Игра в музыку: доколе?*

First of all, we would like to note that the article we are discussing is about the author’s understanding of what is happening in modern musical culture from the perspective of his model of music, which he calls the “New synergetic philosophy of music”. According to this model, music is the culmination of the development of the world, representing the person who is most filled with the Spirit (1). But what is the Spirit?

The Spirit, or Spirituality, is ultimately expressed in the reverence for the memory of one’s ancestors — “Two feelings are strangely close to us...” (Pushkin). Memory is the Spirit (2).

In music, memory, and therefore tradition, in the most profound sense, is found in the folk song — “The Singers” (Turgenev).

Today, in music, we are seeing a departure from traditions — songfulness, and live intonation (primarily due to the use of electronics). Composers are not engaged in creativity (in the original meaning of the word) but in what they call provocation: under the guise of musical works, they create certain art objects, in which they use different sounds. We call these sound games “game of music”. In fact, we can say that there is a “conspiracy of music” (3). When did it start?

We believe that the phenomenon in question received a powerful impetus for its birth from the works of the post-war musical avant-garde composers — AvantGarde II. The International Summer Courses for New Music, organized in Darmstadt in 1946, played a significant role in the emergence of these creations. During the courses, many composers honed the principles of their new music, e.g., P. Boulez, C. Stockhausen, B. Maderna, L. Nono, L. Berio, J. Cage, J. Xenakis, M. Kagel, V. Rome, M. Feldman, B. Fernyhough, H. Lachenmann, B. Furrer and others (it is significant that several outstanding composers of the 20th century, probably due to their connection with the soil, did not participate in the courses: P. Hindemith, K. Orff, B. Britten, Z. Kodáy, I. Stravinsky) (4).