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17Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 2 (2009 2) 169-175
УДК 78+008.01
A Piece of Musical Art as a Creative Form of Artistic Self-Expression of Culture
Rimma M. Shamaeva*
The Chelyabinsk State Academy of Culture and Arts, 36-a Ordjonikidze st., Chelyabinsk, 454091 Russia 1
Received 23.03.2009, received in revised form 30.03.2009, accepted 6.04.2009
In the given article we consider a piece of music within the modern culture. Being treated by the author as a creative product, musical composition is creative by its nature. Musical composition accumulates different creative potentialities, which reveal themselves in a variety of forms, and act as an active participant of the dialogue between epochs, different cultures, and subjects of musical communication.
Keywords: Musical composition, culture, creativity, creative product, creative sphere, musical communication, dialogue.
Introduction
Art is one of the main elements of the modern cultural sphere. The language of art (and of music as well) fixes cultural matrixes in the works of art. But in the expanding variety of culture phenomena, music continues to be a steady phenomenon, preserving its functions and meaning. Penetrating into all the spheres of the human existence, it plays a role of the accumulating environment, having influence on the processes as inside itself, so on the culture on the whole. Beginning from the Romanticism epoch, a piece of musical art has been a product of an individual activity. In the sphere of musical creation, a large-scale piece outstands by its conceptuality and is a peculiar form of perception of spiritual life of the man and the society; it plays the role of a symbol of the epoch. Though, far not every composition becomes symbolic and not
every piece can be called a master-piece. What makes different one composition from another? Why, staying in the memory of the mankind for a long time, some compositions make people think, analyze, and contemplate, while others are left without attention?
Example
From our point of view, outstanding pieces of musical art must be referred to creative products and are an artistic form of a concrete culture self-expression. Thanks to their creative nature, pieces of high art are able to dialogue with epochs, and other cultures.
The notion of creative product is very wide: it can be technical innovations, new styles in art, new ideas and paradigms in science, i.e. - the new, which have not been earlier in any of its revelations or its objectified forms. In the sphere
* Corresponding author E-mail address: shamaeva_rm@mail.ru
1 © Siberian Federal University. All rights reserved
of music, under the term of «creative product» we understand pieces of musical art, new styles, genres, forms, new performance techniques, new instruments, and new ways of soundmaking from the point ofview of their ability to activate, to awake the creative potential of musical culture subjects. Understanding of the interaction, which takes place inside musical communication, and which presents by itself an interrelation and interaction of the subjects of culture (the composure, the performer, and the listener) by means of musical composition, provides a possibility of a new point of view of the inner mechanisms of development of the musical culture and culture on the whole. Thereat, every subject is involved into the creative process of creation, performance and perception of musical compositions (creative products). This way, a new reality (creative environment) is appearing and the subjects themselves (creative persons) are changing. New musical composition is like an innovative product, it is «flowing» into the culture, and starts functioning in it, actively influencing on the already existing elements of the cultural environment, it changes the image of the musical culture, and it, in its turn, makes the subjects create new creative products and activate musical activity. Appearing in the result of creative activity of the musical culture subjects, a new artistic reality is a transformed surrounding reality, having been born simultaneously with the appearance of an author's new creation, its performance by the performer and its perception by the listener. In the given context, musical culture of the society is presented as a creative environment, as far as interaction of all its elements brings to appearance of new forms of culture, gives birth to new pieces of musical art as innovative products. Thereat, it is important to bear in mind, that musical experience, emotions are not equal to the emotions of our everyday life, original emotions, and that is why the sense of a musical masterpiece, as of an artistic creation, is
mostly sacral and presents by itself another reality. Revealing the content structure of perception, V.V. Medushevskij considers active assimilation of the experience of integral attitude to life to be the final objective of artistic perception. Singling out two main participants of the action: the piece and the person, or to be more precise, the life experience, which is fixed in the artistic world of the piece, the author marks significance of the dialogue with the listener's own life experience, «being disclosed in the effects of acceptation, identification of his positions or negation, arguments, and struggle» (Medushevskij, 1980). Thereat, he underlines that similar processes, but in some other succession, are also characteristic of the process of music composing, and in this sense - the piece creates not only its listener, but its composure as well (and its performer). Having been created by the author, the piece starts «living its own life», entering the dialogue with its creator, performer and listener. Hence, musical composition potentially has a conceptual meaning, which is revealed only in the contact, in the dialogue with the recipient. The composure, performer and the listener become objects of reverse impact from the part of the artistic work. In the result of this interaction - the dialogue or, taking into consideration a multi-level character of the communication - the polylogue among the musical composition, its performer and listeners, there appears a possibility to enlarge the notion of the musical culture essence and its integral character. On one hand, being the most important link of musical communication, the musical piece is the resume, the final result of the compositional process, a form of expression of composure's creative personality in the world and in the being. On the other hand, it is the beginning of new processes and transformations in the surrounding reality, that one reality, where it is turns out to be and begins its way in the history of culture. Building into a certain cultural environment, the
musical piece is like an innovative product - it starts influencing on the surrounding reality (transforming and changing it and introducing new elements), it has an ability to awake, to provoke and to inspire motivation. To the mind of French scientist and philosopher C. Levi-Strauss, «by the force of its inner and always new logics, every piece of music will push its listener out of his passiveness, making him merge with its inspiration» (Levi-Strauss, 2006). As creative products, new musical compositions, new editions and new types of musical pieces appear in response to new demands of the time. Innovative piece of art puts forward new requirements to the musical communication subjects: to the performer (there appears a necessity in new instruments, in new means of performance, in new sounding); to the listener (its perception changes, becomes finer, demanding from its listener high tension, readiness to accept new sounds, even most unexpected ones). As a creative product, musical composition contributes to changing of the person himself (everybody of the musical communication subjects), to activation of his motivation to self-perfection and self-actualization (as a creative person). Consequently, having entered the inner world of a concrete person, music makes him «find»», «disclose» something in him himself. In the process of such a musical communication, the person forms new kinds of attitudes towards the surrounding reality.
As an attributive feature of the pieces of musical art, creativity is revealed within the frames of understanding of its cultural-historical significance. Thus, considering organization of the musical sphere in Bruckner's compositions, A.V. Mihajlov discloses the historical-cultural situation in Austria after I World War with the help of this separate fact (A.V. Mihajlov, Music in the History of Culture: Selected Essays. 1998). At the same time, through the facts, place and the way of its perception, a separate composition can
indicate in what direction the collective wish of esthetic satisfaction is moving. And, consequently, «it makes the reverse process be transparent, i.e. we can understand what the product will be in the future.» (Adorno, 2001). Hence, the changes (of forms, styles, genres and so on), which take place in the musical art, have common bases with social processes, and very often anticipate the later, as far as sometimes, scarcely noticeable changes in art are able to reflect just specified general cultural tendencies earlier, than they occur in other spheres of culture. In its turn, it allows speaking about the musical composition as a complicated organism, where creative potentialities are being accumulated. These potentialities are revealed in different variants: starting from presentation of a historical-cultural fact and ending with rendering of most secret inner feelings of a person by means of a piece of musical art.
Having gone through centuries, artist's compositions enter the dialogue with other cultures and epochs. And each epoch of cultural development adds new senses to the existing ones in the work of art, thus expanding its conceptual sphere. Real existence of the piece in culture makes corrections into its sounding; it is changed in dependence on the place and the time of its being in culture. According to H. G. Gadamer, performance of a dramatic and musical piece is being changed and must be changed depending on time and circumstances of its performance (Gadamer, 1988). Artistic work is as an embodiment of various levels of perception (perception of the composure, of the performer), as soon as it has reached the listener, it is filled with new senses. In this sense, the listener is also as much a creator of the music, as much his own species (spontaneously or consciously) are generated in him. Thus, every subject of musical communication implies his own special sense into the musical composition: having been sent by the composure, the message is filled with new
senses, while passing through the participants of the creative process. And acquiring new senses, added by the subjects of musical culture, musical composition each time acquires a new life, thus prolonging its unlimited «time travel». Building into a certain cultural environment, musical composition as an innovative product, starts influencing on the surrounding reality, thus enriching it with new forms and new content. Simultaneously, we can also observe a reverse process of fulfilling of this very composition with new senses of a concrete culture, with a new sounding. Innovative musical compositions of the modern culture are compositions-experiments, compositions-revelations - they change the character of interaction between art and audience, which is appealed to an open dialogue, to an intellectual game, co-creation, co-experience, to perception of the processes of the surrounding reality. To our opinion, the remarkable thought of Pablo Casals, an outstanding musician-violoncellist of XX century, concerning that, that the composition is classical, if it is always topical, concludes in itself a constructive formula of existence of musical masterpieces in the history of culture. Topicality of the piece of art is indirect because of the given composition being in demand (a certain culture, epoch, and a period in the history of the mankind or a nation). In order to comprehend the vital ability of a musical composition, it should be tested by time and by the change of the socio-cultural situation on the whole for the purpose of all the extra-musical symbolical elements could «grow» in to the musical language of the epoch and could become an equal element of its lexis, having ceased to be taken as something foreign in relation to music itself (Ivashkin, 1995). In connection with all this, we would like to recollect a composition, which has been associated with composuring personality of A. Schnittke for many years. The diploma work of 23
years old composure - the oratorio «Nagasaki» -was written in 1958. After half the century has gone, we can rightfully estimate the genius of the author's masterpiece. Obviously, this piece of music can be referred to innovative artistic achievements of XX century. In his composition, the artist-humanist expressed the greatest tragedy of the Japanese people, who had gone through all the terrors of the atomic war, by means of music. The texts of the poems belong to A. Sofronov (the poem «Nagasaki»), G. Fere, and modern Japanese poets Simadzaki Toson and Eneda Jejsaku. In the world culture, this composition has been the first experience of evocation of horror of lethal atomic explosion in symphonic music. The inner essence of the depicted event is a drama of the nation, having become a victim of the hellish massacre, expressed in the artist-humanist's composition and which was followed by repercussions throughout the whole world, having left nobody uncaring. In his continuous feeling of tragic essence of the being, the composure became a continuer of the mental outlook, inherited from both Dostoevskij, and Mahler. The composure-innovator's piece drew everybody's attention, making people think over global problems of the human being.
Listening attentively to the sounding of a new piece of art, we are trying to grasp the author's idea, for the first sight, to understand -what the composure has tried to express in his work. But, simultaneously with this process, our efforts are also directed to formation of our own understanding of this piece of music, of our own reading of the musical masterpiece, and that is conditioned by the culture, which the person belongs to, by his individual nature, and education (the level of his up-brining). The listener's belonging to a corresponding culture allows him to anticipate the direction of the author's thought development to this or that extent, though such a forestalling never completely coincides with that, what has been conceived and realized by
the composure. Thereat, separation of the notions of «author's text» and «noted text» allows differentiating the text, created by the author himself and reconstructed and perceived by the performers and the audience. Hence, musical piece presents by itself a sort of integrity, which includes both its author's text and the variety of its performers' and listeners' interpretations.
Giving characteristics to the modern culture, V. P. Rudnev singles out postmodernism as the first (and the last) condition of the culture of XX century, which openly has accepted the fact that text does not reflect the reality, but creates a new one, or to be more precise, many realities, which do not very often depend upon each other. As far as «any history, according to the postmodernism understanding, - is the history of a text creation and its interpretation» (Rudnev, 1997). We address to the notion of «text», which is used in the structural method of linguistics and literature study, as far as it helps to disclose the notion of «artistic work». Under the text of artistic work we understand that material (in music - sound) structure, which is created by its author in order to express certain content. Then, there appears a question - what is the difference between text and composition? Yu. Borev explains the transition of artistic text in to a composition through the moment of text inclusion into the processes of social functioning (perception and interpretation). Precisely, at that very moment, artistic text transforms into a composition (artistic culture meta-sign). Thus, in comparison with text, composition is «a functioning unsealed text, having its own sense (artistic conception) and its object meaning (its value for the mankind)» (Borev, 2005). In musical art, the process of text transition into a composition is conditioned by a special peculiar nature of the musical language. Author's text and noted text of the musical composition are not identical, as far as noted text is only the means
of graphical fixation of the acoustic process. Researchers mark that the process of music coding is characterized by incompleteness, because it is impossible «to render» fully a musical sounding into a noted text, as far as «beyond the main sense, musical phenomena have also connotative co-meanings» (Lazutina, 2007). Thus, possessing special peculiar features, musical composition text fixes its sounding with the help of a special system of signs, where we observe a special situation of understanding, and which is characteristic of polysemy, richness of content and untranslatableness from one symbolic system into another. In comparison with other cultures, understanding of the music language in the modern culture is complicated by the fact that there are many ways of searching of new variants of musical expression, of methods of influence on the listener, means of musical speech and esthetic conceptions. Thus, music perception process acquires a multi-level character. A modern composure purposefully leaves his composition unfinished, undefined. He whether outlines its most general contours, or variants. Creation of a composition, which will always be only one of the unlimited numbers of possible variants of the musical master piece, is shifted on to the performer. In the middle of 50-s of XX century there appeared co-called «open» compositions. The main reason of their appearance was: the reaction to rigorous determinacy of the serial music, enchaining the composure with a row of obligatory rules, mono-meaning, and unchangeability of electronic and concrete music. On the whole, European music, all its system of expressive means was drastically changed in the artistic culture of XX century. There observed qualitative changes of the musical thinking (in the context of all the system of musical means and these changes are particularly connected with a loss of tonality). Still keeping its certain positions, tonal music has ceased to
be an absolute norm. While harmony stopped to be the music basis, preserving its expressive and form-making meaning. In XX century, a widespread reform of «new music» was overcoming the mono-consciousness. In the conscious of composures there vanished the border, which divided situation in music and situation in the world. Revolutionary innovations, contradictions, painful processes in the art of XX century just increased the desire to perceive the sense of the newest tendencies of artistic creative process, the measure of its participation in spiritual self-definition of the modern person. The new stage of creative process also testifies of changing of expectations, being elated with the creative product, of changing of notions concerning the ways of its perception and its influence. Languages of the modern art have changed the character of correlation of the composition reality and the reality of the surrounding world. Compositions personages lose their definiteness, truthfulness, authors got rid of the real world objectness, narrativeness, and detailing, what is typical of the classics. Images of new art are multi-dimensional, indefinite, elusive, what corresponds to modern understanding of complexity, of the inexhaustible, and paradoxicality of the human nature. Senses of compositions are conditioned by the play of contexts, they are open and that is why they are numerous, what is on the whole meets the demands of the Relativism epoch and the rationality principle crisis. To the mind of music researcher M. Raku, perception of the fact that «inter-texts are not formed on a random basis, but under the influence of some laws, which are dictated by the Great Text of culture, is significant for our understanding of the laws, which form rich sense
structure of the composition - its inter-textual layer» (Raku, 1999). One may suppose that the text of any composition is already stored by the program of the Great Text of culture. Today, the fact, that every interpretation of the artistic test contains the striving to go out beyond the limits of this very composition, is unconditional. That is «composition» as «text» separates and expands its borders, thus merging into the Great Text of culture, beyond which horizon there is more than culture - there is the history of society and of the person. Text of the musical composition is a wide field for new readings, interpretations, versions, additions and new senses. Thus, having absorbed all the senses of each concrete culture «and thus going out beyond the border of this culture, into its hazardous co-existence with other cultures, each such a composition discloses the sense of the culture being as communication of cultures and as communication of persons» (Bibler, 1990). Being an essential instrument of «communication of cultures», art turns out to be able «to present» the culture, it belong to, and «to open it to the representatives» of other cultures (Kagan, 1978).
Conclusion
Masterpieces of art are forming an indissoluble integrity with culture, completing each other in their interrelation. Being an artistic model of culture, the product of musical creation process presents by itself a creative form of its artistic self-expression. In the course of the dialogue of the musical communication subjects there is given a birth to creative environment, and in connection with this the existing musical culture sphere and culture on the whole are being changed.
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