The Phenomenon of Sacrality in Andrei Eshpai's "Liturgical" Symphony

Dunaevskaya Alla PhD in Art History Associate Professor, Department of Music Theory, M. M. Ippolitov-Ivanov State Music and Pedagogical Institute 109147, Russia, g. Moscow, ul. Marksistskaya, 36 novalyo@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

"There is no death beyond death.

Life follows life. Which one is unknown..."

(Andrei Eshpai)

It is impossible to imagine the compositional work of the modern era without mentioning the name Andrei Yakovlevich Eshpai, who brought his talent, sincerity, and depth of embodied themes to it. The composer was convinced that his work requires skill and will but must necessarily come from the heart: "To love, to burn, to feel and to hear is advice suitable for both performers and composers ^{[1; p.11]}.

The master’s vast legacy, which has absorbed the traditions of domestic and world art and the innovations of the present century, has always attracted and will attract the attention of researchers and listeners with the universality of thinking, the organicity of utterance, the scale of genre and style range, from songs and music to movies, jazz compositions, to choral and chamber, instrumental opuses, concerts, and symphonic scores.

The symphonic genre, as well as the genre of the instrumental concert, was a favorite for the master. He wrote nine symphonies, distinguished by a variety of stylistic solutions and the individuality of the genre "appearance." Among them are the symphonies dedicated to the memory of his father, Yakov Andreevich Eshpai (the Third and Eighth). The Fourth Symphony and ballet raised humanistic problems; the Fifth Symphony was created as a memorial to the memory of the Great Patriotic War, in which the composer participated, as the philosophical Ninth Symphony and the meditative Seventh. Eshpai said that he has been writing a single work all his life: "This work is our life ..." (from the conversation with the author of this article and Andrei Yakovlevich Eshpai). One of the parts of the master's creative life is the Sixth "Liturgical" Symphony, a unique composition whose artistic patterns are determined by the phenomenon of sacredness.

Sacredness (from the Latin sacer—dedicated, dedicated, sacred, holy), while maintaining a stable position in artistic practice, has been the object of study in various fields of science—philosophy, sociology, cultural studies, musicology, religious studies, philology. At the end of the twentieth century, the research interest in this phenomenon became particularly acute and intense, being conditioned by the processes of intensification of Christian values in public and cultural life, occurring after long oblivion: "The time of shifts, losses and confrontation in our society turned out to be a time of acquisition, rebirth, emancipation [...]. For many decades, the forgotten (and "clogged"), repressed (and banned) Orthodox artistic and musical tradition began to revive not gradually and locally, but violently and everywhere" ^{[2; p. 7]}.

In modern scientific works, the problem of the interdependence of sacredness and religion becomes urgent. Thus, I. V. Fedorova, having studied the etymology of the term, defines a circle of words that form a single semantic field with it, namely, "divine," "mysterious," "cathedral," and "spiritual." The researcher suggests considering sacredness in the humanities in the meaning of "belonging to the religious sphere of consciousness" ^{[3; p. 75]}. S. N. Vorobyova holds a similar point of view and considers the category of the sacred a constitutive property of the religious (Orthodox) worldview and points to its "involvement in the sacred, transcendent spiritual world" ^[4].

There is another—a synthetic—approach to the interpretation of sacredness. For example, N. I. Konovalova, using the expanded conceptual characteristics of this phenomenon, believes that the religious is only one of the hypostases of the sacred, along with, for example, the myth: "Sacredness can appear as an almighty God, as the souls of the dead, as an indefinite diffuse force, etc., and everything that seems to be a receptacle of this force it appears as sacred, at the same time dangerous and precious, fascinating" ^{[5; p. 20]}.

In A.V. Medvedev's work, attention is focused on the paradoxical situation that has developed in relation to sacredness: "Modern texts of various directions are full of it (the term "sacredness"—A.D.), it is equally organically included in poetically sublime and objectivist scientific works, and the range of contexts, various phrases in which the word "sacred" is present is truly limitless—from the holy object (mountain, stone, wood, etc.), to holy beauty, from the saint characterizing a human feeling or state (holy love, sacred duty, etc.), to holy grace" ^{[6; p. 12]}.

The scientist's conclusions that sacredness is a cultural phenomenon, and its scope is much broader—beyond religion, correlates with the modern paradigm of Russian musicology associated with the study of sacred compositions that are not liturgical and not intended for performance in the church but reflect the modern artistic consciousness with its desire for diverse and individual ways of embodying the spiritual A. B. Kovalev classifies such compositions as extra-temple music ^[7]; O. A. Urvantseva, as secular concert genres ^[8]; N. S. Gulyanitskaya refers to them as secular-sacred music, where "the sacred, as timeless and valuable, allows the artist should identify the spiritual dominants, and through the prism of these values, look at the Present Time" ^{[9; p. 159]}.

Among the stylistically and genre-diverse poles of secular-sacred compositions, a special role belongs to the symphony, which has revealed its space for sacred themes. The range of ways of interpreting the phenomenon under consideration in them is wide and diverse. Let's name only some works of the period: nova musica sacra (N. S. Gulyanitskaya), a chamber symphony with the chorus "Spiritual Verse" (1982), the cycle of symphonies "Rus departing" (1986–1996) by Y. Butsko, the Second Symphony "Saint Florian" (1982), the Fourth Symphony (1984) by A. Schnittke, "Stichera for the Millennium of the Baptism of Russia" (1987) by R. Shchedrin, "Svetozvony VI" ("Christ is Risen from the Dead") (1993) by V. Ulyanich, symphony concert "Old Russian Tales" based on poems by I. Bunin (1987) Dmitrieva, symphonic creativity of G. Ustvolskaya (The second symphony "True, Eternal Goodness" (1979), the Third "Jesus the Messiah, save us!" (1983), the Fourth "Prayer" (1985–1987), the Fifth "Amen" (1989–1990).

Eshpai's "Liturgical" Symphony (1988) originated as a creative project dedicated to the millennium of the Baptism of Rus: "This event attracted the attention of many artists and was reflected in their work. I'm one of them," the composer said. The huge inheritance we received from the era of early Christianity gives us endless material for the development of topics that concern people today as well as a thousand and two thousand years ago" ^{[1; p. 65]}.

The composition has an extraordinary genre-composition solution. The program name itself indicates the presence of genre diffuseness in its poetics, based on the interpenetration of signs of symphony and liturgy. It is noteworthy that the original idea of Esphai was based on the idea of creating a choral diptych a capella based on the communion "The Cup of Salvation to receive" and the text of the thirteenth chapter, The Epistles to the Corinthians of St. Paul, the Apostle. And only later does a symphonic work arise, where the spiritual word becomes a semantic core within a different genre, and the author's desire to change the stylistic specifics of the composition leads to the inevitable expansion of its linguistic space: "The search led to the fact," the composer said, "that I cannot imagine the chosen theme without involving the orchestra" (from a conversation with the composer).

Before the symphony performance, it is important that the Messages text is to be readin modern Russian. "After listening to the text," Esphai noted, "people understand more clearly what they are about to hear in Old Slavonic, they can better feel the ‘spirit of the symphony,’ which I called ‘Liturgical’" ^{[1; p. 65]}.

The one-part form of the composition includes an orchestral introduction and a choral section. Being in a state of end-to-end procedural and dynamic growth, in which its elements "grow into each other and germinate through each other" (P. A. Florensky), the form acquires a vector directed to the dramatic peak—liturgical images.

It is specific that the sacredness that determines the semantic "score" of the composition finds a dual realization here, close to the concept of duality (according to I. S. Stogniy), which in the studied discourse does not imply antinomies, but is aimed at understanding and combining various aspects of eternal universals, asserting not only the absoluteness and mystical inaccessibility of the divine but also revealing the Christian idea of the eternal immortality of the human soul.

Thus, in the orchestral introduction, the semantic perspective which the composer himself characterized with the words of G. Skovoroda, "the invisible prevails," language structures explicate the cosmological, transcendent dimensions of sacredness. The spatial coordinates of the text—depth, line, diagonal, symbolizing the immaterial, invisible world, form a three-dimensional, moving texture of varying degrees of density and "color" (P. A. Florensky). This is facilitated by the use of techniques of combining and alternating various writing techniques—sonorics, microchromatics, tonality, neomodality, limited aleatorics in combination with timbre dramaturgy—from minimalist sophistication associated with being in a moment of sound silence (the first section) to powerful sound concentration and extreme capture of space (the second section).

For example, in the first section, the softness of the phonism of the strings is combined with the cold "otherworldliness" of the piano and vibraphone and the gloomy detachment of the timbres of clarinets and bassoons, which, combined with the unhurried passage of time (the only tempo of the Andante, which tends to slow down at the end of the stanzas), muted dynamics forms a transparent sound fabric. Its significant characteristic is the detailed polygenicity, which is found in the stratification of timbre-textured layers, long horizontal projections of melodic and figurative thematic, harmonic "overflows," and chord pedals.

The text’s fret profile also contributes to achieving a state of gloomy mystery, which is represented here by neomodality associated with the use of horizontal and vertical projections of diatonic and chromatic frets. So, for example, in the introductory episode, the upper and lower layers of the texture are at first a little differentiated. They recreate a single phonically three-dimensional chord formant formed by polyinterval and polyrhythmic quarto-tritone structures in strings and piano, but already from c. 1, the rhythmically uniform, variable-accent flickering of the triad and quart figures of the harp on the continuum background of strings, marked by the fluctuation of diatonic colors e-moll; a acquires special audibility-moll; C-dur, F-dur.

The second section of the orchestral introduction is filled with chaotic energy, reminiscent of the universal play of the elements. Its textured plan has a different type of interaction: the texture acquires a co-orientation and is subject to the continuous build-up of sound masses. The movement of lines, which can be rhythmically and timbre individualized, folded into a vertical, or create a micropolyphonic mix, is determined by multi-layered, clearly articulated linear sound graphics that arise in conditions of total chromatization.

Let us refer to the climactic episode (c.17), which sounds like the apogee of chaos, accompanied by a complete mixing of the sound spectrum. The gamma-like movements of the eleven-string voices form an undifferentiated sonor-noise field, which is transformed at the peak of the climax (c. 25) into an expanded, uniformly pulsating dynamic sound canvas created on the basis of chromatic chord series.

The melodic beginning plays a special expressive role in creating the polygenicity of the texture of the orchestral introduction. It is represented by polyphonic micro-movements of motifs that create a sense of non-manifestation and mystery and by extended formations that permeate the musical fabric with their elements. Indicative in this regard are the episodes (c. 2, 3), in which the sound fabric seems to be "rocked" by ascending tone-semitone intonations of strings, turning into a flexible polymelodic construction of two flutes and a bassoon against the background of cluster pedals of violins. The improvisational lines of the duo's voices develop in an asymmetric mode from the initial second intonation, gradually expanding the range.

In the second section of the introduction, melodic turns acquire a deliberate formality. Such, for example, is the dark, graphically clear, sweeping theme of the bassoons and double basses of the episode (c.19), which over chanted on the textured foundation of the rehearsal ostinato of violas, amplified by harps, and turns out to be completely dependent on the mechanical dimension of rhythmics.

A kind of "marker" of sacredness is the temporal properties of a musical text, which determine the formation of a special timeless world/eternity, acting, in the words of M. B. Krasilnikova, as "a sign of transcendent being, as an attribute of the Absolute, immeasurable by time intervals" ^{[10; p. 7]}. Ancient philosophers believed that real-time should not be identified with eternity. In particular, according to Plotinus, eternity, being in various states, is unchangeable and self-identical, whereas time presupposes sequential movement (Enn. III, 7. 11).

The image of eternity becomes a kind of emblem of sacredness in the orchestral introduction, revealing itself in the "sounding substance" (Boris Asafyev) of musical texture. The state of the sound fabric here can be described as mobile static, characterized simultaneously by integrity, fundamental openness, and decentralization. The self-development of textural elements "highlights" details and micro-details and is subject to notable plastic textural shifts, accompanied by the processes of thickening and rarefaction. Let’s consider in this connection the textural thematism of episode C. 6, which Eshpai himself defined as a "symbol of Eternity": "I don't like symbols as such, but that's what I wanted to express here" (from a conversation with the composer). The author's understanding of eternity as the static root cause of time finds expression in the sophistication of harmonic, timbral coloristics, the magical energy of sound that erases the sense of reality and fascinates with the phonism of stereo resonances based on the diagonal inclusion of the orchestra's voices. The theme itself resembles "hyperdrive, identical to itself," representing metrically smooth, descending throughout the keyboard for eleven bars (pp-p) the chromatic line of the piano, the spatial perspective of which is supported by the sound points of the piano and vibraphone. The textured background for it is a three-dimensional (out of nine voices in the range of more than three octaves) dissonant chord vertical.

The "Theme of eternity" has its own line of development: when repeated (c.7), it is timbre-toned (woodwind, vibraphone, piano) and changes, contracting horizontally and growing vertically into symmetrically displaced polyintervalled complexes. Once again, the theme sounds in the introduction code (c.32), where it "collapses" in the canonical layering of chord lines and dynamizes, reaching ff. At the same time, the sound matter is enriched with new colors and compacted, transforming into sonor. The refractive function of the theme semantically turns out to be very important: it, symbolizing timeless substance, does not disappear emphatically, just as it did not undergo a stage of formation.

It is also important that in the orchestral introduction's text, two opposite tendencies of the temporal organization of the sound process are observed, creating a sense of stopped time. One of them is the constant presence of a rhythmic rod that creates the effect of uniform movement, thanks, in the words of Alfred Schnittke, "a leveling abundance of homogeneous elements that could be dynamic in themselves, but neutralized by the total dogmatization of reception" ^{[11; p. 75]}. Ostinato techniques become a significant textural argument here, often used in polystructure and polyplasticity conditions, forming static sections that include several subspaces. In this connection, we note numerous continuum pedals or discrete lines, ostinato ad libitum, set within certain sound poles, canonical ostinato of a toccata character with different intervals of the introduction of voices forming dispersed clusters; ostinato of melodic groups with shifting accents, total ostinato forming pulsating sonorous matter. On the contrary, the opposite trend is connected with the mixing of textured details to the degree of sound non-repetition and undifferentiation, which accumulates powerful energy in three-dimensional space.

The qualitative content of chronos in the instrumental section is emphasized by including episodes related to the material, mobile world of human existence, forming a temporal counterpoint. The spiritually lyrical figurative series here is characterized through the genre beginning, developing according to the laws of profane time with its linearity and irreversibility. The composer used similar polychronic formations in his Fourth Symphony. In this ballet, dance music of various eras—a gallant minuet, a poetic waltz, and jazz rhythms sparkling with vital energy, associated with memories of the "harmony of the constantly changing world" (from the libretto to the ballet "Circle"), are encrusted in a mysterious and mystical sound stream.

In the "Liturgical" Symphony, genre episodes resemble the "childish" images of the works of Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich. Semantically, they recreate "reality by half": the world of human life seems to "shine through" the depths of the sounding Cosmos and disappears. So, in the section Meno mosso (c.15). the sound space formed by the pedals of the strings and the ostinate figures of the harp texture "exposes" the vocal cantilena of the solo flute, which develops into a duet with the second violins, which then "sinks" in sonorous sonorities. The episode (c. 28) is based on a waltz formula. An elegant melodic line is drawn in the violins in a high register (2nd, 3rd octaves) and turns out to be "woven" from intonation links bearing a bizarre "fabulous" phonism of tritone turns and tone-semitone movement. After sounding off, the waltz dissolves into the harp's glissando, creating a fleeting glimpse of the real world.

Let us turn to another aspect of the phenomenon of sacredness. Being connected with the religious and spiritual aspects of the worldview, he has his own system of signs, which forms a complex connotative and denotative system in the text, forming the liturgical paradigm of the composition. I. S. Stogniy, considering musical connotations a phenomenon generated by semantic diversity, asserts that "the connotative meaning is based on a subtext—expanding, deepening, "I highlight ‘suggestive,’ often contradicting the denotative, capable of acting ‘perpendicular’ to it, as its opposition, but multiplying the general meaning and, in general, working with it in the same direction ^{[12; p. 8]}. The musicologist notes that one of the dynamic properties of connotations is "transformation to notate to denote," in which the aspiration of hidden processes to their detection and disclosure is carried out ^{[12; p. 9]}.

We observe a similar process in the dramatic strategy of Eshpai's Sixth Symphony, where several multi-level components—the "harbingers" of the sacred–liturgical semantics of the choral section—the theme-quote is involved in the "Cup of Salvation I will receive," the sound of the bell ringing, as well as the intonation vocabulary of Old Russian liturgical music itself function in the orchestral introduction as deep structures, becoming "voices, interwoven into the text" ^{[13; p. 157]}.

Thus, the theme "I will receive the Cup of Salvation," being the bearer of the conceptual idea of the symphony, has a special symbolic and dramatic meaning: it is present in the text of both sections, being "hidden" in the instrumental texture of the first and "revealed" in the choral sound of the second. In the orchestral introduction, the theme appears in the "depths of stopped time," semantically "anticipating itself" (c.13). Its presentation in sustained octave unisons of bassoons, contrafagots, cellos, and double basses is archaically majestic but veiled by a textured environment of polymetrically ostinate nature.

In the choral section, the theme acquires denotative characteristics—it passes from the status of a semantic counterpoint to that of the main and only semantic unit, connecting with the word, which becomes a correlate of its internal content. Expounded by the tenors and then by the mixed a capella choir, the theme is developed based on the principle of variant-chant progression characteristic of znamenny chanting. The diagonal-vertical section of the texture has a special expressiveness, including simultaneous combinations of variants or counterpoint of timbre-intonation layers combining into mono- and polyinterval sound complexes.

In addition to the use of the theme quotation itself, the influence of the intonation vocabulary of "everyday life" is generally found at the deep level of the orchestral introduction. Combining the sound space of the instrumental score with modern writing techniques, the Old Russian chant becomes a universal code that forms a special sound dialectic by projecting its own vocabulary onto the musical texture.

Such, for example, is the multidimensional sound canvas of section c. 1, which reveals the intonations of everyday modality in the reference tones of the harp figures, which outline the descending diatonic sound line from "h ²" to "a" of a small octave, derived from a small everyday fret. In the fret-intonation field of the song-speech episode (c. 15), the connection with the stylistics of the znamenny chant is also revealed through the use of diatonic fret with the variability of supports and the characteristic quarter-second chant of the melodic line and background figures. It is also significant that throughout the instrumental section, a sequence of tones of the everyday scale is included in the textural foundation, forming a horizontal intonation axis, which, communicating wholeness and unity to the development, symbolizes the liturgical subtext.

From the point of view of the analysis of connotative and denotative functions of sign systems, the sound image of the bell ringing deserves special attention. In the orchestral introduction, it also occurs implicitly, differing in extremely short duration. Its textual function synthesizes the climactic episode (c.25) and arranges the texture by the movement of monorhythmic polyphonic tertz complexes and monolithic unisons with a change of accentuation. In the finale of the choral section, in the hallelujah (c.78), the phonism of the three-tone and fifth verticals again imitates the bell ringing, but here it has a bright "light-bearing" palette, voicing the exclamation "Hallelujah!" The section itself is voluminous. The semantics of ringing is found in repetitions of characteristic rhythmic formulas that transmit bell swings and manifests itself in the solidity and crescendoing dynamics of chordal sound masses, complemented by the descending movement of basses along tetrachords.

Once again, we emphasize that different connotations in structure, which are revealed both at the level of intonation, harmony and at the level of thematism or recreation of a stable type of sound acuity, implement the program of the symphony, determine its compositional idea, representing a line of accumulation of the central meaning of the work.

It is also important that the use of intonation signs of the liturgy in combination with the chosen spiritual word leads to an increase in the informative content of the text and the actualization of spiritual and sacred semantics associated with Orthodox culture in it. According to E. E. Lobzakova, in the modern artistic space, church monody manifests itself as a dynamic construct that translates "essential spiritual and aesthetic characteristics (ontologism, conciliarity, sacredness, canonicity, symbolism)..." ^{[14; p. 8]}. The researcher calls the reception of the chant "that "unifying intonation" on which the most important line of musical and stylistic counterpoint of Russian music of the second half of the twentieth to the beginning of the twenty-first century" [Ibid.].

Indeed, the znamenny chant as a symbol of religious sacredness often acted as an element of a multi-temporal cultural dialogue in a variety of instrumental compositions by modern Russian composers, including in Hymn I for Cello, harp, and timpani Alfred Schnittke, "Symphonic Motet," "Symphonic Chant" by Sergei Slonimsky, in the works of Yuri Butsko, for example, in his "Polyphonic Concert."

"It's amazing," Yuri Kholopov said, "that some properties of the ancient fret system, which could not be used then, turned out to be unusually suitable for modern music. It was as if the wheel of history had described a wide circle and, on a new spiral, once again led to the resumption of the once seemingly completely abandoned musical intonation" ^{[15; p. 31]}.

Eshpai's symphonic oeuvre as a whole is characterized by dialogicity. The poetics of his opuses is largely determined by artistic communication with various layers of culture, primarily with the Mari and Russian as the closest to the composer. Moreover, Eshpai always treated the quotation itself carefully so as not to "damage the quotation" (from a conversation with the composer), not to destroy its semantics, and in most cases, its constructive integrity. In this context, the appeal to the stylistics of the znamenny chant, to its quoting and determinism by individual style parameters, although not common, becomes an essential factor of the musical and stylistic counterpoint of the master.

An important indicator of the author's attitude to spiritual discourse is end-to-end citation, when the composer returns to the same material in several of his symphonic compositions, combining them into a macrotext.

This is, first of all, the quote, "I will accept the Cup of Salvation" (Eshpai found it in the notebook of the irmodal choirs of his grandfather, an Orthodox priest). In addition to the "Liturgical" symphony, the theme is also used in the choral presentation in the fourth part of the Ninth Symphony, "Four Poems (c. 20a)," where it acquires a different intonation version and a voluminous harmonic presentation but retains indisputable recognition, including thanks to the spiritual word. In the same connection, it is necessary to highlight the end-to-end inclusion of a theme related to Orthodox funeral hymns, in particular, to the "Canon of the Deceased" from the everyday hymns of the Funeral Service (6th voice), in the fabric of the Fourth Symphony-ballet (c. 101), the Fifth Symphony (c. 11) and the symphonic painting "Suvorov's Crossing the Alps" (c. 30).

In the "Liturgical" symphony, the author's stylistic palette is subtly approximated to the vocabulary of the Old Russian chant, finding embodiment in the combination of everyday intonation with chromatics, variant coloring of steps, variability in conditions of harmonic modality, techniques of verticalization of the fret, modal-dissonant interpretation of harmony. "I need dissonance," Eshpai explained. "The znamenny chant dictates its own style and poetics, but in the symphony, I got a great opportunity to say about the events that concern me ‘in my own words.’ Of course, I was striving for a harmonious combination of these two (author's and liturgical – A.D.) layers" (from a conversation with the composer).

As an example, we will give the development of the theme quote "I will receive the Cup of Salvation" in the choral section (the first part), where it occurs according to the model of a lowercase two-voice and is based on the alternation of the quoted theme and the chant for open and closed syllables, built on its material. The intonation core of the whole is a fret array of a large everyday scale with the inclusion of an altered stage, "cis." The rhythmic variation and variability of the pitch position of phrases and foundations determine the plasticity of the chant. The choral vertical, which results from the contrapuntal connection of voices, is marked by the variability of the vertical index from the third quarto-fifth to the second.

Let us turn to the techniques of the author's "voicing" of sacred semantics in other sections. Among the techniques of interpreting the spiritual word, we note allusions to church singing, namely, singing with a cannonarch (middle part, c. 41) and harmonic singing (finale, c. 76).

The middle part (per text The Epistles to the Corinthians of St. Paul the Apostle) assumes the antiphonal dialogue of the canonarch's part (bass) and the harmonic responses of the choir. The recitative of the cannonarch is free from metric frames and is set out in one tone (recto tono) with second deviations at the end of phrases functioning within the framework of variable quart sound orders derived from the everyday mode. In the responses of the choir, the techniques of fret verticalization are used when the second movements of the three-tone chords, quintoctave consonances arise as a result of the influence of the intonation characteristic of the melody and are subordinate to the principle of the variability of the positions of the fret center. The choral section's finale and the symphony are based on the text of the kontakion from the Akathist to the Mother of God "Oh, All-Loving Mother!".

The orchestral-choral score here is marked by warm, light harmonic shades, outlined by flexible lines of choral polyphony in conditions of variable texture density – from unison to six-voice, supported by the orchestra's sound masses (strings, and finally brass and xylophone). The harmonic vertical is formed by the pulsating monorhythmic of chord complexes projecting natural d-moll with a terse variability of supports. As a result of smooth vocalization, modal iridescences of consonances and mildly dissonant structures arise—polyinterval formations, quart chords, and consonances with side tones.

The sound of the final section in terms of its impact is comparable, in our opinion, with the akathist icons of the Theotokos, which, as is known, are built on the principle of the artistic embodiment of the majestic epithets of the Theotokos from the Akathist and other hymnographic works. "It was very important to me that this music touched hearts," Esphai said (from a conversation with the composer).

Summarizing the above, we emphasize that the phenomenon of sacredness in the Sixth "Liturgical" Symphony fully determines the special "tonality" of the composition, filling it with a boundless depth of thought, giving rise to states of in-depth reflection, irrationally mystical "communion with the Divine," prayerful contemplation and joy. Being constructed according to the laws of symphonic logic, the semiosphere of a musical text is based on the contrasting juxtaposition of sign systems forming a multilevel multilingual discourse. Aimed at recreating semantically heterogeneous dimensions of sacredness, which are united by the end-to-end "cultivation" of the liturgical paradigm, it forms the essence of the genre event. At the same time, the author's appeal to the cultural layer of Old Russian liturgical music, creating a special chronotopic multidimensionality and connotative conditionality, strengthens the symbolic subtext and leads to the formation of a mythological reality detached from the usual course of time.

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