Music and Time Annotation << Back "I am that Which Alone Exists" Vocal Cycle "The Harlot and the Maiden" by A. Izosimov N.V. Klimova The article examines the stylistic and dramatic features of the chamber vocal cycle "The Harlot and the Maiden" by St. Petersburg composer Alexander Izosimov (b. 1958). Created for mezzo-soprano and piano to the texts of the ancient monument of the 2nd-4th centuries apocrypha "Thunder. The Perfect Mind", the cycle turns the listener to the mysteries of man's knowledge of his own essence. The main character of the cycle is a creature of the beyond. It is life and death, light and darkness, it is the sole origin of all that exists. The article contains an attempt to reveal the invariant approach to the exegesis of the literary text and to analyze the parametric features of the musical style suggested by it. The formula for renewal is the pitch structure of the neomodal method created by the composer, which he called "breathing mode". Focusing on the sound side of the word, its acoustic nature, the power of emotional utterance, the composer fi nds an equivalent in the sonorous devices of the verbal and musical text. Unlike the classics of the Russian avant-garde, in A. Izosimov’s cycle, sonorics is combined with light-acoustic coloring, recreated by means of harmonic structures. Keywords: text of the apocrypha, piano part, harmonic structures, pentachords of light and darkness. DOI: 10.25791/music.8.2025.1371 Pp. 14-21.