St. Petersburg Court Chant and the Tradition of Eastern Slavic Church Singing
Ortodoksi.netista
St. Petersburg Court Chant and the Tradition of Eastern Slavic Church Singing (dissertation)
Public examination of a doctoral dissertation in the field of Musicology
Doctoral candidate: Lic. Phil. Jopi Harri
Date and venue: 28.1.2012, University of Turku, Turku, Finland
The Eastern Orthodox liturgical chant repertory known as the St. Petersburg Court Chant emerged within the Imperial Court of Russia by the 19th century, during which it was published in a small number of editions. The chant spread eventually throughout the Russian Empire as well as abroad, and became a de facto standard for the common church music of mainstream Russian Orthodoxy in Russia and countries that were part of the Empire, such as Finland, Estonia, and Poland. Via emigration, Court Chant even found its way to West Europe, North America, and elsewhere.
The current study is the first dedicated work to examine in detail the composition and essence of Court Chant, and the actual reasons behind its prevalence. This is carried out by means of a reconsideration of historical documents as well as by analytical comparisons of the music with a wide range of other chant repertories of the Eastern Slavic tradition, including the square-note chant books published by the Holy Synod of the Russian Church, Russian vernacular chant sources from dioceses and monasteries, Old Rite chant books, and Ukrainian chant sources, many of which have not been described in previous literature.
The study includes an updated general history of Eastern Slavic church singing, a presentation of the liturgical system from the viewpoint of church music, an introduction to the musical notations that are used in the chant sources, a typology of chant books, and observations on the pitch organization and traditional harmony of Eastern Slavic chant.
The book will be of particular interest to chant scholars, church musicians, music historians, and all researchers concerned with computer-assisted statistical methods of music analysis.
Annales Universitatis Turkuensis B 340
ISBN 978-951-29-4863-5 (PRINT)
ISBN 978-951-29-4864-2 (PDF)
ISSN 0082-6987
(-> In Finnish)