Scientists all over the world are trying to give a comprehensive scientific answer to questions about the emergence of object-visual perception of music and the existence of an invisible border of the reality of sounds and the illusion of meaning. Such a study can be compared with the eternal search for a higher mind, and you need to start with an understanding of the nature of the appearance of a musical image in a composition.
What is a musical image?
This is an intangible character of the composition, which has incorporated a bouquet of sounds, thoughts of the composer, performers and listeners into a single energy center without time and landmark of real space.
The whole composition is a stream of sensual intonations that accompany the most diverse emotions and actions of the heroes of its history. Their combination, sequence and contradictions to each other create an image of composition, revealing the facets of the spiritual world of a person and expanding the boundaries of self-knowledge. Creating a musical image in music reflects a palette of feelings and emotional experiences, philosophical thoughts and an enthusiastic attitude towards the beautiful.
The amazing world of musical images
If the composer paints in the early morning, he creates musical images in music, inviting the audience to feel the dawn, the sky in blurry clouds, the awakening of birds and animals. At this time, a dark room filled with sounds instantly changes its scenery to the projection of the morning landscape of endless fields and forests.
The listener's soul rejoices, emotions overflow with its freshness and spontaneity. And all because the composer, creating a melody, used sounds, their intonation, certain musical instruments capable of orienting the human memory to such sensations of sounds. The sounds of a bell, shepherd’s pipe or cries of roosters fill the associative image of the melody so much that the duration of the song leaves no doubt — morning. In this case, we speak of constant, predictable associations.
What is the musical image of lightning, tried to explain I. Haydn, Glinka, Verdi, R. Strauss, and N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov spent a lot of effort on creating a musical image of light phenomena in music. Sound growth was used for light and atmospheric images, and low sounds were heard in the bowels of the earth, while maintaining a logical comparison of low and high in both art and real life.
Random associations of a musical image
There are also random associations that are unpredictable and strictly individual for each person, as well as his life experience. These are smells, mood features, atypical lighting, a coincidence at the time of listening, and much more. One association always provokes another, saturating the musical image with additional details, gives a unique, deeply personal character to the whole composition.
Associations created as a result of listening to music have their age and relevance. That is why the real-visual music of past centuries is gradually turning into the formal, more abstract music of our time. Concrete visual associations are becoming obsolete. Thus, the compositions of Mozart or Bach do not evoke in the soul of the modern listener those images that were characteristic of their contemporaries. It is not easy to answer the question of what a musical image is in modern music. Electronic sounds have long replaced live ones, but would have been completely alien to musicians from the time of Tchaikovsky and Beethoven.
Lyrical images in music
What are lyrical images in music, Russian classics are well aware. In 1840, Glinka wrote a romance to the poems of the great Russian poet A. S. Pushkin, "I Remember a Wonderful Moment." The composer created images of an enchanting moment: a memory of the first minutes of acquaintance, the bitterness of parting with a loved one and the joy of a new meeting. The weightless melody first flows smoothly, flowing with gentle motives, and suddenly interrupts with an unstable syncopated rhythm.
The rhythmic accents, expressive repetitions and the energy of the “progressive” rhythm of the middle section reflected the effects of the poetic syllabus so vividly that the famous poems of the poet in love found more vivid, sensual emotions, striking with their depth and residual effect.
In turn, the reverent love for Ekaterina Ermolaevna Kern and the deep emotions that accompanied these relations created a unique product of spectacular contrasts, flexible options and intonations and opened up new little-studied possibilities for creating an associative series in a musical work and its images.
What is a musical image in a romance? This is an excited speech that reveals the secret of the beloved’s experiences and makes the listener a witness, accomplice, and even the beloved hero himself, plunging into the world of ambiguous feelings and secret fears.
A talented performer of romance merges with the image of a lyrical hero, just as A.S. Pushkin and Glinka were once whole with him, and an invisible trio encompasses all the senses of the listener, captures his imagination and pours into him an inspired impulse of love and beauty experienced suffering.
“All arts, like music, require feelings that bring inspiration,” Glinka said. - And forms. What does harmony mean, and “forme” means beauty, i.e. proportionality of the composition of a harmonious whole ... Feeling and form are soul and body. The first is the gift of the highest grace, the second is acquired by labor ... "