I. Dabayeva

Rachmaninov’s spiritual heritage in the national culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries

The article deals with the issues associated with the concert life and musicological interpretation of the spiritual compositions by S. V. Rachmaninov: the spiritual concerto «In Prayers to the Unsleeping Mother of God», «Liturgy», «All-Night Vigil». It is noted that in the pre-revolutionary period these works were presented in the concert programs of the Synodal Choir. An overview of the pre-revolutionary press leads the author to conclude that Rakhmaninov’s spiritual works were not in demand for other choirs because of the performing difficulties, the overcoming of which requires considerable technical preparing and a high level of professionalism. Noting the milestones in the performance of Rachmaninov’s spiritual works in subsequent periods, the author accentuates the problem of turning to them in the post-Soviet period by choirmasters and leading chamber choirs. The author considers the dynamics of the scientific interpretation of the spiritual heritage with the example of the concerto «In the Prayers of the Unsleeping Mother of God» and notes the following milestones: the mention of the performance and the brief description of the artistic properties of the work in the pre-revolutionary period; the absence of references to this work in the Soviet period; the desire for deep comprehension in the context of the evolution of the genre of a spiritual concerto and the concept of formation and development of a model of a classic-romantic concerto that was proposed in the post-Soviet period.

Key words

Rachmaninov, Russian sacred culture, sacred music, sacred concerto, concerto model, concert program.

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