“Madrigāls” by Peteris Vasks: ways to renew the genre tradition

Abstract

The relevance of the study lies in highlighting the main principles of updating the ancient genre tradition with modern means in «Madrigāls» for mixed choir a сappella by the Latvian composer Peteris Vasks. The main objective of the article is to reveal the ways of updating the genre tradition and expressive means of music in «Madrigals» by Peteris Vasks for the a cappella choir. The methodology includes methods of historical, comparative, structural and functional analysis for: tracing the history of the emergence and development of the madrigal genre and identifying the peculiarities of its existence in different historical periods; establishing the constructive features of the music fabric and its interaction with the poetic foundation; tracing the vectors of renewal of genre traditions in this work. Results and conclusions. In the studied choral work of P. Vasks, the lines of continuity of the leading genre of the Renaissance era are determined and the ways of renewing the genre tradition are established. In «Madrigāls» the composer uniquely implements the main principle of the genre: the direction of the entire set of expressive means towards the display of the verbal text. Using modern techniques of composer writing, he emphasizes as the main artistic image of the miniature the main symbol — «time», it is this that is revealed both at the poetic and music levels. The music embodiment is based on the interaction of various techniques of composition: aleatory moving voices and effectively formed sonoric bunches. In connection with the word and the poetic primary source, a musical-symbolic sound picture is formed, the content of which unfolds in time, gradually and steadily rushing to the main final thought in the code of the work. Thus, working with a genre that has a centuries-old history, Peteris Vasks does not seek to preserve its usual outlines. The composer does not reproduce the established model of the genre, but interprets it, offers an updated version of the prototype of a certain genre, the primary invariant of which he sometimes deeply hides, and sometimes brings to the surface. This gives rise to many associations and at the same time surprises in how the modern arsenal of sound organization of huge choral arrays is organically combined with the «genre memory» of music art, and also opens up a wide perspective of research into other genres with their stable components and author’s innovations.