The specifics of composer’s interpretation of the genre of prelude in Samuil Feinberg’s creativity

The aim of the article is to determine the specifics of the composer’s embodiment of the prelude genre in the works of S. Feinberg on the example of two cycles “Four preludes” op. 8 and “Three Preludes” op. 15. The methodology is based on an integrated approach and includes analytical, comparative, as well as structural-functional and genre-style methods. The results are based on the identification of features of the composer’s interpretation of the piano prelude genre in the works of S. Feinberg. Due to the current trend towards the discovery of rarely-performed music, there is a growing interest in the works of S. Feinberg, whose compositional heritage is still poorly known by a wide range of performers and scientists. Some of his works, which are of undoubted artistic value, remain out of the field of view of researchers. This remark is especially appropriate in relation to the genre of prelude in the artist’s legacy, which is represented by two cycles of “Four preludes” op. 8 and “Three Preludes” op. 15. Despite the fact that the composer addressed him in the early period of his work, the originality of the composer’s writing style is clearly manifested in this genre. In the context of the relationship between the compositional style of S. Feinberg and the Scriabin creative tradition, key points are identified that distinguish the manner of interpretation of this genre. It is noted that the originality of composer’s thinking is manifested at various levels of organization of a piece of music. Focusing on the Scriabin’s style of the second period of creativity, which manifests itself in laconic thematism and the absence of a pronounced сantilena, S. Feinberg reinterprets it in figurative, semantic and pianistic terms. The manner of musical utterance of S. Feinberg is marked by greater emotional tension and expression. The composer uses a richer texture, which presents a wide variety of types of small and large piano techniques, with the latter prevailing. It applies elements of polyphonic development. Thanks to this approach to the textured solution, the virtuoso component is even more pronounced in preludes. The scientific novelty of the results obtained lies in the fact that for the first time in Ukrainian musicology, an attempt was made to comprehend the features of the interpretation of the piano prelude genre in the works of S. Feinberg, as well as to trace the features of the creative reinterpretation of the Scriabin composer tradition in the early period of S. Feinberg’s work. The practical significance of the study lies in the possibility of using its results in higher educational institutions of art education when working on the works of S. Feinberg in the class of special piano, as well as to deepen ideas about the specifics of the composer’s style of this artist.

The Truth is Out There: “Songs of Bukovina” by Leonid Desyatnikov as a Neoromantic Cycle

«Буковинские песни» Леонида Десятникова, написанные в 2017 году и вдохновленные фольклорными напевами,—продолжение традиции циклов прелюдий для фортепиано, заложенной в эпоху романтизма и активно развитой в дальнейшем. В статье делается попытка осмыслить сочинение как образец нео романтизма, констатировать неразрывную связь с прошлым, параллельно затраги вая особенности работы композитора с материалом. Большое внимание уделяется романтической идее синтеза: «Буковинским песням» свойственно сочетание несо четаемого, органичное соединение непохожего, разнопланового. Именно поэтому, анализируя цикл, автор статьи оперирует словами с приставкой «поли-»: поли форма, политоникальность, полиопорность, полиладовость, полигармония, поли метрия, полиритмия, политональность (ключевое «поли-» для самого Десятнико ва)—обобщающим для всех этих терминов становится понятие полисистемы. В буклете к диску «Буковинских песен» поэт Мария Степанова предпринимает «Двенадцать попыток заговорить» о фортепианных прелюдиях Десятникова. Дан ная статья, в сущности, представляет собою тринадцатую, музыкантскую и музы коведческую, попытку начать разговор о цикле. Подробный потактовый анализ «Буковинских песен» не входит в задачи этой работы; перед автором, скорее, стоит цель показать ведущий принцип организации материала в рассматриваемом сочи нении. Наиболее детально анализируются Прелюдии I, II, XIII, XV, XIX. Leonid Desyatnikov’s “Songs of Bukovina” written in 2017 inspired by folk chants is a continuation of piano prelude tradition founded in the age of romanticism and actively developed later. This article is an attempt to comprehend Desyatnikov’s work as an example of neoromanticism, to find the inextricable connection to the past all while looking at distingushing features of the composer's way of working over the material. Special attention here is paid to the romantic idea of synthesis. “Songs of Bukovina” is a combination of uncombinable, an organic conjunction of dissimilar, different. That's why in this article the author often uses words that begin with the prefix “poly-”, such as polyform, polytonicality, polymodality, polyharmony, polyrhythm, polytonality (the most important word to Desyatnikov himself) etc., which are hyponyms to the term of polysystem. In the Booklet to “Songs of Bukovina” CD, poet Maria Stepanova makes “Twelve attempts to start speaking” of Desyatnikov’s piano preludes. This article is, in fact, yet another, 13th attempt made by a musician to speak of this cycle. The goal of this work is not to provide a bar by bar analysis of the “Songs of Bukovina” but to show the main principle according to which the material is organized. The author will take the closest look at Preludes I, II, XIII, XV, XIX.

Enchantment

In this essay, a philosopher (Graham) and a music analyst (Burnham) explore the nature of music’s power to enchant. Graham establishes this enchantment as the result of a desirable relocation into an alternative sonic world that nevertheless shares important features with the everyday material world. The huge range of descriptive language that music is able to sustain, including temporal and spatial terms, reveals the tangential relationship of music to the world of everyday experience, while more specifically musical terms (for example, cadenza) show that music operates as a truly different world. Burnham elaborates on the emotional rewards of relocation into the world of music by describing our investment in two specific musical worlds, a brief Chopin piano prelude and Barber’s Adagio for Strings. We are eager to be put under the spell of such pieces because relocations into the enchanted worlds of music ultimately anchor and enhance our sense of self.

Nineteenth-Century Music?? The Case of Rachmaninov

In two of Rachmaninov's last works, the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini of 1934 and the first of the Symphonic Dances of 1940, a stylistic contrast between an opulently scored lyrical theme and the more angular, dissonant music that surrounds that theme throws into relief the extent that Rachmaninov's musical language had changed and developed since his first great successes thirty years earlier with the Second Piano Concerto and the Second Symphony. The words that motivate a similar stylistic contrast in the song Son (Sleep), composed in 1917, near the end of his most compositionally productive years, suggest an interpretive reading of such a stylistic contrast: the earlier, lusher style is associated here with dreams, and hence with memories; while the later, sparer, more tonally ambiguous style accompanies an evocation of something more impersonal, in the case of the song the stillness of a dreamless sleep. Some of the developing aspects of Rachmaninov's style revealed in these later examples are already evident even in the more traditional-sounding pieces of the last decade (1907––17) of his Russian period, which is shown in an analysis of the piano Prelude in G## Minor of 1910. Even this seemingly traditional Prelude, but more and more in his later music, Rachmaninov emerges as an indisputably twentieth-century composer.