Multidimensional piano in George Crumb’s chamber music (on the example of “Makrokosmos I”)

Abstract

Statement of the problem. The article considers the issues of transformation of the sound image of the piano, which is extremely relevant for the last generations of pianists-performers, which in the modern era acquires new features or develops certain qualities of its own. On the example of the American composer George Crumb’s famous meta-cycle “Makrokosmos” for solo “amplified” piano, we can clearly observe an ability of the solo instrument to creation of a virtual symbolic ensemble, the participants of which very diversity new and traditional piano timbres become. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. Despite the attention of musicologists to the figure of G. Crumb, his chamber music as a leading genre of creativity, in particular the image of the piano as the most used instrument by the composer, in all its diversity and novelty, is not analyzed in detail. The ensemble qualities of the piano in its expanded composer’s vision, as well as the principles of pianistic performance of modern music on the new “a-classical” instrument with its enriched sonorous and spatial possibilities, remain overlooked. The purpose of this article is to use the example of the first volume of G. Crumb’s meta-cycle “Makrokosmos” to reveal in the multidimensionality of the “roles” of the solo piano a new quality of “symbolic ensemble” in the context of genre typologies of music of the XX–XXI centuries, in particular based on the idea of Professor I. Polska regarding solo performance as micro-ensemble forms. A comprehensive approach to the disclosure of the stated topic is applied, combining source studies, comparative, comparative-analytical, cultural and philological research methods. Research results and conclusion. Using the example of the analysis of “Makrokosmos I” it is demonstrated that G. Crumb is far from unification in his interpretation of the piano. His “expanded piano” emphatically appeals to timbre and figurative polyphony, i.e. a multidimensional ensemble, the participants of which, in addition to the pianist himself who involves different “territories” of the piano in the musical performance (beside a keyboard, also the open strings, pedals, and corpus), are his voice, variously organized verbal replicas and whistling. Thus, in the collection of symbolic images that appear in various combinations and sequences in the 12 pieces of “Makrokosmos I”, we count up to a dozen symbolic roles-characters that build a fantastic picture where temporal and spatial dimensions intersect and interact. The rendition of such music, in addition to the performer’s mastering of its purely “technical” novelty, requires the transformation not only of the pianist’s consciousness and skills, but also of established theoretical views in the paradigm of modern genre typologies.