Reading the Epigraph-Figuration in Sergei Slonimsky’s Master and Margarita

Abstract

The research here brings under scrutiny an essential compositional element found in Sergei Slonimsky’s 1972 operatic score, Master and Margarita. At issue is the “Epigraph-Figuration” — a 14-note chromatic melody presented on the score’s frontispiece and found in a myriad of variation throughout the 3-hour chamber opera. Teasingly abstract in its aspect, not limited to any one particular dramatic role, and in reflexive correspondence with the Goethe quote commencing Bulgakov’s famous novel, the Epigraph-Figuration has inspired compelling exegesis and speculation. Exactly because the attraction of extra-musical hermeneutics is so strong for scholars of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, Slonimsky’s melodic figuration has lacked an objective examination sufficient enough to explain the significance of its many kaleidoscopic incarnations. This is exemplified, but not limited to, the compelling hypotheses of multi-disciplinary scholar Siglund Bruhn who sees the figuration as a representation of spiritual “opening” — symbolically significant as she places it in the dynamic context of the Soviet history of cultural thaw and cultural repression well known to Slonimsky and his peers and colleagues. But the present author will arrive at an alternate orientation, aided in no small part by a brief paradigmatic analysis of the actual, empirical presence of the Epigraph-Figuration in ten selected score excerpts. With the recent passing of Slonimsky, the music world and contemporary Russian culture has lost not only a fabulously brilliant and dedicated composer, but a courageous civic figure who tirelessly dedicated his life to the musical development of others with unflinching moral certitude and uncompromising creative integrity. The present author, and former student of Slonimsky, arrives at an alternate conclusion, discovering in the Epigraph-Figuration a robust illustration of one of the composer’s most salient aesthetic principles — affinity for the Subject and care for its right to individual growth — demonstrated in his unique treatment of each of its multiple, morphological iterations.