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Performance in the diversity of its historical practices could be analysed in several aspects: technological, music- historical and social-psychological. The technological aspect comprises the characteristics of singing voices; the structure, technical capabilities and historical development of different types of musical instruments, the ways of handling them (specifics of producing sounds and technical devices, strokes, agogics, etc.); various music and vocal companies. At the same time, in the course of the mu- sic-historical process and with a certain complex of conditions, performative practice plays the role of an important factor in the development of music culture. The social-psychological aspect is based on the fact that it is performative practice that fulfils the communicative function of music art. It shapes its third possible line of research: communicative models in constant interaction take shape in its dynamism. The two major models- auto-communicative model (when the composer and performer are the same person) and dialogical (when they are different persons) are subjected to analysis. The introduced term ‘au- to-communicative model’ is borrowed from Y. Lotman in the field of literature and an attempt has been made to use it in musicology. Special attention is paid also to the specific transitional forms between auto-communication and the dialogical model. The latter is studied in its two major forms, synchronic and diachronic, while the composer-performer dialogue is treated as a dialogue between ages with specific forms of expression. Grounds for the occurrence and development of a secondary (indirect) form of the diachronic dialogical model showing itself in various arrangements, transcriptions and revisions are also given.
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The article offers the first ever analysis of a cycle, Lyrical Pieces for Piano Op. 6 by Academician Andrey Stoyanov (1890–1969), the pioneer of Bulgarian piano school. He composed also the cycles Aquarelles, Following Sunny Roads (Parts 1 and 2), Album for the Young, Sonatina and teaching-oriented pieces. His student, Prof. Charakchieva recalled that in his lifetime many of the above mentioned early and very valuable pieces had been performed frequently. Following his death, however, his works gradually ‘vanished’ from music venues for political reasons. The study raises essential issues related both to the Romantic pro- file of the pieces in Op. 6 and to all the keyboard works of Andrey Stoyanov’s legacy, revealing a complex person, an intellectual and a polymath, a composer, a pianist, a teacher, a philosopher, an essayist and a musicologist. This analytical reading is offered in an attempt to draw the attention of performing musicians and researchers, revealing Andrey Stoyanov’s fine compositional artistry of a composer skilled in rendering pro- found musical meaning to the subtlest details, and in developing musical thoughts abounding in ideas in a minor genre. Apart from an in-depth, harmonic and dramaturgic analyses of each of the pieces, the study seeks to explicate the tonal closeness of the first prelude to the third piece of Seven Piano Pieces, Op. 11 by Zoltán Kodály, composed almost at the same time; a parallel between the intimate lyricism of the second prelude and a number of chamber pieces by Sergei Rachmaninoff or Joseph Marx; some similar compositional devices, which in the third piece, Tale are reminiscent of Richard Wagner, etc. It is not just a formal resemblance, far from that, but rather inherently encoded internal bonds placing the early works of the great Bulgarian composer in a natural relation to the developments in Europe’s music life what it used to be just prior to and during his early creative activity. It explains to a great extent why Andrey Stoyanov’s works did not fit in the consequent line of development of Bulgarian compositional thought and regardless of their brilliance evaded the attention of per- formers and music researchers.
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On March 26, 2015 the composer, conductor and teacher, who has authored Le marteau sans maître for solo alto and six instruments (1952–1955); Éclat for 15 players (1965); Mémoriale for solo flute and eight instruments (cello, 2 horns, 2 viola, 3 violins) (1973–1975); Répons for six soloists, chamber ensemble, electronic sounds and live electronics (1981–1984); Anthèmes II for violin and electronics (1997), etc.; founded and headed the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/ Musique (Institute for Music/Acoustic Research and Coordination, IRCAM) and the Ensemble Inter Contemporain (EIC), Paris; written a number of articles, given many interviews and talks on contemporary compositional techniques and the analytical approaches to them, Pierre Boulez turns 90. An encounter with one of the greats of music culture of the twentieth and the twenty-first century at Arnold Schönberg Center, Vienna offered a chance to conduct a short interview with him, which we wished and were let to dedicate to those of Bulgarian musicians, who happen to be interested in the highest levels of compositional mastery in the music composed since the second half of the previous century until now.
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Ivan Spassov’s work is a genuine attempt at forging an artistic language from the collision of modernism with the spiritual legacy of Bulgarian Orthodoxy. After a period of work in which he was concerned with extended structures, he turned to traditional Bulgarian music as a basis for the building of microstructures, working with the principle of serially-derived varied repetition of extremely small cells. In the focus of the study is composer’s late monumental sacred style in Velikdenska Muzika za Stradaniyata, Smiirtta e Viizkresenieto na Isus. It could be said that what makes Spassov’s work so compelling is its irreconcilability. Overawed by the mystery of death, he seeks light and redemption, having recourse to both Eastern and Western liturgical traditions, attaining an ever-greater textural transparency.
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The self-improvement and self-protecting of the composer Ivan Spassov’s figure are the main topics of this conversation, broaching the typical of him approach to treating traditional folk material in an avant-garde compositional environment; the complex ties between musical texts and paratexts; the tension between compositional technologies and the humane dimension to his work; composer’s relationship with main figures of New Music in Bulgaria and his conscious social mission as a teacher and conductor. The dialogue presents both a view of Ivan Spassov and self-revealing of the individualities of the two conversing composers (belonging to different generations) in a post-compositional to a large extent situation, socially and aesthetically.
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