Abstract: This article focuses on the Sixth "Liturgical" Symphony of Andrei Yakovlevich Eshpai, one of the brightest representatives of the national and world musical culture of our time. The composition is considered from the perspective of sacrality, which fully determines its artistic and constructive patterns and dramatic perspective. The scientific novelty of the work is due to the subject of research itself, which was first used in relation to this work. To study the phenomenon of sacrality, it was necessary to use an interdisciplinary approach, including system-structural, comparative, semiotic, and hermeneutic analysis methods. Close attention was paid to considering the properties of musical texture as the main indicator of the spatiotemporal organization of musical material. The connotative and denotative properties of the musical syntax turned out to be analytically significant. No less important was the role of intertextual interactions that determine the text's language mechanisms and reveal its content’s plan. It was established that the phenomenon of sacrality, responding to the aesthetic attitudes of the master, is implemented comprehensively—as a conjugation of philosophical, mythological, and spiritual-religious discourses, each of which has its own system of signs. The functioning of sign systems at the syntagmatic and paradigmatic levels of the text lead to linguistic differences in the instrumental and choral sections of the symphony, revealing phenomena of semantic multiplicity, polychronicity, ensuring the end-to-end formation and development of the liturgical idea. As a result of such interactions, the genre space of the symphony is formed, which is a synthetic, universal, communicative concept.

Keywords: sacrality, symphony, Andrei Yakovlevich Eshpai, contemporary domestic music, musical texture, connotation, denotation, musical text, symphonic dramaturgy, znamenny chant

Abstract: The research object of this article is Finnish musical culture. The subject of the study is the life and work of composer, teacher, conductor, and educator Erkki Melartin (1875–1937). The purpose of the article is to recreate the personal and creative portrait of Melartin as one of Finland’s most outstanding musicians during the first half of the twentieth century. The author examines in detail the composer's biography in close connection with all types of his activities and describes the main directions of the composer's creativity. The author pays special attention to Melartin's administrative activities as the head of the Helsinki Music Institute (now the Sibelius Academy), his conducting, and his pedagogical work. The main conclusions of the study are that Erkki Melartin made a tremendous contribution to the development of culture and musical professional education in Finland; his impressive compositional heritage (with many influences of other composers and Karelia folklore) has bright and distinctive features; Melartin is the author of the first national opera (Aino) and the first large-scale national ballet (Blue Pearl). Among his students: Aarre Merikanto, Yrjö Kilpinen, Vyane Raitio, Ilmari Hannikainen, Uuno Klami, Sukho Ranta, and Helvi Leiviskä —those who later formed the elite of the Finnish School of Composition in the twentieth century. The article, a first in Russian musicology, publishes detailed information about the composer's life, work, and social activities. The main conclusions of the study: Erkki Melartin made a tremendous contribution to the development of culture and musical professional education in Finland; his impressive compositional heritage (with many influences of other composers and folklore of Karelia) has bright and distinctive features; E. Melartin is the author of the first national opera ("Aino") and the first large-scale national ballet ("Blue Pearl"). Among his students: Aarre Merikanto, Jurje Kilpinen, Vyane Raitio, Ilmari Hannikainen, Uuno Klami, Sulho Ranta and Helvi Leiviska – those who later formed the elite of the Finnish school of composition of the twentieth century. The article for the first time in Russian musicology publishes detailed information about the life, work and social activities of the composer.

Keywords: Vyborg friends of music, ballet Blue Pearl, opera Aino, Finnish music education, Finnish music, Sibelius Academy, Finnish musical culture, Helsingfors Institute of Music, Erkki Melartin, Martin Vegelius

Abstract: The research subject of this article is Dmitri Shostakovich's “Thirteenth Symphony” – one of the most monumental symphonic canvases of the twentieth century, reflecting in its essence the chronicle of historical vicissitudes that took place in the Soviet Union. After a number of compromised compositions in the late 1940s and 1950s, forcibly written ("Songs about Forests," the Eleventh Symphony, numerous miniatures), the Thirteenth Symphony made a splash in musical and near-musical circles, as many perceived it from a polemic angle with the Stalinist regime. The reader's attention is focused on the fact that in it, the composer resorts to a veiled polemic with the current government, and the figurative world of the symphony is a direct reaction of Shostakovich not only to the events to which the opus is dedicated ("Babi Yar," the words of E. Yevtushenko) but also on the reality surrounding him. The semantic contexts of the work are examined through the prism of biographical data about the composer, as a result of which a wide documentary and historical apparatus are involved – the memoirs of Shostakovich's colleagues and contemporaries, his own statements addressed both to the symphony in question and to the broad historical and cultural context of the era. It is in the broad contextual approach that the scientific novelty of the article is seen. In addition, it presents analytical material that allows a deeper understanding of the essence of the work as a whole and the reasons why the symphony was banned at the time.

Keywords: Shostakovich, Thirteenth Symphony, art content, musical art, music theory, philosophy of music, musicology, music and history, music of the 20th century, art history

Abstract: The object of the study is the Sonata for Viola and Piano Op. 147 by Dmitri Shostakovich – a work rightfully considered autobiographical and as a farewell. The subject of the study was the specificity of the timbral embodiment of the composition’s figurative and emotional sphere. In the proposed reading, the first part of the sonata is an image of the world to which the composer sends a farewell glance, the second is a sarcastic sketch of bright collective images of the vices of humanity, and the finale is a penetration beyond reality. The author of the article, in detail, referring to specific musical examples given in the text, examines the specific instrumental techniques used by the composer, which made it possible to embody the mystical concept of the sonata. The novelty of the research lies in the identification of three main figurative lines of the composition: eternity, the voice of the soul, and the world, which correspond to different timbral characteristics of the viola, which received their definitions through the use of specific expressive techniques. Eternity is the dispassionate sound of the viola, which is characterized by some programming, inexorability (an allusion to the "knock of fate”), monotonous figuration, and long double notes in the lower part of the range. The voice of the soul is detached, with the dark, gloomy coloring of the sound: melodica, devoid of "beautiful" intonations, sentimental singing, "Beethoven" trio in new refraction, acting as the personification of the otherworldly. The world is a tearing and sharp sound and sarcastic caricature of colors: glissando with access to the flageolet, short caustic foreshocks, exaggeratedly sharp staccato, ascending parallel quarts in sixteenth, illustrating a hysterical burst of laughter. The main figurative spaces coexist throughout the composition, presenting in the sonata genre a new specific characteristic of the viola for the first time, which interprets the world of unreal images in many ways. Shostakovich's sonata is defined as the starting point of the formation of the leading figurative direction of the viola repertoire of the last third of the twentieth century, which secured the viola the role of a guide to the world of the beyond—a kind of Virgil.

Keywords: instrumental techniques, figurative-emotional sphere, Fedor Druzhinin, world of surreal images, musical and philosophical concept, timbre characteristic of viola, viola sonata, viola performance, Dmitry Shostakovich, viola repertoire

Abstract: This article aims to highlight the significance of song folklore recordings when documenting the scientific heritage of the first scientists and researchers of Tuvan musical folklore – A. N. Aksenov and E. V. Gippius – during the period 1927 to 1965. The methodological basis consists of the principles of historical continuity, objectivity, a holistic approach to the analysis of the history of the development of traditional Tuvan vocal music and the prospects for its development. The study of folk music is inextricably linked with the development of professional art. Currently, the works of visiting Soviet composers, melodically associated with Tuvan folklore, are practically not performed in the repertoire of concert programs of creative collectives of the city of Kyzyl. One of the main obstacles to their further application is the absence of these works in the curricula in music educational institutions. The issues of the prospects for the use of preserved sources in the digital archive of the Academy "Xөөmei" are analyzed. The question is raised about the need to create a single institutional repository of works and materials on the work of Russian specialists, musicologists, and scientists who studied the musical culture of Tuvinians in the Soviet period. Modern Tuvan musical folklore was largely based on the results of Aksenov's research, whose activities served as the main reference point for the study of Tuvan folk music and contributed to the flourishing of Tuvan musical art in Tuva.

Keywords: scientific archives, scientific biography, Aksenov, Gippius, Katanov, ethnomusicology, Tuvan khomei, performing traditions, Tuvan folk music, researchers of Tuva