Music theory: musical presentation, polyphony, strict style. Polyphony - what is it? Types of polyphony Polyphonic work is also a musical form

Polyphony (from the Greek poly - many; background - sound, voice; literally - polyphony) is a type of polyphony based on the simultaneous combination and development of several independent melodic lines. Polyphony is called an ensemble of melodies. Polyphony is one of the most important means of musical composition and artistic expression. Numerous techniques of polyphony serve to diversify the content of a musical work, embody and develop artistic images. By means of polyphony, you can modify, compare and combine musical themes. Polyphony is based on the laws of melody, rhythm, mode, and harmony.

There are various musical forms and genres used to create polyphonic works: fugue, fuguetta, invention, canon, polyphonic variations, in the XIV-XVI centuries. - motet, madrigal, etc. Polyphonic episodes (for example, fugato) are also found within other forms - larger, more ambitious. For example, in a symphony, in the first movement, that is, in sonata form, the development can be built according to the laws of fugue.

The fundamental feature of polyphonic texture, which distinguishes it from homophonic-harmonic texture, is fluidity, which is achieved by erasing caesuras that separate constructions, and the imperceptibility of transitions from one to another. Voices of a polyphonic structure rarely cadence at the same time; usually their cadences do not coincide, which gives rise to a feeling of continuity of movement as a special expressive quality inherent in polyphony.

There are 3 types of polyphony:

multi-colored (contrasting);

imitation.

Subvocal polyphony is an intermediate stage between monodic and polyphonic. Its essence is that all voices simultaneously perform different versions of the same melody. Due to the difference in options in polyphony, voices either merge into unison and move in parallel unisons, or they diverge into different intervals. A striking example is folk songs.

Contrasting polyphony – simultaneous sound of different melodies. Here voices with different directions of melodic lines, and differing rhythmic patterns, registers, and timbres of melodies are combined. The essence of contrasting polyphony is that the properties of melodies are revealed in their comparison. Example – Glinka “Kamarinskaya”.

Imitation polyphony is a non-simultaneous, sequential entry of voices carrying out one melody. The name imitative polyphony comes from the word imitation, which means imitation. All voices imitate the first voice. Example - invention, fugue.

Polyphony - as a special type of polyphonic presentation - has gone through a long path of historical development. Moreover, its role was far from the same in certain periods; it either increased or fell depending on changes in artistic goals put forward by one era or another, in accordance with changes in musical thinking and with the emergence of new genres and forms of music.

The main stages in the development of polyphony in European professional music.

XIII–XIV centuries Moving to more voices. The huge prevalence of three-voices; the gradual emergence of four- and even five- and six-voices. A significant increase in the contrast of melodically developed voices sounding together. The first examples of imitative presentation and double counterpoint.

XV–XVI centuries The first period in history of the flourishing and full maturity of polyphony in the genres of choral music. The era of the so-called “strict writing”, or “strict style”.

XVII century In the music of this era there are many polyphonic compositions. But in general, polyphony is relegated to the background, giving way to a rapidly developing homophonic-harmonic structure. The development of harmony was especially intensive, which at that time became one of the most important formative means in music. Polyphony only in the form of various presentation techniques penetrates the musical fabric of operatic and instrumental works, which in the 17th century. are leading genres.

First half of the 18th century. Works of J. S. Bach and G. F. Handel. The second heyday of polyphony in the history of music, based on the achievements of homophony in the 17th century. The polyphony of the so-called free writing"or "free style", based on the laws of harmony and controlled by them. Polyphony in the genres of vocal-instrumental music (mass, oratorio, cantata) and purely instrumental (“HTK” by Bach).

Second half of the 18th–21st centuries. Polyphony is basically an integral part of complex polyphony, to which it is subordinate along with homophony and heterophony and within the framework of which its development continues.

Literature:

Bonfeld M.Sh. History of musicology: a manual for the course “Fundamentals of theoretical musicology.” M.: Vlados., 2011.

Dyadchenko S. A., Dyadchenko M. S. Analysis of musical works [Electronic resource]: electronic. textbook allowance. Taganrog, 2010.

Nazaykinsky E.V. Style and genre in music: textbook. manual for higher students textbook establishments. M.: VLADOS, 2003.

Fundamentals of theoretical musicology: textbook. allowance for students higher music ped. textbook institutions / A. I. Volkov, L. R. Podyablonskaya, T. B. Rozina, M. I. Roitershtein; edited by M.I. Roiterstein. Moscow: Academy, 2003.

Kholopova V. Theory of music. St. Petersburg, 2002.

It happens that I begin to develop an idea in which I believe, and almost always at the end of the presentation I myself cease to believe in what is being stated. F. M. Dostoevsky

And in this sense, it can be likened to an artistic whole in polyphonic music: the five voices of a fugue, successively entering and developing in contrapuntal consonance, are reminiscent of the “voicing” of Dostoevsky’s novel. M. M. Bakhtin

In accordance with the views of M. Bakhtin, aesthetic and literary phenomena not only reflect life reality in the forms of literature and art, but are also one of the fundamental existential-ontological foundations of this life reality itself. M.M. Bakhtin is deeply convinced that the aesthetic manifestations of existence are initially rooted in various spheres of life - in the rituals of culture, in the communication of people, in the life of the real human word, in the intonations and interruptions of voices, in texts and works of iconic culture. In his opinion, aesthetic activity collects “scattered meanings of the world” and creates for the transient an emotional equivalent and a value position, with which the transient in the world acquires a valuable event weight, involved in being and eternity.

Aesthetic and literary phenomena are considered by M. Bakhtin as potentially and actually dialogical, for they are born in the conjunction of such existential-ontological categories as individual and sociocultural, human and eternal, directly sensory and architectonic-semantic, intentional and “external”, etc. In the understanding of M.M. Bakhtin, the aesthetic principle is inseparable from the value-ethical relationship, and since the goal, value and mediator of the aesthetic-axiological relationship is another person, it is dialogical from the very beginning.

M.M. Bakhtin’s dialogical worldview enriched it with many original concepts: aesthetic event (as an “event of being”), dialogical and monological, out-of-placeness, polyphony, carnivalization, ambivalence, familiar laughter culture, “internally convincing and authoritarian word”, “autonomous participation" and "participatory autonomy" of art, the tearful aspect of the world, etc.

M. M. Bakhtin’s aesthetic system is based on a deep understanding of the differences between monologue and dialogic artistry. He believes that monological aesthetics is based on the culture of monological consciousness as “the teaching of those who know and possess the truth of those who do not know and make mistakes,” which has become established in European thinking as the culture of monistic reason. In a monologue novel, the author knows all the ways to solve the problems of the heroes; he describes and evaluates them as fully defined and framed by the “solid frame of the author’s consciousness.”

In Dostoevsky's works, Bakhtin first of all finds shining example dialogical aesthetics is the aesthetics of “polyphony” (polyphony), in which the voices of the characters are equated with the voice of the author or even presented in a more detailed and convincing manner. A dialogical-polyphonic work becomes fundamentally open, freely indefinable, incomplete “event of existence” and as a result of this the monological author’s consciousness becomes impossible - omniscient, all-evaluating, all-creating, final-determining.

The aesthetics of a monologue novel is traditionally associated with the prose genre; the aesthetics of a dialogical-polyphonic novel reveals such rich ideological, compositional and artistic content that it allows us to consider its originality from the point of view of poetics.

M. Bakhtin sees the decisive feature of Dostoevsky’s artistic style in the fact that the most incompatible materials are distributed “not in one horizon, but in several complete and equivalent horizons, and not the material itself, but these worlds, these consciousnesses with their horizons are combined into a higher unity, so to say, of the second order, into the unity of a polyphonic novel.”

The musical term “polyphony,” which M. M. Bakhtin introduced to designate dialogic polyphony (as opposed to monological polyphony, i.e. homophony), turned out to be unusually capacious and broad and began to denote a type of artistic thinking, a type of aesthetic worldview, a method of artistic creativity .

The dialogue of a polyphonic work has a double intentionality: external, sociocultural, semiotic-compositional and internal, psycho-spiritual, deep-transcendent. External intentionality is extremely multifaceted and inexhaustible: the dialogue of heroes and their value orientations; dialogue between words and silence; multilingualism, diversity of styles; polyphony of novel imagery and value chronotopes; dialogue between the artist and the “memory of the genre”, with a real or potential hero, with non-artistic reality; stylization and parody, etc. A polyphonic work is a “clump” of dialogicality, it is a meeting of many semiotic-cultural phenomena and processes: texts, images, meanings, etc.

The internal intentionality of a polyphonic work lies in the fact that the author of the novel unusually expands the display of the inner life of the characters and deepens the penetration into the mental and spiritual life of the heroes, and does this not “from the outside,” by author's description and commentary, but “from the inside,” from the point of view of the hero himself. M. Bakhtin is convinced that in a dialogical-polyphonic work the comprehension of psychology inner world heroes is carried out not through “objectively externalizing”, objectively completing” observation and description-fixation, but through the display of constant dialogical attention-intentionality to another person, hero, character.

M.M. Bakhtin’s humanitarian-dialogue understanding of freedom elevates a person above any external forces and factors of his existence - the influences of the environment, heredity, violence, authority, miracle, mysticism - and transfers the locus of control in the “events of his existence” to the sphere of consciousness. The polyphony of consciousness, discovered by Dostoevsky and comprehended by M. Bakhtin, is the main sphere of generation and manifestation of human subjectivity, and therefore the Freudian idea of ​​the unconscious, subconscious (“it”) in the world of dialogical human existence is a force external to consciousness that destroys personality. Bakhtin believes that Dostoevsky, as an artist, explored not the depths of the unconscious, but the heights of consciousness and convincingly showed that the dramatic collisions and vicissitudes of the life of consciousness often turn out to be more complex and powerful than Freud’s unconscious complexes.

In the system of dialogical and aesthetic ideas of M.M. Bakhtin, the central role is played by the category of “extra-locality”, comparable in meaning to such concepts as “dialogue”, “two-voices”, “polyphony”, “ambivalence”, “carnivalization”, etc. The phenomenon of non-locality gives an answer to the most important question in the theory of dialogue about how one person can understand and feel another person.

The decisive reason for this is that, in the process of feeling into another person, the understanding of the need not only to feel into another, but also to return to oneself through “out-of-placeness” - aesthetic or ontological - is ignored. It is very important that, by identifying with another person, I “dissolve” in him and lose the feeling and awareness of my own place in the world or in the current situation. When completely merging with the feelings of another person, there is a literal infection with “internal feelings,” and “external” aesthetic or ontological contemplation, which generates an “excess of vision” as an “excess of being,” becomes impossible. The ontological basis of aesthetic externality is the fact that I cannot see myself with the same degree of comprehensiveness as another person, and when perceiving another person I have an “excess of vision” that is impossible when perceiving myself. My vision of myself is marked by “lack of vision” and “excess of internal self-perception,” and in relation to another person I have “excess of (external) vision” and lack of “internal perception” of the mental experiences and states of another person.

“Outsideness,” according to Bakhtin, characterizes an aesthetic position that allows one to see and create a complete image of the hero without introducing the author’s subjectivity.

M.M. Bakhtin’s worldview may seem to be one of the options for “aestheticization of life” and “aestheticization of action,” however, in reality, Bakhtin’s dialogical aesthetics is directly opposed to both the cult of “pure aesthetics” and the identification of ethics and aesthetics. When Bakhtin declares “expressive and speaking being” the object of (dialogue) aesthetics, then the three words “expression”, “speaking” and “being” are placed for him not in different departments - “aesthetics”, “linguistics” and “ontology” - but they are combined into an unmerged and indivisible unity of the “first philosophy”, embodying the living, beautiful and genuine reality of human action and “human-human” existence.

“The essence of polyphony is precisely that the voices here remain independent and, as such, are combined in a unity of a higher order (!) than in homophony. If we talk about individual will, then in polyphony it is precisely the combination of several individual wills that occurs, a fundamental going beyond the limits of one will. One can say this: the artistic will of polyphony is the will to combine many wills."

We are already familiar with a similar world - this is the world of Dante. A world where unreconciled souls, sinners and righteous, repentant and unrepentant, condemned and judges communicate. Here everything coexists with everything, and multiplicity merges with eternity.

The world of Karamazov's man - everything coexists! Everything at the same time and forever!

Dostoevsky really has little interest in history, causality, evolution, progress. His man is ahistorical. The world too: everything always exists. Why the past, social, causal, temporal, if everything coexists?

I felt a falsehood here and decided to clarify... But, duh... Is absolute truth possible? Is something unambiguous that does not give rise to protest valuable? No, absolutely barren. The system is good, but it has the ability to devour itself. (Oh, lambs of systems! Oh, shepherds of absolutes! Oh, demiurges of the only truths! How is it? - Mazdak, oh-oh-oh-oh!..)

Dostoevsky knew how to find complexity even in the unambiguous: in the one - the plural, in the simple - the composite, in the voice - the chorus, in the statement - negation, in the gesture - contradiction, in the sense - ambiguity. This is a great gift: to hear, to know, to publish, to distinguish all the voices in oneself at the same time. M. M. Bakhtin.

Dostoevsky's hero-ideas are these very points of view. This is a new philosophy: the philosophy of points of view (Long before the creation of this philosophy, Dostoevsky had already widely used it. Bakhtin, one of the first to discover this, said: he thought not with thoughts, but with points of view, consciousnesses, voices. Vyacheslav Ivanov and Ortega). The consciousness of one hero is opposed not by truth, but by the consciousness of another; there are many equal consciousnesses here. But each individually is limitless. "Dostoevsky's hero is an endless function." Hence the endless internal dialogue.

This is how a character is built, this is how every novel is built: intersections, consonances, interruptions - a cacophony of replicas of an open dialogue with the inner, unmerged voices merging in the dodecaphonic music of life.

Not duality, not dialecticity, not dialogue - a chorus of voices and ideas. A great artist is a person who is interested in everything and who absorbs everything into himself.

An artist of many truths, Dostoevsky does not separate or separate them: everyone knows the truth of everyone; all truths are in everyone's consciousness; choice is personality. Not just the persuasiveness of everything, but bringing the most unacceptable to the limit of persuasiveness - that is what polyphony is.

The Dostoevsky phenomenon: exploring all possibilities, trying on all masks, an eternal proteus, always returning to himself. This is where no point of view is the only correct and final one.

So, Demons is a visionary book by Dostoevsky and one of the most prophetic books in world literature, which we passed by without shuddering or heeding the warnings. Demons are still relevant - that's what's scary. Dramatizing Demons, A. Camus wrote: “For me, Dostoevsky is first and foremost a writer who, long before Nietzsche, was able to discern modern nihilism, define it, predict its terrible consequences and try to indicate the path to salvation.”

The Brothers Karamazov, or the decline of Europe

There is nothing outside, nothing inside, for what is outside is also inside J. Boehme

Hesse proposed a completely unexpected interpretation of Dostoevsky, connecting his ideas with Spengler’s “decline of Europe.” Let me remind you that O. Spengler, predicting the exhaustion European civilization, in search of her successor, settled on Russia. Hesse came to a slightly different conclusion: the decline of Europe is its acceptance of the “Asian” ideal, so clearly expressed by Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov.

But what is this “Asian” ideal that I find in Dostoevsky and which I think that he intends to conquer Europe? - asks Hesse.

This, in short, is a rejection of all normative ethics and morality in favor of a certain understanding, all-acceptance, a certain new, dangerous and terrible holiness, as Elder Zosima proclaims it, as Alyosha lives it, as Dmitry and especially Ivan Karamazov formulate it with the utmost clarity .

The “new ideal,” which threatens the very existence of the European spirit, writes G. Hesse in 1919, anticipating 1933, seems to be a completely immoral way of thinking and feeling, the ability to discern the divine, the necessary, the fateful in both evil and ugliness, the ability to honor and bless them. The prosecutor's attempt in his long speech to portray this Karamazovism with exaggerated irony and expose it to ridicule by ordinary people - this attempt in fact does not exaggerate anything, it even looks too timid.

“The Decline of Europe” is the suppression of Faustian man by Russians, dangerous, touching, irresponsible, vulnerable, dreamy, ferocious, deeply childish, prone to utopias and impatient, who have long intended to become European.

This Russian man is worth a look. He is much older than Dostoevsky, but it was Dostoevsky who finally introduced him to the world in all its fruitful meaning. A Russian person is Karamazov, this is Fyodor Pavlovich, this is Dmitry, this is Ivan, this is Alyosha. For these four, no matter how different they are from each other, are firmly welded together, together they form the Karamazovs, together they form the Russian man, together they form the future, already approaching man of the European crisis.

The Russian person cannot be reduced to a hysteric, a drunkard or a criminal, a poet or a saint; in it all this is placed together, in the totality of all these properties. The Russian man, Karamazov, is at the same time a murderer and a judge, a brawler and the most tender soul, a complete egoist and a hero of the most perfect self-sacrifice. The European, that is, a strong moral, ethical, dogmatic point of view is not applicable to him. In this person, external and internal, good and evil, God and Satan are inextricably fused.

That is why in the souls of these Karamazovs a passionate thirst accumulates for the highest symbol - God, who would at the same time be the devil. Dostoevsky’s Russian man is such a symbol. God, who is also the devil, is an ancient demiurge. He was there originally; He, the only one, is on the other side of all contradictions, he knows neither day nor night, neither good nor evil. He is nothing and he is everything. We cannot know it, because we know anything only in contradictions, we are individuals, tied to day and night, to heat and cold, we need God and the devil. Beyond the boundaries of opposites, in nothing and in everything, only the demiurge lives, the God of the universe, who knows no good and evil.

Russian man strives away from opposites, from certain properties, from morality; he is a man who intends to dissolve, returning back to the principum individuationis (Principle of individuation. (Latin)). This man loves nothing and loves everything, he is not afraid of anything and is afraid of everything, he does nothing and does everything. This person is again the primordial material, the unformed material of soul plasma. In this form, he cannot live, he can only die, falling like a meteorite.

It was this man of disaster, this terrible ghost, that Dostoevsky evoked with his genius. The opinion was often expressed: it was fortunate that his “Karamazovs” were not finished, otherwise they would have blown up not only Russian literature, but all of Russia and all of humanity. The Karamazov element, like everything Asian, chaotic, wild, dangerous, immoral, like everything in the world in general, can be assessed in two ways - positively and negatively. Those who simply reject this whole world, this Dostoevsky, these Karamazovs, these Russians, this Asia, these demiurge fantasies, are now doomed to impotent curses and fear, they have a bleak position where the Karamazovs clearly dominate - more than ever before. But they are mistaken, wanting to see in all this only the factual, visual, material. They look at the decline of Europe as a terrible catastrophe with a roar from heaven, or as a revolution full of massacres and violence, or as a triumph of criminals, corruption, theft, murder and all other vices.

All this is possible, all this is inherent in Karamazov. When you deal with Karamazov, you don’t know what he’s going to shock us with in the next moment. Maybe he’ll hit you so hard that he’ll kill you, or maybe he’ll sing a piercing song to the glory of God. Among them are Alyosha and Dmitry, Fedora and Ivan. After all, as we have seen, they are determined not by any properties, but by the readiness to adopt any properties at any time.

But let the fearful not be horrified by the fact that this unpredictable man of the future (he already exists in the present!) is capable of doing not only evil, but also good, capable of establishing the kingdom of God just like the kingdom of the devil. What can be founded or overthrown on earth is of little interest to the Karamazovs. Their secret is not here - nor is the value and fruitfulness of their immoral essence.

Every human formation, every culture, every civilization, every order is based on an agreement regarding what is permitted and prohibited. A person who is on the path from an animal to a distant human future must constantly suppress, hide, deny much, infinitely much in himself in order to be a decent person, capable of human coexistence. Man is filled with animals, filled with the ancient world, filled with monstrous, hardly tamed instincts of bestial cruel egoism. All these dangerous instincts are present, always present, but culture, agreement, civilization have hidden them; they are not shown, learning from childhood to hide and suppress these instincts. But each of these instincts breaks out from time to time. Each of them continues to live, not one is completely eradicated, not one is ennobled or transformed for a long time, forever. And after all, each of these instincts in itself is not so bad, no worse than any others, but in every era and every culture there are instincts that are feared and persecuted more than others. And when these instincts awaken again, like unbridled, only superficially and with difficulty tamed elements, when the animals growl again, and the slaves, who have been suppressed and lashed for a long time, rise up with cries of ancient rage, then the Karamazovs appear. When culture, this attempt to domesticate a person, gets tired and begins to waver, then the type of people who are strange, hysterical, with unusual deviations - like young men in adolescence or pregnant women - becomes more and more widespread. And in the souls arise impulses that have no name, which - based on the concepts of old culture and morality - should be recognized as bad, which, however, are capable of speaking in such a strong, such natural, such an innocent voice that all good and evil become doubtful, and every the law is unsteady.

The Karamazov brothers are such people. They easily treat any law as a convention, any lawyer as a philistine, they easily overestimate any freedom and difference from others, and with the ardor of lovers they listen to the chorus of voices in their own chest.

While the old, dying culture and morality have not yet been replaced by new ones, in this dull, dangerous and painful timelessness, a person must again look into his soul, must again see how the beast rises in it, how primitive forces that are higher than morality play in it. Those doomed to this, called to this, destined and prepared for this - these are the Karamazovs. They are hysterical and dangerous, they become criminals as easily as ascetics, they do not believe in anything, their crazy faith is the doubtfulness of all faith.

The figure of Ivan is especially amazing. He appears before us as a modern, adapted, cultured man - somewhat cold, somewhat disappointed, somewhat skeptical, somewhat tired. But the further he goes, the younger he becomes, the warmer he becomes, the more significant he becomes, the more Karamazov he becomes. It was he who composed The Grand Inquisitor. It is he who goes from denial, even contempt for the murderer for whom he holds his brother, to a deep sense of his own guilt and repentance. And it is he who experiences the spiritual process of confrontation with the unconscious more sharply and more bizarrely than anyone else. (But everything revolves around this! This is the whole meaning of the whole decline, the whole revival!) In the last book of the novel there is a strange chapter in which Ivan, returning from Smerdyakov, finds the devil in his room and talks with him for an hour. This devil is nothing more than Ivan’s subconscious, a surge of the long-settled and seemingly forgotten contents of his soul. And he knows it. Ivan knows this with amazing confidence and speaks about it clearly. And yet he talks with the devil, believes in him - for what is inside is also outside! - and yet he gets angry with the devil, pounces on him, even throws a glass at him - at the one he knows lives inside himself. Perhaps never before has a conversation between a person and his own subconscious been so clearly and clearly depicted in literature. And this conversation, this (despite outbursts of anger) mutual understanding with the devil - this is precisely the path that the Karamazovs are called upon to show us. Here, in Dostoevsky, the subconscious is depicted as a devil. And rightly so - because to our blinkered, cultural and moral view, everything repressed into the subconscious that we carry within ourselves seems satanic and hateful. But the combination of Ivan and Alyosha could give a higher and more fruitful point of view, based on the soil of the new future. And here the subconscious is no longer the devil, but the god-devil, the demiurge, the one who has always been and from whom everything comes. To establish good and evil anew is not the work of the pre-eternal, not the demiurge, but the work of man and his little gods.

Dostoevsky, in fact, is not a writer, or not primarily a writer. He is a prophet. It is difficult, however, to say what this actually means - a prophet! The prophet is a patient, just as Dostoevsky was in reality a hysteric, an epileptic. A prophet is a patient who has lost the healthy, kind, beneficent instinct of self-preservation, which is the embodiment of all bourgeois virtues. There cannot be many prophets, otherwise the world would fall apart. Such a patient, be it Dostoevsky or Karamazov, is endowed with such a strange, hidden, painful, divine ability that the Asian honors in every madman. He is a prophet, he is a knower. That is, in it a people, an era, a country or a continent have developed for themselves an organ, some tentacles, a rare, incredibly gentle, incredibly noble, incredibly fragile organ that others do not have, which others, to their great happiness, have remained in their infancy. And every vision, every dream, every fantasy or human thought on the way from the subconscious to consciousness can gain thousands different interpretations, each of which may be correct. The clairvoyant and prophet does not interpret his visions himself: the nightmare that oppresses him reminds him not of his own illness, not of own death, but about illness and death in common, whose organ, whose tentacles it is. This commonality can be a family, a party, a people, but it can also be all of humanity.

In Dostoevsky’s soul, what we are accustomed to calling hysteria, a certain illness and capacity for suffering served humanity as a similar organ, a similar guide and barometer. And humanity is beginning to notice this. Already half of Europe, already at least half of Eastern Europe, is on the path to chaos, rushing in a drunken and holy rage along the edge of the abyss, singing drunken hymns like Dmitry Karamazov sang. The offended man in the street mocks these hymns, but the saint and the clairvoyant listen to them with tears.

Existential thinker

Man must continually feel suffering, otherwise the earth would be meaningless. F. M. Dostoevsky

Existence only exists when it is threatened with non-existence. Being only begins to be when it is threatened with non-existence. F. M. Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky was one of those tragic thinkers, heirs of Indo-Christian doctrines, for whom even pleasure is a kind of suffering. This is not uncommon sense, not a lack of common sense, but the purifying function of suffering, known to the creators of all holy books.

I suffer, therefore I exist...

Where does this transcendental craving for suffering come from, where are its sources? Why does the road to catharsis go through hell?

There is such a rare phenomenon when an angel and a beast inhabit one body. Then voluptuousness coexists with purity, villainy with mercy and suffering with pleasure. Dostoevsky loved his vices and, as a creator, poeticized them. But he was a naked religious thinker and, like a mystic, he anathematized them. Hence the unbearability of torment and its apology. That is why the heroes of other books suffer from happiness, and his heroes suffer from suffering. Vice and purity drive them to sorrow. That is why his ideal is to be different from what he is, to live differently from how he lives. Hence these seraph-like heroes: Zosima, Myshkin, Alyosha. But he also endows them with a piece of himself - pain.

For Dostoevsky, the problem of freedom is inseparable from the problem of evil. Most of all, he was tormented by the eternal problem of the coexistence of evil and God. And he solved this problem better than his predecessors. This is the solution as formulated by N. A. Berdyaev:

God exists precisely because there is evil and suffering in the world; the existence of evil is proof of the existence of God. If the world were exclusively kind and good, then God would not be needed, then the world would already be God. God exists because there is evil. This means that God exists because there is freedom. He preached not only compassion, but also suffering. Man is a responsible being. And human suffering is not innocent suffering. Suffering is associated with evil. Evil is associated with freedom. Therefore freedom leads to suffering. The words of the Grand Inquisitor are applicable to Dostoevsky himself: “You took everything that was extraordinary, fortune-telling and uncertain, you took everything that was beyond the power of people, and therefore acted as if you did not love them at all.”

N.A. Berdyaev considered the main thing in Dostoevsky to be the stormy and passionate dynamism of human nature, the fiery, volcanic whirlwind of ideas - a whirlwind that destroys and... cleanses man. These ideas are not Platonic eidos, prototypes, forms, but “damned questions”, the tragic fate of existence, the fate of the world, the fate of the human spirit. Dostoevsky himself was a scorched man, burned by internal hellish fire, inexplicably and paradoxically turning into heavenly fire.

Tormented by the problem of theodicy, Dostoevsky did not know how to reconcile God and a worldview based on evil and suffering.

Let’s not engage in scholasticism, finding out what Dostoevsky gave to existentialism and what he took from it. Dostoevsky already knew much of what existentialism had discovered in man and what he would still discover. The fate of individual consciousness, the tragic incongruity of existence, problems of choice, rebellion leading to self-will, the supreme importance of the individual, the conflict between the individual and society - all this was always in the center of his attention.

All of Dostoevsky's work, in essence, is philosophy in images, and a higher, disinterested philosophy, not intended to prove anything. And if someone tries to prove something to Dostoevsky, then this only indicates incommensurability with Dostoevsky.

This is not an abstract philosophy, but artistic, living, passionate, in it everything plays out in human depths, in spiritual space, there is a continuous struggle between the heart and mind. “The mind seeks deity, but the heart does not find it...” His heroes are human-ideas living a deep inner life, hidden and inexpressible. All of them are milestones of future philosophy, where no idea denies another, where questions have no answers and where certainty itself is absurd.

Everything is good, everything is permitted, nothing is disgusting - this is the language of the absurd. And no one except Dostoevsky, Camus believed, knew how to give the world of the absurd such close and such painful charm. “We are not dealing with absurd creativity, but with creativity in which the problem of the absurd is posed.”

But the existentialist Dostoevsky is also amazing: amazing again for his multiplicity, combination of complexity and simplicity. Seeking the meaning of life, having tested the most extreme characters, he answered the question, what is living life, answers: it must be something terribly simple, the most ordinary, and so simple that we cannot believe that it is so simple, and, naturally, we have been passing by for many thousands of years, without noticing or recognizing it.

Dostoevsky's existentiality is both close and far from the absurdity of existence - and it would be strange if it were only far or only close. With most of his heroes he affirms this absurdity, but with Makar Ivanovich he teaches teenagers to “bow” to man (“it is impossible to be a man without bowing”), with most of his heroes he affirms the inviolability of being and immediately contrasts it with a miracle - a miracle in which he believes. This is the whole of Dostoevsky, whose enormity surpasses the brilliance and brightness of Camus’s thought.

Dostoevsky is one of the founders of the existential understanding of freedom: how tragic fate, as a burden, as a challenge to the world, as a difficult-to-define relationship between debt and obligations. Almost all of his heroes have been released and do not know what to do with it. The starting question of existentialism, which makes it always a modern philosophy, is how to live in a world where “everything is permitted”? Then comes the second, more general one: what should a person do with his freedom? Raskolnikov, Ivan Karamazov, the paradoxist, the Grand Inquisitor, Stavrogin, Dostoevsky is trying, without fear of results, to think through these damned questions to the end.

The revolt of all his antiheroes is a purely existential protest of the individual against herd existence. “Everything is permitted” by Ivan Karamazov is the only expression of freedom, Camus will then say. It cannot be said that Dostoevsky himself thought so (this is what distinguished him from the Europeans), but I would not interpret his “everything is permitted” only in an ironic or negative way. A person, perhaps, is allowed everything, because a saint has no choice, but he must emerge as a person - such is the broad interpretation that follows not from one work, but from the entire work of the writer.

Dostoevsky's man is alone in front of the world and defenseless: alone. Face to face before everything that is inhuman and human. The pain of loneliness, alienation, tightness of the inner world - cross-cutting themes his creativity.

Dostoevsky and Nietzsche: on the way to a new metaphysics of man

The topic “Dostoevsky and Nietzsche” is one of the most important for understanding the meaning of the dramatic changes that occurred in European philosophy and culture at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. This era is still a mystery, but it was also a period of prosperity creative forces European humanity and the beginning of a tragic “break” in history, which gave rise to two world wars and unprecedented disasters, the consequences of which Europe was never able to overcome (this is supported by the ongoing decline traditional culture, which began after the end of World War II and continues to this day). In this era, philosophy again, as it was in the 18th century, which ended with the Great French revolution, came out of the offices onto the streets, became a practical force, steadily undermining the existing order of things; in a certain sense, it was she who caused the catastrophic events of the first half of the twentieth century, which had a metaphysical connotation as never before. At the center of the turning point, which captured absolutely all forms of European civilization and ended at the beginning of the twentieth century with the emergence of non-classical science, “non-classical” art and “non-classical” philosophy, was the problem of man, his essence, the meaning of his existence, the problem of man’s relationship with society, the world and the Absolute .

We can say that in the culture of the second half of the 19th century there was a kind of “liberation of man” - the liberation of a separate empirical personality, existing in time and invariably moving towards death, from the oppression of “otherworldly”, transcendental forces and authorities. The human Christian God has turned into the World Mind - omnipotent, but cold and “mute”, infinitely distant from man and his petty everyday concerns.

And only a few, especially insightful and sensitive thinkers, understood that we need to go forward, not backward, we need not just to deny new trends, but to overcome them through inclusion in a broader context, through the development of a more complex and deep worldview, in which these new trends will find their rightful place. The significance of Dostoevsky and Nietzsche lies precisely in the fact that they laid the foundations of this worldview. Being at the very beginning of a long journey that ended with the creation of a new philosophical model of man, they could not yet clearly and unambiguously formulate their brilliant insights.

The statement about the similarity of the quests of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky is not new; it was found quite often in critical literature. However, starting from the classic work of L. Shestov “Dostoevsky and Nietzsche (philosophy of tragedy)” in most cases we're talking about about the similarity of the ethical views of the two philosophers, and not at all about their unity in the approach to the new metaphysics of man, the consequences of which are certain ethical concepts. The main obstacle to realizing this fundamental similarity in the philosophical views of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky has always been the lack of a clear understanding of the metaphysical dimension of the views of both thinkers. Nietzsche’s sharply negative attitude towards any metaphysics (more precisely, towards the positing of “metaphysical worlds”) and Dostoevsky’s specific form of expression of his philosophical ideas (through artistic images of their novels) make it difficult to isolate this dimension. Nevertheless, solving this problem is both possible and necessary. Indeed, as a result of that philosophical “revolution”, headed by Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, new approaches to the construction of metaphysics were developed - in Russian philosophy, these approaches were most consistently implemented in the 20th century in the systems of S. Frank and L. Karsavin , in the Western universal model of new metaphysics (fundamental ontology) was created by M. Heidegger. In this regard, the decisive role of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky in the formation of the philosophy of the twentieth century would be completely incomprehensible if they had nothing to do with the new metaphysics that arose under their influence.

Without pretending to be a final solution to this very difficult task, to identify that common metaphysical component of the views of Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, which determined their significance as the founders of non-classical philosophy. As a central element, we will choose something that was absolutely of the greatest importance for both thinkers and constituted the most famous and at the same time the most mysterious part of their work - their attitude to Christianity and especially to the main symbol of this religion - the image of Jesus Christ.

The metaphysical depth of Dostoevsky's quest became apparent only at the beginning of the twentieth century, during the heyday of Russian philosophy.

Only now have we finally come closer to a complete and comprehensive understanding of all that is most important in Dostoevsky’s philosophy. In his work, Dostoevsky tried to substantiate a system of ideas according to which a specific human personality is perceived as something absolutely significant, primary, irreducible to any higher, divine essence. Dostoevsky's heroes and he himself talk a lot about the fact that without God, man has neither existential, metaphysical, nor moral foundations in life. However, the traditional, dogmatic concept of God does not suit the writer; he tries to understand God himself as a certain instance of being, “additional” in relation to man, and not opposite to him. God from the transcendental Absolute turns into the immanent basis of a separate empirical personality; God is the potential fullness of a person’s life manifestations, its potential absoluteness, which each person is called upon to realize in every moment of his life. This determines the paramount importance of the image of Jesus Christ for Dostoevsky. Christ for him is a person who has proven the possibility of realizing that fullness of life and that potential absoluteness that is inherent in each of us and which everyone can at least partially reveal in their being. This is precisely the meaning of the God-manhood of Christ, and not at all in what he united in himself humanity with some super- and extra-human divine essence.

From two theses - “There is no God” and “God must exist” - Kirillov draws a paradoxical conclusion: “That means I am God.” The easiest way is to follow the straightforward interpreters of Dostoevsky to declare that this conclusion testifies to Kirillov’s madness, and it is much more difficult to understand the true content of the hero’s reasoning, which reveals a system of ideas that is apparently extremely important for Dostoevsky.

Expressing the conviction that “man did nothing but invent God” and that “there is no God,” Kirillov speaks of God as a force and authority external to man, and it is precisely this kind of God that he denies. But since there must be an absolute basis for all meanings in the world, there must be a God, it means that he can only exist as something internal to an individual human personality; That’s why Kirillov concludes that he is God. Essentially, in this judgment he asserts the presence of a certain absolute, divine content in each person. The paradox of this absolute content is that it is only potential, and each person is faced with the task of revealing this content in his life, of making it actual from potential.

Only one person was able to come closer in his life to the realization of the fullness of his absoluteness and thereby gave an example and model for all of us - this is Jesus Christ. Kirillov understands better than others the significance of Christ and his great merit in identifying true goals human life. But besides this, he also sees what others do not see - he sees the fatal mistake of Jesus, which distorted the revelation he brought to the world and, as a result, did not allow humanity to correctly understand the meaning of his life. In his dying conversation with Verkhovensky, Kirillov thus sets out his vision of the story of Jesus: “Listen to the big idea: there was one day on earth, and in the middle of the earth there were three crosses. One on the cross believed so much that he said to the other: “Today you will be with me in paradise.” The day ended, both died, went and found neither heaven nor resurrection. What was said did not come true. Listen: this man was the highest in the whole earth, he was what she lived for. The whole planet, with everything on it, without this person is just madness. There was nothing like this before or after Him, and never, even before a miracle. That’s the miracle, that there has never been and will never be the same” (10, 471-472).

“What was said was not justified” not in the sense that Christ and the thief did not acquire a posthumous existence - as for Dostoevsky himself, for Kirillov it is obvious that after death a person will certainly face some other existence - but in the sense that that the indicated other being is not “heavenly,” perfect, divine. It remains as “open” and full of various possibilities as man’s earthly existence; it may equally turn out to be both more perfect and more absurd - similar to the “bathhouse with spiders”, the eerie image of eternity that arises in Svidrigailov’s imagination

Before moving on to understanding the metaphysical foundations of Nietzsche’s worldview, let us make one “methodological” remark. The most important problem that arises in connection with the formulated interpretation of Kirillov’s story is how permissible it is to identify the views of Dostoevsky’s heroes with his own position. One can partially agree with the opinion expressed by M. Bakhtin that Dostoevsky strives to “give the floor” to the heroes themselves, without imposing his point of view on them; in this regard, of course, it is impossible to directly attribute the ideas expressed by the characters to their author. But, on the other hand, it is no less obvious that we have no other method for understanding philosophical views the writer, except for consistent attempts to “decipher” them through an analysis of the life positions, thoughts and actions of the characters in his novels. Already the first approaches to such an analysis show the incorrectness of Bakhtin’s assertion that all Dostoevsky’s heroes speak only in their own “voice.” An indicative coincidence of ideas and points of view is revealed, even if we are talking about very different people (let us recall, for example, the amazing “mutual understanding” between Myshkin and Rogozhin in “The Idiot”). And they acquire especially great importance in the context of comparing the positions of Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, since, according to a very successful expression, with which most researchers of the German thinker will probably agree, Nietzsche in his life and in his work appears as a typical hero of Dostoevsky. And if it were necessary to indicate more specifically whose history and whose destiny Nietzsche embodied in real life, then the answer would be obvious: it is Kirillov.

A correct understanding of Nietzsche's philosophy, avoiding traditional errors, is possible only on the basis of a holistic perception of his work, equally taking into account his most famous writings and his early works, in which the goals that inspired Nietzsche throughout his life are especially clear. It is in Nietzsche's early works that one can find the key to his true worldview, which he in a certain sense hid behind the overly harsh or overly vague judgments of his mature works.

In the articles from the series “Untimely Reflections” we find a completely unambiguous expression of Nietzsche’s most important belief, which formed the basis of his entire philosophy - the belief in the absolute uniqueness of each person. At the same time, Nietzsche insists that this absolute uniqueness is not already given in each of us, it acts as a kind of ideal limit, the goal of the life efforts of each individual, and each individual is called upon to reveal this uniqueness in the world, to prove the absolute significance of his arrival in world. “In essence,” writes Nietzsche in the article “Schopenhauer as an Educator,” “every person knows well that he lives in the world only once, that he is something unique, and that even the rarest case will not merge so wonderfully again.” motley diversity into the unity that constitutes his personality; he knows it, but hides it like a bad conscience - why? Out of fear of a neighbor who demands convention and himself hides behind it... Only artists hate this careless flaunting of other people's manners and self-imposed opinions and expose the secret, the evil conscience of everyone - the position that every person is a miracle that happens once ..." The problem of every person is that he hides behind everyday opinion and habitual stereotypes of behavior and forgets about the main thing, the true purpose of life - the need to be himself: "We must give ourselves an account of our existence; therefore, we also want to become the true helmsmen of this existence and not allow our existence to be tantamount to a meaningless accident.”

The unconditionality of faith in perfection and truth can be based on the ontological reality of the highest perfection - this is how this faith was justified in the tradition of Christian Platonism. Rejecting such an ontological reality of perfection, Nietzsche, it would seem, has no reason to insist on the unconditionality of our faith. By doing this, he actually asserts the presence of something absolute in being, replacing the transcendental “ultimate reality” of the Platonic tradition. It is not difficult to understand that here we are talking about the absoluteness of faith itself, that is, about the absoluteness of the person professing this faith. As a result, the problem that arises for Nietzsche in connection with his statement about the unconditionality of faith in perfection is no different from a similar problem that arises in the work of Dostoevsky. The solution to this problem implied in Nietzsche's early writings is clearly consistent with the basic principles of Dostoevsky's metaphysics. Recognizing our empirical world as the only metaphysically real world, Nietzsche preserves the concept of the Absolute by recognizing the human personality as the Absolute. At the same time, in the same way as in Dostoevsky, the absoluteness of the personality in Nietzsche is manifested through its ability to say a decisive “no!” imperfection and untruth of the world, through the ability to find in oneself the ideal of perfection and truth, even if only “illusory,” but accepted unconditionally and absolutely, in spite of the crude factuality of the world of phenomena.

Everything that Nietzsche further writes about the meaning of the image of Jesus Christ further confirms this assumption: he interprets it in exactly the same way as Dostoevsky does in the stories of his heroes - Prince Myshkin and Kirillov. First of all, Nietzsche rejects any meaning of the actual teachings of Jesus; he emphasizes that the whole meaning in this case is concentrated in the “internal”, in the very life of the founder of the religion. “He speaks only of the innermost: “life,” or “truth,” or “light” is his word for expressing the innermost; everything else, all reality, all nature, even language, has for him only the value of a sign, a parable.” By calling the “knowledge” that Jesus carries within himself pure madness, ignorant of any religion, any concepts of cult, history, natural science, world experience, etc., Nietzsche thereby emphasizes that the most important thing in the personality of Jesus and in his life is - this is the ability to discover in oneself and make creatively significant that infinite depth that lurks in every person and determines his potential absoluteness. It is precisely the demonstration of the actual absoluteness of the individual personality that is the main merit of Jesus, who destroys the distinction between the concepts of “man” and “God.” “In the entire psychology of the Gospel there is no concept of guilt and punishment; as well as the concept of reward. “Sin,” everything that determines the distance between God and man, is destroyed—this is “the gospel.” Bliss is not promised, it is not associated with any conditions: it is the only reality; the rest is a symbol to talk about it...” In this case, what is fundamental is not the “union” of God and man, but, strictly speaking, the recognition by “God”, the “Kingdom of Heaven” of the internal state of the personality itself, revealing its infinite content.

The pathos of Nietzsche's struggle with historical Christianity for the true image of Jesus Christ is associated with the perception of an absolute principle in man himself - a principle realized in the concrete life of an empirical personality, through the constant efforts of this personality to reveal its infinite content, its “perfection”, and not through participation abstract and superhuman principles of “substance”, “spirit”, “subject” and “God”. All this exactly corresponds to the main components of the interpretation of the image of Jesus Christ, which we found in Dostoevsky’s novel “Demons”, in the story of Kirillov. In addition to what was said earlier, one can give another example of the almost literal coincidence of Nietzsche’s statements and Kirillov’s aphoristically succinct thoughts; it is especially curious since it concerns the book “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” i.e., it is associated with the period before Nietzsche’s acquaintance with the work of Dostoevsky (if you believe Nietzsche's own testimony). And Zarathustra’s judgment that “man is a rope stretched between the animal and the superman,” and his message that “God is dead,” and his declaration of love to those who “sacrifice themselves to the earth, so that the earth once became the land of the superman,” all these key theses of Nietzsche are anticipated in one of Kirillov’s arguments, in his prophetic vision those times when a new generation of people will come who will not be afraid of death: “Now a person is not yet that person. There will be a new person, happy and proud. Whoever doesn’t care whether to live or not to live will be a new person. Whoever overcomes pain and fear will be God himself. And that God will not<...>Then new life, then a new man, everything new... Then history will be divided into two parts: from the gorilla to the destruction of God and from the destruction of God to...<...>Until the earth and man changed physically. Man will become God and will change physically. And the world will change, and things will change, and thoughts, and all feelings” (10, 93).

The musical development of a child involves developing the ability to hear and perceive both individual elements of the piano fabric, i.e. the horizon, and a single whole - the vertical. In this sense, great educational importance is attached to polyphonic music. The student becomes familiar with the elements of subvocal, contrastive and imitative polyphony already in the 1st grade of school. These varieties of polyphonic music in the repertoire of grades 3-4 do not always appear in independent form. We often find in children's literature a combination of contrasting vocalization with subvocal or imitative vocalization.
One cannot help but mention the irreparable mistake of those teachers who, while observing the formal requirements of the program, use polyphonic music in educating a student, which is beneficial only for showing him off. Often these are works where a student can demonstrate his performing achievements not so much in polyphony, but in a moving, toccata-type polyphonic texture (for example, preludes in C minor and F major from the first notebook of “Little Preludes and Fugues” by J. S. Bach). If Considering that only two or three polyphonic works are studied throughout the year, it is clear how much their one-sided selection limits the child’s development.
Special role belongs to the study of cantilena polyphony. IN school curriculum includes polyphonic arrangements for folk piano lyrical songs, simple cantilena works by Bach and Soviet composers (N. Myaskovsky, S. Maykapar, Yu. (Durovsky). They contribute to the student’s better listening to voice performance and evoke a strong emotional reaction to the music.
Let us analyze individual examples of polyphonic arrangements of Russian musical folklore, noting their significance in the musical and pianistic education of a child.
Let's take for example the following plays: “Podblyudnaya” by A. Lyadov, “Kuma” by A. Alexandrov, “You Garden” by V. Slonim. All of them are written in verse-variation form. Singing melodies, when repeated, “overgrow” with echoes, “choral” chord accompaniment, plucked folk instrumental background, colorful transfers into different registers. Working on these pieces, the student acquires the skills of cantilena polyphonic playing, mastery of episodic two-voices in the part of a separate hand, contrasting articulatory strokes, hearing and feeling the holistic development of the entire form.
We find the combination of subvocal tissue with imitations in Ukrainian folk songs arranged for piano by I. Berkovich, arranged by N. Lysenko, N. Leontovich. The plays “Ta mute prshshkomu”, “Oy za za gori kam’yano”, “Plive choven”, “Lantsinonka rustled” became established in the school repertoire. The verse structure is enriched here not only with imitations, but also with a denser chordal-choral texture .
The student comes into contact with contrasting voice leading mainly when studying the polyphonic works of J. S. Bach. First of all, these are plays from “ Music book Anna Magdalena Bach. Thus, in the two-voice “Minuet” in C Minor and “Aria” in G minor, the child easily hears the voice leading due to the fact that the leading upper voice is intonationally flexible and melodious, while the lower voice is significantly distant from it in register terms and is more independent in melodic-rhythmic pattern. Clarity of syntactic captivity short phrases helps to feel the melodic breath in each voice.
A new step in mastering polyphony is familiarity with the structures of the continuous, metrically identical Movement of voices characteristic of Bach. An example would be “Little Prelude” in C minor from the other notebook. The expressive performance of the continuous movement of the eighth Pots in the upper voice is helped by the disclosure of the intonation characteristics of the blod and the feeling of melodic breathing within long constructions. The very structure of the melody, presented primarily in harmonic

figurations and broken intervals, creates natural preconditions for her expressive intonation. It should sound very melodious with a bright shade of rising intonation turns (for example, in bars 3, 6, 8, 18). In the continuous “fluidity” of the upper voice, the student should feel internal breathing, as if hidden caesuras, which are revealed by carefully listening to the phrasing division into different bar groups. So, for example, at the beginning of the prelude such division is carried out in two-bar groups, in bars 9-12 - in single-bar groups, and then with ever-developing rising intonations - in the wide breath of a complete eight-bar (bars 13-20). Such an internal feeling of syntactic division helps to plastically unite pianistic movements within sound “chains” and prevent stiffness and tightness of the muscles. In the examples considered, the melodic contrast of the voices is usually combined with the bass voice belonging to one or another harmonic function.
The next stage in studying imitative polyphony is familiarization with inventions, fuguettes, and small fugues. In contrast to the contrasting two-voices, here each of the two polyphonic lines often has a stable melodic-intonation imagery.
Even when working on the lightest examples of such music, auditory analysis is aimed at revealing both the structural and expressive aspects of the thematic material. After the teacher has performed the work, it is necessary to move on to a painstaking analysis of the polyphonic material. Having divided the play into large sections (most often, based on a three-part structure), one should begin to explain the musical, semantic and syntactic essence of the theme and counterposition in each section, as well as interludes. First, the student must determine the location of the topic and feel its character. Then his task is to expressively intonate it using means of articulatory and dynamic coloring at the found basic tempo. The same applies to counter-addition if it is of a retained nature.
As is known, already in small fuguettas the theme first appears in an independent monophonic presentation. It is important to develop in the student an internal auditory attunement to the main tempo, which he should feel from the very first sounds. In this case, one should proceed from a sense of the character and genre structure of the entire work. For example, in “Fugetta” in A minor by S. Pavlyuchenko, the author’s “andante” should be associated not so much with at a slow pace, how much with the fluidity of rhythm at the beginning of the theme; in “Invention” in C major by Yu. Shchurovsky, “allegro” does not mean so much speed as the liveliness of the rhythm of the dance image with its characteristic pulsating accent.
In the performance disclosure of the intonational imagery of the theme and counterposition, the decisive role belongs to articulation. It is known how finely found articulatory strokes help to reveal the expressive richness of voice performance in Bach's works. A teacher studying Bach's inventions in class may find much to learn in Busoni's editions. Landshof.
What general, elementary patterns of articulation can we talk about at this stage of training?
Already in two-voice small preludes, fuguettes, inventions, the expressive features of the strokes should be considered horizontally (i.e. in the melodic line) and vertically (i.e. simultaneous movement number of votes). The most characteristic in the articulation of the horizontal may be the following: smaller intervals tend to merge, larger ones - to separation; moving metrics (for example, sixteenth and eighth notes) also tend to merge, and calmer ones (for example, quarter, half, whole notes) tend to dismember. Using the example of “Hunting Roll Call” by N. Myaskovsky, one can show how the corresponding articulatory strokes were found for a theme that carries two figurative principles. The rhythmically weighted beginning of the fanfare melody with its wide intervals is performed in a deep pop legato with emphasis on each of the four sounds. The triplet eighth notes of the moving final part of the theme are reproduced using a light finger legato technique.
Similarly, in the aforementioned “Invention” by Yu. Shchurovsky, all sixteenth notes, set out in smooth, often scale-like progressions, are performed legato or quasi legato; longer sounds with their wide interval “steps” are divided into short leagues, staccato sounds or tenuto.
In the articulation of the vertical of a two-voice fabric, usually each voice is shaded with different strokes. A. B. Goldenweiser, in his edition of Bach’s two-voice invention, advises performing all sixteenth notes in one voice coherently (legato), while contrasting eighth notes in another voice should be performed separately (pop legato, staccato).
The use of different strokes to “color” the theme and counterposition can be found in Busoni’s edition of Bach’s two-voice inventions (see invention in E major).
One of the characteristic properties of Bach's themes is their predominant iambic structure. Most often, the first time they are performed begins with a weak beat after a previous pause on a strong time. When studying small preludes (Nos. 2, 4, b. 7, 9, II from the first notebook), the teacher should draw the student’s attention to the indicated structure, which determines the nature of the performance. When playing into a theme without accompanying voices (for example, in a small prelude in C major from the first notebook), the child’s hearing should immediately be included in the “empty” pause so that he feels a natural breath in it before the unfolding of the melodic line. The pianistic technique itself is carried out by slightly raising the hand from the strong beat with its further smooth immersion into the keyboard. The feeling of such polyphonic breathing is very important when studying cantilena preludes.
Unlike inventions and foots, in small preludes the theme is not always clearly expressed by one small melodic structure. Sometimes a short, laconic theme, repeated several times, is carried out in the form of smoothly changing thematic “chains”. Using the example of the same small prelude No. 2 “in C major, it is clear that the first three-bar consists of three links. With an iambic structure, it is important to hear the soft endings of thematic sections on strong beats (A, B, C), followed by an internal feeling of short “breaths” before each new construction. If the theme is based on chord sounds, it is useful for the student to play its harmonic skeleton with chords, directing it auditory attention to the natural change of harmonies when moving to a new segment. For example, in each of the three initial measures of the mentioned prelude, one must try, by delaying the last three sounds, to hear the chord and its gravity in a new function in the next measure. Such transformation of the melody into compressed harmonic complexes When performed monophonically, it allows you to feel the integral line of intonation development within each functionally stable group of sounds.
To more actively listen to the student's two-voice fabric, his attention should be paid to the technique of the opposite movement of the voices. For example, in “Invention” by A. Gedick, “Two-Voice Fugue” in D minor and “Hunting Roll Call” by N. Myaskovsky, the student almost directly assimilates the melodic pattern of each voice with their contrastingly directed pitch movement.
In the performing interpretation of imitations, especially in the works of Bach, a significant role is given to dynamics. The most characteristic feature of the composer’s polyphony is architectural dynamics, in which changes in large structures are accompanied by new dynamic “lighting.” For example, in the small prelude in E minor from the first notebook, the beginning of the two-voice episode in the middle of the piece after the preceding big forte in three voices is shaded by a transparent piano. At the same time, small dynamic fluctuations, a kind of microdynamic nuance, may appear in the horizontal development of voices. Unfortunately, today we still see the unjustified use of wave-like dynamics in short sections of Bach's music as an echo of Czerny's edition. The student does this subconsciously, under the influence of the more directly assimilated dynamics in lyric plays of small forms of homophonic structure.
When thinking about the dynamics of three-voice cantilena small preludes, the student’s auditory control should be directed to episodes of two-voice in the part of a single hand, set out in drawn-out notes. Due to the rapid decay of the piano sound, there is a need for greater fullness in the sound of long notes, as well as (which is very important) listening to intervallic connections between the long note and the shorter sounds passing against its background. Such dynamic features can be seen in small preludes Nos. 6, 7, 10.
As we can see, the study of polyphonic works is excellent school auditory and sound preparation of the student for performance piano works any genres.

Yulia Gennadievna Tyugasheva
Methodological development “Principles of working on polyphonic works in piano class DSHI"

1. Introduction.

For general musical education, children's students music school, development is extremely important polyphonic hearing. Without the ability to hear the entire musical fabric works, to follow while playing all the lines of musical presentation, their coordination, subordination to each other, the performer cannot create artistically full image. Does the student play a homophonic-harmonic or polyphonic piece, he always needs to understand the logic of the movement of texture elements, find its main and secondary lines, and build a musical perspective of different sound planes.

2. Types polyphony.

With elements polyphony students encounter problems already in the initial period of training. You need to know what types there are polyphonies and what is their essence. « Polyphony» - Greek word. Translated into Russian it means "polyphony". Every voice in polyphonic music is melodically independent, so all voices are expressive and melodious.

Subglottic appearance (polyphonic Russian songs) based on the development of the main voice (in the song - lead). The remaining voices of its branch are more or less independent. They contribute to an increase in the overall chanting of melodic development (note example of a Russian folk song "And I'm in the meadow").

Contrasting polyphony based on the development of independent lines, which are not characterized by commonality origin from one melodic source (Bach's works). First one and then another voice comes to the fore (music example by J. Bach "Minuet")

Imitation polyphony is based on the sequential implementation in different voices, or the same melodic line (canon, or one melodic passage - theme (fugue). All voices are generally equivalent, but in the fugue (variety of fuguetta, invention)- the leading role of the voice with the theme, in the canon of the voice containing the most individualized part of the melody (note example by I. Bach "Two-Voice Invention" in D minor).

3. Work principles over different views polyphony in junior classes of children's art school.

For beginners, the most intelligible educational material in terms of content is the melodies of children's and folk songs in single-voice transcriptions. Songs must be chosen simple, but meaningful, with bright intonation expressiveness, with a clear climax. Further, purely instrumental melodies are used. Thus, the student’s focus is on the melody, which must first be sung expressively, then played expressively. piano. At first work is underway on polyphonic processing folk songs of subvocal type. Tell: the singer started the song, then the choir picked up ( "echo voices", varying the same melody. We need to separate the roles. The student sings and plays the lead singer, the teacher plays the choral part on piano. Then switch roles, having first learned all the voices by heart. The student feels independent life each part and hears the entire piece in its entirety, in a combination of both voices. Next, the student plays both parts, this creates a figurative perception of the voices. A number of other subvocal plays are also learned polyphony. The concept of imitation needs to be explained using examples available to the student. "On a green meadow..." the chant is repeated an octave higher - like "echo", the melody is played by the student, the echo teacher, then vice versa. This is especially useful when the imitation is accompanied by a melody in a different voice. Immediately accustom the student to clarity in the alternate entry of voices and to the clarity of their conduct and ending. The upper voice is f, the echo is p, i.e. a contrasting dynamic embodiment of each voice is necessary. So that the student hears not only the combination of two voices, but also their different colors. After mastering simple imitation (repeating the motive in a different voice) begins Job over plays of a canonical type, built on strett imitation, which enters before the end of the imitated melody. Here, not just one phrase or motive is imitated, but all phrases to the end works. Overcoming this new polyphonic difficulty - work in stages:

First, rewrite the play in simple imitation, putting pauses in accordance with the corresponding voices;

Next, the entire text is played in the ensemble, but in the author’s version, then the student himself plays everything. This exercise can then be played by ear from different notes. What does the student take away for himself? He gets used to it faster polyphonic texture, clearly understands the melody of each voice, their vertical relationship. He sees and grasps with his inner ear the discrepancy in time between identical motives. Hears the beginning of the imitation, its combination with the same phrase that is being imitated, and the connection of the end of the imitation with a new phrase. This work is very important, since strett imitation in polyphony Bach occupies a large place. Lungs polyphonic pieces I. Bach from "Music notebook of A. M. Bach"- the most valuable material, it actively develops polyphonic thinking of the student, fosters a sense of style and form. IN working on polyphony basic principles of working on a work. Characteristic polyphony– the presence of several simultaneously sounding and developing melodic lines, hence the main task is the ability to hear and lead each voice polyphonic development separately and the entire set of voices in their interrelation. In a two-part composition it is necessary work over each voice - to be able to lead it, feel the direction of development, and intonate well. When studying polyphonic pieces main work is conducted on melodiousness, intonation expressiveness and independence of each voice separately. Independence of voices is an indispensable feature of any polyphonic work, and it manifests itself in next:

2. different, almost nowhere matching phrasing;

3. mismatch of strokes;

4. mismatch of climaxes;

6. discrepancy in dynamic development.

The dynamics in Bach's plays are aimed at revealing the independence of the voice. His polyphony is characterized by polydynamics and above all, dynamic exaggerations must be avoided. A sense of proportion in dynamic changes is necessary for a convincing and stylish performance of Bach's music. The peculiarity is that Bach's works do not tolerate nuanced diversity. Long build-ups, significant climaxes, large constructions performed in one sound plane or juxtaposition of contrasting sections are possible, but not a constant change of colors. Often dynamic growth in the topic is based on like steps. Be sure to pay attention to the special structures of Bach's motifs. They begin on the weak beat of the bar and end on the strong beat. As if they are off-beat in nature, the boundaries of the motive do not coincide with the boundaries of the beat. Dynamic pathos and significance are characteristic of Bach’s cadences, especially if the melody develops in the sound f, this also applies to the cadences in the middle works. Braudo revealed distinctive feature Bach's style is a contrast in the articulation of adjacent durations, that is, small durations are played legato, and larger durations are played non legato and staccato, depending on the nature of the piece (there are exceptions of the minuet in d minor, all legato is the nature of the song structure, Braudo called it "reception of eight".

4. Common disadvantages when playing polyphonic pieces.

Common disadvantages when playing polyphonic pieces including that the student throws a sound given voice, does not hear its connection with the entire melodic line, and does not translate it into the next meaningful melodic passage, voice. Sometimes, one withstands a sound and does not balance its decaying sound with the strength of the next one, as a result the sound line is broken and the expressive meaning is lost. In a two-part composition one must take it seriously work on every voice, be able to lead it, sensing the direction of development, intonate well and, of course, apply the necessary strokes. It is necessary to feel and understand the expressiveness of each voice and when they sound together. The student should be aware that different voices, in accordance with their expressive meaning and melodic pattern, phrasing, sound character, strokes can be (and often happen) completely different. This requires not only careful listening, but also special work. You must be able to play each voice from memory, which will help its correct auditory perception and performance. The overall sound will challenge the student to identify the timbre of the sound line.

5. Features work on polyphony in the senior classes of the Children's Art School(polyphony).

In polyphony work The difficulty increases because there are not two, but more voices. Concern for the accuracy of voice guidance makes you pay special attention to fingering. The most difficult formations are those that require good legato. It is necessary to use complex fingering techniques - silent substitution to maintain voices, "shifting", "slip". A new difficulty also appears: the distribution of the average voice between the parts of the right and left hands. The accuracy and smoothness of voice guidance here will largely depend on the fingering.

In polyphonic works knowing each voice from memory from beginning to end is not at all necessary, although it is advisable in some cases. We accept this path work: having familiarized yourself with the essay, carefully analyze each part of it, isolating complex constructions and analyzing their structure. Disassemble each such structure by voice, play separately with the proper fingering, correct phrasing and precise strokes. Next, move on to a combination of different voices and then to full polyphony. The same work hold over the next section, and so sort everything out work. And then return to what seems most difficult. It is useful to train one to listen to the conversation of voices in order to catch vocal and speech intonations; Pay attention to the melodious sound of each voice - this is one of the requirements when performing polyphony.

In the future, always return to the most difficult places and play voices separately, especially where there are two or three voices in one part, in order to maintain accuracy in voicing.

For understanding polyphonic work you need to imagine its form, theme and its character, hear all its implementation. Larger required Job over the first presentation of the theme - the main artistic image of the essay. You need to know whether stretted themes are available in increase and in circulation. Represent the melodic pattern and the nature of the counterposition, know whether it is retained or not. Teach them first separately, then in combination with the topic. Also applies to interludes, know what melodic material they are based on. Identify cadences and their role. Be able to hear not only the horizontal, but also the vertical, that is, the harmonic basis that arises from the combination of melodic voices. When learning to first play with a rich sound, the entire musical fabric should sound well and clearly.

6. Conclusion.

A teacher working with students of any level of preparedness always faces a serious task: teach to love polyphonic music, understand it, with pleasure work on a polyphonic piece. Polyphonic way of presentation, artistic images polyphonic works, their musical language should become familiar and understandable to students.

Mastery polyphony gives a lot students: develops hearing, timbre variety of sound, the ability to lead a melodic line, develops the skill of performing legato, develops accuracy, preciseness of sound, develops special obedience, flexibility of the hand and fingers combined with sound definition.

Development of full perception polyphony unthinkable without Bach's music, which combines features like polyphonic, and homophonic-harmonic thinking. Bach's most striking thematic and clear logic will serve as a starting point for children to become acquainted with polyphony.

I believe that polyphonic music is accessible and interesting for young musicians, and it should be mastered with initial stage learning to play an instrument.

7. Music examples.

8. Literature.

1. A. Alekseev « Methods of learning to play the piano»

Moscow. "Music".1971

2. N. Kalinina "Bach's keyboard music" piano class»

Leningrad. "Music". 1988

3. I. Braudo “On the study of Bach’s keyboard works in music school”

Moscow. « Classic XXI» . 2001

Types of polyphony

There are several types of polyphony: heterophony, subvocal, imitative, multi-themed polyphony.

Heterophony (from the Greek eteros - other and ponn - sound) - a type of polyphony that occurs during a joint (vocal, instrumental or mixed) performance of a melody, when deviations from the main melody occur in one or more voices. Indentationdifferences can be caused by natural differences in the performing capabilities of human voices and instruments, as well as by the imagination of the performers. Although there are no reliable written monuments illustrating the history of the development of heterophony, traces of the heterophonic origin of folk polyphony have been preserved everywhere. Examples of heterophony.

Organum from Hukbald's Musicaenchiriadis

Dance song of the 13th century (from the collection of X. I. Moser “TönendeAltertümer”)

Lithuanian folk song "Austausrelе, teksauleле" ("The dawn is busy")

Heterophony is characterized by unison (octave) endings, parallel movement of voices (in thirds, fourths and fifths), and the predominance of synchronicity in the pronunciation of words. Expressive Possibilities heterophonies were used by I. Stravinsky in the ballets “The Rite of Spring” and “Petrushka”.

Subvocal polyphony - type of polyphony, characteristic of Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian folk music, as well as folklore-oriented works of professional musical art. During choral performances of songs in slow and moderate movement (lyrical plangent and wedding, slow round dance, Cossack) there is a branch from the main tune and independent variants of the melody are formed - subvocals (eyeliner, dishkant, goryak and others). Signs of subvocal polyphony: a variable number of voices (usually 3, sometimes 5 or more), free switching on and off of voices, an abundance of crossings, the use of imitations (inaccurate), unison and octave endings, simultaneous pronunciation of syllables of the text. Examples subvocal polyphony.

Song from the collection of E. V. Gippius and Z. V. Evald "Songs of Pinezhye"

Song from the collection of A. M. Listopadov "Songs of the Don Cossacks"

The expressive possibilities of subvocal polyphony were used by Mussorgsky in “Boris Godunov” (prologue), Borodin in “Prince Igor”, S. S. Prokofiev in “War and Peace” (soldier’s choirs), M. V. Koval in the oratorio “Emelyan Pugachev” ( peasant choir).

In composers' creativity, there are two main types of polyphony - imitative and non-imitative (multi-colored, contrasting).Imitation polyphony (from Latin - “imitation”) - carrying out the same topic alternately in different voices. The techniques of imitative polyphony are varied. For example, a fragment from G. Dufay’s mass “ Avereginacaelorum"

IN multi-themed polyphony Different, sometimes contrasting, melodies sound at the same time. As, for example, in the first movement of Symphony No. 5 by D. D. Shostakovich

The distinction between imitative and multi-themed polyphony is arbitrary due to the great fluidity inherent in polyphonic music. When combining the melody in inversion, increase, decrease and in the raking movement, the differences in melodies horizontally intensify and bring the imitative polyphony closer to contrasting:

Complete tasks

1. Determine the type of polyphony:

A)