Vocal Cycle «From Songs of Hiroshima» by Ivan Karabyts: Dialogue of Cultures of East and West

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problematic issue of the genre-style interaction of the musical traditions of the East and the West in Vocal cycle «From songs of Hiroshima» by Ivan Karabyts. The relevance of the research is in the fact that the phenomenon of genre-style interaction between the traditions of the East and the West in the chamber-vocal works of Ukrainian composers of the second half of the 20th century remains little studied in art history. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to identify the genre-style dominants of the vocal cycle «From Songs of Hiroshima» by Ivan Karabyts in the aspect of the dialogue between the cultures of the East and West. Research methods include historical – for the study of scientific sources dedicated to the work of Ivan Karabyts; stylistic – allows to systematize some of the features of the composer's style of Ivan Karabyts, in the context of chamber vocal creativity; semantic, with the help of which the content component of poetic images in a cycle is analyzed; structural and functional – to identify intonational and stylistic features of the cycle; comparative – to compare the musical specificity of the Eastern and Western traditions in the cycle; generalization – necessary to summarize the results of the study. Conclusions: For the first time in world musicology, the vocal cycle «From the Songs of Hiroshima» by Ivan Karabyts has been studied in the aspect of the dialogue between the cultures of East and West. The analysis revealed the reception of stylistic and genre elements of the Eastern tradition on the basis of chamber-vocal creativity of Ivan Karabyts. The article presents a detailed analysis of the vocal cycle «From Songs of Hiroshimaby Ivan Karabyts in the genre and stylistic aspect on three levels: semantic, stylistic and architectonic. The semantic level assumes getting familiar with the philosophical ideas of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism. The stylistic level involves borrowing not only individual ideas or musical motives, but also the religious and spiritual code in general. Oriental flavour (intonation, rhythm, meter, timbre, register). It can be seen through the reflection of stylistic features associated with the Oriental tradition, due to the use of the Oriental way of thinking (contemplation, intuition, meditation) and flavour (intonation, rhythm, meter, timbre, register). The architectonical level provides for the creation of new art forms. It was revealed that along with the traditional features of Japanese music, Ivan Karabyts used forms of musical expression that were new for the middle of the twentieth century: aleatorics, sonoristics, dodecaphony, pointillism. The cultural dialogue of Eastern and Western musical traditions in the vocal cycle «From Songs of Hiroshima» by Ivan Karabyts demonstrates a new aesthetic paradigm of musical art of the second half of the twentieth century, which represents a phenomenal artistic and musical metalanguage – Eurasian. The analyzed cycle became, firstly, the embodiment of the composer's personal artistic search, and secondly, a reflection of the artistic tendencies of Ukrainian culture in the second half of the 20th century.