OLD RUSSIAN ICONOGRAPHIC MONUMENTS OF THE 15th CENTURY AS A SOURCE OF INFORMATION ON BOWED INSTRUMENTS

tudying Old Russian art sources gives valuable historical and everyday material that allows us to fill and clarify our ideas about musical instruments: the features of their design and functioning. Frescoes and miniatures from manuscripts are of particular importance among the extant information on Old Russian bowed instruments.

The article deals with the images of bowed instruments on the fresco “Ant Skomorokh” of the western wall of the Assumption Church near the village of Melyotovo in the Pskov region (1465) and the miniature “King David Speaks with the Singers” from the first part of the Sacred Psalter (1470—1480). The iconographic sources under exa­mination contain not only images of bowed instruments, but also inscriptions, which increases their importance for the study of Old Russian instrumental culture.

For the first time, the article attempts to complexly analyze bowed instruments in the Old Russian art of the 15th century, comparing them with medieval Western European and Byzantine illustrations and with Old Russian written and archaeological materials.

The comparative-typological and historical approaches form the methodological basis of the study. They allow identifying and relating the main types of medieval bowed instruments, their similarity in form and performing techniques. As a result of the comparative-typological analysis of the Old Russian iconographic monuments of the 15th century, it is concluded that the images of bowed instruments represent some transitional pattern — they still demonstrate links with the Byzantine canon, contain signsof Western European instruments, but already incorporate specific national Old Russian features. In the 15th century, some inscriptions began to appear on Old Russian miniatures and frescoes, explaining that there were folk musicians on them. In the same period, the vertical playing arrangement of the instrument was introduced for the first time in the Old Russian art, which corresponded to the Russian tradition of performing on bowed instruments. A number of design features unite these instruments with the gudoks of the 12th—15th centuries from the Novgorod archaeological excavations (the shape of hull, lack of a prolonged neck, presence of three strings and the form of bow).

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