PhD in Philology, Assistant Professor at the Chair of Old Russian Singing Art of the N. Rimsky-Korsakov State Conserva­tory in Saint Petersburg. Egorova received a PhD from the Saint Petersburg State University in 1996. She is the author of a monograph, four textbooks and a num­ber of articles. Her academic interests are focused on the history of Old Russian literature, the rhetoric and pragmatics of medieval texts, the Slavonic-Russian translations of Byzantine patristics, Byz­antine and Russian hagiography, the prosody of the Eastern Christian liturgi­cal literature and the monastic culture of Ancient Russia.
MUSICAL HIEROTOPY IN THE MEDIEVAL CULTURE: ZNAMENNY CHANT AND SACRED SPACES
This presentation is dedicated to the phenomenon of musical hierotopy, which is considered an important element in the medieval liturgical tradition. The term “hierotopy” was introduced into scholarly circulation by A. Lidov who sug­gested that a special practice existed in medieval art related to sacred spaces. Properly speaking, hierotopy was a me­dieval art of creating spatial images, the symbolism of which was strengthened by a liturgical context. These spatial images involved different components such as the interior space of the temple, icons, liturgical clothes, lighting effects, ritual actions, music, etc.
The analysis of recent research shows that the problem of the hierotopical sig­nificance of Old Russian church singing has not yet been presented in contem­porary medieval studies. Our study is based on Russian notated manuscripts of the XVI-XVII centuries and intends to answer the following questions: What role did the artistic devices of ancient Russian monody have in creating the spatial images? What are the various lev­els of interaction between the musical and verbal structures of the znamenny chants? How can different nuances of musical intonation, rhythm, contrasts, and melodic resemblance participate in the formation of sacred spaces?
In this context it is interesting to consider some Old Russian chants in a certain as­pect. One of the most significant parts of the interior space of temples is the tomb of a Saint. The richly decorated shrine of a venerated person, whether a hierarch (f. e. St. Peter of Moscow) or a monk, the founder of the monastery (as St. Kyrill Be­lojezerskyj or Sergyj of Radonezh) or even a holy fool (like St. Basil the Blessed), be­came a source of miracles, which were glorified in numerous texts in hymnog­raphy. The authors of this presentation demonstrate how znamenny chant, record­ed in authentic medieval codices, was used by Russian ancient composers as an instrument of hermeneutics and at the same as an important device of Hierotopy.