Romantic Traditions in the Works of Ivan Sokolov on the Example of Intertextual Poetics of "Gospel Paintings"

Sycheva Natalia Nikolaevna ORCID: 0000-0002-0439-0769 Postgraduate Student, Lecturer at the Department of Music Theory and Composition, Rostov State Conservatory named after S. V. Rachmaninov 344002, Russia, Rostov region, Rostov-on-Don, 23 Budennovsky Ave., of. 13 lane. Guards 13 Natali.nakone4naya@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

 Ivan Glebovich Sokolov (born 1960) belongs to a special branch of musicians whose genius is realized in many areas of creative activity.

According to V. N. Kholopova, his multifaceted activity, characterized by the breadth of the manifestation of talent, evokes analogies with the creators of the Renaissance: he is a composer, pianist ^[1], a public figure, a brilliant musicologist, teacher, lecturer, connoisseur of poetry and literature^[2].

Despite such a breadth of research, the central, dominant line in his work was composer-piano activity, appearing as an inseparable whole in the process of creative self-expression. I. G. Sokolov noted: "performance helps to find impulses for composition, and composition helps in performance, although internally I think of myself as a composer"^[3]. The performance directly affected Sokolov's creative search for a composer. The main line of his repertoire consists of works by romantics, which have a special impact and evoke a response in the hearts of the audience. "In general, it seems to me," I. G. Sokolov believes, "that romanticism lives in the XX century. I find it in almost any modern composition that I play. Of course, in parallel with the music of the XX century, including the works of Boulez, Stockhausen, I also played Chopin a lot" ^{[2, p. 58]}. The highlighted "dialogicity" of performance and composition, of course, serves as a marker of the romantic tradition. It was in the XIX century that a creator of a special kind appeared on the foreground, combining these two creative directions.

Feeling the need to return to romantic ideals and ideas in the XXI century after the dominance of the "conceptual" vector in composition^[4], I. G. Sokolov creates a number of compositions in line with romantic traditions: "Thoughts about Rachmaninoff" (1992), Sonata for Cello and Piano (2002), Sonata for Violin and Piano (2005), Sonata for Viola and Piano (2006), Poem (2014), Sonata for Clarinet and Piano (2020), Piano Concerto (2021). This series includes the piano cycle "Gospel Paintings" (completed in 2012; the Russian premiere took place in 2014)^[5], which reveals many parallels with the music of the Romantic era.

The piano cycle "Gospel Paintings" by I. G. Sokolov currently exists in three editions: the first edition is a piano cycle consisting of thirty-three pieces (31 preludes, Recitative and Epilogue), each prelude is preceded by an epigraph with a quote from the Gospel ^[6]. The second edition is formed by the synthesis of I. G. Sokolov's music and a visual series from K. V. Sutyagin's paintings^{[7] [6]}. It is equipped with the author's explanations by I. G. Sokolov to the music of the piano cycle, revealing the mysteries of the composer's creative process. The third edition is a large-scale multimedia project called "Earth and Sky"^{[8] [7]}. It includes music of the piano cycle, paintings by K. V. Sutyagin, as well as a number of other related components (video interviews of two creators, video sequences with music and painting, author's explanations by I. G. Sokolov to the preludes).

Let's consider the first edition of the piano cycle (2012), the music of which can be attributed to the direction of "new traditionalism" ^{[8, p. 381]} in modern musical culture. This trend is characterized by reliance on the democratic musical language and the principles of the classical-romantic tonal system ("I tried to find for myself what I call the "native language" of the art of music" – I. G. Sokolov ^{[3, p. 219]}). In such works, sensual expressiveness dominates, the genre basis is clearly expressed. In one of the interviews, the composer himself noted the attraction to this type of writing: "In the process of composing my piano cycle "31 Prelude, Recitative and Epilogue. Gospel paintings” I wondered: “How do I compose?And I realized that you can't consciously strive for novelty: everything new appears by chance, that's why it's new. For a person who consciously strives to do something new will operate with the mind, and the mind consists of familiar formulas that already exist in this world. I was convinced of this by composing this and other works; I tried to "invent" as little as possible" ^{[2, p. 59]}.

The "Gospel paintings", which certainly continue the romantic line of the monocycle of preludes (F. Chopin, A. Scriabin, C. Cui), are characterized by the hegemony of a special type of music-making, which, according to Sokolov, is not constrained by a logically constructed compositional system and is completely subordinated to the free and spontaneous improvisational instrumental principle ("purely musical style" by I. G. Sokolov). The alternation of preludes in the cycle is similar to the cycle of preludes of Op. 64 C. Cui: the logic of following is based on movement along large and small thirds in the ascending direction. In the middle of the cycle I. G. Sokolov places six pairs of enharmonic keys:

The music of the preludes turns out to be close to the stylistics of the piano compositions of the Romantics, which manifests itself in many aspects, including the use of quotations, quasi-quotations, allusions, which give the cycle the properties of dialogical openness:

The main part of the intertextual parallels are allusions, quotations and quasi-quotations of an unintentional nature. One such quote, which appeared in the musical fabric by chance, naturally, was pointed out by the composer himself after the creation of the cycle (quote from a fragment of the Prelude e-moll Op. 28 by F. Chopin).

The comprehension of the found correspondences in the music of the cycle, of course, belongs to the field of hypotheses and assumptions concerning the intentions of the composer, the ratio of the thoughtful and the accidental in his creative process. Nevertheless, the highlighted analogies with other compositions and the noted principle of quoting ^[9] in the "Gospel Paintings", in our opinion, naturally proceed from the composer's creative method, which requires separate scientific consideration.

I. G. Sokolov speaks about his creative process as follows: "<...> all my life, the search for a creative path itself took 95% of creative forces. That is, the question of how to compose <...>. And then at some point I realized that such a craving for reflection must necessarily be balanced with something completely different. For example, absolute spontaneity, unpredictability and freedom" ^{[9, p. 61]}. In another interview , I. G. Sokolov subtly noted the essence of his compositional work: "Another very important feeling. The composer does not always compose music, sometimes music composes the composer <...> and in this sense my piano activity helps me a lot to cover history" ^{[3, p. 212]}. The composer mentioned the peculiarities of the composition process that takes place directly behind the instrument: "In the end, I wanted such music that would not be in line with ideas, but would simply enter deeply into the very natural element of music-making" ^{[3, p. 216]}. Thus, it can be assumed that in the element of natural music-making and the flight of I. G. Sokolov's creative imagination, at the moment of creating his own compositions, musical fragments from the music of composers of various eras appear "like a flicker". In this context, Sokolov's pianism turns out to be a kind of "network" that captures certain musical fragments from the treasury of piano literature. This justifies the direct and partly spontaneous appearance of most of the quotations in different sections of the forms of preludes.

Broadly speaking, the intertextual connections and parallels in the "Gospel Paintings" with the musical material of various eras are manifested on two levels:

1. Intonation-thematic (textual):

a) quote (J. S. Bach, F. Chopin);

b) allusion (J. S. Bach, S. V. Rachmaninov, F. Chopin, D. D. Shostakovich);

c) assimilation of intonation turns and musical signs of composers into the musical fabric of preludes (S. V. Rachmaninov);

2. Compositional – fusion of compositional models of piano cycles by O. Messiaen, P. Hindemith, F. Chopin and A. Scriabin, C. Cui, M. Mussorgsky, K. Debussy.

However, if we limit the field of consideration of intertextuality and focus on the problem of assimilation of musical vocabulary characteristic of the romantic era, then it manifests itself on three levels: textual similarity with specific works (quotations, allusions, quasi-quotations), commonality with the stylistics of the compositions of romantic composers, as well as with common musical and stylistic elements characteristic of the music of romanticism in general. Let's consider these levels with musical examples:

a) quoting fragments of piano music by romantic composers^[10] - F. Chopin, Prelude e-moll, Op. 28 (Examples 1a, 1 b), is the only case of using a "pure" quotation in the cycle;

b) allusions to musical fragments of musical works by romantic composers - P. I. Tchaikovsky, "October" from the Seasons, Op. 37; S. V. Rachmaninov, Etude–painting a-moll (Lento assai), Op. 39 (Examples 2a, 2 b); S. V. Rachmaninov^[11], Prelude No. 4, Op. 23, F. Liszt. Nocturne "O Lieb", As-dur, S. 541 (Examples 3a, 3 b); S. V. Rachmaninov. The romance "Oh no, I pray, don't go away", Op. 4, No. 1 (Examples 4, 5 b); S. V. Rachmaninov. Romance "Oh, don't be sad!", Op. 14, No. 8 (Examples 5a, 5 b);

c) migration of intonation complexes (the term of L. N. Shaimukhametova) into the musical fabric of the cycle of works by romantic composers - sadness, despair (Elegiac Trio for piano, Violin and Cello, Op. 9 by S. V. Rachmaninov), elegiac melancholy (The first part of the piano Concerto, Op. 20 by A. N. Scriabin). To the same level should be attributed the reproduction of stereotypical intonation spheres related to the general formulas (topos) of the romantic style – cantilena, romance, song (see Preludes No. 21, 27). Some preludes (Nos. 23, 25) evoke analogies with songs by F. Liszt at the level of intonation and figurative correspondences; in prelude No. 21, I. G. Sokolov notes the similarity of musical material with major intermezzo by I. Brahms ^{[6, p. 35]}. However, it seems that in the preludes the composer deliberately avoided quoting such melodic moves that could be identified with any particular fragment of the romantic composer's composition, and in general they can be attributed to commonly used musical and stylistic elements.

d) quasi-quotes with free reproduction, "romanticization" of the material like a musical paraphrase – the Chorale "De profundis" (Examples 6); or changes with the preservation of the semantics of the musical material – J. S. Bach. Partita for clavier No. 2, BWV 826. Sinfonia, G. Verdi. Requiem, "Lacrymosa" (Examples 7 a, 7 b, 7 c).

e) quasi-quoting musical signs of the style of romantic composers - bells – F. List. Large studies on Paganini, S. 141. Etude No. 3 "La campanella"; S. V. Rachmaninov, Prelude No. 12, Op. 32.

Let us turn to a more detailed consideration of some examples of intentional and unintentional manifestations of the principle of intertextuality.

In the melodic theme of the first prelude (C-dur, epigraph – "My soul magnifies the Lord", from Luke 1:46) of the cycle, the composer laid a veiled, hidden reference to the chorale "De profundis" ^{[6, p. 15]}, which is only the thinnest hint of its intonation framework (Example 6). However, the material of the chorale, deliberately disguised in a wordless instrumental narrative, was extremely important for the composer. The original semantics of the chorale reflects the Divine principle and merges in unison with the idea of the cycle. It is based on an artistic understanding of the earthly life of Jesus Christ based on the texts of the Gospel, as well as the correlation of the past with the present: "Music and painting are subordinated to one task – to reveal the connection between the Gospel and the modern world" ^{[6, p. 3]}. The compositional idea of the first prelude of the cycle is associated with the embodiment in music of the process of creation of the world and for the realization of the artistic idea of the work, the composer uses the means of romantic harmony.

In the first prelude, two polar sides are dramaturgically sharpened: chaos, non–existence - the moment of creation of the world, being. The introduction, based on the image of the image of nothingness (foggy perspective, haze), is realized thanks to a special choice of chord structures: the prelude opens with a cluster, the functional basis of which is a dominant nonaccord. The dissonant phonic effect of the initial cluster is prolonged by introducing a reduced seventh chord, represented as a layering of two seventh chords at a distance of a small second. The tension is significantly increased by moving through the most dissonant intervals – tritone, major septima, minor non. The septaccords are deployed in an ascending direction with imitation of circular (spiral) movements and resolved into a C-dur tonic with an additional septum tone, after which a different musical image is exposed and developed.

The mentioned connection of the theme of the prelude with the chorale "De profundis", noted by I. G. Sokolov, directly correlates with the idea of artistic comprehension in the piano cycle of the most important events recorded in the Holy Scriptures: "I took the obvious idea that any piece of music is a model of the universe, an attempt by a man, a composer to imitate God in His creation of the world ^{[6, p. 11; our italics are N. S.]}. Beginning its narration from the top of the source, the endless melody resembles human speech. It includes melodic moves peculiar to the genre of romance on a descending lyrical sexta. The melody soars above the harmonic figuration, in which a significant role is given to linearity in voice science.

The exposure of the theme is carried out within the modulating period in the tonality of the fourth degree of kinship – one-ring (C–dur - cis-moll). Within the period, deviations occur through S in the key of h-moll (DDp), fis-moll (?p or ? °) and as a result, a tonal series is formed – With–h–fis–cis, based on an upward movement along the fifths with a gradual departure into one of the most distant keys.

Here is another example of intertextuality. At the very beginning of the tenth prelude ^[12] of the cycle (gis-moll) there is an allusion to a fragment from the first number (Sinfonia) of the second partita c-moll (BWV 826) by J. S. Bach (Example 7a). Similar musical material is found in the Requiem of J. Verdi in the part "Lacrymosa", b-moll (Example 7c). These three examples have a close spiritual content, and as a result correspond to the image that I. G. Sokolov sought to embody in the music of the prelude – a generalized image of the suffering Christ.

Against the background of an "empty" tonic with a removed tercial tone in musical accompaniment and relying on the prolonged sound of a pure fifth, a melody in the spirit of romance with a characteristic choreic ascending and descending lyrical sexta unfolds in the first bars. The deepening of the dramatic figurative state is achieved by harmonic means: a full functional turn of the romantic type (T-SII2-D9-T) enhances the dissonant sound of D9 with the use of an unprepared delay to the tertz tone with a list characteristic of this technique.

Other striking examples that directly refer to romantic musical culture and its traditions are the analogies found in the preludes with the music of S. V. Rachmaninov. For example, at the very beginning of the fourth prelude of the cycle, the intonemes of sadness and suffering are reproduced, consonant with the beginnings of two romances by S. V. Rachmaninov: "Oh no, I pray, don't go away", Op. 4, No. 1 (Examples 4, 5 b), "Oh, don't be sad!", Op. 14, No.8 (Examples 5a, 5b). In the fourth prelude ^[13], on the one hand, the composer sought to depict a picture of the flight to Egypt of the young Mary, the elder Joseph and the infant Jesus, on the other, according to the author's plan, to generalize the tragedy of the XX century ^{[6, p. 18]}.

In the opening bars of the prelude and the romance "Oh, don't be sad!", a motif characteristic of Rachmaninoff's work is presented, placed in the bass (the initial choreic lamentose second intonation with a further fifth decline), firmly established in the cis-moll prelude op. 3. Another important means that unites these fragments is harmony: they begin with the restlessness characteristic of romantic composers. In the romance "Oh, don't be sad!" the dominant tertskvartaccord with a sexta in the bass is resolved in a leap into the tonic; in the romance "Oh no, I pray, don't go away" the initial turn is represented by a harmonic turn with the "nominal" Rachmaninoff harmony: DDVII43 – DVII43 with a quart – t, the semantics of which is associated with a state of mental depression, tragic hopelessness. Finally, in I. G. Sokolov's prelude, the initial turn is a dominant with a sexta, resolved into a tonic; this turn is complicated by chromatic non-chord sounds.

Summing up, it should be noted that intertextuality, as a compositional principle, arose naturally in the work of I. G. Sokolov. Sokolov, a musicologist who has encyclopedic knowledge in the field of music and subtly captures certain analogies between musical compositions, at a certain time was fascinated by the intertextual poetics in the work of his teacher N. N. Sidelnikov, dedicating his analytical study to the "Labyrinths" ^[11]. Another striking example is an article in which the thematism of D. D. Shostakovich's viola sonata is studied through the prism of the principle of autocitation ^[12]. Such a scrupulous study of these two works, in our opinion, influenced the creative method of I. G. Sokolov in "Gospel Paintings".

Another important factor that influenced the style of I. G. Sokolov's "Gospel Paintings" was his active lecturing activity at the Moscow Conservatory, where he teaches the course "Theory of Musical Content". Later, the materials of the lectures were broadcast by the author in an online project dedicated to stories about classical music "From Bach to the present day"^[14]. Knowledge of the richest layer of musical compositions, including the romantic era, is directly reflected in the format of the lecture: I. G. Sokolov's narration is permeated by his playing of musical fragments through associative thinking, which reveals the semantic content of certain compositions.

The chosen perspective of the study leads to conclusions that have commonality with one of the key concepts of postmodernism – "the authority of the text", which musicologist A. S. Sokolov defines as "the level of saturation of this text with allusions to other works of art representing a certain cultural tradition" ^{[10, p. 247]}. The revealed quotations, allusions and analogies are connected with the musical culture of Romanticism, and their abundance in the piano cycle of I. G. Sokolov is directly due to the phenomenon of "negotiation" of its traditions. The unity of "everything with everything" defines the monostylistics of a new warehouse – with the absence of seams and sharp contrasts, generating a single artistic narrative. Of course, the system of intertextual interaction is based on the principle of aesthetic and stylistic dialogue within the framework of one composition. The freedom to choose and combine a variety of materials in any sequence gives birth to a new original work.

Musical examples.

Example 1a. The text is donated by F. Chopin. Prelude No. 4, e-moll, Op. 28. Fragment:

Example 1b. Text-recipient. I. G. Sokolov. Piano cycle "Gospel paintings". Prelude No. 2, e-moll. Fragment:

Example 2a. Text-donor. S. V. Rachmaninov. Etude-painting a-moll (Lento assai), Op. 39. Fragment:

Example 2b. Text-recipient. I. G. Sokolov. Piano cycle "Gospel paintings". Prelude No. 8, cis-moll. Fragment:

Example 3a. Text-donor. F. List. Nocturne "Dreams of Love" ("O Lieb"), No. 3, As-dur (S. 541). Fragment:

Example 3b. Text-recipient. I. G. Sokolov. Piano cycle "Gospel paintings". Prelude No. 23, As-dur. Fragment:

Example 4. Text-donor. S. V. Rachmaninov. Romance "Oh no, I pray, don't go away", Op. 4. Fragment:

Example 5a. Text-donor. S. V. Rachmaninov. Romance "Oh, don't be sad!", Op. 14 No. 8. Beginning, fragment:

Example 5b. Text-recipient. I. G. Sokolov. Piano cycle "Gospel paintings". Prelude No. 4, h-moll. Beginning, fragment:

Example 6. I. G. Sokolov. Piano cycle "Gospel paintings". Prelude No. 1, C-dur. Fragment:

Example 7a. Text-donor. I. S. Bach. Partita No. 2, c-moll, BWV 826. Sinfonia.

Example 7b. Text-recipient. I. G. Sokolov. Piano cycle "Gospel paintings". Prelude No. 10, cis-moll. Fragment:

Example 7c. J. Verdi. Requiem. Fragment:

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^[1] I. G. Sokolov graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in two specialties (1983): composition (N. N. Sidelnikov), piano (L. N. Naumov).

^[2] Often these facets of creative activity closely interact with each other: performances are accompanied by preliminary musicological comments, analytical preliminaries; Sokolov's lecturing enlightenment is inseparable from performing-piano activity, where the narrative is permeated with insightful and sometimes unexpected musical analogies voiced on the instrument.

^[3] From the conversation of N. P. Ruchkina, the author of the dissertation on the work of I. G. Sokolov [cit. according to: 1, p. 3].

^[4] The period of the 1980s-90s was marked by Sokolov's active appeal to the compositional technique of cryptophony, as well as to the possibilities and means of instrumental theater, performance. By the end of the 1990s, the composer was moving away from the "conceptual vector" and noted the following: "I had a feeling that it was impossible to eat spices alone, which was actually what this experimental style was for me" ^{[3, p. 219]}.

^[5] The piano cycle "Gospel Paintings" was preceded by many compositions that figuratively and meaningfully prepare it. These include a number of spiritual choirs ("Hail to the Virgin, Rejoice", 1999; "Cherubimskaya", "Holy God", "Two are involved" 2002), secular works with spiritual content ("Sound in Life" for solo cello, 1993), where a special role is assigned to the genre of romance ("Holy of God" on the sl. V. Khlebnikov, "And believing" on the sl. G. Aigi, "Prayer" on the sl. E. Baratynsky, 1997; "Angel" on the sl. M. Lermontov, 2002; "Bible" on the words of V. Bryusov, 2006-2017). After creating the "Gospel Paintings", the composer again wrote a piano cycle of fifteen pieces for piano based on the paintings of Dietmar Bonnem (2016), in which he repeated the experience of synthesizing music and painting.

^[6] To date, two articles have been devoted to the study of the piano cycle "Gospel Paintings" – by E. A. Zolotukhina (2020) and Yu. A. Kosheleva (2021), the main emphasis in which is placed on the embodiment of spiritual symbolism in the musical matter of the composition ^[4-5].

^[7] The tradition of the synthesis of music and painting in the piano cycle comes from the "Pictures from the exhibition" by M. P. Mussorgsky (and in Western European music – Prints by K. Debussy), later domestic composers-pianists of the XX century, including T. G. Smirnov in the piano cycle Five Pieces for piano, turned to a similar synthesis in their work. "Suzdal Pictures", Op. 14; S. V. Aksyuk in the piano cycle "Russian Paintings", consisting of 24 preludes.

^[8] https://zemlyainebo.ru /, implemented in 2017.

^[9] Other researchers also point to the implementation of the citation principle in this cycle. About the presence in the Gospel cycle of two samples of allusions to the music of S. V. Rachmaninova writes Yu. A. Kosheleva in the article "On the peculiarities of intonation dramaturgy of the piano cycle "Gospel Paintings" Ivan Sokolov". It notes analogies with the music of Prelude No. 12, Op. 32, as well as Prelude No. 4, Op. 23 ^{[4, p. 116]}.

^[10] In N. P. Ruchkina's dissertation in I. G. Sokolov's Cello Sonata, the following quotations from the music of romantic composers are noted ^{[1, p. 100]}: Impromptu No. 1 Op. 90 F. Schubert; the theme of the Bluebird and Princess Florina from the third act of Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty, The March of Tin Soldiers from Tchaikovsky's Children's Album.

^[11] See the article by Yu. A. Kosheleva ^{[4, p. 116]}.

^[12] The epigraph to the tenth prelude: "... unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18:5).

^[13] The epigraph to the fourth prelude: "He got up, took the Baby and His Mother by night and led them to Egypt" (Matthew 2:14).

^[14]URL: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOM7OLn3AZxt6qVd1MMtisnn8H8aZ3wDG. (Accessed: 12/26/2022). To date, 207 lectures out of 300 have been posted on the site.

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