Abstract
Much has been written about the remarkable musicality of Alexander Pushkin’s poem “Night Zephyr.” In the critical reviews, beginning from the 19th century, the main attention was drawn to the outward imagery rich in sound and the poetical means of the “instrumentation” of the verse (the rhythms and phonetics). Moreover, the customary musical and poetical traits have also been solidified by the specific elements of the musical language, related to genre, composition and performance. As a result the symbolic polyvalence of the poem was made more profound, and capacious artistic semantics present in it were assembled. It is not perchance that “Night Zephyr” has become popular among composers. About forty musical settings of the text of the poem are known. The article examines the songs of Glinka, Dargomyzhsky and Medtner, in which a special delicate understanding of Pushkin’s profound symbolism is found. The three Russian composers in their songs enter into an artistic-semantic dialogue with the poet, responding to his musical-lingual, and through them – exaltedly semantic symbolizations. The analysis of the poetic and musical texts presented in the article is aimed at carrying out a theoretical and musical performance-based interpretation of the complex task undertaken by the great Russian composers: not to lose the poetical profundity, as well as to disclose the further boundaries of meaning, when they composed their songs as revelations of a new artistic reality. Keywords. Alexander Pushkin’s “Night Zephyr,” art songs, poetical text, musical text, musical content, Mikhail Glinka, Alexander Dargomyzhsky, Nikolai Medtner.
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