The folk song as the national image of the world in the context of the globalization of China’s musical culture
The formulation of the problem. One of the fundamental genre foundations of the music education of a singer is a song. In its intonation content and form the folk song always has a brightly embodied national colour. The most popular genres of the small form are studied in the higher musical institutions according to the national criterion: the romance was born in Spain, in France it is the chanson (chanson); in Germany it is the lied (das Lied). In Ukraine, there is its own kind of the song-romance – “solospiv” – a solo song, which has received a significant historical and stylistic development, and it is still a “visiting card” of the national singing style. If the Ukrainian song is gradually getting its status while entering the European scientific and artistic space, the Chinese song still expects it. The Chinese folk song, which embodies the phenomenon of the national culture, has the national image of the world, shaped during millennia, musical differences and the poetic system. Is there any reason to believe that the folk song as a product of the cultural exchange serves the purpose of the international integration and opposes the globalization? The practical experience of the long-time singer makes it possible to say yes, there is. It is known that the melos in music always embodies the connection with national peculiarities of the language/speech. The basic law of the vocal language is the singing reproduction of vowels and consonants: the maximum duration of vowels with the shortest sound of consonants, according to T. Madysheva. The ratio of vowels and consonants affects the overall sound quality of the voice sounding and is often determined by the term of the “musicality” of the language. Among the most musical there is the Ukrainian intonation culture of singing. As the author of the present article suggests from his many years of practice, the melody and its musical-mental fundamentals become the “bridge” to the study of a foreign musical heritage, and they are: fret-harmonic (high pitch), metric-rhythmic (time and space) and timbre-register (colorist). Consequently, the relevance of the topic is conditioned by the statement of the problem important for the modern performing practice of the globalization age: to reveal the methodological significance of the folk songs genre by comprehending its archetypal content and the function of preserving the “memory of culture” and spiritual power. The purpose of the article is to assess the role of the folk song in the process of forming the singer’s professionalism and, through the creation of the national image of the world of the song examples from China, to characterize the mental principles of musical thinking that provide the singer with the choices of genre and style preferences. The material of the research of the mental and musical fundamentals of the Chinese folk song is the examples of ancient Chinese melodies, presented in the form of Chinese composers’ processing: “The River of Sungari”, “The Fisherman”, “To the East from the River” and others. The analysis of recent publications on the topic. The category of the “national image of the world” is developed in the continuation of the ideas of L. Kiyanovskaya [4]. Wang Zuo defended his thesis devoted to the Ukrainian solo songs [1]. Now it is the turn of the Chinese folk song, which should be studied as an example of the national image of the world, thinking and attitude, and should be presented to the Ukrainian listener. The presentation of the main material. The intonation grounds for the melos of the Chinese folk song are second, second-quarter, mediant-second singing episodes. The peculiarities of the melody are determined by the specifics of the fret thinking of the ancient Chinese music, which is built of the varieties of pentatonic (major and minor) with the involvement of the segments of the Phrygian, Dorian, and Eolian frets. The metric-rhythmic elegance and richness of images are caused by variations on the basis of the thematic development, with the rhythmic splitting of the ascending theme-model, the deployment of the ascending core up and down. Comparing the Chinese singing with European classical examples and taking into account the specifics of the national melos, one can find the affinity of their syntactic structures. The period serves as a “marker” for the distribution of the formation into a simple two-part form (# 3) and a simple three-part form (# 8). The un-squareness of the musical thematism microstructure is explained by the syntactic dependence on the national language/speech. One often encounters a period of an un-square structure: 7 + 7 (with the extension or reduction of one of the components): 2 + 2 + 3; 2 + 3 + 5. The national stylistics of the song examples is expressed in the colourfulness of harmonies (quart- and quinto-cords) and in the accords phonism (a pure quinto, a great second) in the songs “The Night on the Bridge”, “Guan Shan. The Crescent”. They are dominated by landscape sound scenes, the principle of miniaturization, through which the sensual world of the human heart unfolds, and therefore – the mental principles of the Chinese national sound and image thinking. The processing of the song called “To the East from the Rive” creates the grounds for interpreting it as a vocal ballad with the trough development of a single sound idea. On the basis of a clever rethinking of the melody and an image and intonation development, the dramaturgy of the mono-scene is defined, and it belongs to great vocal forms and demands the singer to master the actor’s skills in the creation of an artistic image. The conclusion. The songs selected for the genre-stylistic analysis (as certain “chains of the historical process”) reflect the ability of the Chinese folk-song tradition to represent the national image, correspond to the status of the world culture and show the life-giving power of its bearers to preserve the mental-musical and world view and psychological models of the thinking (archetypes). Folk songs and their authors’ processing form the basis for the formation of the national image of the world of the corresponding culture. They belong to the priority field of professional education of academic singers both in Ukraine and in China.