Alexander Shchetinsky's Symphony for Mixed Choir a'cappella “Know Yourself”: From Neo-Baroque to Metastyle
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31318/2522-4190.2019.126.197975Keywords:
Ukrainian choral music, genre, choral symphony, spiritual concert, musical text, polystylistics, neo-baroque, metastyleAbstract
The genre of choral symphony develops at the intersection of current creative searches in the field of higher musical and philosophical generalizations and modern polystylistic thinking. As an example we can consider the symphony for Mixed Choir a cappella of A. Shchetinsky “Know Yourself” (2003). The relevance of this study is connected with the problem of neo-baroque context in the symphony, which is not sufficiently disclosed and concretized in Ukrainian musicology.
But at the same time it acquired special significance due to the traditions of assessing the H. Skovoroda's heritage in the context of the “Ukrainian baroque”.
The purpose of the article is to identify neo-baroque tendencies in the symphony of A. Shchetinsky “Know Yourself” and to outline the factors that inspired the composer to rise to the level of metastyle.
The author of the article not only outlines parallels between the ideological, philosophical and stylistic peculiarities of H kovoroda’s texts and A. Shchetinsky’s symphony, but also proves, relying on the methods of neo-baroque style analysis, proposed by L. Melnik that the principles of neo-baroque in levels are verbal, formal and musical-linguistic. The results of the study involve identifying the leading figurative and thematic spheres of the symphony and the specific images-symbols that can be used in combination with the postmodernist play with the stylistic models of the Baroque era. A. Shchetinsky intentionally “re-intones” the texts of H. Skovoroda, saturating the choral fabric with different-style elements, allusions of baroque genres and melotematic methods, stylizations of textured and ladarharmonic “signs” of the era. At the same time, they are all presented in the form of transparent hints, “dissolved” in the composer’s own style. Symphonizing the choir and appealing to the genre of the choral concert, A. Shchetinsky emphasizes the continuity of the spiritual tradition from baroque to current times. A. Shchetinsky's unique approach to the creation of a choral symphony leads to the rise of his individual composer style from the local musical idea of the neo-baroque to a global super-individual metastyle.
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