ELECTRONIC COMPOSITION OF ALFRED SCHNITKE “STREAM”: SPECIFICITY OF FUNCTION OF SOUND OBJECTS

Abstract

Research objective is to determine the sound objects that make up the musical fabric of A. Schnittke’s electronic play “Stream”, as well as to identify patterns of their functioning. The article analyzes the electronic play by A. Schnittke “Stream”, considers the used music technologies and the place of the work in the composer’s creative heritage. It is emphasized that the play “Stream” has not been practically studied in the scientific literature due to the lack of a developed methodology for the study of electronic music, which has no author’s notation. The methodology of the study is based on the structural-functional methods, which allows to identify the components of colorful acoustic objects without a certain height, as well as to establish their role in the organization of the work. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that for the first time in Ukrainian musicology the regularity of creating and deploying sound systems in A. Schnittke’s “Stream” were studied, the methodology for analyzing electronic compositions without an author’s score was improved. The work of A. Schnittke is analyzed from the perspective of the spectromorphological theory of D. Smalley, who offers an analytical apparatus for the study of colorful harmonies with an indefinite height. Instead of the traditional author’s notation, which is impossible under the conditions of musical material chosen by the composite, a sonogram is used – a graphic representation of acoustic processes in frequency and time coordinates. The composition by A. Schnittke is also analyzed from the perspective of a functional method for studying a sound-altitude system developed by Yu. Kholopov. Conclusions. It was found out that the musical material consists of continuum sound masses that develop according to the texture principle, according to D. Smalley’s classification. It is indicated that the structural core of the work is composed of noises and sound objects with a partially defined height, localized in a narrow range. The organic unity of material and form, which is ensured by the display of the natural overtone structure of sound and the transfer of its regularity to the compositional level, is studied.