Musical composition: Problems of the text and semantic invariant

Abstract

The possibility to interpret musical compositions in multiple ways and, as a consequence, the existence of different ways of intoning (pronounce) the same composition (in other words, its semantic varying) raises the question of the limits of meaning of the given composition. There are various conditions of the existence of musical compositions: a) the conditions of the oral tradition, b) of the written one, in which the recording of the pitch and rhythmic aspects of a musical composition in their entirety has not yet been established, c) of the written tradition in full effect, not allowing additions to a composition by performers, d) of the written tradition, which reflected the musical realities of the 20th century. The wide coverage of the material assumes the use of the comparative historical method. In issues of generating of the musical meaning, it was most expedient to turn to the phenomenological-dialectical method. The author segregates the concepts of a textual and semantic invariants of a musical composition. Conclusions, which contain new provisions: a) as a semantic invariant of a composition is understood a sound image (model), which has a genre-style nature and determines all possible ways of intoning with the continuity of the oral performing tradition; b) in the music of the developed written tradition, the expansion of the range of interpretations is determined by the complex interweaving of various and even opposite genre models in a score, which, nevertheless, shaped the directions (vectors) of meanings, preventing the transition to “bad infinity.” (Refs. 15)