The Play of Daniel in the National Musical Culture

Abstract

The article is devoted to the consideration of the processes of biblical story implementation ("Play of Daniel") in the Old Russian culture and domestic works of the new time. The process of secularization was analyzed: from the church ceremony the Play moved first to the theater stage, and then to the fairgrounds, and in the early twentieth century was resumed in the concert hall. His liturgical side disappeared prayers, liturgical hymns, the accent shifts to a dramatic and then comic performance, already in the play by Polotsky P. Only in the composition of the Kastalsky he once again took part in the performance as a church reader. The conclusion was made about a sharp reduction in its musical component from "dewy poems" of considerable length, to brief "games" in the play by Simeon Polotsky and in skomorokh fun. Only at the beginning of the twentieth century, thanks to the "historical restoration" of Kastalsky A.D. a new, mostly musical version of the Play appeared.