One of the concepts associated with a verbal text, which has its own specific qualities, is the "narrative", which is understood as a set of related events or impressions (both real and imaginary, including artistic ones), which make up artistic text of a narrative nature. The narrative is also considered as the process of presentation of an artistic text of a narrative nature – both literary and of another artistic nature. The study of the narrative as a special property (or set of properties) of a vocal musical composition with a narrative text, its potential, performing specifics and peculiarities of the listener's perception, will be relevant in both theoretical and practical areas.The need to involve the narrative theory in the scientific circulation of performing musicology is stipulated by the direct manifestations of culturally determined psychological attitudes in the field of both compositional creativity and musical performance. Thus, the demand for the topic of the dissertation is stipulated by: the theoretical and practical necessity of specification of the narrative theory on the basis of vocal-performing interpretation; the presence in the compositional and performing practice of different musical genres in terms of narrative manifestation, as well as the related relevant issues of performing embodiment and interpretation in today's cultural situation, which is marked by an extraordinary variety of musical styles and genres, problems of academic music art actualization for the modern public, issues of the development of music science, in particular, in interaction with other spheres of humanitarian knowledge; the lack of systematic development of aspects of the stated topic in the scientific discourse on the issues of vocal art. In the process of unfolding the logic of the study, scientific sources from the following areas of music science and the humanities have been involved: the theory and practice of vocal art in historical and methodological aspects; theories of musical interpretation in aspects of musical thinking, genre, style and form in music, performance process, in particular, in retransmission to vocal-performance creativity; historical-cultural and musicological theories related to composer's creative work in the field of vocal, linguistic, philosophical, psychological, in particular, narrative issues. The study presents the narrative theory as part of the musicological apparatus. For the first time the dissertation defines the narrative as a concept of the humanities (linguistics, psychology, and philosophy) in terms of certain prerequisites for its involvement in the science of music; a number of scientific sources on narratology, which enrich the idea of the main tendencies and problems of the humanities, have been introduced into the scientific circulation of musicology; the specifics of vocal-performing art as a sphere of using the narrative theory have been revealed; the narrative genres of chamber-vocal and vocal-stage music are characterized; the interpretatively effective regularities of the musical-performing process have been highlighted through the prism of the narrative as a genre identification; the cognitive model of the narrative-performing analysis of the vocalist's interpretative activity, created on the basis of the author's classification of the narrative manifestations, is proposed; we have differentiated and terminologically determined by extrapolating the basic terms and concepts of the narrative theory to the musicological conceptual apparatus of the factors of narrative-performing dramaturgy, which in their interaction, directed by the performer, determine a certain artistic result; the narrative component in the performing interpretations of individual compositions of narrative genres, namely the ballad and the opera, has been considered; we have also identified the priority directions for further study of the specifics of the narrative in the art of music (semantic, functional-structural, genre, and performing ones). Summarizing the main characteristics of the narrative, we determine that in the field of music the narrative should be understood as a special quality of a musical composition, in particular, the vocal one, based on the narrative nature (both verbal and the one achieved by means of musical expression).
