Empire Style as a Model of the Embodiment of Patriarchal and Orthodox Ideas in European Culture and Music of the Restoration Era

Abstract

The article is devoted to the consideration of the qualities of Napoleonic and Alexanderian empire as a “style of empire” and their manifestation in the musical and historical tradition of France and Russia in the first half of the XIX century. The typology of this style is directly associated with the essence of the concept of “empire” as a universal state, pursuing the goals of world domination or leadership and possessing a kind of cultural civilizational mission. For the French absolutism of the New Age and its imperial “hypostasis” in the XIX century, the emphasis on the enlightening and civilizing mission is indicative, while in the history of the Russian Empire, throughout all stages of its existence, the spiritual-messianic idea of understanding Russia as a guardian has been consistently upheld (as “Third Rome”) Orthodoxy inherited from Byzantium. The musical “signs” of the empire became those genre spheres in which the scale of design and ideas were combined with reliance on typical, universally significant means of musical expression, the genesis of which often goes back to the spiritual and religious tradition. The empirical qualities of French musical culture are considered in the example of the poetry of the musical theater of G. Spontini, summarizing the cultural and historical realities of France of the era of the first empire, while the choral polonaises of O. Kozlovsky, which absorbed the sacred genesis and typology of edging, anthem and polonaise, become a sign-symbol of the Alexanderian Empire and its associated imperial court culture.