Ru
EnA. Kolokolnikova
Document as reality and as artifact (on the problem of documentary practices in music)
The article examines the phenomenon of documentary art in contemporary musical culture. The main goal of the work is the theoretical understanding and clarification of the basic categories “document” and “documentality” in relation to musical and artistic creativity. The methodological framework of the research combines comparative-analytical and historical-cultural approaches, enabling an interdisciplinary analysis of concepts developed in document studies and their adaptation to the field of art. The first part of the article identifies the principal properties of the document on the basis of existing definitions, including the fixation of information on a material carrier, reliability, factuality, temporality, as well as the dialectical interplay between objective reality and the subjectivity of the compiler. This allows the author to propose a working definition of documentary musical art as an artistic practice that incorporates verbal, visual, or auditory texts, not originally intended for artistic purposes, into the authorial context. The second part is devoted to the analysis of specific artistic practices. Using the examples of the choreographic drama “Quiet Don. Melеkhov” by Leonid Klinichev and the symphony “Nu Shu: The Secret Songs of Women” by Tan Dun, the article demonstrates various strategies for synthesizing documentary and artistic elements. A methodological distinction between documentary and artistic images is proposed and subsequently applied to the analysis of “Urban Gypsies” by Johannes Kretz. The article concludes that the specificity of documentary musical art lies not in the mere use of factual material, but in an organic synthesis in which the documentary layer, while retaining its connection with reality, is subordinated to the artistic concept and transformed into an artifact.
Key words
documentary practices in art, documentary music theatre, document, representation of reality in art, artistic and documentary image.
For citation
Kolokolnikova A. Document as reality and as artifact (on the problem of documentary practices in music). In: South-Russian Musical Anthology. 2026. No. 1. Pp. 130–136.
