Cycle “34 preludes and fugues” by V. Bibik: interpretive and performing aspects
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24195/artstudies.2024-2.25Keywords:
Ukrainian music for piano, polyphonic cycle, interpretive and performance analysisAbstract
A truly monumental work – the cycle “34 Preludes and Fugues” for the piano by Ukrainian composer V. Bibik, written between 1973 and 1978, has not left musicologists indifferent to this day. There is an active comprehension of the constructive features of the cycle, studying the basics of the composer’s personal style, but the most relevant issues are interpretive and performing ones. The article presents an interpretive and performing analysis of the preludes and fugues from the first notebook of the cycle “Reflection”. It is revealed that the preludes and fugues in the first notebook are not a random set of mini-cycles, but works built according to a certain dramaturgy, in which two culminations are outlined, the first – Prelude and Fugue № 8 and the second – the last in the notebook, № 14, characterised by a significant intensity of the development of the artistic image and the complexity of the polyphonic form. The artistic and figurative content of the first notebook corresponds to the stated programme and is characterised by a wide range of figurative solutions of each mini-cycle: calm, enlightened images, concentrated and self-deepened, images of bell-like and bird’s songs, excited and pathetic and emotionally tense, mournful and cosmically unreal. It has been established that in interpreting the preludes and fugues by V. Bibik from the mentioned cycle, one should focus on the aspects of the composer’s artistic style, which are manifested in a special sense of sound, the palette of its timbre colouration, an extraordinary approach to rhythm and agogic, the absence of uniformity of movement, the formation of a certain rhythmic rubato, movement in music, the fundamental importance of the pedal and the variety of its use in creating an artistic image. In addition, it is necessary to understand the principle of the development of the musical image in the works of the cycle, which is based not on the conflict of opposing image spheres, but on the internal status of the theme.
References
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