Motifs of the Twelve Great Feasts in Znamenny Chants

Abstract

The subject of this article is the stichera of the chant book of Twelve Great Feasts and the principles of arrangement of stichera therein. The object is the musical and poetic compositions of festive stichera. The research material contains manuscripts of the XVII – early XVIII centuries from the collections of the Russian National Library, Russian State Library, Library of the Academy of Sciences, and State Historical Museum. The study employs the methods of musical analysis, linguistics and literary studies. The author dwells on the poetic and musical-imagery motifs present in the stichera of the Twelve Great Feasts. Special attention is given to the literary techniques used in the text and chanting of stichera. The main conclusion lies in establishment of the pattern in using poetic and musical techniques in the composition of stichera. The novelty of this research consists is in determination of the types of composition of stichera of the Twelve Great Feasts depending on the poetic and musical-imagery motifs contained therein: mono-motional, multi-motional, and composition with elements of other genres. All three types of composition manifest on the level of single chant, micro-cycle of stichera, festive stichera, and stichera of the book as a whole in the poetic text and chant. This article is firs to conduct classification of festive stichera based on the use of elements of non-changing liturgical genres in the poetic stichera texts. The stichera are divided into doctrinal, homiletic, and scriptural compositions. The revealed compositional patterns in the stichera of Twelve Great Feasts are an important stage in further research of festive stichera.