Traditional and innovative in the orchestration of Ivan Karabyts‘ third concerto for orchestra «Lamantation»

Abstract

The orchestration of Karabyts’ Third Concerto for Orchestra “Holosinnia” (“Lamentations”) has been studied. The relevance of the study. Despite a number of research works on Karabits’ Third Concerto its orchestration remains little studied yet. Therefore, the main objective of the paper is to examine orchestration of the Third Concerto for orchestra and to research the interaction between ‘traditional’ and ‘innovative’ traits in Concerto’s orchestration. The methods of the research. The score analysis lies in the core of the paper but historical, comparative, and semiotic methods of analysis have been applied as well. Attention is focused on the combination of traditional and innovative origins which paved the way for the composer to rethink the methods of presentation in the orchestra. Thus, these transformations reflect the original (author’s) approach to the genre. It was emphasized that Karabyts interprets the synthetical character inherent to the concerto for orchestra genre particularly wide. It is emphasized that this approach allows the composer to identify a palette of genres of instrumental music: for one performer, different combinations of chamber ensembles, concerto grosso and solo instrumental concerto. In particular, the opposition between two groups was strengthened not only due to unequal quantity of performers in each of them (concerto grosso), but also by relying on the different nature of the material or the use of bells or tube, quite rare in this role, to solo (solo concerto). The combination of traditional and innovative is reflected in the composition of the orchestra (paired with a large percussion group) and the approach to percussion instruments (endowing them with melodic, semantic, formative and other functions). It is emphasized that Karabyts repeatedly applies “percussion-like" interpretation in relation to other instruments. Such an approach results in a qualitative transformation of the instruments: the inherent warmth of a string timbre decreases; the singularity of each wind color neutral-lizes. Complications of semantics at each rhythmic, intonation, and timbre ostinato formulas are revealed. The introduction of a particular (author’s) approach to the baroque tradition of combining the functions of a soloist and a capellmeister, the manifestation of which is the solo of bells perso-nally made by Karabyts, has been noticed. The conclusions state that the Concerto’s orchestration plays important role in dialectically combination of “objective” and traditional (the passage of time, the history of the people, destiny) with “subjective” and individual (the author’s attitude to events and their rethinking). Such an approach is typical for the twentieth-century musical art. The significance of the research is that it reveals the importance of orchestration as a means of expression and thus brings better understanding of the functional potential of orchestration within the frame of the twentieth-century art tendencies.