Accompaniment in chamber vocal music as an independent branch in the history of piano art

The article is dedicated to the issues of the development of piano accompaniment in chamber-vocal repertoire in the context of the five-hundred-year history of keyboard music. The clavier emerged as an alternative to the lute as an instrument more suitable and convenient for accompanying singing and dancing. The "introduction" of the clavier into choral and solo vocal music transformed the style and character of musical performance, created additional artistic and technological opportunities, and changed the vector of development of the chamber-vocal repertoire. The growing role of the clavier in musical practice was facilitated by significant improvements in the qualitative characteristics of keyboard instruments. The author of the article notes the most significant milestones in the development of piano accompaniment for songs and romances and considers accompaniment as an independent and self-sufficient line in the history of piano performance. The works of Schubert and Schumann, Duparc and Wolf, Schnittke and Shostakovich become the subject of study and at the same time vivid examples that confirm the main conclusions of the article. The article employs comparative-analytical, structural-functional, and cultural methods of research. The author utilizes literary-textual and musical-textual methods and relies on fundamental principles of general historical methodology in scientific research, in particular, sociocultural, historical-chronological, and biographical approaches. Working with words, with great poetry and literature, required composers working in the genre of chamber-vocal music to find synthetic technological solutions and fresh pianistic and artistic techniques. The search, which lasted several centuries, yielded abundant creative results. The novelty of the research lies in the historical approach to the art of piano accompaniment, with artistic phenomena examined throughout the entire five-hundred-year path of keyboard music development. In this work, the author draws on years of experience as a collaborative pianist, their lecture experience in the subject of "History of Piano Art," and the works of our outstanding scholars engaged in research in the field of chamber-vocal music. This article is only the beginning of a larger conversation about the history of piano accompaniment, which we hope will continue in further discussion. It is evident that more and more young pianists are choosing the profession of accompanist as their primary focus, writing graduation theses on this topic.

piano, vocal music, mélodie, Lied, piano accompaniment, Schubert, Schumann, Duparc, Wolf, Shostakovich