INTONATION ANALYSIS OF THE PIANO TEXTURE AS A MEANS OF DEVELOPING THE PIANIST’S PERFORMANCE THINKING: THE CONTENT, HEARING STRATEGIES, AND THE METHODS

Abstract

Intonation analysis of the piano texture as a means of developing the pianist’s performance thinking: the content, hearing strategies, and the methods The aim of this research is to substantiate the content of the piano texture intonation analysis, a means of developing the pianist’s performance thinking, with defining the auditory strategies, techniques, and relevant intonation-analytical skills that form the basis for piano intonation skills. The research methodology is based on the phenomenological approach. The author, by reducing, applying phenomenological analysis, and describing the content of the intonation performance thinking in the “phonic space” of piano texture, has sought to explore the intramusical nature of its essential components, which can be analyzed theoretically. The scientific novelty is in transferring the content basis of the intonation thinking to the plane of rationality by appealing to the intramusical factors of the intonation processes in the musical piece’s performance texture. Thus, it allowed us to single out the auditory strategies, the methods of the intonation analysis, which are methodologically important for the formation of the pianist’s performance skills, and to determine the system of the intonation-analytical skills, that provide access to the artistic level of performance. Conclusions. Being a modality of developing the pianist’s performance thinking, the intonation analysis is aimed at understanding the sources of dynamic integrity of the performance form at different levels of its organization, namely phonic (overtone micro-intonation), morphological (microstructural motive intonation and/or articulation), syntactic (organic, expressive semantic accentuation phrasing), compositional (intonation dramaturgy of the musical piece as an artistic whole). The object of the intonation analysis is the phonic environment of the musical piece performing texture, while its subject is the internal meaning-creating logic of the tonal connections in the projection of the melodic harmony and spatial timbre dynamics, a linear and deep coordinate of the intonation texture of the sound image. There are semantic guidelines for the analysis of the performance texture that are essential for the piano intonation, such as semantically significant melodic and harmonic tonal connections; features of the “declamatory” articulation of the motives in the projection of the integral texture; the syntactic structure of the melody and its corresponding voices and/or texture fragments; the intramusical logic of dynamic phrasing. The shift of the content orientation of the intonation analysis, proposed in the article, to the corresponding intonation-analytical skills, which form the basis for performing intonation mastery, demonstrates the direct connection between the appealing to the intramusical parameters of music in the intonation texture study and the formation of important thinking qualities. That is, the ability to hear the most subtle, high-pitched, timbre-dynamic changes within each tone embedded in the melodic line; the natural (corresponding to the internal musical logic) declamatory articulation of the text’s semantic structures; the expressive (in the sense of expressed) phrasing; the shift of the textual vision of the texture into intonationally flexible sound images; the coverage of the textural vertical in the dynamics of the figure-background relations of its elements; tracking of the forming intonation lines in the depth of textural fabric (harmonious voice leading).