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8Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 2 (2016 9) 430-437
УДК 78.01
Sotsiokulturnoe the Content of the Worldview of the Composer, Expressed in Musical Creativity
Svetlana A. Bashkevich*
Sverdlovsk Music School Tchaikovsky 22 Pervomayskaya Str., Ekaterinburg, 620000, Russia
Received 14.11.2015, received in revised form 21.12.2015, accepted 09.01.2016
This article discusses the specific features of the world that the composer embodied in musical creativity, on the basis of cultural approach to music. As a result it is concluded that the worldview of the Creator of musical art, expressed tonally, there is the spiritual-axiological attitude to the world in which the emotional and rational unity of the inextricably linked socio-cultural and individual-the subjective beginning.
Keywords: worldview, culture, intonation, musical style, musical form, aesthetic, ethical, emotional, rational, spiritual and value.
DOI: 10.17516/1997-1370-2016-9-2-430-437.
Research area: culture studies, philosophy.
Since ancient times music has been a membership of all religious rites primarily because it could transfer the person beyond the bounds of ordinary life to the invisible transcendent world, which is more important because the visible world of empirical reality obeyed to it. In the mythologized minds of human beings the unconscious basis, which was unable to separate real from fiction, the physical from the spiritual, played a huge role. On the biologically-adaptive level the unconscious by its origin is associated first of all with the sound as it has the most important warning signal information about the state of reality, directly affecting the motor-emotional sphere becoming the source
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* Corresponding author E-mail address: [email protected]
of the strongest external influence on all living things. Although people still receive visually most of the information, it's impossible to see many trancepsychical emotional states. The vision gives much more to rational analysis than the sound does, the sound is initially immersed in the unconscious and is not amenable to rational interpretation. It is not a coincidence that in ancient "Eastern - Vedic - tradition that the palm is not born by the primordial light but by primordial sound: the universe is created by the sacred syllable AUM (om, um).
Shabda is a Vedic term, which means the ability to hear mystically transcendental mystic sounds (vibration) of the absolute reality.
Hence, the primary value of Hinduism culture is "hearing" and musical thinking and in general is not so much worldview, as wordhearing,"1 -notices D. V. Pivovarov.
The sound also has a huge advantage in comparison with the musical word as it bears itself the infinity of semantic associations, the spiritual vision of the invisible, without having a private defined meaning. Therefore, at all times people have sought to connect the music with the sphere of transcendent and logically incomprehensible Divine principle.
As pointed out by M. G. Aranovsky, "We are aware that the feelings excited by music are not equal to real ones, and that the idea expressed by means of music is only a condition or a figuratively-symbolic analogue of the thought, which is real in case it provides some kind of verbalization. And any attempts to "paint" the world of objects with the help of sounds are limited by the sphere of extremely sophisticated synaesthetic associations. In all other aspects the music is immersed in the unconscious, and this makes it unique among other types of artistic activity"2.
Genetically, inherent in the unconscious holistic perception is more easily and more convincingly expressed with emotions. In music emotions are the main feature of musical content.
It should be noted that the emotional structure of a musical work does not reveal objectively the intrinsic properties of reality reflected in music, but it marks composer's evaluating, general value attitude to the reality. The value attitude acts in music as an emotion. Like each emotion in the art, it has spiritual basis and non-utilitarian generalized attitude, which reveals special sense of phenomena - spiritual-value. Every composer has a certain range of higher emotions-generalizations which is a predominant basis in a non-separable unity with spiritual and moral
concept of the ideal of cultural-historical era. So for Mozart who is a representative of Age of the Enlightenment, with its optimistic faith in human mind, it is typical to use joyful, positive emotions that characterize his optimistic and harmonious attitude to the world, for Schubert who is an artist of the Romantic era it is typical to use an elegiac emotional dominant, Schnittke used alarming emotions etc. In a word, under the predominance of certain emotions one can always see a point of view about the world, the composer's worldview, which became an emotion and the sociocultural entity itself that generated this attitude to the world, which is expressed and penetrated with this emotion.
But bringing music to emotions is impossible it is much more than emotions embodied in it. Emotional basis in music is closely associated with consciousness, understanding and logic, i.e. rational understanding of reality: "Music is sensory immediate learning of the world; one of the sensitive spheres of human consciousness,"3- said B. V. Asafyev. Indeed, in the process of creating music many decisions are made on a conscious level or in the presence of the unconditional priority of consciousness. Conscious choice begins with the formulation of an idea, which develops a predictive aim for creativity search, getting focused and internally organized (for example, Beethoven "first wrote down his idea verbally by creating an artwork,"4), with the choice of a genreand a form, it is becoming the most important conditions for creating music. It is necessary to clarify that the concept of a musical work is determined by the composer's worldview and is prepared by his life and human experience, conditioned by socio-cultural necessity. The mind, solving problems, works on different levels of creating a musical text. Making a choice and evaluating its decision, the composer operates with certain realities of music: melody, rhythm, harmonic succession,
elements of texture, setting of tempo, tessitura, timbre, etc. M. G. Aranovsky calls them the operands, which mean "a dialectical unity of sounding matter and a parallel row of auditory representations corresponding to it.
Music operands are a non-fragmented world of sounds. They are organized, ordered and appear in the form of a multi-tiered system of musical language. The musical language is a system of grammars, each of which manages one or another type of stationary units. <...> in the abstract form the musical language exists as a system of opportunities in the musician's mind, the opportunities that you can implement and turn into a sounding phenomena"5.
Like the verbal language, the music language is a method of communication, it is generated by our socialcultural environment and it is a carrier of human thoughts. The art of music cannot distance itself from its developed traditions of musical and linguistic principles, learned by a composer in the form of composition technique, which should be implemented consciously and this is a necessary condition of music creation. However, the composer is inherent in his individual worldview with its value system of preferences in the field of musical language, which forms the basis of the composer's musical speech. It transforms an innovative linguistic and musical tradition when the composer is reaching the true skill. At the same time the conscious selection of necessary linguistic means takes place on the level of implementation of the plan, as a rule, on the basis non-notional thinking because in music there are no concepts, there is only the background of the figurative meaning. Moreover, being so emotional, "the music is a causative agent of thoughts and if you listen to the process of musical formation, it is possible to find out that a piece of music represents a certain system of relations and we, listening to it, enter the world of peculiar dimensions where nothing
is occasional where every moment of sounding is joined to the preceding and the subsequent sound. Here everything is determined; everything is flowing and is given in movement"6.
Hence, the composer's worldview has a dual nature: emotional and rational. Both sides of the worldview have spiritual and value grounds, caused by the personality of the author and the sociocultural setting of the surrounding reality. The correlation of both sides of different composers in different cultural and historical periods is mobile. It goes from the primacy of rationality in ideational (by P. A. Sorokin) type of culture through the balance of thoughts and feelings in the ideal type to the prevalence of emotional aspects in a sensual culture.
It does not matter which component -an emotional or rational - could dominate in music, the composer models the whole elusive, inscrutable to the end and deep process of the human spirit, in intonation.
The founder of the intonation theory, B. V. Asafiev, returns repeatedly and persistently to the main statement of his thesis that music as a form of "imaginative and cognitive activity of consciousness" is "figuratively-sonic reflection of reality". And the manifestation and the product of consciousness, musical thinking, is intonation. This proposition determines the nature and aesthetic orientation of all Asafiev's intonation theory.
According Asafiev's, theory intonation is an elementary cell, "firstcell" of music, which already displayed a social function of music art as the intonation always implies a certain degree of generalization. Asafiev's theory of intonation leads to the interpretation of a musical work as the composer's expression of creative individuality by pointing out the way to understanding of the dialectical unity of a tradition and innovation in music. The composer does not copy the intonation, but reproduces, i.e. actively revises
it in his artistic consciousness. Hence, the intonation can be represented in the form of the living consciousness of the people, of the nation, of the society of a certain historical period as "intonational vocabulary of the era" (an Asafiev's term). At the same time crystallized in musical practice, intonation systems give the tendency to all further development of musical consciousness in the society.
And at this moment the power of composer's creative individuality develops, all the uniqueness of his worldview, which allows to maintain an objective semantic value of a society's intonations, transformed with the help of alive and fresh sounding by adapting them to the requirements of the relevant life content.
Moreover, in the history of music there are a considerable number of years of musical intonation formation around each interval, which obtains more and more stable semantic links. And the most brilliant composers could capture exquisitely and accurately a socio-expressive significance of intonational meanings, grouped around a given interval. These meanings acquire no less clarity than the content of the words in their music. Passed through the mind of a composer, such socially-important tone always carries a cultural and historical concrete nature and, at the same time, obtains an individual difference of the worldview tendency of composer's consciousness. In this connection not only interval, but also melodic and genre means are reinterpreted, for example, Passakalii by D. D. Shostakovich or Waltz by M. Ravel. Examples can be continued infinitely. And Asafiev's understanding of "intonation fund of the nation" receives brilliant confirmation in the works of composers of the "world responsiveness", for example, M. I. Glinka, who discovered and introduced in the use of Russian musical culture of Spain in the symphonic overtures "Aragonese jota " and "The night in Madrid"; the original order of Eastern
melodies, primarily in act III of the Opera "Ruslan and Lyudmila"; smooth Italian cantilena in his works for piano and songs; the grace of a Polish dance in the brilliant Polish Suite in the II act of the Opera "A life for the Tsar"; the sadness of the Jewish melos in the party Rachil in the music to the tragedy by N.The Kukolnik "Prince Kholmsky". By traveling around Ukraine Glinka wrote two songs on Victor Zabella's words "Gude viter" and "Ne shchebechi soloveyko" where he penetrated so finely in the essence of intonation of Ukrainian folk music that in a few years he was forced to leave his authorship in a letter to the Polish writer and philosopher Peter Dubrovsky, "the Music was written by me on the words of Sabella, but if it is similar to ukranian folk, it's not my fault!"7.
In his epic piano Preludes and fugues D. D. Shostakovich stamped originally Russian national style, which has as a prototype the pattern of Opera-choral music by Mussorgsky and Borodin, "although he never quotes, he does not even stylize Russian folk song as well as Eastern folklore in F-sharp minor Prelude and Fugue, but he transmits the very essence of folk music with all its features of tonal, intonational, and metrorhythmic organization."8 The same can be said about the vocal cycle of "Spanish songs" by Shostakovich.
These are only few characteristic examples from the history of music, which take place in the works of many outstanding composers. The talent of the composer consists in a special artistic quality - to hear typical for this time and close to his own worldview intonations that are capable of creating musical images of fantastic power and artistic convincingness in a sound stream of life.
In the 1920s B. V. Asafyev determined that musical intonations are manifested not only in a precisely defined sequence of intervals, but they also permeate all means of musical expression which determine the expression of musical form.
The musical form interested Asafyev not only as a completed structure, but at the same time, and primarily, as a process, as an intonational movement carried out in time.
Therefore, the intonation defines and determines the continuity of the formation of the musical form making it capable of transmitting the content. Hence, the intonation, being a sociocultural phenomenon and passing through the ideal matter of composer's artistic consciousness, turns into music as a form of art, i.e. a cultural phenomenon. The intonation absorbs all the means of musical expression, unites composer's creativity with the help of the unity of musical language, which shows from the first tact a musical image of the creator. But intonational unity of sounding of any historical period, defined by the works of several outstanding composers, creates a unique and immediately recognizable style of the era. The phenomenon of intonation takes place in all historical musical cultures. Therefore, the theory of intonation gives the methodological basis for the study of the theory, history of music, and musical aesthetics as the most sophisticated philosophical understanding of this kind of art, so the theory of intonation becomes the basis of the cultural approach to music.
Asafiev observes all the great author's, folklore music, Ancient Greece, and magic spells of primitive peoples. He is convinced: "the presence of the phenomenon of intonation connects everything that happens in music (the facts of creativity and style, the evolution of the expressive elements, and forming) in a united specifically associated with the development of social consciousness process...."9. This universatility of intonation allows to define music as "the art of the pronounced meaning."
It should be noted that B. V. Asafyev used the term "intonation" in different ways: as "first cell" of music, order of musical compositions in general, as the nature of everyday sounds, and the
peculiar intonation fund of the era. In short, the concept of intonation is left unfinished and open in Asaf'ev's works what explains its different understanding in the works of modern scientists.
Developing Asafyev's theory of intonation V. V. Medushevsky emphasizes that "all means of musical form (harmony, polyphony, rhythm, syntax, composition) have intonation basis and distinguish two general categories: a notion of analytical and intonation (intonation and dramatic) side of the form. The last one is dominant. The analytical side is integrated with it as a schematizing frame. <...> hence, intonational form, originally united, manifests itself in two roles: as a potential pre-basis (when it does not contain a concrete version of the analytical form) and as an alive basis of music"10. Creating a musical work, firstly the composer hears it in proto-intonation which is already a "unity of sense and sound". But proto-intonation is still vague. "The composition is the clarification of the proto-intonation with implantation an analytic form in it. Unconscious structure of protointonation affects the choices of the analytical form which is more distant from the organization of meaning"11. Continuing the thought of V. Medushevsky this way, we can say that protointonation is unconscious, concretized in the process of composing and it results in conscious, rational, having density in analytical form. The proto-intonation lives latently in the mind of the composer, which is formed by a particular type of culture, by its "intonation dictionary" (Asafiev's term); it is a word from this dictionary. The composer's speech, which consists of intonation-words and what system it will contain, depends on the worldview of the composer which, as a filter, selects and arranges words-intonations. But the analytical form, as well as the language of the composer, is built individually being at the same time formed and developed by a certain type of culture.
That is why the scientific thought strengthens gradually a direct link between the concept of "intonation" and "artistic image" which "carries the artistic content - the dialectical unity of reflection of reality and the expression of the worldview of the artist. Therefore, the artistic figure can't be any right image, similar to the reality, but only expressive image, the image with the "double reflection" - of the reality and of the artist, of the objective and subjective worlds"12.
It should be noted that the previously mentioned proto-intonation is a rolled, one moment image. The proto-intonation exists not only at the beginning of the composer's work, but it summarizes the whole musical process, it keeps the musical integrity of the image. It organically combines the spiritual and the musical language sides as they are born by the worldview of their creator, they transform in an integral system, which can be called a compositional style. This art system is defined by an objective socio-cultural reality and subjective properties of the author. The style conveys composer's holistic perception of the cultural and historical eras and expresses the author's worldview. At the same time "it has a cultural significance set by the reminiscence and principles of other tendencys"13.
Thus, the music style is a holistic individual unique hearing world, a certain position in it. And at the same time, the cultural-historical era and its ideals are reflected in concentrated form in the style of the great composer. But in no circumstances when the intonation is equated with the style, it must be emphasized that the style of music grows out of the intonations, being an essentially typological system of intonational unity. According Medushevsky, in a united general intonation can be either a separate piece or the composer's work in general, and the brightness of individual styles does not destroy the stylistic unity of the cultural-historical era. The style of the era is the generalization of cultural setting.
It appears more evidently in periods of socio-cultural breaking, which brings changes taking place in art, and in its stylistic peculiarities. The value picture of the world is captured in composer's worldview that is why the solution to the eternal human questions are so different in the styles of different epochs.
Thus, the worldview of the composer is intonational in its nature. In his worldview emotionally-sensualandrational-logicalprinciples are organically combined. It is also necessary to highlight the religious-philosophical, aesthetic and ethical implications which are transmitted by music through intonation.
The experience of harmony or, on the contrary, the disharmony of the world, social relations and the personality of a man is formed through a religious-philosophical structure of the worldview of music as a kind of art. It is through this component of the worldview that there is a final cognitive-emotional decision about the sustainability, stability or, conversely, dissociation, temporality, tragic finiteness of human existence. Such higher values that produce the most general assessment of the relationship between the world and the man are sharply developed in works of the artists belonging to different types of culture and stylistic tendencies.
For a composer of the Baroque era, the source of doubt in the soul of the man is characterized by a questioning sorrowful intonation. But a Baroque man is an essential part of the universe, full of hidden from human sight beauty and order because the Baroque man does not lose the connection with the absolute. Therefore, the voice of internally ordered Universe calls for restraint, enlightening of he mind and feeling, convinces the man to rise up above his suffering.
On the contrary, in romantic music in the center of the restless universe there is a man with his pathetically-declamatory intonation trying to bind the chaos of objective reality. But it is in
vein. With his lonely will a man cannot overcome the disruption of the world, resulting in evident or latent anxiety, always like a shadow haunting the romantic hero.
To characterize the aesthetic and the ethical component of the worldview of the composer it is necessary to go back to the conversation about the emotional nature of musical art and to stress out that the emotion of art is artist's spiritual and value worldview, aesthetically expressed, according to the aesthetic ideal of the creator of art, which carries in his implication an ethical good urge to balance and reconcile life's contradictions. Thus, the field of emotional and value view is associated with the aesthetic-ethical component of the worldview of the artist, in our opinion, is inseparable because "a purely aesthetic view of the work of art is one-sided and insufficient. It needs to be replenished with ethical, especially when the historical isolation of aesthetics as an independent entity, the last one was just closer to ethics"14. Aesthetic and ethical values have the basis in artist's worldview. In our opinion, the aesthetic component of the worldview of the artist is primarily related to beauty. In music the beauty is identical with musically beautiful in sound matter, i.e. with artistic perfection (if we understand art as implemented, expressed aesthetic, existing in the form of a musical work). The aesthetic component of the worldview of the artist is a sphere of freedom to find the beauty of the incarnation of the creative spirit, the ethical component focuses on the goal to do a duty that subjects the human spirit to socially useful, necessary, which is expressed in a work of beauty art.
Music as a form of art is a kind of human value interaction with the world, which is carried out through intonation and in its process, and in its result the man creates a new reality, aesthetically-valuably shows his spiritual world, to suggest his own worldview to others, i.e. the
hearing-understanding of the world through the prism of beauty inherent in this man who is a creator of music. Therefore, the beauty of musical intonation is not only aesthetic but also ethical reality.
Intonation of the musical genius in his worldview can be sincere, sad, light, happy, angry, irritated, even comic, but it will still be both beautiful and elevated because the intonation which is born by a genius, is a particle of the infinite Spirit which always cleans it and raises it to heights. Since ancient times, first in the East and then in Europe, mythological, religious, philosophical, natural-science thought was instilled in the music and it has had such qualities as harmony, proportion, rhythmic orderliness, beauty, perfection that has enabled it to rank as the Herald and carrier of the Divine world. Such notions of the old thinkers were picked up by subsequent centuries of European history. Even positivist XIX century could not deny the music in its Divine inspiration.
Summing up the specific features of the worldview of the composer, it should be noted that music as a form of art is always linked to the ideal of culture and carries its spiritual values, captured and refracted in composer's worldview. Expressed intonationly, the worldview of the composer is the spiritual value attitude to the world where on an emotional and rational level sociocultural and individual and subjective principles are inseparably bound. The unity of the sociocultural and individual personality constitutes a system of values covering both the individual composer and a new art tendency. L. A. Sachse has indicated value dominants of the worldview of the composer: "If the substantive core of spiritual culture is the core of human spiritual values (aesthetic, moral, philosophical), the music is an intonational mode of existence of these values in the subjective tense of their integrity and active focus on the reality that
is the living human worldview"15. The same Bach's tragedy manifests more differently than
universal mankind topics, such as: love, life, Chopin's and Schnittke's tragedy as it is included
death, freedom, happiness, etc. are filled with not only in different personal, but in cultural-
different meaning in the worldview of values historical hearing perception of the world and its
system of Mozart and Liszt, Gluck and Wagner. axiological interpretation.
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Sohor A. N. Ethical foundations of Beethoven's aesthetics.Issues of sociology and aesthetics of music. - L.: 1981, - P. 87 Aranovsky M. G. Music and thinking. // Music as a form of intellectual activity. - M.: Book Com, 2007. - P. 24,26 Kolomiets G. G. Value of music: philosophical aspect. - Orenburg: IPK GOU OGU, 2006. - P. 263 Glinka M. I. Literary works and correspondence.In T. 2T. 2. - M.: Music, 1977. - P. 148
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Социокультурное содержание мироотношения композитора, выраженное в его творчестве
С.А. Башкевич
Свердловское музыкальное училище им. П.И. Чайковского Россия, 620000, Екатеринбург, ул. Первомайская, 22
В данной статье рассматриваются специфические особенности мироотношения композитора, воплощённые в музыкальном творчестве, на основе культурологического подхода к музыке. В результате делается вывод, что мироотношение творца музыкального искусства, выражаемое интонационно, есть духовно-ценностное отношение к миру, в котором в эмоционально-чувственном и рациональном единстве неразрывно слито социокультурное и индивидуально-субъективное начала.
Ключевые слова: мироотношение, культура, интонация, музыкальный стиль, музыкальная форма, эстетическое, этическое, эмоциональное, рациональное, духовно-ценностное.
Научная специальность: 24.00.00 - культурология, 09.00.00 - философские науки.
