On church singing in the Fedoseevtsy collection Paternal Testaments. Article I

For the first time, the article examines the chapter “On Church Singing” from Paternal Testaments, the collection of Fedoseevtsy Old Believers, which was compiled in their ideological center, Moscow Preobrazhenskoe Cemetery, to approve the rules that determined the life of Fedoseevtsy communities in the 19th century. As for church singing, the choir of the Moscow Fedoseevtsy Preobrazhenskaya community was considered exemplary among the Bespopovtsy [Priestless Old Believers] at the beginning of the 19th century. The chapter “On Church Singing” was included in the collection as a result of the appeal of regional communities to Moscow mentors for clarifications regarding liturgical practice, which makes it possible to find out what issues in this area disturbed the Old Believers. The essay was included in the final version of Paternal Testaments as one of the additional 15 chapters selected for inclusion in the book between 1805 and 1809. The chapter’s author is unknown, as well as the exact date of its creation: its writing can be confidently attributed to the second half of the 18th century. In the collection, “On Church Singing” follows at number 49 and is divided into 15 articles. Justifying the canonicity (or non-canonicity) of a particular tradition, about which, apparently, the question was asked, the author of the essay refers to a decent list of sources (ancient, Old Believer and New Believer) quoting some of them. This article examines all of these references. According to the text of the document, the teachers of the Preobrazhenskaya community approved the Old Znamenny Chant, including Stolpovoy, Demestvenny and Three Line chants, as canonical. As it appears, the Three Line singing appeared in this list only as a quote from the Stepennaya Kniga [Book of Generations], it was hardly practiced in reality. Such a widespread kind of hook singing as the Putevoy chant is not mentioned in the essay. This is possibly due to the fact that it did not raise questions, in contrast to, as it appears, the less common Demestvenny chant, to which the author of the chapter “On Church Singing” pays special attention. The texts of the chants were admitted strictly in the razdelnorechnaya edition (half of the chapter is dedicated to this question since there are a number of polemical writings and resolutions of Old Believer councils about it). As it appears, regional communities were troubled by some Greek elements in liturgical chant. The author of the chapter proves the canonicity of these elements’ use - anenaiki (special additional syllables), prayers in Greek and Svyatogorski (Athos) edition of the Theotokos hymn “It is Truly Meet”. This is the range of questions that the regional communities addressed to the Preobrazhenskoye Cemetery, and what was enshrined as a canon.

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