Musical Profile of Agatha Christie's Novel, Giant's Bread

The purpose of the article is to study the musical context of Agatha Christie’s novel, Giant’s Bread, from the viewpoint of reflection of the current problems of the British musical culture of the first third of the 20th century and the search for new musical forms. Interpretation of artistic phenomena and musical terms as certain semantic signs, by means of which the author conveys real musical and artistic queries of her time in the artistic context of the novel, has become the main task. The article’s research methodology is a complex of general scientific and special methods, namely, the comparative and historical, biographical and hermeneutic methods of research as well as the method of theoretical generalization. Research novelty. It is the first time when verbal music of Agatha Christie’s Giant’s Bread novel, the British writer, the author of detective novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, is the object of research. Giant’s Bread was written in 1928 and was one of six psychology novels by Agatha Christie. Conclusions. Agatha Christie’s Giant’s Bread novel may refer to the literary works defined by a notion of a novel, which tends to music. The author verbalizes music in different forms reproducing the real British musical context of the 20s, introducing the names of composers, their works, artistic phenomena, etc., into the artistic conception of the novel. Analysis of the latter as certain semantic landmarks gives reasons to assert that the author depicts current problems of the British musical culture through her characters and evaluates musical processes in continental music from the viewpoint of esthetic needs of the time.