Ethnographic Concerts in the Service of Empire

2020 ◽  
pp. 209-254
Author(s):  
Adalyat Issiyeva
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Russian Culture ◽  
Russian Composers ◽  
Folk Song Arrangements

This chapter discusses how the composers affiliated with the Music-Ethnographic Committee used several strategies to circumscribe the peoples of the empire under the umbrella of Russian culture. Most of the so-called Ethnographic Concerts organized in Moscow by this committee (1893–1911) featured Russian or Slavic music followed by arrangements of folk songs of Russia’s inorodtsy, helping to reinforce the idea of Russia as a multiethnic state. Detailed analysis of folk song arrangements representing Russia’s ethnic minorities suggests that Russia was determined to appropriate and recontextualize the cultures of its newly acquired southern and eastern subjects. By introducing into inorodtsy music some elements associated with Russianness—the Dorian mode, avoidance of the leading tone, modal harmony, and what was called the “Glinka variation”—Russian composers reduced both the cultural and musical distances between Russia and its “others.” The arrangements performed in the Ethnographic Concerts, however, completely transformed inorodtsy musical language and stripped it of its historical and traditional meanings.

Representing Russia's Orient

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adalyat Issiyeva
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Art Songs ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Imperial Identity ◽  
Musical Discourse ◽  
Political Differences ◽  
Russian Composers ◽  
Musical Elements

This book examines the musical ramifications of Russia’s nineteenth-century expansion to the east and south and explores the formation and development of Russian musical discourse on Russia’s own Orient. It traces the transition from music ethnography to art songs and discusses how various aspects of (music) ethnographies, folk song collections, music theories, and visual representations of Russia’s ethnic minorities, or inorodtsy, shaped Russian composers’ perception and musical representation of Russia’s oriental “others.” Situated on the periphery, minority peoples not only defined the geographical boundaries of the empire, its culture, and its music but also defined the boundaries of Russianness itself. Extensively illustrated with music examples, archival material, and images from long-forgotten Russian sources, this book investigates the historical, cultural, and musical elements that contributed to the formation and creation of Russia’s imperial identity. It delineates musical elements that have been adopted to characterize Russians’ own national hybridity. Three case studies—well-known leader of the Mighty Five Milii Balakirev, lesser known Alexander Aliab’ev, and the late-nineteenth-century composers affiliated with the Music-Ethnography Committee—demonstrate how and why, despite the overwhelming number of pejorative images and descriptions of inorodtsy, these composers decided to disregard their social and political differences and sometimes confused and combined diverse minorities’ identities with that of the Russian “self.” The analysis of the arrangements of folk songs of Russia’s eastern and southern minorities reveals the trajectory of the ways their music was treated, from denigration and “othering” to embracing peoples from all the provinces of the empire.

scholarly journals The Harmonization of Folk Songs in Kodály’s Workshop

2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 265-279
Author(s):  
Pál Richter
Keyword(s):  
Folk Music ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
Bela Bartok ◽  
Western Music ◽  
Zoltan Kodaly ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Folk Song Arrangements

When Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály began systematically collecting folk songs, they almost exclusively encountered monophony, which subsequently featured as their compositional inspiration. As a musical phenomenon, monophony differed sharply from the harmonically based, often overharmonized, polyphonic universe of Western music. However, they also encountered coordinated folk polyphony, in the context of instrumental folk harmonizations. Taking into account the instrumental folk music both Kodály and Bartók collected, this study compares the two main types of folk harmonizations with folk song harmonizations in the works of Kodály, whose related theoretical statements are also considered. This study offers an in-depth analysis of six fragments from Kodály’s major folk-song arrangements to highlight the features of Kodály’s folk song harmonizations.

RUSSIAN FOLK SONG "OVER THE SILVER RIVER" AND ITS FATE IN CHINA

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-167
Author(s):  
Zhang Yue ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
Russian Culture ◽  
Russian Music ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Chinese Music ◽  
History Of ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
Very High

The article deals with the history of the Russian poet F. N. Glinka's poem "Veiled Traces", which was the basis for the famous folk song "Over the Silver River". The article reveals the content of the text and shows different variants of its "plot". This refers to several Russian collections containing the song "Over the Silver River", including "Ural Folk Songs" by L. Christiansen and "Folk Songs of Krasnoyarsk Region" by K. Skobtsov. Folklore collectors considered this song as an example of Russian lyrical song genre. The author analyzes the arrangement of this song included in A. Chernyavsky's piano book and notes the expressive features of the performance of the song by the famous singer I. M. Skobtsov. The original and adapted versions are compared in terms of style and expressive techniques in the context of Chinese traditions, in order to identify specific and common properties within two different cultures. The roles of the folklore collector Wang Lobin, who recorded the song "Over the Silver River" using elements of Chinese music, and the composer Li Yinghar, who arranged Russian melody adopted in Chinese culture, are highlighted. Musical samples are also presented. Russian music in China is a special "cross-border" phenomenon, and the interest in Russian culture and Russian musical folklore in China is very high. Russian folk songs are loved in China and are very popular.

Rimsky-Korsakov and His World

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Great Influence ◽  
Igor Stravinsky ◽  
The West ◽  
Russian Culture ◽  
Center Stage ◽  
Russian Composers ◽  
General Aspects

During his lifetime, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908) was a composer whose work had great influence not only in his native Russia but also internationally. While he remains well-known in Russia—where many of his fifteen operas and various orchestral pieces are still in the standard repertoire—very little of his work is performed in the West today beyond Scheherezade and arrangements of The Flight of the Bumblebee. In Western writings, he appears mainly in the context of the Mighty Handful, a group of five Russian composers to which he belonged at the outset of his career. This book finally gives the composer center stage and due attention. In this book, Rimsky-Korsakov's major operas, The Snow Maiden, Mozart and Salieri, and The Golden Cockerel, receive multifaceted exploration and are carefully contextualized within the wider Russian culture of the era. The discussion of these operas is accompanied and enriched by the composer's letters to Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel, the distinguished soprano for whom he wrote several leading roles. Other chapters look at more general aspects of Rimsky-Korsakov's work and examine his far-reaching legacy as a professor of composition and orchestration, including his impact on his most famous pupil Igor Stravinsky.

Latvju dainu atbalsis Veltas Sniķeres lirikā

2020 ◽  
pp. 124-134
Author(s):  
Sintija Kampāne-Štelmahere
Keyword(s):  
Indian Philosophy ◽  
First Language ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
Ethical Values ◽  
Exile Literature ◽  
Gold Silver ◽  
Research Objects ◽  
Literary Methods ◽  
Prehistoric Time

The research “Echoes of Latvian Dainas in the Lyrics of Velta Sniķere” examines motifs and fragments of Latvian folk songs in the poetry by Sniķere. Several poems that directly reveal the montage of folk songs are selected as research objects. Linguistic, semantic, hermeneutical and historical as well as literary methods were used in poetry analysis. The research emphasizes the importance of Latvian folklore in the process of Latvian exile literature, the genesis of modern lyrics, and the philosophical conception of the poet. Latvian folk songs in the lyrics of Sniķere are mainly perceived as a source of ancient knowledge and as a path to the Indo-European first language, prehistoric time, which is understood only in a poetic state. Often, the montage of Latvian folk songs or their fragments in the lyrics of Sniķere is revealed as a reflexive reverence that creates a semantic fracture and opposition between profane and sacred view. The insertion of a song in the poem alters the rhythmic and phonetic sound: a free and sometimes dissonant article is replaced by a harmonic trochee, while an internationalism saturated language is replaced by a simple, phonetically effective language composed of alliterations and assonances. The montage of folk songs in a poem is justified by the necessity to restore the Latvian identity in exile, to restore the memory of ancient, mythical knowledge, to represent the understanding of beauty and other moral-ethical values and to show the thought activity. Common mythical images in the lyrics of Sniķere are snake, wind, gold, silver, stone etc. The Latvian folk song symbolism and lifestyle of the poet are organically synthesized with the insights of Indian philosophy.

scholarly journals Lusatian Folklore in the Slavic Research of the Italian Wolfango (Wolf) Giusti

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
pp. 36-44
Author(s):  
Yarema Kravets’ ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Research Papers ◽  
Short Essay ◽  
Mood Classification ◽  
The Way ◽  
Literary Legacy

Purpose: The article is devoted to the Sorbian studies work of the Italian Slavic scholar of Lusatian origin Wolfango Giusti (1901-1980) “The Folk Lusatian Serbian Song” (1926), totally unknown in Ukrainian Slavic scholars’ circles. The author of a large number of Sorbian studies publications printed in the 1920s and 1930s in the pages of Italian Slavic editions, he became a true popularizer of Lusatian culture, and his works found a special reverberation in the research papers of authoritative Sorbian scholars. W. Giusti’s name as researcher and translator has recently been more frequently mentioned in Slavistic publications, his interest in Ukrainian poetry, esp. in the 1920s, is written about. The interest in W. Giusti’s literary legacy is linked, in particular, to his being interested in T. Shevchenko’s and M. Shashkevych’s lyrics. In the research under analysis, the Italian scholar stressed that “the soul of the Lusatian people has found its best and fullest expression in their folk song”. Also mentioned by W. Giusti were Ukrainian folk songs, rich in their multi-genre samples. Results: The paper presents a classification of the most characteristic folk songs, the classification coming to be basis-providing for the Italian scholar: W. Giusti relied on authoritative research papers, including those by the scholars K. Fiedler and B. Krawc. The Italian Slavicist acquaints us with songs of love between brother and sister, love songs about the way of life of the whole people, songs resonating with the motif of fidelity. Neither has the literary scholar bypassed the issue of the neighbouring peoples’ influence experienced by Lusatian culture, particularly that of a Germanic culture, providing some examples of a “spiritual analogy” with German folk songs. W. Giusti completed his short essay by promising to offer the reader, before long, “other genres of the extremely rich Lusatian folklore”. The promise came to be fulfilled as early as the next year, in the work published under the title “Folk Lusatian Serbian Songs”. Key words: Lusatian folklore, Wolfango Giusti, folk song, motif of fidelity/infidelity, dramatic mood, classification of songs, aspects of “Wendish” folklore, Germanic influence.

Teaching the Korean Folk Song (Arirang) Through Performing, Creating, and Responding

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyesoo Yoo ◽  
Sangmi Kang
Keyword(s):  
Music Teachers ◽  
Music Educators ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
Upper Elementary ◽  
Depth Information ◽  
General Music ◽  
Comprehensive Musicianship ◽  
Music Standards ◽  
Music Classrooms

This article introduces a pedagogical approach to teaching one of the renowned Korean folk songs ( Arirang) based on the comprehensive musicianship approach and the 2014 Music Standards (competencies in performing, creating, and responding to music). The authors provide in-depth information for music educators to help their students achieve learning outcomes for the skill, knowledge, and affect domains of the Korean folk song ( Arirang). Furthermore, the authors offer music lessons for Arirang in a variety of ways that are appropriate for upper elementary and secondary general music classrooms, including performing, creating, and responding to the music. An educational website that includes exemplary lesson plans, videos, and worksheets is also provided to help music teachers obtain content and pedagogical knowledge of Arirang.

The Folk Song Project at the Confluence of Music and Nationalism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip V. Bohlman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South America ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
World Music ◽  
Musical Thought

Published in six folios during 1778 and 1779, Herder’s Volkslieder (Folk songs) has been one of the most influential works in modern intellectual history, even though it has never before appeared in English translation. The Volkslieder not only became the first collection of world music—songs came not only from many regions of Europe, but also from Africa, the Mediterranean, and South America—but also served as the source for European composers throughout the nineteenth century. Aesthetics, ethnography, and literary and cultural history converge to transform modern musical thought. Part one of the chapter contains translations from Herder’s own introductions to the songs, and part two contains twenty-four songs that represent the paradigm shift inspired by this monumental work on folk song.

Form created by performance: Bartók's recording of his Improvisations op. 20

2007 ◽  
Vol 48 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 103-111
Author(s):  
Ron Atar
Keyword(s):  
Simple Structure ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
Personal Style ◽  
Performance Style ◽  
Current Article ◽  
The One ◽  
Folk Song Arrangements ◽  
Special Case

Abstract Bartók's “Continental” 1942 recording of Improvisations op. 20 provides us with invaluable insights into his aesthetics and nature. This is a special case study in which Bartók redesign the composition through his performance. In this rendition the simple structure of most of the eight pieces that construct the composition (alternations between arrangements of the Hungarian peasant songs and transitions section in between them), turn into temperamental micro-drama of associations, flowing without any hesitations from Bartók's mind to his fingers. The folk song arrangements are played in various performing styles, related directly to the written texture, while the transition sections played in more personal style. Here, in these transitional sections, Bartók the romantic, emotional pianist is revealed. These transitions are used by him as improvisatory pauses, used mainly for musical reflections dealing with his performance style of the preceded folk song arrangement or the one that follows. The current article introduces and examines some of the insights evoked by Bartók's recording of this composition.

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