Tatyana Genrikhovna Kazantseva,
Candidate of Art History, State Public Scientific and Technical Library of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Novosibirsk State Conservatory named by M.I. Glinka, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
From the Initial History of Field Research of the Liturgical-Singing Culture of the Old Believers of Altai (Based on Field Materials of Archaeographic Expeditions of the Institute of History, Philology and Philosophy of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1969)
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2024-2-16
The article introduces previously unpublished information into scientific circulation, reflecting the state of the tradition of liturgical and para-liturgical spiritual singing of the Old Believers of Altai in the late 60s of the last century. Materials were collected in the expeditions of Siberian archaeographers under the leadership of N.N. Pokrovsky and are representing by diary entries, as well as phonograms and their brief description. Field research was carried out in Barnaul and Biysk among the Old Believers of the Chasovennye Сommunity. The audio recordings were made from three older performers and represent texts of spiritual poems, samples of liturgical chanting and educational singing material. The diary entries contain information about the performers and books of chants in the personal libraries of the Old Believers, and the degree of their proficiency in the znamenny writing. The information about the Barnaul Chasovennye community is most fully presented: the ritual and liturgical context is described, information was received from the spiritual head of the community about the methods of teaching church singing, adopted at the beginning of the 20th century. The materials available to the researcher are fragmentary, but they make it possible to assess the tradition of spiritual singing of the Old Believers of the region in this period as fading. Only a few elderly male singers living in large cities were able to it professionally. At the same time, there are signs of the active existence of the tradition in the past: mastery of Znamenny calligraphy, the presence of a chorister school. Thus, the material collected by archaeographers is highly important for reconstructing the picture of the existence of the liturgical-singing culture of the Siberian Old Believers in the second half of the last century in the diversity of its regional and sub-confessional variants.
Publishing: 28/04/2024
The article has been received by the editor on 12/12/2023
How to cite: Kazantseva T.G. From the Initial History of Field Research of the Liturgical-Singing Culture of the Old Believers of Altai (Based on Field Materials of Archaeographic Expeditions of the Institute of History, Philology and Philosophy of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1969) // Historical Courier, 2024, No. 2 (34), pp. 228–236. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2024/ISTKURIER-2024-2-16.pdf]
The article was prepared according to the plan of research work of the State Public Scientific and Technical Library of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the project “Depository of Book Monuments of Siberia and the Far East: Identification, Digital Storage System and Access Organization for Research”, No. 122040600049-8.
Links: Issue 2 2024
Keywords: Old Believers of Altai; Siberian archeography; znamenny chant; liturgical singing; spiritual poems