CHRISTMAS СANON : PRESERVATION OF THE EDITION OF THE CHURCH SLAVONIC CHANT TEXTS OF THE 16TH–20TH CENTURIES

Abstract

This article represents a chant Church Slavonict texts of Christmas сanons. It was reveal that the Ukrainian music manuscripts has preserving translations of byzantine hymnography texts from Kyievan Rus time (12th–19th cent.). Instead from the 2nd half of the 18th century into Old music print was entered Patriarch Nikon’s translation (in Moscow). This translation had the linguistic changes. It has influenced also in music text of chant. This music differences is represented in this article. An attempt to compare these translations has shown that the new edition has linguistic changes caused, on the one hand, by Greek texts and, on the other, by adaptations to the northern variant of the Church Slavonic language. This somehow influenced the change in the musical text of the songs. These differences are considered in the article. Melodic changes are related to the semantic transmission of the liturgical word, and Ukrainian sources more accurately convey its meaning. It was also found that the text in the sung sources had variants of individual words, because in the older translation from Greek texts there was a preservation of the metrics of songs. In modern church singing practice, the first canon is widespread and translated into several editions. Nevertheless, the melody of these songs needs to be returned to the performer – a church singer, because it has been replaced by recited singing. Therefore, the task of the article was to consider the musical editions that have been preserved in handwritten and old printed books to compare them and convey to the modern church. The objectives of this study is to return Church Slavоnic chant of ukrainian redaction in modern practice of Ukrainian Orthodox and Uniate Churches. And this is basis for saving and transmision of church chant by ukrainian heritage.