Review: The research subject of the article is the piano art of Pavel Alekseevich Serebryakov, an outstanding Leningrad pianist, pedagogue, artist and director. The research object is the mani-sided activity of this person. The author considers such aspects of the topic and the performer’s individual style, his repertoire preferences, concert, music and social activity. The author gives special attention to particular facts of the great artist’s biography which had influenced his performance path. The author refers to the reviews of various musical critics, colleagues and students, as well as Serebryakov’s own performance views drawn from autobiographical notes and interviews. Based on the author’s conversation with P. Serebruakov’s grandson P.V. Dmitriev, the author reveals the methods of the pianist’s individual work with the repertoire and some peculiarities of his performance thinking. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the fact that it uses rare previously unpublished archive materials covering performance and music and social activity of P.A. Serebryakov, including: The Serebryakovs family archive documents provided by Serebryakov’s grandson P.V. Dmitriev Materials, reviews and newspaper articles kept at the Central State Archive of Literature and Arts (fund 214) Audio recordings from the sound library of St.Petersburg Conservatory Materials of Serebryakov’s conversations with students The research material can be used by young musicians, as well as the pedagogues of special music schools for illustrative and educational purposes.  

Keywords: skill, audience, activity, art, performance, music, pianist, Nikolaev, Serebriakov, artist

Review: In the 19th century, after a two-centuries oblivion, the interest in a medieval genre “danse macabre” reappeared. Dances of Death were embodied not only in pictorial art, literature and music, but also attracted the attention of scholars. The research subject of this article is one of such scientific works - “Les Danses des Morts” by J.-G. Kastner. Its uniqueness consists in the combination of a theoretical research and practical embodiment of its results in a piece of music. The genre of the tractate is defined by scholars as “livre partition” - a sheet music book. The article contains the biographical data of the life and creative work of the French scholar, music expert and composer, little-known in Russian musicology. Based on their own translation of the original text, the authors study the structure-content components of the tractate and define its specificity. J.-G. Kastner considers the genre “danse macabre” in the historical, philosophical and aesthetic contexts; traces back the interdependence of literary, decorative, and musical versions of the dances. The tractate of the French musicologist considers in detail the range of instruments of dance macabre (based on the collection of wooden engravings of a gothic Doten Dantz printed in the late 15th century). The authors define the features of J.-G. Kastner’s ideas which differ them from the thanatological views of his predecessors H. Peino and E.-H. Langlois.

Keywords: livre-partition, treatise, art, Grande Ronde, Georges Kastner, dance of death, danse macabre, phenomenon, death theme, êíèãà-ïàðòèòóðà

Review: The authors attempt to reveal the internal interconnection of a traditional mythologem of space with the ideas of a modern astronomical reality in the music by E. Artemiev written for A. Tarkovsky’s movie “Solaris”. The mythologem of space gained its features back within the ancient worldview and formed a sort of a semiotic complex which can be considered as a combination of various symbols connected with basic natural forces, basic forms and numbers. This mythologem was embodied in various art forms, including the music of various historical epochs. Surprisingly, in contemporary culture, which has much wider knowledge of physical (astronomical) space, the ancient ideas of microcosm and macrocosm are still functioning, along with the medieval religious ideas of eternity, metaphysical searches for new spirituality, the divine-humanity of cosmism adherents, etc. Based on M.M. Bakhtin’s concept of chronotope, the authors develop the model of chronotope analysis represented in the form of a table (G. N. Dombruaskene) which allows considering the movie within a vector space, in which the main vectors - the two basic directions - are the chronometry and the chronotope. The table format demonstrates the semantic moments related to space which emerge at the crossing of the three key parameters of the movie: verbal, visual and musical. The full chronotropic, semiotic and computer-based analysis with the sonograms of music examples (D.N. Bolotin) helps to reveal in each space-related fragment of the movie the music and artistic means of expression of its philosophical and astronomical characteristics.

Keywords: film music, sonorica, electronic music, space, mythologeme, Solaris, Tarkovsky, Artemiev, musical semiotics, chronotope

Review: The research object is the sacred music of a well-known Norwegian composer Henning Sommerro (born 1952), one of the bright components of his multifaceted creative work. The present article is the first work within the Russian scientific literature analyzing this aspect through the prism of one of the key works of the composer. The authors are also the first to introduce the complete musical score of the composition into the scientific discourse. Along with the recordings, it helps to understand how the composer manages to successfully combine the liturgical and secular components, the poetical and musical texts, and how they outline the modern musical directions. The research subject is the musical drama and expressive means of the “Partisan Requiem” (2000) by Sommerro performed by the combined Russian-Norwegian choir (Murmansk, 2019). The research shows that the composer keeps the graphic structure of the historically formed model of the genre. Owing to the musical expressive means and “citation”, demonstrating the postmodernist practices of the composer, the genre becomes recognizable, denoting the important “memory spaces”. At the same time, in terms of drama, Latin and Norwegian texts are “arranged” according to the internal connection, the monologue inclusions of the narrator are often accompanied with a reduced orchestra, whose timbre and color, on the one hand, thematically unite the Norwegian texts with the graphic and musical sphere of the composition, and on the other hand, deepen the understanding of the ideas underlying them. The briefness of poetic verses strengthens the importance of each of them; they are rhythmically linked to liturgical texts thus helping to create a single lexical and musical fabric of the composition by means of a complex interaction of the choir, the orchestra, the soloists and the actor-narrator.   

Keywords: dialogue of cultures, means of musical expression, musical dramaturgy, theme of God 's wrath, Partisan requiem, Norwegian poet Olsen, Norwegian composer Sommerro, places of cultural memory, word and music, musical subtexts

Review: The author attempts to explain the methodology of structural analysis of music timbre. The research subject is music timbre, and the object is its semiotic system. Based on the semiotic system developed by  Ferdinand de Saussure, the author outlines two algorithms within the structure of music timbre - randomness and linearity. Considering the first principle, the author explains the anthropologic nature of a timbre sign, forming the total variability of a timber sign, and some patterns of music timber perception. The second principle is considered through the prism of psycho-acoustics which helps to detect and define the structural principle of linearity as a primary mechanism of perception of music. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the first experience of studying music timbre in terms of its structural organization. For the first time timbre is considered as a semiotic system with structural principles. Since musicology still doesn’t have an appropriate conceptual framework for structural analysis of a timbre space, the model by Saussure becomes especially valuable, primarily because of the fact that it emerged as an attempt to build such a language system which would take into account the correlation and interrelation between language and speech. This is the content of the novelty and topicality of the research which is based on a certain algorithm of structural analysis of music timbre. 

Keywords: music perception, psychophysics, anthropological principle, sign, sign system, structural analysis, music timbre, timbre, psychology of perception, musical instrument

Review: The research subject is the period of the 1960s - the 1970s - the period of flourishing of the Soviet ballet theatre. During this period, in many theatres of the Soviet Union,  choreographers-pioneers were working whose creativity was based on the commitment to traditions and readiness to propose their own vision of the development of ballet theatre. The article considers the early period of work of one of “the men of the sixties” - a choreographer Gennady Malkhasyants (1937 - 2008). The author of the article reconstructs one of his earliest plays - the ballet “Naughty Couplets” staged in 1974 in Voronezh Opera and Ballet Theatre. The ballet was a part of an one-act ballet recital. The novelty of the research consists in the fact that it introduces into the scholar discourse the materials of the personal archive of the choreographer. The topicality of the research consists in the necessity to analyze the creative work of choreographers-directors, to reconstruct the plays which are not performed any longer and haven’t been recorded. In the 1970s, G. Malkhasyants was developing various choreographer’s techniques and director’s principles of the composition of a dance. So far, the creative work of G. Malkhasyants almost hasn’t been studied. The knowledge of the materials and the creative process of G. Malkhasyants gives the opportunity to trace back the main tendencies and, probably, to find the new ways of development of the modern art of choreography.   

Keywords: staging techniques, musical and choreographic drama, dance composition, the art of a choreographer, a generation of innovative choreographers, soviet ballet theater, director's principles, choreographic imagery, plastic expressiveness, stylization

Review: The article focuses on calendar-ceremonial folklore of Novgorod region as an important component of folklore song traditions of the region. The musical and poetical forms of the calendar are considered in terms of type, genre and realm. The author is the first to systematize the data about calendar folklore recordings made in Novgorod region by various collectors in the 1960s - 1990s. The author gives special attention to the results of field studies of Saint Petersburg Conservatory named after N.A. Rimski-Korsakov. The author introduces into scientific discourse a range of items of calendar folklore from the archive of the Conservatory (Maslenitsa, Christmas and Easter carols and yells). The specificity of Novgorod calendar traditions is connected with a special role of intoned yells serving a function of calling over ceremonial characters, and Christmas carols combining the features of folk and church melodics. Some folklore forms, recorded in Novgorod region, can be considered unique (the North-East Maslenitsa chants, the “Piper” song, the Easter callings). Taking into account the peculiarities of a genre composition of the calendar, the types of chants and the style features, the author outlines three historical-cultural zones in Novgorod region - the North-East, the South-West and the Central. The research results can be used for mapping  the calendar folklore chants of Russia’s North-West, and for the further study of music folklore traditions of Novgorod region together with other folklore genres.   

Keywords: folk songs, folklore genres, folklore archive, North of Russia, local traditions, calendar folklore, ritual songs, Novgorod folklore, Novgorod region, areal research

Review: Nowadays, computer technologies are integrated into all art forms. New artistic directions emerge which are totally based on multimedia (primarily audio-visual) instruments. The question about the role of music art in the new cultural paradigm becomes topical. Based on the example of academic music, the article considers the possibilities of using programming tools for music scores processing into a transcript. The authors consider the possible mathematical model of a piece of music which allows processing the piece of music and getting both an authentic and an experimental version. The authors analyze the set of parameters helping to form a virtual acoustic space corresponding with an artistic concept. The authors demonstrate that academic music transcript modeling using electronic sound synthesis can promote the artistic reinterpretation of the score of the piece of music. The selection of particular timber, performance and spatial parameters during transcribing helps to interpret a composition according to the artistic tasks. The use of virtual instruments also allows creating digital recordings without performing musicians. The article contains the variants of forming a virtual acoustic environment based on the example of a classical piece of music for string quartet: from a “traditional” to an “experimental, differing in musical sources positioning, a set of spatial effects and the parameters of their adjustment.   

Keywords: virtual acoustic space, sound synthesis, sound processing, modeling, music programming, computer music technologies, arrangement, transcription, classical music, spatial effects