On the Formation Role of the "Events Dynamics" in the Musical Compositions for Voice and Piano

THE SUBJECT of this research is the form in pieces of vocal music regarded as a systematic organization of poetical and musical sound elements providing for the harmony of composition components. Such approach reveals the dual character of the formation principles. On the one hand, such principles are determined by the interaction of poetical and musical resources, on the other hand - by the laws of thinking, including its rational and logical types. We assume that the realization of the general formation principles should employ universal as well as specific means. THE OBJECT of the research is to consider these universal means.

The theoretical assumptions of the research are based on the conceptions, which present the unfolding of artistic content as a temporal process. Regarding artistic time as MEASURING OF CHANGES (Arnheim, 1974) we need to identify such changes in the functions of existing elements or introductions of new elements, which can be qualified as EVENTS (Rutchievskaya,1998, p. 50). Among various sound events representing different levels of composition, rhythmic phenomena take on special significance as they can be characterized quantitatively as well as qualitatively, i.e. can be MEASURED.

Three types of poetical and musical sound elements were considered as such events:

  • the smallest verbal and musical units (phoneme and attacked sound);
  • units marked by the feature, significant for a given level of composition(metric accents inverses and accords with a new tone content);
  • units possessing certain structural integrity (words and texture verticals).

We used fuzzy sets (Zadeh, 1965) to calculate the density of the temporal units (lines and musical phrases corresponding to them) in a vocal composition. Each sound parameter described earlier was characterized by the fuzzy set K(j, µ(i)/i), where:

j - designates the number of the parameter;

i- designates the number of the line;

µ(i) - designates the subjective measure of the event importance, determined by the frequency-method (Zubareva, 2000 & 2002, Kulichkin, 2002; Kulichkin & Zubareva, 2004).

Thus we calculated and visualized the density of sound events and its changes in the process of unfolding the musical composition for voice and piano. We applied this method to the romances of M. Glinka based on poems of the Russian poets. The approach to interpreting the obtained can be demonstrated on the example of the romances «Don't sing ... » («Ne poy, krasavitsa, pri mne...») and «Oh, the night ...» («Ah ty, noch' li,nochen'ka!»).

The first romance («Don't sing ... ») presents an example of solution to the problem of ensuring the integrity of couplet forms, which is a topical issue for the vocal music. The verbal density of a poem is very important for such a solution. The form of the curve (corresponding to this parameter) demonstrates the preparing of climax in the «golden-section» point and the post-climax fall. Another aspect of uniting separated couplets into single form is related to the camouflaging of interstanza caesuras by increasing the of phoneme and accent events. It should be noted that the dynamics of rhythmic and harmonic events (in musical line) is aimed at achieving the same uniting effect, which is unusual for instrumental compositions (Zubareva,2002).

A specific problem of vocal music formation consists in the interaction between the new verbal text and reproduced music. The romance «Oh, the night ...» is very significant in this relation. The evident similarity of the event dynamics curves (for poetry and music) allow us to conclude that formation is controlled by a certain general regularity, which is the same for the parts and the whole.

This paper dealing with the vocal compositions by M. Glinka, presents the pilot results of studying the event dynamics. However, they make it possible to trend the perspectives for future research, related to:

  • updating the concepts of the forming role of the sound events density in various genres of music;
  • extending and deepening the knowledge about the peculiarities of formation in vocal music;
  • the opportunity of studying non-specific phenomena of the sound component of poetry (i.e. having no direct relation to the sense of verbal constructions) as structure elements of the composition as a whole.

 

References:

Arnheim, R. (1974). Art and visual perception: A psychology of the creative eye. The new version. Berkeley - Los Angeles: Univ. of California press.

Kulichkin, P.A. (2002) About researching one's own work. Bulletin of Psychology and the Arts. Vol. 3, №2, P. 53-54.

Kulichkin, P., & Zubareva, N. (2004). "Degenerated" cases of tensity function and the degree of genre characteristics expression in a musical piece (experiments of quantitative analysis applied to pianoforte miniatures of XVIII-XX centuries). Art and Science - Proceedings of the XVIII Congress of the International Assotiation of Empirical Aesthetics. Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, P. 536-539.

Rutchievskaya, Е.А. (1998). Klassithceskaya musykal'naya forma. St. Petersburg: The Composer. [Classical Musical Form].

Zadeh, L.A. (1965). Fuzzy sets. Information and Control Systems, Vol. 8, P. 338-353.

Zubareva, N.B. (2000). O primenenii teorii netchyotkih mnozhestv v muzykovedtchskom issledonanii (na primere analiza fortepiannogo tsikla S. Prokofieva «Detskaya musyka»). Istoriya I metodologiya nauki. Perm: Perm Univ., Issue 7, P. 169-178. [On the Application of Fuzzy Sets Theory to Music Research (Analyzing the Piano Album by S. Prokofiev "Puerile Music")].

Zubareva, N.B. (2002). Tochnye metody v issledovaniyi protsessov musykal'nogo formoobrazovaniya. Istoriya I metodologiya nauki. Perm: Perm State Univ., Issue 9, P. 94-103. [Exact Methods in the Research of Musical Formation Principles].