Mariasina Nonna

The Divine Service of the Liturgy of Presanctified Gifts in works of composers of the New direction (the turn of the 19th century)

Abstract

This article is devoted to the Liturgy of Presanctifi ed Gifts as an artistic and musical cycle in works of Russian composers of the so-called New Direction. The Liturgy of Presanctifi ed Gifts is a special rite of the Russian Orthodox Church which belongs to the period of the Great Lent and is performed only on certain specifi cally prescribed weekdays. The ascetic character of this period of the church year, rarity of the church service as well as the minor role of chanting in it were the reasons why the Liturgy of Presanctifi ed Gifts did not attract much attention of religious composers during the whole Synod period of the history of the Russian Orthodox Church. Even so, every period has a certain number of liturgical cycles of the Lent. Among the New Direction composers there are several who turned to the Liturgy of Presanctifi ed Gifts, namely A. Nikol’skiy, P. Chesnokov, A. Grechaninov. Each of them created one cycle of this type. The aim of this article is to give a short comparative analysis of these cycles, to identify their common features and at the same time to reveal the vivid individual character in each of them, which is carried out for the fi rst time. We have found several common features in these cycles. These include stylistic orientation towards ancient chants, common to the New Direction, being revived in the new, modern, form. One should also note the impact of the emotional atmosphere of the Great Lent and of the semantic features of the Liturgy of Presanctifi ed Gifts on the musical style of the works in question; this impact, however, receives very individual manifestation in each case. For the fi rst time, we have traced the new interpretation given by the composers to the structure of the chanting range of the Liturgy of Presanctifi ed Gifts, which in this case begins by the Celebration of the Typika; this is unique in the whole history of Russian liturgical singing. This observation allowed us to make a conclusion about the domination in the New Direction of the emotional and aesthetic perception of the church service.

Keywords

The Liturgy of The Presanctifi ed Gifts, the Lent, the Typika, New direction, choral cycle, A. Nikol’skiy, P. Chesnokov, A. Grechaninov

References

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Information about the author

Mariasina Nonna

Student status: Graduate student;
Place of study: St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University for the Humanities; 6/1 Likhov pereulok, Moscow, 127051, Russian Federation;
Email: nonna888@yandex.ru.