The Organ and the Bayan: Intertextual Interactions (by the Example of Cesar Franck’s Choral No. 3 in A minor)

The study of the natural laws of semantic organization of the musical text is a topical issue of contemporary musicology. In this connection a unique opportunity to immerse into the processes of text-generation is presented by research of instrumental compositions which have appeared on the basis of borrowing and modification of an “alien” musical text. By means of a comparative analysis of Cesar Franck’s Choral No. 3 in A minor from the series “Three chorals for a large organ” with its transcription for bayan carried out by Friedrich Lips, the general and specific principles of semantic organization of the notated, musical and performance texts are disclosed. From such an angle the issue of intertextual interactions is being raised for the first time. Its complex character has become the foundation for turning to the methodology of the theory of the musical text (Mark Aranovsky, Liudmila Shaymukhametova) and the theory of musical content (Liudmila Kazantseva, Valentina Kholopova). In this article the attitude is developed towards the musical text of the organ compositions as an open polysystem endowed with a special mechanism of preservation and transformation of the invariant in the conditions of a new instrumental context. Study of the intonational lexis and etymology of its meanings has made it possible to disclose the unique artistic specificity of the Choral, while examination of the bayan version in the author’s performance has allowed us to comprehend the techniques of adaptation of “someone else’s” thematicism to a new timbral-instrumental performance scenario.