The Semantic Spectrum of Interpretations of Bell-Like Sonorities in the Language and Structure of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Etudes-Tableaux, opus 33

Abstract

The present research work is devoted to analysis in the cycle of Etudes-Tableaux opus 33 of the means of interpretation of bell-like sonorities — the genre-related component reflecting one of the constants of Russian musical culture and represented in an especially relief quality in the composer’s artistic world. A broad spectrum of meanings of bell-like sounds, the multiplicity of pitch-related, register-dynamic and textural forms of interpretation of bell-like sonorities in the conditions of sound imitation, the tendency of reconstruction, or the creation of allusions, intimations of bell reverberation. The variation quality of the figurative and genre-related contexts, the types of pitch organization, chordal and intervallic structures, the creations of the means of duration, the effects of generation and extinction, and the forms of exposition defining the creation of effects of bell reverberation. The manifestations of corresponding, the connections from a distance in correspondence of a set of adjacent pieces defining the traits of micro-cycles in a cycle of pieces are discovered and researched, and at the same time its artistic integrity as a single text.