Liturgical Musicology in Belarus: Pro et Contra

Abstract

The article presents the field of musicological research, which was designated as “liturgical musicology” in the famous monograph by Ivan Gardner Liturgical Singing of the Russian Orthodox Church. The author provides various variants of the name of the object of study of liturgical musicology and emphasizes the development of research-related interest in the music of the Orthodox Church in its different regions. In a broad sense, “liturgical musicology” signifies musicological research in the field of the liturgical (church) chanting practice and liturgical (church) singing. In a narrow sense, this definition is interpreted as musicology the object of study of which is formed by musically sounded out (chanted) church (liturgical) canonical texts. The article presents an interpretation of the concept of “liturgical musicology” as a method of research, and also describes the operations of its application. Among the large number of research works by scholars in Russia and other countries, liturgical musicology is most vividly represented by the study of Ivan Gardner and the collective works of The Knight of Cantorial Ministry, Father Matthew (Mormyl) and Archpriest Michael Fortunato. Spiritual Testament. The article examines a number of research works devoted to the study of the Belarusian liturgical singing practice of the Orthodox Christian tradition and presents a retrospective analysis of the development of Belarusian liturgical musicology. Russian and Soviet researchers laid the foundation of Belarusian liturgical musicology in the 19th and 20th centuries. They systematized the available historical and archaeological information about church singing in the Kiev Church Metropolis and provided characterization to Belarusian (Lithuanian) church music manuscripts. Present-day Belarusian scholars have reconstructed the history of the development of the national liturgical singing practice formed on the basis of the intonational reinterpretation of the Byzantine, folksong, Polish-Latin and Russian traditions; they have demonstrated its intonational independence and ethnic identity which is determined by the peculiarities of pronunciation of the consonants and the prosody of the sung text. The article provides characterization to the regional peculiarities of the liturgical singing practice and its influence on the formation of personality and examines the individual stylistic features of the musical work of cantorial and church composers which contribute to the diversity of the aural element of church worship. The author analyzes the works of Belarusian scholars in the context of the liturgical musicological method of research.