GRAŽINA DAUNORAVIČIENĖ

THE MUSIC GENOTYPE AS AN OPEN, SELF-ORGANIZING SYSTEM AND ITS SEISMIC STATE IN MUSIC EVOLUTION

GRAŽINA DAUNORAVIČIENĖ

Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre grazina.daunoraviciene@lmta.lt

The typological phenomena of music are by nature a conceptual, intricately organized system that accumulates intramusical and extramusical factors of different origins. Due to their complicated systemic structure and constant change, they have become not-so-easily theorized objects of systemic (theoretical) musicology studies. In the presentation, the focus is put on the ontic concept of the music genre, or music genotype (Daunoravičienė 1990, 2019), which is examined via three problem sections. The viewpoint is concentrated through the methodological approach of the general systems theory (GST), which focuses on the nature and functioning of the music genotype and the relevant laws of fractality and isomorphism in the structure of systemic phenomena.

The first problem section considers the significance of the historical memory of art music typologies (from Boethius to Adler; see Marx, 2004) for the epistemology of the music genotype. The author of the presentation argues that the constructive centers of the historical typological systems of music reflect the structure of the system of formative elements (criteria) at the ontical level of the music genotype. The latter, formed by the collective intelligence of music scholars of the sixth through the twentieth century, will be discussed in the presentation. In the discourse of the second problem section, the meta-functions of the music genotype – the realization of typologization through its own subfunctions, that is, compositional function and communicative function – will be based on the case study of an opera by young Lithuanian composers of today. Simultaneously, the metaphors of the generic contract applied by Jeffery Kallberg and music genotypes as agents of communication proposed by Jim Samson will be made relevant.

The intersection of the postwar music avant-garde with the postmodernist philosophy of artistic introspection can be associated with the “explosive” effect of evolution. The seismic state of music evolution and the intensity of change tested the universality and plasticity of typological structures. The data of analysis of the early twenty-first-century practice of music art is a testament to the fulfillment of numerous twentieth-century visionary insights professed in the manifestos of such figures as Busoni (1907), Pratella (1910), Russolo (1913), Munari (1938), and Maciunas (1963) a. o., as well as their mixes in the strangest forms in Klangkunst, the fourth type of music. For the docu-

mentary evidence of the development of art forms and genotypes in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, a chart of typology of the Fluxus art forms, which evolved over time, drawn in 1965 by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins and accompanied by a graphic system signifying it, was of great importance.

Postmodernist theories and new research methodologies offer preconditions for the renewal of the traumatic functioning of the epistemological approach to the music genotype. As mentioned above, for this purpose, the interpretation of system (element) and (macro)system transformations, derived from the GST and based on the research in periodic self-organization of open systems and spontaneous self-management processes, was chosen for the present approach. The intersystemic “chaos” of music genotypes is to be identified in this talk as the junction and transgression field of the “old” and the “new” genotype (macro)systems. The concept of an open self-organizing system made it possible to view the music genotype (s) – the system and the (macro)system – as an object whose dynamics is based on the regularities of nonlinear processes predicting crises and chaos phases, with the recombinations of the old and the new genetic traits taking place in their milieus.

Keywords: genre, genotype of music, (macro)system, self-organization, mono-genre, poly-genre, free genre.

This talk is part of the project “The Evolution of Lithuanian Music Culture (1970–2020) in Typology Approach: from Deformation to New Phenomena”, funded by the Lithuanian Research Council, No. S-LIP-19-71, 2019-04-30.

Gražina Daunoravičienė is a PhD, dr. habil. in musicology (2008) and full-time professor. She has been teaching at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre since 1979 and was the Head of the Department of Music Theory between 1998 and 2003. She has received scientific scholarships and grants to study and do research at the Moscow State P. Tchaikovsky Conservatory, Salzburg Mozarteum, and Oxford University (Oxford Colleges Hospitality program) and was awarded a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and Education of Saxon Lands and a DAAD grant (Germany). She has presented reports and published scientific articles in Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Germany, Russia, Great Britain, Belgium, Switzerland, Slovenia, Yugoslavia, Finland, the United States, China, Austria, and Italy. She initiated the publication of a series of monographs dedicated to the most outstanding Lithuanian composers (Balakauskas, Bajoras, Kutavičius). Daunoravičienė has been the editor of four collections (2002, 2007, 2013, and 2019). In 2016 she published the monograph Exploration of Modernistic Identity in Lithuanian Music and was awarded the Vytautas Landsbergis Prize at the Lithuanian Composers’ Union Musicologists’ Section competition for the best musicological works of the year. She is a Knight of the National Order of Merit. She has been awarded the State Prize for Culture and Art established by the Government of the Republic of Lithuania. She is the founder and editor of the scientific journal Lithuanian Musicology (for the editing of twenty volumes she was awarded the Ona Narbutienė Prize at the aforementioned competition) as well as the editor and author of a five-book study guide called The Language of Music (two volumes were published in 2003 and 2006). From 2008 to 2013 she was a member of the Research Council of Lithuania and a representative of the Committee of Humanities and Social Sciences.