Meditativity in the structure of art consciousness (on the material of the mass «And i said in my heart» by M. Shukh)

Abstract

Background. Mikhail Shukh is a Ukrainian composer, who paid much attention to spiritual music in his creative work. In general, the spiritual sphere of his works belonged to choral genres. Mikhail Shukh’s choral music is very diverse: it varies from large genres to choral cycles and miniatures. Mikhail Shukh was one of the first composers who revived spiritual music in the 90s of the 20th century after a long stagnation. As a composer of the "new time", who belonged to the "nova musica sacra" direction, Mikhail Shukh interprets spiritual genres in a new way. His works are written from the modern perspective, begotten by the artist’s vision of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Mikhail Shukh composed his works at the historical and political turn of the centuries reflecting and developing the choral art of our times in many ways. The composer’s musical thinking is remarkable for philosophical and religious ideas that underlie many of his works. In his world view, Mikhail Shukh always shrinks into himself, trying to gain inner freedom, to comprehend the secrets of the world order. Hence the desire of the composer for the meditative direction in music – contemplation, reflection – is noticeable Objectives. The purpose of the paper is to reveal meditativity in the structure of M. Shukh’s Mass "And I said in my heart" in order to comprehend the specifics of the artistic consciousness of the composer Methods. The study is based on the stylistic, semantic and genre methods. Results. The results of the research detected that Mikhail Shukh’s Mass "And I said in my heart", written with canonical Latin texts (for soprano, female vocal trio, organ and synthesizer), belongs to the spiritual genre and is distinguished by the weighty role of meditativity in the birth of the artistic concept of the composition. However, speaking of the canonical genre of the Mass, it is clear that the most important thing in the sound of church songs is their prayerful character. Prayer state is the state of inner feeling, that is why the concept of "meditativity" can be equated with the concept of "prayerfulness". But the pray can be different – it can contain requests to God, thanks or praise of His greatness. Such a deep immersion of the composer in the image and philosophical thinking stems from the fact that the Mass "And I said in my heart" is a dedication to the memory of his mother, which changes the content and genre of the work, bringing it closer to the funeral mass – requiem. This is evidenced by the structure of the Mass: the work is made up of 9 parts, 8 of which belong to the classical requiem, with the exception of one – "Victimae paschali", which is a Gregorian sequence. The mass has many intonations of light sadness; the transparent architectonics of the parts makes the mass sound imponderable and sublime. From the emotional viewpoint the parts are contemplative, prayerful, peaceful, devoid of vivid variety. A bright example of the nontraditional interpretation of the requiem genre made by the composer is his treatment of the part "Dies irae". As you know, this part has always been one of the dramatic centers in the classical samples of the genre (for example, in the works of W. Mozart, G. Verdi, A. Schnittke). However, from the viewpoint of imaginative state the second part of Shukh’s Mass "And I said in my heart" is meditative-contemplative, essentially it does not express the main idea of the Requiem text about the "Day of Wrath". The composer decided to use the meditative figurative sphere in this part, wishing to rise and soar over everything negative and let all the earthly sufferings go. The analysis of the mass showed that in most parts (except VII and VIII) the composer uses slow or moderate tempo, a quiet nuance, there are no climaxes. Analyzing the peculiarities of the thematism in the mass, we can say that the author often comes close to the genre of the Gregorian chant in its pure form (in unison, in a quart), the themes are quite ascetic, restrained and do not have much development. The semantics of the work synthesizes various states of the penitential soul and embodies such modes of meditative lyricism as penitential, sorrowful, contemplative, prayerful, and peaceful ones. One of the stylistic features of M. Shukh’s musical language is the use of sustained chords in the cadence at the end of phrases or at the end of the parts themselves, which is also observed in this work and is also a manifestation of the meditative semantics. The parts of the mass can be conditionally divided into figuratively bright parts (e.g. "Kyrie eleison", "Victimae paschali", "Domine Jesu Christe", "Agnus Dei"), which mostly sound in major keys where enlightened, ascending intonations, consonances prevail, and mournful ones (e.g. "Dies irae", "Dies illa", "Lacrimosa"). As the name of the work "And I said in my heart" suggests, the Mass has many inner emotions of the author; it reveals the composer’s own self. This is evidenced by the fact that the composer wrote his piece not for the full choir, but for a vocal trio in order to make the texture of the work more transparent and its sound more gentle, intimate, as well as to affirm the dominant female image in the piece – the image of Mother. Soft voices and the "angel-like" solo of the high soprano help to create the image of the human soul "departing", "flying away" to God. An important role in the embodiment of the meditative concept of the mass is assigned to the accompanying instruments – the organ and synthesizer. From the first seconds soft organ chords resemble the sound of the choir, and the slight rustle of the synthesizer’s sound dip listeners into the prayerful sphere, way of thinking. And then throughout the composition they help to create an elevated, prayerful image. Conclusions. When analyzing various genres of choral works by M. Shukh, one can note that the composer resorts to meditativity both in spiritual choral works (for the embodiment of the Divine being through music) and in secular genres. So, this quality of the composer’s choral thinking can be seen in the Mass "And I said in my heart," which is a vivid embodiment of the liturgical interpretation