On the Particular Commonalities of Compositional Approach in the Works of the St. Petersburg Classics

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of the commonalities of compositional approach in Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, Sergei Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky cantata, and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7. The features of the St. Petersburg Classics’ object-oriented creative method are examined by means of conceptual pairing of morpheme and morph. A description is provided of the morpheme of the event, and its morph of the prayer ritual, in the first and third movements of the Symphony of Psalms. A comparison is drawn between the morph of the prayer ritual and the morph of the enemy invasion in “The Battle on the Ice” from Alexander Nevsky and in the invasion episode from the first movement of Symphony No. 7. In the “Crusaders in Pskov” section of Alexander Nevsky, the textual realization of the morpheme of the environment has been traced, in the form of the morph of the Teutonic yoke. The melodic, rhythmic, and textural resources in the morphic implementation of the morphemes of space, motion, and dissonance, and the Janus morpheme, are revealed. Common approaches to choral and orchestral writing are identified, as are similarities in melody and rhythm, which bond together these three masterpieces of 20th-century musical culture. Keywords: Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Symphony of Psalms, Alexander Nevsky cantata, Symphony No. 7, morphological analysis, morph and morpheme in music.