Artistic Merit Research Articles

Alexander Maksimovich Kolchin as a Church Artist of the Classical Era

New Age church art is one of the most dynamically developing areas of contemporary Russian art history. The constant process of reconstruction and restoration of churches requires a scientific approach and documentary substantiation. The artistic merits of church art in the Classical era are highly appreciated by specialists, but biographies of masters of mural painting and iconography are rarely published and are little known. The study of biographies and works of painters who devoted themselves entirely to temple decoration is important for compiling an objective picture of Russian culture of the 19th century.Alexander Maximovich Kolchin (1812-1866) was born and grew up in Yaroslavl, was on the staff of the bishop’s house masters, received the title of a non-class artist at the Imperial Academy of Arts (Academy of Arts) in St. Petersburg, worked in six rural and several urban churches in Yaroslavl province, renewed murals in Vologda and painted a new church in Kashin, Tver province. In this article for the first time all available information about the painter, scattered in different editions, is brought together; new archival documents are published and the artist’s work is analyzed in the context of classicism stylistics. Documents from the personal file of A.M. Kolchin from the Russian State Historical Archive are introduced into the scientific turnover, which inform that the master painted portraits from life, the whereabouts of which are still unknown. Although there are few surviving works by A.M. Kolchin, they demonstrate the high skill of the painter, which was documented by the exacting council of the Academy of Arts in 1853. A.M. Kolchin was distinguished by his knowledge of Old Russian sources of church art and full awareness of its theological and liturgical meaning; his fluent mastery of the basics of academic drawing and masterly ability to combine mural painting with architectural forms; a wide range of subject compositions and depictions of individual figures.The article allows to expand the corpus of information about the artist and his works, and this publication will serve as a basis for further research.

Racism on Trial in U.S. Symphony Orchestras

Abstract This essay examines how racial discrimination operates under the surface and through the guise of preserving musical excellence, as exemplified through the 1969 lawsuit filed by double bassist Arthur Davis and cellist Earl Madison charging the New York Philharmonic with racial discrimination in hiring practices. Analyzing the narratives that emerged during the 1969 hearings around artistic merit, racial discrimination, and screened auditions, I argue that the New York Philharmonic weaponized musical excellence as a pure entity abstracted from race and other social categories in order to claim that its sanctity required protection from societal charges of discrimination. Notably, these same legal arguments were used in a subsequent case in which timpanist Elayne Jones charged the San Francisco Symphony with discrimination on the basis of race and sex following her tenure denial in 1974. Placing these two cases in conversation not only illuminates the tenacity and power of discriminatory ideas and practices in U.S. orchestras, but it also demonstrates how the experience of fighting legal battles reverberated personally and professionally for Black classical musicians. These lawsuits exacted a significant toll on Davis, Madison, and Jones, each of whom was sacrificed at the altar of change that, decades later, has yet to come.

Education of mercy as a traditional Russian value based on a modern teenage book

Introduction. The problem of studying ways and means of educating the younger generation of high moral ideals is an acutely urgent task of modern science, since it is a response to the challenges of the time, laid down in the basis of state policy to preserve and strengthen traditional Russian spiritual and moral values. The purpose of the article is to present the results of a study of the educational impact of a modern children's and youth book on the example of Elena Mamontova's novella "The White Owl" on understanding and strengthening such a traditional Russian spiritual and moral value as mercy. Materials and methods. The tools for socio-pedagogical research were 26 children's books – winners of literary prizes over the past ten years, from 2013 to 2023, and presented on official websites. Among them, the books most in demand by the children's readership were highlighted. The selection was carried out using the methods of analyzing readers' reviews, readers' forms of children's libraries and literary analysis of the ideological and artistic merits of the works. Based on the ideological and substantive criterion, the expert evaluation method selected E. Mamontova's novel "The White Owl" as having a spiritual and moral educational potential. Results. The author summarized the results of the experimental study. The subjects, 22 students of the 7th grade, teenagers of 13-14 years old, first independently, and then together with the teacher discussed traditional Russian values, primarily charity. After the initial independent reading of the book, 82% were able to understand the main idea of the work – the importance of mercy, which indicates the accessibility of the ideological and artistic system of the teenage book to readers. At the same time, special work in the lesson deepened and enriched the students' ideas about mercy: 100% realized the concept of mercy not just as a synonym for kindness, but as the ability to forgive out of compassion, humanity, and show leniency. 60% of the subjects somehow compare themselves with the characters of the story, noting a similar experience in their lives, which indicates a meaningful reading. In addition, some young readers, after special work with the book, were able to go beyond the specific situation and see the problem of mercy in a broad life perspective, talking about the fate of future generations. Conclusion. On an experimental basis, a conclusion is formulated about modern adolescent literature as an important resource for the spiritual development of the younger generation and the strengthening of its national identity. The conclusion is confirmed by the analysis of students' feedback on E. Mamontova's story "The White Owl", which contains moral lessons that allow preserving Russian national identity and help to educate a spiritually developed personality of a teenager.

Copyright Protection of Appropriated Art: Free Use or Transformation of a Pre-Existing Work?

Appropriative art, i.e., the result of deliberate processing of someone else’s work or part of it, carried out in order to demonstrate one’s own creatively independent artistic declaration, de lege lata falls under the category of a derivative work. Neither Russian law nor foreign legal regulations establish a special exemption from the exclusive right, similar to the exemption applied to works in the genre of parody or caricature, the creation and use of which is considered as a case of free use of the original work. Analysis of foreign judicial practice shows that in the absence of such an exemption, the only remedy against the claim of the copyright holder is a reference to the parodic nature of the result of processing. Meanwhile, courts are reluctant to extend the regime of parody to the appropriative art. American copyright law forms an exception that allows the court to use the transformative test within the framework of the fair use doctrine. According to the test, the use is considered fair if the author, as a result of processing pre-existing work, transformed it into his own artistic statement and (or) his own aesthetics. However, this approach has significant drawbacks, in particular, it directly forces the court to evaluate the artistic merits and significance of a derivative work. Thus, unlike parody, appropriation as an established and recognized art practice has not yet found a decent place within the framework of the institution of free use of the work.

“Painting the Woods into Existence”: Australian Fiction on the Value of the Arts

ABSTRACT This article analyses two works of contemporary Australian fiction—Wayne Macauley’s Caravan Story and Julie Koh’s “Inquiry Regarding the Recent Goings-On in the Woods”—and places their depictions of artists under attack in the context of Australian cultural policy history. Despite the surreal hyperviolence contained in these stories, their concerns neatly align with the academic criticisms of cultural policy in their respective eras. Caravan Story, published at the end of the John Howard era, shows how a focus on economic return in lieu of artistic merit can erode the value artists place on themselves and their work. “Inquiry”, published soon after Minister for the Arts George Brandis had significantly reduced available arts funding, represents the drastic effect the funding cuts had on artists and the passionate community response. The texts are further connected by their optimistic endings, contextualised here through an exploration of the artists’ biographies and their struggles to push back against cultural demands of economic success. This article shows how these experimental works of fiction make the case for the intrinsic value of the arts through narratives that reject the economic imperative and in their very constitution as creative works.

On Seeing the Price of Keats’s Bread: or John Bull Buying the Elgin Marbles in a Time of Climate Crisis, 1816

This article situates John Keats’s 1817 sonnet ‘On Seeing the Elgin Marbles’ within the context of 1816–1819’s climate catastrophe and subsistence crisis. Countering received readings of Keats’s sonnet as about artistic vocation; I argue that it is more about the opportunity cost of expending public funds on ancient art during a climate-exacerbated economic crisis. This reading emerges by placing the poem in dialogue with a political cartoon by George Cruikshank, ‘ The Elgin Marbles! or John Bull buying stones at the time his numerous family want bread!!’ that critiques the British Government’s purchase of the Parthenon sculptures in these terms. I contend that both sonnet and cartoon stage the purchase of the sculptures not in terms of their artistic merits, but instead in terms of the opportunity cost of public relief and the potential ‘waste’ status of art in the face of a depressed labour market and skyrocketing grain prices.

Controversy as Currency: An Investigation into the Economy and Politics of Literary Prizes

Literary prizes, while providing legitimacy of artistic excellence to authors, are delicately poised in modern prize culture. They must maintain a balance between the artistic merit of literature and the health of the economic capital of the publishing industry and sponsors. This paper meticulously examines the myriad proliferation of literary prizes and the convergence of its intricacies— the process of nomination and selection, sponsorships, promotion, media coverage of the award ceremony, celebratory nature of the occasion, the climactic drama of acceptance speech, and controversy— to characterize the centrality of economic force at play. It reflects the dependency of art form’s flourishing and sustenance on the logic of the economic marketplace. Through a close analysis of the controversial selection of certain authors and particular books, the paper looks at the epiphenomena of prestigious literary prizes to demonstrate a classic working of the neoliberal market outcome of controversy as publicity/currency, which not only brings about manufacturing of aura for controversial writers as celebrities but simultaneously radiates its effect on the demand value of their literary products and investing participants. It concludes that centrifugal dissemination and consumption of mediatised controversy events across national and international borders generates a centripetal concentration of socio-economic capital for writers, publishers and sponsors.

Literature and art as political discourse: adapting The White-Haired Girl in the communist context of China

ABSTRACT It is not only political actors but also the contexts, which make a text political discourse. This nuanced understanding turns political functions and implications into defining features of political discourse. Using the Chinese revolutionary work The White-Haired Girl as a case study, this paper argues that the constant adaptations of the work, in its various literary and artistic forms, are intrinsically political. Born out of a folktale, the work first assumed the form of literary non-fiction in 1940. Aligning with Chinese Communist Party’s evolving political agendas in the next few decades, The White-Haired Girl migrated across medial borders to take the form of a movie in the 1950s and a ballet in the 1960s. The highly ideological adaptations transformed the work into political discourse, with its life sustained not primarily by artistic merits but by political functions. The adaptation history of The White-Haired Girl reveals that intersemiotic translations of a work tend to complement their source text(s), and they also bear (intertextual) traces of their sociohistorical contexts.

Critical Readings in Najeeb Mahfouz’s The Cairo Trilogy: A Masterpiece of Arabic Literature

This research article explores the literary masterpiece of Egyptian author Najeeb Mahfouz, with a special focus on his renowned Cairo Trilogy. The aims of the research are to examine the artistic merits and cultural significance of Mahfouz's work within the realm of English literature. The objectives include analyzing the thematic elements, character development, and narrative structure employed by Mahfouz in the Cairo Trilogy. To achieve these aims and objectives, a comprehensive analysis of Mahfouz's trilogy was conducted, incorporating literary criticism, historical context, and textual analysis. Primary and secondary sources were consulted to gather relevant information and insights. The results of the research reveal the remarkable depth and richness of Mahfouz's writing, demonstrating his mastery of storytelling and his ability to capture the social, political, and cultural complexities of the 20th-century Egypt. The thematic exploration of love, family, tradition, and societal change resonates strongly with readers across cultures and time periods. In conclusion, Najeeb Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy stands as an exceptional work of Arabic literature, blending captivating storytelling with profound insights into human nature and the challenges of societal transformation. The analysis of this masterpiece contributes to a deeper understanding of Mahfouz's impact as a literary figure and highlights the enduring relevance of his literature in the global literary canon.

Some problems of research of the Yuan Dynasty copper red enamel porcelain (you’li-hong)

In the scholarly exploration of Chinese ceramic history, the Yuan Dynasty emerges as a pivotal era, distinguished by its remarkable advancements in porcelain artistry, culminating in the mastery of porcelain craft. This period is notably marked by the emergence and refinement of underglaze red porcelain, a quintessential embodiment of Yuan ceramic excellence. The inception of underglaze red porcelain, a technique entailing the application of copper-containing colorant to porcelain before overlaying it with a transparent glaze and firing at temperatures exceeding 1350°C in a reducing kiln atmosphere, is historically attributed to the Yuan Dynasty. This technique, which flourished subsequently during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, represents a significant evolution in ceramic art. Each Chinese dynasty contributed uniquely to the ceramic arts, with the Yuan Dynasty particularly enhancing the underglaze red porcelain technique during its middle and late periods, as evidenced by the sophisticated coloration in surviving artifacts. This study aims to thoroughly examine the underglaze red porcelain of the Yuan Dynasty, highlighting its artistic uniqueness and exceptional craftsmanship. The paper commences with an overview of the Yuan Dynasty’s historical context—its political, economic, and cultural landscape—setting the stage for a deeper understanding of the underglaze red porcelain’s development. This is followed by an exploration of the porcelain’s creation process, including material selection and firing methods, to underscore the intricacies of its craftsmanship. Furthermore, a detailed analysis of the artistic and decorative elements of the underglaze red porcelain will be undertaken, focusing on aspects such as form, design motifs, and glaze hues, to unpack its stylistic and aesthetic dimensions. The culmination of this paper will be an evaluation of the historical significance and artistic merit of the Yuan Dynasty’s underglaze red porcelain, offering insights into its enduring legacy and influence on subsequent ceramic traditions. Through this comprehensive investigation, the study not only enriches our understanding of the Yuan Dynasty’s ceramic artistry but also underscores the importance of preserving and promoting traditional Chinese ceramic heritage. Additionally, it provides a foundation for further scholarly inquiry and conservation efforts in the realm of ancient Chinese ceramics.

Literacy through Composition Techniques in the Chinese Yan Huang Style of Composer Bao Yuankai

Music composition, particularly within the Chinese Yan Huang style, holds significance for its artistic merit and potential to enhance literacy development and foster cultural appreciation. This study delves into the literacy composition techniques employed by composer Bao Yuankai within the Chinese Yan Huang style, focusing on the piece “Going to Jiangzhou.” The primary objective is to analyze the literacy composition techniques in the Chinese Yan Huang style of composer Bao Yuankai. Through a multidimensional approach integrating insights from music education, cultural studies, and literacy development, the study examines instrumentation, melody, harmony, and cultural symbolism in Yuankai’s compositions. Three key informants, including music scholars, professional musicians, and music educators, provide diverse perspectives on Yuankai’s works. Qualitative data analysis methods are employed to analyze insights gathered from interviews and observations. Findings reveal Yuankai’s adept use of traditional Chinese elements alongside modern composition techniques, resulting in compositions that resonate with audiences worldwide. Suggestions include incorporating culturally relevant content into music education curricula to enhance student’s literacy skills and cultural awareness.

Mahalia Jacksonin musiikin ja hänen gospellaulutyylinsä saapuminen Suomeen 1950–1960 luvuilla

Mahalia Jackson (1911-1972), “The World’s Greatest Gospel Singer”, broke path for the worldwide popularity of African American gospel music. Her European concert tours never reached Finland, but since the 1950s, Finnish audiences have been able to listen to her music via recordings, radio, film and other media. This article explores the ways in which Jackson’s music came to Finland in the 1950s and 1960s. Furthermore, the article shows how the early marketing of her records and music critics’ excited reception of her gospel vocal expression sought to shape local audiences’ listening experiences and appreciation for the artistic merit of her music. This article is based on a study of various sources including advertisements, music reviews, correspondence and other archival materials, recordings, Jackson’s performance at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival and the film Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1959). This article shows that when Mahalia Jackson’s music came to Finland, her gospel vocal expression was recognized for its powerful spirituality and emotional impact on listeners. Yet the ways in which her music was presented to Finnish audiences was often mystifying, decontextualized and guided by the interests of music industry actors. This limited the ability of local listeners to understand the cultural and historical meanings of her gospel vocal expression. At the same time, however, the enthusiasm and admiration demonstrated by music critics paved the way for the enduring influence of Mahalia Jackson’s music in Finland.

Poetological Essay by Yuri Linnik «Somnambulistic»
 about the Wreath of Sonnets by Maximilian Voloshin «Lunaria»
 (an Attempt at an Adequate Interpretation)

Yuri Linnik's talent harmoniously combined a deep philosophical understanding of the universe with the virtuosity of its poetic embodiment in the most complex genre-strophic form of sonnet associations. He created a fantastic number of wreaths of sonnets impeccable in their ideological and artistic merits – 651. The poet
 used to publish his works accompanied by original author's comments written in the stylistic manner of Socrates, Nietzsche and Viktor Shklovsky. A special group of his works are poetological essays, which also include conceptual reflections on two pioneer wreaths of Maximilian Voloshin's sonnets «Corona Astralis» and «Lunaria», consonant with their main pathos of a significant part of his own stephanism. One of them is presented in this publication with adequate comments. Another, dedicated to
 «Corona Astralis», as we hope, will be published by our Kazakh colleagues.

Programmatic Cycles for Piano in the Creative Heritage of Wang Lisan

This article is an anniversary dedication to one of the most signifi cant Chinese composers, Wang Lisan (1933–2013). Along with Ding Shande, Wang Jianzhong, Chu Wanghua, Zhao Xiaosheng, he can be called a classic of Chinese music of the 20th century. The main part of the composer’s creative achievements is associated with the piano art. A special sign of recognition of the artistic merits of his compositions was their inclusion in the mandatory repertoire of the All-China Qualifying Music Exam confi rming the highest levels. The main objective of the article is to determine the specifi cs of the composer’s interpretation of the programmatic cycle, to identify the fi gurative and content-related features of genre samples and the principles of cycle formation that are important for the composer.

Раннее творчество М. Горького в издательских стратегиях социал-демократов

The paper reconstructs the publishing history of early short novels by Maxim Gorky, which eventually became his first collection of works. Consideration is given to the actions of figures from the social democratic movement, who were drawn to Gorky’s works due to their artistic merits as well as their inherent potential for protest. It was a common practice for adherents of social democratic ideas to maintain constant contact and engage in patronage, frequently through correspondence. Following the correspondence recommendations, Gorky encountered V. G. Korolenko, who exhibited unwavering support and a willingness to discuss and promote the manuscripts of the young author and participate in their publication from 1893 to 1895. From 1898 to 1901, Gorky was under the patronage of V. A. Posse, who spearheaded the publication of the collected works of the provincial author in the capital. Despite the strategic risk involved, posse managed to establish the publishing house of Dorovatovsky and Charushnikov in St. Petersburg. In 1898, this publishing house released the first two volumes of Gorky’s “Essays and Stories” and in 1899, the third volume appeared and the first two were reprinted. The reconstruction of the publishing history of Gorky’s works made it possible to qualify the organizational and publishing intentions of social democrats as publishing strategies to create and promote publications that are important ideologically for a particular social group. In artistic book publishing, it was crucial to prioritize ideological strategies that would appeal to a broad audience.

«АЭЛИТА» ЯКОВА ПРОТАЗАНОВА: МАРС КАК ЧАСТЬ БЕССОЗНАТЕЛЬНОГО ГЕРОЯ-ИНТЕЛЛИГЕНТА 1920-х

The article delves into Yakov Protazanov’s film Aelita (1924), marking its 100th anniversary. It aims to bring to light the nuances of the film, which were overlooked within Soviet film studies, while also highlighting the key differences between Alexei Tolstoy’s original novel and its cinematic adaptation. The Martian storyline, reimagined as the fantastical realm of engineer Mstislav Los by the screenwriters, can be interpreted as the subconscious of the intellectual hero of the 1920s in order to explore its symbolic meaning. The Martian landscape not only embodies governmental conservatism, but, through its constructivist style, symbolizes modernity, a technologically advanced civilization, as well as reflects concerns that come not from the past, but are projected towards the future. The paper analyzes the interplay between the fears and dreams of the intellectual protagonist, whose values were shaped before the 1917 revolution. Unlike his literary counterpart, the screen image of Los has changed: in the film, the engineer is an active man, an adventurer, a person of passion. The ethereal Aelita, the sovereign of Mars, is juxtaposed to Los’ wife, Natasha, a Soviet bureaucrat. While Natasha embodies the democratic ethos of an energetic Soviet woman, Aelita personifies aristocratic ideals. The emotional openness, energetic movements and tactile interactions, and active work and social contacts—the Soviet anthropological ideal—stand in contrast to the personal convictions of Los, who aestheticizes emotional restraint, interpersonal detachment, and social elitism. The article explores the motifs common to the Moscow and Martian storylines: the yearning for interplanetary connections, the need to transcend the usual mode of life in pursuit of something new, different, unattainable, and the willingness to make sacrifices for loftier objectives. In summary, the screenwriters have radically transformed the world of Tolstoy’s novel, which manifests the impotence of an individual in the face of revolutionary turmoil and emotional depression over the loss of a beloved one. Protazanov’s film underscores the importance of active participation of not only the Red Army soldier (Gusev), but also the intellectual (Los). While aligning with certain tenets of Soviet ideology, the film also contains subtexts that challenge it. Such is the (imaginary) revolution on Mars, which turns out to be driven not by a collective awakening among the working people of Mars, but rather by the individualistic ambitions of two Earthly men: the inertia of soldier Gusev’s ardor and the jealousy of intellectual Los, his detachment from with his Soviet wife and his yearning for emotional and erotic solace with a woman of royal lineage. The article surveys critical and theoretical analyses (both domestic and international) on Aelita, revealing motifs resonant with the Western European cinematic trends of the 1920s and of subsequent decades, from auteur (Robert Wiene, Fritz Lang, Andrei Tarkovsky) to popular science fiction films and series of the early 21st century (Cloud Atlas, Dune, Foundation, etc.). This reconfirms the scale of Protazanov’s Aelita, its predictive potential and artistic merit within the tapestry of global cinema.

Faience Art Item’s Stylistic Analysis in the Context of Its Complex Investigation (As Exemplified by a 19th Century Tureen)

Awareness of the importance of studying faience art industry of the 19th century reveals itself in the increasing researchers’ attention to this material. In this regard, a faience tureen with overglaze monochrome painting applied by transfer printing technique produced by the Creil factory (France) aroused interest. Stylistic analysis and the search for analogues allowed to confirm production place and time of the item, to assess its artistic merits, to identify the pictorial sources of its decoration, and to analyze features of transferring a two-dimensional image to a three-dimensional ceramic surface using the transfer printing technique. Revealing the sources of pictorial decoration on ceramic objects is recognized as a valuable result of art history research, since the question of relationship between pictorial motifs on ceramic art items and contemporary graphics is not elaborated enough both in Russian and foreign art history. For the same reason, investigation on the issues of adapting a two-dimensional original image to a curved shape, i. e. of coordinating the shape and decoration of a ceramic item, are also valuable: these aspects are also presented extremely scarcely in art historical studies. Stylistic analysis is not sufficient very often for attributing ceramic art objects; therefore, other research methods such as archival heuristics and expertise using natural science methods are often involved for this purpose. Both archival documents and production casts and molds of the Creil factory have been lost. The shape and size of the object are difficult for instrumental study. Under such conditions, stylistic analysis turns out to be the leading method for studying items of the kind. Realizing all the limitations of this method, we demonstrate its capabilities where the use of others is significantly difficult or impossible.

Intellectual Property Piracy and the Intersectionality of Artistic Merit, Gender, and Race

Intellectual Property Piracy and the Intersectionality of Artistic Merit, Gender, and Race

Сосуды с эпиграфическими и псевдо­эпиграфическими надписями с территории Царевского городища

Research objectives: To study 14th century vessels with epigraphic and pseudo-epigraphic inscriptions. Research materials: Ceramic vessels kept in the Archaeological Museum of Kazan Federal University. Results and novelty of the research: In the 1960s, large-scale archaeological work was carried out on the archaeological sit of Tsarevskoye settlement by the Volga Archaeological Expedition led by G.A. Fedorov-Davydov. A group from Kazan State University (led by I.S. Weiner) also took part in the the expedition. As a result, a large layer of material sources was obtained within which, the most massive example of material was ceramics. To date, archeological objects discovered during the excavations of the Tsarevskoye settlement in 1961–1968 are in the funds of the Archaeological Museum of the Kazan (Volga Region) Federal University. In addition to the artistic merits of the ceramics of the Golden Horde era, these items have a special scientific source-study significance since, being obtained as a result of field research, they are stratified and provided with an archaeological context. As part of the study, five stonepaste-based glazed vessels, one Central Asian stamped jug, and one die for the manufacture of stamped dishes were considered as the main research subjects. Vessels with epigraphic inscriptions meet analogies among the materials of the Lower Volga and Central Asian sites. Thus, the article introduces new data obtained as a result of epigraphic, linguistic, and comparative analyses of the collection originating from the territory of the eastern suburb of Tsarevskoye settlement of the 14th century.

Фортепианный квинтет ор. 55 А. Г. Рубинштейна и его место в отечественной истории жанра

In the article examines the artistic concept of the piano quintet op. 55 in F major by A. G. Rubinstein, one of the little-studied pages of Russian chamber instrumental music of the 19th century. A comprehensive examination of the composition is given in the context of the composer’s creative biography and the national history of the genre, the formation of which significantly differed from the European path of quintet development. Based on a detailed analysis of the musical dramaturgy, the author formulates a position on the underrated artistic merits of the work and its stage significance for Russian musical culture. The innovation in the interpretation of the quintet is emphasized: the first in the history of Russian chamber instrumental music to turn to a large-scale four-movement cycle and its symphonization. The transformation of conflictive beginnings into a classical-romantic model of the genre is noted. The stylistic features of the quintet are identified that determine the romantic dominants of its artistic intent.