The Texture of Giya Kancheli’s Sixth Symphony: Stylistic Peculiarities

Abstract

The article is devoted to disclosing the peculiarities of the texture of Giya Kancheli’s Sixth Symphony for large symphony orchestra as the most significant component of the style of the composition. The genre-based basis of the composition, the timbral and dynamic levels of the artistic system are researched in correspondence with this aim. The following elements are situated within the author’s range of vision: the stratified textural phenomena and their block varieties, which essentially transform the image of the score: modulation processes based on effects of suddenness and unexpectedness. The later become characteristic patterns of a montage type of dramaturgy and also a testimony of the connection between the mastery of textural statuary art with the cinematographic art, which has proved itself very fruitful for Kancheli’s symphonic genre. This connection is examined in the article under the angle of coverage of the principle of mutability of texture as a constantly changing substance. This provides a demonstration of new methods of cohesion of textural plans capable of conveying the contradictions and paradoxes of the contemporary world in a musical text.

Keywords: Giya Kancheli, Sixth Symphony, musical texture, chorale, sonorica, montage type of dramaturgy, principle of textural variability