Organ Symphony "Noёl" by Paul de Maleingreau and the Christian Mystery of Christmas

Abstract

The purpose of the work is to reveal the poetic-intonational spiritual-symbolic aspects of the organ symphony "Noël" by P. de Malengro in the direction of stylistic and spiritual-philosophical searches of the Franco-Belgian culture of the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Research methodology. An interdisciplinary, genre-stylistic, historical-cultural approach was essential for this work, allowing to explore the factors contributing to the discovery of the spiritual-semantic specificity of the concept of "symphony" in all its variety of meanings. The scientific novelty of the work is determined by the introduction into musicological use of materials from the organ symphony "Noël" by P. de Malengro, the poetics of which was formed at the intersection of the artistic, spiritual and musical traditions of the Northern Renaissance and French modernism. Conclusions. An overview of the use of the term "symphony" in the cultural-historical and spiritual practice of different eras testifies not only to the breadth of its semantic and applied meanings, but also to the presence of general semantic indicators, in accordance with which a symphony ultimately implies a certain integrity in which merge, different numerous components are combined. A symphony as a musical work is an equally complex and comprehensive concept that represents the most diverse "models" of this genre. The organ symphony "Noël" by P. de Malengro represents the typology of the "spiritual symphony". Its expressiveness, related to the biblical mystery of Christmas, is strengthened by the composer's appeal also to the masterpieces of the Northern Renaissance (Rogir van der Weyden and the van Eyck brothers). Symphony "Noël" is a free composition (4 parts) of the suite-variation type, a "symphony-mystery", the thematic basis of which is Gregorian chants, as well as the corresponding principles of their texture and mode-intonation development (monody, heterophony, various forms of polyphonic development, reproduction of the spiritual and vocal practice of discanting of the Notre Dame School). The poetics of such a "symphony-mystery" is significantly supplemented by an appeal to the timbre qualities of the so-called "symphonic organ", the universalism of performance, dynamic and timbre-intonation capabilities of which turned out to be literally correlated with the universalism of the symphony genre as such.