Sound images of percussion instruments: modernity and retrospections
Authors: Bielova Yelyzaveta 
Published: January 2021

Introduction. The widespread use of percussion instruments is a worldwide trend in artistic practice of the 20th – early 21st centuries, whose existence is due to the constant development of composer creativity and the performing art of percussion instruments playing. The named vectors of musical activity are linked inextricably, since one direction contributes to the development of another. Nevertheless, there are not still fundamental scientific works would investigate the evolution of wind instruments from the beginnings to the present in the designated context of the interaction between composer and performing arts. The questions remain open: why, over time, composers were more and more attracted to the sound images of percussion instruments? How did the formation of sound images of percussions take place and what tendencies can be distinguished in this process in connection with the development of various musical styles and genres, as well as with individual, unique composer ideas? What works contributed to the evolution of percussion instruments? The aim of the proposed research is an attempt to examine, in the context of evolutionary processes, the practice of the modern use of percussion instruments in composing and performing art. In addition to questions of their direct use in the works of composers, the sound image of percussions is considered, which can be reproduced with the help of articulation and other techniques on various instruments (piano, strings, harp, guitar etc.). Literature review and methodology of the research. This research in a factual aspect based on the works of G. Blagodatov (1969) and A. Kars (1989). However, percussion instruments are not the subject of special consideration in the works of these authors. In addition, we note that the methodological approach of the named researchers is opposite to the proposed analytical model. G. Blagodatov and A. Kars examine evolutionary processes in the history of a symphony orchestra and orchestration. However, they highlight the typical, not the special and unique, while is this interest that determines the specifics of our research. The historical and cultural approach that takes into account the historical experience of both musical and other types of art helps to “decode” the unique composer ideas. The historical and genetic research method is used when considering evolutionary processes and searching for features of historical continuity in the interpretation of sound images of percussion instruments. Findings. Modern interest in percussion instruments in the practice of playing music is associated with a new interpretation of the means of musical expression in compositions of the 20th – early 21st centuries. The reason for this interest should be sought in the correspondence of the sound image of the percussions to certain characteristics of the “picture of the world”, which develops in the work of artists throughout the XX–XXI centuries, a time of rapid total changes, when the “shock” and rigid “rhythm” become the symbols of the time, requiring, in turn, psychological relaxation and detachment. Accordingly, two main trends in the embodiment of percussion sound images formed. The first is associated with the emancipation of the rhythmic principle up to its complete liberation from the melodic one (the appearance in musical works of independent themerhythms, of expanded rhythmic structures, semantically significant rhythmic ostinatі, solo percussion instruments, in particular, in the works of the concert genre). The second is sonorous-coloristiс, revealing the wide timbre possibilities of percussion instruments, involving, among other things, exotic, archaic, atypical author’s methods of sound production, untempered sounds. In the 20 century, composers tried to free music from the power of even tempered tuning (for example, when using microtonal music in creative experiments carried out by A. H&#225;ba, Ch. Ives, I. Wyschnegradsky) and percussion instruments, by their nature, fit this tendency. Going beyond the limits of even tempered tuning concerns both pitch organization and concentration on timbre colors, sonorism. The second of the tendencies, in our opinion, responds to the hedonistic preferences of the listeners, and also corresponds to the widespread aesthetic concept of the naturalness of artistic creativity, where percussion appears as the most suitable instrument for reproducing natural biorhythms of the Universe and a Human in musical rhythms. The semantic content of percussion sound images demonstrates multidimensionality and poly-variety, up to opposite expressive meanings. Features of the use of percussion in musical works of the XX–XXI centuries are often determined by a unique composer intention, which performers and researchers should decode based on the cultural and historical experience of musical art. For example, the sound image of bells, which clearly reveals the sonor-color qualities of the percussiveness, acquires different semantic meanings depending on the author’s concept. It is possible to use sound images of percussion instruments from the standpoint of symbolism. Historical, in particular, national origins can also affect the interpretation of sound images of percussion instruments. Continuity and evolutionary changes are demonstrated by examples from the practice of using timpani, which for centuries were part of a symphony orchestra, and in the XX–XXI centuries became participants in a joint game and even soloists in different performing groups. The main section of the manuscript gives examples of all directions in the interpretation of sound images of percussion instruments. Conclusion. So, the proposed complex analytical model, taking into account the historical, national, evolutionary factors in the interpretation of sound images of percussion, which differs in different eras, seems promising, making it possible to trace the continuity in the new and the features of the cultural dialogue arising one way or another in the “big time” (M. Bakhtin) of art.