into accordance the theoretical and practical parts of the research. The key results of the research are the possibility to adapt the teaching fundamentals and techniques of a regimental drummer of the middle of the 18th century to the modern realia. The main contribution of the author is not only the first literary translation of the work into Russian, but also generalization of the acquired knowledge for purposes of a modern performer and music teacher. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the opportunity for a modern musician to learn about the teaching techniques nearly two and a half centuries later. The study fills in the gap in the history of the Russian performing art.   

Keywords: percussion, a military drum, military music, marches, war signals, A treatise of percussion, school for snare drum, Shamov, regimental drummer, Ludwig Winter

Review: The article focuses on the role of a concertmaster - a specialist of a modern music institute, which is studied in the context of communication and activity analysis. To characterise professional activities of an academic concertmaster, the authors use a notion of strategy; they introduce a terminological word combination “a concertmaster’s strategy”, which hasn’t been reflected fully enough in music education science. The article substantiates the thesis holding that a set of professional strategies of a concertmaster of a choral conducting class is determined by communicativeness - a pertinent dominant characteristics of the modern educational practice. The authors use the method of description. The scientific description of the strategic activities of a concertmaster is based on the analysis of the work of a concertmaster of a choral conducting class. The authors establish a connection between the categories “strategy” and “competence” responsible for quality-related side of strategic behaviour, and focus on the procedural character of strategic activities. The article reveals the work of a concertmaster of a choral conducting class in terms of the specificity, content and structure of the key professional strategies determined by it.   

Keywords: algorithm, structure, key competencies, communication strategies, educational strategies, professional strategies, strategies, conducting thesaurus, teaching strategies, collegial strategies

Review: The study of music in its relation to folklore is of indisputable interest. The present article considers one of the priority directions in musicology - the composer/folklore problem. However, some aspects of this problem haven’t been studied thoroughly enough yet, the more so since the choral pieces of Russian composers, embodying the Russian wedding music, have outlined a new level of composer/folklore relations. The synthesis of various style tendencies with ceremonial wedding songs leads to the new quality of artistic thinking and characterizes a thematically specific folklore direction as an essential field of creativity marked with genre-style and structural diversity, variability of sources and originality of the methods of their performing. This problem, being one of the key problems of Russian musicology, had been studied in detail in the publications of G. Golovinsky, I. Zemtsovsky, L. Christiansen, G. Grigorieva, L. Ivanova, etc., whose fundamental works were used for the study of the specificity of the modern composer art. The performance of Russian wedding folklore in choral works of modern Russian composers is a poorly studied field of musicology which forms the scientific novelty of this work. Thus, the author states that the latitude of style quest along with adherence to traditions is typical for modern composers. These features are connected with the graphic structure - the circle of the wedding subject, moods, and favourite statement forms.   

Keywords: regional traditions, folklorized composition, wedding rite, wedding songs, folk genre, choir, folklore, songs, rite, traditions