Kharakoz H. Choral fugue: genre, stylistic and performance aspects (on the material of the Western European music of the XVIII-XIX centuries)

The study is aimed at the research and disclosure of the specific features of the choral fugue, its genre, stylistic and performance aspects in the context of the Western European music of the XVIII-XIX centuries. Despite the significant share of polyphony in the choral art of this period, however, the specificity of genre, stylistic and performance interpretation in the conditions of choral writing of the polyphonic form — fugue — has not yet received proper coverage in the world and domestic scientific and theoretical literature. In particular, there is still no monograph in Ukrainian or Russian, dedicated to the choral fugue, comprehension of its compositional and content specificity, vocal and technical and performance peculiarities, which indicates the increased relevance of the chosen topic. The object of the study is the choral art of the XVIII-XIX centuries; its subject is a variety of specific compositional embodiments of the choral fugue in their connection with the individual structural and semantic characteristics of the choral works under the study. The aim of the study is to substantiate the genre, stylistic and performance specificity of the choral fugue on the material of the Western European music of XVIII-XIX centuries. The following tasks are actualized: to consider modern concepts of the choral fugue; to study the phenomenon of choral fugue in the scientific literature; to use the modern sources for the definition of choral fugue and also to work out the general typology in terms of the criteria; to formulate the main results of the choral fugue and to summarize them in a visual model; to make comparative analysis of the vocal and instrumental versions of J. Bach and G. Handel’s choral fugues in order to reveal the genre features of the phenomenon under study; to examine choral fugue in its compositional, stylistic, and performance aspects, namely the specific character of the baroque choral fugue as exemplified by the interplay between the fugue and the chorale in Bach's spiritual cantatas; to describe the tendency of symphonizing the choral fugue in the Classical period in the oratorios and masses by J. Haydn, W. A. Mozart, L. van Beethoven; to reveal free synthesis of baroque and classical traditions in choral fugue of Romantic composers on the example of works by F. Mendelssohn Bartholdy and G. Rossini.