Chamber and Instrumental Music by Alexey Krasheninnikov: Experimental Poetics

Abstract

The article considers the study of the experimental direction in chamber instrumental music by the St. Petersburg composer Alexey Krasheninnikov (b. 1976). This line of creativity focuses on explorations related to the expansion of the timbre resources of instruments, mixing of different compositional techniques and use of instrumental theatre elements. The article examines a number of works created by Krasheninnikov over the past 10 years: Flight from Oneself (2018), The Seasons (2019), The Path of the Star (2019), The Ring (2022), Angel at the Holy Sepulchre (2022), Bedroom Scene (2023), Memory (2025) and Self-Portrait (2025). All of these works are introduced into the scholarly circulation of Russian musicology for the first time. The performed analysis characterises the methods of extended performance techniques and features of the stage implementation of instrumental opuses and identifies features of the composer’s writing as individually refracting the principles of seriality, cryptophony and combining deterministic and aleatory methods of organising musical material. The role of extra-musical factors in the formation of the artistic concept and form of the compositions is revealed, and parallels are drawn with the compositions of Western European authors. The example of Memory establishes the humanising direction of Krasheninnikov’s experimental searches. It is emphasised that the specificity of the composer’s approach is determined by dialogue with other forms of art, attempts at their intersemiotic translation and by the expansion of the medial possibilities of musical art.

Keywords: music of the 21st century, Alexey Krasheninnikov, instrumental theatre, extended performance techniques, seriality, cryptophony, aleatoric music, experiment