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.... Christmas Season. Snow. Sparkling lights. Slightly reverberating air. Fantastically transformed shop windows and the warmth of home with the decorated Christmas tree :
However many difficulties we might face in our lives, however mature we may grow, each of us will return in his heart into the enchanted fairy tale of the childhood, into a winged dream, into a world of harmony and beauty, into the atmosphere of the New Year.
The tradition of Christmas festivities originates from the Renaissance, when the baroque music filled the royal court of Louis XIV, as well as the salons of the noble and enlightened families of Medici, Riccardi, Bargiolo and many others.
Between the two great epochs, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, chamber music experiences philosophical transformation. While retaining its refinement and elegance, it gradually begins to reflect the profound and multifaceted world of human experience expressed in the sound of music. Works of music of the period further evolve the unity of form and contents. Classical genres of ensemble and solo sonatas, trios, suits are being evolved, in which overture of a theatrical character fancifully combine with fugues, organ improvisations, social dances, cantabile arias and program pieces of various types.
By the beginning of the 18th century, as a result of transformations in culture by Peter I's, who was enchanted with the elegant etiquette of the French royal court and the Parisian elegant life, instrumental chamber music has become part of the life of the Russian nobility. Later it finds its ways in Ukraine as well. By the 1790s Count Razimuvsky's court chamber capella, as well as those of Boyarin Artemon Matveev, Hetman Bogdan Khmelnitsky's, Count Sheremetev's and Baron Stroganov's, Prince Yusupov's, Prince Vorontsov's and Prince Trubetskoy's. They used to arranged concerts, most often during the Christmas and Great Fast Seasons, where the best contemporary European, Russian and Ukrainian music was performed.
So it today. Joining in time, works of different styles will be performed. The works created in the same epoch, but in different countries, and by different schools of composers.
These will include four old trio-sonatas of the late 17th century, such as the majestic and monumental Sonata Do-Minor by I.S.Bach from "The Musical Offerings" written to a royal theme offered by King Friedrich II of Prussia in 1747; the elegant and gracious "Venetian" Sonata by E. Dall'Abaco; the strict and solemn English Trio-Sonata by G.Parcell; and the romantic Sonata by F.Couperin written in the form of the program suit. The latter is devoted to A. Corelli - the greatest representative of the Italian baroque, whom Couperin allegorically compares with Apollo, a patron god of arts.
Along with these greatest works, music by our contemporaries will be performed. The three Ukrainian masterpieces include the philosophically tragic String Quartet by I.Karabitz; unparalleled in its color Three Ukrainian Watercolors, a piano trio by V.Guba, in which folksong and dance intonations are interlaced with humor and sharp grotesque; and, finally, the Sonata for Violin and Piano by M.Skorik, one of the brightest Ukrainian sonatas, which has claimed tremendous popularity with audiences and performance for over 40 years since it had been written.
Three centuries have passed. The epochs, tastes, styles and manners have changed, as well as the artistic language of music. But what remains unchanged is love, which inspires, warms and gives hope, which beats in the hearts, and jingling of the Christmas bells, in each note of beautiful music.
Кандидат искусствоведения
Анна Середенко
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