Singing Festivities in the Russian Empire at the Turn of the 19th–20th Centuries

The article tells about the song celebrations in the Russian Empire at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries. Starting with the Baltic Germans in the late 1850s, the festivities gradually spread to all the western provinces of the country — Estonia, Livonia, Courland, Finland; then they began to settle in Russian territories. The festivities contributed to the rise of the national movement in the regions, and had a beneficial effect on creativity and performance. The first festivity of Russian song took place in Pskov (1911), in subsequent years, song festivities among the Russian population were held in the town of Bela, Sedletskaya Province, (1912) and in Zamoć in the Kholmsk region (1913). A certain algorithm for holding the festivities was worked out: on the first day, sacred music sounded, on the second — secular choral music, on the third day — a competition of groups. The singing festivities were timed to coincide with events of state or provincial importance. Thanks to the singing festivals, various types of arts (music, architecture, theater, literature, music printing) received an impetus for development. Singing festivals enlightened the people, gave the necessary vector to leisure, directing it towards amateur music-making or theatrical activity. The pre-revolutionary tradition, interrupted after 1917, began to actively revive from the 70s of the twentieth century, and it is developing today.

The Cantiones of 1575

In 1575, Tallis and his younger colleague William Byrd were given a royal monopoly on the printing of music. That same year they published the Cantiones, an elegantly produced collection of music by both composers. Some of Tallis’s contributions were reworkings of his older pieces, but others were strikingly innovative. His works in the last part of the book are particularly creative and fascinating. This chapter describes the whole collection and examines those last pieces one by one. It is unclear whether the Cantiones were a commercial failure or at least a partial success, but in either case they were a significant landmark in English music printing.

“V.V. Bessel” Collection in the Russian National Museum of Music

Vasily Vasilyevich Bessel (1843—1907) entered the history of Russian and world music culture as one of the largest music publishers. His company was occupying one of the leading positions in terms of production volume in the Russian music printing market in the late 19th — early 20th century. It was the company that first published many of works by Russian classical composers — A.G. Rubinstein, A.P. Borodin, P.I. Tchaikovsky, M.P. Mussorgsky, N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov, and A.K. Lyadov. V.V. Bessel’s music publishing activities were connected with his works on the history of music printing in Russia and copyright. He left an extensive legacy in the form of numerous handwritten materials, now dispersed in various archives (mainly in Moscow and Saint Petersburg). The Russian National Museum of Music, Collection 42, holds one of the largest archives associated with V.V. Bessel. Major part of it makes up a separate collection called “V.V. Bessel”, which includes unofficial documents, responding mail, as well as literary manuscripts and photographic materials. Due to lack of comprehensive research of that documentary collection, this article provides a brief overview of its content, and the history of formation of V.V. Bessel’s collection. The main purpose of the research is to characterize both published and unknown sources. The article meets the relevant task of modern musicology: disclosure of Moscow and St. Petersburg archival collections. Many of the documents reviewed by the author are an important addition to the only monograph on V.V. Bessel, which belongs to the pen of N.F. Findzein. The article discusses, in more detail, the documents related to the literary weekly “Muzykal’nyi Listok [Musical Sheet]” (1872—1877), the first periodical published by “V. Bessel and Co.”, as well as the correspondence of December 1886 between V.V. Bessel and P.I. Tchaikovsky, which, at the latter’s initiative, ended all the composer’s personal and business contacts with his Petersburg publisher. This study expands the researchers’ understanding of the body of documents stored in the collection under consideration, the problems associated with them, and their prospects.

The Jewish Liturgical Music Printing Revolution

Orality is the hallmark of all Jewish music cultures, and most especially of their liturgical music. Orality is not simply a technique of music mnemonics and transmission among Jews through the generations; it became, as Judit Frigyesi puts it, an aesthetical ideal, and this principle applies not only to the East European Jewish traditions studied by her but to all Jewish traditions....

To Sing Upon the Book: Oral and Written Counterpoint in Early Modern Europe

During the fifteenth century, many musici thought of counterpoint as an improvisational practice in which certain procedures were employed to produce a musical texture in which interest lay in the interplay of two or more melodic lines. The improvisational practice was called singing upon the book (cantare super librum): it required one singer to realize a pre-existing melody (called a cantus firmus) inscribed in a text while one or more other singers (called concentors), reading from that same text, devised, ex tempore, a countermelody or melodies that obeyed the rules of counterpoint with respect to the cantus firmus. Similar procedures, applied in writing, produced res facta, contrapuntal texture in textual form. Counterpoint and res facta were alternative means of providing music for occasions both sacred and secular. During the sixteenth century, several factors combined to alter the relationship between improvised and written counterpoint, and by the end of the century the importance of the former was greatly diminished. The growth of music printing provided an abundance of music for a growing community of amateurs who could read music but were not interested singing upon the book. The composers responsible for this new music embraced emerging ideas that stressed the advantages of written music, which enjoyed permanence that improvised counterpoint lacked, which was usually more observant of the rules than improvised counterpoint could be, and which enhanced the reputations of the composers who created it. As a result of these developments, emphasis shifted from improvised to written counterpoint, from the procedures that produced a contrapuntal texture to the texture itself, and singing upon the book came to be seen by many not as an end in itself but as a way to sharpen composers’ skills. Marginalized by print, improvised counterpoint survived in a much reduced community, largely in Catholic France and Iberia, and eventually, for want of a musical community large enough to sustain it, ceased to be a living musical tradition.

The transmission of motets within the Paston manuscripts, c.1610

The creation and expansion of commercial music printing from around 1500 has normally led to modern editors assigning textual primacy to published copies of music from the period in preference to any equivalent manuscript copies. However, some groups of manuscript sources, such as the Paston collection, from late 16th and early 17th century England, can shed a different light on contemporary music print culture and its relationship to manuscript copying. Edward Paston?s huge private music library, now dispersed in collections in the UK and US, contains many multiple versions of works he already access to in print form, and the choices he or his copyists made with regard to three particular six-voice Latin motets, Byrd?s Memento homo, Ferrabosco?s In monte Oliveti, and Vaet?s Salve Regina, are examined here, and placed within with their collecting context and likely use.