The classic heritage of European arts as the foundation for training an academic singer in China at the present stage
Background. The article has been devoted to giving the grounds to the unity of theoretical and methodological principles of professional training of vocalists in Ukraine and China. At the present stage one of the basic approaches of the vocal pedagogy is to understand the criteria for the formation of individual programs (for each singer separately) on getting to know the classical heritage of European arts of the 17-20th centuries as the foundation for the education of an academic singer. These criteria were previously based on the technology of the vocal art, the so-called "schools". Nowadays, the other sources of professional skills are being updated: the musical intelligence of the singer, his/her image, genre preferences, which in general constitute a category of artistic assessment of his/ her creative activity – the "performing style". The object of the article is the vocal art; the subject is the genre and style priorities for the formation of professional skills of singers in the modern high school. The purpose of the article is to determine the criteria for the formation of programs on the assimilation of the classical heritage of European artsof the 17-20th centuries as the foundation for educating an academic singer in China at the present stage. Methodology. During the time of the Soviet education many theoretical works (including translations of ancient treatises and textbooks on vocal in Italian, French, and German) were created, where the problems of training the singing voice, sound formation, mastery of technical exercises were considered. They are also known in China (works by V. Bagadurov). Among the Ukrainian teachers who developed the methodology for training an academic singer, we can call V. Antonyuk, N. Grebenyuk, O. Stakhevych. However the genre-style priorities have not yet been considered as the criteria for the formation of repertoire policies, and the development of programs of modern vocal pedagogy. Interpretology is directing to it in the quality of a science about methods of musical interpretationanalysis, the subject of which is the "style of a performer’s creative activities", among other subjects and objects of this scientific discipline. Results.The genre criteria of repertoire policy in the classes of academic singing have been determined on the example of the Department of Solo Singing of Kharkiv National University of Arts named after I.P.Kotlyarevsky and the Wuchang Conservatory (People’s Republic of China). The compulsory components of the repertoire are the following genre genotypes: a folk song– "gene print" of different national cultures (a Ukrainian solo song, a Russian romance, an Italian song, and aChinese solo song); a classical song (Austro-German, romantic); an aria (baroque or an expanded aria from the opera of the 19th century of the Italian, German or French schools).The particular attention is drawn to the samples of the intellectually sharpened lyrics of the 20th century studied in the classes ona concert and chamber singing (vocal cycles of the composers of the 20th century G. Maler, D. Shostakovich, and B. Britten) and, finally, there are separate examples of the so-called historical performances (in particular, the revival of the castrates’ singing). As the analysis of program requirements to the vocalists studying at the Wuchang Conservatory has revealed, the genre situation of China’s vocal culture is diversified by studying the achievements of the established historical styles of European arts. Baroque is represented by ancient arias; classicism –by a classic song and arias from the operas by V. A. Mozart; the 19th century –by the vocal cycles of romantic composers (Schubert, Schumann, J. Brahms), a lyrical French opera (Bizet). The most attractive vocal style is belcanto, which, as a stylistic phenomenon, unfolded itself in the works of composers of Italy of the 19thcentury (Verdi, Bellini) and the beginning of the 20th century (J. Puccini). Significantly fewer examples of Russian opera classics of the 19th and 20th centuries are presented, however this process started due to the popularity of P. Tchaikovsky’s and S. Rachmaninoff’s music. Conclusion.The diversity of composers’ styles in the historical evolution of the European musical tradition is based on the established genre "tree", which kind of preserves the genetic "scrubs" of the vocal culture of intoning. The expansion of the semantic boundaries of the academic performance in China is happening through the extensive assimilation of national patterns of the three main "whales" of the vocal genre: "a folk song –a classical song/romance –an aria". As a result, Chinese vocalists are well integrated into foreign music and performing schools,and produce their own creative activities based on high criteria, relevant artistic values of European and world arts. We have investigatedthe "Programs", compiled as qualification requirements of the higher school of Ukraine, according to the genre-style content and they coincide with those that are operating at the present stage of the professional training of academic singers in China. The genre and stylistic coordinates of programming, which serve as the guarantor of ensuring the continuity of the new European arts in the system of the culture dialogue between the East and the West (as "our own – someone else’s") have been defined. The successes of Chinese vocalists in the artistic world show that musical creativity has no national boundaries and serves the unification of the humanity on the basis of the spiritual beauty of God’s world, which the singer supports, like Atlas