Original and borrowed: correlation of the author’s and referred elements in modern musical work
Authors: Shchetynsky O.S. 
Published: July 2019

The phrase “author’s speech” the most frequently uses in musicological texts without exact definition but rather as a metaphor. However, its senses are not clear enough. The correlation of original and “borrowed” elements in music work also needs clarification. The objective of this article is to analyze the role of the author’s and borrowed elements, as well as their impact on artistic value of musical work on the examples of creativity by the composers of the XX century. Some examples of the “author’s speech” do not show any problem, as we clearly feel, when exactly the author suggests his/her personal commentary to the “events” that were depicted before. Among these are the sorrow solos of wind instruments in the symphonies by Dmitry Shostakovich, which he usually introduced after tragic culminations or the D minor orchestral interlude before the last episode of “Wozzeck” by Alban Berg. The author himself characterizes this interlude as the “author’s speech” directed to the audience, which represents the humankind. However, episodes of similar character (author’s “direct speech”) are not obligatory in music. Huge number of works by Shostakovich, Berg and other authors does not include them. Certainly, this does not mean they lack the “author’s speech”. While identifying this element in the piece, it is important to reject the stereotype to bind it with slow music of certain character (meditative, melancholic, sorrow, festive, solemn, etc.). In the same time, although such connotations sometimes are working, the faster episodes of another nature, with thematic contrasts and intensive development, should not be associated only with dramatic quasi-theatrical action. The author cannot avoid various emotions (doubt, trouble, uncertainty, protest, searching for a decision, multivalency of reaction, and many others), which definitely will be reflected in his/her piece and will producing a music of very different kinds. If we consider the music work in technical aspects, we find the combination of individual and “borrowed” elements at all levels of the compositional structure. So, we may conclude the author’s individuality manifests itself everywhere, and the meditative episodes do not enjoy any priority in comparison to episodes of another figurative character and type of movement. “Suite in the old style” for violin and piano (harpsichord) by Alfred Schnittke is a good example of such practice. In his dialogues with Dmitry Shulgin Schnittke characterizes this work as total stylization, except several tiny details. Nevertheless, the analysis of the piece reveals the more serious personal contribution. In addition to found by the researcher Olena Vashchenko harmonic and melodic elements that have their origin rather in the 20th century, the present article shows similar content in formal structure of the Suite and in part-writing of its polyphonic movements. Individual style reveals also in Schnittke’s choice of certain elements of “old styles” and their combination with the 20th century musical writing. Why Schnittke ignored his real stylistic contribution and qualified his Suite lower than it deserved? The author of the article finds an explanation in the composer’s work of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the Suite was composed. In those years, the main Schnittke’s phenomenon – poly-stylistic writing – was coined in such wide-scaled works as the First Symphony, Piano Quintet, Requiem and others. Being occupied by these works that indicate his personality much stronger, Schnittke mentions just that feature of Suite, which stayed in his conscious as dominant, exactly stylization, so the explanation may be found in psychological field. Totally stylized piece would never become so popular and beloved both by the performers and the public as the Suite does. There is no reason to play and listen to pure stylization, when it is possible to have dealing with an original work. A listener and a performer are attracted by the combination of the original and stylized elements in the Suite, their interaction and flexible transition of one into other. This may be called as “modernized antiquity”. Due to this feature, the piece stays one of the most popular and wellknown works of the composer. Conclusion. The importance of the original and “borrowed” elements does not depend directly on the quantity of these elements and even on the ratio between them. The author’s individuality may show itself in various aspects in the context of the dominating stylization. The creative power of the author depends, first of all, on the strength of the author’s personality and his/her ability to adapt somebody else’s achievements to his/her own tasks, to fill them with new content and to create a new context for them. In case of a positive answers to these challenges the author gets the ability to utilize somebody else’s idiom similar to his/her own, and a listener, a performer and a researcher get a reason to refresh in memory the poetic prophesy by Osip Mandelstam: “… and will again the skald create somebody else’s song, and he will utter her as if it will his own”.