The article is devoted to the musical works by composer Nikolai Korndorf that are part of the repertoire of Alexander Ivashkin, a cellist of world renown. The destiny of the performances of a whole set of Korndorf’s solo, chamber and orchestral compositions, such as Concerto capriccioso, the string trio, the piano trio, the Triptych (Lament, Response and Glorification), and the Passacaglia is connected with the name of this outstanding musician. Special attention in this article is given to the last of the mentioned compositions, which bears the authorial dedication to Ivashkin. In the context of the overall questions dealing with the poetics of the titles and the genre form of Korndorf’s compositions, clarification is given of the peculiarities of the composer’s interpretation of the historical genre of the passacaglia. Closely adjoining the musical and verbal elements, Korndorf brings into the musical text of the Passacaglia fragments from Dante’s The Divine Comedy, which are read out loud by the performer in the language of the original text. One of the important aspects in comprehending the artistic meaning of Korndorf’s cello compositions is connected with musical symbolism. In the textural, intonation and harmonic tendencies manifested in the Passacaglia it is possible to observe both the semantic connections with the abundant world of Dante’s images and the associative parallels within the extensive musical intertextual domain.
In the course of the waning of the tradition of folk music, the significance of archival funds of folk musical and ethnographic material as repositories of the intangible cultural heritage is increasing. One of the largest collections of this kind is the archive of the E. V. Gippius Music and Ethnographic Center, located at the Gnesin Russian Academy of Music. It is based on the fund of fieldwork audio and video materials, the collection of which is carried out by a special program that makes it possible to obtain rather extensive and diverse information from researched objects of traditional culture. The museum fund of the archive contains a significant number of ethnographic specimens. The E. V. Gippius Music and Ethnographic Center also possesses an abundant fund of manuscript materials and a specialized library, which includes books in Russian and in other Slavic languages. The article outlines a set of issues relevant to folk music collections, including the issues of preservation of information on magnetic recording media and adequate cataloging of the materials stored in the fund. In recent years the interest to the intangible cultural heritage in Russia has increased and has been fixed at the level of the state cultural policy, which would be conducive to solving any problems the keepers of the unique folk musical and ethnographic archives are confronted with.
The article is devoted to the comparative analysis of two significant compositions from the Renaissance era — the motets endowed with forty separate voices: Alessandro Striggio’s Ecce beatam lucem and Thomas Tallis’s Spem in alium. The distinguished principles of counterpoint having been revealed, as well as the different kind of work with the musical material and choral parts refute the widespread thesis that Striggio’s motet could be considered as a model for Tallis’ motet. At the same time, it is possible to observe a common general compositional technique for both of these motets — by means of imitational writing. The latter explains the logic of the composition of these two musical masterpieces: the gradual buildup of the respective parts and the combined groups of parts makes it possible to display control of the vertical element with a forty-part tutti and avoid parallelisms. The imitational and polyrhythmic counterpoint in Spem in alium also casts doubt over the hypothesis of the possibility of preliminary “chordal” sketches for ten voices in the case of Tallis’s motet, although this could be valid in the case of the motet Ecce beatam lucem, which is similar in its texture to the chordal tonality that appeared in the subsequent musical period.
The article highlights the problem of genre attribution of tunes of the spring-and-summer period of the peasants’ calendar cycle. The materials for research were comprised of folksongs about the holiday of Pentecost recorded in the Belgorod Region. Publications and archival records indicate a number of issues facing the researcher, such as the genre diversity of the set of musical texts under consideration, and the presence of different terminologies among both song collectors and performers. This phenomenon may be explained by the relatively late period of formation of the southern Russian musical culture, as well as the peculiarities of its organization (the multiplicity of local traditions). During the analysis of the melodies, it was possible to establish the presence of structural connections with the predominant genre group within each specific regional tradition. The results of the study may be used for mapping the components of regional song systems, and also make it possible for us to present the features of the formation of the traditional musical culture in the south of Russia in a new light.
The article makes a brief overview of the history of British musicology, which had many outstanding exponents starting from the late 17th century, most of them enlightened music lovers of one kind or another. Among the factors that have influenced the development of musicology in Great Britain to varying degrees are performance practice, the numerous societies of music lovers, and the close connection between musicology and journalism. The name of Paul Griffiths, who holds a degree in biochemistry from Oxford University and is not a professional musician, occupies a prominent place in British musical culture of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The present article examines various areas of Griffiths’s creative activity: criticism, musicology, literature, and librettistics. It also presents a list of Griffiths’s monographs, most of which are devoted to the history of modern music and its creative spirit. Excerpts from some of the musicologist’s studies are provided. The conclusions include reflections on the phenomenon of brilliant amateurs, “non-academic” musicology, and the unique character of British music studies.
