Seminar "Bells and bell sonority in M.Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov": Orthodox Traditions, Orchestral Versions, Views of Researchers"

On Wednesday, May 24, at 15.00 in the Green Hall of Russian Institute for the History of Arts was hold a seminar “Bells and bell sonority in M.Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov”: Orthodox Traditions, Orchestral Versions, Views of Researchers” (from the cycle “Folklore, Anthropology, Ethnography: Folklore and the composer “). The keynote speaker: A.B.Nikanorov, PhD, Senior Scientific Researcher of the Organology Department, RIHA.

M.P.Mussorgsky opera “Boris Godunov” – an opus of the outstanding Russian composer well described in musicological and educational literature remains a work not fully explored in many musical ethnographic and traditional spiritual aspects. One of them is the problem of bells and bell sonority, which contemporary researchers touched only in the first approximation. Сampanology studies concerning the opera “Boris Godunov” for various reasons were not undertaken as in the XIX, as well as in the first half of the XX century. At the seminar, we will try to find out the specifics of the use and interpretation of traditional genres of Orthodox bell-ringing by M.P.Mussorgsky, as well as other authors of the music editions of his opera. In the dialogue with his colleagues, the speaker hopes to analyze the known and reveal new scientific aproaches regarding the musical-historical, harmony-acoustic, ethno-instrumental, stylistic basis of bell-shaped imagery in the opera Boris Godunov.