“Blake Sonata” for piano by Dmitry Smirnov: conceptual and dramaturgical interpretation of the sonata-poem genre

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to identify the features of the implementation of the artistic concept in the "Blake Sonata" (2008) by D.N. Smirnov. In the course of semantic and compositional analysis, the expressive and dramatic levels of the work are studied. An individual solution to the problem of updating the sonata genre in the 21st century is considered, which determines the relevance of the study. An example of the composer's sonata work is analyzed in scientific literature for the first time. The model of symphonic thinking appears in the work in combination with a modernized poem principle. The bright world of poetry and graphics of the poet and painter W.Blake (1757–1827) inspires the composer to create bizarre musical images. The composition of two contrasting parts, striving to merge into a single form, draws two polar “images of time”: pulsating “vector time” and frozen “circular time” of eternity. There is a paradoxical combination of classicist principles of form-building (rondo sonata, variations) with avant-garde methods of formation and transformation of thematic material, which develops the tradition of the New Viennese school (the use of artificial themes-ciphers in the hemitonics system, sophisticated polyphonic work: canons, mirror structures). The imposition of poem thinking on sonata-symphonic logic is expressed in monothematicism, dramaturgy of leaps and transformations, synthesis of cyclic, sonata, variation, rondal principles, as well as in a special combination of subjective and objective ways of presentation, expressed in filling artificial avant-garde material with bright expressive imagery and romantic pathos. Thanks to a careful selection of means, D.Smirnov finds an original way to achieve a new integrity of cultural consciousness.