The Issues of the European Chamber and Ensemble Instrumentalism Evolution

The purpose of the article is to consider the European chamber and ensemble instrumentalism evolution as a particular type of musical mentality and explore the genre field of radical transformation of traditional methods of composing. Research methodology. The method of historicism was used to reveal the fundamental regularities of chamber and ensemble instrumentalism in the European composers’ works. In addition, the paper uses a general aesthetic method to consider the aesthetic and stylistic phenomenon of instrumentalism, and a musical-analytical method is to study the research object systematically. Scientific novelty. The music-theoretical and performance studies started considering instrumentalism in terms of new instrumental and expressive music means of the first half of the 20th century. For the first time, the origins, semantics and main trends of the evolution of chamber and ensemble instrumentalism as a particular type of thinking in the musical culture of Europe are analysed. Conclusions. The origins and traditions of chamber and ensemble instrumentalism, represented by styles of European music from the Baroque to the Second Viennese School, are considered. Chamber and instrumental ensemble as a particular type of musical thinking actively functions with stylistic “constants” and “variables”, with timbre-texture and space-time units as stylistic dominants in chamber and ensemble instrumentalism. Chamber ensemble of instrumental type was developing in two dimensions: introspective as a romantic chamber ensemble and constructive-game, Late Renaissance and Baroque touring style. The Romantics developed mainly the timbre-texture dimension of the instrumental ensemble, experimented with compositions, created new types of mixed (polytembre) sounds. The anti-Romantic line of development was associated with the semantic-compositional level of the genre system, a radical rethinking of the nature of sound structures in various composition techniques, overemphasis in the system of means of an expressive and constructive unit of music