DOI: 10.12975/rastmd.20261436 ISSN: 2147-7361

Embodied meaning and musical text in prepared piano performance: A semiotic-hermeneutic framework

Assem Zakirova, Marlena Koilybaeva
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The article presents a text-oriented analysis of modern Kazakh music for prepared piano in the context of musical semiotics, hermeneutics, and intertextuality. The study aimed to identify the features of the formation of the artistic text in the works of Daniyar Berzhaprakov Umai and the triptych of Roman Vlasov Shapqyn, Zhoqtau, Toi Bastar (Dala Dāýsy – “Voice of the Steppe”). The methodology combined semiotic, hermeneutic, intertextual, and analytical-interpretative approaches. As a result, it was established that the modern Kazakh school of prepared piano has formed a new model of musical thinking, in which timbre, gesture, silence, and bodily interaction with the instrument have become full-fledged carriers of meaning. In the work Umai, timbre modifications were associated with the mythological image of the goddess Umai and created a multi-level system of symbols. In the cycle Dala Dāýsy, a prepared piano was used to represent cultural memory and the ritual cycle of life, in which each part symbolized a distinct existential state: movement, grief, and rebirth. A comparison with the work of John Cage showed that Kazakh composers reinterpreted the avant-garde tradition by emphasizing the semantic richness of sound. It was concluded that the prepared piano in modern Kazakh music became not only an experimental technique. It was a complex semiotic system that combined national archetypes, the physicality of performance, and avant-garde aesthetics. The results obtained expanded the understanding of the development of non-European practices of prepared piano and demonstrated the specifics of the integration of local cultural codes into modern musical language.

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