Chronotopic Metamorphoses in Béla Bartók’s Minor Seconds, Major Sevenths

Abstract

Despite time and space are inseparable in music, they are sometimes explored separately. The term ‘chronotope’ unites both categories and has found an extensive use in musicology. However, musicologists use the term to denote quite different concepts. The article proposes a new definition of ‘сhronotope’. It draws on the framework and aims of the suggested method of сhronotopic analysis of piano music. Together with the semantic analysis, this method ensures in-depth comprehension of all the elements of musical fabric and its semantic and emotional ‘vibrations’. This approach has proved effective to study both classical music and music of later eras. The article reports the results of the application of the analytical  method to explore B. Bartók’s Minor Seconds, Major Sevenths, for piano (Mikrokosmos Vol. 6/144). On the one hand, Bartók’s piano work exemplifies all kinds of changes in temporal and spatial structure of the chronotope, with the spatial structure taking the lead. Not all the changes (metamorphoses) are noticeable at first glance. On the other hand, Minor Seconds, Major Sevenths develops as a dialogue of intervals, i.e., their relations and transformations. It is filled with micro-meanings and may be referred to as an interval-based dramaturgy of the composition. This is characteristic of Bartók’s creative method. He was extremely careful about the sound material and tended to explore its small structural units.

Keywords: time, space, rhythm, texture, changes, stage, chronotope

For citation: Astakhova O. A. Chronotopic Metamorphoses in Béla Bartók’s Minor Seconds, Major Sevenths [Electronic source]. In: Sovremennye problemy muzykoznaniya / Contemporary Musicology, 2021, no. 4, pp. 95–108. (In Russ.) DOI: 10.56620/2587-9731-2021-4-095-108