Musical dramaturgy as a creative method in jazz art: the example of the piano art by Sergey Davydov
Authors: Kharenko Alina 
Published: May 2020

Background. Jazz is one of the most significant phenomena of the entire twentieth century, which in a very short period of time has won the attention of listeners around the world. Finally, many explores are interested in the study of jazz art as a significant element of the world’s musical heritage. There are a lot of works written by national and foreign musicologists who study jazz music from different viewpoints. A great variety of studies in jazz art include works devoted to the technical aspect, on the one hand: the study of scale harmony, rhythm, instrumentation, and on the other hand – the issues of historiography and style formation. However, focusing mainly on the identification of specific methods of using individual elements of the entire complex of music and expressive means of jazz art, scientists are less interested in the study of more «in-depth» issues, such as interpretation in jazz art, form building, semiotic and hermeneuticmethods of jazz music evaluation, musical dramaturgy. The concept of jazzmusic making remains unexplored. In our understanding, the study of musical dramaturgy deserves special attention, because at its level the coordinates of jazz music as a complex improvisation process converge. Objectives. The purpose of the article is to identify and study the main factors that determine the principles of formation of jazz musical dramaturgy at the level of solo piano composition. It is the improvisational nature of the composing and performing arts as well as the absence of a detailed musical notation that indicate the need to study the subject and an attempt to provide its scientific substantiation. Methods. The methodology of the study includes analytical, comparative, systematic and stylistic methods. This methodological basis allows us to identify the principles of jazz musical dramaturgy from the standpoint of piano jazz art, which, in the author’s opinion, gives an opportunity to speak about the peculiarities of organizing a musical text with the texture of different types of arrangement. Results. Over the last decades, jazz, without losing its specificity, has increasingly shown a tendency to interpenetrate with academic musical art, and at the same time become universal. An example of this could be the creative work of the renowned Kharkov jazz pianist Sergey Davydov. Turning to the specifics of the solo improvisational mastery of the pianist, we should distinguish the following important vectors in his work: commitment to the synthesis of jazz and academic traditions, tendency to polyphonize the textual presentation of the musical text, the use of the sonata principles as a consistent processual development of the whole complex of music and artistic ideas. The subject of the analysis offered in this study is a demonstrative example of the arrangement of the musical text of S. Davidov’s solo improvisation, which he demonstrated at the international festival “S. Rakhmaninov and Ukrainian Culturе”, which took place in Kharkiv in 2007 (the analysis was made on the basis of the video footage). The uniqueness of this example is that the pianist in his improvisation synthesized jazz intonation-rhythmic idiom with constructive and creatively inventive correlation of textural and compositional techniques of S. Rachmanino’s pianism. The conducted analysis confirms that S. Davydov, in addition to using the whole arsenal of specific jazz means of organizing sound fabric, adapts in his improvisation texturally-theatrical principles characteristic of S. Rakhmaninov’s work, and not only at the expense of quoting, but and at the intonational level. The factual organization of the composition, in this case, is based on the use of the potential of large and passage techniques, which brings together S. Davydov’s creative concepts with the aesthetics of virtuosity of European pianist composers of the Romantic period. Solo improvisation is analyzed – a kind of musical recital, which lacks the traditional jazz principle of formation based on variational construction, and is dominated by freely interpreted sonatas. Conclusions. Thus, the basic principles of musical dramaturgy formation in jazz art are: the use of specific jazz means of expression, which in the light of textual organization of the musical text realize the emotional and meaningful tension, forming a clear dramatic outline of the whole composition. Conflict, as a multilayered, comprehensive process of choosing an aesthetic position in the climax, reaches a point of dramatic ignition due to specific performance factors: dynamics, agogics, textural-rhythmic combinations. Not only specific performing skills but also energetic translation of the ideological content of the whole composition are involved in this process. In the context of jazz musical dramaturgy, one more important factor, which is fundamental in both solo and ensemble jazz art, is specific communication. However, when compared to academic music, where the listening strategy is interpreted as a «strategy of co-intonation to the sound form» but in jazz culture it is the listener who, at the level of the performer or interpreter, is a direct participant of musical dramaturgy creation. This is expressed by applause at times of intense tension or after the most successful improvisation of one of the ensemble members. Summarizing all the above, on the basis of the analysis we have tried to give our corrections to the concept of «musical dramaturgy in jazz» – is a thematic process of juxtaposition and interaction of elements of jazz language that contains various polystylistic complexes of Western European academic art, directing the energy of communication to the higher artistic unity of a jazz work.