Some aspects of the semantic approach to the study of new trends in Russian church-singing culture

The article is devoted to problems of the modern Orthodox musical culture, connected with the secularity of spiritual culture, with the loss of understanding of the essential and semantic foundation of the Church art. As a result of the processes of secularization of the Church culture, the symbolic intonation potential of ancient chants was replaced by musical symbols of secular culture: everyday songs, romances, Protestant chorales of I. S. Bach with subtext of liturgical texts in the Church Slavonic language. The Ancient Russian singing culture was a unique example of the semantic field of culture, where the evidence of the Prototype, of the primordial Form, expressed in the cultural form and its semantics (parameters, given with the help of certain symbols), was fixed and transmitted from generation to generation. The author expresses concern about the loss of the main function of the Orthodox musical art: like an icon, the Orthodox Church music demonstrates Divine reality. The special attention is deserved by the positive direction of modern orthodox musical culture: canonical church-singing, expressed in the reconstruction of the culture of singing znamenny chant, interest in the Byzantine tradition, the appeal to the Old Russian polyphony, socio-cultural activity of regents-composers.