The genres of canonical orthodox music and their interpretation in the works of the 17th - early 20-th c. composers - Статья

Kharkiv State Academy of Cultury, Kharkiv THE GENRES OF CANONICAL ORTHODOX MUSIC AND THEIR INTERPRETATION IN THE WORKS OF THE 17TH - EARLY 20-TH C. COMPOSERS V.V. Voskoboinikova, postgraduate student, Lecturer The Spiritual and religious life take on special significance and become topical in the modern music art, domestic composers’ and performers’ practice. This can be indicated with replenishment of choirs repertories with liturgical works and also the expansion of the modern composers creative work with opuses on the spiritual-religious subject. Besides, song collections a considerable cultural heritage of the domestic spiritual music works, kept in numerous archives, are mostly unknown, little studied and require mastering ecclesiastical music genres in the format of full-scale historical and theoretical research. Nowadays we witness a significant interest in «liturgical musicology», in particular, genre structure of liturgical singing. The problems of historical formation of liturgical cycles, typology, stylistics, evolution of canonical genres, performers aspects call for further studies. The subject of this paper is the specific way in which authors reconsider chief canonical genres of Orthodox music - Liturgy and All-night vigil. The aim of the article is to identify historical stages of Orthodox liturgical singing tradition and its transformation into a genre and form of music art. The object of the study is liturgical works of Russian artists in the period of the 17th - early 20th century. music liturgy vigil liturgical The analysis of the last researches and published works shows an interest of scholars in these problems. In the work «Poetics of music composition» of the modern Russian musicologist N. S. Gulanits- kaya emphasizes the lack of studies of spiritual music genre system in comparison with other spheres (literature, art). This problem gains importance in the scholars opinion, «not only regarding Old Russian religious music but also spiritual-musical creative work of Modern era» [4, 28]. Understending the phenomenon of spiritual music, in particular from the viewpoint of the specific character of cyclic forms, is examined in detail by modern scholars. Original conceptions of church music cyclicity are presented in research by N. Gulanitskaya, W. Protopov, T. Vladishevskaya etc. Thus, in N. Gulanitskaya’s opinion liturgical song collections of long and short forms should be interpreted first of all as a hierarchical ensemble structure of liturgical singing intended for the unity in the deep meaning of Divine service. In his book I. Gardner covers the phenomenon of progressive secularization of choral church singing. Gardner makes an attempt to systematize numerous authors liturgical works and evaluate them in the compliance with the canon and preservation of Orthodox Church liturgical singing tradition [3, 7]. W. Protopopov’s «Music of Russian liturgy. Problem of cyclicity» is of great importance regarding the interpretation of spiritual music cycles. This work embraces the phenomenon of liturgical cycles from the origin time to the works of the early 20th century. However, in spite of availability of scientific literature dealing with the problems of spiritual works cyclicity, there are a lot of issues requiring further development and systematization. Basic material. The genre system, characterized by variety and specific character of genre forms, text orientations, musical interpretations take on a great significance in liturgical singing of Orthodox church and in Old Russian literature and in visual arts. The genre system of church music is a multilevel hierarchical organized sphere of musical poetic meanings, structurally expressed in certain canonical forms of Church art. Being a specific unity and integrity, this system is an integral part of the Divine service and differs from genre formation of secular music tradition considerably due to the synthesis of great and little forms and also clear-cut hierarchical subordination of structural elements of Divine service. The genre variety, from major cyclic formation, making up the Divine service (service of intercession, service for the dead, church wedding ceremony, Liturgy, All-night vigil) to independent functioning in divine service sphere and combined into genre groups of religious songs of little forms (canticle, hirmos, troparion, sedalen etc) are the essence of representation of depth and variety of liturgical content of Orthodox church music. Liturgy and All-night vigil belong to the major liturgical genres; they are interpreted as an aggregate of content and its structural expression. D. S. Likhachov uses the term «genre ensemble» to describe them. They make up large-scale two-part cycle and contain numerous subgenres: troparions, canticles, kontakions, litanies, prokeimenons. The division of religious songs into the variable, expressing the idea of a feast, and invariable, i.e. constant, at every Divine service - is one more