GENRE-STYLE AND SPIRITUAL-MEANING ASPECTS OF B. BRITTEN’S VOCAL CYCLE «SEVEN SONNETS OF MICHELANGELO»

Abstract

The research summarizes the poetic-intonational and genre-stylistic specifics of B.’s vocal cycle. Britten’s «Michelangelo’s Seven Sonnets» in the context of the traditions of the «English musical revival». The purpose of the work is to reveal the poetic and intonation uniqueness of the cycle «Michelangelo’s Seven Sonnets» by B. Britten in the stream of genre and style guidelines of English music of the first half of the 20th century. The methodology of the work has a complex nature and is based on a combination of the principles of historicaltypological, interdisciplinary, hermeneutic and genre-stylistic research methods. The scientific novelty of the work is determined by its analytical perspective, which takes into account not only the innovativeness of B’s approach. Britten in the reproduction of figurative and semantic constants of Michelangelo’s poetry, but also his inclusion in the genre and style norms of the English musical art of the first half of the 20th century. Conclusions. Сycle B. Britten’s «Michelangelo’s Seven Sonnets», created in 1940, is one of the outstanding examples of this genre not only in the composer’s work, but also in chamber and vocal music of the 20th century as a whole. Turning to the poetry of Michelangelo reveals not only the author’s interest in Renaissance poetry, but also in the «eternal» themes raised in the cycle. Among such aspirations are «Beautiful», «Harmony», «Perfection», complemented by the themes of «Friendship» and spiritual understanding of the essence of «Beauty». The intonation language of this vocal cycle B. Britten was formed at the intersection, on the one hand, of the traditions of Italian bel canto, and on the other hand, under the influence of the stylistic guidelines of the work of K. Debussy and M. Ravel. At the same time, the restrained and sublime emotional tone of the work of B. Britten, who went back to the Neoplatonic Renaissance poetry of Michelangelo, also reveals the neoclassical features of his style, marked above all in the extreme simplicity of musical expression and in the appeal to tonal principles of thinking, which is determined not only by the aesthetic guidelines of B. Britten, but also the stylistic preferences of the English musical culture of the first half of the 20th century.