«Свободная пульсирующая композиция» Лейфа Сегерстама как индивидуальный алеаторный проект

Abstract

This article is devoted to the characteristics of “freely-pulsating composition.” This technique has been developed in the works of Leif Segerstam – a significant Finnish composer and conductor. Segerstam’s creativity astonishes by its extremely prolific quality. The composer wrote more than three hundred symphonies and also numerous compositions in other genres. Such artistically creative activity has been stipulated by those principles of composition which the Finnish composer has developed. Their formation and evolution took up over two decades. The “freely-pulsating phase” was initiated by Segerstam in the mid-1970s, while all the basic features of the composer’s technique were formed by the late 1990s. In its final variant, the method of “free pulsation” became connected with the sphere of the symphony: it has been demonstrated by musical compositions written since the early 2000s. These symphonies are essentially one-movement sonoristic compositions, generally, all of them of the same duration and performed without a conductor (in Segerstam’s words, they rely on an “built-in conducting mechanism”). Their musical texture is based on an aleatory counterpoint, in which the various instrumental parts are synchronized loosely. The form of symphonies consists of several (from 5 to 8) blocks, in which there is an alternation of more and less controlled sections. In general, the features of “freely-pulsating composition” make it possible to consider it an individual version of aleatory techniques and to see its preimages in the American music from the 1960s, with the works of Earle Brown and Christian Wolff. Keywords: Segerstam, aleatory technique, aleatory symphony, freely-pulsating composition, built-in conducting mechanism.