Mamona A. "New Orientalism" in the music of the first third of the 20th century (on the example of composers’ interpretations of R. Tagore's poetry)

The relevance of the chosen dissertation topic is associated with the necessity to comprehend the phenomenon of R. Tagore in the works of composers of the first third of the 20th century within the context of the Oriental discourse that had existed in European music culture for centuries. The composers selected for analysis represent different national schools: French, Italian, Ukrainian, Polish, Austrian, Czech, and American. Despite these differences, the examined works demonstrate a common typological tendency – they choose not to employ the existing Oriental complex in Western European musical tradition. The research aims to study the specificity of this tendency in the musical renderings of R. Tagore's poetry. Therefore, the object of the study was chosen to be musical Orientalism in its historical metamorphoses, and the subject – the renewal of principles of musical representation of Eastern images during the formation period of musical modernism. The purpose of the study is to substantiate the concept of "new Orientalism" to define the transitional musical-stylistic phenomenon which arose in Western musical art in the first third of the 20th century in terms of understanding the Oriental phenomenon, particularly represented in the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore. To achieve the set goal, the following tasks were formulated: to investigate the scope of research of musical Orientalism in scientific sources; to examine the processes of forming a complex of expressive means in European music for the reproduction of Oriental images; to outline the ideological and philosophical-aesthetic essence of European Orientalism as an artistic phenomenon; to characterize the stages of its formation and national versions of representing Eastern images in various historical and cultural contexts; to identify the musical-stylistic complex ("Oriental code") inherent in romantic poetics, which is associated in the musical practice of European composers with Eastern references; to document the renewal of fundamental principles for creating Oriental visions in the context of the musical-historical process of the first third of the 20th century, based on composers' interpretations of R. Tagore's poetry ("musical Tagoriana"); to trace the features of composers' reception of poetic words through a comparative analysis of different opuses set to the same text; to reveal the historical and artistic prerequisites for changes in the Oriental paradigm during the era of musical modernism; to propose a definition of "new Orientalism" and to identify the range of artistic phenomena associated with its various aspects in the musical art of the first third of the 20th century.