Features of music function of the modern drama theater

Abstract

The complex and today little studied problem of music performance specific character in dramatic theatre is the main idea of this article. Its importance in the performance is far out of service-applied function. Music actualizes hidden meanings showing stage director’s message more precise. Music always has its important place in Ukrainian dramatic theatre. Nowadays due to much technical feasibility there are various musical means of performance. On the one hand, the tendency to compilation, strange musical texts picking out and their arrangement has increased. On the other hand, stage directors support and develop old tradition of inviting professional composers to create original music to the performances. Musical and theatre life of Kyiv region develops day by day. However, a paradoxical situation takes place in science. Up to date, the topic of "dramatic theatre and music", the problem of music place in the art of performance is not studied well enough in Ukrainian musicology. The problem of analysis method elaboration of dramatic performance music was ignored by the scientists almost all the time. The actuality of this article is stipulated by the absence (in modern Ukrainian musicology) of methodological foundation of theatre music analysis which would not break the specific character of its synthetic sense. Research material is based on two performances of stage director S. Moiseev: People’s Artist of Ukraine, an art director of Kyiv Academic Young Theatre. These performances are examples of different approaches to the musical solution of the performance. "Satisfaction" (2010) by Shakespeare’s play "Merchant of Venice" is an example of special created music and "Moscowiada" (2006) by Yu. Andrukhobych is an example of compilation method of performance musical conception. The author of both plays original music is a well-known composer, an honoured figure of art of Ukraine, repeated prizewinner of "Kyivska Pektoral" for the best music conception Yuriy Shevchenko. Musical line of "Moscowiada" together with the other performance components is created to implement stage director’s performance super-task. Due to music the sense of postmodern stylistics of stage version origin (of Yu.Andrukhovych’s novel) is intensified. It is realized through author’s ironic vision of restructuring epoch. In the performance "Satisfaction" the composer Yu.Shevchenko followed both stage director’s objectives concerning performance trend maintenance and his own vision of music place in dramatics of the performance. Following stage director’s conditions the composer managed to escape Jewish intonations in music to smooth over national conflict between money-lender Shylock and Venice merchant Antonio. There are no stylized fragments which would remind about Shakespeare’s time in any musical number. On the contrary, due to composer’s use of various effects of electronic music (scratch, etc.) in the numbers, audio fits well performance modern version of classical text "The Merchant of Venice". We must notice that in the chosen performances the musical line as one of the components of general stage action just as much as actors’ play, set design, light design and plastique is created to show stage director’s performance super task. The musical component should not be separated from the visual line because it is an integral part in the general dramatics and promotes its end-to-end development.