Veneration of the Holy Blessed Prince Alexander Nevsky in Russian Chants of the XVI–XVIII centuries. The Stylistic Features of Chants

Abstract

The article is devoted to the veneration and all-church glorification of the Holy Blessed Prince Alexander Nevsky, his great feats of arms, his highly spiritual and pious life, captured in hymns and divine services by Russian hymnographers and composers. The article provides a textual and comparative historical analysis of these hymns, including various types of Old Russian chants of the XVI–XVIII centuries — znamenny, demestvenny, strochny — with their monodic unison and polyphony. The article also traces the history of the development of the veneration of the Holy Prince Alexander, namely: the emergence in the XVIII century of new services and solemn partes concerts created in honor of the translation of the relics of St. Alexander from Vladimir to St. Petersburg. The novelty of the article lies in the study of various stylistic trends in the singing culture of Russia of those times and methods of notation of chants at the example of liturgical chants and concerts dedicated to St. Alexander. The research was based on chronicle monuments from archival manuscript collections of the Russian State Library, the State Historical Museum and the Russian State Archive of the Ancient Acts.