Musicology Annotation << Back Toposes of love and death in V. Ullmann’s melodrama «The Lay of the Love and Death of the Cornet Christoph Rilke» Fedusova Alina A. The relevance of the study and its scientific novelty are due to the insuffi cient study of the music created in the concentration camps of the Third Reich. The article examines one of the last and most significant works of the Czech-Austrian composer V. Ullmann (1898–1944) – the melodrama «The Lay of the Love and Death of the Cornet Christoph Rilke», which reflects the theme of life and death, which is one of the key in art concentration camp Theresienstadt. The hypothesis of the research is that the main images of melodrama acquire stable characteristics and acquire the meaning of toposes. The piece highlights the toposes of love and death. The less independent image of holiday-life stands apart, in combination with the topos of love, it embodies the dichotomy of life. The object of the research is the artistic world of V. Ullmann’s melodrama, the subject is the toposes of love and death. The purpose of the research is to identify the specifi cs of the toposes of love and death using the example of a selected piece. The study revealed the following features of the topos of death: low register, octave and chord pulsation, the presence of uneven accents, sharp dissonant sounding of vertical and horizontal. The topos of love is characterized by the balance of registers, the predominance of melodic expressiveness, the wide use of polyphonic techniques, elements of dodecaphony, chords in the spirit of late romanticism. The results obtained can serve as a basis for the study of a wide layer of pieces, which reflect the images of life and death, and open the prospect both for a deeper understanding of the works of other composers who lived and worked in Theresienstadt, and for expanding ideas about the artistic dominants in the creativity of V. Ullmann himself. Keywords: topos of love, topos of death, V. Ullmann, «The Lay of the Love and Death of the Cornet Christoph Rilke», music of Theresienstadt. DOI: 10.25791/musicology.4.2021.1185 Pp. 12-20.