ФОРТЕПІАННИЙ ЦИКЛ “КАРТИНА БАШУ” ЗАБУТОГО КИТАЙСЬКОГО КОМПОЗИТОРА

Abstract

Huang Huwei is a Chinese composer and teacher whose work attracts the greatest interest in the study of trends in the development of national piano music. His musical compositions are among the most successful and striking examples of the combination of ethnic elements of the national musical language with the skill of mastering Western compositional methods. The excitement of the composer to the piano was inspired by the thirst for comprehension of the richness of the expressive capabilities of the instrument that came from the European continent and the possibility of studying and applying in the work of the unusual monochromatic Chinese culture of the principles of instrumental development. Huang Huwei’s piano pieces were immediately recognized as masterpieces of national music both in terms of artistic value and cultural – as they reflected the outstanding achievements of Chinese humanistic art. The high recognition of creativity was facilitated by the desire of the composer to preserve in the piano works the peculiarities of the national musical language and to develop the traditions of national instrumental music. Huang Huwei graduated from the Beijing Central Conservatoire on piano class and composition (class of professor Zhao Yuan Ren). It was discovered that during the study, it was important to attend lectures on the composition of the German composer J. Schloss (1902–1973), who used the method of combining traditional with modern compositional techniques; and in harmony – with the Russian composer Boris Alapov, who, in particular, highlighted the importance of applying in the work to folk melody and the programmatic of musical works as one of the most important ways of uniting music and literature During the years of the cultural revolution, Huang Huwei’s piano works, like the exceptional majority of the other best-known Chinese composers, were banned from performing and for a long time completely disappeared from the musical horizon. Thanks to the reliance on national folklore and the use of national means of musical expression, with exceptional importance to sound-imaging effects and acoustic coloring techniques, the piano loops of the composer are considered to be masterpieces of the Chinese national style. Guided by such methods, Huang Huwei striving to achieve the “nationalization” of the European piano and, thus, contribute to its quick introduction into the instrumental space of China. On the example of the piano cycle “Bashu painting” it is shown that the composer constantly tried to transfer to the Chinese national soil a palette of expressive means of European musical impressionism, namely, the weakening of functional harmonic ties, layering, like the picturesque spots of unsolved harmonies, the rudeness of rhythmic drawings, a thin game of segments of the modes, contouring completeness of the invoice. These characteristics point to his deep admiration for the art of impressionism, whose artistic principles were most closely related to both the mentality of the composer and the Chinese nation as a whole.