“Third Stream”, “Third Direction”, “Third Layer”: Terms or Metaphors?

Main Article Content

Anatoly M. Tsuker

Abstract

The terminology used in the works devoted to mass music is often characterized by almost the same mobility and multivariance as mass music itself, approaching metaphors in character. Metaphoricality in musicology is a natural phenomenon, due to the very subject of investigation, but it should not replace precise and unambiguous terms. From this point of view, the article examines the concepts that are widely used in musicological works: “the third layer” is the name introduced by V. Konen, “the third direction” is the definition belonging to R. Shchedrin, and the “third stream” is a term created by G. Schuller, who supported this designation with personal composer experience and theoretical works. The author shows that these definitions, out of the context of their appearance, in the general musicological field, do not reveal the essence of the objects they designate. In addition, their vulnerability also lies in the fact that they echo each other in sound, but having a different meaning and nature of use, thereby creating a fair amount of terminological confusion. But if the concept of “third stream”, for all its debatability, can claim the “status” of the term, thanks to its local application, which has been established over six decades, thus marking a homogeneous synthesis of jazz and modern professional composer creativity, then the definitions of “third layer” and “third direction” are metaphors, the first of which, historically and geographically almost boundless, is applicable to all mass-consumer music from the Middle Ages to the present day, and the second, on the contrary, separates into a separate group of authors, whose work turned out to be an integral part and a vivid expression of broader integration processes that took place in Soviet music of the second half of the 20th century and involved composers of different “directions”, stylistic orientations, and genre preferences into their orbit.


Keywords: “third stream”, “third direction”, “third layer”, terminology, metaphor, mass music, jazz, professional composer creativity.

Article Details

How to Cite
Tsuker А. М. (2023). “Third Stream”, “Third Direction”, “Third Layer”: Terms or Metaphors?. Music Scholarship / Problemy Muzykal’noj Nauki, 52(3), 7–16. Retrieved from https://musicscholar.ru/index.php/PMN/article/view/1459
Section
Music of the XX–XXI Centuries
Author Biography

Anatoly M. Tsuker, S.V. Rachmaninov Rostov State Conservatory, Rostov-on-Don, Russia

Dr.Sci. (Arts), Professor, Scientific and Creative Head of the Music History Chair, Rostov State Rachmaninov Conservatory

Honored Artist of the Russian Federation, Laureate of the Prize of the Union of Composers of Russia Named after D.D. Shostakovich