An important property of musical content is generalization or detail. The nature of the musical work

What is the essence musical content(2 hours)

1. Generalization is the most important property of musical content (on the example of Part I " moonlight sonata L. Beethoven).

Music material:

1. L. Beethoven. Sonata No. 14 for piano. Part I (hearing); II and III parts (at the request of the teacher);
2. L. Beethoven. Symphony No. 7, parts I and II (at the request of the teacher);
3. L. Beethoven, Russian text by E. Alexandrova. "Friendship" (singing).

Characteristics of activities:

1. Analyze ways of translating content into musical works.
2. Perceive and evaluate musical works from the point of view of the unity of content and form (taking into account the criteria presented in the textbook).
3. To master outstanding examples of Western European music (the era of Viennese classicism).

In search of understanding of the musical content, logical laws and methods of analysis are powerless. We believe music just in spite of all logic, we believe only because it influences us indisputably and obviously. Is it possible not to believe what exists in ourselves?

Everyone who has had to think about the mystery that the musical content contains, probably felt: music tells us about something more, which is immeasurably wider and richer than our experience, our knowledge of life.

So, listening, for example, to Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, we can imagine a picture of a moonlit night: not just one night in a specific area, with a specific landscape, but precisely the spirit of a moonlit night with its mysterious rustles and aromas, with an endless starry sky incomprehensible, mysterious.

However, is the content of this work exhausted only by landscape associations? After all, listening to this sonata, we can imagine the dreary torment of unrequited love, separation and loneliness, all the bitterness of human sadness.

And all these such different ideas will not contradict the nature of Beethoven's sonata, its concentrated contemplative mood. For it tells us about sadness - not just the sadness of a moonlit night, but all the sadness of the world, all its tears, suffering and anguish. And everything that can cause these sufferings can become an explanation of the content of the sonata, in which everyone guesses their own spiritual experience.

Most of you know Moonlight Sonata and really love it. No matter how many times we hear this magical music, she conquers us with her beauty, deeply excites us with the mighty power of the feelings embodied in her.
In order to experience the irresistible impact of the music of this sonata, one may not know under what life circumstances it was composed; one may not even know that Beethoven himself called it a “fantasy sonata”, and the name “Lunar”, after the composer’s death, was assigned to it with the light hand of one of Beethoven’s friends, the poet Ludwig Relshtab. AT poetic form Relshtab expressed his impressions of the sonata, in the first part of which he saw a picture of a moonlit night, the quiet expanse of a lake and a boat serenely sailing on it.
I think that, having listened to this sonata today, you will agree with me that such an interpretation is very far from the actual content of Beethoven's music, and the name "Lunar" - no matter how we get used to it - does not at all correspond to the character and spirit of this music.
And is it even necessary to “compose” some own programs to the music, if we know the real life circumstances under which it was created, and, consequently, what thoughts and feelings the composer had when it was created.
That's if you know, at least in in general terms, the history of the emergence of the "Moonlight Sonata", I have no doubt that you will listen and perceive it differently than you have listened to and perceived so far.
I have already spoken about the deep spiritual crisis that Beethoven experienced and which was captured in his Heiligenstadt will. It was on the eve of this crisis and, undoubtedly, bringing it closer and sharpening it, that an important event for him took place in Beethoven's life. Just at this time, when he felt the approach of deafness, he felt (or, at any rate, it seemed to him) that for the first time in his life a real love. He began to think of his charming pupil, the young Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, as his own. future wife. “... She loves me, and I love her. These are the first bright minutes in the last two years,” Beethoven wrote to his doctor, hoping that the happiness of love would help him overcome his terrible illness.
And she? She, brought up in an aristocratic family, looked down on her teacher - albeit of a famous, but humble origin, and besides, deafening. “Unfortunately, she belongs to a different class,” Beethoven admitted, realizing what an abyss lies between him and his beloved. But Juliet could not understand her brilliant teacher, she was too frivolous and superficial for this. She dealt Beethoven a double blow: she turned away from him and married Robert Gallenberg, a mediocre music composer, but a count ...
Beethoven was a great musician and a great person. A man of titanic will, a mighty spirit, a man of lofty thoughts and deepest feelings. Imagine how great must have been his love, and his sufferings, and his desire to overcome these sufferings!
"Moonlight Sonata" was created in this difficult time of his life. Under its real name "Sonata quasi una Fantasia" that is, "Sonata like a fantasy", Beethoven wrote: "Dedicated to Countess Giulietta Guicciardi" ...
Listen now to this music! Listen to it not only with your ears, but with all your heart! And perhaps now you will hear in the first part such immeasurable sorrow as you have never heard before;
in the second part - such a bright and at the same time such a sad smile, which had not been noticed before;
and, finally, in the finale - such a stormy boiling of passions, such an incredible desire to break out of the shackles of sadness and suffering, which only a true titan can do. Beethoven, struck by misfortune, but not bent under its weight, was such a titan.
The Moonlight Sonata brought us closer to the world of Beethoven's grief and Beethoven's suffering, to that profound Beethoven's humanity that has been stirring the hearts of millions of people for more than a century and a half, even those who have never seriously listened to real music.

In the same way, joyful music reveals to us all the joys of the world, everything that makes people laugh and have fun.

The theme of joy is heard in many of Beethoven's works, including the famous Ninth Symphony, in the finale of which (for the first time in the history of symphonic music!) Beethoven introduced a choir and soloists singing a mighty anthem - "Ode to Joy" to the words of Schiller.
But the Seventh Symphony is one of the few works by Beethoven where joy, enthusiastic, exuberant joy arises not as the end of a struggle, not in the process of overcoming difficulties and obstacles, but as if the struggle that led to this victorious joy had passed somewhere earlier, not seen and not heard by us.
But Beethoven would not have been Beethoven if he had surrendered to the power of elemental joy thoughtlessly, forgetting about the complexities and vicissitudes of real life.
The Seventh Symphony, like most of Beethoven's other symphonies, has four movements. The first of these parts is preceded by a long, slow introduction. Many critics heard in this introduction echoes of that love for nature, which Beethoven himself often spoke about. For example, much is connected with nature in his Sixth Symphony, which, in his own words, he was helped to compose by cuckoos, orioles, quails and nightingales.
In the introduction to the Seventh Symphony, it is indeed not difficult to hear a picture of the morning awakening of nature. But, like everything in Beethoven, nature here is also powerful, and if the sun is rising, then its first rays illuminate everything around with a bright and burning light. Or maybe these are also distant echoes of that struggle, which nevertheless was and was, obviously, not easy ...
But now the introduction is over, and Beethoven literally brings down the elements of joy on us. The three parts of the symphony are filled with it. If there were such an instrument that could measure the strength of the tension of music, the strength of the feelings expressed by it, then in Beethoven's Seventh Symphony alone, we would probably find as much joy as it does not exist in all the works taken together by many other composers.
What a miracle of art and, if you like, a miracle of life! Beethoven, whose life was completely devoid of joy, Beethoven, who once said in despair: “Oh, fate, give me at least one day of pure joy!” - he himself gave humanity with his art an abyss of joy for many centuries to come!
Isn't it really a miracle: to melt boundless suffering into violent joy, to bring to life dazzling bright sounds from dead deafness! ..
But the three joyful movements of the Seventh Symphony are the first movement, the third and the fourth. And the second?
It was here that Beethoven remained true to the truth of life, which he learned from his personal and difficult experience. Even those of you who have never heard the Seventh Symphony before may recognize the music of its second movement. This is mournful music - not a song, not a march. There are no heroic or tragic notes in it, which are usually heard in Beethoven's funeral marches. But it is full of such sincere, heartfelt sadness that it is often performed at civil memorial services, on the mournful days of the funeral of outstanding people dear to all of us.
Even the brighter episode that appears in the middle of this movement (in fact, it also happens in Chopin's funeral march, written half a century later), does not deprive this music of its general mournful tone.
This part of the whole symphony gives an amazing vital truthfulness, as if saying: we all strive for joy, joy is wonderful! But, alas, our life is woven not only out of joy...
It was this part that was repeated twice at the request of the public during the first performance of the symphony. This part is one of the most beautiful and most popular pages of Beethoven's music. (D. B. Kabalevsky. Conversations about music for youth).

We see that music has the ability to generalize all similar phenomena of the world, that, expressing any state in sounds, it always gives immeasurably more than the experience of the soul of one person can accommodate.

Not only joys and sorrows, but all fabulous miracles, all the riches of fantasy, all the mysterious and magical that is hidden in the incomprehensible depths of life - all this is contained in music, the main exponent of the invisible, wonderful, intimate.

Questions and tasks:

1. Name the pieces of music you know that would embody the basic human feelings - joy, sadness, anger, delight, etc.
2. Listen to these poems. What do you think, which of them most closely matches the image of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata? Explain your choice.

Presentation

Included:
1. Presentation, ppsx;
2. Sounds of music:
Beethoven. Symphony No. 7:
1 part. Poco sostenuto-Vivace, mp3;
2 part. Allegretto, mp3;
Beethoven. Symphony No. 9, Ode to Joy (final), mp3;
Beethoven. Sonata No. 14:
1 part. Adagio sostenuto (2 versions: symphony orchestra and piano), mp3;
2 part. Allegretto (piano), mp3;
3 part. Presto agitato (piano), mp3;
3. Accompanying flock, docx.

Content in music- the inner spiritual image of the work; what the music expresses. Every artistic content has three sides - subject(fable) emotional and ideological(“Book on aesthetics for musicians”, M.-Sofia, 1983, p. 137). The central concepts of musical content - idea(sensually embodied musical thought) and musical image(direct opening musical feeling holistically pronounced character , as well as musical capturing feelings and states of mind). The most important and specific side of the musical content is beauty, beautiful, outside kotoporo there is no art (ibid., p. 39). The dominance of high aesthetic, artistic feelings of beauty and harmony(through the prism of which the lower, everyday feelings and emotions are also refracted) allows music to perform the most important social function of elevating the human personality.
Form in music- sound content implementation using a system of elements and their relationships. The germ of this Form musical and mobile dynamic her momentum - intonation complex, which most directly reflects the essence of the ideological and figurative content and represents the realization of the core of muses. thoughts by means of rhythm, mode and texture. musical thought(idea, image) is embodied in metric organization, motive structure of the melody, chord, counterpoint, timbres, etc..; it is fully realized in the integral Musical Form, in logical development through a system of repetitions, contrasts, reflections, in the aggregate of various semantic functions of the parts of the Musical Form. The composition technique (musical form) serves to complete the expression of the muses. thoughts, the creation of an aesthetically complete artistic whole, the achievement of beauty (for example, in harmony, technical rules determine “harmonic beauty”, according to P. I. Tchaikovsky).
Musical form and content are the same. Any, including the most subtle, shades of artistic feelings are certainly expressed by some means of the Musical Form, any technical details serve to express the content (even if it cannot be formulated verbally). The non-conceptuality of music. artistic image, which does not allow to adequately reproduce it in the language of verbal speech, can be grasped with a sufficient degree of certainty by the specific artistic and technical apparatus of musical-theoretical analysis, which proves the unity of the content and form of the musical. Leading, creating factor in this unity is always intonation-driven content. Moreover, the function of creativity is not only reflective, passive, but also "demiurgical", involving the creation of new artistic, aesthetic, spiritual values ​​(which do not exist in the reflected object as such). The musical form is the expression of the muses. thoughts within the framework of the historical and socially determined intonational structure and the corresponding sound material. Muses. material is organized in musical form based on a fundamental distinction repetition and non-repetition; all specific forms of music - different types repetitions.
Even after the music was isolated from the original "musical" trinity of the word - chant - body movement (Greek chorea), The musical form retains an organic connection with verse, step, dance(“In the beginning there was rhythm,” according to X. Bülow).

The means of which is sound and silence. Probably, any person in his life heard at least once the murmur of a stream in the forest. Does it remind you of melodic music? And the sound of spring rain on the roof - doesn't that sound like a melody? Just when a person began to notice such details around him, he realized that he was surrounded by music everywhere. It is the art of sounds creating together a unique harmony. And man began to learn from nature. However, in order to create a harmonious melody, it was not enough to simply understand that music is an art. Something was missing, and people began to experiment, to look for means of transmitting sounds, to express themselves.

How did music come about?

Over time, a person has learned to express his emotions through a song. The song was thus the first music created by man himself. He wanted for the first time with the help of a melody to tell about love, this wonderful feeling. The first songs were written about her. Then, when grief came, the man decided to perform a song about him, to express and show his feelings in it. This is how memorial services, funerary songs, and church hymns arose.

To maintain the rhythm, since the development of the dance, music performed by the body of the person himself has appeared - snapping fingers, clapping, hitting a tambourine or a drum. It was the drum and tambourine that were the first musical instruments. Man with their help learned to produce sound. These tools are so ancient that their appearance is difficult to trace, since they can be found in all peoples. Music today is fixed with the help of notes, and it is realized in the process of performance.

How does music affect our mood?

Characteristics of music in terms of sound and construction

Also, music can be characterized by sound and structure. One sounds more dynamic, the other is calm. Music can have a clear harmonious rhythmic pattern, or it can have a broken rhythm. Many elements determine the overall sound of various compositions. Let's take a look at four terms that are most frequently used: mode, dynamics, backing track, and rhythm.

Dynamics and rhythm in music

Dynamics in music - musical concepts and designations associated with the loudness of its sound. Relate to the dynamics of sharp and gradual change in music, loudness, accent, and a few other terms.

Rhythm is the ratio of the length of notes (or sounds) in their sequence. It is built on the fact that some notes last a little longer than others. They all come together in a musical flow. Rhythmic variations give rise to the ratio of the duration of sounds. Combining, these variations form a rhythmic pattern.

fret

Mode as a concept in music has many definitions. It occupies a central place in harmony. Here are some definitions of mode.

Yu.D. Engel believes that this is a scheme for constructing a certain sound range. B.V. Asafiev - that this is the organization of tones in their interaction. I.V. Sposobin pointed out that mode is a system of sound connections, united by some tonic center - one sound or consonance.

The musical mode was defined in its own way by various researchers. However, one thing is clear - thanks to him, a piece of music sounds harmoniously.

backing track

Consider the following concept - backing track. It should certainly be revealed when talking about what music is. The definition of a backing track is as follows - this is a composition from which the vocals have been removed, or the sound of some musical instrument is missing in it. One or more parts of instruments and / or vocals are missing from the backing track, which / which were present in the original version before the composition was changed. The most common form of it is the removal of words from the song so that the music sounds alone, without lyrics.

In this article, we told you about what music is. The definition of this beautiful art form has been presented only briefly. Of course, for those who are interested in it in depth, professional level, it makes sense to study its theory and practice, laws and foundations. Our article answers only some of the questions. Music is an art that can be studied for a very long time.

In modern psychological and pedagogical literature, the perception of music is considered as “the process of reflection, formation of a musical image in the mind of a person. At the heart of this process is an evaluative attitude to the perceived work.

There is another definition musical perception: this is “a complex activity aimed at adequate reflection of music and combining the actual perception (perception) musical material with the data of musical and general life experience (apperception), cognition, emotional experience and evaluation of the work"

Musical perception is a complex, mentally multi-component process. Any person with simple physical hearing can determine where music is playing and where it is just noise produced by various objects, machines and other objects. But not everyone can hear the reflection of the subtlest experiences in the sounds of music.

In addition, musical perception is a historical, social, age concept. It is conditioned by a system of determinants: a piece of music, general historical, life, genre and communicative context, external and internal conditions of perception. It is also determined by age and gender. Musical perception is influenced by the style of the work, its genre. For example, the masses of Palestrina are listened to differently than the symphonies of Shostakovich or the songs of Solovyov-Sedov. Music is perceived differently in the historic Philharmonic Hall, in particular, in the hall of the Academic Chapel. M.I. Glinka or on the open stage of the park of culture and recreation. And the point is not only in the acoustic features of these concert venues, but also in the mood that the atmosphere, interior, etc., creates in the listener. The construction and decoration of a concert or theater hall is one of the most difficult tasks architecture and applied arts. Decoration concert halls flowers, paintings, sculptures, etc. has an unusually beneficial effect on musical perception.

To develop musical perception means to teach the listener to empathize with the feelings and moods expressed by the composer through the play of sounds organized in a special way. This means - to include the listener in the process of active co-creation and empathy with ideas and images expressed in the language of non-verbal communication; it also means an understanding of the means by which an artist-musician, composer, performer achieves a given aesthetic effect of influence. In addition to activity, musical perception is characterized by a number of qualities, in which its beneficial, developing influence on the human psyche, including mental abilities, is revealed.

Musical perception, like no other, is distinguished by vivid emotionality and imagery. It affects various aspects of the emotional sphere. Despite the abstractness of the musical language, the musical content is diverse and embossed in images. And the specificity of their perception lies not in the strict fixation of these images, but in their variability. The work of reproductive thinking is connected with musical perception and its inherent evaluative activity.

Speaking about the specifics of musical perception, it is necessary to understand the difference between hearing music, hearing music and perception music. Hearing music does not imply concentration of attention only on it, listening already requires focusing attention on music, while perception is associated with comprehending the meaning of music and requires the inclusion of intellectual functions. Moreover, the more complex, larger-scale a piece of music, the more intense intellectual work it requires from a person when it is perceived. An intermediate stage between listening to music and its perception is comitate perception, a kind of “lightweight” perception, “half an ear”. It has been dominant for thousands of years.

The formation of a full-fledged musical perception testifies to the most complex multilateral interrelated process: firstly, about intellectual growth of a person, secondly, about the improvement of all his basic musical abilities, and thirdly, about the high level of development of musical art, the peak of which was the appearance of the classical sonata and symphony. It is the perception of such genres as symphony and sonata that requires the greatest intellectual tension and concentration.

The development of music perception occurs in the process of all types of musical activity. For example, in order to learn a song, you must first listen to it; when performing a song, it is important to listen to the purity of the intonation of the melody, the expressiveness of its sound; moving to the music, we follow its rhythmic, dynamic, tempo change, development and convey our attitude to the work in motion.

In the process of perception of music, we can distinguish several stages:

The stage of the emergence of interest in the work to be heard, and the formation of an attitude towards its perception,

listening stage,

Stage of understanding and experience,

Interpretation and evaluation stage,

realizing that the division is conditional, since the sequence of stages can change, one period of perception can merge with another.

Analyzing the process of musical perception, we can present it in two planes of activity, inextricably bound friend with the other - perception as such and the idea of ​​music, i.e. holistic image of the work. Only multiple perception (repetition) of music allows a person to form a full-fledged holistic image of the work. In the process of multiple perception of music, there is a constant improvement of auditory actions, the degree of their coordination. At the first listening, the main task of perception is the approximate coverage of the entire musical plan of the work with the selection of individual fragments. In the process of repeated listening in the structure of musical activity, forecasting and anticipation based on previously formed ideas begin to appear. The listener compares what is sounding at a given moment of time with what was previously perceived, with his own associative range. Finally, in the process of subsequent perception on the basis of in-depth analysis through synthesis, a rational-logical assimilation of musical material takes place, a comprehensive comprehension and experience of its emotional meaning.

From the foregoing, it is clearly seen that musical perception is characterized by certain properties. Some of them are specific to musical perception (emotionality, imagery), while others are common to all types of perception (integrity, meaningfulness, selectivity).

Speaking about the perception of music, one cannot bypass such an integral part of it as emotionality. Aesthetic emotionality is understood as the experience of the beauty of the artistic image, feelings, thoughts awakened by music. Aesthetic perception music is always emotional, without emotions it is unthinkable. At the same time, emotional perception may not be aesthetic. Listening to music, a person can simply “succumb” to its mood, “get infected” with it, simply rejoice or be sad, without thinking about its aesthetic content. Only gradually, as a result of purposeful activity to gain experience in communicating with music, having received certain knowledge, musical baggage, he will begin to highlight the aesthetic side of a musical work, to notice and realize the beauty and depth of sounding music.

Sometimes the aesthetic experience is so strong and vivid that a person experiences a feeling of great happiness. "This feeling - according to the definition of the composer D. Shostakovich - arises from the fact that in a person, under the influence of music, the dormant forces of the soul awaken until now and he cognizes them."

Another characteristic property of musical perception is integrity. A person perceives a piece of music, first of all, as a whole, but this is carried out on the basis of the perception of the expressiveness of individual elements of musical speech: melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre. The perceived musical image is a complex unity of various means musical expressiveness, creatively used by the composer to convey a certain artistic content. An artistic musical image is always perceived by a person as a whole, but with varying degrees of completeness and differentiation, depending on the level of development of each individual.

“The concept of the integrity of musical perception is not adequate to the concept of its completeness of differentiation. Naturally, an unprepared listener cannot adequately perceive the whole system of means that creates a musical image, as a professional musician is capable of doing. Nevertheless, he perceives in the work its holistic image - the mood, the nature of the work.

One of the most important (if not the most important) components of perception in general and musical perception in particular is meaningfulness. Psychologists say that perception is impossible without the participation of thinking, without awareness and understanding of what is perceived. V.N. Shatskaya writes that "under the main perception of a musical work is meant the perception associated with its aesthetic assessment and awareness of music, its ideas, the nature of experience and all the expressive means that form the musical image" .

The thesis about the unity of the emotional and the conscious in the perception of music also takes place in the works of Russian scientists. One of the first to formulate it was B.V. Asafiev. “Many people listen to music,” he wrote, “but only a few hear it, especially instrumental music…It is pleasant to dream to instrumental music. To hear in such a way as to appreciate art is already intense attention, which means mental work, speculation. The unity of the emotional and conscious in the perception and performance of music is one of the basic principles of musical pedagogy.

Logic plays an important role in the perception of music. thinking. All his operations (analysis, synthesis) and forms (judgment, conclusion) are aimed at the perception of the musical image and means of musical expression. Without it, the process of musical perception could not take place.

One of the most important operations of thinking for the perception of music is comparison. At the heart of the perception, "becoming" of music lies precisely the process of comparing, for example, the intonations of the previous and subsequent sounds in one work, repeating complexes of consonances in different works.

Of essential importance are the operations of classification, generalizations, which help to attribute a piece of music to certain genre or style that, in turn. Makes it much easier to understand. Forms of thinking - judgment and inference - underlie the evaluation of specific musical works, the whole process artistic education and musical culture in general.

Selectivity perception is manifested in the ability to catch the expressiveness of intonations and follow the development of melodies, musical themes. One can speak about the selectivity of musical perception in a broader sense - as a preference for one or another musical style, genre, and one or another piece of music. In this case, the selectivity of perception can be considered as the basis for the formation of artistic taste.

Selectivity as a property of musical perception, in particular, in children, has not yet been studied enough. Mass pedagogical observations and surveys show that the majority of children prefer "light" music to "serious" music. But this phenomenon has not been scientifically explained. It is not clear why children like some works and are accessible, while they reject others as boring and incomprehensible.

Musical perception is difficult process which is based on the ability to hear, experience the musical content of the work as an artistic and imaginative reflection of reality. In the process of perception, the listener, as it were, "gets used" to the musical images of the work. However, to feel the mood in the music is not all, it is important to comprehend the idea of ​​the work. The structure of adequate thoughts and feelings, understanding of the idea arise in the listener due to the activation of his musical thinking, which depends on the level of general and musical development.

Summing up the analysis of the process of musical perception, it is worth noting that the need for the development of perception has been repeatedly drawn attention by musicologists-practitioners who work directly with the children's audience. The development of musical perception expands and strengthens the musical experience of students, activates their thinking. An important condition for the development of the ability to think is direct emotional perception. Only after it can one proceed to a detailed analysis of the work.

Thus, the correct organization of "listening" to music, taking into account the peculiarities of perception contribute to the activation of musical activity, the development of interests, musical tastes of students, and, consequently, the gradual formation of musical culture.

L.P. Kazantseva
Doctor of Arts, Professor of the Astrakhan State Conservatory
and Volgograd State Institute of Arts and Culture

THE CONCEPT OF MUSICAL CONTENT

Since ancient times, human thought has tried to penetrate the secrets of music. One of these secrets, or rather, the key one, was the essence of music. There was no doubt that music can strongly influence a person due to the fact that it contains something in itself. However, what exactly is this meaning, what does it “speak” to a person, what is heard in the sounds - this differently varied question, which has interested many generations of musicians, thinkers, scientists, has not lost its sharpness even today. It is not surprising that the key question for music of its content received very different, sometimes mutually exclusive answers. Here are just a few of them, conditionally grouped by us.

Significantly stands out the area of ​​​​opinions about music as an imprint human:

music is an expression of human feelings and emotions(F. Bouterwek: musical arts express “feelings without knowledge of the external world according to the laws of human nature. All these external arts can only indicate vaguely, paint only very remotely”; L.R. d'Alembert; V.G. Wackenroder; K. M, Weber, F. Chopin, F. Thiersch, J.J. Engel, J. Sand: "The field of music is emotional unrest"; R. Wagner: music "remains even in its extreme manifestations only to in s t v about m "; S. Kierkegaard; R. Rolland; Stendhal; R. Wagner; V. P. Botkin; L. N. Tolstoy: "Music is shorthand for feelings"; B. M. Teplov: "Content music are feelings, emotions, moods"; L. Berio; A.Ya. Zis; S. Langer; S.Kh. Rappoport; E.A. Sitnitskaya); thinkers of the 17th - 18th centuries. (A. Kircher, I. Mattheson, D. Harris, N. Diletsky and others): music is an expression of affects;

music is an expression of feelings(I. Kant: it “speaks through sensations alone without concepts and, therefore, unlike poetry, leaves nothing for reflection”);

music is an expression of intelligence(I.S. Turgenev: “Music is the mind embodied in beautiful sounds”; J. Xenakis: the essence of music is to “express intelligence with the help of sounds”; R. Wagner: “Music cannot think, but it can to embody a thought"; G. W. Leibniz: "Music is an unconscious exercise of the soul in arithmetic");

music is an expression of the inner world of a person(G.W.F. Hegel: “Music makes subjective inner life its content”; V.A. Sukhomlinsky: “Music unites the moral, emotional and aesthetic spheres of a person”; K.Kh.F. Krause; A.A. Farbshtein ; M. I. Roiterstein: “The main thing that music tells about is the inner world of a person, his spiritual life, his feelings and experiences, his thoughts and moods in their comparison, development”; V. N. Vladimirov; Golovinsky, I. V. Nestiev, A. A. Chernov);

music is an expression of the mysterious depths of the human soul(J.F. Rameau: “Music should appeal to the soul”, “Genuine music is the language of the heart”; A.N. Serov: “Music is the language of the soul; it is the area of ​​feelings and moods; it is the life of the soul expressed in sounds”; F. Grillparzer: "It is precisely vague feelings that are the own field of music"; F. Garcia Lorca: "Music in itself is passion and mystery. Words speak of the human; music expresses what no one knows, no one can explain, but what is more or less in everyone"; H. Riemann: "The content ... of music is formed by melodic, dynamic and agogic ups and downs, bearing the imprint of the spiritual movement that gave rise to them"; A.F. Losev: "Music turns out to be the most intimate and most adequate expression of the elements of spiritual life”);

music is an expression of the inexpressible, the subconscious(V.F. Odoevsky: “Music in itself is an unaccountable art, the art of expressing the inexpressible”; S. Munsch: “Music is an art that expresses the inexpressible. The possession of music is a sphere of the subconscious that cannot be controlled by the mind and touch”; G. G. Neuhaus: "Everything "insoluble", inexpressible, indescribable that constantly lives in the soul of a person, everything "subconscious" (...) is the realm of music. Here are its sources").

The field of ideas about music as an imprint is many-sided extrahuman:

music is an expression of the existential, the Absolute, the Divine(R. De Conde: music calls for an “irrational absolute”; R. Steiner: “The task of music is to embody the spirit that is given to man. Music reproduces the ideal forces that lie behind the material world”; A.N. Skryabin; K.V. .F. Solger: the meaning of music is “the presence of a deity and the dissolution of the soul in the divine ...”; Franz Fischer: “Even a good dance music- religious");

music is an expression of the essence of Being(A. Schopenhauer: “Music in any case expresses only the quintessence of life and its events”, other arts “speak only about the shadow, it is about the essence”; V.V. Medushevsky: “The true content of music is the eternal secrets of being and human soul"; G.V. Sviridov: "Word ... carries the Thought of the World ... Music carries the Feeling, Sensation, Soul of this world"; L. Z. Lyubovsky: "Music is a kind of reflection of the composer's comprehension of Nature, the Universe, Eternity, God. This is her majestic Object»);

music is a reflection of reality(Yu.N. Tyulin: “The content of music is the reflection of reality in specific musical images”; I.Ya. Ryzhkin: music “gives a complete and multifaceted reflection of social life ... and leads us to a whole knowledge of reality"; T. Adorno: "The essence of society becomes the essence of music"; A. Webern: "Music is a pattern of nature perceived by the ear");

music is movement(A. Schelling: music “represents pure movement, as such, in abstraction from the subject”; A.K. Butskoy; R. Arnheim; N.A. Goryukhina: “Question: what is meant by the content of a musical work? Answer: its dialectics own movement"; A.F. Losev: "... pure music has the means to convey ... the ugly element of life, i.e. its pure becoming”; VC. Sukhantseva: "The subject of music ... is the area of ​​re-creation of the procedural nature of being in its actual socio-cultural development..."; L.P. Zarubina: “Music mainly and predominantly depicts the formation”);

music is an expression of positive(A.V. Schlegel: “Music absorbs only those of our feelings that can be loved for their own sake, those on which our soul can voluntarily linger. Absolute conflict, a negative principle has no way into music. Bad, vile music does not can express, even if she wanted to"; A.N. Serov: "Ambition, stinginess, deceit, like Iago, the malice of Richard III, the sophistication of Goethe's Faust are not musical subjects").

The transitional zone between the first and second regions is also visible, into which the following installations fall:

music is an expression of man and the world(N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov: “The content of works of art is the life of the human spirit and nature in its positive and negative manifestations, expressed in their mutual relations”; G.Z. Apresyan: she “capable of reflecting by its inherent means the essential phenomena of life, primarily the feelings and thoughts of people, the spirit of its time, certain ideals”; Y. A. Kremlev; L. A. Mazel; L. M. Kadtsyn: “The content of musical works is the world of ideas ... about the work itself, about the surrounding world, about the listener in this world and, of course, about the author and performer in this world"; B.L. Yavorsky: "Music expresses: a) schemes of motor processes... b) schemes emotional processes... 3) schemes of volitional processes... 4) schemes of contemplative processes”; A.A. Evdokimova highlights the emotional, intellectual and subject aspects of the musical content);

music is a reflection of reality in the emotions and ideas of a person(Yu.B. Borev; G.A. Frantsuzov: the content of music is “an image of emotional experiences, acting as one of the forms of mental reflection in the mind of a person of objective reality - the subject of musical art”).

Finally, it is important, although somewhat paradoxical, to understand music as an imprint sound:

music is a specific self-valuable world(L.N. Tolstoy: “Music, if it is music, has to say something that can only be expressed by music”; I.F. Stravinsky: “Music expresses itself”; L.L. Sabaneev: “This is a closed a world from which a breakthrough into logic and ideology ... is made only by a violent and artificial way"; H. Eggebrecht: "Music does not mean something extramusical; it means itself");
music - aestheticized sounds (G. Knepler: “Music is everything that functions as music”; B.V. Asafiev: “The subject of music is not a visible or tangible thing, but is the embodiment, or reproduction, of processes-states of sound, or, proceeding from perception, - giving oneself to the state of hearing. What? Complexes of sound in their relationship ... ");

music is a combination of sounds(E. Hanslick: “Music consists of sound sequences, sound forms that have no content other than themselves ... there is no content in it, except for the sound forms we hear, for music not only speaks with sounds, it speaks only sounds”; M. Benze, V. Viora, E. Garni, G. A. Laroche, A. Mol, D. Proroll, N. Ringbom, V. Fuchs, T. Zielinsky: she is a “soundscape”);

music is everything that sounds(I.G. Herder: “Everything that sounds in nature is music”; J. Cage: “Music is sounds, sounds that are heard around us, regardless of whether we are in a concert hall or outside it "; L. Berio: "Music is everything that is listened to with the intention of hearing music").

Of course, a very conditional grouping of thoughts about the essence of music cannot cover the palette of opinions that has developed today. This obviously does not include positions, say, arising from the interpretation of music in the Middle Ages as a science, from the distinction in music between the composer's opus and the improvisational process of music-making, statements of the ontological nature of music as an art form, transferring the concept of the content of music to the field of perception, etc.

Some modern definitions of musical content, given by V.N. Kholopova - "... its expressive and semantic essence"; A.Yu. Kudryashov - "... integrated system interactions of musical-semantic genera, types and types of signs with their objectively established meanings, as well as subjective-concrete meanings refracted in the individual consciousness of the composer, which are further transformed into new meanings in the performing interpretation and listener's perception"; VC. Sukhantseva - "... the area of ​​\u200b\u200bbeing and evolution of rhythmic-intonational complexes in their fundamental conditionality and mediation by the creative subjectivity of the composer"; Yu.N. Kholopov, who believes that the content of music as art is “the inner spiritual aspect of the work; what music expresses" and includes "feelings and experiences in a special aesthetic esk and e ”and“ sound quality that ... is subjectively perceived as one or another pleasantness of the sound material and sound design (in the negative case - a nuisance) ”. The positions of E. Kurt also require comprehension - “... the true, original, moving and shaping content [of music. - L.K.] is the development of mental stress, and music only conveys it in a sensual form ... "; G.E. Konyus - there is technical content (“all the various material used for its [musical creation. - L.K.] production”) and artistic content (“impact on the listener; caused by sound perceptions mental experiences; representations excited by music, images, emotions, etc.”).

It is easy to get lost in these and numerous other judgments about the content of music that are not given here, because the understanding of the essence of music known to science today is very different. Nevertheless, we will try to understand this most complicated issue.

The musical content characterizes music as an art form, therefore it should state the most general patterns. Here is how A.N. Sohor: “The content of m[usic] is made up of artistic intonation images, that [o] e [is] captured in meaningful sounds (intonations) the results of reflection, transformation and aesthetic evaluation of objective reality in the mind of a musician (composer, performer)” .

True in principle, this definition is still far from complete - and we have just seen this many times - it characterizes what music is strong in. Thus, the subject is obviously lost or unjustifiably carefully hidden behind the phrase "objective reality" - a person whose inner spiritual world is invariably attractive to the composer. From the situation of communication between the composer-performer-listener, the last link fell out - the interpretation of what is sounded by the listener, without which the musical content cannot take place.

Given the above, we will give the following definition of musical content: it is the spiritual side of music embodied in the sound, generated by the composer with the help of the objectified constants (genres, pitch systems, composition techniques, forms, etc.) that have developed in it, updated by the performing musician and formed in listener's perception.

Let us characterize the terms of the multicomponent formula presented by us in somewhat more detail.

The first component of our definition informs that musical content is the spiritual side of music. It is generated by the system of artistic representations. Performance- psychologists say - this is a specific image that arises as a result of the complex activity of the human psyche. Being a union of the efforts of perception, memory, imagination, thinking and other properties of a person, the image-representation has a generality (distinguishing it from, say, a direct impression in the image-perception). It absorbs the human experience not only of the present, but also of the past and possible future (which distinguishes it from the image-perception that is in the present and the imagination directed to the future).

If the music is system representations, it is logical to ask the question: about what exactly?

As we saw earlier, subject side musical performances seen in different ways, and almost every statement is somewhat true. In many judgments about music appears human. Indeed, musical art (as, indeed, any other) is intended for man, created and consumed by man. Naturally, it tells first of all about a person, that is, a person, almost in all the richness of his self-manifestation, has become a natural “object” displayed by music.

A person feels, thinks, acts in relations with other people in the center of the philosophical, moral, religious laws of being developed by society; he lives among nature, in the world of things, in geographic space and historical time. Habitat of a person in the broad sense of the word, that is, the macrocosm (relative to the world of the person himself) is also a worthy subject of music.

We will not discard as untenable those statements in which the essence of music is linked with sound. The most controversial, they are also legitimate (in particular for contemporary creativity), especially if they are not focused specifically on sound, but expanded to the entire apparatus of influence that has developed within the boundaries of music. Thus, the meaning of music can lie in its self-knowledge, in ideas about its own resources, that is, about the microcosm (again, relative to the human world).

The large subject “spheres of competence” (A.I. Burov) of music that we have named - ideas about a person, the world around us and music itself - testify to a wide range of its topics. The aesthetic possibilities of music will be realized by us as even more significant if we remember that the delineated subject areas are by no means necessarily carefully isolated, but are prone to various interpenetrations and mergers.

Formed into musical content, performances are generated and coexist according to the laws of musical art: they are concentrated (say, in the exposition of intonations) and discharged (in intonation development), correlate with the “events” of musical dramaturgy (for example, they replace each other when a new image is introduced) . In full agreement with the spatio-temporal foundations of the integrity of a musical work, the temporal development of some representations (corresponding to musical intonations) thickens and compresses into more capacious (musical images), which, in turn, give rise to the most general ideas(semantic "concentrates" - musical and artistic themes and ideas). Subordinate to artistic (musical) laws, ideas generated by music gain the status artistic(musical).

Musical content is not a single performance, but a system of them. This means not just a certain set of them (a set, a complex), but their certain interconnectedness. In terms of their objectivity, representations can be heterogeneous, but ordered in a certain way. In addition, they can have different significance - be primary, secondary, less significant. On the basis of some, more particular, representations, other, more generalized, global ones arise. Combining multiple and heterogeneous representations gives a rather complexly organized system.

The peculiarity of the system lies in its dynamism. A piece of music is arranged in such a way that in the unfolding of the sound fabric, meanings are constantly being created, interacting with those that have already taken place and synthesizing more and more new ones. The content of a musical work is in constant motion, "playing" and "flickering" with facets and shades, revealing its various layers. Inconstantly changeable, it slips away and entails.

Let's go further. Some perceptions arise composer. Since representation is the result of a person's mental activity, it cannot be limited only to an objectively existing subject area. It certainly includes subjective-personal beginning, human reflection. Thus, the representation underlying music is an indissoluble unity of objective and subjective principles. Let's show their unity on such a difficult phenomenon as musical-thematic borrowings.

The musical-thematic material borrowed by the composer, that is, already existing musical statements, finds itself in a difficult situation. On the one hand, it keeps a connection with an already established artistic phenomenon and exists as an objective reality. On the other hand, it is intended to convey other artistic thoughts. In this regard, it is advisable to distinguish between its two statuses: autonomous musical thematism (located in the primary artistic opus) and contextual (acquired through its secondary use). They correspond to autonomous and contextual meanings.

Musically-thematic borrowings can retain their primary meanings in a new work. The semantic side of the fragment from "The Enlightened Night" by A. Schoenberg in the Third Sonata for button accordion by Vl. Zolotarev, despite the arrangement of the orchestral fabric for a solo instrument; in the play “Moz-Art” for two violins by A. Schnittke, the author also manages to draw the easily recognizable initial musical theme of the symphony g minor Mozart in a violin duet without distorting its meaning. In both cases, the autonomous and contextual meanings almost coincide, leaving priority for "objectively given".

However, even the most careful handling of borrowing (not excluding the mentioned examples) is under the pressure of a new artistic context, which is aimed at forming semantic layers in the borrowing composer's opus that are not achievable without someone else's music. Thus, at the end of Zolotarev's piece, a fragment from Schoenberg's music acquires an elevated idealization that is unusual for him in the original source, and the key intonation of Mozart's symphony is involved in a witty game played by two violins by Schnittke. Even more obvious is the composer's subjective activity in those cases when borrowings are not given "verbatim", but are preliminarily ("pre-context") dissected. Consequently, even such a detail as the musical thematic material used by the composer bears the stamp of a diverse unity of the "objectively" given and the author's individuality, which is actually natural for art as a whole.

To outline a particular subject area and express their own vision to the composer allow objectified constants- Traditions developed by musical culture. An essential feature of the musical content is that it is not created by the composer every time "from scratch", but incorporates certain semantic clots developed by generations of predecessors. These meanings are refined, typological and stored in genres, pitch systems, compositional techniques, musical forms, styles, well-known intonation-signs (intonation formulas like Dies irae, rhetorical figures, symbolism musical instruments, semantic roles of keys, timbres, etc.). Once in the field of attention of the listener, they evoke certain associations and help to "decipher" the composer's intention, thereby strengthening mutual understanding between the author, performer and listener. Resorting to them as fulcrums, the author layers new semantic layers on this foundation, conveying his artistic ideas to the audience.

The ideas that arise in the composer are formed into an artistic opus, which becomes full-fledged music only if it is interpreted by the performer and perceived by the listener. For us, it is important that the representations that make up the spiritual side of music are formed not only in the composer's opus, but also in performance and perception. The author's ideas are corrected, enriched or impoverished (for example, in cases of loss of the "connection of times" with a large time distance between the composer and the performer or the composer and the listener, a serious genre and style transformation of the "primary source" opus, etc.) by the ideas of other subjects and only in this form do they turn from the potential of music into true music as a real phenomenon. Since the situations of interpretations and perceptions are countless and individually unique, it can be argued that the musical content is in continuous motion, that it is a dynamically developing system.

Like any other representation that arises in music, it is “reified”. His "material form" sound, therefore, the representation "materialized" by him can be called sound or auditory. The sound way of being representations distinguishes music from other forms of art, in which representations are "reified" by line, paint, word, etc.

Of course, any sound is capable of causing a performance, but it does not necessarily create music. In order to get out of the depths of primordial "noises" and become musical, that is, "tone", the sound must be aestheticized, "raised" above the ordinary by its special expressive effect on a person. This is achievable when sound is included (by special means and techniques) in the musical and artistic process. In such a situation, the sound acquires specific - artistic - functions.

However, the recognition of the sound nature of music does not absolutize exclusively auditory representations as purely musical. Others are quite acceptable in it - visual, tactile, tactile, olfactory. Of course, in music they by no means compete with auditory representations and are called upon to generate additional, additional associations that clarify the basic auditory representation. However, even such a modest, auxiliary role of optional performances allows them to coordinate music with other types of art and, more broadly, with other ways of being a person.

Understanding this, one should still refrain from extremes - an overly broad interpretation of music, expressed, for example, by S.I. Savshinsky: “The content of a musical work includes not only what is given in its sound fabric. With it merge, perhaps expressed or even not expressed by the composer, the program - the data of theoretical analysis, etc. For Beethoven, these are the analyzes of A. Marx, the articles of R. Rolland; for the works of Chopin, these are his “Letters”, Liszt’s books about him, Schumann’s articles, analyzes of Leuchtentritt or Mazel, statements by Anton Rubinstein, for Glinka and Tchaikovsky these are the articles of Laroche, Serov and Asafiev". It seems that “near-musical” materials, which are certainly important for the perception of music, should not blur the boundaries of music itself, which are predetermined by its sound nature. The latter, however, consists not only in sound as a substance, but also in the subordination of sound to the musical laws of being (sound-pitch, tonal-harmonic, dramatic, and others).

Paying tribute to sound in music as an art form, we nevertheless warn you: its embodiment in sound should not be understood straightforwardly, they say, music is just what sounds right at the moment. Sound as an acoustic phenomenon - the result of fluctuations in an elastic air medium - may be absent "here and now". However, at the same time, in principle, it is reproducible with the help of memories (of previously heard music) and internal hearing (according to the available musical notation). These are the works, a) composed and notated by the author, but not yet voiced, b) living an active stage life, and also c) works that are now (temporarily) not relevant “the totality of already accomplished performing realizations”, “the memory of which has been postponed, stored in public consciousness» . In those cases when the sound "clothing" of performances was not found and fixed by the composer or - in improvisation - presented by the performer, who at the same time also takes on the author's functions, it is not necessary to talk about the musical content, and indeed the musical work. Thus, the musical content of L. Beethoven's Thirty-Second Piano Sonata, which does not sound while reading these lines, quite realistically exists. Nevertheless, it is more or less successfully reconstructable, which would be completely impossible in a hypothetical case, for example, with the Thirty-third Sonata of the same author, which does not have sound substance.

So, we found out that the result of the mental activity of a person - a composer, performer, listener - acquires sound "shapes" and forms spirituality music.

STRUCTURE OF THE CONTENT OF A MUSICAL WORK

If the concept of musical content characterizes music as if from the outside, in comparison with other types of art, then the concept of the content of a musical work has an internal orientation. He denotes the sphere of the spiritual, but not in the maximum generalization (typical of music in general), but in a much greater certainty (typical of a piece of music). The musical content is focused in the content of the musical work and provides this (although not the only one, along with, say, improvisation) way of being music. Between them there are relations "invariant - variant". Preserving all the properties of musical content, the content of a musical work adapts the possibilities of music to its existence in a given form and the solution of an artistic task.

The content of a musical work is specified through a number of concepts. Describing the musical content, we talked about the key importance of performances. Not only in their objectivity, which has become quite obvious, but also in their capacity and artistic purpose in music, the performances are diverse. We single out those that are called musical images.

Musical images are given to a person as a mediation of musical sounds (real or imaginary), sound movement, deployment of musical fabric. In a piece of music, the images not only receive their own sound outlines, but also, interacting with each other in a certain way, add up to a complete figurative and artistic picture.

A musical image is a relatively large or (considering the predominantly temporary nature of music) a long semantic unit of a musical work. It can arise only on the basis of meanings of a smaller scale. These are musical intonations. Musical intonations contain lapidary, non-expanded meanings. They can be likened to words in literary language, developing into verbal units and giving life to a literary image.

Musical intonations also do not exist as “ready-made” meanings and are formed on a certain semantic basis. For them, it becomes the semantic impulses of musical sounds or tones. Standing out in a vast field of sounds, musical sound- tone - very specific, because it is designed to ensure the life of a work of art. In music, sound is dual. On the one hand, it "decorates", "embodies" the musical content, as mentioned earlier. Objectively belonging environment, the sound takes us to the area of ​​physical and acoustic realities. On the other hand, the sound is selected to solve a certain artistic task, in connection with which it is also endowed with what can be called semantic prerequisites. And although the tone is difficult to attribute to the purely semantic components of music, we include it in the structure of the content of a musical work as an elementary unit that cannot be decomposed into even smaller meanings. In this way, tone limits the lower limit of the content structure rooted in the material substance of music.

Having understood how a musical image is formed from ever smaller semantic units, let's try to go in the opposite direction and consider what content components it, in turn, determines.

Artistic image or their combination in art is found topic works. The same thing happens in music: musical images reveal the theme, understood hereinafter as a general aesthetic category. The theme is distinguished by a high degree of generalization, which allows it to cover the whole work or a large part of it. At the same time, ties with integral sound are weakening in the theme, a tendency is ripening in it to free itself from the "dictatorship" of sound and self-valuable being in the world of abstractions.

The final expression of the tendency to mediate sound by semantic units of varying degrees of capacity (intonation - images - theme) gets in idea musical work. The idea is the most generalized, abstracted and directed from sounds to the realm of the ideal, where the sound specificity of music is practically leveled in the face of ideas of scientific, religious, philosophical, and ethical origin. Thus, the idea becomes another limit of the structure of the content of a musical work, which is seen as vertically directed from the material to the ideal.

The semantic components that we have identified are lined up in a hierarchy, at each level of which certain semantic units are formed. These levels are represented tone, musical intonation, musical image, theme and idea of ​​a musical work.

The named components of the content of a musical work do not exhaust all the elements of the structure, they represent only its backbone. The structure cannot be complete without some other elements occupying specific places in it. One of these elements is means of musical expression. On the one hand, the means of musical expression are quite material, because the pitch, dynamics, timbre, articulation and other parameters are associated with a fairly clear sound. On the other hand, they sometimes crystallize meanings that become truly intonational (in some melodic patterns, rhythmic formulas, harmonic turns). Therefore, their position in the structure of the content of a musical work would correctly be called intermediate between tone and musical intonation, and such that they are, as it were, partly rooted in tone, and partly “grow” into musical intonation.

Another indispensable element of the structure of the content of a musical work is author's start. A piece of music serves to communicate two personalities - the listener and the composer, therefore it is so important in it how the composer appears in own composition. The author's personality captures itself by no means only in style, but also penetrates deeply into the area of ​​content. We can meet her not only in a musical image (the image of the author), but also in a personally colored musical intonation (by F. Chopin, R. Schumann, F. Liszt, S. Rachmaninov, D. Shostakovich), and in a personally meaningful sound palette (for example, J. Cage, J. Xenakis, S. Gubaidulina), in the subject (self-portrait), etc. It turns out that in the territory of one's own opus, the author's personality is, in principle, ubiquitous. Knowing this, we can assert that the author's principle occupies a special position - it is potentially distributed throughout the entire structure of the content of a musical work and can be localized in one or more of its components.

In the structure of the content of a musical work there is another, not previously named, element. It - dramaturgy. Almost all of its activity is aimed at ensuring the deployment process, although the latter goes through milestones and stages marked by one or another "event". This process takes place in different planes of a musical work: in the means of musical expression (as “tonal dramaturgy”, “timbre dramaturgy”, etc.), intonation (“intonation dramaturgy”), images (“figurative-artistic” or “musical dramaturgy "). Thus, dramaturgy, closely interacting with other elements, takes on the role of an energy force that stimulates the self-movement of musical content.

The presence of a driving component in the structure of the content of a musical work is symptomatic. Behind it stands an essential pattern for music: true content is not a static construction, but a process. It unfolds in the unceasing movement of the continuous creation of new meanings, the escape of already manifested meanings, changes in previously held meanings (rethinking), all kinds of interactions of meanings, etc.

As we can see, the hierarchically organized backbone of the structure was replenished with a number of other functionally unique elements. Thus, a universal structure is built that makes possible the existence of musical content in a piece of music.

It is easy to see that the components of the structure are added up in the composer's opus. However, the process of meaning creation, which begins in the activity of the composer, continues, as already mentioned, by the performer and the listener. In performing and listening creative activity, what is intended by the composer is corrected and transformed, which means that no new elements are added to the structure of the content of a musical work. In performing and listening activities, respectively, we should talk about transformation, change in the formed structure.

In the unstoppable expansion of the process of meaning generation, the structure plays the role of a flexible frame that streamlines, “disciplines” this process, that is, a kind of “bearing support” of the semantic flow. Structural units are "nodes" (B.V. Asafiev) of fluid content-becoming. Therefore, the most scrupulous study of the integral structure still does not give grounds for counting on the final solution of the problem of comprehending the phenomenon of content.

If we proceed from the chronotope (spatio-temporal nature) of a musical work, then the most important feature the process of creating the content of a musical work. It lies in its dual orientation. Meanings are incremented not only in the sequentially-temporal, horizontal, more clearly conscious movement of musical thought, but also spatially - along the “vertical”. The vertical vector reveals itself in the formation of hierarchically correlated meanings, that is, in the crystallization by semantic units of a lower level - meanings of a higher level. It is described in detail by V.V. Medushevsky. The researcher gives seven types of interaction of means of musical expressiveness, tracing the corresponding paths from the meanings of the elements of music to musical intonation or musical image :

interpretation relation: impulsive movements (texture) + joyful, light coloring (mode, register) \u003d glee, or impulsive movements + sad colors \u003d despair, or expectation + tension \u003d longing, attraction;

detail ratio: mournful intonations (descending chromaticisms or minor triads with aching retention) + tension, languor (aggravated modal relations) = sorrow;

metaphorical transfer: fullness of texture, as a phonic quality, as the fullness of space with sounds and voices + tension, aspiration, languor = fullness of feeling (“flood of feelings”, “sea of ​​flowers”);

suppression of semantics, reversal of meaning: joy, light (major) + sadness, darkness (low register, etc.) = sadness, darkness;

cutting off polysemy, highlighting hidden meanings: liberation from peripheral semantic nuances in favor of a few main ones;

interlevel contradictions, inconsistencies, exaggerations: deformations in the structure of emotion (“one-time contrast”, discovered by T.N. Livanova);

parallel interaction (synonymy): mournful sighs (in the part of the soloist) + mournful sighs (in the part of the orchestra) \u003d amplification, brightening of the meaning or aspiration (functional inclinations) + aspiration (melodic, linear inclinations) \u003d amplification of the meaning.

The "algebra of semantic interactions" developed by Medushevsky, it would seem, solves a modest particular problem - it systematizes the ways of meaning formation. But for the study of musical content, it means much more. Firstly, we see that although the scientist studies the interaction of the means of musical expressiveness, leading to the embodiment of emotion, in fact, the range of action of the formulas given by him can be extended to other results, that is, extended to images of mental processes, images-landscapes, etc. .d. In other words, we have before us universal schemes for the formation of meanings in music.

Secondly, “algebra” makes it possible to understand that “the content of a musical work is not formally deducible from the linguistic meanings of the means used,” since the elements of music also synthesize meanings that are quite different from their own. This idea can be developed and expanded: the content of a musical work is not reducible to any of the components of the structure (musical image, theme, intonation, etc.), no matter how deeply it is developed. It certainly implies the interconnectedness of a whole complex of components.

The third conclusion allowed by the formulas described above is as follows: the mechanism of formation of new meanings that they reveal "works" not only at the levels of means of musical expression and images, but also at other "floors" of the structure of the content of a musical work.

Another conclusion follows from the foregoing considerations. When synthesizing new meanings, there is a “ejection” to more high level hierarchical structure, thereby turning on the mechanism of transitions from the lower level to the higher one, from it to a higher one, etc. At the same time, each lower level turns out to be the “soil”, the foundation for the one above it. Resorting to the general philosophical categories of "content" and "form", which are essentially different from the musical and aesthetic categories of the same name, which we will constantly use later, we can say that each lower level correlates with a higher one both in form and content, and transitions with from one level to another are equivalent to transitions of form into content.

The structure of the content of a musical work that we discovered contains the most general patterns. As such, it is universal. Any essay complies with these laws, but in its own way overcomes the schematic structure. The invariant structure is detailed, filled with specifics that correspond to the individuality of each individual opus.

Since a musical work absorbs, in addition to the results of composer creativity, also the activities of the performer and listener, the content of a musical work is unthinkable without taking them into account. However, as soon as it became clear that the structure formed in the composer's opus is individualized in performance and perception, but not replenished with new elements, it is legitimate to call it not only the structure of the composer's content (on which we subsequently actually focus our attention), but also the structure of the content of a musical work. .

Even the most detailed structure is not able to capture the holistic content of the work. Music always hides something elusive, “indescribable”. Penetrating into the smallest "cells" and "pores" of the opus, becoming its "air", it practically does not lend itself not only to analysis, but, as a rule, to awareness, which is why it received the name "unconscious". Therefore, undertaking the task of comprehending the content of a musical work, we must understand that in its entirety it can hardly be grasped by the mind. There always remain those "outrageous" depths of content that are still inaccessible to consciousness, and therefore mysterious. Mastering the structure of the content of a musical work, we must remember that the content is unlikely to be revealed to us in all its integrity and depth, because it is in principle inexhaustible. No matter how carefully we analyze it, we still remove only the surface layer, behind which lies a lot of artistically valuable, aesthetically affecting the listener.

“If someone is content with knowing the thoughts, tendencies, goals and edifications contained in a poem or story, then he is content with very little, and he simply did not notice the secrets of art, its truth and authenticity,” he once said. contemporary writer and thinker Hermann Hesse. But can't his words also apply to music? Isn't a piece of music an intriguing, alluring mystery? By studying the musical content and its connection with the form, we are trying to lift the veil of this mystery.

NOTES

1. Two fragments from the book: Kazantseva L.P. Fundamentals of the theory of musical content. - Astrakhan: GP JSC IPK "Volga", 2009. 368 p.
2. Kholopova V.N. Theory of Musical Content as a Science // Problems of Musical Science. 2007. No. 1. S. 17.
3. Kudryashov A.Yu. The theory of musical content. - SPb., 2006. S. 37-38.
4. Sukhantseva V.K.. Music as a human world (from the idea of ​​the universe to the philosophy of music). – Kiev, 2000. S. 51.
5. Kholopov Yu.N. Musical form // Musical encyclopedia. - M., 1981. T. 5. Stb. 876.
6. Kholopov Yu.N. To the problem musical analysis// Problems of musical science: Sat. Art. - M., 1985. Issue. 6. S. 141.
7. Kurt E. Romantic harmony and its crisis in Wagner's Tristan. - M., 1975. S. 15.
8. Konyus G.E. Scientific substantiation of musical syntax. - M., 1935. S. 13, 14.
9. Sohor A.N. Music // Musical Encyclopedia. - M., 1976. T. 3. Stb. 731.
10. Recall: spirit is “a philosophical concept meaning an intangible beginning” (Philosophical encyclopedic Dictionary. - M., 1989. S. 185).
11. Savshinsky S.I.. The work of a pianist on a piece of music. - M., L., 1964. S. 43.
12. N.P. Korykhalova calls the composition, which has not yet been performed, but recorded with notes, a “potential” (“possible”) form of being a musical work, and “already sounded earlier ... which has become a fact of culture, but now not performed ...” - a “virtual” form, rightly believing that “ virtual being is the real being of a musical work" ( Korykhalova N.P. Music interpretation. - L., 1979. S. 148).
13. The structure of the content of a musical work as a kind of hierarchy is considered by G.B. Zulumyan ( Zulumyan G.V. The content of a musical work as an aesthetic problem: Dis. … cand. philosophy Sciences. - M., 1979); M.G. Karpychev (Karpychev M.G. Theoretical problems music content. - Novosibirsk, 1997), I.V. Malyshev ( Malyshev I.V. Musical composition. - M., 1999), N.L. Ocheretovskaya (Ocheretovskaya N.L. Content and form in music. L., 1985), V.N. Kholopova ( Kholopova V.N. Music as an art form. - St. Petersburg, 2000), E.I. Chigareva ( Chigareva E.I. The organization of expressive means as the basis of the individuality of a musical work (on the example of Mozart's work of the last decade): Abstract of the thesis. dis. … cand. art history. - M., 1975).
14. The role of performing interpretation and listener's perception in the formation of musical content is shown in the book: Kazantseva L.P. Musical content in the context of culture. - Astrakhan, 2009.
15. Medushevsky V.V.. On the problem of semantic syntax (on the artistic modeling of emotions) // Sov. music. 1973. No. 8. S. 25-28.
16. Ibid. C. 28.
17. Nevertheless, musicology tries to unravel its riddle. Let us point out, in particular, the publications of M.G. Aranovsky ( Aranovsky M.G. On the two functions of the unconscious in creative process composer // Unconscious: nature, functions, research methods. - Tbilisi, 1978. Vol. 2; Aranovsky M.G. Conscious and unconscious in the creative process of the composer: To the formulation of the problem // Questions of musical style. - L., 1978), G.N. Bloodless ( Beskrovnaya G.N. The interaction of intentional and unintentional (improvisational) began as a source of multivariate musical interpretation // Questions of musical performance and pedagogy: Sat. tr. - Astrakhan, 1992), V.N. Kholopova ( Kholopova V.N.. The area of ​​the unconscious in the perception of musical content. - M., 2002).
18.Hesse G. Letters in a circle. - M., 1987. S. 255.