Le 1er juillet 2017
de 14h30 à 15h00
Le Patio (université de Strasbourg)
22 rue René Descartes, 67000 Strasbourg
salle 3202
Séance - Semiotics and Semantics of Tonality and Harmony
Pré-acte / Acte
Auteur : Liudmila Kazantseva
The tonality is studied in the theory of music as composition tool. Also, long since, musicians and music thinkers are interested in semantic aspect of a tonality. Still the theory of affects (J. Mattheson, J. Quantz) pointed to expressiveness of the most usable tonalities in composer practice. Subsequently the circle of semantic important tonalities (e.g., in music of romantics) extended; the synaestheticism was caught in expressiveness of the tonality (in N. Rimsky-Korsakov and A. Scriabin’s color-light concepts). At present data of observations over semantics of the tonality within separate composer styles are available: F. Chopin, S. Rachmaninov, D. Shostakovich and other musicians. These data, however, have mainly empirical character, they emphasize the subjective origin of interpretations of tonalities.
In our report we examine formation of meaning in a tonality: the subjectivity and objectivity of semantics and factors influencing it.
On the basis of the conducted analysis it is becoming apparent that a metaphoricity of semantics of a tonality is ontological, natural, and by no means strictly subjective as it seems quite often. Objective bases of semantics are disclosed. It is corrected by a set of factors: features of a harmony, harmonic development and other components of musical texture. It has become obvious that the tonality is also influenced by composer style and by genre of the work. As such – subjective-objective – a phenomenon the tonality is used by the composer and perceived by the listener. Such comprehension of semantics of the tonality gives us an opportunity of its further theoretical learning.
