Chanting art's masters at the court of Ivan the Terrible

The extant written data provide great evidence to the fact that the activities of the most outstanding Russian chant masters were closely connected with the main centres of Russian medieval music - with the Tsar's and the patriarch's choirs. The sources also lead to the conclusion that the development of the Moscow school as a unique creative trend of the old Russian music took place a bit later than the Novgorod one. A decisive role here was played by the chant masters who were taught in Novgorod the Great [Veliky Novgorod]. Among them one should mention the didascalos and chanter Feodor Krestjanin (the Christian), whose chants became the embodiment of “Moscow singing” for the musical theorists of the late 16 th - early 17 th centuries. Bright author creativity at that time involved in its sphere as ordinary Moscow masters and high reigning persons, the first of whom was the Tsar Ivan the Terrible.