RHETORICAL FIGURE ANTITHETON IN THE CHORAL CONCERT “I BLESS THE LORD” OF IVAN DOMARATS’KYJ

Abstract

The main objective of the article is to present the contrast in Ukrainian baroque choral music in a new aspect that is in its rhetorical meaning. It stands to reason that the contrast is the main structure-building component in Ukrainian choral compositions of that period. Nevertheless, its function might get a new meaning in the light of the rhetorical approach. Methodology. Both methods of analysis and synthesis were performed to give an account of rhetorical function of contrast in certain elements of musical language, such as melody, modus, texture, range, and also to systematize the most common semantic meaning in each type of contrast. The method of hermeneutic analysis was conducted in order to apply more complex approach to the study. In this regard analysis comprised study of the text semantics and its correlation with music, as well as implementation of means used in western-European researches. Relevance of the study. Such rhetorical approach is a pre-requisite for rhetorical performance, which is also called historically informed performance. Rhetorical performance has to build its expressiveness on the basis of rhetorical means in the musical texture that is rhetorical figures. This practice is now commonly implied, although it’s still on the stage of developing the theoretical basis in Ukrainian musicology. Findings. In this paper was revealed that I. Domarats’kyj more frequently implied two types of rhetorical figure antitheton, namely contradiction in modus and in texture. The semantic of modus contrast is represented in three different ways: as musical emphasis, as embodiment of certain images, as structural component. The semantic of textural contrast often mirrors juxtaposition in quantities in literary text while the range contrast reflects two different images or aesthetic categories, like good and evil.