Semantics of Louis Durey’s vocal-instrumental cycle “Songs on Saint Léger Léger’s poems” (“Images à Crusoé”)

Abstract

Statement of the problem. The article aims to investigate the semantics of the vocal-instrumental cycle “Songs on Saint Léger Léger’s poems” by Louis Edmond Durey (1888–1979), one of the representatives of the French “Group of Six”. This composition, which also has another name – “Images à Crusoé”, written in 1918, belongs to the period of formation of French modernism. The primary literary source, the poem of the same name by Alexis Saint Léger Léger, better known under the pseudonym Saint John Perce, has certain features of surrealistic aesthetics, which also influenced the musical dramaturgy of the cycle. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. Until today, this composition by Louis Durey has not been considered in domestic musicology, therefore, the task of the study is to describe the figurative sphere of the work, to identify its main intonation-semantic constructions and, ultimately, a more thorough explore of the individual style of the composer. The research was carried out using historical-contextual, comparative, and systemanalytical methods. Results and conclusion. According to his results, it was established that Louis Durey embodied not so much the content of Saint John Perce’s poetic stanzas as his personal attitude to his poetic images and metaphors. The composer operates with a whole semantic system of leit-intonemas and through- genre models (polka, lullaby, chorale, hymn) and builds semantic arches between numbers of the cycle. Cross-cutting musical and semantic elements also become components of arch dramaturgy: intonations of circles, “spindles”, bells, sighs, and the instrumental texture of all numbers of the cycle contains quarto-quint steps. Pentatonic, whole-tone and natural scales contribute to the reproduction of the atmosphere of the exotic nature of the deserted island, as well as the sound imaging techniques used by Durey. The dramaturgy of the cycle is built according to the montage principle, which is mostly subordinated to the type of verse and the semantic content of Saint John Perce’s poetry. Division of the musical form is carried out by changing the size, tempo, genre style. Thus, each number of the cycle consists of short sections connected to each other thanks to the collage technique. The rhythmic and thematic variety in the collage of episodes“frames” indicates the presence of game logic in L. Durey’s cycle. Certain influences on the music of the cycle of illustrations for Daniel Defoe’s novel “Robinson Crusoe”, created in the second half of the 19th century by Carl Offendinger, in perspective, allow us to consider the work in the context of the problem of the synthesis of arts as of a component of modernistic aesthetics.