Abstract
In the second half of the 19th century, when Oskar Kolberg conducted
his folkloristic and ethnographic work, folk song and music were still
alive and, to a great extent, functioned in their natural culture context.
However, already at that time, and especially in the last decades of the
century, gradual changes were taking place within folk tradition. Those
changes were brought about by industrialization and factors in the
development of urban civilization, which varied in intensity depending
on the region. Folk music was also influenced by those changes and they
themselves were further fuelled by the final (third) Partition of Poland
by Austria, Prussia and Russia, declared in 1795 and lasting till the end
of World War I.
Oskar Kolberg noticed and described changes in the musical
landscape of villages and little towns of the former Polish Republic
in the 19th century, as well as in the choice of instruments. To be quite
precise, musical instruments are not featured as a separate subject of his
research, but various references, though scattered, are quite numerous,
and are presented against a social, cultural and musical background,
which provides an opportunity to draw certain conclusions concerning
folk music instrumental practice.
However, changes in the makeup of folk music ensembles resulted in
the disappearance of traditional instruments, which were being replaced
by the newer, factory-produced ones. This process worried Kolberg
and he noticed its symptoms also in a wider, European context, where
bagpipes or dulcimers were being supplanted not only by “itinerant
orchestras” but also by barrel organs or even violins. Writing about
our country, Poland, he combined a positive opinion on the subject
of improvised and expressive performance of folk violinists with
a negative one on clarinet players and mechanical instruments.
Summing up, the musical landscape of Polish villages and both
small and larger towns was definitely influenced in the 19th century
by the symptoms of phenomena which much later acquired a wider
dimension and were defined as globalization and commercialization.
Sensing them, Oskar Kolberg viewed the well-being of the traditional
culture heritage with apprehension.
Singing well-becoming: Student musical therapy case studies
