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Purpose of Article. The article considers the status of Ukrainian music and drama theatre in the socio-political conditions of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires of late XIX – beginning XX century. The research methodology is based on the usage of historical-cultural, comparative, and art-historical methods. The mentioned methodological approach allows to explore the ideological and aesthetic content of the creative activity of Ukrainian music and drama theatre, determine its contribution to the cultural-artistic panorama, and the initiation of interethnic national dialogue. The scientific novelty of the work is the analysis of specific features of the Ukrainian music and drama theatre in as a sociocultural phenomenon, determination of its role in the ethnocultural space of the Russian and Austrian-Hungarian empires of late XIX - beginning XX century. Conclusions. The Ukrainian music and drama theatre was researched as a component of the social aspect, was integrated into the cultural and historical form of a polycultural society, acquired the status of a socio-cultural phenomenon, that performs ethnic consolidating function, promotes national culture as well as national theater art.
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Purpose of Article. The purpose of the work is to find the generalizing features and trends of the appeal of the Chinese drama (spoken) theatre to the works of classics of the world drama - W. Shakespeare, H. Ibsen, A. Chekhov in the status of objects of artistic reception, as well as to find their alterations in the concrete and historical context of cultural life and society. To generalize the reasons for expanding the circle of authors of world literature and outstanding playwrights for a more reliable and full coverage of the influence on Chinese drama and "spoken" theatre. Methodology. The methodology of research, first of all, lies in applying comparative and historical-logical methods. The given methodological approach allows us to disclose and analyze the certain patterns of applying ideas and images of Russian and Western literature about the ideological models of Chinese society in specific historical conditions; these models being close to the relevant plot motives and ideological sources of a certain period. Scientific Novelty of the work is to expand the notion of the influence of classical world drama on the repertoire and the means of interpreting the plays by the new theatrical troupes of China. In particular, the differences between the "spoken" theatre and the "Beijing Opera," as well as the ways of the formation of the national theatre, considering the influence European dramaturgy - from Shakespeare to Chekhov. Conclusions. It is important for perception problems of a translated text of the work of art in a different cultural environment, that receptive aesthetics accentuates the question of historicism and social principles of this interpretation - in literature and drama, and in the theatrical culture in general. It is proved that in the mentioned period of time there was a transition in Chinese drama from the legends of xi qu theatre to the real life of a man. That is, Chinese playwrights have learned from the classics to create true, viable models of plays, to combine drama and lyricism together, to create new types of characters, a special genre of "lyrico-psychological drama." At the beginning of the XX century, the educated youth refused to adopt the norms of behavior determined by Confucian ethics; the adherence to well-doing, the external standards of decency and the family farm management were gradually becoming obsolete. This circumstance can be vividly illustrated by the reaction caused by the play "A Doll's House" by Henrik Ibsen when the female movement in China began to be called "Noraism" after Nora - the protagonist of this play.
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The purpose of the article. The features of the combination of traditional and innovative elements in modern choreography and their main stages of formation are considered in the report. A striking example of this synthesis is the so-called folk trends that meet current requirements, while at the same time retaining the hallmarks of national traditions. Methodology. The methodology of research consists in application of art-criticism, comparative, historical and logical methods. The novelty of research. The genre varieties of modern choreography are found out, and the transformation of traditional symbols in them is noted. In choreographic art, as a developing process, there are two components; stable - a cultural tradition and innovative - updated and enriched in the form and content of new artistic discoveries. In today's conditions, the danger of the loss of a rich heritage of folk art, traditions of folk folklore in all its genre diversity is becoming more and more understood. Conclusions. The innovative approaches to the teaching of classical dance are highlighted, the effectiveness of which depends directly on the teacher's knowledge of modern technologies and their ability to correctly and timely apply, taking into account the structure of the lesson, the selection of material for a particular topic, the choice of educational line and the construction of educational process.
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Purpose of the article: In the surroundings of the Kyiv voivodes and governors, one of the most influential officials of the city and surrounding administrative territories, in the 15th–18th centuries formed a special cultural environment, where music was also given a certain place. The main purpose of our study is to characterize the musical life of these environments in the language of historical documents. In addition, to determine the functions and composition of musical chapels, musical repertoire, instruments, identify musicians, and so on. The methodology of the research is to apply predominantly general-historical methods: historical-genetic, historical-comparative, historical-typological and historical-systemic. Scientific novelty: The musical life of Kyiv voivodes and governors has never been the subject of a special study. The collected materials, first presented in such configuration, deepen and specify the knowledge about the secular musical culture of Kyiv in the 15th–18th centuries. Conclusions: The musical culture of Kyiv of the 15th–18th centuries has not yet been sufficiently well studied, but almost completely forgotten knowledge and ideas about secular Ukrainian music of this time are gradually resurfacing. In addition, our research partially eliminates the artificial problem of Ukrainian historical musicology – the ways of reception of professional European musical culture in Ukraine, because, as can be seen from the collected documents, musical chapels existed in Kyiv during all this period, and judging by musical instruments and repertoire, they embodied the Western European musical theory and practice. The musical chapels of the voivodes differed little from those that existed in other areas of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the service of voivodes and governors there were both local and foreign singers and instrumentalists, which contributed to the spread of foreign musical achievements in the city. Subsequently, the presented direction of the study can become a model for the analysis of musical chapels in other Ukrainian historical areas.
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Headlines from around the region: traditions, modernity and outrage in the Caucasus; Poland and a Jewish museum; you say Romanian, I say Moldovan; three Russian sisters; and Armenians in Turkey.
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Slovak translation of De institutione musica (I,1-14) from Boethius.
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Research on popular folk music in Serbia and other parts of former Yugoslavia in the 1990s has claimed close ties between performers and Serbian nationalism.1 Authors have pointed to symbolic links between singers and the regime of Slobodan Milošević and ultra-nationalist public figures. The most notorious example of connections between of folk music performers and Serbian nationalism was the 1995 marriage between popular singer Svetlana Veličković-Ceca and paramilitary leader Željko Ražnatović-Arkan.2 This cemented the idea of a symbiotic relationship between pop-folk music and warmongering nationalism that aimed to foster an immoral value system. For example, Ivana Kronja writes that ‘This system of values aimed to establish the cult of crime and violence, war-profiteering, national-chauvinism and provincialism, together with the abandonment of morals, education, legality, and other civic values.’3
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Three musical adaptations of the myth of Phaedra, in which the wife of King Theseus of Athens desperately falls in love with her stepson Hippolytus, were composed in the second half of the twentieth century by three homosexual composers: the dramatic cantata Phaedra for mezzosoprano and small orchestra (1976) by Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) after a text by the American poet Robert Lowell, the opera Le Racine: pianobar pour Phèdre (1980) by Sylvano Bussotti (1931-) after a libretto drafted by the composer himself and consisting of a prologue, three acts, and an intermezzo, and, last but not least, the two-act concert opera Phaedra (2007) by Hans Werner Henze (1926-2012) after a libretto by the German poet Christian Lehnert. The aim of this paper is to prove that the three homosexual composers chose a myth about an incestuous—and thus censored—love in order to represent homoerotic desire, labelled as deviant by the coeval heteronormative society and hence condemned by it. The study sheds light on the aspects of the most famous literary elaborations that affect gay sensibility, and on how the three composers experienced their homosexuality and gave utterance to it in their other works. The analysis of the three works at issue demonstrates that the discourse about gayness takes shape through the interplay of numerous aspects. The elaboration of the literary sources, the organization of the libretto, the characters’ definition, and the mise-en-scène, together with the music, put the myth into that perspective.
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The purpose of my paper is to reveal the main features of the mystery genre in the European musical culture of the 19th and the 20th century on the basis of the genre features established in the Antiquity and the Middle Ages.The mystery play genre, as we know, in essence means the firm unity of certain stable features. The complexity of those features consists of two specific elements—religion and social, and a general one—the model of the world for a certain epoch.If in the mysteries of Ancient civilizations and the Middle Ages, the aforementioned components operated as a firm unity of inseparable elements; later, in the period after the “new times”, especially at the end of the 19th century and in the 20th century, the stable elements were disintegrated from each other. This process is discussed on the examples of the following operas:• The common religion and ethical model—Wagner’s Parsifal;• The code of moral rules and principles in the social context—Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron;• The explication of Thomistic ideas in the modern world—Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise.What is outlined is the unity of necessary components of the genre of the mystery play: multidimensional sources of libretto; a mission of the main hero; the author’s interpretation of the mystery; the abundance of ritual scenes; the relationship between the internal and externaldramaturgical processes; synthesis of the different theatrical genres; static dramaturgy. All of these features suggest a specific type of musical main mystic spheres: divine, terrestrial and demonic. Consequently, the dramaturgy of opera staging has three levels of activity: superficial, inner and upon time.
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The article discusses the issue of Jewish musicians’ identity by the example of prewar Galician artists. It emphasizes the role of social and political divisions within Jewish community and the impact of assimilation, liberalism, socialism and Zionism on the musical life of Jews in Galicia. Then, it discusses their influence on individual musicians like: Bronisław Gimpel, Bronisław Huberman, Józef Koffler, Stanisław Lipski, Wilhelm Mantel, Paweł Anhalt, Stefan Schleichkorn, Henryk Guensberg, Józef Neger, Henryk Apte, Izaak Lust, Zofia Lissa, Mordechaj Gebirtig, Nachum Sternheim and musicians active on the stage of popular music. Its aim is to encourage musicologists to reconsider the issue of prewar Jewish musicians’ identity and to use findings of historians and sociologists in musicological literature. They indicate rather complexity, not unilaterality, of the self-identification of Jews in diaspora. Understanding of the Jewish musicians’ work conditions allows to discover the hidden meaning of their actions.
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The aim of this article is to interpret songs by Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and a less-known composer—Irena Wieniawska (1879−1932), based on the same poems by Paul Verlaine. In the first part of this paper, the relationships between Wieniawska, Fauré, Debussy, Ravel and Verlaine are subsequently described. Then, the author makes a comparison between selected songs by French composers and Madame Poldowski, indicating main similarities and differences. The final part consists of some remarks related to the fact that Wieniawska fulfills features of the French mélodie very strictly. This is why her songs seem to be more traditional, not as allusive and sophisticated as Debussy’s or Ravel’s vocal works.
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The history of the organs in the Cistercian Abbey in Kraków-Mogiła has not been studied so far. The article elaborates this topic based on the results of an archival query. Most of the sources are preserved in the Cistercian Archive in Mogiła. Examining them, the author discusses the history of instruments in the monastic church and in the former St Bartholomew church. On the basis of the sources, it was stated that at least in the 18th century the monastery church was equipped with two pipe organs. This fact has not been pointed out so far by researchers. The following article is supplemented by archival photographs.
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The Archive of St Joseph’s Convent in Kraków contains a collection of musical manuscripts, which have not been studied before. Among books of liturgical use, such as graduals and antiphonaries, there are also small cantionales, full of canto fratto repertoire. The majority of these sources originate from the Convent of Bernardine Nuns in Kraków; however, there are also at least two manuscripts from the Convent in Wilno. The aim of this paper is to present canto fratto repertoire of Benedicamus Domino found in the 18th and 19th century liturgical manuscripts from the Convent of Bernardine Nuns in Kraków. The author indicates sources of studied melodies based on the wide range of liturgical manuscripts from the 18th and 19th centuries—especially from convents of Bernardine Nuns in Poland, as well as from the Convent of Benedictine Friars in Staniątki—and compares it to the dispersal of canto fratto settings of ordinarium missae. Finally, the paper presents complete index of Benedicamus Domino melodies in the annex.
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Infant prodigies were a common phenomenon in the 19th century. They astonished the audience not only through their impressive abilities, but also the innocent beauty and the youthful grace. The perfect example of this is Apolinary Kątski (1826–1879), a violin virtuoso and a composer, known mainly as the founder of the Institute of Music in Warsaw, who, since he was three, was recognizable in concert halls all over Europe.According to the author, the early stage of the violinist’s activity requires more attention. The presented article sketches the path of young Apolinary’s life from the moment of his first performance in 1829 to May 1838, when he was granted with the famous recommendation of Niccolò Paganini. It introduced him to numerous concert halls of Europe and positively influenced his further artistic activity. The hereby presented paper makes an attempt to find out the date and place of birth of Kątski in the context of the rich musical activity of his family members. It also shows the first artistic tours of the young virtuoso against the background of his artistically talented siblings: a violinist Karol, pianists Stanisław and Antoni, and a singer Eugenia. The crucial moment are reflections on the stay of the family in Paris and their first performances in the musical centre of Europe as well as contacts of the young violinist with Niccolò Paganini.The studies on the correspondence of the father of the virtuoso, Grzegorz Kątski, and research on the foreign newspapers let the author reconstruct the life of Apolinary Kątski in the very first stage of his musical activity and place him in the context of infant prodigies of the 18th and 19th centuries.
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The main aim of this paper is to examine the discourse on Frédéric Chopin that took place in Poland in 1949, when the 100th anniversary of his birth coincided with the culmination of the socialist realist propaganda in the field of Polish culture. The discourse, initiated and moderated under effective surveillance of the Polish People’s Republic’s government, was filled with communist ideology. The authorities aimed at creating a sense of communion in the Polish nation, therefore they undertook numerous actions in the area of cultivating memory of Chopin and reception of his works. The composer was used as a banner under which the culture of socialist realism was to be consolidated. Chopin was presented by the narrators in the socialist realist context in various dimensions.“Deep humanism”, “truth”, “optimism”, “sincerity” and “democratic features” of Chopin’s music were the crucial notions used by them. Chopin was depicted, among others, as a revolutionist and a prophet of triumph of communism. The oeuvre of Chopin was said to bring together “fraternal countries and nations”, Polish People’s Republic and Soviet Union, while being simultaneously a crucial element of class conflict. The authorities had a tendency to overemphasize folk roots of his compositions, thus among musical genres composed by Chopin the importance of Mazurka was exaggerated. Other genres without such strong folk connotations, as sonatas, ballades and scherzos, were marginalized in the discourse.
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This article explores the newly discovered account books of the Lviv Uniate Musical Chapel of the Bishop Leon Szeptycki. The main stay of this musical chapel was the architectural complex of the Cathedral of St George in Lviv. Today, two account books are stored in the department of old books and manuscripts of the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum in Lviv in the archives of the Lviv bishops; they cover the years 1760–1779. In the first two parts of the article, the author investigates the issues of the founding of the musical chapel and its place of activity. In the third part, there is a list of musicians who were members of this chapel over the years. In addition to the names and surnames, their positions, years of employment, musical instruments which they played and details of their biography are indicated. In the next part, there is a list of pupils of the chapel. It appears that the total number of pupils ranged from 2 to 14. Adult musicians and pupils played various instruments: harpsichord (“klawicymbaly”), clavichord (“klawikort”), organ, violin, alto, viola da gamba (“kwartviola”), cello (“basetla”), oboe, bassoon, trumpet and horn; there were singers as well. In the fifth part, the author specifies in what way the Lviv Uniate musical chapel was financed. In the next part, both the church and the secular musical repertoire of the musical chapel are described. In this section, also information from the Warsaw periodicals are used. In the seventh part, the collaboration of the Uniate music chapel with other chapels and monastic orders, Jesuits, Dominicans and Conventual Franciscans is explored. In the last part, the author examines the information about the human settlements that are found on the pages of the account books.
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In the article, the author investigates 24 musical manuscripts belonging to former Miners’ Orchestra of Wałbrzych (Waldenburger Bergkapelle), which used the sources for concerts of the orchestra. The analysed manuscripts have not yet been researched or catalogued in RISM (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales) database before. The ensemble’s repertoire was analysed and the collection’s characteristics, including copyists, watermarks and stamps, were examined. It allowed to assess the provenience of the manuscripts and make certain remarks about the type of repertoire played by Waldenburger Bergkapelle. The results of the analysis were presented in the context that can be found in secondary sources, widely describing the activity of the orchestra. The author also carried on cataloguing in Warsaw University Library, creating the catalogue in the Muscat RISM system. Considering the numbers on shelfmarks, it can be assumed that the original collection contained circa one hundred of musical sources. However, only a small part of them is known and catalogued. Therefore, the knowledge of the collection remains incomplete and is worth further investigation.
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Edward Mąkosza (born on 13th November 1886 in Lisków, died on 25th April 1973 in Częstochowa) was a Polish composer, pedagogue, conductor, organist and ethnomusicologist. He was the main organiser of the musical life in Częstochowa. He is an author of circa 1000 compositions. He received numerous commendations and was a hero of the Jasna Góra Monastery. The article, presenting Edward Mąkosz’s biography, is to serve as an intro-duction to the comprehensive study of his work. The subsequent periods of his life (childhood, youth, professional work until World War II, professional work after World War II) are discussed. Then, we focus on the composer’s broadly understood activity: social, pedagogical and artistic undertakings. The article aims to show the professor’s entire life.
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