ON WOMEN-CHURCH SONGWRITERS OF THE MIDDLE AGES

This article is devoted to the image of women's creativity in the church music culture of the Middle Ages. Personalities of women-authors such as Kassia and Hildegard von Bingen are in the centre of attention here. Dame Elpis, Mechthild, Hadewijch of Brabant, Blanche de Castile and others are also mentioned in this text. This work is the first attempt to embrace women's compositions of this period to fill in the gaps of literature in Russian. Historical and social aspects are especially important for the author. The author observes some unknown names of women composers of that century and their biographical details, to reconstruct the picture of social status of women-authors and to describe some types of their creative activity. It is clear from the text of this article that church composers of that historical period belonged to the type of songwriters, because the synthetic nature of creativity was typical for them: it is known that almost all church composers created not only music compositions but also literary texts. Songwriters belonged to different social classes. Most of them were professed. Music compositions of women-clerks were used for practical purposes - their music was performed during services in convents. This explained the limited rotation of nuns' compositions within narrow situational frames, the space of church. They also composed music orientated to professional skills of musicians of a convent. The genres of their creativity were defined by the music traditions and ceremonies of the Catholic Church. All the music they created is connected with religious themes and is generally represented by hymns, songs and psalms; although these authors created larger compositions, such as masses and musical dramas, too. It is typical for women-authors to use some specific female themes and images in their works that were not appropriate for men-authors. In the conclusion, the author emphasises the fact that music creativity of women-clerks of the Middle Ages was recognized by contemporaries and played an important role later in the future.

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