The Migrating Intonational Formula as a Phenomenon of Musical Thinking
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Abstract
The musical theme is one of the most important content-filled elements of musical compositions pertaining to various
genres and styles. The semantic processes in the musical theme demonstrate the action of a universal mechanism,
which provides its connection with the musical image. The fact that this mechanism has not been studied sufficiently
leads to a narrow-grammatical directedness in musicological analysis.
Approaching a musical composition from the positions of semantic analysis means acknowledging of the presence
in a musical theme of stable intonational features with established meanings – namely, lexemes and semantic figures,
which altogether make up the intonational lexis. Many of them acquire the status of migrating intonational formulas,
appearing from one musical text to another in the music of various genres and preserving their initial meanings.
Coming into interaction with each other in context, the migrating intonational formulas combine together meanings
and generate numerous significances.
The article examines the processes of forming direct and mediated meanings. The semantic mechanism of forming
direct connections of migrating formulas with meanings and images are determined by their permanent sources, which
form several groups of intonations: 1) sound signals, 2) intonations of speech origins (verbal speech), 3) gesture
and plasticity in the elements of musical speech, 4) textural formulas and clichés of instrumental nature (musical
instruments), 5) musical-rhetorical figures. While undergoing contextual changes, these meanings preserve their direct
connection with the denotation. Indirect meanings are formed in musical compositions by means of migrations of
formulas from one musical composition, genre or style to the next.
The author distinguishes four stages of semantic transformations:
1) the stage of denotation or the primary semantization, the formation of extra-textual (direct) meanings in the
vernacular music-making environment; 2) the stage of the secondary and subsequent semantization: the formation of
primary and secondary meanings in the artistic context of the musical theme; 3) the stage of partial de-semantization: the
transition of formulas onto the level of general stylistic stereotypes as the result of devaluation (due to lengthy overuse),
the “erasing” of primary and secondary meanings and the acquisition of an overall musical type of expressivity; 4) the
stage of realization of the extinguished direct (extra-textual) and mediated (contextual) meanings in a new musical text.
An analysis of the intonational and lexical makeup of a theme in a musical composition makes it possible to
free oneself from a subjective interpretation and impulsively arising associations in the interpretation of a musical
composition and provides for the deciphering of the sign-related etymology that is appropriate to the composer’s
intention.
Keywords: semantics, semantic figures, theme, theory of meanings, migrating intonational formula.
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