The principles of F. Martin’s composer style and their embodiment in the «Trio on popular Irish melodies»

Statement of the problem. Frank Martin (1890–1974) is an outstanding composer of the 20th century who made a unique contribution to the treasury of world musical art. He lived a long life and reached remarkable heights in his fruitful career. His creative output consists of a wide range of musical genres: from arrangements of folk melodies to symphonic, oratorio and opera works. F. Martin’s compositional writing combines elements of various musical trends, including neoclassicism, impressionism and expressionism. The relevance of the topic of this study is determined by the fact that there is no information in Ukrainian musicology about the chamber and instrumental heritage of the outstanding Swiss master and the specifics of his artistic thinking. The predominant absence of F. Martin’s works in the repertoire of domestic performers is also noticeable. Biographical information about F. Martin, his personality traits and his work are contained in sources of French-speaking (Perroux, 2001), German-speaking (Kämper, 1993; Kaufmann, 1993) and English-speaking (Tapper, 1964; King, 1990; Cooke, 1993; McCabe, 2000; Bruhn, 2011; Poon, 2017) origin. The large annotated biographical and bibliographical guide by Ch. King (1990) is a significant step towards eliminating the gaps in musicology related to the work by F. Martin, but it does not contain any analysis of specific pieces. In the field of Ukrainian musicology, there are only an article by Kharkiv reseacher D. Kozyk (2023), where she considers the opera and symphonic work of the composer. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. The purpose of the study is to present the principles of F. Martin’s individual compositional style in the field of chamber-instrumental creativity as a component of European musical art of the post-Romantic era on the basis of the author’s interpretation of the piano “Trio sur des mélodies populaires irlandaises”(“Trio on popular Irish melodies”). The novelty of the research is the intonation and dramaturgy analysis of the Trio to identify the principles of the composer’s style and ensemble difficulties in performing the work. The specifics of the composition and interpretation of F. Martin’s chamber and instrumental works have not been the subject of research in world and Ukrainian musicology, therefore the author relies on his own experience of performing F. Martin’s Trio. The research is based on a wide range of approaches to the analysis of a musical work developed in modern musicology. The historical approach reveals the innovation and conceptuality of F. Martin’s composer style; the genre approach allows us to understand the hierarchy of the general and the specific in the selected work; the stylistic approach helps to determine the individual principles of the composer’s thinking in the context of the diversity of stylistic trends in 20th-century music; the corresponding generalizations are made on the basis of a structural and functional analysis of the elements of form-making and musical language (melody, metrorhythm, harmony, texture) of the “Trio on popular Irish melodies”. Research results and conclusion. The following tasks were completed: – a brief description of the composer’s work was provided; – the architectonics and intonation-dramatic structure of the Trio were analyzed; – some ensemble difficulties that arise in the process of performing F. Martin’s cycle were outlined. Тrio by F. Martin is an interesting combination of Irish traditional music and innovative searches in the field of harmony, rhythm, polyphonic writing, characteristic of the music of the first half of the 20th century. The composer rethinks the classical principles of the development of music themes and freely interprets traditional forms of chamber and instrumental music. He chooses rhythm as the main form-forming factor, using rhythmic variation of the material and complex polyrhythmic combinations in contrapuntal constructions. The tendency towards asymmetrical rhythmic accents, variable sizes, the superimposition of triplet and duole rhythms, together with constant changes in tempo, give the music of the Trio dynamic richness and energy. Along with the significance of the metrorhythm, the multifaceted genre semantics is a powerful factor for building a composer’s concept. Among other stylistic parameters that can be traced in the Trio, it is necessary to single out the prominent role of contrapuntal techniques, in particular contrasting polyphony and polyphony of layers. The harmonic language of the work balances on the border of tonality, atonality and modality, while the composer’s polyphonic thinking also contributes to the emergence of numerous polytonal combinations. F. Martin embodies the conceptual idea ofthe work thanks to strong thematic connections within each part. The kaleidoscopic nature of the musical form is compensated by the intonational kinship of the material, creating a feeling of completely organic development. The above-mentioned principles of F. Martin’s compositional style, revealed through the analysis of his Piano Trio, represent a unique complex of conceptuality and experimentation in the desire of the Swiss master to introduce melodic and metrorhythmic elements of Irish folklore into the sphere of academic music.