OVERT'YURA, overtures, female. (French ouverture, lit. discovery) (music). 1. Musical introduction to opera, operetta, ballet. 2. A short piece of music for orchestra. Concert overture. Dictionary Ushakova
- ru (music)
Synonyms for overture
- prelude
Hypernyms for overture
- music
- start
- work
- play
Overture(from fr. ouverture, introduction) in music - an instrumental (usually orchestral) piece performed before the start of any performance - theatrical performance, opera, ballet, film, etc., or a one-part orchestral work, often belonging to program music.
The overture prepares the listener for the upcoming action.
The tradition of announcing the beginning of a performance with a short musical signal existed long before the term “overture” took hold in the works of first French and then other European composers of the 17th century. Until the middle of the 18th century. overtures were composed according to strictly defined rules: their sublime, generalized music usually had no connection with the subsequent action. However, gradually the requirements for the overture changed: it became more and more subject to the general artistic design works.
Having retained the function of the overture as a solemn “invitation to a spectacle,” composers, starting with K. V. Gluck and W. A. Mozart, significantly expanded its content. By means of music alone, even before the theater curtain rose, it turned out to be possible to set the viewer in a certain mood and talk about upcoming events. It is no coincidence that the sonata became the traditional form of the overture: capacious and effective, it made it possible to imagine the various active forces in their confrontation. Such, for example, is the overture to K. M. Weber’s opera “Free Shooter” - one of the first to contain an “introductory overview of the content” of the entire work. All diverse themes - pastoral and darkly ominous, restless and full of jubilation - are connected either with the characteristics of one of characters, or with a certain stage situation and subsequently appear repeatedly throughout the opera. The overture to “Ruslan and Lyudmila” by M. I. Glinka is also solved: in a whirlwind, rapid movement, as if, in the composer’s own words, “in full sail,” a dazzlingly cheerful main topic(in the opera it will become the theme of the chorus praising the liberation of Lyudmila), and the chanting melody of love between Ruslan and Lyudmila (it will sound in Ruslan’s heroic aria), and the whimsical theme of the evil wizard Chernomor.
The more fully and perfectly the overture embodies the plot and philosophical collision of the composition, the faster it acquires the right to a separate existence on the concert stage. Therefore, already in L. Beethoven, the overture is emerging as an independent genre of symphonic program music. Beethoven's overtures, especially the overture to J. W. Goethe's drama "Egmont", are complete, extremely rich in development musical dramas, the intensity and activity of thought are not inferior to his large symphonic canvases. In the 19th century The genre of concert overture is firmly established in the practice of Western European (overture “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by F. Mendelssohn based on the comedy of the same name by W. Shakespeare) and Russian composers (“Spanish Overtures” by Glinka, “Overture on Themes of Three Russian Songs” by M. A. Balakirev, overture-fantasy “Romeo and Juliet” by P. I. Tchaikovsky). At the same time in the opera 2nd half of the 19th century V. The overture is increasingly transformed into a short orchestral introduction that directly introduces the action.
The meaning of such an introduction (also called an introduction or prelude) may lie in the proclamation of the most significant idea - a symbol (the motive of the inevitability of tragedy in “Rigoletto” by G. Verdi) or in the characterization of the main character and at the same time in the creation of a special atmosphere, which largely predetermines the figurative structure of the work ( introduction to “Eugene Onegin” by Tchaikovsky, “Lohengrin” by R. Wagner). Sometimes the introduction is both symbolic and pictorial in nature. This is the opening symphonic painting of M. P. Mussorgsky’s opera “Khovanshchina” “Dawn on the Moscow River”.
In the 20th century composers successfully use various types of introductions, including the traditional overture (overture to the opera “Cola Brugnon” by D. B. Kabalevsky). In the genre of concert overture folk themes written “Russian Overture” by S. S. Prokofiev, “Overture on Russian and Kyrgyz Folk Themes” by D. D. Shostakovich, “Overture” by O. V. Takt a-kishvili; for an orchestra of Russian folk instruments - “Russian Overture” by N. P. Budashkin and others.
Tchaikovsky Overture
The 1812 Overture is an orchestral work by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in memory of Patriotic War 1812.
The overture begins with the somber sounds of a Russian church choir, recalling the declaration of war that was carried out in Russia at church services. Then, immediately, a festive song sounds about the victory of Russian weapons in the war. The declaration of war and the people's reaction to it were described in Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace.
This is followed by a melody representing marching armies, played with trumpets. The French anthem "Marseillaise" reflects the victories of France and the capture of Moscow in September 1812. The sounds of Russian folk dance symbolize the Battle of Borodino. The flight from Moscow at the end of October 1812 is indicated by a descending motive. The thunder of cannons reflects military successes as they approach the borders of France. At the end of the war, the sounds of the choir return, this time performed by a full orchestra with echoes of bells ringing in honor of the victory and liberation of Russia from French occupation. Behind the cannons and sounds of the march, the melody of the Russian national anthem “God Save the Tsar” can be heard. The Russian anthem is opposed to the French anthem, which was played earlier.
In the USSR, this work by Tchaikovsky was edited: the sounds of the hymn “God Save the Tsar” were replaced by the chorus “Glory!” from Glinka's opera Ivan Susanin.
The real cannon fire envisioned by Tchaikovsky is usually replaced by a bass drum. Sometimes, however, cannon fire is used. This is the first time I've recorded this version. Symphony orchestra Minneapolis in the 1950s. Subsequently, similar recordings were made by other groups using advances in sound technology. Cannon fire and fireworks are featured in the Boston Pops' Fourth of July performances on the banks of the Charles River each year. It is also used at the annual graduation parade of the Australian Defense Force Academy in Canberra. Although this piece has no connection to US history (including the Anglo-American War, which also began in 1812), it is often performed in the US along with other patriotic music, especially on Independence Day.
Overture. When this word is pronounced, many understand that it is associated with music. However, not everyone knows him exact value. What is an overture? What is its origin and scope of use?
The word “overture” came into our language from France - a country in which musical art flourished in the 18th-19th centuries - and it means “introduction”.
Meanings of the word "overture"
This is a piece that is performed before the start of any musical performance, for example, opera, ballet.
- Example: Before the start of P. I. Tchaikovsky’s ballet, the overture sounded, and all the spectators froze in anticipation of a musical miracle.
A short piece for orchestra is also called an overture.
- Example: Wagner's Overture for orchestra was highly appreciated by the audience.
In a figurative sense given word used colloquially to mean the beginning of something. Often this meaning has a sarcastic connotation.
- Example: This was just an overture; the main audit of the company’s work will be carried out in a week.
From the history of the appearance of the overture
Overture as a beginning, introduction to piece of music, did not appear immediately. For many centuries, musicians did not attach importance to this part of the work. Mozart was one of the first to write overtures to his works, after which the overture took its rightful place in music.
Types of overtures
- Overture as the mood of the audience at the beginning of the performance. It allows you to concentrate and prepare for listening to music. Often such an overture used melodies from the main work.
- Overture containing short story the entire work, allowing the audience to understand the main ideas and thoughts of the author (for example, the overtures of J. Strauss and W. Wagner).
You can find out the meanings of other unknown words from the articles in the section
What does the opera consist of: the overture. Photo – Yuri Martyanov
The opera is incomprehensible, ridiculous, absurd, unnatural.
In the age of TV series and YouTube, telling the viewer about mossy passions and ponderous ups and downs by singing - what could be stranger?
However, it is in vain to think that grounds for such a question have arisen only now. In the new Weekend project, Sergei Khodnev will tell what components an opera consists of, why they appeared and why they are interesting to the modern listener.
Even in the most, as it seems to us, most magnificent times for it, opera continued to circulate in strange phenomena that are unclear how they relate to life.
Intellectuals of the 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th centuries looked at the contemporary opera scene and shrugged their shoulders: what is this, why is this? And they repeated something like this in different ways:
“Whoever goes to the opera should leave common sense at home” (Johann Christoph Gottsched, 1730).
But precisely because of this shrug of the shoulders and the perplexed look, opera is not kabuki theater, not something frozen in the same aesthetic forms. Something is always happening to her, and what seems to us to be moments of her well-being, splendor, and massive demand are in fact periods of regular searches, disputes, and experiments.
In fact, it, which Derzhavin called “the reduction of the entire visible world,” was destined to display and concentrate everything that was relevant that was inherent in Western culture at a certain moment - while remaining not a hothouse arthouse, but an elegant pastime.
On the one hand, the current commonly used repertoire of opera houses is a triumph of retrospection: works of a hundred, two hundred, three hundred years ago coexist peacefully and on an equal footing with modern ones. On the other hand, this is not a museum, not a “gallery of old masters,” but an ever-renewing artistic reality: interpretation changes, theater changes.
These changes actually excite a surprisingly wide circle for such an absurd art. Few of the first people you meet will speak passionately about the state of affairs, for example, in modern academic music.
But on the other hand, many will willingly support the conversation that in opera today there are a lot of jokers who force the heroes of Verdi and Tchaikovsky to go on stage in jeans, in totalitarian overcoats, or completely naked.
And yet, a meeting with an opera, even one like this, continues to be perceived as something decorous, important, bon ton, still the stalls are elegant, and the boxes shine, still heads of state and other noble persons flock to the premieres in temples like Salzburg or Bayreuth.
This means that there is, after all, a completely understandable structure into which new combinations of tastes, expectations, and passions are built. How is this structure structured, what does it include, when and why did its individual elements appear?
Understanding the structure of an opera is a more feasible task than sitting through a four-hour performance out of habit, where they sing, sing, and sing incessantly. But, having figured it out, you can experience more conscious pleasure (or displeasure) from this action.
Overture
Overture is an instrumental introduction, music that sounds, according to the composer’s plan, before the curtain rises. During the existence of the opera genre, she received various semantic load, and different names: in addition to the French term “overture,” which was established in the 17th century, it could also be called, for example, introduction, prelude, symphony (sinfonia - consonance) and the introduction itself.
From now on, only operas with a single kind of overture should be performed in the court theater - the “Italian overture” - such an order was issued in 1745 by Frederick II, King of Prussia.
This is still not the Duke from Zakharov’s “Munchausen”, but great commander, albeit a great lover of playing the flute; 1745 is the year of the turning point in the War of the Austrian Succession, and between battles and negotiations the king finds it necessary to speak out directly about which overture is better.
So what is it - an overture, why is it? If opera is “an action carried forward by singing,” then what is it like for music to act before this very action without singing?
Let's say right away: she is not so comfortable at this forefront, and debates about what the correct overture should be, in what form it is needed, statistically arose even more often than discussions about the essence of opera as such.
But only those first operatic prologues are almost always just scenes with singing, and not independent instrumental numbers. The priority of words and narrative seemed obvious; conventional characters like Tragedy, Harmony or Music in an elegant form announced to the public the plot of the upcoming action. And they reminded that it was from ancient times that this very idea was adopted - recitar cantando, “to talk by singing.”
Over time, this idea lost its sharp novelty and ceased to need such sublime apologetics, but the prologues did not disappear for decades. Often, in addition, they featured the glorification of one or another monarch: with the exception of the Venetian Republic, 17th-century opera remained primarily a court entertainment, closely associated with official festivities and ceremonies.
A full-fledged overture appears in the 1640s in France. The model of the so-called “French overture” introduced by Jean-Baptiste Lully is a steel formula: a slow and pompous first part in a recognizable punctuated rhythm (a kind of jumping iambic), a fast second with a fugue beginning.
It, too, is connected in spirit with the strict order of the court of Louis XIV, but became extremely popular throughout Europe - even where French operatic music in general was met with hostility.
The Italians eventually responded with their own formula: an overture in three parts, fast-slow-fast, less ceremonious, without scientific tricks like fugato - this is the same “Italian overture” that Frederick the Great demanded. The rivalry between these two overtures is actually very significant.
The French overture had fallen out of use by the middle of the 18th century, but before that it had outgrown its operatic context: Lully’s invention can be easily recognized in the introductions of Bach’s orchestral suites or Handel’s “Music for the Royal Fireworks.”
The Italian overture (as a rule, it was called sinfonia) lived longer in the operatic context, but its completely different life is much more important - its transformation in the last third of the century from an operatic overture into an independent work, from a sinfonia into a symphony.
What is the opera left with? The opera, represented by Gluck and his contemporaries, meanwhile thought that it would be good for the overture to be thematically and emotionally, organically connected with the material of the drama itself; that it is not worth doing as before - when, according to the same scheme, riveted introductions were written for operas of any content.
And so one-movement overtures in sonata form appeared, and thus unprecedented quotations from the thematic material of the opera itself appeared.
The departure from rigid schemes made the 19th century a century of famous overtures. Colorful, ceremonial, presenting at once a bouquet of tenacious motifs - like “Force of Destiny” or “Carmen”. Lyrical, delicate, economical in quotation - like “Eugene Onegin” or “La Traviata”.
Symphonically abundant, complex, languid - like “Parsifal”. But, on the other hand, the overture of the era of romanticism is closely within the framework of a theatrical event - other overtures turn into important symphonic hits, and the genre of “concert overture” is established, no longer at all connected with opera.
And then, in the twentieth century, the opera overture insensitively turned into an anachronism: there are no overtures either in “Salome” by Richard Strauss, or in “Wozzeck” by Berg, or in “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” by Shostakovich, or in “War and Peace” by Prokofiev .
Being a kind of frame for the opera, the overture functionally embodies the idea of order - that is why the King of Prussia was so attentive to it. Order, firstly, in the etiquette sense, but also in a more sublime sense: it is a means of distinguishing between everyday human time and the time of musical performance.
Just now it was just a crowd, a random collection of more or less well-dressed people. Once - and they are all already spectators and listeners. But this very moment of transition managed, in addition to all music, to acquire ritual prefaces - the dying light, the conductor's dignified exit, and so on - which were simply unthinkable in the time of Frederick II.
What is more important to today’s listener is not all these ritual or ideological considerations, but the performing side of the matter. The overture is the hallmark of the conductor's interpretation of a particular opera: we have the opportunity in these first minutes, before the singers have yet appeared on stage, to try to understand how the conductor perceives the composer, the era, the aesthetics, and what approaches he is trying to find to them.
This is often enough to feel how enormous changes have occurred and continue to occur in our perception of music. Even though the overtures of Gluck or Mozart are themselves a constant value, the difference between the way they sounded with Furtwängler in the early 1940s and with modern conductors is impressive proof that the existence of opera scores in the field of culture and taste is not an ossified fact , but a living process.
Overture with ceremony. "Orpheus" by Claudio Monteverdi (1607)
Monteverdi preceded the prologue of his “Orpheus” with an independent instrumental “toccata”. With a jubilantly solemn spirit, it is simple and even archaic: in fact, it is a three-times repeated fanfare, which then accompanied ceremonial events (this is how the composer wanted to greet his main audience, Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga).
Nevertheless, in fact, it can be called the first opera overture, and for Monteverdi himself it was not just “music for the occasion,” judging by the fact that he later used it in his “Vespers of the Blessed Virgin.”
Overture with tragedy. Alceste by Christoph Willibald Gluck
In the preface to Alceste, Gluck wrote that the overture should prepare the viewer for the events of the opera. This was a revolution by the standards of not only the earlier 18th century, but also the reformer himself - the overture to his “Orpheus and Eurydice” (1762) in no way prepares the listener for the subsequent scene of Eurydice’s mourning.
But the darkly agitated D-minor overture to “Alceste”, an example of “storm and stress” in music, finally organically correlates with a specific opera, where everything, according to Rousseau, revolves “between two feelings - grief and fear.”
Overture with drums. "The Thieving Magpie" by Gioachino Rossini (1817)
For a long time, the first chord of the overture was supposed to be loud for signaling purposes, but the overture to “The Thieving Magpie” turned out to be one of the records in this sense. This is a lengthy sonata composition with typical Rossini insouciance, melodic affection and fiery crescendos, but it opens with a deafeningly effective march featuring two military drums.
The latter was such an unheard-of innovation that some of the first listeners, outraged by the “unmusical barbarism,” threatened to shoot the composer.
Overture with atonality. "Tristan and Isolde" by Richard Wagner (1865)
“Reminds me of an old Italian painting of a martyr whose intestines are slowly being wound around a roller.”
The poisonous Eduard Hanslick wrote about the introduction to “Tristan”.
The prelude, which opens with the famous “Tristan chord,” blatantly violates classical ideas about tonality.
But the point is not in transgression, but in the almost physical feeling of great longing, a deep, but unquenchable desire that is created as a result. It is not without reason that many conservative critics criticized “Tristan” not for purely musical rebellion, but for its intoxication with “animal passion.”
