Foolishness in the work of Galina Ustvolskaya

Abstract

The subject of the article is the phenomenon of foolishness in the works of Galina Ustvolskaya. The author suggests that in the external manifestations of this phenomenon (protest, denunciation) there is an underlying tragic content. In the opinion of the author, the urge towards extremes, as a typical feature of Ustvolskaya's creativity, is the composer's desire to conceal emotion in her compositions. This emotional tension is the very reason for the intonational ambivalence of Ustvolskaya's musical language. In this connection, the author identifies similarities in the composer's work with the foolishness described in Natalia Rostova's monograph, The Man of Reverse Perspective. In this study, the figure of the foolish man is compared to an icon, a reverse perspective which implies a multiplicity of viewpoints. For Ustvolskaya, this multiplicity of meanings is transformed into a special method - genre diffusion. The scientific novelty of the presented study lies in the author's interpretation of the metaphor of foolishness in the works of Ustvolskaya in the context of philosophical justification of this phenomenon. The author's special contribution to the theme's research is the analysis of some specific features of Galina Ustvolskaya's musical style on the example of her piano works. The article provides the notational examples of Twelve Preludes for Piano as well as Third and Fourth Piano Sonatas as the most vivid illustrations of the author's stance. The presented works focus on the intonation and genre spheres as well as outline the further development of these spheres.