Gao C. I. Shamo’s choral creativity: performing interpretation specificity

The thesis is dedicated to the study of Ihor Shamo’s (1925-1982) choral creativity performing interpretation specifics, who was one of the brightest representatives of Ukrainian musical culture in the 20th century. An attention was focused on creating a study which had been based on the personality and creativity of the outstanding artist comprehension for obtaining a modern interpretation and a return to performer’s practice by unique choral compositions of I. Shamo in the context of Ukrainian musical art. A systematic approach to Ihor Shamo’s choral creativity is proposed in the thesis, which allows to uncover the artistic potential of composer’s opuses as from a perspective of the artistic work’s choral component composer’s interpretation revealing, as well as their performer’s implementation specifics. The topicality of the thesis is due to the underestimation of Ihor Shamo’s choral legacy in the most of scientific concepts, which are dedicated to the historical and artistic processes in Ukrainian music, due to the need to review the artist’s creative heritage in order to overcome the “song composer” stereotype; due to the bringing to light the significance of Ihor Shamo’s choral legacy contribution to Ukrainian musical culture; due to the creating the composer’s creativity life periodization; due to the artist’s compositional creativity innovative processes in the choral realm rationale; due to I. Shamo’s choral legacy performing interpretation specifics clarifying and the new horizons of his choral works opening. In the Conclusions, it is emphasized that the outstanding artist Ihor Naumovych Shamo in his choral creativity embodied the images of the Ukrainian mentality and the national symbolism of the musical language. A systematic analysis of little-studied works not involved in modern performance practice with performing specifics rationale has been carried out: “Four choirs a cappella based on Ivan Franko’s poems” and “10 choirs on the poems of Ukrainian poets” cycles, choral opera a cappella “Yatran Games” and “Skomoroshyny oratorio (stage concert-performance). It has been proved that the composer’s choral creativity as an innovative phenomenon of Ukrainian culture of the second half of the 20th century is not peripheral in the system of other genres (song, symphonic, instrumental, film music, etc.) of his heritage. The proposed I. Shamo’s choral works performing interpretation concept confirmed their groundbreaking essence. Ihor Shamo’s choral opuses performing interpretation specificity consists in a cappella choral opera and oratorio (stage concert-performance) as the new genres creation; in polystylistics, which affects the choice of both the conductor’s means of expression and the choral sound production manner; in the texture variety in the synthesis with articulation and the choral composition verbal basis; in polygenre, which requires the identification of genre components and the creation of a performing concept for their implementation; in cyclicity, as a fundamental feature of the composer’s style, which requires the development of cycle dramaturgy and the ability to transform visual and emotional states by choir artists for the reconstruction of auditory and singing ideas; in the artistic image embodiment due to intonation as a system of a musical work comprehension; in the conceptual composer’s interpretation of the Ukrainian poetry high examples; in mastering the cluster technique, aleatorics, sonoristics; in the introduction of the symphonism method, choral instrumentation, theatricalization; in the use of performing staff diversity, divisi, vocalises, sonorism etc.