The Image of Fate in P.I. Tchaikovsky’s Overture-Fantasy “Romeo and Juliet” As the Bearer of Personal Catastrophism
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Abstract
The object of research in this article is Tchaikovsky’s attitude towards religion as the expression of God and fate (destiny), which formed his world-perception, permeated with a personal catastrophism. Its academic novelty is in its academic perspective, which makes it possible to reveal those aspects of the composer’s musical thought which were previously not observed by musicologists. They are analyzed here from the positions of “Tchaikovsky the thinker,” examined through the prism of the composer’s psychological-philosophical reflection, as disclosed in his letters and diary entries, as well as in his music. the author of the article comes to the conclusion that Shakespeare’s tragedy “Romeo and Juliet” served not as the literary program for Tchaikovsky, so that he could create the overture-fantasy with the same name (as has been enrooted in Russian musicology), but merely as a preliminary impulse, which the composer revised thoroughly. At the basis of Tchaikovsky’s world-view, as well as the content of the given composition, lies the contradiction between his feeling of fear of God and the aspiration for uniting with Him. A concrete proof of the author’s conception in the analysis of the overture-fantasy is served by the theme of the chorale, in which the researcher discloses the semantics of hidden aggression and the lonely soul contradistinguished to it. In general, the research of the phenomenon of personal catastrophism which emerged as the result of problematic relations with God in the conditions of tendencies of a social crisis of moral values presents itself as an unusually relevant task. This research of the declared topic makes use of the method of integral analysis of an artistic text based on the composer’s epistolary heritage and his utterances.
Keywords: P. I. Tchaikovsky, overture-fantasy “Romeo and Juliet,” God, church, fate, chorale, life and death, catastrophism, artistic image
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