Znamenny Chant as a Constant of the Artistic World of Yuri Butsko: Chamber Music

Lobzakova Elena Eduardovna ORCID: 0000-0002-0502-0954 PhD in Art History Associate Professor of the Department of the History of Music at Rostov State Conservatory of Sergey Rachmaninov 344002, Russia, Rostov region, Rostov-On-Don, Budennovsky Ave., 23 lel-22@mail.ru Other publications by this author

In the Russian music of the second half of the XX century, the work of Yuri Butsko occupies a special place: with all the multigenre, length in time, thematic breadth, it has a rare ideological and stylistic integrity. Being a contemporary of the second wave of the avant-garde, being formed in an atmosphere of active experiments with compositional techniques, the composer already in the first decades of his creative life turned to deep spiritual and cultural national layers, looking for the ultimate foundations of human morality in them. Christian themes and images, the great significance of the prayer word, both sounding and encrypted, religious symbolism, the central position in his musical poetics of the Old Russian banner chant, combined with inventory in the field of composition techniques – all these signs are constant and form the framework of the composer's musical and philosophical system, in which he appears as an artist of the Orthodox worldview. In the words of T. Cherednichenko, who notes that Yuri Butsko "quietly and unyieldingly ignores the conventions of art that once left the temple for the concert hall" ^{[1, p. 447]}, is the key to understanding the reasons for the composer's creativity not being too much in demand and long silencing: it did not attract avant–garde adherents too much, and the craving for religious in The 60-70s of the last century were antagonistic to official art and suicidal for building a successful creative career.

The composer's discovery took place later, in the post-Soviet period, when a wave of a huge surge of interest in the church singing tradition overwhelmed the national culture and formed a direction that N. Gulyanitskaya called nova musica sacra ^[2]. It becomes obvious that it was Yuri Butsko, believing that "the work should grow directly from sacred roots that have not been exhausted by centuries of industrial cultivation" ^{[1, p. 447]}, in the post-October XX century was the first who tried to synthesize the Old Russian church melos and the latest composition techniques. In this regard, in close chronological proximity to his earliest experience adapting the znamenny monody into the fabric of a secular instrumental composition – "Polyphonic Concert" (1969), there are only "Composition for flute-piccolo, tuba and piano" by G. Ustvolskaya (1970-1971), "Dramatic Song" (1973) and "Symphonic Motet" (1975) by S. Slonimsky, as well as "Anthem No. 1" by A. Schnittke (1974). Hiding in the wordlessness of the instrumental beginning an appeal to the value meanings of religion and forcibly following the gospel "he who has ears, let him hear", each of these authors conducts his intense dialogue of faith with the realities of modernity on the pages of the opuses, building it with quotations or stylizations of banner chants. The choice of almost neutral genre designations as the titles of the compositions is also evidence of this "secrecy".

Instrumental and ensemble genres, which many composers of the second half of the XX century thought of as the area of the most philosophically refined and personal statements, and, at the same time, as the best space for testing new elements of musical language, at an early stage become for Yuri Butsko the main sphere of actualization of the Old Russian singing tradition. The most significant in this regard are the "Polyphonic Concerto" (1969), which begins the so-called "everyday" period of the composer's work, as well as the Trio-Quintet for piano, two violins, viola and cello ("Es muss sein", 1970), Sonata No. 1 for two pianos ("Musica tripartita", 1974), Sonata No. 1 for violin and piano ("Epitaph", 1975), Sonata for Viola and Piano (1976), Sonata for Cello and Piano (1979), Sonata No. 2 for violin and piano ("Crying", 1981). Synthetically generalizes and symbolically closes the creative experience of adapting Orthodox monody into the fabric of secular chamber-instrumental composition, Yuri Butsko's latest opus in this field – Trio No. 4 for violin, cello and piano ("Angel of the Desert", 2010). In these works, along with major concert-symphonic and choral opuses written during the same period, an integral system of expressive techniques aimed at revealing the religious worldview of Yuri Butsko develops, and the main author's strategies for refraction of Old Russian chant in the composer's individual style system are formed - both at the level of content structures and at the level of textual ratios.

The first of them, that is, images, themes, ideas embodied in the compositions, determine the use of chant as the main poetic and semantic element. Regardless of the degree of declaration of the program, each of these chamber-instrumental opuses embodies a certain symbolic plot. According to A. Kurelyak, the author of the dissertation on the implementation of religious symbols in the instrumental music of Yuri Butsko, such an invariant plot formula in the composer's work becomes an inexhaustible passionate plot in its culminating and main events – the Way of the Cross, Crucifixion and Resurrection, which controls the compositional structure and interacts with an external program (if any) ^{[3, p. 75-76]}. The latter in chamber-instrumental compositions can be:

– hidden, not announced, as, for example, in the Sonata for Two Pianos, viola and cello sonatas;

– declared plotless – two memorial sonatas for violin and piano under the titles "Epitaph" and "Lament", dedicated to Maxim and Fomaida Zalessky – Old Believers peasants, connoisseurs of the Old Russian singing tradition, who had a significant influence on the composer in his younger years;

– the declared storyline is the Trio–quintet "Es muss sein" ("It should be"), the content of which is associated with the embodiment of the apocalyptic plot inspired by Yuri Butsko's visit to Auschwitz; "Polyphonic Concert", in which, thanks to quoting the chants of various services, the succession of images and plots of Holy Scripture develops in the trajectory from Darkness to Light; The trio "Angel of the Desert" embodying the liturgical plot motif of the virtuous desert life of John the Baptist.

The Old Russian chants quoted by the author make up another layer of program content.  Functioning within the boundaries of the cult in the whole integrity of the organism of the temple artistic environment, being extracted from the usual context, they retain their informative capacity and cause circles of meanings and associations from the previous context, thereby creating additional increments of meaning in the text created by the author. In connection with the problem of the interaction of the actual musical and extra-musical levels in the compositions of Yuri Butsko, I would like to note the importance for the composer of the principle of the ineffability of the prayer word when quoting the znamenny chant as a carrier of sacred meaning. The conditions of instrumental music are naturally conducive to the realization of this principle. But even where Yuri Butsko still uses a choir (the only case is a "Polyphonic Concert"), the monody is sung on a neutral syllable, "materializing" in the timbre of the human voice and referring perception to spiritual ideas and images in the conditions of synonymy of the word and music in liturgical practice. This "unchangeable content" of the chant, in which, as a rule, the text syntax is preserved at least during the first performance, forms another "plot" in Yuri Butsko's chamber-instrumental compositions, which, along with the invariant passionate plot and the external program, plays an important role in the deployment of semantic processes.

This "plot" of the chant, which is a system of ideological, figurative, symbolic representation of the sacred content, is meaningfully, as a rule, coordinated with the external programming layer. In the Trio "Angel of the Desert", the central image of which is John the Baptist, the Christmas hymn quoted in the third part from the Great Compline "God is with us" opens through the mouth of the prophet Isaiah the news of the coming of the Messiah – that is, the meaning of the whole life of John, who was called to prepare the people to accept the expected Christ. In the trio-quintet, the hymnographic content of the quoted "Cherubic", the semantic apogee of which is praise to the Almighty, opposes the categorical imperative of the Beethoven motif "It must be", which, according to the author's idea, embodies the concept of Western European individualism, which led to the horrors of the dehumanization of the Second World War.

At the level of textual relations, the degree of mutual dynamic transformation of the chant and the author-style context in the chamber-instrumental compositions of Yuri Butsko is very high. Unlike many other examples of this kind, in which the quoted or stylized banner material performs an illustrative function that concretizes the program idea, in the composer's poetics it serves as a sense-forming and text-forming core around which a complex system of genre, compositional, linguistic transformations unfolds. In the analyzed compositions, the composer forms a unique experience of working with the primary source, which is a multi-level system of its adaptation in the conditions of interaction of medieval and modern types of musical thinking, as well as the maximum possible degree of immersion in this process to transform the deep structural and functional level of the organization of the musical fabric.

The first method is to identify the "code" of the national originality of fret thinking and, in accordance with it, transform the parameters of the author's fret structures and search for ways to combine them into a complex integrity. Yuri Butsko approached the embodiment of the artistic canon of Old Russian chants from an analytical position: the instinct of the creator combined with a scientific and theoretical understanding of the problem of mastering the church-singing tradition in secular music and a rational approach to the selection and combination of various means of modern compositional technique used to implement this artistic task. Following the position of V. Odoevsky, who called for the polyphonic processing of the znamenny chant "to limit the counterpoint to the only notes represented by the chant itself" ^{[4, p. 294]}, the composer comes to the idea of creating his own fret system that modifies the everyday scale by expanding to an enharmonic unison at the edges. This allowed him to create an individual technique ("znamennaya", as the researchers call it), applicable to various compositional experiments, including out of connection with quoting authentic samples.

The laboratory for mastering this individual fret concept of "Russian dodecaphony" is the "Polyphonic Concert", in the preface to which the author describes the principle of the new fret arrangement: "An attempt to find the laws of harmonic vertical and logic of harmonization of banner melodies during the transition to the polyphony of the choir or in the genres of instrumental processing <...> led to the idea of expanding this scale by its transpositions in both directions from the boundaries of the singing range, with the preservation of its internal structure (by "consent")" ^{[5, p. 4]}. As a result, "two expansion zones are formed – two register–separated chromatic vectors - flat and sharp spheres, which are not mixed in the work of the region, since the principle of an atonal chromatic spot that occurs when sharp and flat spheres are simultaneously superimposed is impossible for the composer" ^{[6, p. 171]}. Without dwelling in detail on the theoretical justification of the concept of Yuri Butsko's fret, which is sufficiently fully reflected in the works of L. Dyachkova ^[6], I. Kuznetsov ^[7], A. Kurelyak ^[3], we note only that using in the "Polyphonic Concert" znamenny chants from manuscripts of the XVI – XVII centuries in the decoding of M. Brazhnikov, N. Ouspensky, M. Rakhmanova as a kind of cantus firmus, subjecting them to an active variational-polyphonic development, entwining multiple contrasting counterpoints- "author's replicas", the composer remains within the framework of the found original pitch system, which, on the one hand, is conventional to the fret chant system, and on the other – corresponds to the categories of musical thinking of the twentieth century.

The second method of adaptation of the znamenny intonation material assumes its diffuse dispersion in the author's context, the absence of delineation, marking of the boundaries between them. It allows the composer to "convert" an artifact of medieval spiritual and musical culture into the author's style, thereby combining "his" and "someone else's" into a "single". This level – intonation – is especially significant, because for Yuri Butsko, the sound of the motif, a separate intonation, forming the thematism and dramaturgy of his works is great. It manifests itself in intonation ideas, principles of structural organization extracted from a monody source – a kind of "synopsis" – and their extrapolation to the organization of larger syntactic units. Diatonic continuity, the principle of variant-singing germination of thematism, the method of "reproduction" of singing intonations, each of which is produced by the previous one and serves as a fulcrum for subsequent ones; a significant proportion of the polyplastic warehouse of musical tissue are just some of the features of the manifestation of this method.

The third method allows attributing the original source more or less accurately, since it is used on a certain segment of the form, which creates conditions for a dialogue of different styles: dialogue-comparison with quoted or stylized material in order to confirm one's own statement in conflict-free dramaturgy, or dialogue–contrasting contrasting images based on a stylistic antithesis - in conflict dramaturgy. The manifestation of this method can be considered at the thematic level in cases when once appearing in the musical fabric, the theme is fixed in the listener's mind as an invariant. Using the terminology of V. Valkova, this formation can be called a "reference theme": "having appeared in the work for the only time, it is preserved in the listener's memory as a genuine standard for the perception of further development" ^{[8, p. 105]}. Such a theme, as a rule, is the carrier of an ideal image associated with the reflection of the symbols of the acquisition of Light, Truth, Resurrection, Transfiguration, and does not imply a qualitative transformation of the material. They often appear as a result of the development of chamber-instrumental concepts, the upward vector of development of which leads to a new quality in the final peaks, marking the triumph of the religious idea after the elimination of the negative sphere (this type is found in the Trio Quintet, Sonata for two Pianos, Cello Sonata, Trio "Angel of the Desert", Violin Sonata No. 2). The second option is rather characteristic of compositions of a non-conflict type: the znamenny intonation material is concentrated in the initial theme-prayer, which develops, dramaturgically sprouts, often "thinns" in the process of development, after which a new acquisition of the lost idea occurs (Violin Sonata No. 1, "Polyphonic Concerto"). If in the first case, the topic-outcome is carried out holistically, then in the second, extended sections are built on the basis of variational-polyphonic development that ensures its promotion.

Thus, at an early stage of creativity, the field of chamber and instrumental genres becomes a kind of creative laboratory for Yuri Butsko, in which a multi-level system of principles is created that allows such a unique artifact of the historical past as the znamenny chant to be "re-intoned" in new musical and linguistic conditions. Its study enriches the ideas of the composer's original musical and religious poetics, which also manifests itself in symphonic and cantata-oratorio genres - no less significant spheres of active philosophical reflections of Yuri Butsko, clothed in the form of a musical composition.

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