Review: The purpose of the article is to confirm or confute the semantic and compositional similarity of Chopin’s piano heritage with its ideal and graphic interpretation by a choreographer John Neumeier in the context of synthetic materialization on the ballet stage. The object of research is the “black” duet of Marguerite and Armand from the 1978 ballet Lady of the Camellias. The contextual unity of the compositional and semantic choreographic interpretation of this fragment with the music images of the Ballade No.1 g-moll is the subject of research. The theoretical and methodological background of the research is the principles of critical analysis of the choreographic and musical text of the play, and the semantic analysis of choreography developed by historians and theorists of the ballet art (Vanslov, Dobrovolskaya, Lopukhov, Slonimsky). The research is based on video materials from the archives of the Ballettzentrum Hamburg and the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. The author uses the method of overt observation (based on the personal experience of work with Neumeier as a participant of the Lady of the Camellias first run in Moscow on March 20th, 2014) together with the analysis of the choreographer’s lectures  and rehearsals records from the author’s archive. The analysis of the semantics of the choreographic form and vocabulary of the “black” adagio is the main instrument used for solving the scientific problem. Among the new results are the significant groundwork in the detection of classic and innovative author’s expression elements of Neumeier’s artistic language. The author concludes that the combination of the ballade narration with the harmony of the sonata form typical for the Ballade No.1 dictates Neumeier the allocation of parts and the development of choreographic themes inconcert with the music ones, while the dramatic propensity towards conflict allows the choreographer to develop the main characters’ confession.   

Keywords: Choreographic language analysis, Marguerite and Armand, Pas de deux, Choreographic interpretation, Ballad g-moll, Frédéric Chopin, Lady of the camellias, Choreography, Ballet, John Neumeier

Review: The research subject is the creative work of a French composer, pianist, linguist, writer and philosopher Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813 - 1888). As the composer was interested in the legacy of the past  - antique culture and Jewish folklore, he often used modal tonalities. Alkan was the first representative of academic music of the 19th century who used pentatonic scale in two etudes op.35 - in the F-major Allegro barbaro (op.35 no. 5), notably, in Lydian mode, and the B-major op.35 no. 6 based on pentatonic scale with an interesting comparison of natural and harmonical B-major. The author concludes that Alkan was the largest novator of harmonic language and mode peculiarities. He was one of the first musicians of the 19th century to use modal tonalities and colourful harmonies; he rearranged modes in the cycles of short scores, preludes, etudes and songs without lyrics, and he also was a novator in sonata cycles. To analyze Alkan’s works, the author uses comparative-analytical and comparative methods - Alkan’s music is compared with the music of his contemporaries, followers and the old masters whose influence on Alkan’s creative work is easy to see. The author also uses the music-analytical method, as it is very important to carry out the analysis - both merely melodic and harmonic - of each work of the composer. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the fact that the creative work of Charles-Valentin Alkan hasn’t been studied sufficiently enough in Russia so far. The only comprehensive thesis analyzing most Alkan’s works is the art history PhD thesis by Veniamin Smotrov “Charles-Valentin Alkan: personality, esthetics, creative work” having 415 pages. The problem of harmonic language  hasn’t been studied in such a detail even in Smotrov’s dissertation as it is in this article. The author notes numerous peculiarities of harmonic language and modes and tonalities innovating in the creative work of Alkan and even some connections with synagogal Jewish symbolism.   

Keywords: form, innovation, tonality, fret, harony, Valentin, Charles, Alkan, symbolism, romantism

Review: The article considers the composition Dmitri Shistakovich created in his youth days: Two Fables by Krylov for vocal and piano. Despite the fact that the romances were written when the composer was only 15 years old, they outlined many important streams of chamber vocal works and artistic principles of the mature creative period of Shostakovich; his manner, imagery and even mastery are easily visible. The author focuses on the close connection between the fables and the late vocal works of the composer, analyzes the romances and adduces Shostakovich’s own evaluations of this work, and tells about the creative milieu of the composer which affected the creation of the composition. The author concludes that youthful Krylov’s fables manifested the capacity of the chamber vocal art of the composer. They contain all the basic streams of development of Shostakovich’s vocal lyrics - bright theatricality, inclination for humour and grotesque, paradoxicality of thinking, figurativeness, and ensemble significance of a piano accompagnement. With the benefit of hindsight, we find this composition bright, and daring, and forward-looking. Nevertheless, it is rarely played and poorly studied. The purpose of the article is to draw attention to this original and bright opus of an ingenious Russian composer.   

Keywords: piano, mezzo soprano, Leningrad Concervatory, Steinberg, Shostakovich, Fables of Krylov, satire, grotesque, musical theatricality, vocal art

Review: The subject of research is special techniques of variation of chants and lyrics of ritual songs of heptasyllabic and enneasyllabic accentual verses in local traditions of the Upper Poluzhye and Pooredezhye (based on the published and archive materials of the 1970s - 80s). These territories have common historical and cultural development, which resulted in the formation of similar musical and ethnographic traditions. This similarity of traditions is manifested in wedding ritualism, similarity of prothalamia, sustainability of texts and images, and the system of chants-formulae. However, among the wedding songs, the author has found non-typical chants in which they were being transformed. The research is based on the full notation of sound recordings and the comparative-analytical method which help to identify and describe these special techniques of song variations. The scientific novelty of the study consists in the individual approach to the recording of folk songs, which gives attention to the non-typical songs, and considers them in the context of traditional musical texts. The detected transformations of chants and lyrics in wedding songs help to arrive to the conclusion about special and close interaction between chants-formulae, the transfusion of their key elements, and the implementation of the key idea of a wedding song (the conjunction of families of the fiance and the fiancee) at the level of the musical-ritual language, and to raise the question about the possibility of using such techniques in other traditions and genres.   

Keywords: 9-fold, wedding songs, local tradition, Upper Luga, Oredezh region, Leningrad Region, 7-fold, chorus formula, archived records, variation

Review: The article considers the synaesthesia of the two symbolic phenomena of Russian Christian culture -  znamenny chant and the art of calligraphy. The purpose of the research is to detect the most evident aspects of multisensority in the terminology and graphology of the both phenomena. The research object is the semantic level of the znamenny terminology, the graphological plan of calligraphy and the semiotics of the space of a handwritten text uniting these arts in religious chants books. The analysis of the semiography of znamenny chant is based on the idea about the interrelation between the perception of the phenomenon of znamenny chant and “znamya” itself as a set of equal mode senses. The research methodology is based on the methods of cognitive musicology, comparative Art Studies (I.V. Matsievsky), musical liturgics, the studies of the multisensor nature of the perception of art, lectures and workshops on the art of calligraphy by P.P. Chobitko, and the hierotopy approach to studying the phenomena of the church culture developed by A.M. Lidov. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the approach to the consideration of the two phenomena of the Church-Slavonic culture from the viewpoint of synesthetic codes of the Christian culture. The author arrives at the conclusion that znamenny singing is reflected in art together with the Church-Slavic calligraphy and the semiotics of the church liturgical space based on a special visual-spatial code of the Christian tradition and spaciousness as a feature of a handwritten text of a religious book.   

Keywords: Brazhnikov, hierotopy, Znamenny notation, synesthetic codes, liturgical book, Church Slavonic calligraphy, Znamenny singing, Lidov, linguoplasty, paradigm image

Review: The object of research is the editing form in a piece of music. The research subject is the music of Russian composers of the late 20th century. The purpose of the article is to denote the appearance of a special form which hasn’t been noticed in music before - an editing form - in the works of Russian composers of the late 20th century, and to describe its specificity. To achieve this goal, the author refers to the key provisions of V.Bobrovsky’s concept about a “compositional ellipsis”, which in its turn is based on B. Asafiev’s understanding of the process of music form-making as switching of the functions of the associates of the “i-m-t” formula. The author uses the theoretical and analytical research methods, and general scientific methods within comparative and logical analysis including the methods of observation, generalization and comparison. The author arrives at the following conclusions. The editing method is a universal method of constructing an artistic space of a composition in Russian musical art of the late 20th century. In many respects, it was promoted by the spiritual and intellectual environment of that time with its striving for eclecticism, multilayer character, and polarity. The analysis helps to identify the peculiarities of the editing form of a piece of music: a high degree of disintegration of a thematic material, sudden switching of genre and thematic lines, patchiness, and polythematic character of structures. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the fact that the author is the first to use the principle of “compositional ellipsis” (authored by V.Bobrovsky) as a fundamental principle of editing form-making, which extends the spectrum of objective scientific interpretation of music compositions.   

Keywords: interrupted development, fragmentation, text, musical form, editing, musical composition, XX century,, musical art, polytemic structures, compositional ellipsis

Review: The research object is the music decoration of a dramatic play as one of the key elements of creating a single text of a theatrical piece of work. The author is the first to consider the formation of a musical space as a director’s method of creating a stage performance, and the need to study it is determined by the movement of the modern theatre towards musicalization - the formation of a single sound space of the stage business and the shifting of the functions of an author of background music to the director. The research subject is the use of background music and the interpretations of the main music themes, the detection of peculiarities of their functions and an attempt to define the operating name of a director’s method. To achieve this goal, the author uses the method of overt observation and studies the production of the play “Krechinsky’s wedding” at Penza Drama Theatre as a director, a choreographer, and an author of the background music. The analysis of the use of background music, which is undertaken for the first time within the framework of the theatre drama art, shows that music, applied in this algorithm, performs various functions: creates the atmosphere of action, becomes a full fledged “text” of a play, and an instrument of the author’s “translation” of a literary work into a theatre-stage language. At the same time, it allows making the music space integral thus following the trend of the movement of a drama theatre towards its musicalization. The author suggests naming the director’s method a “transformation of a music theme”.   

Keywords: transforming a musical theme, timbre, interpretation, musical arrangement, artistic Director's method, music in drama theater, drama theatre, musicalization, modern theatrical art, the method of participant observation

Review: The article analyzes the peculiarities of a director’s interpretation of the image of the main character of the 2006 “Tristan and Isolde”. The author analyzes the expressive means, including the musical ones, and the screenplay in comparison with the original novel by Gottfried von Strassburg. The scientific novelty of the research is determined by the fact that the author is the first Russian scholar who studies this film using the methods of interdisciplinary analysis, which helps to compare the image of the protagonist with its historic and cultural prototype, and detect the artististic and esthetic position of the director. The research methodology includes the comparative, art, historic and cinematological, and musical analysis, the principles of semiotic analysis in relation to the elements of the artistic language of the film as “independent” texts. The authors come to the following conclusions: the director follows the tradition of history films using the mythologic materials, but not using their “magicness”, embedding the implied mythology. The key points are highlighted by the music which is more than merely supplementary and denotes the genetic linkage of the heroes’s senses with nature and becomes an integral element of the media text. Besides, the music in the film plays an important form-making role connecting its segments. The worldview depicted in the film is vertically multifaceted: it contains the referrals to the Migration Period, the Middle Ages and modernity.

Keywords: Anne Dudley, film music, Kevin Reynolds, medieval novel, Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan and Isolde, epos, cinema, media text, culture hero