THE PRELUDE GENRE IN FRENCH MUSIC OF THE 17TH–20TH CENTURIES

Abstract

The study summarizes the genre-stylistic specificity of the French clavier (piano) prelude, which testified to the key stages of the development of French instrumentalism in recent centuries. The purpose of the work is to identify the poetic-intonational, genre-stylistic specificity of the French piano prelude and the features of its existence in European instrumental music of the Modern era. Methodological basis of the work. Essential for this work are genre-stylistic, intonation, and analytical-musicological methods in their comprehensive application, which together allow us to explore the dynamics of the developmentof the prelude in the French music-historical tradition of the 17th – 20th centuries.The scientific novelty of the work is determined by the fact that for the first time in Ukrainian musicology, it summarizes the key stages of the historical development of the French clavier (piano) prelude, represented in a wide range of works – from the “tactless prelude” to the prelude cycles of the era of musical modernity (C. Debussy, E. Satie, O. Messiaen).Conclusions. The historical paths of the development of the French clavier (piano) prelude testify to the originality and uniqueness of this genre, which genetically converged to the so-called “tactless prelude”, the poetics of whichwas formed at the intersection of the traditions of musical baroque and rococo, as well as the creative and performing practice indicative of them. Among its typical features, the desire for exploratory forms of creative activity, improvisation, and artistic freedom dominates. The emergence of the French prelude in subsequent eras of the European musical- historical tradition reveals the peculiarities of its genre metamorphoses, the culmination of which can be considered the cycle of preludes by C. Debussy. It is in it that the programmatic nature traditional for French instrumentalism is introduced, which is organically combined with the modal-harmonic and intonational searches of musical modernity. The same kind of genre-stylistic orientation characterizes the prelude opuses of E. Satie, in which the innovation and certainshockingness of the author’s thinking are combined with the revival of the traditions of the “tactless prelude”. The result of the development of this genre can be considered the cycle “Eight Preludes” by O. Messiaen, in which, on the one hand, the symbolist-metaphorical principle of interpreting this genre is inherited, and on the other hand, the figurative-meaningful, mysterious-metaphysical and poetic-intonational foundations of his instrumental work are laid, which will be implemented in more detail in his subsequent piano opuses.