CC BY
9
https://doi.org/10.29013/EJA-20-3-131-134
Ovsyannikova-Тrеl Aleхandra Andreevna, Ph.D. in History of Arts, Associate Professor, of Department of History of Music and Musical Ethnography, Odessa National A. V. Nezhdanova Music Academy E-mail: alextrell1973@gmail.com
COMMUNICATIVE MODUS OF RUSSIAN ROMANCE IN THE CONCEPTION OF "WEAK STYLE" OF V. SYLVESTROV
Abstract. The article examines the genre aspects of V. Sylvestrov's "weak style" in the context of the musical-style principles of the "new simplicity". The simplification of the musical language as a "weakening" of the style is realized in the works of V. Sylvestrov by introducing the intonation-melodic formulas of the Russian romance - a genre that personifies the lyrical mode of musical expression in European music.
Keywords: "weak style"; genre; genre semantics; musical semantics; communicative modus; romance.
The appeal to this subject is determined by those artistic and aesthetic processes of contemporary musical art, which give rise to original versions of composer's creativity in the conditions of "weakening" of stylistic individualism as the main vector of the historical evolution of musical professionalism. The indicated direction of composer practice, represented by the phenomenon of new simplicity and "weak style" by V. Sylvestrov as a particular manifestation of this stylistic tendency, is of inexhaustible interest for musicology, since its conceptual foundations are associated with the "root" categories of music as a form of art, which in the conditions of modern musical creativity (composing, performing, listening) acquire a universal meaning in terms of the infinity of their semantic potential. Among such categories are genre and genre semantics: they are the main "tools" for the formation of musical sense in the composer's works by means of their "transformation" into in-tonational metaphors, sound images of the musical space of the composition. Appealing to typical genres of European musical art, V. Sylvestrov ensures the "openness" of their meaningful meaning for the modern listener. At the same time, it is natural to ex-
pand and deepen these meanings, which are formed as a result of the functioning of genre semantics in a fundamentally different socio-cultural and musical-linguistic context. This aspect is not often discussed in studies on the work of the Ukrainian composer, it is not presented as a special subject of modern musi-cological discourse, accordingly, addressing it opens up opportunities for conscious comprehension and perception of the artistic concept of the "weak style" of V. Sylvestrov, representing an exceptional phenomenon of contemporary music art.
The idea of returning to tonality and melody as to the lost "nature of music" [2, 7] led to the emergence of such original individual-composer's versions of the "new simplicity" as V. Sylvestrov's "weak style": the composer himself defines his idea as "... not only "familiar material", which bears the sign of the author's self-denial. This is a rejection of "activism" at the level of form becoming, a rejection of duplication of the "drama of life", which results in a kind of stay in the coda zone" [2, 8]. In the works of V. Sylvestrov, genre definiteness of musical thematicism is often used as "familiar material", which evokes in the memory meaningful associations related with
genre semantics established in the European musical tradition.
With all the difference in the points of view on the genre nature of music that are presented in modern musicological discourse, there is still a common point that is recognized by most historians and theorists of musical art: the musical genre is initially associated with a specific life situation and the life context that determined its function and purpose in human life; it is a socially conditioned and psychologically motivated phenomenon. That is why musicologists call the genre the "life axis" of music, "genetic structure" reflecting a specific "situational complex" [6]. In musicological genre theory, a differentiation of musical genres has developed, based on meaningful and functional criteria - on a specific type of imagery that is assigned to a particular genre, as well as on its place and role in the musical practice of society (V. Zukkerman, A. Sokhor). In addition, the functional side of the genre can be viewed as a kind ofvocabulary, a set of "lexemes" that are specific to a given genre and remain with it in the process of its historical evolution (V. Kholopova).
The well-known "quiet" opuses of the composer ("Silent Music" and "Memories III", for example) fully illustrate the aesthetics of the "new simplicity" associated with the simplification of the musical language: in the concept of "weak style", the simplicity of music arises as a result of a deeply original attitude of its author to the popular genres of the European musical tradition (waltz, romance, serenade). In "Memories" for string orchestra and piano, a Russian romance is used as a genre-intonation metaphor next to a waltz (while none of the five parts of the composition is designated by the author as a "romance" or a "waltz"). The main expressive function belongs to the melodic profile of the cycle, fragments ofwhich almost "literally" reproduce the intonation dictionary of the classics of Russian song lyrics of the 19th century. Simplification of the style of such opuses by V. Sylvestrov is realized by the composer by introducing "popular" patterns into the musical
language: we mean the well-known intonational-melodic formulas, which are extremely specific in their genre and which the composer uses as "building blocks" of musical composition. Their recognition by the cultural memory of the listener is ensured by the principle of accessibility to the perception of their semantic properties, expressive potential and art meaning, which is formed using genre semantics.
The special manner of the author's intonation of the "banal" genre material in "Memories" brings to life the idea of the intonation metaphor: the author's fundamental detachment from the individualism of the creative interpretation of the genre canon creates the effect of a "look from the outside" on the semantic potential of romance, serenade, waltz and generates its new meanings in the context of modernity - both musical, artistic and aesthetic, and worldview and ideological in general. Both waltz and romance, being representatives of popular European music of the 19th century (and in the case of serenade and earlier historical eras), have a stable musical and communicative modus, which reproduces a certain type of a person's awareness of connections and relationships with oneself in the form of lyrical experience and expression (by analogy with drama as a form of relations with people; and epos as a form of relations with the outside world). It is this focus on the subjectivity of the lyric utterance that determines the specificity of the proto-intonation of these musical genres as a source of the "intonation dictionary of meanings" [5, 17] - those primary musical moduses that, being conditioned by the psychology of experiencing, provide the emotional tone of the musical language and form its semantic meanings, fixed in the genre semantics: "Romance in music, however, like waltz, is a symbol of the hero's lyrical experiences. Elegy, nocturne, serenade are also more convenient when showing the sphere of intense feelings, deep experiences" [4, 126]. This communicative modus turned out to be extremely relevant for the composer's practice from the earliest times in its striving for the individualism of creative self-expression (as evidenced by the secu-
lar genres of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance) and reached its apogee in musical romanticism. And the genre semantics of waltz, romance and serenade, which developed in the course of the history of European musical art, was also actively used by composers of the 20th century - because of its semantic certainty and concreteness.
In this context, the waltz can be viewed as a musical and plastic archetype of intimate communication, and the Russian romance - as a genre archetype of the lyric and confessional essence of music, a symbol of individual and subjective personality expression. According to I. Gendler, Russian romance as a popular genre appeared as a musical and poetic attribute of provincial leisure in the 19th - early 20th centuries [3, 41], which indicates the fundamental derivation of the specificity of this musical and communicative form from the everyday consciousness of its creators and the situational complex of everyday life. And in this case, the thought of researcher of the phenomenon of Russian romance that romance has become "a kind of universal language of love relations" [3, 41], because it is based on a deep understanding of genre semantics is very relevant: "A romance is a game of an ideal time, of an ideal story, the meaning of which is not an imaginary problem-free, but an opportunity to fully and vividly experience the episode depicted in the work. The communicative goal of a romance cannot be the addressee's pity or an attempt to return a loved person. The hero clearly understands the irreversibility of the past and therefore, paradoxically, the romance is notable for its realism, the acceptance of the actual state of affairs, about which, no matter how sad it may be, it is rhetorically ideal. Gratitude for the love and happiness that leave is a romance's version of worthy acceptance of life's upheavals" [3, 43]. In such a voluminous expression, there is an indication of the sense of the lyric utterance, which to a large extent expands the content horizons of romance lyrics and takes them beyond the triviality of "spiritual outpourings", bringing them closer to the high ethical content of serious music.
In the artistic context of the development of contemporary musical professionalism, waltz, serenade, and romance can be regarded as musical images of the lost ideal of the Beauty of feelings, which can function as metaphorical elements in a musical text. But in the concept of V. Sylvestrov himself we are not talking about the lost Beauty, but only about that state of culture and man, which gives rise to the feeling of loss. In this case, genre and intonation metaphors perform the most important communicative function, which the composer himself thinks as follows: " ... in order to say otherwise, one must say the same. Here is the connection with metaphor. When you say the same thing, but with a certain index, then some hint or sign appears that you are saying something else" [7, 122]. V. Sylvestrov's author's "speaking" is carried out with the help of well-known and typical genre forms that exist in the cultural (and musical, respectively) memory of the European composer and listener outside the individual author's labels and possessing stable semantics. And therefore, it is accessible for perception and productive for creative interpretation.
Speaking about the communicative aspect of Russian romance in the context of modern culture, we can state the following. The romance, contrary to the stereotypical view of it as a simple formulaic love song, touches upon various aspects of human relations. For all the cliches of the romance language, the works of this genre are characterized by an amazing delicacy in depicting intimate experiences, accurate definitions in describing shades of feeling, sincerity of a passionate and joyful perception of the world around them. All this is expressed by linguistic means, which are still understood by modern people, but are used less and less, since, being elements of direct communication, they cannot fit into the context of distant communication that is now popular. However, it is in the romance that these values are stored not in the form of abstract incomprehensible phrases, but as a bright, living element of communication of people who are not indifferent
to each other, who know how to show their feelings, emphasize the importance of dialogue and express this in an ideal language, which in many ways creates ideal ones that is, full, deep, sincere relationships.
And in conclusion, we note that even at the beginning of the 20 century Valery Bryusov, reflecting on the nature of the banal, spoke about the form of a person's attitude to the banal, which is surprisingly consonant with modern composer's attitudes to simplify the musical language: "At the lowest stage of development, a person knows nothing but the banal: he recognizes only the generally accepted, speaks only the generally known. At the highest stage of development, a person avoids the banal, seeks the original, enjoys what is not banal. But there is an even higher level: people who speak not only for their time, but also for the future stand on it: they know how to choose from banal truths such that for other times will again become necessary, important, original" [1]. This observation contains a deep understanding of creative thinking, which, with the help of the artis-
tic transformation of traditional forms and linguistic senses ofart, is able to form its new value meanings of art and "answer" the questions of the nowdays about the meaning of human life. If we consider the genres of musical art discussed above as "banal truths" of European musical history (waltz, romance, serenade), and their genre-communicative meaning as "banal truths" of human existence, then we can confidently assert that the appeal to them by modern composers connected exclusively with the desire to comprehend the current state of human consciousness and offer their own version of the "answer". Moreover, in the case ofV Sylvestrov, this "answer" is more than "original, important and necessary": the composer, creating sound images of his works on the basis of recognizable, typical musical vocabulary, is guided by the attitude, which he once very convincingly formulated: "... this is very important: not to be afraid of banality. Although banality has its own danger, the fear of banality is a new banality, even worse. For example, feelings, sincerity are banal ..." [7, 73].
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