Musical Version Research Articles

SEMANTICS OF TARAS SHEVCHENKO’S POETRY IN MUSICAL INTERPRETATIONS OF MODERN PERFORMERS

The purpose of the article is to demonstrate the process of transformation of semantic paradigm of musical interpretations of Taras Shevchenko’s poetry in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war. The methodology of research combines general scientific methods with specific methods of musicology and literature. The use of historical and comparative methods, together with analytical method, made it possible to conduct a multidimensional analysis to identify the features of modern musical interpretations of Taras Shevchenko’s poetry through the prism of socio-political transformations and to determine changes in them compared to previous interpretations. Scientific novelty. The analysis of musical versions of Kobzar’s poetry in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war was carried out for the first time. Moreover, new and previously unanalysed song compositions have been added to the research related to musical Shevchenkiana. Conclusions. The creative heritage of the classics has always been a kind of tuning fork for the Ukrainian cultural space. Through the prism of the attitude towards it, it is possible to track both the internal transformations of the artists' creative worldview and the reflection of external challenges the whole country face. Тhe research demonstrates the transformation of semantics of the poetry of Taras Shevchenko in modern performers’ musical interpretations. It reveals not only changes, but also the process which explains why such changes appeared. The work also describes how interpretations expand the paradigm of meanings not only during their creation, but also in diachrony – after a certain time, when the socio-political context changes, thus the phenomenon of "interpretation of interpretations" appears. Through updating the semantics of Taras Shevchenko’s poetry by modern performers, a kind of intergenerational dialogue is formed. This leads to demonstration of spatio-temporal connections, which, through modern media resources, present Ukraine as a country with its own centuries-old history and unique, original culture. Keywords: musical interpretations of poetry, Ukrainian composers and performers, synthesis of music and literature, Ukrainian culture, vocal music, musical interpretation, Ukrainian poets, musical Shevchenkiana, pop studies.

The specificity of musical shaping in the “Psalms of David” choral cycle by R. Tolmachov

The relevance of the article. “Psalms of David” in the poetic adaptation of Taras Shevchenko have long been a part of the choral culture of Ukraine. More than 20 composers have created musical versions of these texts, using separate verses or the entire work.
 The latest version of the Psalter is the choral cycle of the Ukrainian conductor, singer, composer and teacher Ruben Tolmachov.
 The first nights of the work took place under his leadership in May 2023 and had great success and public resonance. That is why the introduction of this work to scientific discourse is relevant.
 The purpose of the article is to reveal the specificity of musical shaping in R. Tolmachov’s “Psalms of David” choral cycle in its relationship with textual semantics.
 The methodology. With the help of textual analysis, the semantic types of psalms (didactic, pleading, laudatory, accusatory) and the peculiarities of their musical structure were determined. By the means of structural, musicological and intonation analysis, the implementation regularities of the semantics of the psalms into specific musical forms have been established.
 The results. The musical structure of all psalms was analyzed, the patterns of musical shaping were revealed, and the specifics of the relationship between the musical form and the content of the poetic text were described.
 The scientific novelty. For the first time, the analysis of the structure of Ruben Tolmachov’s choral cycle based on Taras Shevchenko’s poem was introduced into scientific discourse.
 The practical significance. The results of the research have practical value for performers of works by R. Tolmachov, as well as composers and researchers of choral music.
 Conclusions. In R. Tolmachov’s “Psalms of David” cycle the principle of strophic composition of parts prevails.
 In general, four main types of musical shaping can be highlighted, which are partially correlated with the thematic focus of the psalms.
 Didactic (enlightening) psalms, which depict the pious life of the community, have more “stable” forms (two-part, three-part).
 Psalm 12 and Psalm 149 have signs of a thorough development based on monothematism.
 The accusatory psalms, dedicated to the future Judgment Day (52, 93, 81), are made up using strophic forms with elements of reprise. At the same time, the 81st psalm is characterized by a less active dramatic development and contains a solo episode of a cathartic nature, which is designed to emphasize one of the central ideas of the cycle about the mortality of a person, regardless of his/her status, about higher moral and spiritual values.
 It is also worth noting that the architectonics of R. Tolmachov’s psalms is mostly characterized by the final position of the climaxes.

"I thought this was Shakespeare": Romeo & Juliet: The Musical and Teenage Sexual Liberation in Netflix's Sex Education

Abstract: An increasing number of contemporary Shakespearean adaptations exploit the transformative possibilities of performance to address social injustice and inequality from different perspectives and towards new directions. A timely response to the challenge of finding alternatives to target current social concerns comes from Sex Education , a British TV series created by Laurie Nunn for Netflix in 2019. This series’ engagement with Shakespeare fosters a radical and wide-ranging critique of reactionism and a fight for change in terms of teenage sexual liberation, freedom of self-expression, inclusivity, and representation of queerness and gender fluidity. In the finale of season two, a long sequence is devoted to Romeo & Juliet: The Musical , an erotic and galactic musical version of Shakespeare’s tragedy, created by a young eccentric writer of science fiction attending the school. By also taking into consideration both the production context and Netflix’s status as a streaming platform, this article explores how this parodic postmodern version of Romeo and Juliet —informed by references to queer pop culture and to contemporary movements for civil rights—becomes the ultimate realization of Sex Education ’s rallying cry against the regimes of the “normal,” through the words of a Shakespearean play that opens up possibilities of resistance for teenagers which go beyond distinctions between heteronormative and queer.

PRODUCTIONS OF «ABAY» OPERA BY A.ZHUBANOV AND L.KHAMIDI IN TERMS OF HISTORY AND MODERNITY OF NATIONAL CULTURE

The Abay opera by Zhubanov A. and Khamidi L. takes a special place in the history of opera art in Kazakhstan. The stage life of the opera since 1944 to this day is presented by new musical stage readings, which explains its relevance in the study of modern art history. Along with the previous study of this opera as an artwork and in terms of composers’ creativity, the purpose of studying its productions is to determine the vectors of the development of the opera art in Kazakhstan. The subject of study in this article is the production of the Abay opera in 2014 at Abay Kazakh National Theater of Opera and Ballet. It was created based on a new musical version by conductor Buribaev A. and new staging by director Cigni A. Archival data on its productions and performances were studied to determine the place of the Abay opera in terms of the history of national culture. The study of the 2014 production as well as the means of translating the director’s idea was based on a comparative analysis with the 1976 production. The methodology for studying opera performances was based on theoretical literature on the problems of opera dramaturgy, stage directing, classification of opera performances, and stage texts. The chronological picture of productions and performances of the opera "Abai" studied in the process of the work made it possible to establish its constant presence in the repertoire of the Kazakh National Opera and Ballet Theater named after Abai, which is explained by public demand. The concept of the 2014 production under consideration, without denying the national identity of the opera and its original intention, was based on the drama of high universal moral values ​​of the main characters of the opera in interaction with the existing surrounding world of people and nature. The success of the modern production of the opera "Abai" is a clear confirmation of the development of the opera culture of Kazakhstan, which is being integrated into the world musical and theatrical business.

Interpretive Authenticity: Performances, Versions, and Ontology

<strong>Winner of the Fabian Dorsch ESA Essay Prize.</strong> Julian Dodd defends the view that, in musical work-performance practice, interpretive authenticity is a more fundamental value than score compliance authenticity. According to him, compliance with a work’s score can be sacrificed in cases where it conflicts with interpretative authenticity. Stephen Davies and Andrew Kania reject this view, arguing that, if a performer intentionally departs from a work’s score, she is not properly instantiating that work and hence not producing an authentic performance of it. I argue that this objection fails. A detailed analysis of work-performance practice reveals, first, that the normative scope of interpretive authenticity encompasses the practice of composing musical versions and that, second, when performers sacrifice score compliance to maximize interpretive authenticity, they are performing the target work by means of performing a version of it. By means of the nested types theory, I then show how performances produced in this way can be properly formed instances, and hence authentic performances, of their target work.

“Jerusalem” Set to Music: A Selected Discography

Blake’s stanzas from the preface to Milton a Poem, better known as the hymn “Jerusalem,” are by far the most popular of his poems to have been set to music. While researching versions for a book on “Jerusalem,” I discovered references to some 406 audio recordings and scores (a total that I suspect may still be expanded upon). These date from 1908—when Henry Walford Davies published the first in England’s Pleasant Land, a set of three-part songs—to the reinterpretation of Hubert Parry’s hymn by Tokio Myers and Jazmin Sawyers for the 2018 Commonwealth Games. Donald Fitch’s catalogue was published in 1990 and thus misses the vast majority of recordings that appeared following the introduction of the CD in the late 1980s; he also omits more or less completely popular music versions, which had already begun to appear in the postwar period.

On the attribution of the Stichera Cycle «Most Blessed Father» in honour of the Metropolitan of All Russia Peter to the musical and hymnographic works of Tsar Ivan the Terrible

The authors address the problem of the attribution of the chanting cycle «Most Blessed Father», ascribed in science as work of Tsar Ivan the Terrible’s authorship. The study was carried out by means of a comparative textual analysis of sources of the 16th‑17th centuries, the main of which is the Stichirar writtten by outstanding raspevshik (church chant master) Login Shishelov. It contains the cycle «Most Blessed Father Saint Peter», the first stichera of which was attributed by Login to Tsar Ivan the Terrible. The preservation of the tsar’s musical creation by Login Shishelov is one of the most important evidence in favour of the reliability of this attribution. It is established that in 1585 Login was a monk of the Chudov Monastery, located in the Moscow Kremlin, and could have the opportunity to obtain written evidence of the work of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. The authors reveals the history of this manuscript after its introduction into scientific circulation in 1887, pointing out that this study is in fact the first reference to the tsar’s cycle from it after a century of interruption. The researchers also analyse the scientific works of N. S. Seregina, who in the 90s, when the manuscript was considered lost, believed that she had discovered rewritten several times version of the Tsar Ivan the Terrible cycle, but without attributing remark. The authors of the article found out that this version contains the same verbal texts as the Login’s, but is radically different in musical terms. Therefore, the musical content of the nameless cycle, performed by N. S. Seregina, cannot be attributed to the work of the tsar. The authors of the article established that there are two differing musical versions of the single verbal text of the stichera, while the structure of the cycle with attribution to the tsar consists of four chants, and in the nameless masters – of three. The cycle from Login’s manuscript is unique musically, since so far such neumanic record of its text is found only in this single source. The authors conclude that Login Shishelov’s definitely attribution to the tsar’s authorship the musical and hymnographic text of only the first stichera of the cycle inspires confidence. Whether the other three stichera of the cycle are belonging to the tsar’s authorship remains to be seen in the future. The probability of their belonging to the work of the tsar is also great

The Image of Parfen Rogozhin in «The Idiot», the Opera by M. Weinberg and A. Medvedev

The article is to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky; it concerns a musical version of his novel, «The Idiot». The Russian writer’s work has attracted attention of many composers. In 1986 Mieczysław Weinberg completed the eponymous opera. The librettist Aleksandr Medvedev follows the logic of the original story and constructs the musical drama preserving the specific features and versatility of each character, which is also reflected in the music. The image of Parfen Rogozhin reveals the development of his contradictory nature. The character is represented with ensemble and solo scenes. Parfen’s Song from Scene Nine stands out among the solos. The song «Akh, talan li moi, talan» (Oh My Bad Luck) is quoted as its source. The lyrics of the song were first published together with its tune in 1790, in a book edited by N. A. Lvov and I. G. Prach, «Collection of Russian Folk Songs with Their Tunes» (Lvov-Prach Collection). The study has found that there are different versions of the text in the oral tradition. Their variety can be reduced to two types: the bridal song and the jailhouse ballad with its steady archetype of «beauty and the rogue». Each type has a semantic correlation in the context of the opera. The quotation obviously changes in the opera. The librettist has introduced his own lines enhancing the tragic focus of the song. The composer renders them in the tune emphasizing the intonation intrinsic to the genre of lamentation

Where Is My Home? The Czech National Anthem: its Problems, Controversies, and Strengths

Abstract There are many countries in which the national anthem has its permanent place not open to discussions. With the Czech national anthem Where Is My Home?, however, the case is precisely the opposite. It first appeared under this title in a theatrical farce in 1834 and soon became popular across the nation. In the second half of the nineteenth century, it went through a phase of politicisation (various textual paraphrases, performances at demonstrations as an anti-Habsburg symbol, a resulting ban on singing the piece) as well as one of criticism (in which it was pointed out that the lyrics were outdated and archaic). It was at that time that proposals for the creation of a new “national anthem” were made, while the Catholic circles considered the mediaeval sacred song Saint Wenceslas, which had had a representative function in the state from time immemorial, as a potential candidate. Late in 1918, the entire song Where Is My Home? “automatically” became the first of the two parts of the Czechoslovak national anthem, but critical voices could still be heard and alternative proposals were made. The debate was revived after the fall of Communism, and even now there are efforts to “modernise” the official music version. The present paper is an attempt to discover the causes of the controversy around the anthem Where Is My Home?. This will be done by focusing on its genesis (inspirations), analysing its content and psychological dimension, considering the critics’ reservations, competition, etc. An interpretation will also be attempted as to why Where Is My Home? has withstood all the attacks and remained the national and state anthem.

The Role of Teleological Thinking in Judgments of Persistence of Musical Works

AbstractIn his article “The Ontology of Musical Versions: Introducing the Hypothesis of Nested Types,” Nemesio Puy raises a hypothesis that continuity of the purpose is both a necessary and a sufficient condition for musical work’s identity. Puy’s hypothesis is relevant to two topics in cognitive psychology and experimental philosophy. The first topic is the prevalence of teleological reasoning about various objects and its influence on persistence and categorization judgments. The second one is the importance of an artist’s intention in the categorization of artworks. We tested the teleological hypothesis across three studies. Vignettes in these three studies describe a musical work being changed in some of these aspects: (1) purpose either changed or retained; (2) score either changed or retained; (3) change is made either by the same or a different composer. The results suggest that teleological considerations impact judgments on the persistence of musical works, but this impact appears to be relatively weak. The results also suggest that persistence judgments strongly depend on whether acoustical properties were changed, while whether the change was made by the original composer seems to be relatively unimportant.

Audio-Based Musical Version Identification: Elements and challenges

Creating novel interpretations of existing musical compositions is and has always been an essential part of musical practice. Before the advent of recorded music, listening to a piece of music mostly meant listening to a version of it, in many cases, performed by musicians other than the original composer or performer. While this practice, along with musical notation, allows compositions to remain known for many decades or even centuries, it also provides room for artistic expression.

Musical Intonations in N.S. Leskov’s Tale “The Left-Hander” and their Embodiment in the Opera of the Same Name by R.K. Shchedrin

The article is devoted to the manifestations of musicality in N.S. Leskov’s works and its influence on other artworks created on the writer’s plots (specifically, in the genre of opera). The author focuses on the tale “The Left-Hander”, using as examples phrases of one of the characters, Ataman Platov.The approach proposed by the author is based on a structural, genre and intonation-rhythmic analysis of the primary source text, with documentation of its features. The potential intonation and rhythmic variants of reading individual literary phrases, recorded using conventional musical notation, allow not only to visually compare the shades of their semantic content, but also to correlate them with the musical versions presented in R.K. Shchedrin’s opera “The Left-Hander” (2013). The correlation of the graphic schemes of intonation structures of textual and melodic phrases allows to substantively determine the correspondences and discrepancies in them. In addition, the article notes such musical expressive means that make it possible to convey the intonation of characters’ speech and to outline the characteristic features of their image, such as timbre, tempo, dynamics, etc.Basing on the conducted research, the author makes a conclusion about the influence of text intonations on the formation of perception of characters’ image and the melody of their “musical” speech.The method of intonation-rhythmic analysis of a prosaic literary text, proposed by the author, is a new development in the field of studying the problems of the mutual influence of literature and music; it can find wide application in research in this direction.

Chekhov's prose in the opera of the late XX-beginning. XXI centuries .

As the world theatrical practice of the last decades shows, it is the legacy of A.P. Chekhov that is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for many directors and composers. There is a huge number of works devoted to the topic "Chekhov and music". The musicality of Chekhov's prose is one of the most frequent topics in philological and musicological studies. Plays, novels, and short stories by the author have more than once become an occasion for new creations in the opera house. In this article, the author examines the famous operas of composers of the turn of the XX-XXI centuries based on the prose of A. Chekhov. The works are arranged according to the principle of differences between the plot plot and the libretto of operas from the literary source. In foreign musicology, the genre transformation of opera, in which the literary component becomes the main factor of centralizing unity, has been called literary (the term of K. Dahlhaus). In the most general sense, this genre should be understood as a reliable musical version in accuracy or in the abbreviation of the literary source. In Russian musicology, literary opera is a little-studied area of music history, which allows us to speak about the scientific novelty of the presented material. Thus, in the article the author comes to the conclusion that operas based on A.P. Chekhov stand apart in the implementation of the genre of literary opera in the domestic theater of the selected period. Based on the analysis, the author identifies three types of literary opera, which allow to characterize the method of composers' work with the literary source.

Nested Types and Musical Versions: Replying to Davies’s Challenges

Nested Types and Musical Versions: Replying to Davies’s Challenges

THE EFFECT, IMPORTANCE AND FUNCTIONS OF MUSIC IN CINEMA:

This study focuses on an example of Cahit Berkay who has an important place in the context of film music and the importance, effect and functions of music in the Turkish Cinema. Essentially of the study within the frame of literature review, music, cinema, the relation between music and the field of arts, Turkish Cinema and music, also provides information relates with Cahit Berkay in the context of music in Turkish cinema. The research part of the study, to measure the effects of the soundtracks composed by Cahit Berkay, “Selvi Boylum ve Al Yazmalım” and “Çöpçüler Kralı” movies detected by sample for purpose, versions separated from music with technical method and original music versions interview group (limited to Near East University Vocational School of Health Services Year 2 students) viewed; reactions of students, content analysis technique a from qualitative and quantitative research methods, has been measured within the framework of their responses through written opinion forms with predetermined structured questions. Furthermore, a semi-structural interview technique used from qualitative research methods, face to face interview performed with Cahit Berkay pre-prepared open-ended questions; the collected data have been evaluated by content analysis method.

Adapting "The Wizard of Oz": Musical Versions from Baum to MGM and Beyond ed. by Danielle Birkett and Dominic McHugh

Adapting "The Wizard of Oz": Musical Versions from Baum to MGM and Beyond ed. by Danielle Birkett and Dominic McHugh

Music interpretation of Shakespeare’s plays poetry in the beginning of the XX century into the solo song genre

The purpose of this scientific article is to prove the potential of Shakespeare’s poetry „Fear no More” for giving rise to multiple interpretations in a genre of a solo song. Methods. This study is based on a historical approach, which is used to determine the types of musical genres present in Shakespeare’s plays and trace the history of setting playwright's texts by British composers. The systems approach, comparative and analytical methods are used by investigator to determine the specifics of the form and music interpretation of texts. The scientific novelty of this investigative article is determined by the fact that the comparative analysis of the songs „Fear no more the heat o’ the sun” by British composers of the beginning of the XX century R. Quilter and G. Finzi is, for the first time, carried out and described in this publication. The main target, in this case, is to link the literary component to the music of the song and confirm the possible existence of multiple interpretations of songs from Shakespeare’s plays. Conclusions. Nearly all Shakespeare's plays call for music of some kind which often bears a direct connection to the action of the play; thus is created by the characters on stage in the form of a song. These songs often transgress the boundaries of the plays becoming independent works that are combined together and published as such in separate opuses. For instance, Shakespeare’s song „Fear no More” from the play „Cymbeline” exists in more than a hundred of music versions; the most well known of which are those by R. Qulter and G. Finzi. Comparison of these interpretations proofs the great intrinsic value of Shakespeare’s texts and potential for producing its various readings, as well as the possibility of existence of these songs beyond the narrow confines of the stage action.

Un percorso didattico sul “Rigoletto” di Verdi: «La donna è mobile» e la voce come fantasma

This didactic unit, designed for first two years of secondary school, briefly contextualizes figure of Giuseppe Verdi within history of 19th-century Italian melodrama. It then moves on to illustrate dramaturgy of Rigoletto, which clearly reflects in social and aesthetic reality of its time, explaining why Verdi was so fond of this subject, and defended it strenuously - and in end successfully - from axe of censorship. The course focuses on listening didactics applied to «La donna e mobile», with aim of helping learners understand structure and meaning of libretto, music and its peculiar use in drama. «La donna e mobile», a tavern song and, at same time, song most deeply rooted in drama that has ever been conceived, is heard three times in course of opera, each time in a slightly different musical version, and always for dramatic purposes. The third occurrence ushers in one of most effective, and upsetting, catastrophes in tragic theater of all time: a catastrophe entirely rooted in sound and singing - that is, in sense of hearing which prevails over sense of sight. The lesson we learn from «La Donna e mobile» is that in opera it is musical text that has the last word rather than verbal and visual text.

Full snapshot reconstruction in hybrid architecture antenna arrays

In the context of this research work, we study the so-called problem of full snapshot reconstruction in hybrid antenna array structures that are utilized in mmWave communication systems. It enables the recovery of the snapshots that would have been obtained if a conventional (non-hybrid) uniform linear antenna array was employed. The problem is considered at the receiver side where the hybrid architecture exploits in a novel way the antenna elements of a uniform linear array. To this end, the recommended scheme is properly designed so as to be applicable to overlapping and non-overlapping architectures. Moreover, the full snapshot recoverability is addressed for two cases, namely for time-varying and constant signal sources. Simulation results are also presented to illustrate the consistency between the theoretically predicted behaviors and the simulated results, and the performance of the proposed scheme in terms angle-of-arrival estimation, when compared to the conventional MUSIC algorithm and a recently proposed hybrid version of MUSIC (H-MUSIC).

The livre partition phenomenon in J.-G. Kastner’s oeuvre

In the 19th century, after a two-centuries oblivion, the interest in a medieval genre &amp;ldquo;danse macabre&amp;rdquo; reappeared. Dances of Death were embodied not only in pictorial art, literature and music, but also attracted the attention of scholars. The research subject of this article is one of such scientific works - &amp;ldquo;Les Danses des Morts&amp;rdquo; by J.-G. Kastner. Its uniqueness consists in the combination of a theoretical research and practical embodiment of its results in a piece of music. The genre of the tractate is defined by scholars as &amp;ldquo;livre partition&amp;rdquo; - a sheet music book. The article contains the biographical data of the life and creative work of the French scholar, music expert and composer, little-known in Russian musicology. Based on their own translation of the original text, the authors study the structure-content components of the tractate and define its specificity. J.-G. Kastner considers the genre &amp;ldquo;danse macabre&amp;rdquo; in the historical, philosophical and aesthetic contexts; traces back the interdependence of literary, decorative, and musical versions of the dances. The tractate of the French musicologist considers in detail the range of instruments of dance macabre (based on the collection of wooden engravings of a gothic Doten Dantz printed in the late 15th century). The authors define the features of J.-G. Kastner&amp;rsquo;s ideas which differ them from the thanatological views of his predecessors H. Peino and E.-H. Langlois.