Musical Aesthetics of Silence: Nilus of Sora in the Context of the Singing Culture of his Era

The article is devoted to the consideration of the philosophical (hesychast) heritage of Nilus of Sora in the context of the church singing culture of his time based on the material of surviving notated manuscripts of the late 15th – early 16th centuries. His essay “The Tradition and Rules of Living in the Hermitage” contains ideas of a musical and aesthetic nature, some evidence about the singing culture of that era and a value assessment of a number of phenomena of musical and church life.