Complex structures of the virtual in the formation of an associative-figurative plan of a musical work
Authors: Serdiuk Ya.A. 
Published: July 2019

Background. In recent decades, musicology has demonstrated a steady interest not only in the grammar of the musical language, in the structural-logical side of the musical form, but also in the associative-figurative plan of music. The latter is increasingly becoming the subject of not only spontaneously-intuitive cognition, but also of decoding and systematization. The works on musical semantics, disclosing the meanings of musical lexemes in the context of that culture, that epoch-making style, in which they originated, belong, in particular, to L. Shaimuhametova, A. Asfandiarova, I. Alekseeva, H. Baikieva, A. Hordeeva, N. Kuznetsova N. Drach, I. Stohniy, H. Taraeva, L. Kazantseva. We also need to note the numerous studies of rhetoric and symbolism in Baroque music, especially, in J. S. Bach’s works. H. Poltavtseva describes the connection of types of musical language and their perception, as well as the process of comprehension on this basis of musical imagery. The study of musical content as a new direction of scientific thought was carried out by V. Kholopova and A. Kudriashov and found its application in creating of same name training courses. The purpose of the proposed study is an attempt to describe the process of forming a figurative subtext of a musical work using the concept of “virtual”, which, despite the wide spreading in modern musicological works of various directions, still does not have an established semantic structure. At the same time, it can be fruitfully used to study many musical phenomena, including the figurative subtext of a musical work. Research methodоlogy. In this study, we rely on the previously developed by us the conceptual system of the virtual in music, in particular, on one of its components – the virtual cognitive applied to the sphere of musical semantics. We used the modeling method to reproduce the algorithm of the formation of the figurative plan of a musical work, the method of semantic analysis to reveal the meanings of musical lexemes, the analytical methods of musical theoretical disciplines for considering the musical material. The results of the research. Virtual cognitive is connected with the hidden possibilities of the musical text and the hidden semantic plans of the musical work. We define hidden musical text plans as “virtual structures”. The latter, in combination with other components of the musical composition and specific features of the perception of music, shape the complex structure of the virtual, which we consider as one of the factors in the formation of the associativefigurative plan of the musical work. In our study, we rely on the idea of both a virtual cognitive and a musical work as a sign-oriented structure that can be studied from the standpoint of the general theory of language, as well as on the statement about the dependence of the perception of the musical text on a thesaurus of a performer or a listener. In this connection, using such terminological pairs as “language-speech”, “text-context”, “denotation-connotation”, we add one more: “text-subtext”. The relation of the last two pairs, in our opinion, is a correlation: “denotation / text”, “connotation / subtext”. Connotations arise thanks to the context, in which this or that text appears and functions. Both denotations (direct meanings) and connotations (accompanying meanings constituting the area of a subtext) belong to the realm of the virtual, because: 1) the meanings of the linguistic sign are products of individual and collective consciousness; 2) contextualized meanings can be revealed to the recipient only if the latter knows the context, in which this or that sign unit originated. However, if there is not enough auditory experience, both the denotation and the hidden connotations of the text (subtext) exist only as an unrealized opportunity, that is, as virtual. We will consider as musical-speech denotations: pitch characteristics, in particular, mode and tonal, harmonic, various “types of musical language” (after H. Poltavtseva), intonational turns with fixed meanings, the virtual structures of the facture-sound level – individual coloring of sound, hidden polyphony. As connotations – the virtual structures of the composition of the dramaturgic level: numerical symbolism, hidden form-building principles, which are the expression of a certain philosophical idea. Thus, the figurative subtext of a musical work is a compound structure formed by a number of elements and processes. The substrates of this complex are: 1) the musical notation, in which the basic parameters of the sounding are fixed; 2) sounding. On this basis, the other virtual formations arise: 1) performer’s mental, audial and motor ideas about a musical work; 2) listener’s perceptions – the modes of psychosomatic activity and figurative associations that arise on their basis; 3) denotations – semantics, fixed to one or another tonalities, to intonation formulas, to rhetorical figures etc.; 4) connotations, the area of subtext, often generating by contexts, in which the text is appeared, functioned and apperceived, taking into account the recipient’s thesaurus. In the context of perception, we include not only the properties of the recipient’s thesaurus, but also the communicative situation, in which this or that work is performed / perceived. Conclusions. Consequently, another else part of the sphere of virtual cognitive is the complex structures of the virtual, which act as a factor of the formation of an associative-figurative plan of a musical work. The components of these complexes are the components of the musical language (which include the virtual structures of the musical text, especially the factural and syntactic levels) in conjunction with the individual characteristics of perception due to the context of the communicative situation, the capacity and the nature of recipient’s thesaurus – a kind of filter, through which the meaning goes filling those or other musical constructions. The prospects for further research on virtual cognitive in the field of musical semantics provide for a more detailed and multidimensional consideration of the complex structures of the virtual in musical texts of different historical eras and styles.