Pages of Eugenie de Guerin’s “Diary” in the musical embodiment by Darius Milhaud

Abstract

Statement of the problem. The vocal-instrumental cycle «D’un cahier inédit du journal d’Eugénie de Guérin» (“From the Unpublished Diary by Eugénie de Guérin”) op. 27 (1915) is a work by D. Milhaud that was composed when the composer was twenty-four years old. The literary source attracts attention for the fact that it was written not to demonstrate the literary talent of the poetess, but as a confession of the human soul. Currently, domestic musicology does not have significant experience in researching musical interpretations of works of this type, and the “Diary by Eugénie de Guérin” has never been translated into Ukrainian. The vocal-instrumental cycle of D. Milhaud, created on this poetic basis, has not been systematically analyzed. Therefore, the study of this little-known in Ukraine opus of one of the brightest composers of the “Group of Six” appears as an urgent research task. In addition, a detailed analysis of vocal and instrumental works of the era of modernism will contribute to a deeper immersion in the spiritual world of representatives of this artistic direction, as well as to the expansion of the modern performing repertoire. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. The purpose of the study is to systematically analyze the composer’s interpretation of the “poems with music” included in the vocal-instrumental cycle by D. Milhaud. The scientific novelty of it is due to the fact that D. Milhaud’s vocalinstrumental cycle «D’un cahier inédit du journal d’Eugénie de Guérin» op. 27 has not been studied in detail in the national musicology. For the first time it was considered to find out what musical means of expression the composer used to convey the idea declared by the author’s remark «douloureusement» («painful»), which accompanies all the numbers of the work. The work set the task of revealing the specifics of the means of musical expressiveness used by the composer to embody the semantics of poetic images related to the feelings of physical and mental pain that D. Milhaud found in the poetic original source. In the study, for the first time, a linear Ukrainian translation of the verbal text of D. Milhaud’s cycle is provided. Historical and contextual, comparative, systematic and analytical research methods were used. Research results and conclusion. «D’un cahier inédit du journal d’Eugénie de Guérin» is associated with the feeling of pain and sadness, which accompanies all three numbers. Each poem with music gravitates toward a certain tonal sphere. The composer refers to an extended tonality. This principle emphasizes the coloristic function of the musical palette of the work. The cycle reveals a montage type of drama and laconicism of expression. The texture of the vocal-instrumental cycle is polyphonized, especially in the third number, which has fugato features. The harmony is saturated with such intervals as fourth, fifth and tritone. This is associated with images of devastation, pain, mental and physical suffering. The use of fifth that dominates in the musical texture of the work and it is the semantic grain, the key of the intonational dramaturgy, is also served this goal. The vocal part is declamatory and recitative, close to the type of psalmody, the rhythm is complex, directly oriented to poetic versification. D. Milhaud tends to use variable sizes, which is connected with the specific of Eugène de Guérin’s verse technique, The analysis of the musical drama revealed leitintonemes and symbols: the intonemas of the bell sounds, lullaby, destiny, sigh, wheel. The prospects for further research related to the study of D. Milhaud’s vocal and instrumental works of the mature period, comparative analysis with early examples of his work and identification of the peculiarities of the formation of an individual style by the composer.