Ecumenism in the Music of Russian Composers of the Late 20th Century
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Abstract
The art of music at in the late 20th century turns to integration
of various traditions, including religious ones. Ecumenism, the
unification of different religious cultures in the music of one
composer, becomes a characteristic mark of contemporary art.
The author of the article turns to the music of composers Alfred
Schnittke, Edison Denisov and Sofia Gubaidulina, who managed
to combine in their musical outputs the experience of worldviews
of the Christian culture.
Thus, the chief conception of Schnittke’s Fourth Symphony
is the coexistence and the integration of various confessions: on
the level of musical depiction, the composer turns to stylization
of the cult music of various faiths: Orthodox Christian, Catholic,
Protestant church and Jewish synagogue singing.
The interpolation of various language forms in Denisov’s
Requiem symbolizes the supra-national level of poetical
generalizations. The integration of various Catholic and Orthodox
Christian genres in the Oratorio “The Story of the Life and Death
of Our Lord Jesus Christ” presents a manifestation of “universal
openness” of sacred culture.
Upon choosing religious subject matter, Gubaidulina
turns to those types that are common to all the denominations
of Christianity, Eastern and Western: prayer to God upon the
face of death, visions of apocalypse, glorifying the Creator, etc.
Incorporating stylizations of early church music (for instance,
in the “Seven Last Words of Christ”), Gubaidulina achieves a
musical color which is simultaneously reminiscent of Byzantine,
Gregorian and the early Russian Znamenny chant.
Ecumenism in the music of contemporary composers on
sacred themes not only stipulates the stylistic openness of musical
rendition, but also discernibly broadens our conceptions of the
unity of the universe and human culture. Thereby, the heuristic
significance of music is raised onto a higher level.
Keywords: ecumenism, the sacred subject matter in the
music of Schnittke, Denisov and Gubaidulina
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