Оn the music of "The Currents of Love" by M. A. Kuzmin

This article is dedicated to Mikhail Kuzmin’s poem The Chimes of Love, presented to the audience in the autumn of 1907. Embodying the ideas of the Silver Age, the work became an example of a genuine integration of various creative art forms. It brought together poetry, singing, and dance on the theater stage, with Kuzmin himself acting as the author of the text, composer, and performer. Despite the harsh reaction of the critics, who accused him of decadence and dilettantism, the performance clearly highlighted the unique phenomenon of home theatricals that were popular at the time.The object of the study is the synthesis of arts in the culture of the Silver Age. The subject of the research is the structural and semantic features of The Chimes of Love in terms of the correlation between the musical and poetic components of the work. The focus of attention is a detailed analysis of the functioning of intermedial connections, as well as the refraction of the signs of the Rococo era in the modernist consciousness.The methodology of the article combines archival-bibliographic, historiographical, cultural, and analytical approaches. Unlike hermeneutics or semiotics, this choice links the work to its historical context. The first two approaches systematize the sources and criticism of the early 20th century; the cultural approach reveals the phenomenon of home performances and the pastoral topos, while the analytical one serves for musicological analysis.The relevance of the research is due to the lack of specialized musicological works dedicated to The Chimes of Love. At the same time, addressing this topic meets the demand for interdisciplinary research in modern humanities, which studies the connections between literature, music, and theater. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that the article provides the first detailed study of the poem's architectonics and the features of the pastoral topos implementation within it, on the basis of which the genre nature of The Chimes of Love is clarified in both literary and musical contexts. The musical analysis of the work is based on a detailed study of its dramaturgy, the correlation between word and music, the interaction of vocal and instrumental numbers, as well as the features of melody, harmony, texture, rhythm, and form-building.The author concludes that Kuzmin’s appropriation of the French tradition is of a conventional nature. The signs of the Galant era serve merely as a foundation for creating the playful mythology characteristic of his work.