Yavorskiy D. Etude in the genre system of romantic piano miniature (on the example of F. Chopin, R. Schumann, F. Liszt opuses)

The thesis discusses F. Chopin, R. Schumann and F. Liszt etudes in the context of historical dynamics of the genre. The development of etude as an intertypic and musical phenomenon is studied. The three-stage periodization is worked out for the history of musical etude. It is shown that during the first stage the musical etude existed as an object of utility sphere without the differentiation and definition of the genre. On the second stage the genre gained its own definition and was considered as an independent phenomenon of utility practice. At all during the third stage (started in 30th of the 19 century) the representative type of etude was formed in parallel with the utility type. The development of representative etude resulted in the division into two types – concert and artistic. The last one (in a state of becoming) was at once positioned by romanticists as a part of the innovative large-scale form – the cycle of miniatures. The work proves that F. Chopin etudes ор.10 and ор.25, despite the author's division in 12 pieces, have all the features of the holistic macrocycle. Analysis of the intonation-figurative, harmonic-tonal, tempo-characteristic, metric levels of both opuses' dramaturgy reveals the existence of transitive development principles of musical material and the singular transition conception. The additional factor of the integrity of two albums is a sonata form used by composer as the second order form. R. Schumann in the “Symphonic Etudes” radically subjected the genre to the cycle organization laws, submitting the etude to the form, composition, development principles of the thematism of the large-scale cyclic variation genre, restricting the etude to the frames of one variation. Thus author at once transformed every etude-variation to the semantic unit devoid of thematic independence and discreteness of the miniature cycle, and also engaged in the transitive intonation-figurative and thereby the ideological development. F. Liszt materialized all the complex of ideas related to the “Transcendental Etudes” in the last redaction, turning it into the program piece with figurative system of transitive development. The composer reconsiders virtuosity that accorded to the highest examples of the “absolute pianism” and thereby corresponded to the actual “ideal artist” conception, as the way to externalize the most complicated mythologems of the Romantic Era. Thus in the works of three great masters the etude loses the characteristics of the accomplished self-valuable genre. The piece commences to function in full only when it is regarded as an integral element of the large-scale form (cycle). Gaining the artistic features, etude completely loses the instructive dominance, transits to the stage of destabilization, and enters into a phase of the superiority of author's vision of genre over the genre canon.