Ru
EnMo Kaiting
Forms of meter-rhythmical improvisation tendency in N. Kapustin’s Piano Sonatas
The article is dedicated to examining the specific features of meter-rhythmical improvisationality in Nikolai Kapustin’s piano sonatas as one of the key mechanisms for synthesizing classical and jazz traditions. The author situates the composer’s work within the dialectic of written composition and oral improvisational practice, identifying and systematizing techniques that model the core idiom of jazz within the framework of a classical opus. The research is conducted in stages. First, based on current scholarly work in contemporary musicology and jazz studies, a theoretical distinction is made between the concepts of improvisation and improvisationality. The specifics of how the latter phenomenon manifests at different levels of the musical fabric are identified, and the importance of meter-rhythm as the most representative means of expressing improvisational thinking in jazz is established. An important theoretical basis for the analysis is the understanding that improvisationality is defined by two fundamental properties of this type of thinking – variability and heuristicity, which retain their essence both in spontaneous creativity and in written composition.
In the second stage, the essence of specific techniques of improvisationality in the realm of meter-rhythm is revealed. These techniques model the process of spontaneous musical thinking within the conditions of a fixed musical text. Among them are different types of notated swing (from precisely written to stylistically implied), meter-rhythmical variability and the use of complex meters, and polyrhythmic and polymetric structures. The analysis reveals that the unifying factor for all these techniques is the disruption of the inertia of metric regularity. Thus, through the antinomy of the stable and the mobile, the predictable and the unexpected, Kapustin “materializes“ within the established genre model of the sonata the very essence of improvisation – the uniqueness of each moment in the unfolding of the musical texture.
Key words
N. Kapustin, piano sonatas, meter-rhythm, quasi-improvisation, academic music, jazz, interaction of traditions.
For citation
Mo Kaiting. Forms of meter-rhythmical improvisation tendency in N. Kapustin’s Piano Sonatas. In: South-Russian Musical Anthology. 2026. No. 1. Pp. 31–42.
