The article addresses gaps in the history of Russian performance practice on wind instruments by reintroducing the name of Max Vasilyevich Berg, a talented German flutist and pedagogue, and one of the leading musicians of the Mariinsky Theatre. The aim of this study is to reconstruct the main stages of M.Berg’s life and creative career within the context of the musical life of Breslau and St.Petersburg in the last third of the 19th – first half of the 20th centuries. The research is based on the following sources: the Central State Archive of Literature and Art of St.Petersburg; the Russian State Historical Archive; Presidential Library; the State Archive of Wrocław (Poland); Russian and foreign relevant publications and books on the history of musical culture in Germany and Russia in the second half of the 19th – first half of the 20th centuries. The methodological framework of the study relies on a comprehensive approach that integrates historical-biographical, comparative-historical, and archival methods, source studies, and contextual analysis. The theoretical value of this work lies in the fact that it presents, for the first time, a reconstructed creative biography of M. Berg. This contributes to the understanding of the cultural landscape of Russia in the first half of the 20th century and reintegrates the “forgotten names” of talented musicians into the context of contemporary scholarly research.

This article examines the transformation of film music in the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries through the lens of the ideas of John Cage, Toru Takemitsu, and Tan Dun, whose aesthetic strategies are analysed here within a unified theoretical framework for the first time. The focus of the study is the reconceptualisation of sound and silence – from an illustrative function to an autonomous philosophical statement. The paper explores the concepts of silence, sound, performativity, corporeality, and cultural memory. Particular attention is paid to the transcultural dialogue between the Western avant-garde tradition and East Asian aesthetics, specifically the notions of ma and non-linear time. Using Tan Dun’s score for the feature film “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” as a case study – with its synthesis of different models of sonic thinking – the article demonstrates how contemporary cinema becomes a space for the re-actualisation of avant-garde ideas within popular culture.

This article examines the development of the di flute concerto genre in China, using Guo Wenjing’s “The Sad Desolate Mountain” as an example. The study utilizes a combination of scientific methods, including a systems approach, a historical approach, and an analysis of the musical work. Three vectors of development of the instrumental concerto genre in Chinese culture in the 20th and 21st centuries are presented: the European-style concerto, the folk concerto, the concerto for a national instrument, and the orchestra of Chinese instruments. In examining the second type of concerto, in which a solo Chinese instrument is contrasted with a symphony orchestra, the author aims to identify the specific aspects of the concerto genre’s interpretation in Guo Wenjing’s “The Sad Deserted Mountain”. The author addresses the following objectives: to identify the main types of instrumental concerto in Chinese music of the 20th–21st centuries; to determine the specific features of the di flute concerto genre; to analyze the compositional features and musical language of Guo Wenjing’s di flute concerto “The Sad Deserted Mountain”. The author identifies the following principles of the composer’s work in the concerto genre: 1) maintaining the soloist’s cadences and the three-part structure of the classical genre invariant; 2) dramatizing the genre by enhancing harmonic and modal tension; 3) activating the rhythmic element (irregular accents, syncopations, polymetry, etc.). 4) the absence of modal support on the pentatonic scale and an approach to free atonality; 5) the creation of a striking contrast between the dense orchestral sound and the virtuoso soloist. The research approach is novel, as it explores the transformation of the European concerto genre under the influence of a non-European solo instrument. Guo Wenjing’s piece offers a fresh perspective on the possibilities of creating and enhancing drama in the concerto genre with the solo bamboo flute. 

The article examines visual religious images and the processes of their transformation in the Internet environment, including: changing the form and visual grammar, rethinking ideological and sacred content. The focus is on the mechanisms of deconstruction, “remixing”, politicization and commercialization of religious images in the digital environment and the identification of their role in the formation of a new religious identity. The following methodological approaches have been applied to analyze transformation at the formal, substantive, and contextual levels: the semiotic approach of Roland Barthes, the visual grammar of Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen, the theory of representation by Stuart Hall, the concept of “pictorial turn” by William John Thomas Mitchell, the concept of the mediatization of religion by Stig Hjarward, and the concept of memetic visuality by Limor Shifman et al. As a result of the work done, it is possible to come to the conclusions that: in the Internet environment, sacred images lose their rigid connection with the original context, fragment and combine with other visual codes, forming hybrid forms, their semantics change, turning the image into a marker of group affiliation or a tool of manipulation. Transformation leads to desacralization, but at the same time expands cultural recognition and accessibility of religious images.

The article examines the motifs of sacrifice in the productions of Kama Ginkas. The methodological basis of the study comprises a hermeneutic approach as well as a structural-semiotic analysis of the theatrical text. Drawing on the key concepts from the theories of sacrifice by R. Girard, A. Hubert and M. Mauss, S. Freud, F. Nietzsche, and K. Jaspers, the authors analyse such productions as “Medea”, “The Happy Prince”, “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District”, “The Lady with the Dog”, “Rothschild’s Violin” and “Hedda Gabler”. The study reveals that in Ginkas’s works, sacrifice undergoes a qualitative transformation from a plot device into a universal mechanism through which the theatre becomes a space for experiencing liminal situations. The paper concludes that the archaic ritual is being reconfigured: from a sacral act serving as a means to legitimise social order, to sacrificial self-giving devoid of a specific addressee (a deity, community, etc.), and further to a complete devaluation of the original symbolic meaning of the ritual offering. 

The article examines Uzbek musical culture of the national period – from Uzbekistan’s independence in 1991 to the present day – in the perspective of its contemporary status as an object of intangible cultural heritage (ICH). It analyses the key directions of institutionalisation and cultural practice of this period: the revival and scholarly reception of maqom performance, including the establishment of the Yunus Rajabi Institute of National Musical Art in 2020; the formation and development of festival and competition infrastructure – the Sharq Taronalari festival (since 1997), Boysun Bahori (since 2002), Asrlar Sadosi (since 2008) and the International Maqom Competition (since 2018); the composer school of the national period and its engagement with traditional heritage; the international recognition of objects of Uzbek musical culture on the UNESCO Representative List of ICH – Shashmaqom (2008), the cultural space of the Boysun District (2008), Katta Ashula (2009) and the art of lazgi (2019). The author justifiably concludes that the national period is characterised by the systematic institutionalisation of Uzbek musical culture as an element of intangible cultural heritage (ICH). This process encompassed both the development of relevant institutions and practices and the implementation of regulatory norms, established by the 2003 UNESCO Convention and the national legislation of the Republic of Uzbekistan.