Dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the specialty 025 – Musical Art – Odesa National Music Academy named after A V. Nezhdanova. Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications of Ukraine, Odesa, 2026.
This dissertation is devoted to the study of the works of the outstanding Austrian composer and conductor Gustav Mahler. In the first chapter the main concepts are discussed and the main theoretical provisions of the dissertation research are established. In particular, the following postulate is accepted: the performance of a musical work belonging to the European written tradition involves the creation of an ideal sound form project based on the graphic-symbolic text and the subsequent embodiment of this project in a physical sound artifact. The basis of these actions is the interpretation of the work. Musical interpretation is defined as the sound representation of the musician-performer about the form and content of the “composer’s work”, which lies at the basis of musical-performing actions of sound creation.
It is stated that in solving this complex task, a musician-performer can rely on two fundamentally different strategies: 1) introverted, when the basis of the performance project is the musician’s own impressions, ideas, and concepts about the artistic meaning of the work; 2) extroverted, when in the formation of the sound project the musician relies on certain objective guidelines. One of such objective guidelines is style, that is, a complex of individual-typical properties of musical form and artistic-figurative meaning. The accepted theoretical provisions made it possible to explain such an important phenomenon of musical-performing art as the “creative potential of interpretation” (according to V. Moskalenko), or “the zone of creative activity of a musician-interpreter” (according to
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L.Shapovalova), or the spectrum of interpretation (according to the terminology accepted in the dissertation).
The creative potential of interpretation is considered in a typological aspect. The views of L. Dreyfus, O. Katrych, V. Moskalenko, O. Samoilenko, K. Martinsen, G. Neuhaus, and Jan Feyju were analyzed and generalized. In order to obtain the possibility of analytical study and objective assessment of the performance versions of musical works, it is proposed to distinguish between the stylistic properties of the composer’s work; and the stylistic properties of its performance interpretation. The concept of the stylistic spectrum of a musical work is defined. It is explained as a complex of stylistic properties inherent to the each composer’s opus, determined by the personal, genre, ethnic and historical-cultural nature of the given work. It is noted that the stylistic spectrum of the work is objectively regulated by the properties of the form of the text, created and graphically recorded by the author. Like every artistic style, it is characterized by ethnic, cultural-historical, genre and personal individual-typical parameters. This stylistic spectrum should find sound realization in the performer’s work, that is, it can become relevant in the performing interpretation. On these theoretical grounds, the concept of the stylistic spectrum of musical-performing interpretation is introduced. This expression means a complex of stylistic properties of a musical work specific sound version, determined by the conscious or unconscious orientation of the interpreter to personal, genre, ethnic and historical styles.
