The Semantic Structures of Domenico Scarlatti’s Sonata for Clavier К. 466, L. 118 in F minor

Abstract

The issue of comprehension of the content of musical compositions has been of active interest on the part of performers and music theorists for a long period of time. For over five centuries human beings have aspired to discern the composer’s conception in musical note-based symbols. And the more substantial the performance, the more truthfully it conveys the authorial conception to the listener. In this connection the author of the article presumes that the time for priority for the intuitive component in performance, which, undoubtedly, is very important, has nevertheless passed. In the present day, in many ways as the result of intensive development of musicology and its connections with contiguous disciplines, there have appeared various technologies with the help of which the task of cognition of the musical text, penetration deeply into the substance of a musical composition has become fully possible. In this direction we must acknowledge the great merit of the research group of the Laboratory of Musical Semantics of the Ufa State Institute of Arts headed by Doctor of Arts, Professor Liudmila Shaymukhametova, the author of the methodology of the semantic analysis of musical compositions. The article makes use of elements of this method of semantic analysis upon the deciphering of semantic structure of the content of Domenico Scarlatti’s Sonata for clavier К. 466, L. 118 in F minor – a composition in which it is possible to read the semantic meanings of the baroque instrumental and vocal intonational lexis, as well as the lexis of instrumental ensembles. It examines the problem of the correlation of the semantic structures of the primary (authorial) text and its semantic specification in the secondary text (the performance scenario).