Spirituality as a Category of Musical Art and Education

• Main Author: Lyudmila A. Rapatskaya
• Format: Article
• Language: Russian
• Published: Moscow Pedagogical State University, Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education 2020-06-01
• Series: Музыкальное искусство и образование
• Subjects: spirituality; theological interpretation of spirituality; historical and cultural analysis; russian temple music; interpretation of spirituality in secular musical genres; pedagogy of music education; morality; spiritual and moral culture; spiritual and moral education; content of modern music and pedagogical education
• Online Access: http://musart-edu.ru/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/2020-2-34.pdf

Postmodern methodology, which influenced the development of the human sciences of the XXI century, teaches researchers to freely use any concepts and definitions outside of the original semantic context. The author of the article, opposing this practice, defends the traditional methodological foundations of the national pedagogy of music education, identifying the problem of ambiguity and inconsistency of understanding the category of spirituality in modern music and pedagogical research. Identification of the original meanings and clarification of the categorical specifics of spirituality is impossible outside of theological sources that capture the “mechanisms” of centuries-old experience of spiritual knowledge of the world and man. Recognizing the spirituality as the highest reality of human existence, it is suggested that in the pedagogy of music education this category is the basis for a dialogue of scientific and religious knowledge. Scientific interpretation of the category of spirituality in musical art and education is impossible without the correct “translation” of theological pedagogical attitudes into the language of music and musical creativity. Historical and cultural analysis of spirituality as a “super-understanding” of the existence of music is revealed using a comparison of religious meanings with the real sound “analogs”. The appeal to the Russian musical heritage allowed us to identify significant trends between “spiritual” and “artistic”. The first trend is the dominance of spirituality in temple music. It is confirmed by the birth of the artistic Canon of Orthodox temple singing, which emphasizes the semantic depth and grace of prayer texts. The article highlights the norms of the embodiment of spirituality in music, born in the bowels of the theory of its “inspired” origin, as well as the time cycle of the revival of the spiritual dominant in the phenomenon of the “Orthodox musical Renaissance”. Another trend is related to the development of spirituality in secular musical genres. The article notes the ambiguity of the contact between “spiritual” and “artistic” in secular music, the semantic diversity in the implementation of spirituality by Russian composers from its Evangelical understanding to mystical “author’s” interpretations. The transformation of the content components of spirituality into morality in the public consciousness of Russia and their further interaction contributed to the formation of the now widespread, but clearly insufficiently researched concepts of “spiritual and moral education” and “spiritual and moral culture”. In the content of modern music and pedagogical education, the moral component outside of its spiritual context is taken into account to a greater extent. All the above points to the need to develop a new master’s degree program that takes into account the following interrelated factors: the centuries-old experience of embodying spirituality in the musical art, the secular nature of the training of future music teachers.