On the Similarity of the Principles of Church Singing Interpretation of the Sequentia and the Bezstrochen in Western European and Russian Hymnography

Abstract

The article is devoted to the issue of comparative study of the Russian and Western European church singing traditions, making it possible to reveal not only a common conception of their development (which has already been undertaken in music scholarship), but also to correlate concrete principles of interpretation of church singing. The author examines and juxtaposes for the first time the principles of the sequentia and the bezstrochen. Separately from each other, these two terms are familiar and have been elucidated in music scholarship. The term sequentia denotes a textual and musical form based on repetition of melodic lines. One of the first scholarly definitions of “bezstrochen” has been proposed by the author of this article, one that is based on an 18th century manuscript. The term bezstrochen connotes the principle of interpretation of church singing which allows to “fit” a poetical text of different length into the limited space of particular melodic lines. In the article, the regularities of the indicated principles are analyzed based on examples of the European (the sequences Rex Caeli and P(C) langant, filii, plorationa uno) and the Russian traditions of church singing (the bezstrochen in the podobens Yegda ot dreva [When from the Tree] of the 2nd glas and V tretii den' voskresl [You Arose on the Third Day] of the 6th glas). The identicalness of the compositional structures of the church chants confirms the commonality of the church singing traditions in singing na podoben and also makes it possible to assert about a historical evolution of the practice of church singing from a minimal level of melodization to the highest level of chant singing.

Keywords: Western European art of chant singing, Russian art of chant singing, singing na podoben, sedmichnyi chant, sequentia, bezstrochen