Implementation of russian national identity in image of Ivan the Terrible in musical art

Abstract

The artistic image of Ivan the Terrible has been long defined as one of the semantic dominant in
the Russian art. The use of this image has an important place in the composers’ creativity, including
implementation of Russian national identity in the musical works. However, this problem has not
received special study in science. The investigated compositions of Rodion Shchedrin and Sergei
Slonimsky show that the composers were able to implement the concept of national-cultural identity
through ancient musical code — “znamennost” (znamenny chant) — in the disclosure of artistic image
of the Tsar Ivan and his era. This is newness in the embodiment of the image. Nobody of their
great predecessors, disclosing the image of the Tsar Ivan by musical means, had implemented this
phenomenon of znamenitost previously. The author concludes that znamenny chant, newfound in
the depths of the ancient Russian church-singing culture, receives a scientific substantiation as the
archetype of the national musical identity.