DOI: 10.7256/2453-613X.2021.6.35933

Abstract: The leading research topic in this article is the analysis of the specifics of the development of saxophone art in a symphony orchestra. The chosen problem requires the study of this direction from the perspective of a broader socio-historical context, within which it is possible to identify special signs of musical culture, both in the general context and in individual genres. In this vein, the study of saxophone music in a symphony orchestra allows us to outline, firstly, the origins of the origin of interest and the introduction of a special instrument into the cultural panorama, secondly, to trace the ways and impulses of its spread, and thirdly, to find out the problems of the saxophone as part of a symphony orchestra. In order to fully understand its special place in the cultural continuum of a certain place and epoch, music for the saxophone should be considered not just as a specific artifact that has been embodied in creativity, performance, education, but as a multi-level and three-dimensional concept in the musical art of the XIX-XXI centuries. The disclosure of the role of the saxophone as part of a symphony orchestra in the article is not just carried out through the prism of the representation of a certain number of facts, names, events, and can be traced as the correspondence of the development of the instrument to those historical, political, socio-economic and, above all, cultural and artistic processes that have formed a kind of creative reinterpretation of one of the most popular modern instruments. The purpose of the study is to substantiate the genesis, development trends and the current state of saxophone art in general, as well as, in particular, in the composition of a symphony orchestra. In the study, the author focuses on iconic performers and teachers, whose personal achievements in the field of concert, research and musical and social activities had a significant impact on the formation of the saxophone as part of a symphony orchestra.

DOI: 10.7256/2453-613X.2021.4.36033

Abstract: The author reconsiders the interpretation of the concept of Shostakovich’s Symphony No 5 based on the fact that the composition was created during Stalin’s Great Terror of the 1930s and after a harsh criticism of his compositions by the Communist Party and the USSR government in the early 1930s. During the creation of the Symphony No 5, the Soviet music experts defined its concept as a celebration of a “happy” life of Soviet people, However, in the author’s opinion, the symphony has another idea. The researcher notes that the triumph of the Symphony No 5 in the global culture had happened only owing to the director’s interpretation by Yevgeny Mravinsky during the premiere at Leningrad Philharmonic Hall on November 21, 1937, after which the Symphony was performed all over the world and became the gold standard of the Soviet music. Probably, Shostakovich intended to create an optimistic finale for the Symphony. But there are many examples when the composer’s goal doesn’t correspond with the final result. The author provides the conclusion that almost all music experts, who analyze this symphony, use abstract phrases: contrast themes, lyrical image, enemy, etc. But the only proven fact is that a “mechanistic” march is a heavy and ponderous advance of the power of a tyrant eliminating everything he wants based on the principle “who is not with us is against us”. This idea pierces into the Forth and later the Seventh Symphonies by Shostakovich. Today, the Symphony is still a music masterpiece and a part of the global music heritage, but the new socio-cultural interpretations of modern directors each time reveal the new faces of this composition.