Genre Synthesis Research Articles

Претворение жанра плача в русской хоровой музыке второй половины ХХ–ХХI веков

The article is devoted to analyzing the peculiarities of implementing the genre of the lamentation into Russian choral music in the context of certain stylistic tendencies of the second half of the 20th century. The author highlights two chief principles: recreating of the folk genre as an integral structure with preservation of the basic typological features: reinterpretation of the genre through its separate components by means of synthesis with other genres. The peculiarities of the approach toward folk music material are disclosed in the current of the neo-folkloristic trend and in the context of sacred music. The neo-folkloristic musical compositions from the 1960s and 1970s demonstrate the aspiration towards complication and psychologization of the folk music genre source, which often brings it towards reevaluation and deformation. The opposite tendency – of preserving the original semantics of the folk music pre-image – predominates in sacred music, since in the sacred space the folk musical original source manifests itself as a sign of the national element. Keywords: lamentation, neo-folkloristic trend, sacred music, synthesis of genres, polyphony of strata of folk music genres

GENRE SYNTHESIS IN A. PLATONOV’S NOVEL “FOR FUTURE USE”

Th e article examines the genre synthesis in Andrei Platonov’s novelchronicle “For future use” [“Vprok”]. Th e synthetic nature of the compositions is formed by a combination of characteristics of several genres: novels, chronicles, essays. Th is article analyzes the main features of these genres and their specifi city in the Platonov’s novel. Genre synthesis in the story is closely connected with the plot of “test of truth”. Platonov is concerned about how to implement the “truth of socialism” in the collective farming, and he enters into polemics not only with Stalin but also with the leader of the Soviet literature, M. Gorky: he opposes the Gorky’s interpretation of “new truth”, which was to be declared in the Soviet essay. Abandoning the form of storytelling “on behalf of the author”, the writer appeals to the form of a “story within a story”, which allowed him to avoid author’s direct assessments and to implement the idea of polyphony, matching several points of view. In the article we analyze ways of expression of the author’s position and subjective organization of the text. Th e paper also attempts to identify areas of utopia/ anti-utopia, according to the perspective of the “new truth”.

Music, Sexuality and the Enlightenment in Mozart’s Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte by Charles Ford (review)

Music, Sexuality and the Enlighten - ment in Mozart's Figaro, Don Giovanni and Cosi fan tutte. By Charles Ford. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012. [xiii, 336 p. ISBN 9780754668893. $119.95.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index.As tributes to Charles Rosen begin to recall the musician and scholar's profound influence on virtually all areas of thinking about eighteenth-century music, the rigor and strength of his writings continue to encourage interest-and indeed inspire faith-in music's ability to engage even its most demanding audiences. Without evoking The Classical Style specifically, Charles Ford's Music, Sexuality and the Enlightenment remains heavily indebted to Rosen's appreciative interpretations of Mozart's sophisticated musical dramaturgy. It is hard, for instance, to perceive in Ford's analytical project the shadow of the three musical parameters Rosen attributes to the classical style's [aptitude] for dramatic action, namely the articulation of phrase and form, the polarization of tonic and dominant, and the use of rhythmic transition (Charles Rosen, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, expanded ed. [New York: W. W. Norton, 1997], 289).Ford, for his part, defines his method as Schenkerian and influenced by Lerdahl and Jackendoff's work on hypermeter (p. 6), and anticipates contributing to the analytical literature on Mozart's operatic repertoire without, however, demanding expertise of his readers beyond what any third-year undergraduate should know about 'music theory' (p. 6). Indeed, Ford's preoccupation with unifying motives, dominant modulation, and metrical groupings tackles Mozart's musical texts with an analytical fervor that admires the composer's subtle character depictions. Unlike Rosen's interest in musical drama, however, Ford looks outward to the Enlightenment's perception of sexuality as a philosophical mirror for the musical decisions makes in his three most famous operas.The main theses of the book's argument reiterate those found in Ford's earlier book Cosi?: Sexual Politics in Mozart's Operas (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1991). Here too, Ford alternates ambitiously between surveying various intellectual threads of Enlightenment philosophy and detailed accounts of Mozart's musical processes. Given this large scope, Ford's inevitably summative chapters often feel quite abbreviated and the connections between context and musical detail, fragile. The book's large number of self-references make for a disjointed reading experience; more significantly, they suggest a lack of confidence in the argument's capacity to develop and consolidate the two main arenas of research under consideration: Enlightenment thought and musical analysis. Nevertheless, Ford's double focus sheds new light on traditionally problematic Mozartean characters; most especially, he posits Mozart's lyric tenors (Ottavio, Ferrando, and Tamino) as representatives of the masculinity epitomized by Goethe's Werther. Recontextualizing these characters as types belonging to the German Aufklarung, Ford successfully rehabilitates figures who are often derided for their ineffectual presence in the operas' scenarios. The strange association Ford makes between this sensitive type and dramma as a genre is problematic, however. Ford writes that Mozart enriched opera by incorporating elements of the opera seria style, thus the genre title on the title page of the score: dramma giocoso (p. 73). This argument seems to repeat the same inaccurate definition that extensive literature has been at pains to reject. As Volker Mattern argues, far from a simple synthesis of comic and serious genres, the dramma and opera are not different phenomena but rather, broadly speaking, two synonyms (Volker Mattern, Das Dramma La finta giardiniera. [Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1989], 16; my translation). Daniel Heartz, writing of Don Giovanni specifically, likewise calls it a particular kind of opera buffa (Daniel Heartz, Goldoni, Don Giovanni and the Dramma Giocoso, The Musical Times 120, no. …