Page 57 - Glasbenopedagoški zbornik Akademije za glasbo v Ljubljani

to keep a sensible balance between the professional and the amateur, while at the same
time maintaining a semblance of professional virtuosity. The interactivity and breadth
of the operetta's musical form was used as a basis for fusion and interplay of different
performing arts (opera, ballet, dance, drama and symphonic music). The brain's dopa­
mine reward system, which can cause us to enjoy listening to music, is largely depend­
ent on our ability to understand the musical form and to predict its continuation, and
the learning that occurs when deviations occur. We have therefore focused on ways to
make musical form both sufficiently clear and not entirely predictable. Some commonly
used aesthetic devices in contemporary composition, such as the deliberate avoidance of
consonances on the basis of a break with tradition, have proven to be pointless in this re­
spect, since people generally prefer consonances to dissonances, and the overuse of dis­
sonances and harsh sound effects can lead to unpleasant sensations, with consequent ef­
fects on (poorer) musical memory and (harder) following of musical form. To achieve
better identification of the audience, we used musical associations that are widespread Miha Nahtigal ◆ KOMPOZICIJSKI PROCES USTVARJANJA MLADINSKE OPERETE V 21. STOLETJU
in the Slovenian cultural space (references to military marching band, classical and ro­
mantic style, pop, blues, Oberkrainer music or turbofolk, etc.) and can also broaden the
meaning of the story. With the aim of bringing classical music to as wide an audience as
possible, while maintaining the appropriate artistic complexity, we have used approach­
es we have called the surrealist effect and the parallel story. The approaches are based on
the use of clear associations for easily understandable stimuli that already subconscious­
ly allow orientation in the musical form, and more abstract messages that build a paral­
lel story in the sense of a conscious search for the (unusual) context of these associations
and the connections between them.

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