PreParing and conducting of musical reform in russia of 1650–1670-ies *

commissions, to reveal the general results of their activities.

The transition period art appeared a joining link between the Medieval art and the New Time art. During the transition period the Russian professional musical art also went through drastic stylistic changes. The Old Russian chant was gradually replaced by colorful, virtuosic and harmonically rich singing -"partesnoe". Russian musicians took it differently. Most of them, supported by higher authorities and with the help of Ukrainian chanters, were mastering the new art. Others tried to refresh the Ancient Russian chant reforming it in the way they felt necessary. By the 1650-s in the Russian church singing a wide range of negative tendencies was dominated which was formed during previous centuries (in particular so-named "razdelnorechie" 1 ). The acute need for the reformations was felt at least a century before the time when the authorities finally got down to long-anticipated transformations.
There is only one discovered source of information about the work of the First commission and that is the introduction to the treatise of the Second Commission "Notification… to those wishing to study chant singing" («Извещение… требующим учитися пения»), written by "Alexander Mezenets and others". The insufficient data presented there specify the precise date of the Tsar's order to gather fourteen didascaloi (teachers of chanting) in Moscow to have them work in this agency. However, researches of different periods mention different dates when the commission started working [2, p. 117].
The first interpretation of the introduction to "Notification" was given by Metropolitan Evgeny (Bolkhovitinov) who said that fourteen "teachers" had been selected according to the Tsar's "decree of 1652" [16, p. 156]. Quoting the text under discussion, V. M. Undolsky published the 7160 ( . ЗРK . ) year stated in the text as 1652 [77, p. 12-13). I. P. Sakharov, speaking about the work of the commission, transformed 7160 into 1651, but added that the correction of chant books was launched in 1652 [73, v.1, p. 28; v. 2, p. 11). D. V. Razumovsky mentioned in all his works that the * Статья выполнена при поддержке Правительства РФ (Постановление № 211 от 16.03.2013 г.), соглашение № 02.A03.21.0011. 1 "Razdelnorechie" ("homonia") is a specific manner of verbal texts singing with insertion into the words of nonexistent in the usual speech vowels between consonants. That is why it is called "separate speech", which was predominantly the result of Ancient Russian semi-vowels ъ and ь voicing that had neuma above them, and also the result of replacing them with о and е in writing.
First commission began working in 1652. He proved it with the lists of "Notification" and believed that the most sufficient list was the one stored in Undolsky's library [50, fol. 1; 25, p. 81, 138; 26, p. 50). Another outstanding scholar who studied the Russian medieval music, S.V. Smolensky, reported in 1887 about finding a list of "Notification" in the manuscript of a Kazan tradesman called L. Yelkin, and also mentioned the discovered data about two commissions, the first one of which gathered in 1652 [75, p. 9, 16]. But, publishing the entire "Notification" in 1888 on the base of the list of "Yelkin's manuscript", he put the year 7163 (1655) [3, p. 1].
Being a very elaborate researcher, V. М. Metallov, who knew "Notification" from different manuscripts, refers to the first date when speaking about the start of the activities by the commission assembled by 14 didascaloi in his "Essay on the history of the Orthodox church chant in Russia". This caused a wave of criticism from A. A. Ignatyev, who blamed Metallov for blind following D. V. Razumovsky. To prove that the First commission gathered in 1655, Ignatyev presents these facts: the correction of chant books was under way during the reign of Nikon (he was the patriarch since July 1652), for the former patriarch Iosif was against the liquidation of the so called "razdelnorechie", which is proved by Nikon's biographer Ivan Shusherin [74, p. 21]; "pestilent wave" (epidemic of plague), which is stated in "Notification" as one of the reasons for the stoppage of the commission's work in Moscow in the late 1655 (this provision is not grounded); and finally, the main proof, "written" evidence of "Notification" as published by S. V. Smolensky [17, p. 32-35].
А. А. Ignatyev's work was commented by V. М. Metallov. His highly scientific article issued in one of the Moscow Ecclesiastical Academy periodicals settled the problem of the time of the First Commission's first gathering very convincingly and stated that it happened in 1652 [20, p. 423-50]. However, this work seems to have been known to a very small range of people and then it was forgotten. In any case, until now, the majority of researchers, following S. V. Smolensky and А. А. Ignatyev, believe that the activities of the First commission began in 1655. That is why there is a necessity to touch upon V. M. Metallov's article to study his grounds briefly and to provide supplementing and clarifying.
Вестник ЮУрГУ. Серия «Социально-гуманитарные науки» Analyzing the proofs presented by A. A. Ignatyev, the researcher notices that "Notification" does not specify who was the patriarch when Tsar Alexei Mikhaylovich ordered to gather didascaloi, but it states clearly that the gathering was conducted "with the blessing" of Iosif. As the latter insisted, the Council of 1649 held that "the service should run as before and nothing is to be changed"; but later, after conferring with the patriarch from Tsargrad (the then name of Constantinople) at the Council of 1651 Iosif changed his mind and supported the proposal on the necessity of chant correction. Metallov assumes that this order could hardly be issued directly from the Tsar during the election of the new patriarch, i.e. during the period from Iosif's death to the appointment of Nikon, from April  Then, V. M. Metallov passes over to the manuscripts known to him. The first one reports that it was in the year 7160 ( . ЗРK . ), while the second one names the year of the "7160-го" [12, fol. 408; 13, fol. 1]. Thus, the researcher supposes that S. V. Smolensky did not preserve the element "го" in "7160-го" when preparing the published version. This "го" must have also been in Yelkin's manuscript that was the basis for this work. This could be the circumstance that gave rise to the date 7163 ( . ЗРKГ . ) or 1655 A. D. [20, p. 442-445].
All the four manuscripts of "Notification" enumerated by V. M. Metallov have one and the same year of the First Commission's gathering, 7160 (1652). This date is found in other manuscripts. In some manuscripts it is said "the year of 7160-го". Only in one of them, belonging to the times of the last quarter of the 17 th century, we can find letters " . ЗРKГ . " [49, fol. 412]. It is important to note that the scriber of this manuscript acted like a vey illiterate copyist as he made a lot of mistakes and omitted many words and letters. He must have made a mistake writing " . ЗРKГ . ". Besides, ten other manuscripts containing the introduction to "Notification" are very trustworthy. Thus, it seems to prove that the work of the First Commission began in 1652.
So, in the summer of 1652, Tsar Alexei Mikhaylovich deigned to found an agency of church plain chant correction. As it was already said, the Tsar himself was very fond of ancient chant art. Being an expert in all nuances of church singing since his youth, the Tsar, apparently, had long ignored the wrongs in this system. But when the question of its reforming grew extremely urgent, Alexei Mikhaylovich decided to initiate these actions. First of all, by the Tsar's order, fourteen chant masters were gathered in Moscow. "Notification" has little information about these people. It is known that the First Commission was composed of the representatives from various levels of church hierarchy "from heads of holy places to different chosen God's people" [2, p. 117].
The members of the Second Commission received their payments through the Typography Department while the commission worked at the Moscow Printing House (details are given further). There is no information about the First Commission. The 1650-s Records of the Typography Department do not have any data of that kind. We do not know so far the names or ranks of those fourteen didascaloi 3 . This commission worked until the summer of 1654 (when, in the conditions of war and epidemic, it had to shut down), i. e. for about two years. Considering those ambitious objectives set before the chant masters, let us try to find out what they managed to do within that period of time.
First of all, the didascaloi, apparently, collected a large amount of ancient manuscripts on chant including many of those which were in "staroistinnorechie". At that time, it was arranged to correct chant and other books according to ancient books. "Notification" says that the Second Commission possessed ancient parchment "hand-written Hirmologions" and books of "other church chants", which were "written four hundred years before and were withering" [2, p. 121], i. e. were written in the 13-14 th centuries. Judging by the short period of work produced by the Second Commission and small number of its members, we may assume that these manuscripts were collected by the members of the First Commission. The 1652 books of charges at the Typography Department have a lot of records concerning the purchasing of several hand-written books for as samples for correction [35; 36 and others].
To settle the issue of stylistic similarity of musical texts it was required to enhance and unify the notation system. In line with it, it is important to consider V. М. Metallov's remark that cinnabar red ink signs "zarembas" which denoted more clearly the pitch of a sound were probably organized and corrected by the Numerous manuscripts of the first half of the 17 th century contain the znamenny neumatic signs. Some of them were preserved in the following years (р, б, т and others), but many of them disappeared in the later works (д, о, св and others) [30; 31; 47; 55; 58; 59; 60; 70; 71] 1 . Approximately since the 1650-s, cinnabar signs became widely applied and were known in literature as the "Shaidur system". The basis for calling them after the name of Shaidur is another work, "Tale of marks used in chant". Its author reports that "God revealed a key to marks" to a Novgorod citizen Ivan, Akim's son, who had an awkward nickname, Shaidur [52, fol. 5-6].
M. V. Brazhnikov already questioned the theory that this very Shaidur was the only author of the signs (those discovered in "Tale of Zarembas" and in "Notification"). As well as the church znamenny chant system, the system of signs also required systematization. This researcher associates this process with the work of the Second Commission [11, p. 296]. We believe that this was done earlier, by the First Commission. The Second Commission did not work for a long time. Working in the field of theory, the members of the Second Commission ignored marks and used them (already systemized and known to singers) only to explain the system of the signs they were introducing: "The signs that have been used before are mentioned here only for the purpose of brief explanation"; and then this purpose is outlined [2, p. 118]. It is highly possible that separated masters-theoreticians, with whom the author of "Tales of Zarembas" used to talk a lot, gathered together to work out a standard theory of signs and notation unification. They studied signs of the former theoreticians (it is very possible that these were the ones who reported the author about the other masters), but the biggest recognition was earned by Novgorod-born I. A. Shaidur and his system which was taken for the basic one. The sources do not verify that these didascaloi arrived to form the First Commission, but the time of their activities coincides with that of the First Commission. These masters did not have enough time to establish a generalizing theoretical manual (they only systemized the signs) and, due to the forced ending of the work, parted their ways. That is how the system of signs in a short while became known across the country and was introduced to the collections of Russian plain chants.
It is obvious that before the start of the First commission's activity, the problem of centralized chant book production was reckoned as highly urgent. In 1652, at the Moscow Publishing House, Feodor, Ivan's Son, Popov was entrusted with the "launching of the znamenny chant book typing" [22, p. 41]. But since the didascaloi chose the way of introducing cinnabar signs, this hindered the fast realization of the idea, and then hampered the whole music reformation for many years.
The First Commission executed preliminary works and only started the reformation of the chant art. After the first steps towards znamenny chant correction were stopped in the summer of 1654, in 1654/55 and 1655/56 "and the years to follow, the process that was started in Moscow, the ruling city, continued in all towns, villages and monasteries with each master going through the correction of his singing" [2, p. 118]. Many of the preserved manuscripts and documents prove these words from "Notification". The editing of chant books, for example, was under way in Savvo-Storozhevsky Monastery [27; 28; 29 and others]. In June 1662, diak of the first stanitsa Tsar's choir, Ivan Nikoforov was granted with expensive cloth for "writing narechnoe neumatic singing for the Fest of St. Theodore Stratelates" [32, fol. 103]. Alexander Mezenets started correcting books after settling down in the house of "protector of corrected chant", of the duke U. S. Urusov, in June 1666 [14, fol. 1]. However, masters, who were scattered all over the nation, "failed to come to agreement". Because of the "great differences in views" in Russia, "even two could not sing together in one church, not to mention three or more" [2, p. 118]. To overcome the differences and correct the chant system, it was necessary again to gather the best masters and continue the work started by the First Commission.
There is no precise information in sources about the time of the Second Commission's establishment. I. P. Sakharov  In the introduction to "Notification", it is said that Tsar Alexei Mikhaylovich, after conferring with patriarch Ioasaf, "ordered to his Right Reverend Pavel, metropolitan Sarsky and Podonsky, to gather masters who knew chanting well". Overall, they managed to find six masters [2, p. 118]. Since it is known that in the 1660-s and 1670-s Pavel headed the Moscow Publishing House, it was reasonable to seek information about the Commission in the documents issued by the Typography Department that regulated the work of that Publishing House.

Вестник ЮУрГУ. Серия «Социально-гуманитарные науки»
The first review of these documents was prepared by I. Mansvetov with even some data about several members of the Second Commission [18]. The research work with these resources started by Mansvetov   But there are no grounds to assume that he "accommodated himself" after working at the First Commission.
The list of the Moscow Publishing House editors from the books of salaries for 1657, presented by I. Mansvetov, beside Alexander Pechersky, has the name of "Elder Alexander" [18, p. 27]. Some researchers tend to think that this is another name of one more well-known (mentioned in "Notification" too) member of the Second Commission, Alexander Mezenets 3 . Indeed, a book expert, Elder Alexander arrived at the Publishing House and started his work there since September 1657. He named himself "monk Alexander" when putting his signature to prove the reception of the Tsar's payments [36, fol. 333, 393; 37, fol. 57]. The comparison of the handwritings shows that the "monk's" handwriting belonged not to Mezenets, but to monk Alexander Shestakov [40, fol. 4].
Therefore, the supposition that the members of the commission working in 1652 through 1654 later worked in the Second Commission is not confirmed by the resources yet.
The most sufficient data about the members of the Second Commission are given in the book of charges for 1667-1674 issued by the Typography Department. This book has a record reading according to the Great Tsar's order of October 177 (1669), The Typography Department for the work with znamenny chant books should pay two altyns (6 kopecks) daily apiece to Yaroslavl's diakon Kondrat Larionov, Reverend Patriarch chanter diak Fedor Konstantinov, Grigory Nos from Vologda and Faddey Nikitin from Usol'e -from the 2 Only the name "Alexander" is indicated here. According to the handwriting one can identify Alexander Pechersky According to this record, the members of the commission did not start their work there at the same time. Kondrat Larionov, Feodor Konstantinov, Grigory Nos and Faddey Nikitin began on January 1, while the Elders Alexander Pechersky and Alexander Mezenets -on February 8, 1669. There are reasons to believe that during 1668, there was held a correspondence with the then widely-known music centers and masters went through strict selection to demonstrate "good knowledge of znamenny chant" and were gathered in Moscow. The activity of the Second Commission was launched in January 1669. After three months of work of the regular masters and two months of work of the elders, they all were given the first payments. In October 1669, the commission was paid almost fully for the whole period of work in the previous year (from September 1669). Later, payments "two altyns for one day" were given to the editors after four or five months of work [43, fol. 163, 172]. As a rule, all expenses on the commission were registered after paying the money to the full-time workers of the Publishing House or in "other charges". This means that from the very start the commission was seen as a short-time institution.
The six chant masters stayed as members of the Second Commission for different periods of time. They started and finished their work at different time. Apparently, the length of their staying depended on the type of work each of them was supposed to do there. Moscow gathered masters who knew all the nuances of the Old Russian chant art: "these were masters who knew the Moscow, Krestianinov, Usolsky and other versions" [2, p. 118]. Common members of the commission presented various chant centers and, evidently, were supposed to edit and unify melodic materials. Elder Alexander Mezenets stood forward as the leading chant theoretician 1 . A former full-time editor 2 , Alexander Pechersky was invited to the commission rather as a literary editor of the chant books. After completing their tasks, the members of the commission left.
The first one to leave the commission was Yaroslavlborn Kondrat Larionov (after May 1669 he was not paid for the work at the commission). The labor of the Patriarch's diak Fedor Konstantinov and Usol'e-born Faddey Nikitin was paid until December 1669. Finally, on April 21, 1670, the rest of the editors, Alexander Pechersky, Alexander Mezenets and Grigory Nos, received their last payment for the work done from December 1, 1669 to May 1, 1670. Thus, the Second Commission of chant book correction worked approximately from January 1669 to April 1670 and finished its activities after a year and a half of its work. The names of the elders are separately mentioned in other documents of the following years.
"Notification" points out that the first result of the six-master commission was the correction of the chant Hirmologion: "And they first corrected a book of znamenny chant hirmuses" [2, p. 118]. The correctors fully edited texts and melodies of hirmuses. Since then the structure of the Hirmologion's manuscripts was not the same. For example, during the whole 16 th century and the first half of the 17 th century, the selection of hirmuses was extremely stable. The manuscripts usually included about 690 hirmuses (without rosniks -a special genre). Starting with the last third of the 17 th century, the succession of hirmuses changed greatly.
The correction of the chant Hirmologion was conducted in several ways: the texts of hirmuses were verified according to the oldest hand-written and "newly corrected" typed books. Some of the hirmuses were completely eliminated, but a large amount of new ones was introduced from the Kanons that had not been used in the service-chant practice. After all corrections and supplementations, the general number of hirmuses in the collection grew one and half time bigger (about 1020) [51; 53; 57; 61; 65; 68 etc.]. Nevertheless, alongside the new version of the Hirmologion manuscript, the making of copies with the selection of hirmuses similar to 1 In «Notification" his leading role in the compilation of this tractate is indicated: "Written by Alexander Mezenets and others" ("Трудился Александер Мезенец и прочии") [2, p. 208-209]. 2 76, p. 40-61]. The commission's musical-theoretical work "Notification" was written on the basis of and as an appendix to the Hirmologion. As mentioned above, the original of the corrected Hirmologion, apparently, was kept in the Tsar's library: its inventory for 1682 has records about "Plain hirmuses written by the masters at metropolite Pavel Krutitsky" [23, p. 131].
It was possible to preserve the further unified edition of melodies and texts of chants only through the centralized publishing of corrected chant books. Technically, the typing of neumatic notation books was not an easy process, which was aggravated by the introduction of cinnabar signs. After taking up the preparation of musical texts for typing, the masters inevitably faced the question of further enhancement of znamenny neumatic notation. It was decided to apply the signs of limited purpose which were invented long before the Second Commission. Basing on the system of cinnabar signs, the didascaloi, in fact, created a new well-organized system of signs. Their commission declared: "Now the cinnabar signs, the indication characters of the old znamenny chant can not be in typed pressing, but they will be replaced by other sings" [2, p. 119]. As the sings were written as constitutive parts of znamenny chant neuma, they had the function of cinnabar signs (indicating pitch correlations between the neuma of notations), and were most appropriate for the typographic reproduction of plain chant texts. Shortly after the work of the Second Commission, the Publishing House got down to the execution of this important task.
Following D. V. Razumovsky's assumptions, the research literature widely presented an opinion that only in 1678 the Publishing House prepared a "full set of znamenny chant neuma" for the typing of chant books [19, p. 11]. However, the sources inform that this work was produced within one year after the Second Commission. Thus, in March 1671, Pavel ordered to pay 10 rubles to type-setter Ivan Varfolomeev for the development of znamenny neuma and setting up samples based on them. Finally, on May 16, 1671 Tsar Alexei Mikhaylovich instructed to print 2400 books of hirmuses with new versions of chanting [43, fol. 221, 238; 44, fol. 45, 46; 45, fol. 6]. Nevertheless, for some unknown reasons, this was not executed. In any case, there has not been discovered any printed znamenny chant Hirmologions or other chant books. As for the made punches, matrixes, set of neuma, they were stored for a long time at the Moscow Publishing House. P. A. Bessonov found records about them in the Inventory of the House for 1681, and later, in the documents of the 18 th century [4, p. 28-30].
Alongside the Hirmologion other chant books were brought in correspondence with non-chant church books. In some of them, not only texts and melodies were corrected, but the content of compositions was also changed. In the Octoechos, all chants of small vespers were replaced, which is the best sign of the new version of the manuscript 1 . In the Feasts, sticheras were mostly changed in small vespers for the mobile feasts sticheras without fixed dates 2 . In other chant books, texts were mostly only corrected. Without waiting for the start of regular and massive printing, the government established a group of scribers who started working immediately 3 . Simultaneously, the capital and eparchial centers sent away letters to cities and monasteries to instruct the churches "to sing and speak edinoglasie and in narechie, without resistance, according to the newly corrected hand-written and printed books" [1, p. 235-236, 401-402 etc.]. Narechnoe books (establishing one universal church language) were widely spread as early as in the 1670-s, which is proved by the records left in them by the scribers and owners.
So, the Second Commission successfully accomplished the reformation of the Ancient Russian znamenny chant. However, the masters-reformers were late. The Russian musicians of the second half of the 17 th century were focused on the so called Partesny (Polyphony) chant with easier theories and notation. The editors of ancient chant failed to do everything they had planned, but these six people, some of the best masters of the Russian dying art, are not the ones to blame.