Specific features of ballad genre composing interpretation and realization in the vocal cycle of D. L. Klebanov “Six ballads to poems of A. S. Pushkin” (as an example of “Wurdalak” ballads)
Ukrainian composer Dmitri Lvovich Klebanov (1907-1987) came to the music in the 20s of the XX century, possessing a bright giftedness, artistic intuition, indefatigable thirst for knowledge. Throughout his career the composer turned to various genres: opera and symphony, ballet and instrumental concerts, chamber instrumental ensemble, musical comedy and song. Genre of the vocal cycle appears as a cross in the heritage of D. L. Klebanov. In it, as in other through genres of his creativity (Symphony), there is clearly presented individual style, composer’s creative method revealed in their development. For the vocal cycle D. L. Klebanov chose six songs of A. S. Pushkin. The order of songs is different than in the poetic cycle. The composer converts songs to ballads, guiding by the closest ties of the poetic text with the folk traditions and basing on the heroic epic content of the poems. Realized genre’s name change by the composer not only reveals the depth of the opened nature of Pushkin’s “Songs”, but also involves an inevitable change in their interpretation. Features of the folk world view, where the line between the real world and another world is almost absent, are recreated in the second ballad “Songs of the Western Slavs” (“Pesen zapadnykh slavian” of “Wurdalak” by D. L. Klebanov by the eponymous poem by A. S. Pushkin. The content of this poem goes beyond the reconstruction of Slavic mythology: the poet offers elegant parody of fiction novel genre, traditionally full of mystical horror. Musical setting of Pushkin’s poem “Wurdalak” is described by the system of methods and principles of the composer’s interpretation. For the second ballad, it is typical a particular type of ballad genre, the ballad plot and the ballad hero interpretation, realized by the composer in the aspect of reducing the high content and style, recourse to irony, grotesque presentation and parody, as well as detailed design of the poetic source. This is a kind of travesty. In order to realize it, D.L. Klebanov uses leitmotifs system. The musical material, which was established as a through semantics (“walking around” topic) in No. 1 (“Yanko Marnavich”) is transferred to the No. 2 (“Wurdalak”), in a modified form (cowardice topic), turning the tragedy into comedy (tragicomedy, “high” style is transformed into a “low” one). The second semantics is related to the intonation complex carrying the semantics of “heroic” thing (typical “ups” by the sounds of arpeggio). Several stages of cowardice leitmotif establishment are manifested in the process of dramatic development. 1. Stage of cowardice leitmotif establishment: its “proclamation” in verbal and musical series – double variant statement in piano (in the mirror reflection) and vocal parts (twice – synchronously). 2. Among the methods of the composer’s interpretation, the spread of cowardice leitmotif on the other semantics of poetic text (“sweating from fear ...”). The leitmotif of cowardice gradually covers more and more sound and semantic space of piano and vocal parts, it grows, finding the value of inclusiveness. The ways of the composer’s formation of leitmotifs are different. Basing on its role in the musical drama, leitmotifs should be divided into two groups: 1. Leitmotifs, the intonation and semantic function of which are represented by the composer in “absolute” in originally completed form at the phase of the musical material exposure (“walking around”, the topic of cowardice). 2. Leitmotifs, which go a long way of pre-formation, up to the stage of its intonation and semantic content-feature setting, which is disclosed at the climax phase (anabasis-catabasis – “the wave of horror”, which corresponds to the text “Woe! I am small, I am not strong”, the crystallization beginning of which can be found in the second stanza). D. L. Klebanov, creating an ironic context in the second ballad by mixing the “high” and “low”, recourses to the synthesis of quasiheroic, church and domestic intonations, genre peculiarities of scherzo, he transforms, transfigures leit-topics, used in the 1st ballad “Yanko Marnavich”. The mystical content makes possible the interpretation of this particular scherzo “with a touch of” grotesque within the genre of dance macabre as the embodiment of bewitching dance, “entailing the hero into the abyss” - the story, typical for the fantastic ballad of the romanticism era. Ballad logic in the cycle by D.L. Klebanov is based on the re-semantization of through intonations – symbols. Thus, composer’s interpretation of the poetic source is aimed to create an original artistic content, the origins of which are rooted in the depths of Pushkin’s text, although they are not directly verbally outlined by the poet