On the Problem of Programmatic Embodiment in the Piano Sonatas of Boris Tishchenko

The phenomenon of programmatic composition in the 20th and 21st centuries is a striking feature of thinking, reflected, among other things, in the work of B. I. Tishchenko. This hidden or explicit substantive component permeates the composer's entire piano sonata legacy. In the context of the issues discussed in relation to large-scale piano works, this article takes on particular relevance. The research includes a comprehensive analysis of the programmatic phenomenon in B. I. Tishchenko's sonata work, most clearly manifested in the last three opuses of this genre. The goal of the study is to reveal the conceptual and programmatic intentions of the Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Sonatas through an analysis of the composer's and performer's expressive means. The subject of study is the principle of programmatic composition itself, and the object is B. I. Tishchenko's piano sonatas. The methodology includes musical-analytical and structural-functional analysis, which allows for the exploration of issues of dramaturgy, style, form, texture, harmonic-melodic language, articulatory-phrasing, and tempo-volume parameters. The final three piano sonatas, concluding the programmatic line of the work, rethink familiar genres and images. The complexity and multifaceted nature of the content require a different form, which in B. Tishchenko's hands takes on free contours, losing its sonata foundation. Through analysis, figurative and dramatic intentions are revealed, often dissonant with the initial programmatic concepts. In the Ninth Sonata, genre-based stylization is combined with complex, fractured psychologism. The Tenth Sonata presents a scientific and logical process in which theoretical propositions have a humorous and sarcastic subtext. The Eleventh Sonata explores various states of the world in the antithesis of «cosmic and human», «eternal and temporal». The value of the conducted research is associated with the possibility of using its results in practical disciplines and educational courses by both theorists and performers, including in the direct interpretation of piano sonatas by B. I. Tishchenko.