Music and Time Annotation << Back The Method of Combinatorics as a Modification of the Sonata Principle in the Works of the Chinese Composer Tan Dun E.A. Alexandrova, T.D. Bulgakova Using the example of the sonatas of the outstanding Chinese composer Tan Dun, this article examines the principle of combinatorics as one of the contemporary means of transforming the traditional sonata form. As the study shows, those features of sonatest, that can be found in Tan Dun’s sonatas (contrast of musical images, monothematism, motif development, cyclicity) are modified due to the composer’s reliance on innovative processes of modern music and the use of modern composition techniques (sonoristics, aleatorics, modularity, atonality), while simultaneously striving to preserve the traditions of Chinese music, in particular the usage of folklore prototypes. The most important means of updating the standard sonata form in Tan Dun’s work is the use of the method of combinatorics, implemented through the interaction of visual and auditory types of perception, closely related to the renovation of the ideas of ancient music, with a new type of programming and cross-cutting thematic development. Keywords: Tan Dun, method of combinatorics, sonatality, aleatorics, atonality, variation, suite, film music, folk music instruments, polyphony, Chinese folklore. Pp. 52-56.