Hectographed Singing Books of the Old Believers of the Pomorian Community: Features of the Composition and Edition of Hymnographic Texts
The article is devoted to a virtually unexplored complex of Old Believer singing books of znamenny notation, published at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries by the method of hectography. The editions considered came out of the workshop of the mentor of the Pomorian community in Tula D. V. Batov. These editions are of particular interest, since they contain a novoistinnorechnaya version of hymnographic texts, which is atypical for the Pomorian tradition. The main aspects of the research are the historical context of the emergence of the Pomorian novoistinnorechnaya edition of hymnographic texts, the codicology of hectographed editions of D. V. Batov, the structure and composition of singing books, the peculiarities of the neume notation and the degree of preservation of the original melodic-rhythmic characteristics of chants in the edited version. The material for the study was the exemplars from the collections from St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk. During the study, the following observations were made. Attempts to correct the hymnographic text of liturgical hymns “for speech” were repeatedly undertaken among the Bespopovtsy Old Believers. The appearance of hectographed editions was the logical result of this process. The structure and composition of hectographs reproduce the pre-reform types of singing books, but they have their own characteristics, in particular, they are characterized by an expansion of the repertoire of chants. The edition of the hymnographic and neume text is based on the version customary for the Popovtsy Old Believers, but takes into account the handwritten Pomorian tradition, as well as the pre-reform non-notated printed books. Pomorian singing books were first corrected in the second quarter of the 19th century by representatives of the Moscow Old Believers A. S. Sergeev, I. V. Anisimov, P. V. Sorokin. It is logical to assume that it is this version that underlies the publications of D. V. Batov. However, one cannot exclude the possibility that D. V. Batov not only published singing books, but also made some adjustments to them. Thus, the search for manuscripts-protographs and a comparative analysis of the structure, composition, and notation of Batov's hectographs with supposed prototypes can become promising research tasks.