Compositional technique and phenomenological categories of perception in the Passacaglia of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 8

Název: Compositional technique and phenomenological categories of perception in the Passacaglia of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 8
Zdrojový dokument: Musicologica Brunensia. 2017, roč. 52, č. 2, s. 95-108
Rozsah
95-108
  • ISSN
    1212-0391 (print)
    2336-436X (online)
Type: Článek
Jazyk
Licence: Neurčená licence
 

Upozornění: Tyto citace jsou generovány automaticky. Nemusí být zcela správně podle citačních pravidel.

Abstrakt(y)
This article is an attempt to apply several fundamental phenomenological concepts regarding the perception of sound, and music in particular, to the analysis of a concrete musical composition, the Passacaglia of Dmitriy Shostakovich's Symphony No. 8. We aim at exploring the underlying compositional structures that determine how a musical composition presents itself to consciousness, and how it is perceived. An approach is used that combines the views of two of the most prominent researchers in the field of phenomenology of music, F. Joseph Smith and Don Ihde. Our main concern is the structure of primary perceptions and how the latter are intended as a unified phenomenon (akoumenon). A specifically descriptive method is used to analyze the way in which the music presents itself to us acoustically and how we perceive it as sounding in time. After that reference is made to techniques of composition used to mediate and achieve the described sounding. As a result our research has revealed a deliberately structured dialectical play of awakened retentions, of fulfilled and unfulfilled protentions, a play with intentionality, touching upon the most subtle mechanisms of perception. The current research has also shown that the categories of musical composition and dramaturgy reflect an underlying dramaturgy of phenomenological categories of perception related to the listener's intentionality. These categories include shifts in the focal-fringe ratio, as the focus of intentionality narrows or broadens in accordance with the auditory field of the music it is intending. They also include shifts between different focal cores as such that we have called regional shifts of focus. On a more fundamental level regional shifts of focus occur between various musical parameters, such as rhythm, tonalitymodality, orchestration, melody, timbre, playing technique. Also, the bidimensional character of sound makes it possible for the noetic act to shift its focus between the roundish and the directional dimensions of the auditory field-shape of the music intended. Finally, we have shown how musical time is thematized as a region of intentional focus by way of a desynchronization of various layers of the polyphonic textures within the framework of the fundamental repetitive structure of the Passacaglia. Shostakovich forms three processes of desynchronization within each of the work's three parts (exposition, development, and recapitulation), each of which starts with a synchronization of the musical material and its layers.
Reference
[1] BENSON, B. E. The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

[2] BENSON, B. E. Phenomenology of Music. The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music. New York: Routledge, 2011, pp. 581–591.

[3] BOBROVSKY, V. Претворение Жанра Пассакальи в Сонатон-симфонических Циклах Д. Шостаковича. [The Reinterpretation of the Passacaglia in the Symphonic Cycles of Shostakovich]. Muzika i Sovremennost', 1. Moscow: State Musical Publishers, 1962, pp. 149–82.

[4] SEGOND-GENOVESI, Ch. La Question du Sense dans les Passacailles de Chostakovitch: Vers une Intérpretation Sociopolitique. International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, 2009, 40 (2), pp. 235–268.

[5] GOLIANEK, R. D. Dramaturgical Categories of Expression in Shostakovich's String Quartets. Les Universaux en Musique, éd. Hascher X., Miereanu C. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1998, pp. 501–518.

[6] HEIDEGGER, M. Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes. Gestamtausgabe, Band 5, Holzwege. Frankfurt Am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1977.

[7] HENDERSON, L. hostakovich and the Passacaglia - Old Ground or New? The Musical Times, 2000, vol. 141, pp. 53–60.

[8] HUSSERL, E. Analysen zur passive Synthesis. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968.

[9] IHDE, D. Litening and Voice, 2nd edn. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007.

[10] MEYER, K. Дмитрий Шостакович [Dmitri Shostakovich]. translated by Gulyaeva E. Saint Petersburg: Kompozitor, 1998.

[11] ORLOV, G. Симфонии Шостаковича [The Symphonies of Shostakovich]. Leningrad: State Musical Publishers, 1961.

[12] SABININA, M. Шостакович – Симфонист [Shostakovich – The Symphonist]. Moscow: Muzika, 1976.

[13] SMITH, F. J. The Experiencing of Musical Sound: Prelude to a Phenomenology of Music. New York: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers Inc, 1979.