Vocal training of future music teacher in the context of theory and practice of personification

Vocal training of future music teacher in the context of theory and practice of personification

Lo Chao -

Post-graduate student South Ukrainian National Pedagogical University named after K. D. Ushynsky e-mail: selarin@ukr.net

Formulation and justification of the relevance of the problem. The process of future music teachers professional training involves development of their performance and creative skills. The formation of the latter is carried out in the process of artistic and creative activity of music students related to performing and pedagogical interpretation of music works. Optimization of the process is provided by contemporary well-established trends of the educational process humanization, its individualization and personal orientation.

All the aforementioned trends have been widely spread in the practice of future music teachers vocal training. Traditionally the teacher in the process of vocal and pedagogical interpretation of an image, a character, focuses attention on his individual and personal characteristics; applying the technique of psychological transference, tries to fully humanize' the artistic image of the character, to demonstrate his realistic features that contributes to the realization of the artistic idea and sense of the work. These methods combined with an individual approach effectively provide a rapid `embodiment' of a vocal student into the image and, therefore, considerably optimizes vocal and performance process in the classroom in course of teaching voice or performance skills within the vocal training of music students. vocal student cultural personification

But in this regard, the character in the mind of music student often loses its specific uniqueness inherent to the artistic image which is clearly not a reflection of reality, but is a result of creative synthesis and author's idealization.

The usage of idealization and other artistic and creative techniques is conditioned by the author's desire to emphasize certain features, to pay attention to the specific situation in a certain context and, thus, to convey some message, to bring to the deep understanding of the plan of the work of art. In order to read this message, the interpreter (vocal student) must be oriented to understand a work of art. The latter performs an integrated phenomenon of specific artistic reality, an artistic image as a specific symbol, each facet of which manifests itself in different elements of artistic language and is a unique code of information transfer through the language of art as a special form of existence.

Thus, the depth and conscious understanding of the work syntagmatically affects the authenticity of the interpretation of artistic senses of the works of art in the process of perception and interpretation. The latter implements the process of the search for technologies and techniques motivating future music teachers for a deeper and holistic understanding of the artistic information hidden in the work of art in the studies in music pedagogy field.

An effective method is the technology of personification as a practice of hermeneutic reading of the work of vocal art, based on the interpretation of the artistic image as the embodiment of the complex of specifically artistic, psychological and emotional, social and cultural senses.

Analysis of recent research and publications. The analysis of the literature on the subject revealed that consideration of the artistic image as an embodiment of the global into the individual is traditional in the studies in philosophy and aesthetics of art which dates back to the works of Hehel [1].

Issues of functioning of an artistic image as a semantic element of the fiction text may be further found in the works of O. Losiev, M. Smirnov, Yu. Stepanov, H. Shpet; also in hermeneutical conceptions of Kh.-H. Hadamer, P. Rikior, A. Po- tebnia; as well as in scientific works of modern scholars, including A. Zakirova, O. Koval, D. Li- sun, L. Masol, S. Malkin, V. Nosina, O. Oleksiuk, H. Padalka, V. Feshchenko, S. Shyp.

Today it is hermeneutic approach that is considered the most topical in phenomenological studies of vocal and performance, educational interpretations (T. Lymariova, S. Lysenko, Pan Na, V. Rohozhnikova, A. Sokolska). In these studies, structural components of the vocal work are considered as the elements of artistic text and artistic image is interpreted as an implementation of the complex of specific artistic information.

Meanwhile, the technology of personification has not been implemented into existing concepts of future music teachers' vocal training that is focused on the hermeneutic approach.

The purpose of the article. To justify pedagogical appropriateness of the personification technology in the interpretation of the artistic image of the work when training future music teachers.

The main material of the study. Artistic image of the work of vocal art as a personification of a number of culture-related senses.

As it is known, the sphere of art is a special reality created in the process of artistic cognition, artistic evaluation and artistic synthesis of art (creativity). The form of existence in this reality is a work of art, which is based on the artistic image. The peculiarity of the vocal work is the embodiment of the artistic image in the personality of a character.

Herewith, one should understand that the character in art is not only a reflection of a personality as an individual and anthropological unit existing in objective reality. The creator working on drawing a character underlines and sometimes even exaggerates certain features, selects certain life situations and character's reactions, thereby attracting our attention to certain personality traits, social conditions, life situations, which are of special importance for the author of the work of art. Thus, thanks to specific artistic techniques (creative typization, generalization and hyperbolization) the artistic image of the work of art character becomes a personification of multiple cultural, specifically artistic senses in individual manifestation, namely, in a character.

In this regard, scientists discussing the aesthetic nature of art notice that to perceive any phenomenon aesthetically means to perceive it as integrity, mutual penetration of the unique, special and general. Moreover, when thinking over it thoroughly, it becomes clear that the general (global idea, universally valid information) is laid in the unique (character) and is reflected in the special (artistic image). Thus, cognition in art is defined as mental comprehension through the individuality of an object - his inner content (I. Isakova, L. Chernets). Hence there is understanding of the artistic image interpretation as a process of cognizing the general by means of the individual, primarily by means of the character [2, p. 3].

Of particular importance this phenomenon is in the vocal and performance process, since the latter is traditionally associated with artistic communication. Artistic text of the vocal work is perceived as a message that the artist understands (decodes, interprets) himself and transmits to the listener. Herewith, the performer must take into account the fact that the message contained in the artistic text is multifaceted: it consists of many aspects: individual and psychological, emotional and sensory, social and cultural. Meanwhile, understanding and reading of this various information is carried out through the perception of the diversity of the artistic image.

The process of the cognition of the vocal work's artistic image takes place at several levels: firstly, it is literary text that is usually integrated to the vocal work which differs by the greatest informativity at the conceptual and logical level of perception. The value of the sequence of sounds, organized in literary text is rather ambiguous. The means of artistic expression of the literary text are language intonation, timbre colouring, dynamics and other aspects of the art of recitation. All the above listed is also true for vocal performance, however, the vocal has its specific level of informativity - musical intonation.

Secondly, music which is intoned, performed with the help of the human voice is unique with its mental and emotional potential. The persuasiveness of this potential is related to the fact that the singer in the process of performance uses usual channel of transmitting information, thoughts, emotions - his own voice. However, this process reaches the level of art as a result of implementing a complex of «cognitionunderstanding - interpretation» in the artist's consciousness.

Formation of this complex in the interpreter's mind is necessitated by understanding of the phenomenological nature of vocal performance as the process of the mental unit transformation (emotions, thoughts) in material sound and then again to the non-material - understanding while listening. Thus, the aspects of tangible sounding of the voice become a sign system of translating ideological and aesthetic senses which explains the existence of a second level of cognition and understanding of the sense of the vocal work - sound-producing and semantic.

Sound-producing and semantic level includes some specific vocal attributes that researchers consider the structural elements of the performance text. According to T. Lymariova, they are formed at the crossing of different verbal and non-verbal (tempo, volume) codes and elements as well as the codes of extralinguistics (pauses, sighs, etc.) and kinesics (facial expressions, gestures, look) [4, p. 12-13]. The combination of these elements results in the appearance of the complex syncretic sign- intonation. In its turn, holistic vocal text can be presented as a time-string of syncretic signs- intonations which model various phenomena of psychological and social character [4].

Thus, the word that is sung in the context of vocal art is interpreted as linguistic characteristics of the character, comprehension of which is carried out due to the realization of the intermodal complex of language and hearing perception of signal codes - tonal, timbre and articulation components of the vocal work [5, p. 6].

Scientists also point out that in artistic text of the vocal work besides the consciously synthesized by the author elements of the concept and style there exist «unconsciously used cultural codes» (A. Sokolskaia) and «symbol of the epoch» - embodiment of certain ideals through music personalities (V. Rohozhnykova), as a result of this the character is understood as «culture hero» of a certain epoch [7, p. 8].

Thus, the character of the vocal work, which is perceived in the shed of the concept of culture- related identification is interpreted as a personification of multiple artistic and culture- related senses.

Understanding of this phenomenon implies a certain focus shift in the perception of the artistic image in the vocal and performing, pedagogical interpretation.

Traditionally a given character belongs to a group of artistic images, characteristic of the epoch and composer's works. It is caused by the opera and theater tradition (buffonni characters, lyric characters of the seria opera), philosophy of the culture-related epoch (interest in the ancient stories, Renaissance, privileges of the mind: Enlightenment epoch, introvertedly personal orientation of the epoch of romanticism, etc.). On the other hand, the composer's musical language is a unique phenomenon of art, whose components are highly artistically informative for the interpreter who has reached a certain level of musical and hermeneutic, theoretical training.

Meanwhile, if the above-mentioned aspects are regarded as disparate elements of the context which is a companion to the perception of the artistic image of the character, their content and nature can be partially (or completely) lost in the process of interpretation. However, understanding of the process of creating an artistic image of the character as an interaction of these factors, formed as a result of this process artistic image is perceived and treated as a personification of culture-related, artistic specifically artistic, psychological and reflective, social and cultural phenomena and senses.

A key role here is played by the vocalist's psychological focus on a certain character of perception and understanding of the artistic image of the work interpreted.

The proof can be found when considering the process of artistic interpretation in terms of psychology. As it is known, artistic interpretation involves interpretation of the text of the work of art. Since it is only the perceived that can be interpreted it is naturally to assume that the key role in interpretation is played by perceptual processes. In the context of our research attention is drawn to such properties of perception as objectivity, structurality and meaningfulness, the essence of which is somehow linked to the perception integrity. The singling out of these properties by psychologists proves that the normally functioning mind does not perceive objects and phenomena as separate stimuli of various sensations, but as simulated, abstracted from sensations structure of the features of specific objects, which were consciously perceived, marked and related to a certain category and assigned to a certain class [9].

Implementing the above-mentioned provisions in the process of artistic interpretation during the vocal and performance activity we will take as a basis the statement that properties of psychological process are its integral part. So perceiving and comprehending an artistic image the performer (vocal student) somehow structures the received information about the artistic image of the character, classifying it in a way. And if he operates mainly personal, individual and sensual information, it results in the appearance of the image (although «live» and «realistic») somewhat «deprived» not fully corresponding to the conception of the perception of artistic image as a specific phenomenon of reality.

The latter is proved by the studies in the field of psyhology of art. In particular, E. Krupnyk studying the psychological characteristics of the artistic image cognition, emphasizes the dialectical nature of artistic perception, the essence of which is seen in the interaction of sensual and realistic perception, based on empathy and personal emotional attitude and ability to differentiate specific functionality of the artistic image. This ability, in its turn, is caused by the level of aesthetic literacy of those perceiving, a reserve of theoretical art-related knowledge and ideas of the art as a special form of artistic vision of the world [10].

The foregoing means that performer's understanding of individual manifestations of character's personality by means of revealing his feelings and emotions in fiction does not provide an exhaustive persuasiveness of interpretation, neither allows to reveal the profoudness of the senses of the work of art. At the same time, the interpretation of the character as personification, that is as holistic image-sign is based on understanding the nature of the process of creation, it features associated with the use of methods of creative typization, hyperbolization and other means of artistic synthesis brings to reveal the author's intention and the persuasiveness of the interpretation, which contributes to the realization of communicative, developmental, and educational functions of art.

It was found out that the artistic image of the character of the vocal work is not a simple reflection of the personality of the real person, but is the result of artistic activity, a kind of semantic meta-unit of an artistic text.

At the same time the language of the vocal work is quite specific and the very process of vocal and performance interpretation to some extent is reduced to building a time sequence of vocal semantics elements (vocal tones, discrete sounds) in their interaction with the patterns of linguistic and specific musical drama. In this regard the important aspects that affect the quality of the vocal work interpretation are the nature and depth of performer's (music student's) understanding of the specific senses of art encoded in these elements.

The main formative factor in this process is psychological focus on the interpretation of the artistic image. A decisive role is played by the integrity of this interpretation, which is provided by means of understanding and comprehending the artistic image as a personification of complex of specific artistic, psychological and reflective, socio-cultural senses.