Brilliant Career of Prince Golitsyn', HUS 19 (1995): 639-54; Richard Hellie, The Economy and Materia Culture of Russia 1600-1725 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 571-627. Robert O. Crummey writes: 'Only one boyar . . . Golitsyn, could claim to be a whole-hearted devotee ofthe new cultural standards': Aristocrats and Servitors: The Boyar Elite in Russia, 1613-1689 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 161. On Matveev, Paul Bushkovitch, Peter the Great. The Struggle for Power, 1671-1725 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 43-79.
54 Ovchinnikova, Portret, p. 101.
55 Cracraft, Imagery, p. 192.
56 See Thyreet, Between God and Tsar; Lindsey Hughes, 'Women and the Arts at the Russian Court from the 16th to the 18th Century', in J. Pomeroy and R. Gray (eds.), An Imperial Collection. Women Artists from the State Hermitage (Washington, DC: National Museum of Women in the Arts, 2003), pp. 19-49.
57 See Hughes, Sophia, pp. 139-44, and her 'Sophia, "Autocrat of All the Russias": Titles, Ritual and Eulogy in the Regency of Sophia Alekseevna (i682-89)', Canadian Slavonic Papers 28 (i986): 266-86.
58 David Piper, The English Face (London: National Gallery, i978), pp. i03-4.
paintings of seventeenth-century women, for example, Tsar Fedor's widow Martha, in modest Muscovite robe and headdress, and Peter I's mother Natalia Naryshkina, her hair hidden by a severe black scarf like a nun's veil, date from the 1690s.[367]
Theatre and music
In October 1672 Alexis sat down at Preobrazhenskoe outside Moscow to watch a company of German amateur actors directed by a Lutheran pastor perform the 'Play of Ahasuerus and Esther', the first such spectacle to be staged at court. The tsar was aware of fellow monarchs' enthusiasm for theatre and a decade earlier had instructed the agent John Hebdon to bring players to Moscow. He was persuaded to revive this unfulfilled plan by Artamon Matveev, a pioneer of amateur dramatics, who staged a production of the ballet Orpheo at Shrovetide 1672.[368] The repertoire of Alexis's theatre was largely religious and moralising, with biblical stories providing the plots; but contemporary references and slapstick humour were built in. All plays, regardless of content, had spectacular lighting effects, 'perspective' scenery and colourful costumes. The Comedy ofBacchus even featured drunkards, maidens and performing bears.[369]Staged within the confines of royal palaces before restricted audiences, these performances were extensions of courtly spectacle. The theatre was in operation only until the tsar's death, after which it was closed under pressure from the patriarch. There is no basis for the legend that Tsarevna Sophia wrote and performed plays.[370] The first public theatre in Russia opened in Moscow in 1701, but was not a great success.
The tsar's theatre accelerated the importation of Western instruments and musical scores, previously virtually unknown. It also featured traditional vocal music, which in the course of the century assimilated a number of 'novelties' via Ukraine, including linear (five-line) notation and the increased use of polyphonic (part-singing) compositions. The two most prestigious church choirs belonged to the tsar and the patriarch. They and smaller ensembles maintained by monasteries and private individuals performed not only liturgical music, but also 'interludes' (kontserty) in church and spiritual chants (dukhovnye kanty), which could be sung at home. One of the most prolific composers in the medium of sacred music was the singer Vasilii Titov, who set Simeon Polotskii's rhymed Psalter to music.[371] Another composer, Nikolai Diletskii, a Ukrainian who studied in Vilna, produced Ideia grammatiki musiki- iskoi, the first treatise on music to be translated into Russian. Many vocal scores from the period await analysis and publication.
Instrumental music was restricted by the Church, which permitted only vocal music during the liturgy. A campaign spearheaded early in Alexis's reign by the Zealots of Piety prompted an edict of 1645: 'Take great care that nowhere should there be shameful spectacles and games, and no wandering minstrels with tambourines and flutes either in the town or the villages.' Tambourines, flutes and horns were to be smashed 'without exception'. A foreign witness reported that about five cartloads of instruments were confiscated and burnt.[372] The Zealots' targets were pagan entertainers, but 'seemly' musical entertainments were permissible at court functions and diplomatic receptions. In 1664, for example, musicians from the suite ofthe English ambassador Charles Howard gave some private performances. Tsar Alexis employed a Polish organist, Simeon Gutkovskii. Organs, pipes and drums were played at the tsar's wedding to Natalia Naryshkina in 1671.[373] Even so, Alexis was at first hesitant about permitting instrumental music in his new theatre 'as being new and in some ways pagan, but when the players pleaded with him that without music it was impossible to put together a chorus, just as it was impossible for dancers to dance without legs, then he, a little unwillingly, left everything to the discretion of the actors themselves'. Foreign musicians supplied the accompaniment, some specially hired from abroad.[374] The entry of the Dutch embassy of Konraad van Klenk into Moscow in 1676 was greeted by 'the continual and unceasing sounds of trumpets and percussion', as well as pipes and flutes.[375] Such music was to become a regular feature of Peter I's parades and entertainments.
Literary and intellectual life: publishing and printing
Anthologies and surveys generally include the seventeenth century and the first decades of the eighteenth as the last chapter of Early Russian literature. There was indeed much continuity from the sixteenth century. Russian traditional literature - lives of saints, miracle stories of the Virgin Mary, folk tales - was enjoyed by most classes. Increasingly, however, these were supplemented by new 'high' genres - poetry, drama, sermons - for selected readers. The separation of elite from popular literature continued, as the concept of belles lettres emerged.[376] Little of this was reflected in print, however. In the whole of the seventeenth century the Moscow Press (Pechatnyi dvor), for most of the period the only one in Russia, published fewer than ten books that were not wholly religious in content. These included the 1649 Law Code, Meletii Smotritskii's Grammar and a manual for training infantry regiments. The Press's best-sellers were alphabet primers forteachingbasicliteracy, closely followed by the Psalter. Its total output between 1601 and 1700 amounted to only 483 editions, of which more than 80 per cent were for liturgical use.[377]In other words, the medium of print was virtually reserved for sacred texts, mostly heavy tomes for use in church, while profane or secular works were confined to manuscripts or oral transmission.
367
Cracraft,
368
Simon Karlinsky,
369
For texts see O. A. Derzhavina et al. (eds.),
371
See Olga Dolskaya, 'Choral Music in the Petrine Era', in A. G. Cross (ed.),
372
Adam Olearius,
373
See C. R.Jensen, 'Music for the Tsar: a Preliminary Study ofthe Music ofthe Muscovite Court Theatre',
376
See E. K. Romodanovskaia,