Composer Peter Dmitrievich Petrov as an Exponent of National Musical Culture of Abkhazia

The problem of the national identity of representatives of academic creativity in relation to the national culture of small peoples is particularly relevant in the era of global economic and political globalization, and the development of criteria that allow to attribute such a representative to one or another national culture is a means of demarcating the “own” and “foreign” in the national cultural heritage. The aim of the work is to determine the national-cultural belonging of the composer Peter Dmitrievich Petrov (born January 3, 1949) by studying his life and creative path. The research methods used are the biographical approach and methods of cultural-historical and ethno-cultural analysis as applied to musical art. The novelty of the work consists in the consideration of the problems of cultural and national identity through the study of the biography of one of the outstanding Abkhaz composers — P.D. Petrov. The main result of the research is the development of criteria that allow to attribute a cultural figure to one or another national culture regardless of his ethnic origin. The results can be applied in cultural policy planning documents of countries and regions with a predominance of small ethnic groups, textbooks on cultural studies and art history as they relate to the problem of cultural and national identity, as well as comparative-typological studies of similar processes in other regions. The conclusions of the work are that national art is not only a part of the heritage of individual ethnic groups, but represents in a sense a meta-culture existing in the space of the country. To be classified as a national culture, an art worker does not necessarily belong to the titular ethnos. On the example of the life and creative path of P.D. Petrov, a composer of Russian origin, it is shown that he can be recognized as an Abkhazian composer for his significant contribution to the national musical culture of Abkhazia.