RUSSIAN FOLKLORE IN MASS MUSICAL EDUCATION OF CHILDREN IN PRE-REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA (60s — 80s of the XIXth century)

The 60s — 80s of the XIXth century were the period of arousing interest in music pedagogy and awareness of the need to develop theoretical research for organizing musical education and upbringing of children in family and school, representing the first musical collections for children based on Russian folklore. The analytical base of the research (sources) are collections of folk song arrangements, created with a specific pedagogical purpose, both for special educational institutions and for students of mass schools. Its content allows to demonstrate the views of Russian teachers, music educators and composers on the use of Russian folklore in the system of mass musical education for children. The most important achievement of the studied period is the appearance of the first children's song collections with a realized scientific approach to the publication of folklore works for pedagogical purposes, in which authentic melodies are presented without accompaniment written by the composer, and the song texts are supplemented with information about specific geographical recording location and performers. Theoretical and practical experience of musical education gained in the second half of the XIXth century is very valuable for modern music pedagogical science and practice.

János Jagamas’ Folk Song Arrangements

"The aim of the following study is to present János Jagamas’ vocal folk song arrangements by analyzing the melodies and the compositional methods used within the works. During his scientific work at the Folklore Institute of Cluj-Napoca, the outstanding folk music researcher uncovered and recorded reliable data by collecting, recording, analyzing, and classifying not only Hungarian but also Romanian and Bulgarian melodies. He processed some of the melodies he gathered using a variety of compositional procedures. The works are recommended for children, youth, and amateur choirs, so it is important to get to make them known among music teachers and conductors. Keywords: folk song adaptations, homogeneous and mixed choir works, polyphonic and homophonic editing techniques."

Ethnographic Concerts in the Service of Empire

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.

The Harmonization of Folk Songs in Kodály’s Workshop

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.

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

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.