Principles of the composers’ embodiment of the BACH monogram in Nestor Nyzhankivsky’s and Valentyn Bibik’s polyphonic works: the experience of comparative analysis
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Statement of the problem. A monogram in music, which acquires the meaning of a semantic emblem, code, cipher, appears as an intertextual, dialogical artistic phenomenon. After all, the presence of a monogram in a composer’s work becomes a bridge between musical tradition and modernity, an experience of creative rethinking of the heritage of the past and / or a component of the author’s representation of his own inner world. Musical works using monograms are one of the little-studied topics in modern musicology. Most often, composers turn to the monogram BACH – J. S. Bach, – which sounds in musical works of various genres and forms, primarily in polyphonic ones. Among them are works by famous Ukrainian composers of the 20th century, “Fugue on the theme BACH” by Nestor Nyzhankivsky and “Prelude, Fugue and Aria on the theme BACH” by Valentyn Bibik. Objectives, methods and novelty of the research. The purpose of the study is to identify the specifics of the interpretation of the BACH monogram by N. Nyzhankivsky and V. Bibik as an embodiment of a unique authorial approach to the interpretation of the musical tradition. The composers represent different schools, generations and style formations in Ukrainian music, which necessitated a comparative analysis of the afore-mentioned opuses, separated by a historical distance of more than 60 years, and allowed us to identify the similarities, differences and universal features of the composers’ approach to the interpretation of the BACH monogram. Other research methods were also applied, such as historiographic, search and research when working with sources of information and musical manuscripts, historical оne and genre-stylistic, structural-functional and systemic, which are aimed at a comprehensive understanding of the authors’ individual approach to the development of the BACH motif in the polyphonic works under consideration. The polyphonic opuses by N. Nyzhankivsky and V. Bibik have not previously been considered from the perspective of composers’ work with monograms, which determines the scientific novelty of the results of this study. Research results. A comparison of two works that use the BACH monogram and represent different historical eras – the first (N. Nyzhankivsky) and the last (V. Bibik) third of the 20th century – has shown that there are natural differences between them in the composer’s methods of working on the theme. If N. Nyzhankivsky uses the motifmonogram as the initial intonation impulse, “seed”, from which a new expanded fugue theme grows, then V. Bibik uses several principles of theme-forming, thanks to which the monogram appears both, as a part of thematicism and its sole basis, acquiring the functions of a theme-series with its next serial transformations and polyphonic permutations. But certain analogies can also be traced: both works, despite the laconic thematic basis – the four-tone formula ‘BACH’, are large-scale in volume and monumental in artistic content. That is why they resemble the monumental compositions by J. S. Bach own, where he brilliantly embodied the idea of a comprehensive disclosure of the expressive potential of only one theme, and they also demonstrate this potential. Some common features of the composer’s thinking of N. Nyzhankivsky and V. Bibik as artists of the 20th century are also noted, who, consciously focusing on the artistic models of baroque music (primarily fugue) with appeals to the symbolism of rhetorical figures, synthesize baroque Bachian intonations with medieval, Renaissance, late romantic and modern techniques and means of musical expressiveness. In both works of Ukrainian authors, several different figurative-semantic spheres – lyrical-philosophical, meditative, heroic-dramatic, apotheos-ecstatic, hymnic – interact dialectically, which testifies to the depth, complexity and multifacetedness of the artistic concepts presented by them. Conclusion. It is concluded that both authors illustrate the innovative achievements of their time, demonstrate the high skill of polyphonic writing, theme and form creation, the versatility of creative techniques, as well as the inexhaustible potential of Bach’s monogram, which carries the unique sound “gene” of Christian symbolism and becomes a “portal” for the creative dialogue of the past and the present.
Source: Aspects of Historical Musicology
Authors: Mariia Borysenko, Anna Levchenko
Institution: Kharkiv National Kotlyarevsky University of Arts
Language: English
Subfield: Music
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4409570714