Events
Defense of the Doctoral Thesis | Guerassim Voronkov
3.05.2024 | 2h30pm | Auditório do Departamento de Comunicação e Arte | Universidade de Aveiro
On May 3rd, 2024, at 2h30pm, the defense of the doctoral thesis in Music, by Guerassim Voronkov, will be held at the Auditorium of the Departamento de Comunicação e Arte, Universidade de Aveiro, with the theme: "Rereading of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 15 through transcribing for Chamber Ensemble".
The jury for the PhD Thesis of Guerassim Voronkov
- Prof. Dr. Evgueni Zoudilkine, Assistant Professor at the Universidade de Aveiro and researcher at INET-md (Advisor)
- Prof. Dr. Victor Miguel Carneiro de Sousa Ferreira, Full Professor at the Universidade de Aveiro
- Prof. Dr. Moísés Bertran, Full Professor at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia
- Prof. Dr Dimitrios Andrikipoulos, Coordinating Professor at the Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espetáculo
- Prof. Dr. António José Vassalo Neves Lourenço, Associate Professor at the Universidade de Aveiro and researcher at INET-md
- Prof. Dr. Monika Duarte Sreitová, Assistant Professor at the Universidade de Évora
Rereading of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 15 through transcribing for Chamber Ensemble
Dmitri Shostakovich was one of the leading figures of 20th-century Soviet symphonic music. Throughout his career, he composed a total of fifteen symphonies. Starting from the study of his creative heritage in this musical genre, this research formulates the hypothesis that, in his last symphonic creation, the composer makes a paradigm shift of his symphony model, combining classical formal and structural characteristics with 20th-century methods of development and musical languages, thus building a narrative,
philosophical and personal discourse, which characterizes programmatic music. The score of the symphony has very particular features. First, the composer combines symphonic and chamber music principles to treat the musical material. It is perhaps the most chamber-like of all of Shostakovich's symphonies. Several authors have called the work the symphony of blank sheets. Secondly, the composer mixes in a single space very diverse compositional methods, tools, and concepts, both traditional (classical forms, traditional harmony and melodic) and modern (modal harmony and melody formation, extended tonalities or serial system, as well as textural transformation and block opposition as a tool of formal construction). Thirdly, musical quotations such as self-quotations become a fundamental tool of sound discourse in the symphony. Finally, the work has an emotional, philosophical, and personal charge that makes it a composition with autobiographical and confessional features. Thanks to the particularities of this work, its interpretation becomes a real difficulty for a conductor. This research proposes a new model for creating a personal interpretation based on the experience of creating a transcription of the work for a chamber ensemble and its subsequent performance of this
version, this re-reading of the work.
Advisor: Evgueni Zoudilkine
