Svetlana Demidova’s Report at the IX student conference NRU HSE «Text—Commentary—Interpretation»

On September 25-26, the IX Student Conference of the National Research University Higher School of Economics «Text—Commentary—Interpretation» was held. On September 26, Svetlana Demidova presented a paper «Astrology and the New Music: Contexts of the Word “Konstellation” in Chapter XXII of “Doctor Faustus”» as part of the «20th Century Prose and Poetry» section. 

At the beginning of his essay, devoted to the analysis of the New music and its genres, Carl Dahlhaus notices a peculiar tendency among avant-garde composers to name their compositions as «fugues», «constellations», and «prisms». The etymological background of such borrowings doesn’t catch the researcher’s attention – according to him, one could hardly find a scientific discourse which «wouldn’t have been plundered by composers». Nevertheless, Dahlhaus's observation about the prevalence of the concept of "constellation" in the musical milieu contains an indirect indication of a subject in the intellectual history of the New Viennese School that has not yet been fully elucidated. The point in question is how exactly astrology was related in the reflections of Schoenberg and his students to the fundamentals of the twelve-tone composition technique. Echoes of this topic can be found not only in contemporary musicological criticism but also in fiction – for example, the use of the word «constellation» in relation to the arrangement of chords in chapter XXII of Thomas Mann's «Doctor Faustus». The commentary on this episode was placed in the focus of the presentation.