Mass culture - 3 layers:

1. Folklore

2. Academic creativity

3. Mass culture has always existed (troubadours)

Until recently, there were no boundaries between mass and academic music. In Russia until the 90s. mass music was regulated. The ideology of the media is a massive layer of the audience.

Mass music. art: jazz, vocal, variety art, author's, music. theater (operetta), electronic music. - disco. Music of the 3rd direction - contains both classical and mass character - Rock - opera:

1. Draw the attention of a mass audience to art

2. Ennoble mass music

Mass music is understudied. Scientists are not interested. Negativism is associated with total commerce - industry. Rough handling of academic material, superficial treatment of topics, many popular people. Today is the crisis of musical culture.

Reason: lack of proper academic apparatus, refers to the elements of lexical formulas of the socio-cultural context.

1. Mass music lives according to its own laws.

2. Improvisation

3. Affects technical capabilities

MMK is a phenomenon of socio-cultural ideology

The form of everyday MMK differs from academic instability.

1. Mass concert

2. Mass - household, ritual (disco)

3. Mass decorative (background music)

Speaking about art in general, Pitirim Sorokin noted an approximately similar trend in the middle of the 20th century: “As a commercial product for entertainment, art is increasingly controlled by merchants, commercial interests and fashion trends ... This situation creates the highest connoisseurs of beauty from commercial dealers, forces artists to obey their demands, further imposed through advertising and other media.” At the beginning of the 21st century, modern researchers state the same cultural phenomena: Modern tendencies are cumulative and have already led to the creation of a critical mass of changes affecting the very foundations of the content and operation of cultural institutions. The most significant of them, in our opinion, are: the commercialization of culture, democratization, the blurring of boundaries - both in the field of knowledge and technology - as well as the predominant attention to the process, not to the content. The attitude of science to mass culture is changing. If Karl Jaspers called popular art "the decline of the essence of art", and Jean Baudrillard said that all areas of contemporary art "enter the transaesthetic sphere of simulation", then these concepts were revised in 1960-1970. within the framework of postmodernism, which destroyed for many researchers the opposition of mass and elite cultures of qualitative evaluative meaning. Speaking of art (implying elite art) of the early 20th century, Ortega y Gasset speaks of its dehumanization. Under such conditions, the increase in the role of "super-humanized" mass art is a natural process.

Mass (public) culture represents products of spiritual production in the field of art, created in large editions, counting on the general public. The main thing for her is the entertainment of the broadest masses of the population. It is understandable and accessible to all ages, all segments of the population, regardless of the level of education. Its main feature is the simplicity of ideas and images: texts, movements, sounds, etc. Samples of this culture are aimed at the emotional sphere of a person. At the same time, popular culture often uses simplified samples of the elite and folk culture("remixes"). Mass culture averages the spiritual development of people.

The abundance of "mechanical", electronic sounds surrounding children from infancy slows down the development of vocal cords, the formation of musical ear, musical perception.

Complicating the situation in culture is the congestion and “contamination” of the everyday musical background associated with the development of reproducing equipment; the dominance of low-grade musical works in the media and show business.

Music, which has been a holiday for thousands of years of human history, accompanied a person in especially significant moments of life, has become commonplace, everyday life, moreover, in its worst samples.

Musicologists, scientists, teachers are sounding the alarm. A generation of people "addicted" to mass culture has grown up - they cannot stand silence, they feel discomfort at the sounds of classical music.

This situation was foreseen by D.B. Kabalevsky back in the 60s of the twentieth century. In his speeches, including at international music forums, he, as the honorary president of ISME, noted with alarm and bitterness the emergence of a “music and entertainment industry”, the commercialization of art. It was then, in his opinion, that an intermediary businessman appeared between the creator, performer on the one hand and the listener on the other, the owner of the means of mass distribution of music, who in his activities is guided by the goals of making profit, benefits in one form or another. Of course, such mediation has existed in art before, but never in history has its influence been so great. This intermediary profitable forget about the educational value of art and exploit base, even physiological emotions and feelings of listeners. Moreover, this intermediary influences in the direction he needs not only the listeners, but, through financial leverage, the creators and performers of music.

Today it can be safely asserted that mass musical culture in modern society, in terms of the features of the musical language (aesthetically primitive and physiologically harmful), its goals and objectives (originally commercial), and the forms of existence in society (uncontrolled) are hostile to the goals and objectives of true art. It can be resisted by the comprehensive development of the system of mass musical education, the revival of those forms of it that existed in the recent past and the creation of new ones that take into account the realities of the present, as well as the unification of the efforts of all caring, spiritual, responsible figures of culture and pedagogy.

1. Mass - as an undifferentiated set (ie, the opposite of the concept of a class).

2. Mass - as a synonym for ignorance (as X. Ortega y Gasset also wrote about this).

3. The masses - as a mechanized society (that is, a person is perceived as an appendage of technology).

4. The mass - as a bureaucratic society (ie, in a mass society, the individual loses his individuality in favor of the herd).

5. The mass is like a crowd. There is a psychological meaning here. The crowd does not reason, but obeys the passions. By itself, a person can be cultured, but in a crowd he is a barbarian.

And D. Bell concludes: the masses are the embodiment of herding, unification, stereotyped.

Within the framework of mass culture, the following spheres and manifestations can be distinguished:

The industry of "subculture of childhood", aimed at the formation of standardized norms and patterns of personal culture, laying the foundations for the basic values ​​encouraged in a given society;

A mass general education school, introducing students to the basics of scientific knowledge, the selection of which takes place in accordance with standard programs, educating the standard behavioral skills necessary for the socialization of children;

The mass media, aiming under the pretext of informing the population, an objective interpretation of current events, is the formation of the public opinion necessary for the "customer";

A system of national or state ideology and propaganda that manipulates the minds of citizens in the interests of the ruling elites and forms mass political movements;

Mass social mythology, translating complex phenomena that require special study and appropriate scientific preparation into the layer of everyday consciousness, allowing the "man of the masses" to feel involved in science, politics, public life, etc.;

The industry of advertising, fashion, which forms the standards of prestigious interests and needs, lifestyle and lifestyle, manages the demand of an ordinary consumer, turns the process of non-stop consumption of various social benefits into an end in itself;

Physical image industry: mass physical culture movement, aerobics, bodybuilding, cosmetology, etc.;

Leisure industry: mass art culture (adventure, detective and tabloid literature, similar genres of cinema, operetta, pop music, show industry, circus, tourism, etc.), with the help of which the effect of psychological relaxation of a person is achieved. Mass culture mythologizes human consciousness, mystifies the real processes occurring in nature and in human society. There is a rejection of the rational principle in consciousness. The goal of mass culture is not so much to fill leisure and relieve tension and stress in a person of an industrial and post-industrial society, but to stimulate the consumer consciousness of the recipient (i.e., the viewer, listener, reader), which in turn forms a special type - passive, non-critical human perception of this culture. All this creates a personality that is quite easy to manipulate. In other words, there is manipulation human psyche and exploitation of emotions and instincts of the subconscious sphere of human feelings, and, above all, feelings of loneliness, guilt, hostility, fear, self-preservation. The mass consciousness formed by mass culture is diverse in its manifestation. However, it is distinguished by conservatism, inertia, and limitation. It cannot cover all the processes in development, in all the complexity of their interaction. In the practice of mass culture, mass consciousness has specific means of expression. Mass culture is more focused not on realistic images, but on artificially created images (image) and stereotypes. In mass culture, the formula (and this is the essence of an artificially created image - an image or a stereotype) is the main thing. This situation encourages idolatry. Today, the newfangled "stars of the artificial Olympus" have no less fanatical admirers than the old gods and goddesses.

Mass culture in artistic creativity performs specific social functions. Among them, the main one is illusory-compensatory: introducing a person to the world by covert or covert propaganda of the dominant lifestyle, which has as its ultimate goal the distraction of the masses from social activity, the adaptation of people to existing conditions, conformism.

Such a variety of mass culture as rock music was first officially banned in our country, and then just as immoderately extolled and idealized. Why oppose the rock music that is associated with folk traditions, traditions of political and art song? There are also such trends as punk rock, heavy metal, etc., which, of course, are countercultural, vandalistic in nature. Many musical trends are distinguished by pessimistic syndromes, motives for death, suicide, fear and alienation. The loss of humanistic content occurs in rock music due to the distortion of the natural human voice with all sorts of wheezing and squeals, deliberately broken mocking intonations, the substitution of male voices for effeminate ones and vice versa.

Many luminaries of modern culture, from Likhachev to Solzhenitsyn, spoke about modern mass culture, but the opinion of such an authoritative sociologist as Pitirim Sorokin is interesting: “Modern art is mainly the Museum of social and cultural pathology. its own death as a cultural value in itself".

Of course, mass culture has its positive aspects. Entertaining, delivering sensual pleasure, it gives a person the opportunity to forget about their problems, to relax. However, works of mass culture or kitsch are momentary and only imitate the techniques of genuine art, designed for an external effect.

Mass culture is a multifunctional, objective phenomenon of the modern stage of culture, in which all segments of the population are inevitably involved, and the problem lies in managing the dynamics of mass culture, that is, developing effective mechanisms for selecting its necessary and promising directions and culling those that lead to the irreversible degradation of cultural values ​​and patterns.

The appearance of an academic research about wt. music genres and mass. culture (V. Konen, A. Zucker, V. Syrov and others).

Scientific heritage of V.D. Konen(advice musicologist, doctor of arts): more than 130 works, coverage. the history of the world. music cultures from the Middle Ages to the present, including books on Schubert (1953, 1959), Ralph Vaughan Williams (1958), Monteverdi (1971), American Music Paths (1961, 1965, 1977), Theater and Symphony ( 1968, 1975), Etudes on Foreign Music (1968, 1975), Purcell and Opera (1978), The Third Layer (1994), Essays on the History of Foreign Music (1998, comp. V.P. Varunts) and others. In addition to Acad. music scientific interests Kohnen spread. and jazz, to which she dedicated the books Blues and the 20th Century (1981) and The Birth of Jazz (1984). Unity musicologist, cat. gave jazz support in labor. years for this genre (50-80s), who made it the subject of their research and the area of ​​\u200b\u200bits support and interest.

Zucker A.M.- Doctor of Art History, Professor, Academician. Scientific area. interests: the history of the fatherland. music of the XIX-XX centuries. (TV-in Dargomyzhsky, Mussorgsky, Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, etc.), problems of mass. music genres, questions of music. aesthetics. Author of more than 80 scientific articles and 5 monographs. Main works: Mikael Tariverdiev; Gregory Fried. The way of the artist; Both rock and symphony. The article "The intelligentsia sings thieves' songs (Blat. song in Soviet and post-Soviet culture)" (on the degradation of artistic taste).

SYROV V.N.- Doctor of Arts, Honored. artist of the Russian Federation.

About 40 scientific works that saw the light in the center. and regional. scientific collections, magazines "Soviet Music", "Musical Academy", "Musical Life", as well as in modern. electron. publications. Among them are articles about B. Tishchenko and D. Shostakovich, about the composer's style and creativity of "Beatles", about the history of harmony and Negro blues. Assets. and interests. member of the international and grew up. scientific-theor. music conferences. is-va.

Important area prof. interests - modern. phenomena "3 layers", the interaction wt. genres with music academy. traditions. He works in this area both as a researcher-scientist (one of the few in our country), who published a number of works on jazz, art rock, black blues, and as a teacher who created and introduced a special course "Mas. Musical Genres" into the educational process. ", and as a practitioner, a cat. has been curating jazz for many years. and rock. activities in Novgorod, heads the jury of jazz and rock festivals, advises amateurs. collectives, gives public lectures to the youth. audience.

Music (from the Greek musike, literally - the art of music), a type of art that reflects reality and affects a person through meaningful and specially organized sound sequences, consisting mainly of tones (sounds of a certain height). Music. - a specific kind of sound activity of people. With others. its varieties are united by the ability to express thoughts, emotions and volitional processes of a person in an audible form and serve as a means of communication between people and controlling their behavior. To the greatest extent, music comes close to speech, more precisely, to speech intonation, which reveals the internal state of a person and his emotional attitude to the world through changes in pitch and. voice sound characteristics. This relationship allows us to speak about the intonational nature of music. At the same time, music differs significantly from all other varieties of human sound activity. Keeping some semblance of sounds real life, musical sound fundamentally differ from them in strict pitch and temporal (rhythmic) organization. These sounds are included in the historically established systems, which are based on tones selected by the musical practice of a given society. In music. sounds of indeterminate pitch (noises) or those whose pitch is not taken into account are also used, but they play a secondary role. In each piece of music, the tones form their own system of vertical connections and horizontal sequences - its form. in the content of the music. the dominant role is played by emotional states and processes (as well as volitional aspirations). Their leading place in the musical content is predetermined by sound intonation and temporal musical nature which allows it, on the one hand, to rely on the centuries-old experience of people externally revealing their emotions and transmitting them to other members of society, primarily and mainly through sounds, and on the other hand, to adequately express emotional experience as a movement, a process with all its changes and shades, dynamic rises and falls, mutual transitions of emotions and their collisions.

From different kinds of emotions music. embodies mainly moods. The emotional aspects of the intellectual and volitional qualities of a person (and the corresponding processes) are also widely represented in the musical content. This allows the music. reveal not only the psychological state of people, but also their characters.

Music can express not all kinds of thoughts. She is not characterized by extremely specific thought-messages containing information about any facts, and extremely abstract ones that do not cause emotional and visual-figurative associations. However, music. quite accessible are such thoughts-generalizations that are expressed in concepts related to the dynamic side of social and mental phenomena, to moral qualities, character traits and emotional states person.

Striving for a wider coverage of the world of philosophical and social ideas, composers often go beyond the so-called pure (instrumental non-program) music, referring to the word as a carrier of a specific conceptual content (vocal and program instrumental music., as well as to stage action. Thanks to the synthesis with the word and action, new types of musical images are formed, which are stably associated in the public consciousness with the concepts and ideas expressed by others. synthesis components, and then pass into "pure" music as carriers of the same concepts and ideas. To express thoughts, composers also use sound symbols (melons or tunes that have arisen in social practice, existing in a certain social environment, which have become "musical emblems" of any concepts) or create their own, new "musical signs".

A relatively limited place in the content of music is occupied by visual images of specific phenomena of reality, embodied in musical images, that is, in sounds that reproduce the sensory signs of these phenomena. The small role of representation in music is objectively due to the much lesser ability of hearing, compared to vision, to inform a person about specific material features of objects. Nevertheless, in music, there are often sketches of nature, and "portraits" of various people, and paintings or "scenes" from the life of various strata of society of a particular country and era. They are presented as a more or less direct (although inevitably subject to musical logic) image (reproduction) of the sounds of nature (noise of wind and water, birdsong, etc.), a person (intonation of speech, etc.) and society (various sounds, which are part of practical life), and the recreation of specific sensory features of objects with the help of associations (birdsong - a picture of a forest), analogies (a wide move in a melody - an idea of ​​space) and synesthesia - connections between auditory and visual sensations, tactile, sensations.

The content of different kinds is available in music: epic, dramatic, lyrical. At the same time, however, due to its non-pictorial nature, the lyrics are closest to it. The musical content is generally dominated by positive images. However, for a long time, and especially widely since the era of romanticism, in the musical content. negative images also entered (and with them irony, caricature, grotesque). Nevertheless, even after this, the main place in the musical content continues to be occupied by affirmation, “chanting”, and not denial, denunciation. Such an organic tendency in music to reveal and emphasize the best in a person enhances its significance as an exponent of the humanistic principle and a carrier of the moral and educational function.

The material embodiment of the content of music, the way of its existence is the musical form - that system of musical sounds in which the emotions, thoughts and figurative representations of the composer are realized. Even taken separately, musical sounds already have primary expressive possibilities. Each of them can cause a physiological sensation of pleasure or displeasure, excitement or calm, tension or discharge, as well as synesthetic sensations (heaviness or lightness, heat or cold, darkness or light.) and the simplest spatial associations. These possibilities are used in any piece of music, but usually only as secondary in relation to those resources of psychological and aesthetic impact that are contained in deeper layers. musical form, where sounds already act as elements of integral organized structures.

The music of each nation in each era is characterized by a certain "set" of stable types of sound combinations (intonations) along with the rules (norms) for their use. Such a "set" can be called the musical "language" of this nation and era. Using specific elements and general rules existing musical "languages", modifying them, creating new ones, the composer thereby forms his own individual, somewhat unique musical "language", which he needs to embody his own original content.

The musical "languages" of different epochs, nations, composers are extremely diverse, but some general principles organization of tones - pitch and time. In most "languages", pitch relationships are organized on the basis of mode, and temporal relations on the basis of meter. A coherent and meaningful deployment (in monophony) of pitch and temporal relations of musical sounds on the basis of mode and meter forms a melody, which is the most important of the expressive means of music, its "soul".

In each piece of music, from the individual elements of its form, in the process of their combination and subordination, a general structure is formed, consisting of several private structures. The latter include structures: melodic, rhythmic, harmonic, textural, timbre, dynamic, tempo, etc. Of particular importance is the thematic structure, the elements of which are musical themes (along with various types and stages of their change and development). In most musical styles, it is the themes that are the material carriers of musical images.

All private structures are linked together and coordinated by the syntactic structure (combining motifs, phrases, sentences, periods) and compositional (combining parties, sections, parts, etc.). The last two structures form a musical form in the narrow sense of the word (in other words, the composition of a musical work). Due to the relative independence of the form in music, stable, durable types of compositional structures have developed - typical musical forms (in the narrow sense of the word), capable of embodying a wide range of images. Such are the two-part and three-part forms, variations, rondo, sonata allegro fugue, and others that have existed in European music for several centuries; there are typical forms in the musical cultures of the East. Each of them generally reflects the characteristic, most common types of movement in nature, society and human consciousness (the formation of phenomena, their repetition, development, collision, etc.).

Human musical activity has three main varieties: creativity, performance and perception. They correspond to three stages of the existence of a musical work: creation, reproduction, listening.

At all stages, musical activity is creative, although in varying degrees: the author creates music, the performer actively recreates and recreates it, the listener more or less actively perceives it.

Music arose at the lower levels of social development, performing a predominantly utilitarian role - ritual, rhythmic in labor activity, while contributing to the unification of people in a single process.

In the future, music became inextricably linked with literature. Poetic works - tales, ballads, etc. were intoned by the melody, hummed. Music was also in synthesis with dance. Music is a kind of art designed for auditory perception and is distinguished by a direct and especially active effect on people's feelings, L.N. Tolstoy said, for example, that musical art "by its nature has a direct physiological effect on the nerves." The main means of expression here is sound and other aspects and components of the musical form: melody, polyphony, harmony, rhythm, composition, etc. Music creates sounds of a special nature that do not exist in nature and which do not exist outside of music. Musical sound has an intonational nature. The first musical instrument was the voice. The basis of music is rhythm and harmony, which in its combination gives a melody. Unlike all types of fine and verbal arts , music does not reproduce visible pictures of the world and is devoid of semantic specificity. Apparently, therefore, it can be considered a truly universal, universal "language" that does not require translation.

Many prominent cultural figures - and not only composers - of all arts preferred music. Here is how the great German writer and thinker Johann Wolfgang Goethe wrote about it: “The greatness of art, perhaps, is most clearly manifested in music, because it has no content to be reckoned with.

She is all forms and fillings. It makes sublime and noble everything that it undertakes to express.

Compared to works of all types of spatial arts, musical creations are practically indestructible, because, except for their far from obligatory musical notation, they exist not in a material, objective, but in an ideal form. They cannot be felt, forged, as happens with paintings and sculptures, although they can be stolen by giving their authorship to someone else's work.

Unlike visual arts in music, other art criticism categories play a huge role - interpretation and performance. In essence, a virtuoso musical work has not one, as in painting, but several "authors", if we count the composer, performer (or performers), as well as the possibilities of the instruments used.

In musical creativity, if we keep in mind its performing side, more than in other types of primitive arts, there is a collectivity. That is why the concept of folklore is associated, first of all, with music, song and poetry, which are also associated with the musical beginning.

Studying and analyzing various points of view of researchers on the variety art of the 20th century, we will try to clarify: what happened on the domestic variety stage during this period? Than the stage of the early twentieth century. different from the stage of the late twentieth century? How did the artistic and aesthetic performance change, how did the whole ambiguous era artistically reflect in the vocal performance? To answer the above and other questions, of course, it is necessary to understand the specifics of the stage, the vocal skills of the performers, and the diversity of species and genres. Researchers and art historians of the last century systematized the main categories of variety art: from the very concept of "variety" to the understanding of variety as a phenomenon of mass culture. Undoubtedly, openness and accessibility of perception, entertainment and spectacle of performance, festivity and variety of pop numbers have been and remain the characteristic features of the stage. Humorous, and sometimes satirical aspects of variety art have always been its indispensable elements. Recall the most famous names of the colloquial genre of the national stage: Arkady Raikin, Yuri Timoshenko and Efim Berezin (Tarapunka and Shtepsel), Roman Kartsev and Viktor Ilchenko, Gennady Khazanov, Mikhail Zhvanetsky, Maria Mironova, Alexander Menaker, Efim Shifrin, Yan Arlazorov, Vladimir Vinokur, Mikhail Evdokimov, Klara Novikova and others. For the national stage of the twentieth century. it was important that the elements of various arts - circus, theater, early cinema, music, dance - collected in a variety performance created a specific action and made the platform a unique form of artistic creativity. There is no doubt that the stage synthesized various forms of performance, formed synthetic acting abilities in artists and performers. A person's desire for variety spectacles is explained by the variety phenomenon, the essence of which lies in the model of behavior, the originality of the artistic image, the aesthetic values ​​given to the viewer and listener from the variety stage. According to the philosophical and aesthetic tradition, the world is always tragic and comical at the same time. And the ease, rhythm and cheerfulness of the stage contribute to the resolution of the drama of our lives. However, people cannot come to the "permanent holiday", many things become boring, not interesting, sometimes stupid at this "holiday". But the everyday life of a person is also often not happy. Therefore, from time to time he needs to feel this holiday, to restore the physical and spiritual functions of the body. Variety like no other art provides this opportunity. Estrada, as a collective form of art, is very insignificant, but it was studied in aesthetics, art history, and philosophy. In the context of the problems of our article, we will focus on pop vocal art, although, of course, the entire twentieth century. within a limited framework is very difficult to consider. The song on the stage was widely used in the concert practice of the past century. On the stage, a song and a performer have always been valued, who often in the era of Soviet reality was a personality, a talent. Often on the stage there was a “song theater” created by a singer, composer, orchestra with the help of music, plastique, costume, light, mise-en-scenes (Claudia Shulzhenko, Leonid Utesov, Bulat Okudzhava, Vladimir Vysotsky, Alla Pugacheva, etc.). Genres and forms of pop songs of the 20th century. very diverse: romance, ballad, folk song, ditty, chanson, author's song, bard song, pop - music, jazz, blues, etc. As researchers note, at the beginning of the twentieth century. pop song was predominantly composer, at the end of the twentieth century. - performing. Why? We believe that modern pop art has expanded its boundaries due to vocal mastery and has gone beyond just art, making it a mass phenomenon of everyday culture, becoming a sought-after part of the Russian educational system, fashion, the media, Internet culture and even politics. The most complex processes of the cultural life of Russia in the twentieth century. formed a mass culture in which the youth consciousness was primarily attracted to mass musical culture, which is actively manifested in vocal pop performance. Spectacle and entertainment have become popular qualities demanded by the widest contingent of Russian music lovers. The specificity of the official pop art was also that it was not of a commercial nature and for the most part served as a conductor of the socialist/communist ideology. Problem situation pop vocal art at the end of the last century was that in the conditions of the information society, the replication of vocal art became the norm, part of mass art, which became an indicator of the formation and development of the domestic musical show business. Unfortunately, there are not so many studies that examined the aesthetic value and cultural functions of variety show business. The "entertainment" genre is not interesting for history, art criticism, in general, generalizing theoretical studies. Nevertheless, it must be said that today a new type of pop art critic has formed, which combines the practice and theorist of show business. A variety of show programs broadcast on the domestic television screen - “Factor A”, “Exactly”, “One to One”, “Main Stage”, “Voice”, “Voice. Children "and others - fills the Russian scientific space with a variety of journalistic materials that are direct responses to individual pop vocal performances. In our opinion, “variety” is a category that already today deciphers not only an art form, but also a socio-cultural phenomenon of mass culture. As researcher M. M. Muratov notes, the stage appears as an unstable unity of the dual - "psychological protection" and, at the same time, "disguise of emptiness". Their "intersection" in the diverse phenomena of the stage expresses the very essence of human existence and, thereby, explains the deep need for the stage on different historical stages. It should also be noted that the vocal stage today freely goes beyond the academic framework as an art, the processes of modern mass culture are constantly visible in it. We see that in Russia it was mass culture that brought pop music to a new artistic and popular level, at the same time, qualitative changes, perhaps irreparable, took place in the artistic and aesthetic content of pop music. The mass media are increasingly influencing the forms of the national stage, thereby involving it in the sphere of modern mass culture, and given the wide range of television reality shows, it acquires the character of pop folk vocal art. We have already mentioned that with the beginning of a market economy in our country, pop music as an art form has been transformed into one of the constituent parts show business. But this does not mean that the concept of pop music has lost its meaning as an art form. The bottom line is that modern music show business, including pop, aims to get maximum amount dividends and success. And if we are talking about the fact that the origins of variety art arose long before the birth of mass culture in Russia (in the performances of folk performers), then we must also admit that it was mass culture that became fertile ground for the transformation of variety art into musical show business. At the same time, mass culture contributed to the transformation of the stage into a product of musical culture. Of course, behind the external brilliance of a separate "stage" there may be emptiness, lack of content, and unprofessionalism. In the mass culture of the information society, the commercial essence is manifested in the ability to present oneself profitably, or rather, to sell oneself. Demonstration by the stage of openness, accessibility, a certain lightness, showiness and popularity - all these and other qualities become the guarantor of stage success, since, according to researchers of the national stage, there are signs of a new cultural code of modern stage art. Thus, pop vocal art of the twentieth century. is a universal phenomenon of national culture, which got its start in pre-revolutionary Russia, and then in the USSR. In the domestic pop musical culture of the twentieth century. we single out the following most important aspects: official culture and art; amateur mass art; spontaneous amateur performances: folk pop, author's song, rock music. We also believe that the problems of pop vocal art as a phenomenon of mass culture and the interaction between the artistic and commercial aspects of pop art, touched upon in this article, are relevant for modern Russian pop theory and practice.

PROBLEMS OF MASS AND ELITE MUSIC IN THE XX CENTURY

Modern culture is a complex and ambiguous phenomenon, marked by contradictions and crisis. The era of postmodernism with its polarization of contrasts and inconsistency and paradox, with its aggressiveness towards a person and many others. Cardinal transformations in the Russian culture of the post-Soviet period significantly influenced the development of musical culture, which in modern conditions acquired a completely different characteristic in comparison with previous periods. The modernization processes affected all areas of musical culture - creativity, performance, criticism and musicology, the principles of concert activity, as well as the spheres of music education, upbringing and enlightenment. As a phenomenon of elite culture, academic music with its diverse genres that have developed over the centuries (opera, symphony, etc.) in the current situation of total domination of widely replicated products of mass culture is on the periphery of public consciousness and demand, especially among young people.

As part of the growing confrontation between elite and mass cultures, there are different points of view expressed by composers, critics, performers, musicologists - from irreconcilable to more tolerant. Recall that in the past, various formulations also found a place in the musical environment, looking for loopholes leading away from this opposition: calls to compose this opposition: calls to compose “serious / light”, “serious-light and light-serious” music (S. Prokofiev), high - low, "serious in content and easy to perceive" (D. Kabalevsky), etc. necessary applied communication functions, often in our country were subjected to persecution, prohibitions. However, today the situation has radically changed in the opposite direction, and light music, represented by products of mass culture, has taken a leading position, pushing serious music into the background. This was facilitated by a huge number of reasons, consisting primarily in the general change in the cultural paradigm in the 20th century. (from romantic to pragmatic), in the formation new system values ​​(with the transfer of importance from the spiritual to the material), as well as many other phenomena that researchers and practitioners of musical culture reflect on. Of particular note is the extremely bold and fundamentally depressing point of view of the composer and musicologist V. Martynov about “the end of the time of composers” and “the death of music as a space of art”. It seems that such a statement of the question in the composer's interesting, although in many respects debatable works, is not accidental, because it testifies to the modern musician's attempt to understand the complex problems in the field of academic and non-academic music today. In this regard, his book The Zone opus posth, or the Birth of a New Reality is of considerable interest.

Other composers also express a point of view on classical music close to Martynov's. For example, A. Karamanov said in one of his interviews that “classical music, without exception, is tired. She needs to be forgotten for a while, or at least let her rest. You have to play and listen to my music...”. As a way out in this situation, however, the composer offers to "play and listen to my music"... Similar statements about the "death" of academic music can be found in V. Silvestrov. All of them, apparently, are united by the same understanding of the isolation of the opposition in the elite and mass musical cultures and the search for a new relationship between them in the modern conditions of the development of society.

The very concept of elitism often implies an orientation towards music as high art, revealing the depths of human existence, the complex processes of a person's worldview, his relationship to culture, religion and God. In this form, music “as a space of art” or “opus music” took shape during the development of new European culture in the 17th-18th centuries, when such concepts as the author-composer, work, performer and listener were formed. Let us recall the triad of academician B. Asafiev, derived in relation to the new European culture: "composer - performer - listener".

In relation to the musical culture of the XX century. the concept of elitist (or academic) music seems to be more complex due to the branched stylistic diversity typical of modern times. Elitism includes both the musical classics of past eras and the classics of the 20th century created by modern composers, as well as, in part, such fundamentally new phenomena for musical culture as jazz and rock music in their most complex, sometimes avant-garde manifestations.

Mass musical culture, as you know, is associated with the expression of the psychology of the masses, it develops certain stereotypes of thinking inherent in most people, it is designed for a certain average level of musical perception, which is stimulated by the possibilities of replicating mass consumption products with its focus on templates and clichés. Mass musical culture in itself is not a new phenomenon; it was formed in the 20th century. on the basis of everyday musical culture, which has long existed and developed in the conditions of urban tradition. So, since the Middle Ages, musical culture can be divided into three main groups: 1) folklore as a culture of oral tradition, folk musical creativity; 2) professional music as a culture of written tradition; 3) everyday musical culture, which was in contact with both oral and written traditions and played an intermediate and at the same time connecting role between folklore and the sphere of professional creativity. At the same time, one culture never denied another, they existed in a single cultural space in parallel and in the process of historical development were enriched and had a beneficial effect on each other. B. Asafiev also wrote about this in many of his works, in particular in works on opera, where he especially emphasized the role of such everyday genres as song, romance, dance in the formation and development of operatic melos and operatic dramaturgy.

In the musical culture of the XX century. the nature of the correlation of these branches of culture has changed significantly in many ways. Folklore and composer creativity today are two independent artistic systems, sometimes adjoining each other, sometimes living independently, isolated from each other (each according to its own laws).

Household musical culture in the XX century. expanded to the limit and formed an independent layer, which V. Konen called "the third layer of culture." According to V. Konen, the third layer includes different kinds everyday music: mass, pop and author's songs, dance genres, partly jazz, rock and pop music. We note in passing that such phenomena as jazz and rock cannot be entirely attributed to the sphere of mass culture, because, for all their specifics, which are in contact with mass genres, they have many features of elite culture - on the one hand, and folklore properties (in their early periods) on the other. In this regard, it is quite natural that the researcher of mass musical culture A. Zucker considers, for example, the rock of the 1960s and 1970s as a form of protest against the official mass culture. Revealing the ways of integrating the most important stylistic trends of modern music in rock, A. Zucker writes: “Rock turned out to be not such an antagonist of “big music” as he initially tried to present himself. It showed the inherent modern stage striving for expressive expressiveness, for sonoristic and coloristic effects, for the widely used practice of concert performance, for polystylistic thinking and genre formations, multi-component in their origins. Noteworthy and quite legitimate is the conclusion made by A. Zucker that "rock ... has become a participant in broad processes of overcoming the split, style and genre barriers between academic and mass musical art, observed in Russian music of recent decades."

In modern musicology, there are other points of view on the question of sociocultural layers in musical culture in general, including the musical culture of the 20th century. So, E. Vasilchenko distinguishes three layers of culture: academic, traditional (folklore) and popular, and T. Cherednichenko writes about four main types of musical creativity: folklore, urban household entertainment music, the art of canonical improvisation and the European type of "opus music".

The systematization of musical styles and genres according to the theory of "Plastov" by V. Konen, however, is insufficient for a detailed display of the picture that takes place in the musical culture of the last third of the 20th - early 21st centuries. A complete picture, reflecting the processes taking place in the musical culture of the 1990-2010s, is possible only with the introduction of another term, reflecting the ever-increasing processes of synthesis of the “layers” identified by V. Konen among themselves.

Middle culture or "middle culture"

Since the 1970s, the trend of integrating musical styles and genres of various “layers” of music (according to V. Konen) began to actively stand out in musical culture, which served as the birth of new “mixed” styles and genres of music. Their quantitative growth allows us to talk about the formation of another layer - “middle culture”, demonstrating a powerful trend that affects all participants that form modern musical culture: organizers, performers and, above all, listeners. The metaphorical definition of “middle culture”, as well as its synonym “middle culture”, have become scientific terms today and are actively used in the musicological works of A. Zucker, V. Syrov, I. Barsova, N. Pospelov, dissertations and monographic works by D. Zhurkova, Y. Veryovkina and G. Vlasova in the late 1990s - early 2010s. Let us give, in our opinion, the most successful definition of V. Syrov. The scientist calls “middle culture” a new integral culture, “where the barrier between the elite and the mass is erased, where intellectualism classical tradition unites with the hot streams of "low" genres, allowing a person to regain the integrity and fullness of being.

The complication of the musical language in the work of composers of the “third layer”, on the one hand, and the desire to make academic music accessible to the public, on the other, led to the emergence of “hybrids” of two or more styles: Classical/Rock/Pop Music, Classical/Jazz, Rock/ pop music/Jazz, Classical/Rock/pop music/Jazz, etc. So, we can talk about the interaction of opposite styles and genres in the work of B. McFerrin, J. Lucier and V. May, Kronos Quartet and the group "Amadeus", V. Markos, K. Gans and M. Davis, A. Netrebko, J. Morisson and ensembles "Swingle Singers", "PAGAGNINI", "MozART GROUP", J. Kay's orchestra and many others. Most of the compositions performed by these musicians belong to the elitist, academic sphere, while the methods of presentation, the atmosphere and atmosphere of the concert, the manner of the artists' behavior on stage indicate that their work belongs to popular music.

In order to determine the features of the integration and interaction of academic and non-academic styles (elite and mass music), we note their defining features. So, according to A. Zucker, academic music is “basically monofunctional”, that is, “has an autonomous artistic purpose”, mass music is “multifunctional”, realizes itself as a lifestyle, as a social position, as a way of solidarization, performs applied functions. At the same time, the artistic purpose in it may not play a decisive role. In a word, the most important differences between academic and non-academic music lie in the forms of realization of the concert situation, as well as the types of relationships within the above-mentioned triad "author-performer-listener". The integration of styles leads to "the revival of the academic concert ritual" and the general accessibility of music.

Under the influence of popular culture, there are serious changes in both academic and popular music genres. Thus, according to Y. Veryovkina, “one of the most important tendencies of “middle culture” and, more broadly, of modern performance in general, is the desire to expand and loosen the forms of existence of music that are stable for the academic tradition. Music, originally intended for performance in specialized concert halls, distinguished by special acoustics and design, enters a different, non-artistic environment.”

Another important regularity of the middle culture is associated with a change in the established relationship between the composer, performer, and listener. The development of "hybrid" genres leads to a decrease in the role of the author, a significant increase in the status of the performer - he is given the right to create a work anew, and active listener participation. B. McFerrin's performances are a vivid example of the new concert situation. The musician freely interprets the author's text - performs complex instrumental parts of any range with his voice, involves the audience in the performance process. Thus, thanks to the dialogue between academic and popular music, in the concert practice of "middle culture" new forms of communication are born not only between the performer and the listener, but also between the listener and the author.

The question of the relationship between the composer, performer and listener will be touched upon more than once in our study, as well as the question of the existing trends in the development of modern musical culture. As emphasized above, the fundamental question for us is - How does the academic scene change in the conditions of modern existence and the integration of genres? To answer this question, we systematized V.Konen's styles and genres according to the theory of "layers" and introduced the definition of middle music "middle culture". It is the styles, genres and directions of the “middle culture” and the “third layer” of music, as well as the concert forms of their performance on the academic stage, that are the “core” of solving our task.

I think the main problem of Russian music is very close to main problem Russian reality: in the minds of people, and in politics, and in public life, there is complete darkness and chaos. And there is no vector directed to the future. In this sense, it is very easy to compare Russia with what it was in the 80s and 90s, when there was such a vector. Then people had something to fight for and something to fight against. And everyone was expecting changes, and to the extent of their strength and ability, these changes were brought closer. And now people are just surviving. Today is more like such “not happening” 70s, but that era, at least, gave a very powerful culture - first of all, cinema and literature. The current time in this sense is much less fruitful.

Therefore, Russian music is now engaged in "living out" - this applies to our wonderful veteran music, including bard songs or rock. And the second option is hack-work, like pop and rap battles. With the exception of a few specific names - Noize mc or Vasya Oblomov - I cannot name any of today's young Russian musicians who create something meaningful. Why don't they create? I am already 61 years old, and it would be ridiculous and naive for me to be responsible for 18-20-year-old people. I think because that is the situation in the country. If I were now 18-20 years old, I would take up a machine gun, because the situation in the country would not inspire me for anything else. And I definitely wouldn't do music.

Mentioning differences in age ratio, especially when it comes to hip-hop and what is associated with it, is not very rational, for example, putting pop and rap battles on the same line.

<<воспринимать>> recitative.

Returning to the question that I wanted to convey.

So maybe you should change your mind a bit about this situation.

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To date, it is hip-hop that is the most productive and actively discussed domestic genre of music.

It is DISCUSSED. But - excuse me, they also discuss Yuri Khovansky's anti-musical experiments (yes, such experiments, for which half of the commentators under paid articles with Khovansky's clips want to fill his face). And certainly, domestic hip-hop is NOT productive. The mythical "hype" is placed at the forefront of modern domestic hip-hop culture. Already even neologisms have gone - such as a hypetrain (by the way - to my surprise, I did not find this neologism in the English-speaking Internet). There is hype. And there is no music.

Since we are talking about hip-hop - well, let's remember the film "Straight Outta Compton", or "Notorious" the same, well, or google it and watch documentaries about Tupac Shakur. We will not discuss the musical product of Notorious, NWA and Tupac, its qualities and properties. Let's just get acquainted with these tapes and documentaries about Tupac and, to our surprise, we will find that such concepts as "hype" are absent in biopics about hip-hop figures. Tupac wanted to push the black population to stand up for their rights. The NWA pushed satire and social criticism to the masses. Notorius wanted to bring his acquaintances from the street dealing illegal substances into the legal music business.

The problem of modern domestic music is also that not only artists are chasing the mythical "haaaaip", but also the listeners (that is, those for whom the artists are chasing hype) evaluate the musical product not by its content, but by the hype around the artist (otherwise, explain to me the popularity of Pharaoh, if not a mythical "hype", but a banter over his "sker-sker" that has entered the people). One, by the way, has already run after hype - in the end, no one needs it, except for rap battle sites (dull, besides).

People stop judging a musician for how and what kind of music he makes, even on underground venues. Do you have more than a thousand subscribers in public? So - a good band (don't care that half of the guitar riffs are licked from Lostprophets, and stealing riffs written by a guy who has been in prison for 30 years for pedophilia is a minimum of shame and disgrace, don't care that the group's strongest lines are "ah .... love, what so appreciated, lostyyyyal"). Are there 300 people on the board? So the group is dull, and it doesn't matter that upon closer examination the group appears to be real visionaries.

That is - "haaaayp" is what the listeners themselves want from the artist (even from a local band). They don't want music. They want hype. A couple of my acquaintances admire Kendrick Lamar, his lyrics and social message. They don't give a damn about filigree references to Outkast (turn on Ms. Jackson, worn out by everyone to the holes - in response to "who is this? damn cool, it looks like Kendrick"), of English language they don't know either. But they read about the social message in public and on websites. Even from a good fit artist, the listener does not need a product, i.e. music, but "haaaip".

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A frequent situation when a person is arrogant about this genre and the area that is associated with it, simply because he does not know how to<<воспринимать>> recitative.

Well no. Just a recitative in Russian music for recent times sounded good only from three artists (the most annoying thing is that these are not even classics and founders like Vladi or his entourage) - from Oksimiron, Scryptonite and (suddenly !!!) from Victoria Zhuk from Therr Maitz (in one of the new things of the group, with sound in the spirit of Rage Against The Machine).

And when the vocalist (at the same time a jazz vocalist) of an indie pop group reads better than a good part of the country's hiphopers, this does not mean that she is cool (although she is cool), it means that most of the domestic hiphop is an anti-musical bottom (which is evidenced by the content of such specialized sites as the same the Flow), the authors of which forget that they are musicians and that reading is also an instrument (a very important rhythmic instrument). Although... maybe the authors of this anti-musical bottom know that they are NOT musicians?

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