Illusion of Traditionality: Music of Alexander Chugaev

Abstract

This paper throws light on theoretical problems arising from the research for music of composer Alexander Chugaev (1924 – 1990). Despite of the fact that his musical language looks like belonging to the tonal tradition, its analysis requires new analytical tools. Understanding of Chugaev’s harmony often involves theoretical apparatus of 20th-century New music, and in the field of musical form precise fixation of new phenomena hiding beneath “quasi-traditional” forms (which are less and less like their classical prototypes) is needed. Among them are new nature of motif and “motif meter” related with destruction of regular meter and metrical extrapolation. The description of these phenomena in the context of Chugaev’s music helps actualize theoretical problems, superseded for a while by music of Second Avant-Garde.

Keywords

Alexander Chugaev, form of 20^th-century music, motif meter, New music, destruction of meter