Итальянские капельмейстеры в российской империи второй половины ХVІІІ века и православная церковная музыка

The article examines the Orthodox church music of Italian composers of the second half of the eighteenth century, who were invited to the capital of the Russian Empire for the post of first court bandmaster. The main duties of the Italian bandmasters were to compose secular music, especially operas for the court theater. The creation of choral concerts for the court choir that took part in church services with the participation of the first persons of the Russian Empire was not included in the contractual obligations. The main purpose of the appeal of Italian ban-dmasters to this area of creativity was to create a new church repertoire, which was closer in style to the European one. The domestic choir directors, brought up on the traditions of the old church singing art, did not cope with this task. The article contains an overview of the hand-written sources in which the sacred music of the Italian bandmasters was discovered.