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Study of art ' PREMIER Austrian Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 5 — 6 (2021)
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Study of art Искусствоведение
УДК 78.011.26.036.071(410) Стшг(045) DOI: 10.29013/AJH-21-5.6-3-8
O. V. STETSKOVYCH 1
1 Kharkiv State Academy of Culture, Kharkiv, Ukraine
POETICS OF STING'S ORIGINAL CREATIVE WORK: SYNTHESIS OF MUSICAL AND VERBAL FUNDAMENTALS
Abstract.
Objective. In the article the original creative work of British pop and rock musician G. M. T. Sumner (Sting) is examined from the standpoint of art synthesis. Three figurative and thematic bright areas of the musician's creative thinking are identified. Particular works of the British composer and singer are analysed and considered from the musical and poetic points of view. The semantics of Sting's embodiment of artistic images in the context of the relationship between literary and musical authorial texts are revealed.
Methods: historical, system, structural-functional, genre analysis, structural compositional, factor analysis. The relevance of the proposed research is that for the time analysed the work of British musician Sting with an emphasis on poetics in his songs. Sting's poetics in the synthesis between musical and verbal text is considered.
The objective to research is to determine the poetics of Sting's author's work at the level of musical and verbal aspects and conditionally differentiate three leading constitutive motives in his work.
Results: revealed features of practical significance of the Sting's poetics. On the example of musical works it's proved that there are three motives in his poetic.
Key words: Sting, artistic individuality, composer, singer, original creative work, verbal expressive means, musical expressive means, mass musical culture.
For citation: O. V. Stetskovych Poetics of Sting's original creative work: synthesis of musical and verbal fundamentals 2021, No. 1-2. - P. 3-8. DOI: https://doi.org/10.29013/AJH-21-5.6-3-8
Introduction. Sting (true name - Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner), a famous musician, is one of the idols ofpop and rock music of the late XX - early XXI century, whose multidimensionality of extraordinary personality is revealed in several capacities: a talented composer and singer, a refined poet, a true philosopher, philanthropist, actor, etc. For many years, his artistic legacy has aroused objective research interest from both musical and art critics.
The review of modern research. Among the modern musicological studies devoted to the life and work of G. Sumner, a prominent place is held by the works of J. Aaron "West Sting and The Police: walking their footsteps" [1], W. Clarkson "Sting: The Secret Life of Gordon Sumner" [5], C. Gable "The Words and Music of Sting" [6], C. Welch "The Police and Sting" [15] etc.
A significant and reliable source of knowledge of Sting's personality and creative work, a unique description of his various activities is the autobiography "Sting.
Austrian Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 5 - 6 (2021)
ISSN 2310-5593 (Print) / ISSN 2519-1209 (Online)
Broken Music: A Story About Me Who Nobody Knows" [13], which was published in November 2003 and immediately became a bestseller. In this book the author reveals the features of his creative biography, little-known facts of his life, highlights from the very beginning his path to fame, his victories and failures, reflects and summarises his individual experience in art and immerses in the depths of his personal experience (pain of loss of the loved ones, friends' betrayal and other strokes of fate).
It should be noted that the parameter of success of Sting's work is largely due to the universalism of his authorial style, expressed in musical and stylistic diversity, successfully combined with originality and sincerity of poetic texts that reflect the artist's worldview and philosophical principles. It is worth mentioning that Sting's artistic poetics is based on the idea of direct communication with the listener with the help of both verbal and nonverbal means. Undoubtedly, this principle of influencing the consciousness of the audience is not new, but Sting literally reduces it to the absolute. Therefore, the generalised analysis of the musician's artistic activity demonstrates an unconditional tendency to a balanced combination of verbal and nonverbal fundamentals.
In this respect, the specificity of the presentation of the poetic text in Sting's works to some extent corresponds to the principle of the so-called introspective narration, i.e., a narrative, where the artist appears as both a homodiegetic and extradiegetic narrator (in accordance with the classification proposed by the authoritative French literary critic G. Genette - a well-known exponent of structuralism and one of the founders of modern narratology [12]). Characterising the content of the above concepts used in this classification, a Russian musicologist V. Tretyachenko notes that "... "homodiegetic" is a type of narrator who is a part of the functional part of the story, i.e., is a direct participant in the events described in the text; "extradiegetic" is a type of narrator (third person), who is practically unrelated to the art world. This type of narrator represents their own assessment of events, facts and characters described in the work of art" [14, p. 47].
Following the principles of the above narratological systematics, it should be emphasised that the lion's share of the original compositions by G. M. M. Sumner (Sting) should be considered primarily from the standpoint of artistically rethought artistic reflection.
The poetic texts by G. M. T. Sumner (Sting) truly impress with their depth and richness of content. It is no
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coincidence that some authoritative critics when evaluating the musician's work note the exceptional figurative and meaningful capacity of his literary texts.
The conducted analysis of Samner's poetics, in particular, its content-symbolic component, ideological and thematic preferences of the artist, in general allows to distinguish three leading constitutive motives in his work: 1) the motive of all-encompassing love; 2) the motive of decisive protest (as a generalised form of condemnation of any illegal actions against humanity and nature); 3) the life-affirming motive. For example, the motive of love is vividly represented in the songs "Fortress Around Your Heart" from the album "The Dream of Blue Turtles", "I Can't Stop Thinking About You" from the album "57th & 9th", "I Love Her But She Loves Someone Else" from the album "The Last Ship"; the motive of protest acquires considerable force and expression in the songs "We Work the Black Seam" and "Russians" from the album "The Dream of Blue Turtles"; the motive of affirmation - in the songs "History Will Teach Us Nothing" from the album "Nothing Like the Sun", "One Fine Day" from the album "57th & 9th", "Morning Is Coming" from the album "44/876", etc. It should also be added that each of the above motives is characterised by the presence of a certain internal content, where, we shall say, the motive of love can be represented as purely intimate lyrics (love for a girl / woman) and at the level of philosophical lyrics (love as the highest Christian virtue / universal value, etc.).
The uniqueness of Sting's original style is undeniable. In the musician's work, in particular, the original attempt to give a new meaning to the traditional foundations of song genres, based on the inseparability of words and melos, can be traced. This is expressed in the intellectualisation of his compositional speech, primarily due to the presence of signs of a polystylistic method of composition. With the purpose of more detailed understanding of the laws of Sting's artistic thinking, we consider it necessary to single out the core musical and stylistic models, most vividly represented in the artist's work, which are rock music, jazz, and reggae. Since each of these areas is characterised by internal content and stylistic branching (pop-rock, art-rock, etc. in rock music; swing, blues, bee-bop, etc. in jazz), we shall consider these stylistic models in general, rather as original kinds of modern musical art.
The poetics of Sting's original work represents the individuality of his artistic style, which is embodied primarily in the context of the synthesis of arts. The
Study of art I PREMIER Austrian Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 5 — 6 (2021)
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correct characterisation of Stings musical texts, first of all, requires understanding of the theoretical aspects of studying the very concept of "a musical text". In particular, fundamental research of this concept was carried out by a famous musicologist M. G. Aranovsky in his book "Musical text. Structure and properties" (1998) [2]. The scientist presents the musical text as the other side of the musical work, its opposite, considering it as a temporal phenomenon: "We shall consider the musical text as a musical sequence, which is interpreted by the subject, refers to music, is a structure built on the norms of some historical variety of historical language, but carries one or another comprehended meaning" [2, p. 35]. A culturolo-gist V. Rudnev characterises the text as: "signal embodied in the objects of physical reality that transmits information from one consciousness to another..." [10, p. 10]. A somewhat similar and expanded interpretation was proposed by a musicologist V. Tretyachenko, who states the following: "The universality of the phenomenon of text (including musical text - O.S.) is based on the fact that its functioning is determined by two mechanisms -the semiotic and communicative ones, which provides not only coding information, but also the creation of a communication situation based on the text" [14, p. 11]. Moreover, the musical text, according to the musicologist, equally combines the functions of musical and symbolic and sound subject and creative activity, while making the composer's idea, the specifics of the composer's language, the individuality of the performance style, and so on available for perception.
It should be noted that in modern domestic musicol-ogy a fairly large corpus of research is devoted to covering the essence of the concept of a musical work as a text, among which a special place is occupied by the works of O. Beregova [4], O. Kotlyarevskaya [7], V. Moskalenko [8], O. Murzina [9] and others.
Sting's compositions as a certain artistic "product" of the synthesis ofverbal and nonverbal components often reflect the worldview ideas and individual dimensions of the author's inner mental organisation. Often his songs have an underlying suggestive function, although it is presented mostly in the phase of his mature art. However, some samples were embodied in the context of the early stages of the musician's life, marked by an unconditional attraction to the aesthetics of rock music.
The original nature of rock music is known to be determined by a pronounced social and cultural orientation. Reflecting on the aesthetic properties of rock music,
M. Sarkitov emphasises the idea of protest as a kind of "axiom" of the rock art philosophy. "It is music," the researcher stresses, "that expresses the reaction of young people to the state of society and its culture, which, for one reason or another, they are not comfortable with"
[11, p. 13].
The idea of social protest is most clearly revealed in Sting's composition "We Work the Black Seam" from the artist's debut album "The Dream of the Blue Turtles" (1985). The plot of this rock composition is partly based on real events related to the mass strike of British miners in 1984-85, caused by the modernisation of the coal industry in order to develop nuclear energy. It should be emphasised that the public position of miners outraged by the deliberate destruction of the coal industry was personally close to G. Sumner, whose father had worked for many years as a design engineer in the shipbuilding industry, which was also declining rapidly in the 1980s.
In this song Sting, as an active public figure and philanthropist and a staunch opponent of the nuclear power industry, along with a strong social and political protest, which shows full solidarity with the miners, also raises issues of environmental security. Based on the above classification ofJ. Jenette [16], in this composition Sting appears as an extradiegetic narrator, whose story contains tangible intonations of anger, as well as deep concern about the prospects of nuclear energy as a potential danger to the environment.
Particularly noteworthy is the author's concept of constructing the drama of the work, in particular the principles of interpenetration of verbal and nonverbal fundamentals. Earlier it was noted that initially the aesthetics of rock music is embodied in the idea of protest, which is why Sting's appeal to the artistic and expressive qualities of rock style is thought to be a completely rational decision. At the same time, this composition fully reflects the above-mentioned tendency to intellectualise creative work. The search for the latest ways of artistic and verbal communication with the listener's consciousness is manifested at the level of microstructural implementation of individual verbal and melodic elements as a specific artistic means of focusing on the key phrase of the text, emphasising and enhancing its semantic significance. An example of such an artistic microstructure is the final stanza of the refrain of the song: "Deadly for twelve thousand years is carbon fourteen...", where the tragic meaning of the poetic text is enhanced by expressive means of music (rocking descending octave move-
Austrian Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 5 - 6 (2021)
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ISSN 2310-5593 (Print) / ISSN 2519-1209 (Online)
ment in the low register of the piano part). (It should be noted that carbon-14 is one of the most dangerous radioactive isotopes that enters the environment as waste during the nuclear cycle, while maintaining some radiation activity for many millennia).
Another leading figurative and thematic area of G. Sumner's (Sting's) creative work is the motive of all-encompassing love. A piercingly subtle and precise sense of this phenomenon as the highest form of emotional and sensual relationship is realised by the author, albeit in a rather extravagant way, in the composition "Perfect Love... Gone Wrong" from his 6th studio album "Brand New Day". For example, Sting's specific literary approach to the story on behalf of the animal seems to be particularly remarkable, which, of course, should be considered as a metaphor. It is noted that the plot of the song is based on the conflict of two characters: the hostess and her puppy, where the latter is deeply offended by the fat that another person has turned up in the life of the apple of its eye - a man. The metaphor embodied by Sting in the image of a puppy as probably the only creature in the world whose love is sincere and selfless is obvious, but the motive of the "betrayed" puppy love stated in poetry has a much deeper meaning. The principle of its acoustic realisation on the basis of jazz style is also interesting. The famous jazzman Louis Armstrong once said: "What we play is life" [3, p. 170]. This quote literally reflects the idiom of the art of jazz, inspired by the motives of inseparable or lost love, sung by the unsurpassed Mamie Smith, Ma Rainey or Bessie Smith as the brightest representatives of classical women's blues of the 1920s.
Admittedly, in this composition Sting represents the original vision of modern jazz, as close as possible to the stylistic features of jazz rock, enriched with elements of gospel and hip-hop. Stylistic features of hip-hop are presented more clearly on two levels: 1) the characteristic metrorhythmic pulsation of the rhythm section and 2) the use of rap-recitation. (The latter performs an important substantive function, in particular related to the resolution of the conflict situation underlying the drama of the work). The rap episodes of "Perfect Love... Gone Wrong", performed by a Frenchwoman Ste Strasz (in French), vividly reflect Sting's ingenuity, flexibility and ingenuity, embodying the emerging semantic barrier. At the same time, the keynote of selfish j ealousy, most obviously revealed in the stanza: "runner up and second best just ain't my pedigree... " is acoustically reflected in the timbre hue of the trumpet with the sordino, nervous
intonations of which only emphasise the conflict nature of the situation.
The release of the studio album with the extravagant title "44/876" highlighted the previously unknown side of the rich worldview of G. Sumner (Sting). The image of a convinced protestant rebel (not to be confused with a supporter of Christian Protestantism) or a philosopher and thinker is now completely levelled. The latest phase of Sting's work is marked by the motive of boundless world and life affirmation, determined by the artistic and aesthetic features of the reggae style. (Note that the formation of reggae culture was largely based on the Rastafarian religious movement, especially widespread in Jamaica). It should be noted that initially the aesthetics of rock music and reggae art had a lot in common, primarily related to the expression of protest motives, in particular, aimed at overcoming racial segregation. Later, starting from the 1970s, against the background of a certain departure from the spiritual principles of Rastafarianism (love for one's neighbour, rejection of the Western society lifestyle), the "protest" ideology of reggae was replaced by abstract humanism, thanks to which reggae music acquires mostly relaxing and dancing nature. Since the early 70's in the foreground Bob Marley's band "The Wailers" has been actively presenting their creative work in this style. It is "The Wailers"' third studio album, "Catch a Fire" that becomes a sensation in the music world, reggae style is a global cultural phenomenon, and Bob Marley himself is considered a symbol of the phenomenon. Since the mid-70's reggae style has spread around the world, some elements of this style penetrate into different musical styles, and its rhythmic attracts many musicians and, of course, listeners. It was in the 70's that Sting first became interested in reggae style, and began to incorporate certain rhythms and intonations to his own music.
The lightness, kow-key nature and abundance of optimism and positivity inherent in the art of reggae are most vividly embodied in the song "MorningIs Coming", represented by Sting in an ensemble with one of the most famous reggae artists, a talented Jamaican singer Orville Richard Burrell who became popular all over the world under the name of Shaggy. In the mentioned composition the joy of the miracle of a new day is glorified: "Wake up, it's a beautiful day". In addition to the obvious optimistic motive of life affirmation, the content of the poetic text of this composition visibly demonstrates the features of Sumner's worldview and outlook, embodied
Austrian Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 5 - 6 (2021) ISSN 2310-5593 (Print) / ISSN 2519-1209 (Online) -
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in abstract, immaterial symbolic images. One of them is the image of the sun, which in Sting's poetics carries a pronounced sacred symbolism, identifying itself as a source of life and light. The artist's appeal to the reggae style seems absolutely appropriate and justified in every sense. A special colouristic sound of this work is provided by the symbiosis of polar performance styles of both singers (in particular at the level of pronunciation), where Sting's deliberately "British" more restrained manner is contrasted with looseness and simplicity of Shag-gy's flow. (Flow is a slang definition of vocal and performing technique, expressed in a recitative manner of presentation of the material, which became widespread in the hip-hop style). It should be noted that in such an artistic solution a hidden semantic message, expressed
in the idea of international friendship and interethnic equality, is observed.
Conclusions. The introduced careful analysis of three selectively chosen original compositions by G. M. T. Sumner (Sting) to some extent allows to comprehend the philosophical depth and originality of the original poetics of the artist's creative work, as well as to outline the key features and principles of his creative thinking, which find expression in the organic synthesis of verbal and musical means of artistic expression. As a result of the research, it has been proved that the specificity of Sting's musical (compositional and performing) embodiment of ideological and thematic motives stated within his original poetic text is largely due to the clearly defined stylistic affiliation of his works.
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Austrian Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 5-6 (2021) ' PREMIER Study of art
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Information about the author Olena Viktorivna Stetskovych, Postgraduate student of the Faculty of Music Art
Department of Theory and History of Music, Singing Teacher, Kharkiv State Academy of Culture (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
Adress: Heroiv Pratsi str, Kharkiv, Ukraine, 61000
E-mail: [email protected]; tel. +38-(099)-33-25-717
ORCHID: 0000-0002-9527-1211
