Abstract: Functionality in music is understood as “expectation of emergence of certain elements of a piece of music with a certain degree of probability” (A.P. Milka). It is usually expressed as a system of inclination of unstable elements of a tonality to stable ones. The author of this article carries out mathematical analysis of this aspect within the multimedia genre, which combines sounds and silence, present in every piece of music, with visual imagery (motions, pictures, films, etc.). Its elements can be repeated, like sounds do, and, if they are central elements of the composition, they can be more stable than sounds. The author defines the common principles of functionality in multimedia and demonstrates the forms of their expression in a performance and in a happening. The analysis is based on the law of probability. It helps find regularities of stability-instability relationship in compositions containing a gesture. The author proves that in multimedia, where the length of a composition is often not defined by the composer, those elements are more stable, which are repeated with higher probability. The author is the first to give exact definitions to the regularities of functionality in multimedia, in which musicological analysis has usually been substituted with descriptions. 

Keywords: Cohen-Elias, happening, performance, multimedia, texture, gesture, sound, functionality, Cage, Stockhausen

Abstract: The article is devoted to one of the leaders of music vanguard of the post-modernist epoch – John Cage. The author considers the ways of aleatoric design of his scores and the principles of indeterminism typical for many opuses of the composer. The author analyzes the most important Cage’s works in terms of the principle of aleatorics: «Music for Changes», «Seven Haiku», «Music for Carillon № 1», «Music for Carillon № 2», «Music for Carillon № 3», «Music for Piano», «Solo for Piano», Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, «Fontana Mix», «Aria», «Variations I» и «Variations II», «Etudes Australes». The key methodological approach to the material under study is the contextual approach implying the study of the composer’s legacy in the context of dominating techniques and styles of the second half of the 20th century. The scientific novelty of the study consists in the analysis of the principles if aleatoric organization of music structure of Cage’s works. On the basis of this analysis, the author believes it is possible to speak about the contextual nature of the composer’s opuses; to conclude that his compositions are symbolic in the distribution of aleatoric notation and in the consolidation of indeterminism as an important component of designing musical scores in the second half of the 20th century. 

Keywords: performance, musicology, music of the 20th century, score, innovation, postmodernism, synthesis of arts, aleatorics, indeterminism, John Cage

Abstract: The research subject is the new Sergey Slonimsky’s opera “King Lear” (2001) based on Shakespeare’s tragedy. It is the first opera in modern Russian musical theatre, which is based on the old genre dramma per musica. The author of the paper studies the score and premiere plays in Moscow and St. Petersburg to analyze the cultural senses of the creative concept. The author reveals the peculiarities of performing the concept of Shakespeare’s tragedy in drama and the music style of the opera, analyzes the characters’ features and their interpretation by the performer in premiere plays. The author uses the methodology of culturological study, complex and interdisciplinary approaches, methods of historical-comparative analysis, culturological and musicological interpretation. The scientific novelty of the study consists in the fact that it is the first study, which gives profound and comprehensive theoretical and culturological analysis of the new opera “King Lear” by the patriarch of Russian music culture Sergey Slonimsky. It contains the characteristics of premiere plays of 2016 and their artistic evaluation. On the basis of Slonimsky’s work the author concludes about impressive innovation of Russian opera of the 21st century, composer’s reliance on the traditions of the Shakespearean drama theatre and music theatre of the 16th – the 17th centuries, rich in innovations of the 21st century, which smoothly synthesize the features of elite and mass culture. 

Keywords: music of the 21st century , opera drama, innovations, dramma per musica, folklore , mass culture , elite culture, Shakespeare's tragedy, modern opera, Sergey Slonimsky

Abstract: The present publication is a translated article published in Vienna. Its form corresponds with the original publication, copyright rules and the author’s will. However, taking into account the peculiarities of our journal, we have to put footnotes inside the text in parentheses. We’ve kept author’s references to publications. We’ve also kept fonts and text style of the original edition. Karlheinz Essl (born 1960 in Vienna) is an Austrian composer, performer, improvisator and “sound artist”. At the University of Vienna, he studied musicology; in 1989 he defended doctoral dissertation. In 1992–1993 Essl worked for the IRCAM commission in Paris. In 1994 he became a music supervisor of a collection in Klosterneuburg (Vienna). Between 1995 – 2006, he taught algorithmic music at the studio of promising music and media technologies named after an Austrian composer and organist Anton Bruckner in the The Anton Bruckner Private University for Music, Drama and Dance in Linz (Austria). Since 2007 he has been a professor of composition in electroacoustic and experimental music at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. Essl’s work with computers with a focus on algorithmic compositions and music reproduction has had formative influence on his compositional thinking. Essl also works in the field of electronic music, real-time interactive compositions and sound installations. Since the early 1990s he has created various software environments for real-time compositions, which he uses in his live music performances and together with artists from other spheres – choreographers, dancers, artists and poets. In 1998 Essl started designing a computer electronic instrument M @ ZE 2. He uses it as an improvisator in live performances. The publication, which realizes the interdisciplinary method of studying modern electronic music technologies, also contains the results of Essl’s work, who studies and creates electronic and interactive music, composes various music compositions and real-time sound installations. Music works of the composer form from the collisions of ordered, abstract models and original tonal expressive structures. The scientific novelty of the study consists in the fact that the translation of the article fills one of the gaps in Russian scientific literature about the studies of philosophy and aesthetics of music, devoted to the problem of historic development of electroacoustic music as, according to K. Essl, forming, generating and far-reaching musical potential. The paper also contains a detailed description of the composer’s research work with a focus on algorithmic compositions and generative music. 

Keywords: polyphony, music software environment, intermedial environment, algorithmic compositions, computer audio technology, computer electronic instruments, electronic music, electronic music technology, electro-mechanical musical instruments, history of electroacoustic music

Abstract: The article is a review of the concerts of Bulgarian musicians in Moscow. The author mentions the concerts of musicians, well-known in Europe and the USA, - Stefan Dragostinov and his folklore band, instrumental trio of the Vladigerovs, and a violinist Pavel Minaev. The author gives brief characteristics of the performance by the pianist Victoria Vassilenko, the singers Marianna Tsvetkova and Maria Zhekova. The review is focused on the concert of the singer Plamen Beykov and the pianist Bozhena Petrova “Shostakovich. The afterword” with a subtitle “Shostakovich, Michelangelo and Dostoyevsky in music, poems and images”, presented as a multimedia project. The author uses the historical method and the method of the study of art, which help analyze the performance of the late compositions of Shostakovich by the Bulgarian musicians. They performed these compositions in Moscow for the first time. Special attention is given to the use of an innovative multimedia format of the concert using demonstrative materials from the works of Michelangelo Buonarrotti, Dostoyevsky’s and Shostakovich’s drawings. This approach allows extend the capabilities of the modern performers’ interpretation of the music of the 20th century. 

Keywords: Richard Strauss, Marianna Tsvetkova, Boris Christoff, interpretation , multimedia project , Plamen Beykov, Dostoyevsky, Michelangelo Buonarrotti sonnets , Shostakovich the afterword , Bulgarian music performance