April 23rd:

'The Theoretical Problems of Vocal Music of the XX-XXI Centuries: the Synthesis and Discoveries'
Scientific Conference

Traditionally, during the Festival there was held a scientific Conference, which had an international status. The Conference, held on April 23rd at the Museum Centre, was attended by Russian and Azerbaijani musicologists. The moderator of the conference was Dr. of Arts Rauf Farkhadov.

The presented reports were devoted to theoretical problems of the vocal music of the XX and XXI centuries, included into the program of the Sixth Festival. Some reports were directly related to the works executed, including the trilogy by Bo Nilsson «Brief an Gösta Oswald» (Catherine Okuneva), and the opera "Beyond the shadow" by Vladimir Tarnopolsky (Vladislav Tarnopolsky). Each of these works was presented in a wide aesthetic and historical context: not only a problem of the genre was considered, but also the peculiarities of artistic quest of this or that period, as well as individual style of the composers.

Creative work of the Swedish representative of the post-war avant-garde Bo Nilsson (it was the subject of a report from Petrozavodsk musicologist, Candidate of Arts Catherine Okuneva) is still being "terra incognita" for the audience: today his music is hardly performed. But in the middle of the twentieth century, his name was on everyone's lips, I. König and K. Stockhausen wrote about the composer and his music sounded in the Darmstadt courses and at numerous concerts of contemporary music. The bright emotional music by Nilsson was accompanied by his serial technique: later he admitted that he did not use multiparameter calculations in his music. A trilogy for soprano, chorus and orchestra written to the texts by the Swedish modernist poet Oswald Gösta, which was characterized by allusions technique, a free verse and the absence of punctuations, initially caused a mixed reaction. Poetics of death, surrealistic images were embodied in a special type of "syllabic singing", in a speech at a fixed pitch, dividing the text into phonemes, which formed the emotional and poetic overtones.

The report of Doctor of Arts, Professor of the Gnessin Russian Academy of Music Tatiana Tsaregradskaya was devoted to phonetics in the system of composition means of the vocal music by M. Kagel and L. Berio. Both composers showed considerable interest to the word as to the source of the sound, eliminating the borders between its phonetics and semantics, using it as a composite material. Thus Berio exercised the structural approach to language elements: the division of the text to "the sound series", the use of special types of transformation for the different structures and their subsequent imposition, which resembled a polyphonic method. Kagel preferred "the playing" method: using of palindromes, applying to Dadaist poetry, and set the performers artistic tasks.

Rauf Farkhadov set a question, whether the deconstruction of language was a deadlock in the art. The speaker replied that the novelty and self-realization at that stage were of more importance, and that, according to the linguist Sergei Averintsev, "there was nothing richer than the crisis."

A young musicologist from Moscow Vladislav Tarnopolsky devoted his report "The New Music Theater" that had arisen in the 60-70-ies of XX century under the influence of postdramatical theater. It was characterized by the substitution of the genre designation (reports, revues, oratorio, up to "antiopera"), the disappearance of the story, the narrative, and the equality of all the elements of the play. The libretto was often a compilation of texts by different authors on the principle of collage, sometimes in different languages. Collage as a total concept was presented in "Evroperas" by George. Cage. The transformation of the theater space, mobility of scenic platforms played an important role. "Musical performance can exist without actors" (H. Göbbels). The duration of contemporary opera is usually 70-80 minutes, without intermission. The composers pay a particular attention to the monoopera genre.

The second part of the report was devoted to the analysis of the opera by Vladimir Tarnopolsky "Beyond the shadow": the content of the two ancient sources (Plato and Pliny), which defined the concept of the opera, a special cast (two singing trios and a dancing duo, as well as a reader-philosopher), dimensional division of the orchestra into two groups. The genre features of the multimedia opera were identified: the connection of various elements of the play with each other and with the overall plan.

The moderator's question, if the discussed phenomena could be attributed to the opera as such (if there were no major "opera categories") or still to the musical theater, the speaker replied that the genre of opera was permanently reformed, and the answer depended on the currently accepted limits.

Against the background of the serious and interesting reports, the report of Azerbaijani musicologist Raya Abbasova, devoted to the opera by F. Alizadeh "Ihtizar", was not so profound: there were more journalistic fiction than scientific musicology in it. The large-scale work by Firangiz Alizade was performed four times, and it certainly deserved much deeper musicological analysis, taking into account, that the relation to the opera in Baku was more than ambiguous.

Due to the time limitations, the report of Dr. of Arts, Professor of the Moscow P.I. Tchaikovsky Conservatory Marianna Vysotskaya "Poetic structure as a composite invariant: monoopera by Faradzh Karaev 'Journey to love'" was not presented during the Conference. The participants expressed their hope in the coming publication of the report, which was an analytic continuation of an already published article by Vysotskaya, dedicated to the performance of the monoopera in Baku in December 2013.

Prepared by Julia Dmitrioukova, Press Center of the Festival