The Artistic and Religious Canon in the Christian and Muslim Traditions

The article presents a comparative analysis of the musical component of the artistic and religious canon in the orthodox direction of Christianity (Orthodoxy) and Islam. The author considers the concept of canon in a broad sense as a special type of holistic artistic-style system. In a narrow sense, it is considered as an artistic method with its own specific musical and ritual code. The musical beginning is an integral component of a religious cult and, consequently, of the liturgical canon in the Muslim and Christian traditions. Studying music as an artistic component of a particular religious tradition is one of the most popular trends in modern musicology.

Religious art is canonical regardless of the ideological differences between religious systems. A canon as an integral art system is characterized by a number of patterns that manifest themselves at all levels of its structure, thus acting as a norm of tradition and, at the same time, as a way of preserving and transmitting this norm, and this transmission is of a variable type. In the article, the term “canon” is understood in the context of the culturological concepts of canon revealed in the works of V.V. Bychkov, A.F. Losev, Yu.M. Lotman, Yu.N. Plakhov, P.A. Florensky. The canon is understood as an artistic method, on the one hand, and as a special artistic and stylistic system (a set of rules that exist virtually), on the other.

The article clarifies the theoretical ideas about the canon as a carrier of the norm of tradition in relation to the field of art.

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