Abstract: The author reconsiders the interpretation of the concept of Shostakovich’s Symphony No 5 based on the fact that the composition was created during Stalin’s Great Terror of the 1930s and after a harsh criticism of his compositions by the Communist Party and the USSR government in the early 1930s. During the creation of the Symphony No 5, the Soviet music experts defined its concept as a celebration of a “happy” life of Soviet people, However, in the author’s opinion, the symphony has another idea. The researcher notes that the triumph of the Symphony No 5 in the global culture had happened only owing to the director’s interpretation by Yevgeny Mravinsky during the premiere at Leningrad Philharmonic Hall on November 21, 1937, after which the Symphony was performed all over the world and became the gold standard of the Soviet music. Probably, Shostakovich intended to create an optimistic finale for the Symphony. But there are many examples when the composer’s goal doesn’t correspond with the final result. The author provides the conclusion that almost all music experts, who analyze this symphony, use abstract phrases: contrast themes, lyrical image, enemy, etc. But the only proven fact is that a “mechanistic” march is a heavy and ponderous advance of the power of a tyrant eliminating everything he wants based on the principle “who is not with us is against us”. This idea pierces into the Forth and later the Seventh Symphonies by Shostakovich. Today, the Symphony is still a music masterpiece and a part of the global music heritage, but the new socio-cultural interpretations of modern directors each time reveal the new faces of this composition.  

Keywords: repressions, symphonic music, Mravinskiy, conductor's interpretations, Shostakovich, Soviet composer, Fifth Symphony, musical style, orchestral classics, conductor

Abstract: The research subject is the symphonic works of an outstanding Russian composer of the late 20th century Boris Ivanovich Tishchenko (1939 - 2010). The article considers his compositions of the 1960s - 1980s: the first six symphonies with numbers and some symphonies with titles. The author studies such aspects of the topic as Tishchenko’s innovatory role in the renovation of Russian symphonic style of the 1960s, the interrelation of music and poetry in Tishchenko’s large orchestra compositions, and the significant influence of literary concepts on the development of his symphonic style. Special attention is given to the issue of Tishchenko taking over from the large Russian symphonic tradition. The main contribution of the research is the idea that Tishchenko is among the few of his generation who held true to the genre of large “pure” symphony, and took over from the symphonic line of his genius teacher D. Shostakovich. The author’s special contribution is the analysis of all symphonic works by B. Tishchenko. Such a detailed study is the first in Russia. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the fact that the author proves a close connection between Tishchenko’s symphonic style and his epoch, the controversial cultural and social processes suffered by his generation.

Keywords: Dramaturgy, Renewal, Symphony orchestra, Poetry, Music in the USSR, Symphony, Boris Tishchenko, Word and music, Musical theatricality, Leningrad

Abstract: The authors give theoretical substantiation and offer the ways to define the metaphoric images of perpetuum mobile in European music of the 19th - the first half of the 20th century. The research considers the common formative characteristics of an image (monothematism, variational nature, subordination to the continuous flow-through tempo), intonational components (noise and onomatopoeical effects, ostinato character, repetition of rithmic, texture and melodic formulae). The authors detect individual stylistic peculiarities in the realization of perpetuum mobile in the process of conducting a piece of music: sarcastic invariants of a theme (D. Shostakovich). Using the material of musical compositions, the authors substantiate and explain the universal character of the image of perpetuum mobile and its strong potential. The transformations of the image reflect the development of European music from pantheism of romanticists to the newest technicist tendencies of the 20th century, and represent complex conflict processes of the spiritual life of a person in the age of industrial civilization. The research of the image of perpetuum mobile of the previous ages doesn’t explain all the peculiarities of the phenomenon and determines the need for further research of the postmodernist music art of the late 20th - the early 21st century. Based on the offered images of perpetuum mobile in music, the authors detect their transformation from the sound images of the 19th century to anthropogenic allusions of the first half of the 20th century. It is proved that in the music of the early 20th century, perpetuum mobile is one of the implementations of the image of a “human-machine” - in music culture, becomes controversial due to wars and confrontation in the world, therefore the sound images of perpetuum mobile reflect a militarized conflict (a vivid example is Shostakovich’s Symphony No 7). The article characterizes the artistic and stylistic aspects of perpetuum mobile in the instrumental music of the 20th century. The authors note that in the beginning of the century, the image of perpetuum mobile gains the features of technicism, which promotes the development of a different interpretation and means of conducting a piece of music.  

Keywords: conductor's interpretation, romanticism, artistic and figurative connotations, sound image, artistic image, perpetuum mobile, technicism, symphony, conducting, Shostakovich

Abstract: The authors consider and analyze the peculiarities of means of dance and plastic expression: pantomime, gestures, choreographic lexics, choreographic pattern, rhythmics, remarks and exclamations. The idea of a combination of a choreographic image and music of Russian and Chinese dances, declared by the authors, is a multi aspect complicated issue which is of a significant scientific interest. The purpose of the research is to reveal the contents of a folk dance stage adaptation which is conveyed with the help of improved means of expression and is an effective tool for the expression of national peculiarities of Russian and Chinese choreography. The authors study the folk dance stage adaptation as a key means of expression of folk music in Russia and China. The scientific novelty of the research consists in a comprehensive analysis and substantiation of the need for preservation of folk dance traditions in modern China as an important component of a traditional training of a future choreography teacher. The authors prove the presence of definitive features of local invariants of Russian folk dances and dance canon and its differences from the canon of folk dances of other regions.  The research actualizes the problem of music training of future choreography teachers in the pedagogical theory and artistic education practice.  The consideration of this topic is determined by the solution of an urgent problem of preservation of a unique cultural phenomenon of a nation in the aspect of continuous assimilation of culture both among regions and in interstate realms (border areas of countries with unique cultural codes).  

Keywords: traditions, polyphony, choreographic picture, choreographic vocabulary, Chinese folk dance, Russian folk dance, folk dance, folk music, training of choreographers, genre features

Abstract: The article reveals the contents of pedagogical skills of the future music teachers in the process of vocal training based on the value-based attitude of would-be teachers to technologically oriented vocal and pedagogical activity, their technological knowledge and skills in the field of vocal performance and vocal pedagogics and psychology, abilities to use singing training techniques. Vocal and psychological training of would-be teachers of music is considered as a process of acquisition of vocal-technical and art and performance knowledge and skills, vocal and pedagogical skills, using the singing teaching techniques, in order to use them in the work with students, especially those with voice defects. The research methodology is based on the theoretical analysis of the existing approaches, techniques and methods of forming pedagogical competence of would-be vocal coaches. Based on the analysis, the authors systematize and combine different instruments (pedagogical and psychological) in order to increase the effectiveness of eliminating bleating in the process of vocal training. The vocal-pedagogical psychology is characterized as an integrative system combining task-oriented, step-by-step and algorithm-based pedagogical, psychological and vocal activities of a coach aimed at the improvement of the result of teaching singing with account of voice defects in order to use them in the work with middle-school and out-of-school education students especially in terms of working with bleating.

Keywords: vocal and pedagogical psychology, pedagogical technologies, psychology, learning process, competence, singing training, vocal, tremolo, voice defect, methods and techniques

Abstract: In Shostakovich’s creative work, metaphoric completeness becomes the most important constant of any concept, in which the orientation to the depth of the audience’s penetration into the controversial music whole prevails. Naturally, different metaphoric states are enclosed in definite, prevailing metaphoric layers: epos, lyrics, and drama with typical for them various emotional shades and the ways of narrative development. The research object in the article is the suite for two pianos created by the composer in 1922, which reflects the composer’s state of mind after his father’s death. It explains the images and themes in the composition, which  are connected with epos and the epic form of a novel. For the first time, the study of art considers a suite as a musical novel: the author parallels between a novel as a genre of literature and a novel as a possible form of narration and development of a piece of music. It represents the scientific novelty of the article. The author proves that due to its special form of narration, the suite has the features new to the field of piano duet: polysynthetism of the form of the whole, variety of drama “fractures”, diversity of artistic and musical metaphors, and, consequently, the virtuosity of performance. In its turn, it has predetermined the allocation of thematic structures, considerably new for the genre.   

Keywords: the content of art, musical art, theory of music, philosophy of music, musicology, art history, piano duet, Shostakovich, 20th century music, epic