A musical analysis of selected Medtner settings of Pushkin poems

Abstract

This document contains biographical, historical, and cultural information as well as poetic and musical analyses of fifteen songs by Nikolai Medtner on Alexander Pushkin’s texts. The paper focuses on Зимний вечер (The Winter Evening) op. 13, no. 1 and Муза (The Muse) op. 29, no. 1, all 6 songs of op. 36 and the seven songs of op. 52. The study is meant to enrich the performer’s depth of understanding, learning, and communicative potential. Three introductory chapters of the document present detailed biographical information on Medtner and Pushkin as well as a discussion of Medtner’s approach to text selection. The document raises the questions of a paradoxical symbiosis and an organic synthesis of Pushkin's modernism with Medtner’s conservatism. The second part of the document contains a chapter on Russian diction and three chapters which comprise poetical and musical analyses of individual songs, illustrated with annotated score examples, tables, and figures. The appendices provide syntactically idiomatic English translations of all thirty Pushkin poems set by Medtner as well as IPA and word-by-word translations of those texts.