Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, D minor A. Alyabyev

Main article: Alexander Alyabyev

The liturgy in D minor became known to most modern scholars well after two other Alyabyev Liturgies (C minor and C major) - apparently because its autographs are not in the composer's main manuscript fund (SCMMC, f. 40) ^[1]

Presumably this is the earliest of his many-part spiritual works, written in Tobolsk exile (1828-1832). Although the time of the creation of the Liturgy by the author is not indicated, the watermarks "1830" on the paperback of the autograph, as well as the inscription on the title page about the bringing of the manuscript in February 1833 as a gift to the Court Singing Chapel, allow you to specify the date. Most likely, the Liturgy was written in 1831, before the composer met on June 2, 1832 in the Caucasus with his future wife E. A. Ofrosimova (nee Roman-Korsakova), to whom he dedicated this composition. At the same time, Alyabyev handed her the manuscript, and she, in turn, brought it as a gift to the chapel, wrote researcher O. Zakharova.

The fact that the Liturgy was not intended for a mixed choir, like most of the composer's spiritual works (at least that came down to us), but only for male voices, suggests that Alyabyev was guided by the choir of the male Znamensky Monastery of Tobolsk, in which he lived in 1828 and for which he wrote church chants. Created, apparently, already at the end of the Tobolsk exile, the Liturgy became for the composer a kind of final composition in the spiritual work of this period.

According to O. Zakharova, the Liturgy in D minor is the only work from Alyabyev's sacred music that he tried to publish or at least achieve a censorship-legalized performance. At that time, permission to publish and perform Russian sacred music was given only by the Court Singing Chapel, and Ofrosimova handed her the manuscript of the Liturgy - obviously at the request of the composer himself, who was forbidden to visit St. Petersburg.

The design of the manuscript, unlike many (if not all) autographs of his spiritual works, is of a gift, or rather, tray nature. It is a white score in a red leather binding embossed in gold with ornamentation; in the middle there is an inscription in gold letters "Ekaterina Alexandrovna Ofrosimova"; two sheets of paperback are decorated with an exquisite "marble" pattern - a dark blue on a black background. Musical and verbal texts were recorded by the composer with particular care, but pencil and ink author's litters are not uncommon in notes.

Two friendly letters of 1834 also speak of Alyabyev's desire to familiarize a wide range of listeners with his Liturgy. Although this work is not directly called in them, a number of facts suggest that we are talking about it. The first letter is addressed to Alyabyev composer A.N. Verstovsky; it mentions the "Dinner" sent to the latter, probably in the hope of assistance in performance. Here are small details about the work on the composition: "The dinner was written in two weeks, it became according to the proverb" speed you need to catch fleas. " Interestingly, in the same years Verstovsky also wrote the Liturgy for the male composition; he, in turn, sent notes to Alyabyev.

The second letter is A. A. Tuchkov, a friend of Alyabyev, who wrote to the composer:... " we eagerly wait for you to be with your family, when your desires are fulfilled, and before that we keep to ourselves: "Save, Lord, his soul..." (Tuchkov quotes, somewhat paraphrasing, the words from No. 13 of the Liturgy. - O. 3.). The sounds of this music are forever in my memory. "Tell me, did you send this wonderful, most adorable music to print?" At least you sent it correctly to Moscow. " Probably, we are talking about the same work in the memoirs of Ya. V. Saburov:... "when saying goodbye to the Caucasus, Alyabyev once again shouted tears of tenderness and delight with his spiritual music: it seemed that all the deep thought of his sad and high soul poured out in these charming sounds."

After the death of the composer, E. A. Alyabyeva presented the Trinity-Sergius Lavra with an autograph of choral voices with an inscription engraved in gold letters on the binders of each of the four notebooks: "Liturgy of John Chrysostago for four voices. Music by Alexander Alyabyev. Brought as a gift to the Trinity Lavra by Ekaterina Aleksandrovna Alyabyeva in memory of her wife. 1851».

The name of this woman is well known to anyone who is familiar with the composer's biography. According to E. M. Levashev, "the vast majority of Alyabyev's works from the mid-twenties until the death of the composer (1851) are connected in one way or another with the personality of Ekaterina Alexandrovna." First of all, this applies to the beginning of the 1830s, when works dedicated to Ofrosimova appear one after another. And the first among them is the Liturgy (six romances were composed after it, and a little later - two more).

The liturgy in D minor clearly anticipates the Liturgy in C minor for mixed choir written by Alyabyev in the 1840s. The composer put to music most of the canonical texts of the service suitable for the choir, and also combined liturgical functionality in the Liturgy with the integrity, dramatic alignment of the entire composition (in particular, thematic connections at a distance are characteristic - for example, in issue 10 and the first part of issue 13). As in the Liturgy in C minor, here before the numbers and individual sections exclamations of the clergy are written, after which the choir enters; thus, the author showed that he thinks his work as part of the temple action. At the same time, already in this Liturgy, a subjective, autobiographical beginning was clearly captured, as evidenced by at least the fact of the dedication of church composition to a beloved woman. In the light of autobiographical programming, the concert "Bow, Lord, Your Ear" closing the Liturgy is also perceived: the composer's deeply personal experiences were reflected in a passionate plea to God.

The connection of the Liturgy in D minor, as well as Alyabyev's sacred music in general, with his romances, and above all with the romance "Nightingale," which became a kind of monogram of the composer, who associated himself with the image of an exile and singer of love, is indicative. The connection with "Nightingale" is most noticeable in number 10 ("We Sing to You"), where the intonations of the initial eight-act accurately repeat the contours of the melodic drawing of the first two phrases of this romance, and the theme of the last section is based on the piano playing motif.

In conclusion, we note another feature of the Liturgy - its polyphonicity. One fugue, two fugatos, four numbers with a fugitive presentation - this is not often found both in Alyabyev himself and in his Russian contemporaries. At the same time, this polyphonicity corresponded to the composer's views on the church style. In the letter quoted above to Verstovsky, Alyabyev remarked: "I am about yours (Liturgy. - O. 3.) Already wrote, I like it, but it's a pity that I started one allegro concert with fugue and did not finish it, church music requires it. " We also note the gradual increase in polyphonic episodes in the Liturgy of Alyabyev: in the initial numbers there are small fugue constructions, in "The Same Cherubs" there is a fugato on one topic, in "I Believe" there is a detailed fugue composition with a two-stroke theme, in "The Grace of the World" there is a fugato on a four-stroke theme and, finally, in the third part of the Concert there is a fugue on a four-stroke theme.

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