Abstract: The 20th century marked a new age in the development of European civilization, which projected images begotten by the technological transformation of reality into an artistic space. The rapid growth of technologies and the industrialization of all spheres of life were reflected in artists' works in urbanized images of reality. One of these images was the machine as the embodiment of speed and technical progress. Being a central motif in Italian Futurism (the most dynamic branch of modernism), the image of the car penetrated all artistic spheres of the Italian art of the 1910s to the 1930s, most notably: literature (embodied, first of all, in the Futurists’ manifestos devoted to the Machine), music (the noise music by Francesco Balilla Pratella and Luigi Russolo), and art (machine painting). The interest in the avant-garde visual art of the 1920s to the 1930s, including Italian Futurism, has grown recently. Many scientific articles and monographs by foreign authors focus on the technical aspects of this ambiguous flamboyant direction: the images of electricity, urban architecture, machines, and mechanisms. But the Russian scientific literature lacks in-depth studies of these aspects of Futurism. This article aims to become the first step in studying the “machine” aspect of Futurism, i.e., its historical background, development, and the influence of the image that formed the basis for the main idea of the creator of the direction more than a century ago. The authors consider the use of the image of the machine in various artistic fields—literature, music, and art—and provide a comprehensive analysis of this phenomenon.  

Keywords: futurism, Marinetti, Russolo, Pannagi, Paladini, Prampolini, constructivism, Manifesto of Mechanical Art, machine painting, Fratella

Abstract: This article explores the creative instrumental works of the modern Russian-Israeli composer Ilya Heifetz. His life and creative experience have two definite stages: one in Russia before 1991 and the other in Israel, each marked by the challenge of reconsidering his national roots in his personal life and artistic work. One of the examples of addressing this problem in Heifetz’s compositions of the Soviet period is his violin concerto. In this research, the author considers the composer’s combination of academic genre patterns with the intonational and structural peculiarities of Jewish folklore as an effort to comprehend his own national identity. Through the intonation and thematic analysis of the concerto, as well as the composer’s personal letters, it can be concluded that the piece contains a hidden message that addresses the history of the Jewish people and their national character, reflecting the unique peculiarities of Russian Jews as they attempt to understand their own national identity. As the main characteristic of this subethnic group is the Russian language and Russian culture perceived through it, the author of this article focuses on how the peculiarities of the Russian composing schools manifest themselves in this piece of music based on Jewish intonations and genres.  

Keywords: contemporary composer's work, Ilya Kheifets, violin concerto, Jewish national identity, Russian Jews, Jewish folklore, klezmer, hidden programming, musical quotes, anti-Semitism

Abstract: This article focuses on the initial stage of the formation of popular music culture in the first half of the 19th century. It analyzes the historical, social, and cultural context of the emergence of one of the earliest genres of popular culture—operetta—in France and Great Britain. In these countries, popular public entertainment (cafe-chantant, public concerts, music halls, burlesque theatres) created the prerequisites for the emergence of not only a new genre but also a new type of culture. Jacques Offenbach, William Schwenck Gilbert, and Arthur Sullivan became the founders of the original versions of this genre, which were based on national music and theatre traditions. The scientific novelty of the research is determined by the fact that the emergence of the operetta is described as a natural result of cultural and historical development; the author outlines the similar factors that spawned a different and, at the same time, internally close phenomena. Operetta, as a popular music phenomenon, filled the gap between opera and the genres of folk theatre, soaking up the merits of both. The novelty of the genre manifested itself both in the peculiarities of the content and the music forms and the new social function, an appeal to a fundamentally new audience that united different social classes and directly influenced the final artistic result.  

Keywords: music hall, burlesque theatre, café-chantant, public concert, Jacques Offenbach, William Gilbert, mass music culture, operetta, Arthur Sullivan, parody

Abstract: This study researches the editing form in a piece of music. The research subject is the music of late 20th-century Russian composers. The purpose of the article is to denote the appearance of a particular form that hasn’t been noticed in music before—an editing form—in the works of late 20th-century Russian composers and to describe its specificity. To achieve this goal, the author refers to the key provisions of V. Bobrovsky’s concept about the “compositional ellipsis,” which in its turn is based on B. Asafiev’s understanding of the process of music form-making as the switching of the functions of the associates of the “i-m-t” formula. The author uses theoretical and analytical research methods and general scientific methods within the comparative and logical analysis, including observation, generalization, and comparison, and arrives at the following conclusions: The editing method is a universal means of constructing an artistic composition space in late twentieth-century Russian musical art. In many respects, it was promoted by the spiritual and intellectual environment of the time with its striving for eclecticism, multilayered complexity, and polarity. The analysis helps identify the peculiarities of a piece of music’s editing form—a high degree of disintegration of thematic material, sudden switching of genre and thematic lines, patchiness, and the polythematic character of structures. The research’s scientific novelty lies in the author being the first to use the principle of “compositional ellipsis” (authored by V. Bobrovsky) as a fundamental principle of editing form-making, which extends the spectrum of objective scientific interpretation of music compositions.  

Keywords: interrupted development, fragmentation, text, musical form, editing, musical composition, twentieth century, musical art, polytemic structures, compositional ellipsis

Abstract: Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino (born 1947), a philosopher and esthete whose music experimentalizes with audibility threshold, is one of the leaders of the vanguard music culture of the 20th and 21st centuries. The author’s artistic concept is developed within the framework of post-serial searching, which is defined as “music ecology” and the “ecology of listening.” Despite his music's wide recognition in Europe and the US, Sciarrino’s artistic work has received little analysis or study thus far. This is especially the case of his opera works, which draw the attention of the leading opera houses and become significant musical events. The topicality of this research is determined by the necessity to study the composer’s works and his philosophic and esthetic views in detail. Sciarrino’s experiments in the realm of music theatre are connected to the notion of azione invisible (“invisible action”), which is the focus of this article in the context of the composer’s artistic concept. The research subject of this study is Sciarrino’s opera Infinito Nero (1998). The research methodology is based on a complex approach that includes systematic, interpretational, musical, and analytical methods. Through an analysis of the libretto, dramaturgy, and its acoustic realization, the author uncovers the distinctive features of “invisible action” in Infinito Nero, including the lack of traditional plot development, the leveling of a visual component, the ambiguity of character identification, the vagueness of space and time, and the modeling of a sonorous environment in which the microscopic acoustic elements with ecological origins and their transformation become of primary importance. The concept of “invisible action” is defined by the dramaturgy of listening and the new mode of listener comprehension in which the visualization process of acoustic images plays a central role in understanding the meaning of everything that’s happening.  

Keywords: contemporary opera, opera theatre, Maria Maddalena de'Pazzi, azione invisibile, Infinito nero, Salvatore Sciarrino, opera dramaturgy, libretto, ecology of sound, aural ecology

Abstract: This article analyzes the interaction between music and dance in Emilio de' Cavalieri’s ballo O Che Nuovo Miracolo (Oh What a New Miracle, Florence, 1589). The relevance of this research lies in the interest in the emergence and development of the theatre ballet genre during this period. The purpose of this research is to study the interplay between music and dance, exploring how they interact on multiple levels to create a complex, multi-sided performance. In this work, the author reveals traditional techniques of adjustment based on the commonness of the measured length of syllables/motives/steps and innovative forms of interaction that manifest themselves in the correlation between the expressive properties of dance with music fabric’s metrics, rhythm, texture, and timbres. The distinctive features of creative musical endeavors are analyzed based on historical, historical-typological, and intertextual research methods. The author analyzes the multilayered structure of the musical piece, which consists of interweaving complex visual and music-intonation transformations and the exposition of dance and music’s contrasting and symmetrically consistent entities. The author concludes with a special dramatic significance that arises from the fusion of music and choreography found by Cavalieri, symbolizing the process of acquiring “the gift of Harmony.” The multilayered intertextual crossings form a complex composition that can be referred to as one of the most unique artistic findings of the epoch.  

Keywords: ballet music composing, musical art, theory of music, Emilio de' Cavalieri, che nuovo miracolo, La Pellegrina, Aria di Fiorenza, ballet music, musical score, intertext interaction