Christian Sinding’s piano works: the experience of a post-romantic world perception

Abstract

Statement of the problem. Christian Sinding is the first composer after Edward Grieg, whose name resonated in wide circles of the musical community not only in Norway, but also in Europe, in particular Germany. His works were widely performed and aroused general interest, being evidence of the high status of national Norwegian music. In Ukraine, the figure of Sinding is little known, and his works are performed very rarely, despite the fact that his heritage, in particular the piano one, deserves attention and study as a vivid expression of the national style in the music of the early and first half of the 20th century. The style of performance of Sinding’s piano works was also not the subject of special research either in the world or in Ukrainian musicology. Recent research and publications. The creative personality of Sinding appears in generalizing studies on the history of Norwegian music (Rowbotham, 1916; Qvamme, 1949; Grinde, 1981; Herresthal, 1987; Holth, 2014), and the composer’s piano heritage is included in the context of the evolution of European piano art (Herresthal, 1987). The figure of Sinding is also highlighted in works in the genre of creative portraits (Altmann, 1936, Gaukstad, 1956) and in biographical studies. These works contain brief descriptions of the musical material of a significant part of the composer’s works. The dissertation of the Norwegian singer and scientist Per Vollestad, dedicated to Sinding’s vocal work, should be considered the most thorough study of his creativity at the moment (Vollestad, 2002). Nevertheless, in the mentioned sources, the piano music of Sinding, in particular, large-scale genres, did not become the subject of a special study, as well as the question of its stylistic attribution in the context of post-romanticism. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. The purpose of the study is to present the individual composer style of Sinding as of an experience of post-romantic worldview in the context of the trends of the modernism era based on the performance interpretation of large-scale piano works (Sonata and Concerto). The scientific novelty of the topic is determined by the lack of information about the specifics of Sinding’s piano style and artistic thinking in available scientific sources; in particular, we rely on self-own experience of interpreting Sinding’s selected works. The following methods were used in the study: historically typological that helps to outline the stages of evolution and stylistic trends of European piano art; the genre approach that identifies the established models of instrumental music of the European tradition (sonata, concerto); stylistic one revealing the regularities of the Norwegian artist’s individual way of thinking; and interpretative method that allows to understand of the composer’s embodiment of the sound image of the piano in the light of post-romanticism. Results and conclusion. Sinding’s large-scale piano works, the Concerto (1890s) and Sonata (1909) belong to the post-romantic European tradition. The thematic, functional and compositional analysis of the composer’s text of these works made it possible to reveal the fundamental principles of the author’s thinking, which bases on the synthesis of classical-romantic and national Norwegian musical language. Among the leading principles of piano style should be singled out: – the significance of the melody as the main carrier of the author’s thought, which serves as the foundation of the textural and timbre decoration of the theme-image; – a thematic presentation in octave duplications, which makes the piano texture close to an orchestral sound; – double national-stylistic identity: intonation (melos, mode, rhythm) has national-Norwegian roots; compositional regularities follow the German Romantic tradition; – frequent use of the technique of re-harmonizing motifs and phrases, the great role of polyphonic development (including imitative ones: canonical exposition in the development of the 1st movement of the Sonata); – the concert nature of the piano texture; – the richness of the orchestral accompaniment (in the accompanying part, solo horn and woodwinds as personification of the “voices of nature” should be noted). Thus, the post-romantic thinking of C. Sinding in the conceptual genres of piano music serves as an artistic counterpoint to the European style of the border of the 19–20th centuries, enriching its national component, universalizing and conceptualizing the romantic due to expanding of musical language means.