Semantic space of “Well-Tempered Clavier” of J. S. Bach as a basis of the performing concept
Authors: Adlutskyi H. 
Published: December 2021

The relevance of the article is due to the issue of formation in a modern multicultural space of the new image of the executor — the carrier of new senses and cultural memory, as well as need for creative comprehension of the world treasury of musical art in the artistic realities of modernity and research on the specifics of its modern performing versions.

The purpose of the article is to outline the determinants and the specifics of the semantic space of “Well-Tempered Clavier” of J. S. Bach as conceptual basis of the performing concept.

The methodology of the article is based on the principles of a comparative approach, which enables the use of research tools for cultural studies and musicology, in particular historical, historical-contextual, genre, hermeneutical and semiological methods and approaches.

The results. The article outlines the following factors of conceptual polyphony of “Well-Tempered Clavier” as accumulation and artist experience of reflection and protecting the world in symbolic forms, the significance of the synthesis of arts and the unity of emotion, image and symbol on the parameters of baroque aesthetics, the connection of “Well-Tempered Clavier” with the creativity of the artist, resonance of symbolic forms with axiological structures of historical and cultural epochs. The article substantiates the significance in pluralistic symbolic field of the works: semantics of tonality and tempo, which acts as a construction of performing chronotope; sacred melos with perceptually fixed semantics, means of embodiment of which is citing, representation as complementary unity, allusion-variable reproduction; numeric symbolism; rhetorical figures, sound treatment — visualization of the musical process; fixed in the context of European art semantics — in particular “mirror in the mirror” (on micro — and macro levels of the of the music text organization); the genre “ambivalence”, which determines the superposition of different variants of “genre’s memory” and enables the creation of an artistic-reflective arch between the era of Baroque and postmodernism, designated be the leveling of the genre.

The scientific topicality of the article is due to the clarification and systematization of representations regarding the specifics of the semantic field of “Well-Tempered Clavier” of J. S. Bach and the positioning of conceptual polyphony of the work as the basis of performing concepts and text.

The practical significance of article is determined by a direct possibility of applying research results in the performing practice.

Conclusion. Performance of “Well-Tempered Clavier” of J. S. Bach on the basis of the interiorization of symbolic forms is a guarantee of its performing “reading” as an embodiment of the process of being human in a cross-cultural dialogue, deploying self-reflection in the space of a representation of postmodernism paradigm as a multidimensional cultural message, in which the axiological experience of humanity is concentrated and the eternal problems of its spiritual being are actualized.