Piano Works of Transcarpathian Composers of the 20th and early 21st Centuries: The Phenomenon Research Algorithms

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to study the continuity of musical thinking professionalization on examples of piano works by Transcarpathian composers, which are very significant for the formation of the Transcarpathian compositional tradition as a historical phenomenon of mastery development by Transcarpathian composers (Zsigmond Lengyel, Dezső Zádor, István Márton, Emil Kobulei, Mykola Popenko, Volodymir Volontyr, Anatoly Zatin, Viktor Telychko) regarding their compliance with the academic norms of musical thinking and with historically composed stylistic invariants. The approach to the research phenomenon is monadological, which means the intention to diagnose a mentally peculiar discourse of the stylistic design, combining the assimilation of historically relevant thought forms and the intonational stock of a multiethnic folklore of the Transcarpathian region. We come to the conclusion that the piano works of Transcarpathian composers reflect a historically determined manoeuvre of “catching up” with the stylistic initiatives of the whole twentieth century with its idea of a global cultural synthesis and reinterpretation/neo-restoration of traditions. It has been found that the starting point for the professionalization of music composition in Transcarpathia was the modern modality of style – a position that is usually characterized as a “post-Romantic reaction” to all the traditional and total renewal of musical thinking in order to innovate. At the same time, for the style-forming initiatives of Transcarpathian composers the discourse of stylization became most relevant – a special type of musical thinking that created the newest representation of the “intonation image of the world” and found its rather original embodiment in the postmodern phase under the guise of “intellectual performance.”