The ballad as a narrative genre of the chamber-vocal music
Authors: Liu Xia 
Published: March 2021

The ballad as a narrative genre of the chamber-vocal music. Logical reason for research. The relevance of the topic of the present research is due to the fact that in music the interaction of purely musical and extra-musical phenomena continues to remain in the focus of increased attention of the researchers who represent both musicology and other areas of humanitarian knowledge. This interaction has a synergistic effect, which lies in the fact that the combination of the simultaneous influence of words and music, integrated into a single whole, leads to a significantly greater effect of these factors together, rather than separately. Such emergence is clearly manifested during all types of musician’s activities – composing, performing, listening, but has not yet been sufficiently developed in musical science. And the need for a connection between musical science and practice directs our attention to such types of synergistic interaction in music, and one of the most basic is the interaction of music itself (of purely musical, sound patterns) and the verbal text (of the sphere of extramusical – specific images, characters, events, etc.). One of the concepts associated with the verbal text, which has its own specific qualities, is the “narrative”, and the study of the narrativeness as a special property (or a complex of properties) of a vocal musical composition with a narrative text, its potential, performance specifics and characteristics of perception by the listener seems relevant both in theoretical and practical directions. Innovation. The article is devoted to a chamber-vocal ballad, one of the genre indicators of which is the narrativeness. The narrativeness is understood as a special quality of a musical composition, in particular, a vocal one, which relies on narration (both verbal and achieved by means of musical expression). The narrative narration is connected, on the one hand, with eventfulness, plot; on the other hand, it is characterized by an emotional and ethical assessment of the reflected events. In the vocal music, the conductor of the narrative is the word, however, only those genres of the vocal music can be defined as narrative, where the verbal text itself has narrative qualities. The vocal ballad is such among the genres of the vocal music, and its literary origin and narrativeness as the main genetic trait determined the corresponding narrative specificity. The narrativeness as a genre factor in the ballad is the result of the synthesis of a narrative verbal text and the corresponding eventfulness of a vocal composition (an extra-musical component) and the specifics of their musical embodiment (a musical component). As one of its tasks the concert practice of a vocal ballad performer has the realization of the narrativeness as a quality of the performing-composing interpretation, which represents the understanding and presentation of the artistic potential of a musical composition. The narrativeness can manifest itself at different levels of the musical text of the ballad, usually enhancing the emotional and ethical assessment of the events. Objectives. The purpose of the present research is to reveal the specifics of the narrativeness of the chamber-vocal genre of the ballad. Methods. The main methods of the presented research are genre and systemic. The genre method is associated with the need to characterize the chamber-vocal genre of the ballad in connection with the chosen perspective of studying the meaning and action of the narrative in it. The systemic method makes it possible to identify and systematize the peculiarities of the interaction of the extra-musical narrative and the means of musical expression in a specific genre, namely, the chamber-vocal ballad. Results and Discussion. The movement into the inter-disciplinary field remains a promising growth point in modern research in the sphere of humanities, where different areas of knowledge actively interact and share their experience. This also applies to musicology. Active assimilation of knowledge from other sciences helps to see from a new perspective many problems, the study of which by traditional methods has practically exhausted its potential. One of the concepts that can help in the study of the patterns of interaction between words and music in musical art is the “narrative” as a special quality of the verbal text. The narrative involved in the field of musical science receives additional scientific “saturation”, scientific meanings and research perspectives. The development of an integrative scientific approach for two disciplines such as linguistics and musicology goes beyond their case studies and focuses on connecting the laws of “musical structures” to the analysis of the verbal text: for example, such concepts as tension and decline, open and closed form, the lyrical, harmonic content, etc. The need to comprehend the dynamic nature of the narrative text leads to an expansion of the horizon of research related to the concepts of the birth of the text and the perception of the text, and the theory of musical forms is the closest to the narratology in this regard. Indeed, the organization of verbal and musical communication obeys the general laws of dynamism and temporality: the basis of both linguistic and musical structures is the procedural nature of the development of information. The convergence of musicality and narrativeness has led to the development of such a concept as a “musical intrigue” in the works of the French narratologists R. Barony, F. Revaz and others. In musical science, there is a concept that, in our opinion, is associated with a “musical intrigue”, but is more capacious and better explaining the narrative in music of both, a purely musical and extramusical nature – this is musical “eventfulness” (N. Gerasimova-Persidskaya, A. Ivko, and A. Durnev), which is understood broadly and multi-dimensionally, both in connection with the events “introduced” to music with the word, and with purely musical “events” – harmonic, rhythmic, intonational, timbre-acoustic, etc. Such musical eventfulness, unfolded in the narration with a sequential presentation of the events from the “third” person and an emotional assessment of the happening things – both in the verbal and musical text, is most clearly represented in the chamber-vocal genre of the ballad. Owing to the literary origin of the genre and its original narrative nature, it has retained its narrative nature in music (this applies to both the vocal and instrumental ballads). Most often, the musical text in the vocal ballad is subordinated to the verbal one, it is an illustration of the events that are taking place and at the same time enhances their emotional assessment. Conclusions. The narrativeness in the vocal music is primarily related to its extra-musical source. The narrativeness as a special quality of a narrative eventful text is characterized by an emotional attitude and a corresponding assessment, which is dictated from the outside (by the “storyteller”) to the person at whom the narrative is directed – in the sphere of musical practice this is the listener. Since the text (the word) is used in the vocal music, here we should talk about the narrative with all the specifics of its action. Very various texts are used in the vocal music, and not all of them are narrative, therefore, the narrativeness as a genre quality in its pure form can be traced in the genre of the vocal ballad due to its literary origin and narrative character. That is why the most indicative vocal genre in the aspect of the narrativeness is such a genre of the chamber-vocal music as the ballad. The nature of the narrativeness: in the vocal ballad it determines the verbal text, and the means of musical expression, as a rule, embody both the events reflected in the text and their emotional assessment. The prospects for the study of the narrativeness in musical art are associated not only with the characteristics of the interaction of musical and extra-musical principles in the vocal music (both in the chamber music and in the large genres), but also with the study of manifestations of the narrativeness in instrumental music, especially in such compositions that are not associated with extra-musical manifestations even in minimal form (program headers and the like). In addition, since the narrativeness is associated with a “storyteller”-intermediary between the source of information and its recipient, it can be argued that the narrativeness in musical art is also associated with the performing art as one of its tasks, literally or figuratively.