In the 1950s, Charles Snow wrote about the growing gap between the humanities and natural science cultures. He saw this as a great danger both for science itself and for all humankind. In Russia, it was complemented by a crisis of humanitarian knowledge. The article considers the ways to overcome this crisis and build a bridge between cultures.

The solution of these problems is associated with the development of interdisciplinary approaches in general, and the theory of self-organization in particular. Synergetics today represents an approach that lies at the intersection of subject knowledge, philosophical reflection and mathematical modeling. It allows you to solve problems that go beyond individual scientific disciplines. Many of them require an analysis of processes and factors in rational, emotional and intuitive spaces.

The article shows that the ongoing humanitarian and technological revolution, the tasks of designing the future, increase the role of humanitarian knowledge. The author substantiates the importance of a civilizational approach to humanitarian culture and considers the cultural issues of the unique civilization of Russia. There is outlined a number of specific steps to overcome the crisis of Russian humanitarian knowledge.

The concept of cultural challenge is of particular importance among the problems for which solutions are proposed. The transition from the industrial to the post-industrial phase of the civilization development and the widespread use of artificial intelligence systems will free from work about half of people. The social stability and prospects for the civilization development are determined by the ability of culture to make their life complete, meaningful and creative. The use of interdisciplinary approaches in the education system of Russia is of fundamental importance in the course of the humanitarian and technological revolution. The organizational and financial reforms of the last thirty years have led education to a deep crisis. The interdisciplinary approaches are needed in order to balance the wishes of the programs authors, the opportunities of students and to correlate the training received with the prospects for the country’s development. The revision of the content and forms of education today is becoming a problem not only for teachers and scientists, but also for the entire national culture.

The imperative of our country’s cultural development is the image of the future. In the industrial era, there was an idea of universality of the ways of social systems development. In the postindustrial reality, the world becomes more complex, diversity increases. At the current point of bifurcation, several development paths open up. A civilization’s cultural choice, based on tradition, scientific forecasting and the image of the future, becomes fundamental. Interdisciplinary approaches can play a fundamental role in shaping such a cultural choice.

The article is devoted to the discourse of the city’s cultural memory. The relevance of studying this topic is determined not only by the fundamental aspect associated with the episodicity of existing studies of this phenomenon. From an applied point of view, the city’s cultural memory is a symbolic resource that can be used to create an appealing image, form a sustainable urban identity, and strengthen the citizen’s sense of belonging to the city. The accumulation and objectification of cultural memory take place in symbolic forms, which makes it important to study the practices of symbolizing the urban past, the essence of which is to generate the significance of the relevant or latent layers of cultural memory for the citizens.

The article presents the results of the final stage of research related to the study of the process of constructing the cultural memory of the city. The purpose of the article is to analyze modern practices of symbolizing fragments of the urban past, which mean their significance for contemporaries. Basing on the culturological cross-section of the issue, the author integrates different research contexts. The methodological basis of the article is the communicative approach that focuses on the processes of meaning formation, and the constructivist method that considers memory as a multi-layered and dynamic construct. Analyzing the practices of symbolizing the urban past by the example of Russian cities, the author of the article demonstrates how the episodes of the city’s memory are updated in the modern world, how cultural meanings become memorable for citizens. The author uses the results of previous studies and identifies the following elements of the symbolization of the urban past: a) ways of encoding fragments of the past; b) communicative trajectories of memory symbolization; c) factors of producing meanings about the collective past of the city. The obtained results open up new frontiers in understanding the processes of formation of the collective ideas about the city, and prospects for empirical research, forecasting and constructing the cultural memory of Russian cities, giving them the opportunity to change their present and future.

The article examines regional folklore as a field of interaction between academic musical culture in the Far East of Russia and China. The beginning of the systematic study of the academic musical culture of the Russian Far East is associated with the formation of the regional creative association of composers of the Far East (Union of Composers), which is succeeded today by the Far Eastern Branch of the Union of Composers of Russia. The article notes the multi-ethnicity of the region and the special role of the “dialogue of cultures” in the composers’ works. The author analyzes the culture of indigenous peoples and the East Slavic migratory culture of the Russian Far East, as well as the original culture of the countries of the Asia-Pacific region outside the Russian borders. There is highlighted the commonality of some features of the traditional Far Eastern folklore of Russia and China. The article considers the concept of “academic musical culture”, which includes the composers’ works successively connected with the foundations of Western European music formed in the period of the 17th—19th centuries, the composers’ works of the 20th century, including modern techniques, the musical performance, musical performance infrastructure, educational space and academic musicology.

The paper highlights the composers of the region, the main focus of their work, the researchers of the academic musical culture of the region, whose works are significant in understanding the processes of development of modern national musical culture. The article covers the Chinese academic compositional works known in Russia, as well as the range of scientific interests of Russian researchers-orientalists and researchers of musical culture from China.

There is recognized the need for cultural understanding of the stated problem through the study of academic music art, traditional music culture, music science, and music education. The author interprets the role of music and computer technologies in musical culture and education in the Far East of Russia and China as the most important component for interaction in the field of academic musical culture, focuses on the problems of informatization of modern music education.

The article draws a conclusion about the unique experience of composing in China based on the traditional music of the Russian Far East. The pentatonic basis of Chinese music is especially distinguished as being close to the modal organization of the music of Far Eastern ethnic groups, which is also the basis of the folklore music of Russian Far Eastern composers. The author sees such a palatal proximity as a basis for the interaction of the cultures of the Far Eastern region. The article recognizes this aspect as important from the point of view of creating an integral multicultural space based on the principles of humanism.

The article examines the drawings and watercolors by the artist Nikolay Nikolayevich Karazin (1842—1908), based on the materials of the Amu Darya and Samara expeditions of 1874 and 1879. The paper aims at reviewing the graphic series “Amu Darya Scientific Expedition”, published in the magazine “Niva” in 1874—1875, and a series of watercolor portraits made during the Samara expedition, in comparison with the pencil portraits by Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin (1842—1904) in the album of photographs “Russian Turkestan”, published in 1874. This collection of artworks has not previously been the subject of a special art history study. Their examination introduces into the field of specialists’ view a significant stage of Nikolay Karazin’s creative path. The relevance of the article, in view of the investigations of recent years, lies in the representation of the image of an artist-traveler, a draftsman during expeditions in the second half of the 19th century.

The study of the first series is based on the nature and national types of the Amu Darya delta. The analysis of individual examples of journal graphics is accompanied by a description of some of the author’s simultaneous graphic originals, as well as works of other artists interested in Central Asian ethnography. The article uses a comparative methodological principle, with the analysis of fragments of N.N. Karazin’s literary works — travel essays with a pronounced ethnographic component.

The artist’s series of watercolors based on the Samara expedition also presents several images of the ethnotypes of Russian Turkestan, a region of Central Asia in its western part. As a result, there are identified the similarities and differences in the artistic methods and manners, as well as the conditions of creative work, of the two artists — Nikolay Karazin and Vasily Vereshchagin. The analysis is carried out using a comparative method and a socio-historical background.

The Amu Darya and Samara graphic cycles represent N.N. Karazin as a mature creator who intuitively used the means of the approaching new time and modern style. At the same time, he did not leave the boundaries of the literary and artistic genre “voyage pittoresque”, overall successfully combining realistic tendencies with the vision of a romantic.

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.

The article analyses the cantata “Frau Musica” by the German composer P. Hindemith. This work has come to be widely understood as an example of Gebrauchsmusik in the works of O. Leontieva, K.-D. Krabiel, M. Breivik. Gebrauchsmusik is often identified as utility music, which means that it is created for some specific purpose; but the purpose does not have to be utilitarian. In order to assess the profoundness of the composer’s concept and to clarify specifics of the descriptive term, it is necessary to go back to the basics of the theoretical debates about the social role of art that unfolded in the 1920s. Their main participants were H. Besseler and T. Adorno. A valuable source of information is the programs of music festivals in Donaueschingen and Baden-Baden, where Gebrauchsmusik was evolving as a multi-genre artistic experiment. Hindemith played the leading role in this process. It is also important to understand the reasons that prompted the composer to use M. Luther’s text in the cantata “Frau Musica”.

Today the Gebrauchsmusik’s ideas — revitalization of the audience, expanding access to musical education and practical musical activities that evolve collaborative work — have gained the most relevance. According to the author’s hypothesis, “Frau Musica” can be regarded as an illustrative example of a work that combines different views on the nature of musical participation: a spiritual act, a collective work, the highest level of musical accessibility. In this particular composition, Hindemith intuitively found the most promising ways for the development of creative interaction between the composer and the listener, which subsequently led to the creation of a whole corpus of participatory works, including Tod Makover’s “City Symphonies”, Alexander Radvilovich’s “Baltic Music”, Paul Rissman’s “Supersonic”.

The article reveals literary (Emile Zola’s novel “L’Œuvre”, Richard Muther’s work “History of Painting in the 19th Century”), literary and artistic (magazines “Mercure de France”, “L’Ermitage”, “La Revue Blanche”, “La Plume”) and artistic (exhibits of the French art exhibition of 1896) sources of Konstantin Somov’s acquaintance with the art of French impressionism at the beginning of his independent activity (before leaving for Paris in the late 1890s). There are also identified sources of phenomena in his work that are similar to impressionism only externally. These issues become the subject of special consideration for the first time. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that it first reveals that the artist did not address to impressionism in the period before his departure to France, as it has been long believed. To study the tasks set, the article involves sources of personal origin (letters and diaries of K.A. Somov and his friend A.N. Benois), as well as A.N. Benois’s articles of the 1890s, published on the pages of the magazine “World of Art”. The author comes to the conclusion that K.A. Somov did not turn to the artistic method of the impressionists in his work at that time, since the information he had been able to get from the identified sources was of a verbal and theoretical nature. Black-and-white reproductions of impressionist paintings in literary and art magazines and in Muther’s “History of Painting in the 19th Century” had not provided sufficient information for the artist. The phenomena similar to impressionism in Somov’s works are based on the study of nature, the heritage of the old European artists, the art of the Barbizonians, J.-F. Millet, W. Turner.

The article attempts to concretize the essence of the two aesthetically polar staging approaches — theatrical and non-theatrical (performative) — in the context of the choreographic art development. The author suggests that the basis for separating these approaches can be some peculiarities in the ways they interpret such fundamental concepts as “actor”, “role”, “spectator”, “drama”, “action”, “conflict”, which, in a choreographic performance, are in certain relationships determined by cultural traditions, and in a non-theatrical production, they are transformed up to their disappearance. A similar experience of separating a theater and a non-theater on the basis of the presence of an actor, a role, a spectator and an hierarchy between them is proposed in theater studies. However, in choreographic (including ballet) performances, the content of the role is closely linked with the music and is often determined by the emotional background and musical dramaturgy. In the case of a radical departure from the composer’s intention, turning to a different starting point for the composition, the specificity of the choreographic (ballet) performance is destroyed. Borrowings from non-theatrical art are showed in the construction of meanings when working with intrinsic body movement, as well as in the reliance on interdisciplinarity. Within a single line of choreographic art, there is a whole spectrum of ideas that interpret the concepts of “theatricality”, “non-theatricality”, “drama”, and “performativity” in different ways. On what basis to classify them in order to reduce them to a consistent system is a difficult question. The article attempts to outline the foundation for future classification. The relevance of this topic is caused by the insufficient elaboration of the conceptual base in the specialized literature on choreographic art.

The image of Russian puppet theater’s main character, Petrushka, played an important role in the history of Russian culture and embodied some important features of the national character. His images are quite widely and variously represented on the pages of children’s books. At the beginning of the 20th century and in the first post-revolutionary years, publications about the adventures of Petrushka fulfilled an important mission: they recorded characteristic examples of folk art, preserved the memory of farcical performances, and supported the tradition of the art of “Petrushka makers”. The books served as manuals for novice puppeteers.

In the 1920s — early 1930s, Petrushka continued to be one of the most popular characters of children’s books and aroused interest of many Russian writers and graphic artists. This indicates their desire to find a basis and support in the popular laughter culture, to continue its traditions, to bring elements of theatrical aesthetics into books.

Using a complex of methods of book, art and source studies, the article aims to consider the transformation of the image of Petrushka in children’s books of the 1920s — early 1930s.

The author draws attention to the significant differences between the literary component of such publications and their visual range. Writers, as a rule, sought to “re-educate” the areal joker and brawler, to ennoble his manners, modernize his appearance, and involve the popular character in solving actual ideological and pedagogical problems. Artists were more careful about the canonical, historically formed image of Petrushka, resisted too radical reinterpretation of it. Of particular interest in this regard are the illustrative cycles of I.S. Efimov, A.I. Sokolov-Asi, A.A. Radakov, V.M Konashevich, L.V. Popova, F.F. Kondratov.

The best writers and artists of those years managed to preserve the most essential features of the character, breathe new life into him, save him from oblivion, from complete loss of identity, and pass him on to new generations of creators and readers of children’s books.

The theme of war and peace is one of humankind’s eternal problems and one of the most relevant topics in art at all times. On the 75th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War (1941—1945), the author’s research interest is focused on one of the rare works in terms of its power of influence, which tears the mask off the apologetics of war, uncompromisingly and honestly telling about the human price for the military madness. That is B. Britten’s “War Requiem”.

The presented experience of art historical analysis is intended to explicate the intertextual connections of the work with a number of texts (verbal and mainly musical) inscribed in a wide socio-historical and artistic context of both the past and contemporary works of the English musician. This way of reading the opus allows to trace the role of dialogue with the European and national tradition in the birth of B. Britten’s text, which is original, innovative in style, highly outstanding in its artistic and civil-ethical merits. With the identification of intertextual inclusions — literary, ideological-shaped, story, genre, musical-lexical, intonational, and those at the level of musical thematism (from the works of Mozart, Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich) — a number of new opportunities appear: to strengthen the emotional experiences of the recipient; to deepen the understanding of the meaning of both individual sections of the requiem and its general concept; to expand the content field of interpretations of the musical score; to ensure that cultural traditions are inexhaustible for relevant art creativity; and finally, to specify our ideas about Britten’s expressed humanist and anti-militarian aspirations, which were dictated not so much by the external reasons (the relevance of the topic during the Cold War, the Requiem’s being ordered for the opening of the cathedral in Coventry), but by his deep sufferings for the fate of the world and humanity. In general, according to the author, the analysis practically confirms the idea that semiosis — the process of interpreting signs and generating meanings in art (including music) — is unlimited, and can cease only with the termination of the existence of the culture itself.

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