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

This article focuses on the Sixth "Liturgical" Symphony of Andrei Yakovlevich Eshpai, one of the brightest representatives of the national and world musical culture of our time. The composition is considered from the perspective of sacrality, which fully determines its artistic and constructive patterns and dramatic perspective. The scientific novelty of the work is due to the subject of research itself, which was first used in relation to this work. To study the phenomenon of sacrality, it was necessary to use an interdisciplinary approach, including system-structural, comparative, semiotic, and hermeneutic analysis methods. Close attention was paid to considering the properties of musical texture as the main indicator of the spatiotemporal organization of musical material. The connotative and denotative properties of the musical syntax turned out to be analytically significant. No less important was the role of intertextual interactions that determine the text's language mechanisms and reveal its content’s plan. It was established that the phenomenon of sacrality, responding to the aesthetic attitudes of the master, is implemented comprehensively—as a conjugation of philosophical, mythological, and spiritual-religious discourses, each of which has its own system of signs. The functioning of sign systems at the syntagmatic and paradigmatic levels of the text lead to linguistic differences in the instrumental and choral sections of the symphony, revealing phenomena of semantic multiplicity, polychronicity, ensuring the end-to-end formation and development of the liturgical idea. As a result of such interactions, the genre space of the symphony is formed, which is a synthetic, universal, communicative concept.

sacrality, symphony, Andrei Yakovlevich Eshpai, contemporary domestic music, musical texture, connotation, denotation, musical text, symphonic dramaturgy, znamenny chant