The Musical Image: General and Particular Features

Abstract

The previous article from the cycle “The Musical Image” was devoted to the conception of the musical image and the panorama of the “objective sides” manifested by images, which are grouped into the spheres of the Human Being, the World and Music, or — as Motion and Play — freely permeate into any of the spheres.
The second, conclusive article invites us to concentrate on the general and particular features of the musical image. The features of the musical image that are general, or universal, we discover to be sound being, the mobility of the inner structure of the image, its polyvalence, broad spectrum of mirrored “objective sides,” a certain aloofness from the realities of life, the immense significance of the temporal process of development, the difficulty of verbal characterization of the image, the diversity of the scales, the stadial character of formation, the unity of the objective and the subjective elements in it. Along with the general features, the musical image is also endowed with specific traits which are analytically disclosed with the aid of the dichotomies of “reality/nonreality,” “adult/children’s,” “static/dynamic,” “alinement/spiral motion.”