Teaching qualities in piano works by Henryk Pachulski in the context of the development of piano technique in children and youth. Part 1

Henryk Pachulski (1852-1921) – a Polish composer, pianist, and teacher. He graduated from the Warsaw Institute of Music, having studied piano with Rudolf Strobl. His harmony and counterpoint teachers were Stanisław Moniuszko and Władysław Żeleński. After that, he studied piano at the Moscow Conservatory with Nicolai Rubinstein and then Pawel Pabst. He learnt harmony from E. L. Langer, then Anton Arensky with whom he also had a special course in counterpoint. In 1886 he started his teaching career at the Moscow Conservatory, which lasted over 30 years. He also performed as a pianist in Moscow, Petersburg, and Warsaw. Pachulski was acknowledged for his technical aptitude, but he gained the greatest recognition as a teacher and a composer. He created over a hundred piano works, including three sonatas, two cycles of variations, two polonaises, two mazurkas, three waltzes, preludes, studies, impromptus, and more. He also wrote chamber, vocal and orchestra compositions, as well as piano transcriptions for orchestra and chamber pieces. This article presents the composer’s music and teaching activity, it also touches on teaching qualities of his piano works. It pays special attention to technical aspects, and the analysis also covers the formal side of these compositions. While preparing the text, the author used information included in the Polish music press from the turn of the 20th century, music collection of the National Library in Warsaw, archive documents, and foreign sources.

National in modern composer's work:to the problem of interpreting the song source

The article deals with the specific facets of the issue “Composer and Folklore” based on the example of piano transcriptions in musical and creative practice of Kazakhstan during different decades. Based on the traditions of musicology in the study of national composition schools, the genre that has acquired a special and ever-increasing representative value in the modern cultural situation is presented. In the works that are in active demand in the field of musical performance, the expediency of relying on the text of the original folk source for the implementation of the adequate and complete interpretation (performing, musicological, etc.), regardless of the measure of its rethinking, is emphasized.Since the most bright patterns of folk and “oral and professional creativity” (T.B.Gafurbekov) are interpreted more than once, the versions of various authors are compared. There are comments of the “series of transformations” of the well-known folk song “Kamajay” using musical illustrations. Its two piano variants show the significance of variation methods using genre-style models that bring new meanings to the content of the whole. “Improvisation” (1978) by A.Bestybayev (born in 1959) in the historical context is a symbolic work in view of its obvious conceptuality. The creative figure of the composer himself demonstrates the spiritual potential that will be even more convincingly marked and revealed later.Perspectives of studying the “National” category in its multiple manifestations in the development of the artistic culture of Kazakhstan are seen not only in view of the determination of the broader theoretical context, but also in view of the consistent introduction of works, documents, facts into the research practice, which were for certain reasons “forgotten” or not fully involved [1]. History and traditional values are able to actualize multi-level issues that are significant for the nation’s self-determination on the “global map of the XXI century” (N.А.Nazarbayev) through cultural achievements.

Ancient Music in the Piano Transcriptions by Serhii Yushkevych

Relevance of the study. A new wave of creative interest in the piano transcription combines the constructive and destructive vectors of the development. In the performing sphere the former stimulate the search for original ways of presenting the personal “I”. The destructive influence is connected with the possible hyperbolization of any artistic ideas. The presented problematic situation determines the relevance of the topic of the article: the transcription legacy of the renowned Kharkiv pianist-pedagogue Serhiy Yushkevych still remains little studied in domestic art history.Main objective of the study. The objective of the research is concluded in comprehending the stylistic dominants of S. Yushkevych’s transcriptional approach.Methodology. The research is based on the principles of an integrated approach that motivates appealing to the genre, stylistic, intonation, structural-functional, compositional-dramaturgical and comparative-interpretative methods of analysis. The biographical method is used to provide additional important informational data Results and conclusions. Transcriptions demonstrate not only the aesthetic preferences and stylistic guidelines of a particular era (according to B. Borodin), but also the individual performing and interpreting tendencies of the transcriptor himself. This allows considering transcriptions as the key to understanding a musician’s artistic credo. S. Yushkevych’s transcriptional interests include the works of composers of the Baroque and Romantic eras, Soviet-era music, and Ukrainian folklore; he is attracted by various samples of orchestral, organ-harpsichord and vocal music. The transcriptions of the “Badinerie” collection can be divided into three groups: 1) ancient music; 2) the compositions which in the original are intended for the voice with accompaniment; 3) Ukrainian music. A significant role in understanding the creative search is played by the interpretation of Yushkevych-pianist.The specificity of the transcriptional style of the Kharkiv maestro lies in the ability to create the “sound op-art” with the help of typical formulas of piano technique (similar to the op-art by V. Vasarely). This is reflected in his own system of means of expression, the specifics of the texture and register distribution of the artistic material, the use of polyphony as a technique of additional ornament, the embodiment of various acoustic effects and more. This creates a different type of the pianosound relief. The stylistic features of S. Yushkevych’s transcript handwriting are: the special register framing of the composition, the multi-layered nature of piano texture, the openness to timbre orchestration, the use of quartet writing peculiarities, the tessitura fragmentation of thematic complex, the intonation-motive detailing of musical fabric and a significant freedom from the author’s remarks. The pianism itself is the main “factor of influence” and is a representative of the individual style.

THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION: ANCIENT RIPS IN THE KAZAKH OPERA

This paper presents the new evidence that confirms the influence of A.V.Zataevich (direct and mediated) on the work of composers in the genre of opera in Kazakhstan. Relying on the support of various sources, mainly inaccessible and/or forgotten, there is shown the true scale of the use of song and instrumental samples of his musical and ethnographic collections of the «1000 songs of the Kyrgyz people (tunes and melodies)» (1925), «500 Kazakh songs and kuy…» (1931) and piano transcriptions (treatments) that are created in parallel with the collecting activity. In this regard for the first time the variety of forms and results which are opening a real contribution of A.V.Zataevich in the development of the Kazakh opera art is designated., Keywords: сhant, song, folklore, quote, tradition, composer, opera, plot, globalization.

Felix Mendelssohn’s Reception of Bach’s Organ Works

This chapter investigates how Felix Mendelssohn responded to Bach’s organ music on the basis of new evidence garnered from a recently published edition of Mendelssohn’s letters. According to these documents, Mendelssohn “received” Bach’s organ works in a variety of musical and social contexts across Europe. Of particular importance is Mendelssohn’s response to a set of four-hand piano transcriptions of Bach’s organ chorales prepared by his friend J. N. Schelble.

Four-Hand Piano Transcription and Geographies of Nineteenth-Century Musical Reception

Throughout the nineteenth century, massive quantities of four-hand piano transcriptions were published of virtually every musical genre. Indeed, no other medium before the advent of the radio and phonograph was arguably so important for the dissemination and iterability of concert and chamber repertories. Yet such transcriptions proved to be anything but innocent vehicles of translation. Not only did these four-hand arrangements offer simplified facsimiles of most orchestral works blanched of their instrumental timbres (a result that was often compared to the many reproductive engravings and black-and-white lithographs of artworks that were churned out by publishers at the same time); such arrangements also destabilized traditional musical divisions between symphonic and chamber genres, professional and amateur music cultures, and even repertories gendered as masculine and feminine. By bringing music intended for the public sphere of the concert hall, opera house, and salon into the domestic space of the bourgeois home parlor, the four-hand transcription profoundly altered the generic identity and consequent reception of musical works.