Transformations of literary ballad

Abstract

The ballad genre is rather complex, it includes folk, literary and musical (both vocal and instrumental) versions; their semantics, stylistics and literary form varied throughout the ages. The genre has been at a focus of the researcher’s interest due to its heterogeneity and numerous transformations. The research focuses on the use of some new musicological concepts of the form for the analysis of a literary work. The aim of the study is to demonstrate the expression and dynamics of the aspects of form musicality through the analysis of a ballad composition. The transformation trends of the ballad form will be defined in the light of romanticism – neoromanticism paradigm, thus the composition of some Lithuanian literary ballads will be compared (literary ballad containing folklore motifs Jurate and Kastytis by the 19-20th century poet Maironis, Mozart by mid-20th century writer Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas). The research is done using the methods of comparative and musicological functional analysis concept – that is a scientific innovation in the sphere of analysis of literature works - and is based on the works of the scientists Hugo Riemann, Werner Wolf, Steven Paul Scher, Viktor Bobrovsky, Lev Mazel, James Parakilas, Vanda Zaborskaitė, Aleksandras Žalys, and others.