Sergei Taneyev’s String Quartets in the Aspects of Interaction of Texture and Genre

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of texture as the most important constituent of the style of Sergei Taneyev’s string quartets. Up to the present time in Russian musicology texture in the composer’s chamber instrumental music has not formed a subject for special study, which is what especially stipulates the relevance of the chosen theme. The aim of the article is to define the specificity of the genre revealing itself on the textural level of the quartet’s artistically organized integrality, which may shed light on the sphere of its evolution in Taneyev’s music. The following issues are resolved in correspondence with the aim: to establish the correlation of the texture with the form, to research the means of this interaction with the thematicism, to disclose the most characteristic indications of the individual authorial style, having examined them in the aspect of the processes of form-generation. The author arrives at conclusions about the formation of the styles of the quartets. It is indicated that the compositions absorb into themselves various types of polyphonic and homophonic expounding of the musical material, the varieties of its strata, as well as the modulation processes in the sphere of texture based both on the suppleness of its transitions and on the effects of suddenness and unexpectedness. Both types of textural modulations present a distinguishing feature of Taneyev’s artistic manner that is connected with the stages of formation of form.

Keywords: string quartet, Sergei Taneyev, texture, polyphony, homophony, imitation, counterpoint, genre, style, cycle