“The Bells” by Sergei Rachmaninoff: The poem “The Bells” by Edgar Allan Poe in the translation by Konstantin Balmont as a source for the birth of an individual musical form. Part II: Structure peculiarities
Svistunenko Tatiana Anatolevna
Saratov State Conservatoire
Submitted: 05.08.2023
Abstract. This paper is the second part of the publication: Svistunenko T. A. “The Bells” by Sergei Rachmaninov: The poem “The Bells” by Edgar Allan Poe in the translation by Konstantin Balmont as a source for the birth of an individual musical form. Part I: background and history of creation // Manuscript. 2023. Vol. 16. Iss. 2. The first part gave a description of E. A. Poe’s creative work and his aesthetic views; characterised the general composition of K. D. Balmont’s translation of E. A. Poe’s poem “The Bells” and presented the history of creation of the poem “The Bells” by S. V. Rachmaninoff and the public perception of this work. In this article, the author conducts a detailed analysis of each of the four parts of S. V. Rachmaninoff’s poem “The Bells”, which makes it possible to identify a number of general patterns inherent in the composition as a whole. As a result, the peculiarities of main theme development in each part of the work have been determined; it has been substantiated that in S. V. Rachmaninoff’s poem “The Bells”, there is a special type of a main theme, which, despite being one of several “seeds”, develops according to monothematic laws. All the structure peculiarities in the poem testify to the creator’s individuality and the composer’s nuanced solution of questions of musical form, which reflects his desire to convey the very essence of the content of the poetic work in music.
Key words and phrases: симфоническая поэма «Колокола» С. В. Рахманинова, поэма “The Bells” Э. А. По, музыкальная поэма для симфонического оркестра, структурные особенности, лейттема, symphonic poem “The Bells” by S. V. Rachmaninoff, poem “The Bells” by E. A. Poe, musical poem for symphony orchestra, structure peculiarities, main theme
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