Russian Federation (Russ. Rossiiskaya Federatsiya).

Country largely in Asia, with its capital at Moscow. It is the world's largest country in area, reaching from the Gulf of Finland to the Pacific, and from the Arctic to the Black and Caspian seas, covering 11 time zones.

During the three centuries of Romanov rule (from 1613) the Russian Empire expanded to take in much of eastern Europe and northern and central Asia. The 1917 Revolution replaced the Romanovs with a Soviet republic headed by a series of strong leaders (Lenin, Stalin) whose views affected all spheres of society including music. The empire was reconstituted as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) which, following territorial gain after World War II (including the absorption of the Baltic States), grew to a total of 15, of which the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic was by far the biggest and itself included a number of smaller autonomous republics. Liberalization in the late 1980s led to the break-up of the Soviet Union into its constituent parts. In this way the Russian Federation was shorn of areas, partly Russian-speaking, such as Ukraine and Belarus, that had been closely linked with Russia for many centuries.

For further information on countires formerly part of the USSR, see articles on the following Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; as well as those from the former Soviet Central Asia: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan; and Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

I. Art music

II. Traditional music.

MARINA FROLOVA-WALKER (I, 1–3), JONATHAN POWELL (I, 4(i), (iii)), ROSAMUND BARTLETT (I, 4(ii)), IZALY ZEMTSOVSKY (II, 1), MARK SLOBIN/JARKKO NIEMI (II, 2), YURI SHEIKIN (II, 3)

Russian Federation

I. Art music

1. 988–1730.

2. 1730–1860.

3. 1860–1900.

4. The 20th century

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Russian Federation, §I: Art music

1. 988–1730.

(i) Sacred music.

Russia adopted Christianity in 988, when Prince Vladimir chose the Eastern Rite for the greater beauty of its services. This choice, together with the country's geographical position, ensured that Russia would develop independently from the West for centuries to come. In the Russian Church, Byzantine chant evolved into znamennīy raspev (znamennīy chant), which was notated in kryuki (neumes). This notation served as an aide-mémoire rather than a precise indicator of pitch until changes in the early 17th century, and so the recovery of chant melodies from manuscripts before this time is not possible, although a large number of chants were carried over into later neumatic and modern-notation manuscripts. Znamennīy chant was monodic and, in accordance with canon law, always sung without instrumental accompaniment. The chant melodies were organized into eight glasī (the system of osmoglasiye); 19th-century scholars assumed that these were analogous to Gregorian or Byzantine modes, but they were later established to be collections of melodic formulae. In the 20th century chant scholars in Russia also suggested that an indigenous polyphonic tradition emerged in the mid-17th century; however, there is no consensus on how to transcribe the music of this alleged tradition, since even the later neumatic notation lacks clef signs and indications of relative duration, and there are no documented rules for combining voices. The non-indigenous tradition of polyphonic church music that came to Russia from Poland via Ukraine is, on the contrary, well documented and preserved in a readily comprehensible Western notation. This imported tradition, known as partesnoye peniye (part singing), dates back to 1652, when the new style was demonstrated by a group of Ukrainian singers who had been invited to Moscow. From this Western practice emerged a new genre of liturgical music, the sacred concerto; Nikolay Dilets'ky and Vasily Titov were the leading exponents, and a composition manual for the genre survives, the Grammatika musikiyskogo peniya of Dilets'ky. (See also Russian and Slavonic church music.)

(ii) Secular music.

Little is known about secular music in Russia during the Middle Ages. Pictures of skomorokhi (similar to jongleurs) can be found in chronicles, but none of their music was notated in any form. Although the Russian Church believed the skomorokhi to be inspired by the devil, and accordingly persecuted them, they are known to have been employed at the court of Ivan the Terrible (1533–84). The main centres of skomorokhi activity were Novgorod (which enjoyed free-city status) and, from the 16th century, Moscow. From the time of Ivan the Terrible, Russians made increasing contact with the West, and Russian music came under Western influences. Portative organs and other keyboard instruments became popular as royal presents, and they were evidently used: we know, for example, that organ playing was popular at the court of Aleksey Mikhailovich (1645–76). Westerners hired by the Russian court brought other musical novelties: Gutovsky, for example, was printing music at the Russian court from as early as 1677. Instrumental music was used in ceremonial contexts (although, again, nothing is known of its nature), and military bands were formed around the middle of the century. In 1672 the first court theatre was established, and music played a significant role in its productions. From the late 17th century the court regularly invited foreign musicians, and this grew to a steady stream during the reign of Peter the Great. The first secular music to survive in notation was the new genre of partsong, known as kant, which emerged during this period. For Peter, the cultivation of European-style musical entertainments was a mark of civilization, and in 1718 he introduced regular balls (assamblei) where the Russian nobility were obliged to dance the newly learnt minuet. Large military bands featured in the celebrations of Peter's victories, and the aristocracy began to employ instrumental musicians.

Russian Federation, §I: Art music

2. 1730–1860.

(i) Opera.

The first opera ever presented in Russia was Ristori's Calandro, performed in Moscow, in 1731, by a touring Italian troupe. Soon an Italian operatic company was established at the Imperial Court in St Petersburg; for their inaugural production in 1736, they presented Araja's La forza dell'amore e dell'odio, recruiting Russian musicians for the choir and orchestra, a practice that was maintained thereafter. In time, the company began to perform new operas in the Russian language: the first of these, again with music by Araja, was Tsefal i Prokris (‘Cephalus and Procris’) by Sumarokov, performed in 1755, by which time there was a sufficient number of trained Russian singers for such enterprises. The Imperial Court and, increasingly, the higher nobility paid their foreign musicians handsomely and accorded them dignified status. Consequently many European musicians, especially Italians, took up positions in Russia, remaining for years, or often for the rest of their lives. The most senior position of court Kapellmeister was occupied by a string of distinguished composers: H.F. Raupach (1758–62), Vincenzo Manfredini (1762–5), Galuppi (1765–8), Traetta (1768–75), Paisiello (1776–84), Giuseppe Sarti (1784–6) and Cimarosa (1787–91); Martín y Soler held positions of court composer (1790–94) and inspector of the Italian Court Theatre (1800–04).

Many families among the higher nobility established their own theatrical and operatic companies (often training their serfs for this purpose), and several theatres were built to house regular productions. In the 1750s an Italian entrepreneur, Locatelli, ran the first public opera house in Moscow, but the enterprise was short-lived, since there was not yet sufficient public interest in opera, even though Locatelli presented comic operas which had appealed to the widest audience elsewhere. By the 1780s, however, interest had grown significantly, enough to justify the opening of several public opera houses during that decade; among the new opera houses was the Petrovsky Theatre in Moscow, which was one of the world's largest at the time, with 1000 seats. Aside from the Italian opera, presented by the Italian companies alone, all other operas included spoken dialogue, and these were played by singer-actors who also took part in non-musical dramas; increasing specialization led to the division of companies into distinct operatic and dramatic troupes at the beginning of the 19th century. But in tandem with this division of companies according to specialization, the number of companies was also gradually diminishing as the Imperial Theatres began to absorb the best singers (and actors) from the foreign and native companies; since the Imperial Theatres could always outbid other companies for the services of singers, they eventually destroyed all competition, leaving only one Italian, French, German and Russian company based at each Imperial Theatre.

One early Russian-language opera, Sokolovsky's Mel'nik-koldun, obmanshchik i svat (‘The Miller who was a Wizard, a Cheat and a Matchmaker’) of 1779, which enjoyed a run of three decades, established a new operatic genre in Russia, namely, a comedy of everyday life with spoken dialogue, often incorporating the melodies of popular Russian songs; the genre established itself firmly through a series of successful operas written in the 1780s and 90s. A new generation of operatic composers, including Pashkevich, Fomin and Bortnyans'ky, came to prominence at this time, and Catherine the Great's personal enthusiasm for opera lent their activities further support; indeed, she even penned several librettos which were duly set to music (for example, Pashkevich's Fevey of 1786 and Fedul s det'mi (‘Fedul and his Children’), by Fomin and Martín y Soler, of 1791). Russian operatic companies had to compete with German, French and English companies (both touring and resident), and were strongly influenced by their rivals' repertories. Perhaps the most consequential influence came in the form of Kauer's Das Donauweibchen, first performed in Russia in 1808; the success of the German version gave rise to Lesta, Dneprovskaya rusalka, a Russian-language adaptation, and this in turn spawned three sequels and prepared the way for many other Russian-language operas with fairy tale plots and spectacular stage effects. The leading composers of such operas were Catterino Cavos, an Italian émigré who directed the Russian opera company at court from 1798 to 1840, and Verstovsky, who based several operas on latter day Slav epic-style plots, the most popular being Askol'dova mogila (‘Askold's Grave’), first staged in 1835 (Verstovsky was also a composer of vaudevilles). In 1836 the first through-sung Russian opera was staged, Glinka's historical drama, A Life for the Tsar; it was hailed by critics as the first truly national opera and has since become a traditional season-opener. Nevertheless, foreign-language opera remained more popular among Russian audiences, for although the Imperial Russian company featured many distinguished singers, such as the bass Osip Petrov and the mezzo-soprano Anna Petrova, foreign companies could boast of even greater luminaries, such as Rubini, Patti or the dancer Filippo Taglioni.

(ii) Concert life.

The first public concert in Russia took place in 1746, and by the end of the century public concerts had become commonplace. Nevertheless, the greater number of concerts were still private, taking place at court and in the homes of the aristocracy, such as the many sumptuous palaces lining St Petersburg's Nevskiy Prospekt (admittedly, the invitees at private concerts would have constituted a large part of the potential audience for such music). Foreign musicians dominated concert life, although the first Russian virtuosos began to appear in the 1780s and 90s: the violinist Khandoshkin, for example, or the singer Sandunova. Over the course of the following decades, amateur musicians and music lovers from the aristocracy, well travelled and well connected, were able to attract Europe's most eminent performers to St Petersburg and Moscow: John Field (1802–21), J.N. Hummel (1822), Lipiński (1820s and 30s), Sontag (1830), Henselt (1838–89), Vieuxtemps (1838, 1845–52), Liszt (1842, 1843), Clara Schumann (1844), Berlioz (1847) and Pauline Viardot (1843–6, 1853).

Aside from orthodox orchestral and choral forces, soloists and chamber musicians, another type of ensemble, now long consigned to oblivion but then very popular in Russia, was the rogovaya muzīka (horn music); the first such ensemble in Russia was formed in 1751 by J.A. Mareš, a Czech musician, and such concerts remained a constant feature of concert life until the 1830s. The musicians played brass instruments with a design peculiar to these ensembles, producing a tone which was reputedly of great beauty, with one drawback: each instrument could play only one note. Excessive rehearsal time was required to achieve the necessary degree of coordination, and accordingly these orchestras were usually staffed by serfs or soldiers, who were in no position to demand hourly rates. A succession of modifications to the instruments' design provided players with a maximum of four notes by the end of the century, without significant damage to the timbre (since the timbre was the raison d'ętre of these orchestras, the range of possible modifications was limited). Contemporaries wrote enthusiastic accounts of horn orchestras consisting of anything between 40 and 130 players; since players often used more than one instrument in a given piece, the number of instruments in the orchestra could reach 300, according to these accounts. The repertory most commonly consisted of dance music, but extended more ambitiously to arrangements of popular overtures, or, occasionally, of entire symphonies.

In 1802, the newly formed St Petersburg Philharmonic Society began to organize grand concerts with large orchestral and choral forces, including a number of Handel oratorios, Haydn masses and Mozart's Requiem; and in 1824 they gave the first complete performance of Beethoven's Missa solemnis. The construction of a railway between St Petersburg and Pavlovsk, the site of the Tsar's summer residence, led, in 1838, to the opening of an important new public concert hall which also served as the Pavlovsk terminus. Series of concerts given by Johann Strauss (ii) in 1856–65 and again in 1869 established the Pavlovsk concert hall as one of the most fashionable venues for the St Petersburg gentry and nobility. Within the confines of St Petersburg, summer concerts in the various parks became popular during this period. From 1842 until the late 1850s, the university orchestra presented an annual concert series, introducing a wide repertory to the inhabitants of the capital, including many new works.

(iii) Domestic music-making.

From the mid-18th century Moscow and St Petersburg saw a swift rise in sales of printed music and musical instruments, especially keyboards, guitars and harps; by the 1760s the ranks of music teachers in the cities had expanded greatly, and teachers for the most popular instruments were able to make a comfortable living. In 1751 an amateur musician, Teplov, published the first printed collection of Russian music, entitled ‘Idle Hours Away from Work, or A Collection of Various Songs’; these pioneering settings of Russian poetry display some skill in fitting poetic metres into regular musical phrases (the composers of earlier partsongs were not so successful in setting the less congenial hendecasyllables of their chosen verses).

The music publishing business became an established part of commerce in the 1770s, adding to the sales of foreign sheet music; new music was often anthologized in various music lovers' periodicals, which remained popular throughout the following century. In 1798 a sufficient amount of music was circulating to prompt the opening of the first musical lending library in St Petersburg. The ability to compose songs became a mark of the cultivated gentleman around the beginning of the 19th century, and this proliferation of musical activity inevitably yielded some composers of distinction, such as Alyab'yev and Varlamov, and even Glinka's roots belonged to this culture. The term ‘romance’ was used to distinguish these songs, which began to acquire a distinctive repertory of harmonic and melodic devices, from their 18th-century predecessors.

(iv) Sacred music.

Italian composers employed by the court were not restricted to the composition of operas, but also provided liturgical music for Russian Orthodox services. Galuppi and Sarti, together with their Russian students, unsurprisingly brought stylistic features of Italian opera to the liturgy; occasionally, we even find melodies borrowed from Spontini and Gluck. The most distinguished indigenous composers of the time were the Ukrainians Bortnyans'ky and Berezovs'ky, both of whom studied in Italy. In the late 18th century they refashioned the style of the choral concerto, which was now a cycle of three or four classically patterned movements. The new liturgical music was, however, largely restricted to the more important churches of St Petersburg and Moscow, since smaller churches in the cities and provinces lacked sufficient forces of expert singers; accordingly, the now traditional three-part chant harmonizations remained the norm.

From the beginning of the 19th century the focus of all developments in Russian sacred music was the Court Chapel Choir, officially founded under this name in 1760, but descended from a court choir originally created in 1479. The Cappella choir was much in demand for its high performance standards, and it was often invited to participate in operatic productions and concerts. Both categories of sacred music – the annual cycle of chant arrangements and larger occasional works – were written mainly by directors of the Court Chapel Choir (such as Bortnyans'ky from 1796 to 1825, or Aleksey L'vov from 1837 to 1861). The melodies of znamennīy chant had by this stage all but disappeared from practice, having been gradually replaced by so-called bolgarskiy (Bulgarian) and grecheskiy (Greek) chant; the melodies of these repertories followed more regular structures than those of the znamennīy type. In 1816 the Court Chapel Choir directorship was granted exclusive control over the publication and performance of liturgical music; the express purpose was the elimination of the more blatantly operatic elements from sacred music, but it effectively gave the Court Chapel Choir's composers a monopoly over sacred music.

Russian Federation, §I: Art music

3. 1860–1900.

(i) Music education.

Largely through the activities of the brothers Anton and Nikolay Rubinstein, Russian musical life was professionalized during this period. The solicitations of Anton Rubinstein won musicians the status of ‘free artists’ and thus gave them a respectable place in the social hierarchy. In 1859 Anton Rubinstein had founded the Russian Music Society (RMS) under the patronage of Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna, and the next year saw the inauguration of the society's music classes. This activity was institutionalized in 1862 as the St Petersburg Conservatory, and various eminent foreign musicians were appointed as the conservatory's first professors. The foundation of Russia's first conservatory was greeted with hostile polemics from Stasov (who was soon to become the ideologist of The Five); he argued that the Western educational model that had inspired Rubinstein's conservatory threatened to undermine the indigenous development of a Russian national music. Stasov's protest notwithstanding, the success of the St Petersburg institution led in 1866 to the foundation of a second conservatory, in Moscow, placed under the directorship of Nikolay Rubinstein; among its first appointments was Tchaikovsky, who had just graduated from the St Petersburg Conservatory. By 1871, even a member of The Five had defected to the conservatory system, namely Rimsky-Korsakov, who in spite of his lack of formal training, accepted an invitation to teach at the St Petersburg Conservatory. Each composer was eventually seen as founder of a compositional school: Tchaikovsky's Moscow school, which included Taneyev, Kalinnikov and Rachmaninoff; and Rimsky-Korsakov's St Petersburg school, which included Glazunov, Lyadov and Ippolitov-Ivanov. Higher instruction on the piano was by far in greatest demand in the new conservatories, and the revenue generated by the piano departments allowed other departments to continue without material worries; prominent among the two conservatories' piano professors were Anton Rubinstein and Yesipova, and soon the first generation graduates, Ziloti, Safonov Rachmaninoff and Goldenweiser. The RMS quickly extended its educational programme to the provinces and outlying territories; new music schools were established in Kiev (1863), Saratov (1865), Khar'kiv (1871), Tbilisi (1871) and Odessa (1886), all of which were accorded the status of state conservatories in the years immediately prior to the Revolution.

The new conservatories' fees were high, enabling the critics of the RMS's policies to protest that these institutions were effectively closed to talented members of the lower social strata. Balakirev had shared Stasov's misgivings at the advent of Western institutions in Russian musical life, but he now decided to make the best of the new circumstances, and together with the choral director Lomakin he founded the Free School of Music in 1862, with the purpose of providing inexpensive musical education to all (in some cases, students were allowed to study free of charge). The school's finances were always strained, since Balakirev was unable to win the support of enough wealthy patrons; the syllabus was soon restricted to vocal tuition and classes in the rudiments of music theory, and the institution had ground to a halt by the end of the century. Nevertheless, the idea of music education open to all survived the demise of Balakirev's school and was soon embodied in the so-called People's Conservatories, founded in both St Petersburg and Moscow, in the wake of the 1905 uprising, through the offices of Rimsky-Korsakov, Lyadov, Taneyev, Auer and other distinguished musicians. Apart from the State Conservatories and the People's Conservatories, many private schools had been established in the two cities; some of these survived the post-Revolutionary exodus and the nationalization process, such as the school founded by the Gnesin sisters in 1895, which continued to produce many important virtuosos throughout the Soviet era.

(ii) Concert life, music business and patronage.

The foundation of the RMS by Anton Rubinstein in 1859 completely transformed the musical life of the two capitals. Both the St Petersburg and Moscow branches of the RMS established programmes of orchestral and chamber music, with up to 20 concerts a year in each city. The programmes combined the established Western classics – Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Schumann in the view of Russians at this time – with new Russian works; there was also a growing interest in the revival of (Western) Baroque music. In the 1886–7 concert season, Rubinstein presented a series of ten piano recitals designed as an education in music history, running from Baroque to contemporary works; the entire series was given in both St Petersburg and Moscow, and the recitals featuring Chopin and Schumann were received with particular enthusiasm. During the same season, Rubinstein conducted a parallel series of historical symphony concerts, and in the following season gave a new series of 53 lecture-recitals on the piano's repertory.

While the activities of the RMS were initially heavily dependent on state subsidies and aristocratic patronage, the 1880s saw the rise of wealthy industrialists as major sponsors of music (and the other arts), among them M.P. Belyayev, Mamontov and Morozov. Belyayev, for example, sponsored the annual series of concerts devoted exclusively to Russian music from 1885 onwards (and set up a trust, so that the series could continue after his death), and from 1891 he also funded a series of quartet evenings each year. In addition to his direct contributions to concert life, Belyayev also established a music publishing house and provided large sums for annual composition prizes (the Glinka Prize and the chamber music prize, both open to Russian composers only). Belyayev also gave direct assistance to the careers of particular favourites, such as Glazunov, Skryabin and several minor composers of string quartets. His publishing house was only one of several major new music publishers to emerge in the late 19th century, and several smaller firms were purchased by their larger competitors. Stellovsky was the first such enterprise, established in 1850 and eventually absorbed by Gutheil in 1886; it published recent music by Glinka, Dargomīzhsky and Serov, but also took on the burden of preserving older Russian music by publishing Khandoshkin, Cavos and others. In 1869 the publishing house of Bessel was established and soon became the normal outlet for the works of The Five; Jürgenson was established in 1861, and became Tchaikovsky's favoured publisher.

Towards the end of the 19th century, there was a marked increase in folksong research, and this scholarly work soon made its mark on concert life. In 1887, an orchestra of folk-style instruments was created by Vasily Andreyev, who took the simple three-string balalaika as his starting point, building instruments in four sizes to cover the normal orchestral pitch range; he later added modified versions of other folk instruments and assembled them in sections, after the standard orchestral model. Andreyev's orchestra performed arrangements of folk and classical music, and their virtuosity won them the respect of Rimsky-Korsakov (who contemplated using balalaikas in one of his operas) and Glazunov (who wrote several pieces for the orchestra). A Russian folk choir was established by Pyatnitsky, who collected folksongs and arranged them for his singers, whom he trained to emulate the vocal production of peasant singers. Neither of these enterprises was designed to replicate folk models, and indeed peasants who heard their own songs performed by Pyatnitsky's choir declared that they were unrecognizable.

(iii) Opera.

In the second half of the 19th century opera became central to the output of many Russian composers: Rimsky-Korsakov wrote 15, Rubinstein 13, Tchaikovsky ten, Cui ten, while Serov, Musorgsky and Borodin made smaller but nonetheless significant contributions to the art. This tendency resulted more from artistic imperatives than from the prospect of commercial success, since Russia offered only the two Imperial Opera Houses, the Mariinsky in St Petersburg and the Bol'shoy in Moscow, both under the same directorship; the choice of repertory was influenced by the court (Nicholas II notoriously rejected Rimsky-Korsakov's Sadko) and by commercial considerations, and on both counts Russian opera fared badly against its French and Italian rivals. The Italian opera company closed in 1885, but this was not due to any lessening of public enthusiasm for Italian repertory; on the contrary, demand had persisted for so long that the Russian Imperial companies were now sufficiently expert to satisfy demand for Italian works. In 1888 and 1889 Wagner's Ring cycle was given its Russian premičre by a German company conducted by Carl Muck; the first Russian-language production took place in 1902 and by all critical accounts deserved the acclaim it won from the public.

The scene was significantly enlivened by the re-emergence of private companies around the turn of the century; prominent among these was Mamontov's Private Russian Opera (established 1885) and Zimin's Opera (established 1904). The private companies lacked the resources of the Imperial Theatres and the quality of their musical performance varied greatly, but they were more flexible in their selection of repertory, and their productions more adventurous. It was Mamontov, rather than the Imperial Theatres, who discovered the talent of Chaliapin; it was Mamontov also who commissioned set designs from the most progressive Russian artists (Vrubel', Korovin, Goncharova, Bilibin) for productions which brought Rimsky-Korsakov his belated celebrity as an operatic composer. Diaghilev's Saisons Russes would later capitalize on these achievements in Paris, where the public was full of admiration for Chaliapin's acting, the stunning avant-garde sets and Rimsky-Korsakov's music. Within Russia, opera spread from the two capitals to the provincial centres of Kiev (1867), Odessa (1887) and Khar'kiv (1880).

(iv) Musical politics and criticism.

Before the 1860s music criticism was largely an occasional pastime of aristocratic music lovers like Ulībīshev, author of the first Russian monograph on Mozart, or Odoyevsky, who wrote pioneering articles on Glinka and Russian folksong. The next generation of critics, headed by Stasov and Serov, invested much more effort and ardour in their writing. Serov is remembered for the first Russian example of motivic analysis (in an essay on Glinka's A Life for the Tsar), and for his passionate promotion of Wagner (whom he met several times). Stasov, the ideologue of The Five, set himself the task of issuing propaganda for the cause of Russian musical nationalism. The Five, in Stasov's polemics, were presented as the only true friends of Russianness and progress in music, and Stasov issued denunciations of many other prominent figures in Russian musical life, including Anton Rubinstein and the RMS, his former friend Serov, Laroche for his advocacy of Tchaikovsky, and the younger critics Ivanov and Koptyayev. Cui, who was also an eminent critic, consistently followed Stasov's line, as did Rimsky-Korsakov in a few articles (which he later regretted). Stasov's posthumous influence was immense, largely shaping Soviet historiography of Russian 19th-century music; even Western accounts fell under his shadow, and accordingly a distorted picture of Russian music was perpetuated.

Musical journals, sold on the strength of their sheet music supplements, had been published in Russia since the late 18th century; the most long-lived of these was the Nuvellist (1840–1906). Journals without such supplements were short-lived, until the pattern was changed by the steady success of the Russkaya muzīkal'naya gazeta (1894–1918, edited by the music historian Findeyzen). Interest in Skryabin, Stravinsky and Prokofiev prior to the Revolution led to a specialist journal, Muzīka (1910–16), devoted to modernist currents in music.

(v) Church music.

The Court Chapel Choir's effective monopoly control over church music ended in 1879, when it lost a legal suit against the publisher Jürgenson, who had independently published Tchaikovsky's music for the liturgy. Nevertheless, until the close of the century, Tchaikovsky remained the only prominent composer outside the Court Chapel to have made a substantial contribution to liturgical music (within the Chapel, Rimsky-Korsakov composed 32 arrangements of chant melodies). In the 1890s, however, there was a surge of interest in church music centred around The Moscow Synodal School of Church Singing; director Kastal'sky called for the revival of znamennīy chant with new harmonizations supposedly derived from Russian folksong (although they were in fact drawn from the harmonic style developed in the middle of the century for piano accompaniments to folksongs). Rachmaninoff's Vsenoshchnoye bdeniye (‘All-Night Vigil’; 1915) is the most celebrated work to draw upon these innovations; others, such as Grechaninov or Tcherepnin, looked towards Western concert settings of liturgical texts, and introduced the organ and orchestra into sacred music. Further development was rendered impossible by Bolshevik policy towards the Church.

Russian Federation, §I: Art music

4. The 20th century

(i) The pre-Revolutionary period, 1900–17.

(ii) Political background to the Soviet period.

(iii) Music of the Soviet period.

Russian Federation, §I, 4: Soviet music

(i) The pre-Revolutionary period, 1900–17.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Russian music was no longer essentially divided along the nationalist and Europe-orientated lines that had defined much 19th-century Russian aesthetic debate. The end of the last century had been dominated by figures such as Tchaikovsky and Glazunov, both of whom had straddled this divide. However, nationalism saw a resurgence with a second generation such as Lyadov and Lyapunov; the beginning of the century also saw Balakirev's return to composition and Rimsky-Korsakov writing a series of operas that must be counted among his most important work. These composers were all based in St Petersburg. In the 19th century, Moscow was generally considered culturally backward when compared with its northern counterpart. But by the year 1900 Moscow had developed into a significant musical centre in its own right: crucial to this renaissance was Sergey Taneyev, a composer who was, more importantly, a teacher and mentor to a particularly gifted generation of composers – Medtner, Rachmaninoff and Skryabin. These figures must be counted as the most significant musicians of the so-called Silver Age, a term applied to the period 1890–1920 and its mainly symbolist and latterly futurist literature and art.

The combination of nationalist techniques with harmonic idioms which, while having their roots in Russian 19th-century music, were also associated with European Impressionism (Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande was performed in Russia in 1907), breathed new life into the St Petersburg school. Such leanings can also be observed in Lyadov's late orchestral works in which make-believe, apocalyptical or mythical narratives are conjured up by a language of increasing sophistication, but which still has folksong and 19th-century models at its basis. Likewise, in Rimsky-Korsakov's late operas, whole-tone and octatonic scales are interweaved in his recounting of the fantastic, the supernatural and searches for the unattainable. By this time, Wagner's ideas – if not necessarily all aspects of his music – had made considerable inroads into musical thinking in Russia and, beyond that, had affected the work of a whole range of the country's artists. The last decades of the St Petersburg school did not purvey a nationalism of the type proposed by Stasov in the 1860s: it had become atrophied, decadent and self-referential – but not necessarily aesthetically worse off for it. While Boris Godunov and Prince Igor were concerned with survival of the state and the tragic results of the relationship between the ruler and the ruled, Rimsky-Korsakov's last two operas treated similar subjects but in two very different ways: Kitezh mysticized the survival of Russia while The Golden Cockerel satirized the rulers of a supposedly imaginary state. Rimsky's pupils such as Nikolay Tcherepnin, Steinberg and others, formulated an Impressionist language that has received little attention outside Russia. His most important pupil, Stravinsky, initiated his stylistic development with a neo-classicism somewhat similar to that of Glazunov's middle-period works (in the early Piano Sonata and Symphony), before being attracted by this latter-day nationalism and Impressionism as well as assimilating some aspects of Skryabin's late language.

Although a classicist at heart, Taneyev was acutely aware of his pupils' need to be exposed to the most advanced musical tendencies, even if he did not necessarily approve of them. He thus broadened their outlook and unwittingly fostered a modernist environment. The Moscow school associated with Taneyev embraced composers as diverse as Rachmaninoff, Medtner, Catoire, Gličre and Stanchinsky, but the most important figure of the first two decades of the century was unquestionably Skryabin, who had been a protégé of Taneyev's. He later eclipsed all other Russian composers and came to represent the modernist musical faction of Moscow (if not all Russia) alone. Skryabin's influence affected the development of nearly every Russian composer of the first half of the 20th century. That composers attempted to write music exactly as he had done more than a decade after his death demonstrates that he had become an idol during the early Soviet era. But his influence had begun to take effect during his own short life: it can even be seen in works by essentially conservative composers such as Gličre, Lyadov, Medtner and Vasilenko. More importantly, elements of Skryabin's style became discernible in the early works of Prokofiev and Stravinsky, both of whom arguably subsequently developed creative personalities as strong as that of Skryabin. It was his example that inspired many musicians from Moscow and St Petersburg to experiment with atonality.

Lourié is emblematic of the breaking down of the previous duality inherent in Russian music: born in St Petersburg, he studied with Glazunov but soon became a follower of Skryabin. Likewise, the Moscow-born Vasilenko was influenced by ancient Russian chant and Impressionism, thus bringing his music closer to the mores of the St Petersburg school. This tendency reached an apotheosis in Gličre's Third Symphony; even though he was really a composer of Moscow orientation, Gličre combined nationalist epos with Wagnerian leitmotif narrative, Impressionist orchestration and Skryabinesque harmonies. Certain musicians who had an especial influence on the development of music in the Soviet era – including those composers of the Moscow school named above and the pianist-composer Goldenweiser, and the critics Zhilyayev and Lamm – were all educated and first gained recognition during the 1910s. In later years they represented a lifeline to the professionalism, artistry and aesthetic morality of the pre-Revolutionary era which the RAPM and then the hardline elements of the Composers' Union would label élitism and, as such, attempt to destroy.

Russian Federation, §I, 4: Soviet music

(ii) Political background to the Soviet period.

Apart from the renaming of ensembles such as the former court orchestra (which became the Petrograd State SO), the abdication of Nicholas II and the formation of the provisional government in February 1917 made little impact on the lives of most musicians, since few were politically engaged. However, this was not to be the case when the Bolsheviks seized power on 7 November later that year in Petrograd. The importance allocated to the arts was reflected in the appointment of Anatoly Lunacharsky as head of the Ministry of Education (abbreviated as Narkompros) the following day. The Bolsheviks needed not only to educate a largely illiterate population but also to indoctrinate it with Marxist principles – a task they believed might be more easily rendered through the medium of art, and in particular drama. Lunacharsky's brief therefore extended to a root and branch reorganization of Russian artistic life along nationalized lines. The new government began taking control of artistic institutions immediately after the Revolution, so that it could have greater jurisdiction over the cultural sphere. The Mariinsky and Bol'shoy theatres were transferred into state ownership on 22 November 1917, and their doors were opened for the first time to thousands of workers who were given free tickets by their factories and trade unions. Within a year the conservatories and private music schools were also nationalized, and concert halls, ensembles, publishing houses, libraries, archives and instrument manufacturers soon followed suit.

A highly educated and cultured man who retained his post until 1929, Lunacharsky was to play a crucial role in mediating between an often hostile and mistrustful artistic intelligentsia and Bolshevik leaders, with whom he also did not always agree on matters of cultural policy. He had more eclectic tastes than Lenin, who was an extreme conservative when it came to the arts; but both recognized the need for cultural continuity, at least in the short term. They were in agreement, therefore, on the question of preserving the old repertories, since they believed that revolutionary art needed to be created on the foundations of the old culture. More problematic was the future of the opera houses, which Lenin objected to as bastions of ‘landlord culture’, but Lunacharsky's more pluralistic approach and the unexpected popularity of opera with the new audiences helped to ensure its survival.

After Narkompros had been organized into departments, Lunacharsky appointed the composer and futurist-sympathizer Lourié to assist him in running its music division (MUZO). Its mission was to bring music to the masses, and to this end it started to promote concerts on an unprecedented scale and sponsored the formation of many new chamber ensembles. Musical events were accompanied by copious amounts of educational materials and were held in factories as well as concert halls for the benefit of thousands of workers and military personnel. MUZO also formulated extensive regulations governing opera house repertories and the contents of concert programmes, which had to be submitted for approval, and it endeavoured to monitor the activities of all those involved in the music business by requiring reports and formal requests for all planned events. Despite the euphoria of the first months after the Revolution, many prominent musicians balked at such measures, particularly since living conditions at the end of World War I were already very difficult. Rather than comply with these new ideological strictures, many (including Rachmaninoff, Koussevitzky, Prokoviev and Chaliapin) chose to emigrate. Conditions deteriorated still further when the country descended into civil war, and funds for proletarian musical enterprises had to be redirected.

Because the country was embroiled in war during the early Bolshevik years, the political leadership was less concerned with cultural matters and the situation in the arts was chaotic and undisciplined (music was even less of a priority for the new Soviet government than literature and drama). Lenin's and Lunacharsky's gradualist approach to the creation of communist culture was strongly challenged by the militant proletarian culture group Proletkul't, which categorically rejected pre-revolutionary, bourgeois art forms in favour of a new art to be created by the workers. Representatives of 300 organizations met at the first Proletkul't congress in October 1920, provoking Lenin to speak out against its attempts to ‘isolate itself as an exclusive organization’ in a Party Resolution. In a speech he gave that month, he stated forthrightly that one could become a communist ‘only when one enriches one's mind with the knowledge of all the wealth created by mankind’. Friction also arose between Lourié and the majority of the Russian musical intelligentsia, who were already unenthusiastic about cooperating with the new regime and who resented the increasing bureaucratization of their activities. (Lourié was replaced by the Proletkul't composer B. Krasin in 1921 and emigrated a year later.) The authority of Narkompros was further threatened by the establishment of a union for all those who worked in the arts, VSERABIS (All-Russian Union of Workers in the Arts). The conference that Lunacharsky convened at the end of October 1920 produced an important Party Resolution designed to reinforce state control over the arts, insist on the necessity of the artistic legacy of the past in creating the new socialist culture and outlaw groups with autonomous ambitions. The Soviet government's cultural policies found their greatest champion in Boris Asaf'yev, a Petrograd-based critic, musicologist and composer who wrote regularly for the Narkompros journal Zhizn' iskusstva (‘The life of art’) and worked tirelessly as a musical populist. He was one of the few members of the musical intelligentsia to embrace the Revolution, and was later to play a prominent political role in Soviet musical life.

By the end of the Civil War in 1921, the social and economic situation in Russia was so catastrophic that Lenin was forced to introduce the New Economic Policy as a survival measure. Along with the private enterprise and free trade that was now permitted came a degree of freedom for the arts, which now began to flourish again, albeit in a climate of greater financial restraint now that generous state subsidies had been withdrawn. Although Lenin continued to maintain his hostility towards artistic revolutionaries such as the futurists, and although a committee, Glavrepertkom, was formed in 1923 to oversee concert and theatre repertories, the party relaxed its control over cultural life to a considerable degree. Lunacharsky's permissive stance was echoed by Bukharin and Trotsky, and this new position of relative tolerance was confirmed by a Party Resolution in 1925. With the new capital, Moscow, emerging as the centre of the avant garde, this was a time of widespread experimentation in the arts, particularly in the theatre. The musical scene was also considerably enriched by renewed contacts with the West, which resulted in the Russian premičres of works by leading modernist composers such as Schoenberg, Berg and Hindemith. Russian music and Russian musicians also began to be heard in the West again. Bruno Walter, who was among the distinguished foreign conductors who visited Moscow and Leningrad in the early 1920s, famously made Shostakovich's international reputation by conducting his First Symphony in Berlin in 1927. Within Russian musical circles, however, factionalism continued in the fierce confrontations between two new groups which were established in Moscow in 1923. The liberal and relatively Western-orientated Assotsiatsiya Sovremennoy Muzīki (Association for Contemporary Music), or ASM, allied itself with the modernist cause, while RAPM, the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians, was in many ways the heir to Proletkul't in its condemnation of decadent bourgeois ideology, but proclaimed that mass song should be the basis of proletarian music. Consensus was difficult to achieve even within these groups, which themselves gave way to factionalism, but RAPM temporarily gained the upper hand in December 1928, when the first Five-Year Plan was announced. With the abolition of NEP came the ‘Cultural Revolution’, spelling the end of artistic freedom and the removal of Lunacharsky from his post.

With the country back on an almost wartime footing for Stalin's accelerated industrialization programme, the Soviet government needed the country's artists to promote the party line more than ever. The militant Marxist stance of RAPM thus came into favour. Dissenting views were still expressed, such as can be found in Our Musical Front, a collection of papers presented to a conference in Leningrad in 1929, but they were not sufficiently powerful to challenge RAPM's hegemony. Under a barrage of virulent attacks on the pages of its mouthpiece Proletarskiy muzīkant (which replaced the earlier Muzīka i Oktyabr' and Muzīkal'naya nov'), conditions became too inhospitable for the ASM and its journal, Sovremennaya muzīka, to survive, despite various conciliatory ploys. A similar fate befell independent musicians who tried to reach a position of accommodation with RAPM; their journal Muzīkal'noye obrazovaniye folded in 1930. Such manoeuvres soon became academic in any case. The behaviour of the leaders of RAPM had become so dictatorial and high-handed that they eventually alienated the party, which signalled its intention to intervene more directly in affairs of culture with the foundation of a Department for Culture and Propaganda (Kul'tprop) in 1930. The Central Committee was able to respond to the insubordination of RAPM by summarily liquidating it, together with all other proletarian artistic organizations. With the Resolution ‘On the Reconstruction of Literary and Artistic Organizations’, issued on 23 April 1932, the party at one stroke put a stop to dissent and factionalism in the arts and ushered in a new era of ideological conformity by announcing the creation of single unions. With most attention focussed by the party on the written word, owing to its potency as propaganda, the Union of Writers was the first to be established, and a high-profile Congress of Writers was held in 1934, at which the all-important doctrine of Socialist realism was promulgated. Russian musicians were less organized and lacked a figurehead of status such as Gor'ky represented for writers, but Lunacharsky's successor, the party functionary Andrey Bubnov, immediately convened a lengthy meeting with composers to thrash out the question of how best to unite forces and serve the needs of the government. In the aftermath of all the recent acrimonious exchanges with RAPM, the majority of Russian musicians welcomed the creation of the Union of Composers, believing mistakenly that consolidation would be concomitant with greater artistic freedom. In fact, the outcome was just the opposite.

With the inauguration of the Union of Composers' journal Sovetskaya muzīka in 1933, this became the single major forum for the debate of musicological and ideological issues that did not challenge the party line. Defining what exactly the party line was with regard to musical compositions was no easy task, as was acknowledged in the first issue of Sovetskaya muzīka. Socialist realism demanded from Soviet writers ‘the truthful and historically concrete depiction of reality in its revolutionary development’. In musical terms, this amounted in practice to the composition of patriotic, uplifting scores, preferably with a topical or folkloric content, written in a straightforward, accessible idiom. Stylistic experimentation was henceforth branded as ‘formalism’, and condemned along with the ‘decadent bourgeois’ music of the West which could no longer be performed or studied. The price of survival in this new climate of cultural isolation was capitulation and compromise or complete silence. Yet the clampdown was not immediate, nor was the situation unremittingly bleak in all respects. Prokofiev chose to return to Russia in 1933 (settling permanently there in 1936), and the 28-year-old prodigy Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District was at first a phenomenal success both nationally and internationally. First staged in January 1934, it was certainly no exemplar of socialist realism as understood by Party officials, however, and this was belatedly recognized in the infamous Pravda editorial ‘Muddle Instead of Music’, published after Stalin attended a performance of the opera at the Bol'shoy Theatre in January 1936. This was the first time that a Soviet artist had been attacked in so public a manner, and the vicious and deliberately high-profile attack on Lady Macbeth for its ‘formalism’ in the Soviet Union's flagship newspaper was aimed not only at Shostakovich but at all Soviet artists unwilling to conform. Since this was at the time of the purges, fellow members of the Union of Composers hastened to endorse the unsigned editorial by denouncing Shostakovich, in an effort to ensure their own survival; not even the composer's closest friends risked defending him. At this stage there were two separate political bodies overseeing the activities of Soviet composers: the music section of Department of Culture and Enlightenment (Kul'tpros), set up under the aegis of the Central Committee as the successor to Kul'tprop in 1935, and the All-Union Committee for Artistic Affairs which took over from Narkompros in January 1936, shortly before the Pravda editorial appeared. The latter was headed by the former Proletkul't leader Platon Kerzhentsev, who took a leading role in the campaign against formalism in the arts, and who may well have been the author of ‘Muddle Instead of Music’. Shostakovich engineered his rehabilitation with the composition of his successful 5th Symphony a year later, accepting its description by a critic as ‘A Soviet Artist's Reply to Just Criticism’. By awarding Shostakovich one of the newly instituted Stalin Prizes for his Piano Quintet in 1940, the party indicated that this process was now complete.

Surveillance and censorship were relaxed during World War II, when attention was deflected elsewhere, but the party reasserted its authority in 1946 as part of its overall drive to restore discipline. A new campaign against formalism and ‘bourgeois degeneracy’ among the artistic intelligentsia was led by Andrey Zhdanov, who had first come to prominence at the Congress of the Writers' Union in 1934 and had been appointed head of Kul'tpros in 1938. Three Party resolutions on literature, theatre and film were first published in 1946, then in February 1948 came Zhdanov's attack on dissonance and atonality in music, with the opera The Great Friendship by Muradeli (first performed in March 1947) serving as the pretext. Shostakovich was once again singled out for particular excoriation, along with Prokofiev, Khachaturian and Myaskovsky and other leading lights of Soviet music, and was forced to apologize publicly at the First All-Union Congress of Composers held from 19 to 25 April 1948. (Asaf'yev played an important role in formulating and enforcing the Party line at this time.)

Throughout the 1930s, the Union of Composers had been a loosely run conglomerate of relatively autonomous chapters set up regionally and in certain major cities (there were 28 chapters by 1945). Owing to a certain amount of confusion as to what exactly the purpose of these chapters should be, who should belong to them and who should run them, there was a considerable amount of reorganization in the early years, particularly in Moscow. It was in order to streamline activities that the government instituted an Organizational Committee (Orgkomitet) of the Union of Composers in 1939 and charged it with creating a centralized leadership. The group of leading composers who were in charge of the Orgkomitet resumed their activities after the war, but were replaced by party functionaries at the 1948 Congress. Among them was Tikhon Khrennikov, who was to retain the post of general secretary until after the demise of the Soviet Union itself.

The repercussions of the 1948 Resolution for the composers it named were severe, and extended to critics and scholars who had discussed their music in a positive light. With the Union of Composers now organized into a ruthless bureaucratic machine, Soviet musicians were subjected to greater ideological surveillance than ever before. It was not until the death of Stalin in 1953 that the pernicious Zhdanov era came to a close, although its chief architect had died in 1948. Signs that controls were to be loosened came in November 1953, when an important Pravda article seemed to encourage individualism and experimentation. Evidence of greater artistic freedom was provided the following year, when Shostakovich was given the ultimate accolade of being made a ‘People's Artist of the USSR’, and the premičre of his 10th Symphony was extensively discussed at the Union of Composers. The cultural ‘thaw’ began in earnest with Krushchyov's speech to the 20th Party Congress in February 1956. Greater tolerance of diversity of opinion at the Second Congress of Composers, which took place in April 1957, paved the way for certain aspects of the 1948 Resolution to be formally revoked. As a result of the new Resolution published in May 1958, the censured composers were rehabilitated and previously banned music restored to the repertory.

Contacts with the West now resumed after decades of cultural isolation. In addition to an international Tchaikovsky Competition, set up in Moscow in 1958, certain musicians were now permitted to travel abroad. Musical life in the Soviet Union was also considerably enriched by the signing of cultural agreements with other countries, which led to visits by foreign orchestras, soloists and composers. Soviet audiences were suddenly exposed to a wealth of new music. As a general rule, Western music that was religious, atonal or complex was neither performed, published nor allowed as a subject of study. Composers of Shostakovich's generation had been able to acquaint themselves with such music before and immediately after the Revolution, but for younger composers access to scores of non-Soviet music was highly limited. The music of Schoenberg and his contemporaries was, in particular, expressly forbidden, due to its ‘bourgeois’ and ‘formalist’ qualities, so the visits in the late 1950s and the 60s of such figures as Glenn Gould, Luigi Nono, Leonard Bernstein and Pierre Boulez were highly significant. Gould's legendary performances of music by Webern, for example, were a revelation, as were the scores by Stockhausen and Boulez imported by Nono. Copland and Britten were among the many contemporary composers who also made visits to Russia during the Thaw, but by far the most significant was made by Russia's own leading modernist, the 80-year-old Stravinsky, who returned to Russia for the first time in 50 years in the spring of 1962 at Khrennikov's invitation. The previously acrimonious relationship between Stravinsky and the Soviet musical establishment was suspended, and the composer was given an enthusiastic welcome (which included an audience with Krushchyov himself). As well as the concerts of his music, Soviet composers were able to attend meetings with Stravinsky, in which he staunchly defended dodecaphony and other 20th-century avant-garde styles and composers.

While the private performance of contemporary Western music within the confines of the Union of Composers was now sanctioned, public exposure to the latest developments in Western contemporary music remained strictly controlled. A clear sign that the period of the Thaw was coming to an end was the débâcle surrounding the premičre of Shostakovich's 13th Symphony, which included politically risqué settings of Yevtushenko's Babiy Yar, in December 1962, when the authorities attempted to ban the performance. When Brezhnev replaced Krushchyov as Soviet leader two years later, the reverberations of his more repressive policies were to be felt acutely in the cultural sphere, beginning with the closed trials of the writers Sinyavsky and Daniel in 1966. The invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 confirmed a new period of ideological control and the emergence of a vociferous new dissident movement, supported by international human rights groups. In music, the change in party policy was reflected at the Fourth Congress of the Union of Composers in December 1968, where there was a renewed emphasis on socialist realism, but repressive measures were less severe than for other creative artists (this was later attributed by some to Khrennikov's skilful political mediation). It was writers who felt the brunt of retrenchment most acutely during this period, with Brodsky and Solzhenitsīn being arrested and then forcibly sent into exile, and others submitted to compulsory psychiatric treatment.

Musicians were also subject to various forms of persecution, however. The now immense bureaucratic machinery of the Ministry of Culture and the music section of the Central Committee's ideology department maintained a rigid control of musical life by imposing censorship on concert repertories and controlling the issue of visas to artists invited to perform abroad. Several prominent performers found these conditions intolerable and eventually defected. Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya, for example, decided to live abroad in 1974 after being prevented by the State Concert Office (Goskontsert) from fulfilling numerous foreign engagements; they were stripped of their Soviet citizenship in 1978. Others fought to be able to leave under a new policy permitting Jews to emigrate to Israel. As a result of the new campaign against musical experimentation and bourgeois ideology, meanwhile, many ‘non-official’ composers found it difficult to arrange performances of their works or find employment, and were subjected to a steady stream of criticism. The task of censorship became harder as the works by the avant garde began to be performed abroad, but international recognition tended to arouse greater hostility from Soviet officialdom. Alfred Schnittke, for example, was banned from travelling to the West to attend the premičres of 19 of his new compositions between 1964 and 1984.

In such conditions, ingenuity and fearlessness were called for. The premičre in 1974 of Schnittke's radical First Symphony, for example, was a landmark event. Conducted by Gennady Rozhdestvensky, it took place in remote Gor'kiy (now Nizhny Novgorod) in order to circumnavigate the Ministry of Culturem which would not allow the work to be performed in Moscow. Official permission was given by Rodion Shchedrin, who in 1973 had taken over from the more conservative Georgy Sviridov as head of the Composers' Union of the Russian Federation (the largest constituent member of the nationwide Union of Composers). Rozhdestvensky also conducted the important first performances of works by Schnittke, Denisov and Gubaydulina (the three leading members of the avant garde) at the Moscow Conservatory's great hall in 1982, and was one of a number of prominent performers and conductors (others included Gidon Kremer, Tat'yana Grindenko, Natalya Gutman, Oleg Kagan, Mark Pekarsky and Aleksandr Lazarev) who played an important role in promoting ‘unofficial’ music during this period.

Events such as the foundation of the annual ‘December Evenings’ concert seried by Sviatoslav Richter and the holding of the first International Music Festival (sponsored by the Union of Composers) in Moscow in 1981 served to demonstrate a certain liberalization in the late Brezhnev years, but the so-called era of stagnation only truly came to a close under Gorbachyov, who became Soviet leader in 1985. As well as ‘perestroika’, which constituted a belated attempt to eradicate the corruption and complacency that was rife at every level of the system, Gorbachyov introduced the policy of ‘glasnost'’ which opened up Soviet society to an unprecedented degree. As the government began to relinquish its control over artistic life, Khrennikov was now forced to move with the times, and non-official composers were finally permitted to travel abroad. Performances of previously banned music were also now allowed to take place, and musical life in Russia was also enlivened by the return of artists such as Ashkenazy and Rostropovich, whose visits provoked a great deal of media interest.

In 1990 the Association of Contemporary Music re-formed in Moscow in order to champion the cause of the current avant garde, as its predecessor had done. The new openness in Soviet society led to a vote of no confidence in the leadership of the Union of Composers at its 8th Congress in 1991, but Khrennikov managed (through vote-rigging, according to some detractors) to maintain his position of authority on the new committee elected to replace it. The Union of Composers survived the demise of the Soviet Union in 1992, but had become financially unviable by 1995, along with its publishing house Kompozitor, owing to the abrupt curtailment of the previously generous government subsidies and years of embezzlement by corrupt officials. Numerous new musical institutions, ensembles and publications were founded in the early 1990s, while those already in existence either folded or began shedding associations with their Soviet past by renaming themselves, among them the journal Sovetskaya muzīka, which became Muzīkal'naya akademiya. With economics rather than politics now playing the significant role in artistic life, musicians lead a precarious existence in the conditions of post-Soviet Russia.

Russian Federation, §I, 4: Soviet music

(iii) Music of the Soviet period.

(a) The early Soviet era, 1917–32.

(b) Socialist realism and retrenchment, 1932–53.

(c) Thaw and the end of the Soviet Union, from 1953.

Russian Federation, §I, 4(iii): Soviet music: Socialist realism and retranchement, 1932–53

(a) The early Soviet era, 1917–32.

The years that preceded the Revolution were marked by the deaths of several major figures: the leaders of the nationalist movement (Balakirev, Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov) died within a few years of each other while Moscow musical circles lost their mentor, leading light and rising star (respectively Taneyev, Skryabin and Stanchinsky) in the space of several months. The list of those who emigrated during the period 1914–22 is equally extensive: Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Medtner, Tcherepnin, Grechaninov, Vīshnegradsky, Obouhow and later Lourié, Glazunov and Lyapunov left Russia. Others, including Catoire and Ippolitov-Ivanov, all but ceased composing. In any other country, the loss of figures of this stature within this space of time would have signalled the end of any significant musical activity. That Russian music survived not only this but also a decimation by the artistic policy of modernists in 1932 makes its continued existence all the more astonishing. What is less recognized is the fact that the Revolution had little effect on the stylistic detail of musical composition.

Links between political life, artists and artistic ideologues proliferated, as did semi-official artistic organizations. The meeting that occurred between Lunacharsky and Lourié in 1917 and that led to the latter's official appointment is typical of the rapprochement between the nascent communist government and many of the more advanced artists and musicians. Lunacharsky supported serious creative work in any field: it has been said that ‘because of him, Russian art succeeded in weathering the terrible years of famine and civil war’ (Yu. Yelagin, 1951). But conditions prevalent during the eras of War Communism, Civil War and the New Economic Policy made even staging a concert a task of significant difficulty: after having settled in Paris, Sabaneyev wrote that ‘at that time, hungry and ragged conductors and musicians assembled in icy concert halls – the temperature was between seven and ten degrees below zero – and with gloves on their frozen hands’ (Sabaneyev, 1930, p.472).

In the early Soviet period the traditions of the Moscow school were continued by Anatoly Aleksandrov, Feinberg and Myaskovsky, and those of Skryabin in particular by Krein, Roslavets, Lourié and many others. Many of these composers became prominent figures in the Association of Contemporary Music (ASM), formed in 1923. The ideals of this organization were comparable with those of the Vechera Sovremennoy Muzīki (Evenings of Contemporary Music) that had been promoted by Derzhanovsky and others in the first decade of the century. But the ASM was not merely a continuation of Mir Isskustva values – it was a relevant, progressive and contemporary Soviet organization. Its western and modernist orientations have been exaggerated: a large proportion of the organization's concert programmes were all-Russian and not particularly modernist. Although Stravinsky had left Russia during the course of World War I, during the early Soviet era he was not ostracized as he would be in later decades: Petrushka, The Rite of Spring, The Wedding, Symphonies of Wind Instruments and Oedipus Rex were all heard in Leningrad in concerts, many of which were organized by the ASM. In addition to this, Bartķk and Hindemith visited Leningrad and performed their own works to audiences already familiar with Schoenberg's Gurrelieder, Chamber Symphony and Five Orchestral Pieces. In 1927 Berg visited the city for the Russian premičre of his opera Wozzeck and was impressed by the ‘excellent musical preparation and theatrically strong performance’. The ASM therefore provided composers and the public with access to music from Western Europe.

But these occasional concerts devoted to the work of foreign composers and Russian modernists such as Roslavets, by dint of their novelty, attracted attention of both a positive and negative nature. At the time, it was easy for the proponents of ‘proletarian music’ to level criticisms of extreme élitism or anti-nationalism at the organization; in doing so the ASM's detractors ensured support from party members who had tangible power but no real interest in the arts. In fact, the modernist consequences of Lunacharsky's and Lourié's directorships made this reaction all the more probable; that this reaction took on political clothing is hardly surprising given the historical context. These criticisms and the resultant changes had famously far-reaching effects on the composition of music in Russia. They were also responsible for certain composers' disappearance from public view: once-prominent composers such as Roslavets, who held a large number of official positions and who was even a committed Marxist, became ‘non persons’ and were expunged from the official history of Soviet music for about 60 years.

The artistic climate engendered by symbolism and futurism was palpable right into the late 1920s; most of the music written in the first decade of Soviet rule has strong audible links to that of the pre-Revolutionary era and that of Skryabin in particular. The first two and a half decades of the 20th century were arguably the richest years of Russian music; the rises of Stravinsky, Prokofiev and then Shostakovich testify to the fertile and lasting heritage of Russian culture of the Silver Age. It is indeed ironic that, considering the subsequent enforced cultural isolation of the country, many of the concerns that have shaped the development of 20th-century music as a whole can be said to have had their beginnings in Russia during the period in which Skryabin had so great an influence. Microtonality (in the works of Lourié and Vīshnegradsky) and electronic music, often written for purpose-built instruments such as the theremin, were both explored in Russia during this fecund period. Additionally, experiments with total serialism and extended modal concepts and the first known uses of a prepared piano (by Ilũa Satz and Leonid Polovinkin) occurred in this era.

During the early Soviet era, Skryabin's revolutionary, apocalyptic and essentially optimistic vision had great appeal and resonance for artists working in a society that in many senses was post-apocalyptic, revolutionary in political and social terms, and that initially engendered optimism in large parts of the creative community and intelligentsia. After Stalin's rise to power and inexorable annihilation of his political enemies, after the dissolution of independent writers', artists' and composers' organizations and with the onset of peremptory censorship and the Yezhovshchina, Skryabin's vision must have seemed naive and irrelevant. Not surprisingly, when Shostakovich claimed that Skryabin ‘is our bitterest enemy’, he was not speaking solely of his own musical preferences. By the later 1920s it was not only modernist tendencies that became dangerous: any music displaying what could loosely be termed symbolist tendencies – which Soviet musicologists would later term ‘subjective’ qualities – became the victim of proletarian criticism for not being easy enough to comprehend. Open nationalism, rather than the narodnost' permissible within a Soviet context, also became inadvisable: the significant Jewish School of the Kreins, Gnesin, Veprik and others was forced to abandon its roots and thus disappear; life was also made difficult for Ukrainian composers such as Lyatoshyns'ky. However, many composers, including Lourié, had abandoned hardline modernist aesthetics in the early or mid-1920s, when there was no political compunction to do so. Roslavets had written in a quasi-tonal manner in 1926 long before any party resolution on the arts, but despite this turnaround (and a public apology for having set ‘decadent’ text) the ranting Viktor Bely, a vociferous proponent of socialist realism, is said to have burnt copies of works by Roslavets. Paradoxically, it has been argued that socialist realism was in fact a logical continuation of the ‘totalitarianism’ of the Russian avant garde.

Russian Federation, §I, 4(iii): Soviet music: Socialist realism and retranchement, 1932–53

(b) Socialist realism and retrenchment, 1932–53.

After about 1930 the fate of Russian music came to depend on two quite different forces. The first of these stemmed from the so-called Leningrad school of Vladimir Shcherbachyov. He taught composers such as Gavriil Popov and Vladimir Deshevov, and during the later 1920s he fostered interest among his composition pupils in neo-classicism, Les Six, Hindemith, Stravinsky and Prokofiev. Although this movement had only slight origins in Russian music, its significance lay in that it nurtured the talent of Shostakovich during the 1920s. The second influence came from the proletarian groups such as the RAPM, whose relentless sectarianism at the end of the 1920s not only brought about the downfall of the ASM but also, more significantly perhaps, instigated the 1932 party resolution on the arts. Ironically, the ideologues of those proletarian groups abolished by the resolution actually gained the upper hand in the subsequent formulation of the doctrines of socialist realism. The Union of Soviet Composers was formed in 1932 with the intention of providing a non-partisan professional organization for composers and writers on music. The union established fora for composers in which new works could – and should – be discussed; these became a tool of censorship, creative assassination and alienation directed against all but those who conformed. The Composers' Union was also in a position to gain employment and commissions for composers, and even to act as employer itself. At worst, the musical result of this is demonstrated in many a work by Kabalevsky and Khrennikov and a few by Shostakovich and Prokofiev; often an unappealing hybrid of classicism, Russian nationalism, propagandizing and Soviet-style ethnicity, socialist realism as manifested in music is notable for its pallor and condescending simplicity. In more general terms, the changes brought about by the establishment of the Composers' Union and heralded by the metamorphosis of communism into a materialist rather than idealist concern were manifold in the sphere of music. In stylistic terms, the genres of song symphony (which frequently incorporated revolutionary songs) and narodnaya muzīka (inspired by Russian folk music or that of another Soviet republic) sprang into being alongside a considerable growth in the areas of applied music.

As the 1930s progressed, composers who had already, in 1917, adjusted themselves to not dissimilar musical conditions were faced with another, more serious set of propositions. Many composers who in the 1920s had freely experimented with modernist techniques turned to teaching, ethnomusicology (and narodnaya muzīka), film music or in fact any form of ‘applied’ music-making considered of sufficient material benefit to warrant sanction from ideologues. The survival of chameleon-like, gifted but ideologically ‘movable’ characters such as Kabalevsky and Asaf'yev lay with their willingness to be members of the ASM, and only subsequently to become mouthpieces of Zhdanov. Fortunately, very few composers are recorded to have actually been killed in Stalin's purges. Sollertinsky and Zhilyayev were killed, and Mosolov imprisoned and sentenced to eight years' hard labour; only Gličre's personal intervention in the form of a letter to Kalinin, the Soviet president, reprieved him.

The first signs that the party was serious in its intention to castigate artists who ignored the tenets of socialist realism came with the appearance of the subsequently famous article ‘Muddle Instead of Music’ in Pravda on 18 January 1936. The article was probably written at the behest of Stalin who had witnessed a performance of Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District; it criticized the dissonance of the music, its lack of immediate comprehensibility and also what were referred to as ‘pornographic’ qualities. Many of his colleagues were reluctant to leap to his defence; those that did paid with loss of reputation. That this was the first such an attack on a composer is emblematic of Shostakovich's unique position. He was singled out for more public praise and vilification than almost any other Russian creative artist. When hounded by the state, he became a kind of martyr; when the apparatchiks lauded him they were rewarded with scepticism from the artistic élite as well as a from a much wider public; his politically motivated detractors took several decades to realize that they could not gain the upper hand. Equally, when ‘official’ composers sat down to write music extolling the party, they mostly found it rather hard to avoid the influence of those figures they had attacked so virulently – Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Myaskovsky.

Prokofiev returned to live in Russia just as the effects of the 1932 resolution were becoming evident: he arrived with his family in 1936 after nearly two decades abroad. It has been suggested that a combination of homesickness and political naivety influenced his decision. Nonetheless, he was treated as a celebrity and was rewarded with as much time as he needed to compose. The war and the comparatively relaxed artistic situation – the authorities gave far less attention to musical matters than they had in the 1930s – stimulated Prokofiev and several others to write some of their finest works. These were often non-programmatic ‘subjective’ works; the continuation of this trend, the resumption of Soviet ‘normality’ in the postwar period and the rise of the ideologue Zhdanov led to a clamp down of a greater magnitude than that of 1936. On 10 February 1948 the resolution ‘On the Opera The Great Friendship by V. Muradeli’ decreed that all music should be subjugated to the dictates of Stalinist Marxist-Leninism. The work of Myaskovsky, Popov, Prokofiev, Shebalin and, of course, Shostakovich was singled out for its formalism and ‘anti-democratic tendencies’. The ramifications for these composers were loss of earnings through commissions and teaching posts, lack of performances and, in Prokofiev's case, a setback for his already frail health. For all musicians it represented an intensification of the witch hunts that had commenced in the 1930s and further isolation from the rest of the musical world.

Better-known figures aside, many composers adopted a monumental style derived in part from the Kutchka and applied this to heroic subject matter from Russia's real or mythical past. Shaporin, for example, had previously been an associate of literary figures ranging from Benois and Blok to Mayakovsky; his major works of the period – the opera The Decembrists and the oratorio On the Field of Kulikovo – exemplify the way in which composers could safely approach subject matter of the Tsarist era. While his style has been derided as ‘Borodin inflated to the dimensions of Mahler’, he had clearly not forgotten some of the experience of harmonic adventure he gained in the 1920s. Occasional waywardness, however, was perhaps overlooked in the light of approved subject matter.

That composers had a difficult time during the Soviet era is well documented. Those who learned their craft in the 1920s and before were faced with few choices: they could either alter their style of writing, give up composition and focus on some other sphere of activity, or write ‘for the drawer’, keeping to themselves any works they wrote, in order to avoid criticism and ostracism from the Composers’ Union. This last choice was the most difficult of all to make for practical reasons and was not taken by many. With no means of publication (which only resulted from official sanction) no commission and no composition-related employment, a full-time composer would have no livelihood. So many composers found a curious middle path that has its roots in pre-Revolutionary symbolism. Among the requirements of the doctrines of socialist realism was simplicity and approachability of style. The surface simplicity of the most impressive works by Shostakovich and Prokofiev frequently obscures an implicit layer of complex allusion. In the works of lesser composers, simplicity was unfortunately not only a surface feature but also the sum of the artistic thought. But the relative simplicity of the works that Goldenweiser, Lyatoshyns'ky, Roslavets, Shebalin and many others wrote in the 1930s and beyond may similarly hide suggestions of the complexity that characterized their previous compositions.

One of the most consistent and internationally recognized achievements of the Soviet state was the impressive standard of training offered by its higher educational establishments. Nowhere was this more evident than in the conservatories that produced a stream of world-class instrumental virtuosos. Unfortunately, the musicologists, critics and composers trained in the same institutions were fettered with ideological concerns that would not so obviously affect the work of, say, a violinist. That composers were rigorously taught counterpoint and orchestration is usually self-evident in their work. The training of performers had a direct effect on the writing of music: many works written by Russian composers (and especially those of the Soviet era) are considered ‘under-notated’ by Western critics who are unaware of the intricacies of the traditions of performing and especially interpretation that formed the backbone of the Soviet educational system.

Russian Federation, §I, 4(iii): Soviet music: Socialist realism and retranchement, 1932–53

(c) Thaw and the end of the Soviet Union, from 1953.

The dominance of Shostakovich was consolidated during the last two decades of his life partly as a result of the death of Stalin and the resultant thaw under Krushchyov: the first performances of many of his most important works written ‘for the drawer’ during the 1930s and 40s and the revival of once dangerous masterpieces such as the Fourth Symphony greatly enhanced his status. His influence became ubiquitous; it is most obvious in the works of his close friends Basner and Tishchenko, and can be detected in the works of many more surprising figures. His overbearing presence tempted other composers to turn consciously away from his example and they made themselves conspicuous in doing so. The arrival of Andrey Volkhonsky from Paris at the Moscow Conservatory, visits to Russia by Nono (with scores from Darmstadt composers), Gould (who described and demonstrated 12-note technique in a lecture to students of the Moscow Conservatory) and Stravinsky (who represented a living link to Russia's pre-Revolutionary, pre-socialist realist past), and the development of the Kiev avant garde served as catalysts to this trend. But perhaps the most significant influence came from one immigrant, ‘unofficial’ composer resident in Moscow, Philip Herschkowitz. He acted as mentor to and taught privately almost all of Russia's nascent avant garde. But he did not teach them the serial techniques of his teacher Webern; he gave them a highly disciplined and thorough grounding in counterpoint as employed by Palestrina and Bach, and would analyse the works of Beethoven, other ‘classical’ composers and only occasionally Mahler. Schnittke's First Symphony, with its symbolic premičre in ‘closed’ Gor'kiy in 1974, was the first public announcement of this new beginning and was the expression of one of the primary paths Russian music would take after Shostakovich. This work demonstrates the way in which Schnittke and many of his contemporaries managed to ‘incorporate a Shostakovichian symbolism … into new musical languages that borrowed little or nothing from the sound of his music’ (McBurney, C1998). A more intimate herald of this stylistically mercurial trend came in another part of the Soviet Union – Ukraine – with Sil'vestrov's Drama of 1971. Many composers associated with the Ukrainian avant garde of the 1950s and 60s were pupils either of Lyatoshyns'ky or of musicians he had taught; this movement served as a great encouragement to Russian composers unsure of the political repercussions. In Russia the modernist revival of the 1960s, spearheaded by Denisov, Gubaydulina and Schnittke, represented in some senses a reawakening of the spirit and sensibilities of the 1920s. Denisov was one of the first people in 1970s Russia to take an interest in composers such as Roslavets. This period also witnessed the overshadowing of genuinely gifted composers of a conservative bent – Frid, Tishchenko and Weinberg, to name but three – by the now ‘official’ modernism of Shchedrin who, by acting as court jester to Khrennikov, could write faintly risqué works in the 1960s and thereafter without jeopardizing his precious career.

The death of Shostakovich in 1975 did not automatically signal an end of his dominance; it actually continued to operate for at least two decades, as had that of Skryabin earlier in the century. As the reputations of modernists such as Denisov, Gubaydulina and Schnittke – all pupils of Herschkowitz – grew beyond the confines of the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 80s, official composers such as Ėshpay and Kabalevsky continued to write much as before. After the fall of the Soviet system in 1991, the appearance of new folklore trends, neo-romanticism and neo-nationalism suggests that many composers appeared content to compose in a manner that would have been approved by the ideologues of the 1930s and 40s. The deaths of the some of the most significant hitherto ‘non-party’ composers – such as Karetnikov, Schnittke and Denisov – in the mid-1990s and the emigration of many with any reputation outside Russia (Suslin, D.N. Smirnov, Firsova, Gubaydulina, Shoot, Korndorf, Vustin and Raskatov) not only deprived the country of many of its most significant musical personalities but also, ironically, left the country in a situation parallel to that of the 1917 revolution. However, a number of composers with experimental or modernist leanings did remain in Russia at the end of the century (these include Khanon'', Belimov, Bakshi, Knayfel', Tarnopol'sky, E.N. Artem'yev and D.V. Smirnov). The most significant composer to emerge from Russia since the 1980s was Galina Ustvol'skaya: she had been writing since the 1940s but, owing to her reclusive character and the religious but rebarbative nature of her music, she had been mostly unknown in the Soviet era. The politically astute, such as Shchedrin, Andrey Petrov (the leader of the St Petersburg Composers' Union for over 30 years), Dmitriyev and, perhaps not so surprisingly considering the rise of the nationalist nostalgia for Russia's Soviet past, Khrennikov, all thrived, even if they were largely ignored by their more ethical colleagues and regarded with faint amusement abroad. The nostalgia for Russia's past informs a whole range of compositional attitudes, ranging from the exquisitely crafted evocations of Sil'vestrov to Sviridov's ersatz and reactionary nationalism. The sudden availability of religious subject matter led to its becoming fashionable with composers of every persuasion; even erstwhile Union officials such as Ėshpay suddenly discovered their latent spirituality in the 1990s.

Later Soviet music was dominated by the figure of Shostakovich, both as martyr and privately unwilling mouthpiece of Soviet music. That his influence should loom large is not surprising considering the magnitude both of his musical achievements and of his worldwide public status. The fact that he was the only composer who remained in Russia to achieve the status and position of artistic influence that Skryabin had until 1930 is paradoxical because in many respects he was the composer most dissimilar to Skryabin in terms of output, philosophy, aesthetic character and technique. The large number of composers directly or indirectly influenced by Skryabin made all the more probable the opposition he engendered on the part of the proletarian groups and the reaction against his aesthetic by the Leningrad modernists and Shostakovich. Those who turned away from Skryabin's and Shostakovich's influences did so because of their pervasive nature. In this sense, the course of 20th-century Russian music can be seen as more complex and more continuous (in terms of ongoing reaction of opposing forces) than has been suggested by the mythology of watersheds, be it the supposed watershed of 1913, with The Rite of Spring, or that of 1917, with the Revolution. The most important break with the past came in 1932 with the defeat of the Silver Age – as symbolized musically by Skryabin – by the forces of materialism (including the material and very real forms that the repercussions of straying from the Composers' Union line could take), proletarianism and the new Soviet music under the perhaps unwilling leadership of Shostakovich. The fallout from the end of Shostakovich's influence was still in play at the end of the 20th century.

Alongside this paradox of and fundamental shift between two opposing personalities, one overriding characteristic has become identifiable, namely that Russian music – and particularly that of the 20th century – has a tendency not to be ‘only’ music. The examples of Skryabin and Shostakovich provide the most well-known and at the same time contrasting examples of this tendency towards various forms of symbolism. This inextricable binding up of life and art is perhaps surprising not only for these two composers but also for many others who appeared to excel in the writing of symphonies, concertos, string quartets and sonatas. These conventional genres were increasingly regarded by many outside Russia as reactionary. But these were genres in which composers could enunciate that which could not be expressed more openly; it is surely no coincidence that it was the composition of symphonies that elicited the most suspicion from politicians and that it was works in this genre that in a sense acted as musical signposts at many of the key points in Russian 20th-century history. What the various key figures of 20th-century Russian music had in common was a desire to express and symbolize their personal beliefs in the medium of essentially classical genres.

Russian Federation, §I: Art music

BIBLIOGRAPHY

a: to 1917: general

IRMO

MooserA

C. Cui: La musique en Russie (Paris, 1880)

M.M. Ivanov: Istoriya muzīkal'nogo razvitiya Rossii [The history of Russia's musical development] (St Petersburg, 1910–12)

B. Asaf'yev, ed.: Muzīka i muzīkal'nīy bīt staroy Rossii [Music and musical life of old Russia] (Leningrad, 1927)

N. Findeyzen: Ocherki po istorii muzīki v Rossii s drevneyshikh vremyon do kontsa XVIII veka [Essays on the history of music in Russia from ancient times to the end of the 18th century] (Moscow and Leningrad, 1928–9)

B.V. Asaf'yev: Russkaya muzīka ot nachala XIX stoletiya [Russian music from the beginning of the 19th century] (Moscow and Leningrad, 1930, 2/1968; Eng. trans., 1953)

G. Abraham: Studies in Russian Music (London, 1935/R)

M.D. Calvocoressi and G. Abraham: Masters of Russian Music (London, 1936/R)

T.N. Livanova: Ocherki i materialī po istorii russkoy muzīkal'noy kul'turī [Essays and materials on the history of Russian musical culture] (Moscow, 1938)

G. Abraham: On Russian Music (London, 1939/R)

M.S. Pekelis, ed.: Istoriya russkoy muzīki [History of Russian music] (Moscow, 1940)

M.D. Calvocoressi: A Survey of Russian Music (Harmondsworth, Middx, 1944)

Yu.V. Keldīsh: Istoriya russkoy muzīki [History of Russian music] (Moscow, 1947–54)

R.A. Mooser: Annales de la musique et des musiciens en Russie au XVIIIme sičcle (Geneva, 1948–51)

T.N. Livanova: Russkaya muzīkal'naya kul'tura XVIII veka v yego svyazyakh s literaturoy, teatrom i bītom [Russian musical culture of the 18th century and its links with literature, the theatre and everyday life] (Moscow, 1952–3)

P. Souvtchinsky, ed.: Musique russe (Paris, 1953)

M.S. Druskin and Yu.V. Keldīsh, eds.: Ocherki po istorii russkoy muzīki 1790–1825 [Essays on the history of Russian music 1790–1825] (Leningrad, 1956)

N.V. Tumanina: Istoriya russkoy muzīki [History of Russian music] (Moscow, 1957–60)

Yu.V. Keldīsh: Russkaya muzīka XVIII veka [Russian music of the 18th century] (Moscow, 1965)

G.R. Seaman: History of Russian Music (Oxford, 1967)

Yu.V. Keldīsh, O.Ye. Levasheva and A.I. Kandinsky, eds.: Istoriya russkoy muzīki [History of Russian Music] (Moscow, 1973–)

R. Ridenour: Nationalism, Modernism, and Personal Rivalry in Nineteenth-Century Russian Music (Ann Arbor, 1981)

S. Campbell: Russians on Russian Music, 1830–1880: an Anthology (Cambridge, 1994)

R. Taruskin: Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutical Essays (Princeton, NJ, 1997)

b: to 1917: specialist studies

V.I. Morkov: Istoricheskiy ocherk russkoy operī s samogo yeyo nachala po 1862 god [An historical overview of Russian opera from its beginnings to 1862] (St Petersburg, 1862)

D.V. Razumovsky: Tserkovnoye peniye v Rossii [Church singing in Russia] (Moscow, 1867–9)

V.Ye. Cheshikhin: Istoriya russkoy operī [History of Russian opera] (St Petersburg, 1902, enlarged 2/1905)

A.V. Preobrazhensky: Kul'tovaya muzīka v Rossii [Church music in Russia] (Leningrad, 1924)

P.N. Stolpyansky: Starīy Peterburg: muzīka i muzītsirovaniye v starom Peterburge [Music and music-making in old Petersburg] (Leningrad, 1925)

V.I. Muzalevsky: Russkaya fortepiannaya muzīka [Russian piano music] (Leningrad, 1949, rev. 2/1961 as Russkoye fortep'yannoye iskusstvo [The art of the piano in Russia])

L.S. Ginzburg: Istoriya violonchel'nogo iskusstva [The history of the art of cello playing], i–iii (Moscow, 1950–65)

B.L. Vol'man: Russkiye pechatnīye notī XVIII veka [Russian printed music of the 18th century] (Leningrad, 1957)

A.A. Gozenpud: Muzīkal'nīy teatr v Rossii: ot istokov do Glinki [Russian music theatre from its origins to Glinka] (Leningrad, 1959)

L.N. Raaben: Instrumental'nīy ansambl' v russkoy muzīke [The instrumental ensemble in Russian music] (Moscow, 1961)

A.D. Alekseyev: Russkaya fortepiannaya muzīka: ot istokov do vershin tvorchestva [Russian piano music from the origins to the peaks of creation] (Moscow, 1963)

A.D. Alekseyev: Russkaya fortepiannaya muzīka: konets XIX – nachalo XX veka [Russian piano music: late 19th to early 20th century] (Moscow, 1963, 2/1969)

N.D. Uspensky: Drevnerusskoye pevcheskoye iskusstvo [The ancient Russian art of singing] (Moscow, 1965, 2/1971)

A.A. Gozenpud: Russkiy opernīy teatr XIX veka [The Russian operatic stage in the 19th century] (Leningrad, 1969–73)

B.L. Vol'man: Russkiye notnīye izdaniya XIX-nachala XX veka [Russian music publishing in the 19th and early 20th centuries] (Leningrad, 1970)

G.B. Bernandt and I.M. Yampol'sky: Kto pisal o muzīke [Writers on music] (Moscow, 1971–9)

A.A. Gozenpud: Russkiy opernīy teatr na rubezhe XIX–XX vekov i F.I. Shalyapin [F.I. Chaliapin and the Russian operatic stage at the turn of the century] (Leningrad, 1974)

A.A. Gozenpud: Russkiy teatr opernīy mezhdu dvukh revolyutsiy, 1905–1917 [The Russian operatic stage between the two revolutions] (Leningrad, 1975)

I. Petrovskaya: Istochnikovedeniye russkoy muzīkal'noy kul'turī XVIII–nachala XX veka [Sources on Russian musical culture in the 18th to early 20th centuries] (Moscow, 1983, 2/1989)

J. Norris: The Russian Piano Concerto, i (Bloomington, IN, 1994)

c: from 1917

V. Belyayev: ‘Russia: Present Tendencies’, The Sackbutt, vi (1925)

S. Korev: Muzīka i sovremennost': sbornik statey [Music and the Present Day: a Collection of Articles] (Moscow, 1927)

L. Sabaneyev: Modern Russian Composers (London, 1927)

L. Sabaneyev: ‘Musical Tendencies in Contemporary Russia’, MQ, xvi (1930), 469–81

A. Lourié: ‘The Russian School’, MQ, xviii (1932), 519–29

R. Moisenko: Realist Music (London, 1949)

A. Werth: Musical Uproar in Moscow (London, 1949)

P. Suvchinsky: Musique russe: études réunies (Paris, 1953)

A. Olkhovsky: Music under the Soviets: the Agony of an Art (London, 1955)

I. Gusin: Sovetskoye gosudarstvennoye muzīkal'noye stroitel'stvo [Soviet Governmental Musical Organization] (Leningrad, 1959)

J. Bakst: A History of Russian Soviet Music (New York, 1966)

S. Fitzpatrick: The Commissariat of Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1970)

S. Krebs: Soviet Composers and the Development of Soviet Music (London, 1970)

B. Schwarz: Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia 1917–70 (London, 1972)

T. Livanovna: Iz proshlogo sovetskoy muzīkal'noy kul'turī [From the Past of Soviet Musical Culture] (Moscow, 1973)

J. Braun: Jews in Soviet Music (Jerusalem, 1977)

D. Gojowy: Sowjetische Musik der 20-Jahre (Regensburg, 1980)

S. Prokofiev: Soviet Diary and other Writings (London, 1991)

F. Lemaire: La musique du XXe sičcle en Russie et dans les anciennes republiques (Paris, 1994)

L. Sitsky: Music of the Repressed Russian Avant Garde, 1900–29 (Westport, CT, 1994)

R. Taruskin: Defining Russia Musically (London, 1997)

G. McBurney: ‘Soviet Music after the Death of Stalin: the Legacy of Shostakovich’, Russian Cultural Studies: an Introduction, ed. C. Kelly and D. Shepherd (Oxford, 1998), 120–37

J. Powell: Music of the Russian Silver Age (forthcoming)

Russian Federation

II. Traditional music.

1. Russian.

2. Non-Russian peoples in European Russia.

3. Siberian peoples.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Russian Federation, §II: Russian traditional music

1. Russian.

(i) Introduction.

(ii) Song

(iii) Dance.

(iv) Chastushki.

(v) Instrumental music.

(vi) Ethnomusicologial and musical developments.

Russian Federation, §II, 1: Russian traditional music: Song

(i) Introduction.

The regional variety of Russian folk music cannot be explained without taking into account the complex historical geography of the Russians.

Russian folk music has had long historical ties and relations of various kinds with the folklore of surrounding peoples, particularly that of Slavonic, Finno-Ugric and Turkic peoples. The centuries of stability of the agrarian traditions of the Russian village, despite its isolation, have been have been constantly broken by migrations of population, for example in the devastation of the south Russian lands during the Tatar-Mongol invasions of the 13th century, and the frequent resettling of people under the landowners during the epoch of serfdom, especially during the 16th century and later. Other disruptive factors were the colonization of new lands; long military service (in the 18th century); and, with the development of capitalism, seasonal work, the foundation of factories, the laying of railways and the building of cities, all of which primarily affected the male population.

Archaism in folklore still appears in the form of dialectical features that survive predominantly in the women's repertory: the dialect division of traditional peasant (as distinct from urban) folklore is an integral feature. Along with general national characteristics (structural patterns, themes, melodies, universally known songs, instruments), the basis of folklore continues to be regional traditions which sometimes have very old ethnic (pre-national) roots. Certain large folk music dialect divisions are clearly distinguishable: north, west, central and south Russian. These in turn are divided into many dialects (e.g. the Oka River basin, the upper Volga, the Don river, the White sea, etc.) and micro-regions (divided off by quite small rivers). Given the enormous dimensions of Russia, an exhaustive cartographic survey of Russian folk music dialects is difficult to achieve.

Russian folk music consists not only of many dialects but also of many layers. In it are found elements of Old Russian (East Slavonic) traditions, true Russian ones dating from the time of the emergence of the Russian nationality (14th to 16th centuries) and later ones. This co-existence implies an organic interpenetration, for the Old Russian forms survive in specifically Russian forms of expression, some more immediately perceptible (in the peasant tradition), others partly or completely imperceptible (in the urban tradition). The latter includes the culture of the larger mercantile villages, the larger settlements of non-serf villagers, the urban suburbs and the outskirts of factory and student centres.

A description of Russian folk music is hampered not only by its complexity but also by the fact that as a system it has been inadequately studied. Many collections are obviously incomplete, and of these much has not yet been systematized on a modern scholarly level, while a large quantity of material has not been published (most of the collections published are small anthologies). Reliable material is only gradually being amassed by researchers, and much remains to be done. Material has not been collected systematically over the whole country, cartography for several important parameters is difficult, and many links and relations remain unclear. Earlier generalizations were made on the basis of even more imperfect and scanty material and yet they have been accepted by scholars at home and abroad. These must be re-examined in the light of new and ever increasing data and new theoretical concepts. Two questions must be considered: to what epoch does a particular system belong, and to what region? To give a general picture (or model) of Russian folk music is deliberately to choose a pseudo-scientific compromise, to summarize what cannot be summarized – individual elements of varied and complex systems. At present, it is scarcely possible to do anything else, but it is important to realize the limits of such a description.

In the past there have been three basic ways of examining Russian folk music: regionally (by dialects), chronologically, or by genre. Ideally, all three would be combined, but the inadequate study of local styles and the lack of necessary documentation for a consistent chronological description make it impossible to present such an account at a scholarly level. It remains to examine Russian folk music by the groups of genres generally accepted in Russian folklore scholarship (see Propp, 1964), which allows certain conclusions to be drawn, while sometimes making use of the regional and historical aspects of data. Yet even this is a compromise, for the genre system is itself not final but constantly evolving, and far from adequate in certain folklore areas. Above all, there are many links and relationships between genres that pass unnoticed when the particular characteristics of specific genres are stressed. In reality folklore genres are not nearly so sharply distinguished as they are in their scientific rubrics. It is known, for instance, that the same text, subject or motif in various local dialects of one national tradition can exist in several different musical genres: it can be recited or chanted as in the epic, called out in formulae in rituals, expressed in laments, sung as a lyric song, danced to, played as a soldier’s parade march or in an instrumental version, and so on. Nevertheless only the genre principle permits a formal characterization of folklore in close association with its social and cultural function, one that shows its ‘text’ and ‘context’ at the same time.

Russian Federation, §II, 1: Russian traditional music: Song

(ii) Song

(a) Work songs and working pripevki.

(b) Calendar songs and ‘calls’.

(c) Wedding songs.

(d) Other songs of family life.

(e) Lyric song.

(f) Epics.

Russian Federation, §II, 1(ii): Russian traditional music: Calendar songs and ‘calls’.

(a) Work songs and working pripevki.

Such songs accompany physical work and help to organize it. As forms of work have changed, songs have disappeared and can be judged only from relatively late collections. They include the well-known song of the barge-haulers, Ey, ukhnem! (Balakirev, Bücher), the artel (working group) songs of the log rafters, carpenters, builders, skippers and others.

The pripevka (plural pripevki) is a short piece, something between a song and a cry or call. It can be a musical command, either inciting or accompanying work, and thus both active and rhythmic. It can also be the chanting of short verse lines (a sort of chastushka). Because of the collective nature of the work and the constant contacts between the workers of the artels, songs of this genre, in contrast to others, have a certain stylistic homogeneity everywhere. They are linked by a similar melodic transformation of the periodic rhythm of the work and the intonation of the spoken command, in the form of special short stereotyped musical phrases that are constantly repeated with slight variation. These usually consist of the major 2nd, perfect 4th and 5th, which may be isolated or in various combinations (ex.1). In choral performance their two- and three-part texture is also varied.

Russian Federation, §II, 1(ii): Russian traditional music: Calendar songs and ‘calls’.

(b) Calendar songs and ‘calls’.

These do not occur everywhere. They are most typical of western and south-western Russia (Smolensk, Bryansk, Pskov regions) and the central Russian regions (Ryazan, Vladimir and others). They are divided into genres, according to the association of the songs with the calendar: winter kolyadī (carols), called variously kolyadki (see Kolęda), ovseni, tauseni, vinograd'ya, shchedrovki; New Year podblyudnīye songs foretelling the future; maslenichnīye (Shrovetide) songs, usually performed in February, seven weeks before the first spring new moon; springtime calls for the spring to arrive (the March vesnyanki, incantational spring songs, invocatory and performed as part of a ritual); volochobnīye and v'yunishnīye songs (Easter carols); the April egor'evskiye (St George’s Day songs), the semitskiye (sung the Thursday before the Russian Trinity) and troitskiye (Whitsunday) songs, called may'skiye in the Smolensk region; the kupal'skiye songs sung on the day of the summer solstice (23 June); and the zhnivnīye songs, accompanying the harvest.

The magical invocation of a rich harvest had an important function in the folklore of the agrarian calendar. There is even a saying: ‘The spring song ends in the autumn’. The link in melodic intonation between the work songs and the ritual calendar songs of harvest is fundamental, for it shows the unity of the musical vocabulary used by the agriculturalist during the entire work year. The formulaic character of the tunes, usually short, also contributed to this, as each one could be combined with many different texts of analogous function. Thus, for example, all the vesnyanki in one local tradition might be performed to one melody. Sometimes the people did not consider them to be real songs: they said ‘vesnu zaklikayet’ (‘one calls for spring to come’) and not ‘poyot vesnyanku’ (‘one sings a vesnyanka’). Here, music does not yet have an exclusively aesthetic function. The singing, ritual movements, dances and even ritual laughter were called upon to intrude actively in life, to act upon it in a necessary or useful way. It is impossible to understand the musical meaning, the structure or the style of performance of calendar songs without a thorough understanding of the essence of calendar rituals and their syncretism. For example, the necessarily loud singing of the carnival songs which were part of the ritual burial of Maslenitsa (Shrovetide) was required to help bring about a good harvest. Equally necessary were the rhythmic movements accompanying the song (walking, running, hopping, striking a stick on the ground or against something, etc.) and the many ritual syncretic song-dances with magical functions.

The motive force in calendar songs is also reflected in their musical structure, especially in their rhythm. Hence the large number of stereotyped rhythmic formulae, combined with various scalar structures different local musics. ( Exx.2 and 3 show rhythmic and scalar structures of Russian calendar songs.) Another important attribute of calendar songs is the refrain. Refrain cries include ‘Kolyada!’, ‘Ta Usen'!’, ‘Svyat vechor!’, ‘Vesna-krasna na ves' svet!’, ‘Oy, mayu, mayu zelenīy!’, ‘Kupala na Ivana!’ etc. In group singing the refrains are always performed by the chorus.

In 1969, Lobanov discovered a new traditional genre of ‘forest-calls’ or vocal melody-signals (see Lobanov, 1996). This genre belongs to north-western Russia and is still preserved in the living tradition of Novgorod, Vologda, St Petersburg, Tver, Archangel and Pskov regions. It may be classified into two types: ukanie (‘halloos’) are exclaimed in the head register of the voice using the vowel ‘u’, mainly by women while gathering berries and mushrooms; goikanie or geikanie (‘heying’) are exclaimed in the chest register using ‘ae’ or ‘o’, mainly by male herdsmen. In the Novgorod region hallooing is often performed on the Thursday before Easter.

Russian Federation, §II, 1(ii): Russian traditional music: Calendar songs and ‘calls’.

(c) Wedding songs.

Songs of various genres belong to this group: lyric songs, performed before going to the altar at the devichnik (the evening party preceding the wedding); glorifying songs or pripevaniya performed before and after going to the altar; wedding laments, performed only before the altar ceremony, and not found in all regional traditions; and ritual or ‘main’ songs (called ‘formula songs’ in current Russian research). The melodies of the latter are sung with various texts during all the basic stages of the wedding ritual. The ritual itself is more or less common to the entire Russian territory. However, two main types of weddings are known among the Russian peasantry: joyful and ‘funeral’ type weddings. The former are typical of the western and southern parts of European Russia; the latter of the north. Consequently, songs of the former are stylistically related to calendrical songs and link Russian wedding ritual to those of other Slavic peoples; and songs for the latter to funeral laments of different local traditions. Group lamenting at weddings shares many of the features of song, but is understood as lamenting by the peasants themselves, as is reflected in their folksong terminology.

Musically, the wedding is usually divided sharply into two unequal parts – before and after the marriage ceremony. The songs sung before it in some regions (e.g. in the Vologda region) bear the general name of prichotī (laments). In such cases there may not be any special melody for the songs of glorification, and this is expressed in the folk terminology: the father-in-law is not ‘glorified’ or sung to but ‘oprichitīvayut’ (‘they lament him’). Glorifying songs are sung to all the participants in the wedding, including children, to whom joking songs of praise are sung. The guests ‘sing forth’ (pripevayut) to a person on behalf of another person, for example, to the bride on behalf of the groom, or to a girl on behalf of a bachelor wedding guest who is courting her. A summary of the Russian wedding is impossible, as no two Russian villages have exactly the same rituals; but differences in wedding rituals and songs are the clearest indicators available of the local dialects of Russian folk music.

Wedding laments, usually with a one-phrase structure with apocope at the end of the line (ex.4), are often closely related to funeral laments. Sometimes they are differentiated functionally during the wedding: at first the laments are relatively restrained, of a generalized character, but at the crucial moment of the ritual the bride changes the melody, falls to the ground and laments na myortviy golos (‘in the voice of the dead’), that is, in the melody of the funeral lament (see Ushakov, 1907). A special type of wedding lament occurs when the bride laments against a background of a group lament or a choral song, forming a complex polytonal, polyrhythmic composition (see for example Zemtsovsky, Toropetskiye pesni, 1967, no.49, and 1972, no.22; Banin, 1973, p.136).

Lyric wedding songs are, on the whole, close to non-ritual songs (see below), although they have some particular features and their structure is simpler. An exception is formed by certain Russian wedding songs such as the orphan song Tī reka li moya rechen'ka (‘You river, my little riverlet’; in Zemtsovsky, Toropetskiye pesni, 1967, no.43), or Trubon'ka (‘Little horn’; in Zemtsovsky, 1974, no.37). Musically they are the most distinctively Russian lyric songs, having essentially no analogy with those of neighbouring peoples. Examples in Rimsky-Korsakov (1876, 4/1951), nos.75, 89 and others, and in Lyadov (1959), nos.81, 90 and others, show a particular melodic type of wedding lyric song based on an original plagal mode with a stereotyped turn in the second half of the melody. There are not many such songs, but they are indispensable to the Russian wedding (ex.5). Lyric wedding songs often display intonational and rhythmic links with wedding songs of other genres, but are distinguished from them usually by their modal changeability. (For greater detail on wedding lyric songs, see P'yankova, 1973.)

The most archaic traditions have a minimum of formula melodies, sung throughout the wedding (which lasts a week, on average). In the eastern parts of the Vologda region, for example, there are weddings that employ a single melody formula, which changes during the ritual only in tempo, from slow at the beginning to fast at the end. On the shores of the White Sea there are weddings with two formula melodies, which are distributed either between the stages of the ritual or between the parties of the groom and the bride (Lapin, 1974). There are weddings in which up to five melodies are sung throughout. These are sung at many stages of the ritual with various texts, although other non-formula songs (i.e. songs with an individual melody) are also sung.

In general, the chief distinction of wedding songs lies not in modal or scalar forms, which are often like those of calendar songs, but in their general structure, and above all in rhythm. A remarkable feature of Russian folk music is the fact that the most complex development of rhythm appears not in dance music (as it does in the Balkans, for example) but in the wedding formula melodies. Furthermore, their rhythm also differs from the asymmetrical rhythm of non-ritual lyric songs (see below). The specific character of the wedding formula melodies rests on extremely stable rhythmic and metrical stereotypes with internally complex structure, as for example: 6/8 4/8 (5 + 3)/8 (see Zemtsovsky, Toropetskiy pesni, 1967, no.25 and others); (3 + 8)/8 (6 + 2)/8 3/4, etc. Lapin has shown that wedding formulae have an irregular metre, with a constant asymmetrical and hypnotically fascinating fast alternation between duple and triple units, for instance (3 + 3 + 2)/8 (3 + 2 + 2)/8 (3 + 2 + 3 + 3)/8 (2 + 2)/8. This kind of rhythmo-metric structure of a two-phrase musical formula is sung to various texts at a White Sea wedding (ex.6). In general, the most widespread rhythm of Russian wedding songs is quintuple, both pure and in various combinations, with 5 + 3 especially frequent. For five-syllable and nine-syllable text lines, the internal structure is usually divided in two (aa; ab + ab; also abb; more rarely aba). A typological classification of wedding formula melodies has been proposed by P'yankova (1972).

Russian Federation, §II, 1(ii): Russian traditional music: Calendar songs and ‘calls’.

(d) Other songs of family life.

Other songs include christening songs on a child’s birth (rodinnye), found primarily on the Belarusian border, as well as feast songs sung at the christening; other children’s songs such as lullabies (bayul'nīye, bayki), game songs, poteshki (entertaining songs), draznilki (usually joking rhymes with personal names), sung tales and songs which are part of tales; and funeral laments (plachi, prichotī, pricheti, vopli, zaplachki).

Children’s game chants are performed within a range rarely exceeding a 4th. Their most typical scalar structures are ac''–d'' and gac'', which are internationally known. Their rhythm is simple, starting from a basic four-beat line and from dance patterns. A double four-beat trochaic line is typical of lullabies. Their melodies are usually based on a trichord spanning a minor 3rd, sometimes with the addition of a 4th below or other nearby passing notes. Their even rocking rhythm and some of their texts are evidence not only of the everyday function of bayukan'ye (lulling the child) but also of the old magical power of lullabies (the function of protecting the child from evil spirits and death itself). Later lullaby texts are called kolībel'nīye by the people themselves, as they distinguish them from the ancient bayul'nīye songs. It is also no accident that the scalar structure and one-line form of lullabies and calendar songs concide (when they have supertonic cadences; see ex.7. This musical feature seems to show that agrarian and family rites are close in their intrinsic meaning.

Prichitaniya (laments) once had an important place in the Russian village: they were performed not only at weddings and funerals, but also when the young men were taken into the tsarist army, and generally for any long separation or illness, or for funeral wakes. According to Propp (1964, p.69) there are three genres of lament: two are ritual (wedding and funeral), and one non-ritual (for recruits, in wartime, and linked with the various misfortunes of old peasant life). Musically they differ in different regions: there may be one musical formula for all the types of lament, or two, usually to be distinguished by the degree of melodic development. In north Russia lyrico-epic laments with extended texts predominate, related in style to the heroic songs. In other regions the laments are shorter, and the melodic form is either more developed or more declamatory.

Paradoxically, the musical and poetic language of the laments is always stable and stereotyped. Their basic scalar structures and some of their rhythmic patterns are also found in calendar and wedding songs and, in the north of Russia, in epic songs. The predominant scalar structures are based on descending 3rds and 4ths with a variable 3rd (major, minor, neutral) and 2nd, the latter tending towards the minor 2nd. Quite often there is also a 4th below the tonic. The rhythmic pattern is linked to the verse: there are long epic lines in the north and eight- or nine-syllable lines in central Russian regions, performed in recitative manner without melisma. The metrical structure of the verse in the classic form of the lament is trochaic with a dactylic ending, with four to seven syllables in each line, which is syntactically complete. The rhythm and scalar structure are stereotyped, as is their general composition: the melody itself is a definite crystallized formula. The musical phrase is often shorter than the verse line, necessitating apocope: the words are not sung all the way through, the endings being swallowed as though in tears. The performance of laments in many local traditions is difficult to notate: they are on the borderline between musical and physical weeping and move easily from one to the other. Other features are: many descending glissandos (between notes and during abrupt changes of register) increasing from line to line; a gradual raising (most common) or lowering of the tessitura; a tense voice quality, often with vibrato; rubato and unmeasured rests; and alternations of musical exclamations with rhythmic speech, cries, moans, natural sobbing, etc. The lament is mostly performed as a solo improvisation for a specific occasion on the basis of traditional musical and poetic formulae. Russian village women learn the art in their youth. Outstanding peasant ‘lamenters’ in the north became famous, for example the voplennitsa from the Trans-Onega region (east of Lake Onega) Irina Fedosova (1831–99), from whom more than 30,000 lines of funeral, recruit and wedding laments were collected. In other traditions every woman knew how to lament. Group and choral lamenting is also known (at weddings, and also on memorial days in the cemetery).

Russian Federation, §II, 1(ii): Russian traditional music: Calendar songs and ‘calls’.

(e) Lyric song.

The narrow understanding of ‘lyric’ as the expression of intimate personal feelings is unacceptable in the folkloric context. Lyric folklore expresses the feelings of the entire people. The lyric song in general is not a genre of folklore but a basic type of artistic creation (along with epic and dramatic; see Propp, 1964, p.67). Nevertheless, in Russian folk music the lyric song can be considered a particular genre, not linked to ritual or dramatic use and characterized by a stable correlation of melody and text. There are various musical forms of lyric songs in Russian folk music, from simple monodic ‘sketches’ to the broadly developed polyphonic protyazhnīye (long-drawn-out) songs. Though much has been written on lyric song, there are no synthesizing studies on the genre as a whole. There are two important points. First, the peasant lyric song in its everyday occurrence is more complex than the above definition of the lyric genre suggests: lyric songs may be free from any ritual, or may in part be drawn into a ritual (e.g. a wedding), into a khorovod, or into the repertory of calendar festivals and winter evening work parties (posidelki), especially in south-western regions (e.g. the Smolensk region: see Pavlova, 1969). When a lyric song performance is linked with a specific function there may be changes in some elements of its musical style (for example, a deformation of the cadence). Secondly, lyric songs are the most dynamic genres in Russian traditional music, historically, geographically and stylistically. Still unfettered by ritual application for the most part, they travel easily with the population, and in new conditions may take on supradialectical features, leading to a creative interpenetration of musical styles and stylistic variants with a song – a characteristic phenomenon (see ex.7). Lyric songs would repay diachronic and synchronic study. Where an archaic style is found (with a short strophe, a narrow range of a 4th or 5th, or a declamatory basis) it is not regarded as such and fully satisfies the musical demands of the modern performers. The lyric song has brought to Russian folk music a wealth of musical forms and new expressive means. The most developed – the polyphonic forms of the expansive protyazhnaya lyric song – evolved during the formation of the Russian nation (14th–17th centuries, Muscovite Rus') and, being a symbol of Russian national culture as a whole, became Russia’s national pride.

Part-singing is found in all Russian folk music, but is most characteristic of lyric songs, where it has reached its highest development in podgolosochnaya (descant) polyphony. The growth of part-singing was accompanied and aided by the tonic stress of the early Russian syllabic folk verse line (governed by the number of syllables, not by stress patterns), leading to the form of 8-, 9- or 13-syllable lines with five to seven unstressed syllables – which is the raspetīy stikh (extended verse line) of the polyphonic protyazhnaya song (terms used by Gippius and Rudneva). The raspetīy line is characterized by frequent interruptions of words (apocope) followed by subsequent repeats, and by various inserted particles, interjections, exclamations (not only between words but also in the middle of a word) and linking syllables. The strophic form used is the ‘chain opening’: at the beginning of each strophe a fragment is repeated from the last line of the preceding strophe, without any meaningful link with the new strophe. The raspetīy or extended line corresponds to an ‘extended’ melody with intrasyllabic melodies: an entire musical phrase may be sung to a single syllable of a song text. These phrases based on one syllable are not optional ornaments but an organic structural unit. The melodic extension of the syllables and the long notes slow down the sung speech and transfer the emphasis from verse to music; the emotional power of the music is dominant, revealing feelings not expressed by the words.

Melodically the extended lyric song is always based on the development and establishment of a single melodic unit, usually that of a 4th or a 5th. In some songs this basic unit of intonation is distinctly stated in the zapev (introduction) of the song as its ‘intonational thesis’, while in others it is expounded differently; it is always present but it has no structurally outlined exposition. An ‘intonational thesis’ is not a theme for development (motivic, variational, sequential), rather the musical phrases flow out one from the other, adding to it or developing it further (by expanding its range, scale rhythm, texture) on the basis of specific musical rules (see Zemtsovsky, Russkaya protazhnaya pesnya, 1967). This organic growth, seemingly deliberate and non-periodic, has great internal energy and intensifying force. The style of musical development is different in different dialects, but the most distinct are in the musical dialects north and south of Moscow. In the north the vodit' golosom style (‘with part-writing’) – majestic, even choral singing with minimal separation of the leading soloist – is characteristic. By contrast, in the south there is resonant stylish singing with the role of the leading soloist accentuated, in a style called kachat' golos (‘to swing the voice’). In the north a choral song is said to be ‘raised’ (na golosa podnimayut), in the south ‘tightened’ (styagivayut), as distinct from khorovod and wedding songs, which are ‘played’ (igrayut).

The basic varieties of Russian folk polyphony are heterophony and descant (podgolosochnaya) polyphony. More rarely found are the vtora, parallel movement of voices, or elements of chordal harmonic structure. At key points in the form, principally at cadences, all the voices lead to a choral unison (or octave). In the Trans-Baikal region in Siberia these are called svodī (‘collections’). The number of voice-parts in the chorus and the number of singers to each part are flexible and may change during the performance of a song; the voices cross freely, and one part may divide into two. The function of the leading voice can be transferred from the leading soloist to another singer. Usually the words are pronounced by all the voices synchronously, but exceptions occur, as in the Voronezh region, where the descant is sung without any words, as pure vocalization, while in the Ryazan region the lower group of singers may not always pronounce all the words: the group basit (acts as a bass) on long notes. When there is a clear division of registers between the parts, the voices cross only within the parts (in south Russian styles). However, the greatest development of polyphonic form is linked everywhere with the highest development of melisma, which is found in the north, central and south Russian dialects. Some north-western and south-western regions that did not experience strong Muscovite influence between the 14th century and the 16th do not have such highly developed forms of polyphonic singing and represent more archaic styles of Russian folk choral singing.

The lyric song arose and was developed not only among peasants working the land but also among those in other situations; it arose among the urban propertied class, the students and finally the proletariat of long standing. Each social group and sub-group of Russian society had its own lyric songs, and each brought something new to their development. After peasant lyric song, the most important branch is the urban song. The influences on its music were various: the old peasant song; new musical instruments with harmonic possibilities (the guitar and the piano); military band music and European dances, introduced during the reign of Peter I; the three-part harmony of the secular kant (in urban Russia from about 1680, for some 150 years, kant came to designate religious psalms, panegyric ‘vivats’ and lyric songs; the numerous collections of kantī, many in manuscripts with musical notation in three parts, also contain some of the earliest notations of folksongs); the link with professional music and poetry; Gypsy singing (see Shteynpress, 1934); and vaudeville. In place of the syncretism of peasant song, melodies began more and more to be composed to an existing text, with the addition of a simple guitar improvisation. As urban life evolved, songbooks with music appeared, at first in manuscript, then printed, from the end of the 18th century. Variability diminished correspondingly. Any popular melodies (including operatic arias) were used as settings for favourite verses and the tunes were unintentionally reworked, their basic melodic pattern being gradually changed.

The role of Gypsy musicians in Russian culture should be reconsidered. Historically Gypsy (Roma) musicians have played a significant part as professional musicians throughout Europe. Since the end of the 18th century and especially in the 19th the Russian Gypsies, according to Petr Bessonov (1874) ‘were mediators between “society” and the “high classes” from the one hand, and the simple folk of the “lowest stratum” from the other hand. They transferred folksongs from below upwards and other verses from above downwards’ (Druskin, SovM, 1934, pp.96–105, esp. 100). As a result, the highly emptional Gypsy vocal style and wordless vocal ‘tap dance’, together with their seven-string guitar with its unusual style of improvisation and harmonization and, above all, the chords they used, literally struck a deep chord in Russian hearts. The ehart-rending style of performance of Russian songs, even when not Gypsus songs, has become a unique phenomenon in Russian culture. This was hinted at in 1806 by an anonymous author (probably Nikolay L'vov) in the preface to A Collection of Russian Folk Songs with their Tunes Set to Music by Ivan Prach, who wrote:

Among the ‘pliasovye’ [dance] songs there are also particular ones known as Gypsy song, more because of the manner of singing them than their construction, because onle these songs can be danced to in the Gypsy style … There is no doubt that Gypsy songs too were composed by Russians. Outside of Russia, Gypsy singing and dancing are quite different and in no way resemble the dancing and singing of the Russian Gypsies. One must supppose that the latter took from our songs that which was most appropriate, and having added to it the greater liveliness of their singing made the songs incomparably more suitable for fast pantomime dance, which if one examines it carefully, is nothing but the Russian ‘kozelskaia pliaska’ accelerated and enlivened by quick movements, which express more passion. In the simple folk ‘pliasovye’ songs there is less melody than in the Gypsy ones. In the latter there is more gaity and there are some particular sayings which are enunciated by the dancers, such as ‘Oi shgo, govori’ [‘Oi burn, tell’] and the like.

The folklore of Russian peasants still keeps alive much of their Gypsy repertory dating from the beginning of the 19th century, including some extremely popular dances and songs, such as ‘Barynia’ (‘Lady’, ‘Mistress’) which has been in popular song books since 1799 as a Gypsy song, ‘Seni’ (the hallway of a traditional Russian hut), ‘Tsīganochka’ (‘Little Gypsy Girl’), and so on. There has been a process of Gypsy instrumentation of Russian tunes, choral orchestration and harmonization. Even the traditional polyphony of the Russian peasants was adjusted wherever possible by Gypsies to the functional harmonic thinking of classical Western European music. In general, the Gypsy interpretation of Russian folksongs became the beginning of their ‘translation’ into the Western European musical language. More than just a performative style, it was also a structural transformation. From the 1850s, the publication of Gypsy songs for voice and piano began in Moscow and St Petersburg. In Russian musical life, a new phenomenon appeared, that is, the musical style of ‘romalesca’, Since that time, it has apparently been possible to differentiate between ‘Gypsy song’ and the stylized and sentimental ‘Gypsy-like’ song (Rus. ‘tsīganshchina’). Similarly, Ukrainian music adopted in Russia, that is ‘malorossiyskie pesni’ (‘Little-Russian songs’), which became very popular, bore almost no resemblance to ‘genuine’ Ukrainian folksong.

Throughout the 19th century songs of the Russian liberation movement were composed. At first they contributed something new only in poetic content (revolutionary texts were sung to folk melodies), but gradually songs were composed with new independent melodies and texts, and using a musical language unusual for Russian folklore: the combination of emotional declamation and a fervent refrain. In 1905 the revolutionary song emerged from underground and was sung in the streets for the first time; marching songs, hymns and procession songs such as Smelo, tovarishchi, v nogu or Vī zhertvoyu pali were sung during mass demonstrations and assemblies. From the towns these songs later reached the villages where they were adapted slowly but eventually took root. The active interchange of urban and peasant, soldier and revolutionary lyrical songs was the basis for the development of their new modern forms.

Russian Federation, §II, 1(ii): Russian traditional music: Calendar songs and ‘calls’.

(f) Epics.

The vast heterogeneous area of narrative folklore includes bīlinī (discussed below), dukhovnīye stikhi (spiritual songs), skomoroshinī (songs of the medieval buffoons), older historical songs and ballads (for more detail see Propp, 1964). Strictly speaking, with the exception of the bīlinī, these types are not separate musical genres, for each has several genre forms. Epic themes existed at various epochs and differed in various local traditions in musical performance, appearing for example in the style and form of bīlinī, dance or game dance-songs, soldier or lyrical songs, and even work songs or ritual songs. The musical features of some of these, for example of the ballad, have not developed to the point of having the characteristics of an independent musical genre. (This is one of the many differences between the Russian folk ballad and those of western Europe and America.) Since the problem of the musical character of Russian narrative folk music as a whole is still unsettled and relatively neglected, this discussion is limited to a characterization of the most important and best-defined genre within it – that of the bīlinī (‘what is was’; starina or ‘old song’ in folk terminology).

The total number of published texts of bīlinī is about 2500, while the number of different subjects lies between 110 and 120, but publications of their music are far fewer. Most bīlinī surviving in oral peasant tradition belong to the Kiev or Vladimir cycle, recounting the ancient heroic deeds of the Russian bogatīri (heroes) such as Il'ya Muromets, Dobrīnya Nikitich and Alyosha Popovich. They embody the people's historic dreams of state unity and of the independence of their homeland in the feudal period. The bīlina has a distinct verse, a stereotyped cadence, a compositionally related beginning and ending, but no special definitive musical content in terms of pitch design. The earliest collections of bīlinī were made in the 17th and 18th centuries. The first manuscript collection of bīlinī with melodies (by Kirsha Danilov) is datable to the middle of the 18th century; the living tradition of the epic in Russia was discovered and noted at the beginning of the second half of the 19th century in the Russian north, by P.N. Rībnikov and A.F. Hilferding, while the first sound recordings of bīlinī were made at the end of the 19th.

According to their manner of performance bīlinī are usually divided into two types: those with solo recitative singing (found primarily in the north) and those with choral singing in parts (chiefly in the south among the Don and Terek Cossacks). In style the latter are close to south Russian lyric songs. The northern tradition itself is heterogeneous (for example, along the Pinega River the bīlinī are choral, along the Pechora they are sung by a two-part ensemble), while recitative performance is also known in the south along the Don River. South and central Russian songs with bīlina images in their texts can be related to bīlinī under certain conditions, but strictly speaking the centre of the bīlinī remains the north of Russia.

The bīlinī of the Trans-Onega region, with few melodies known, clearly belong to a relatively late tradition; in many ways they are unique and cannot be considered generally Russian or even generally north Russian. These melodies consist of several lines with a heightening of the tension of the verse line, so that the text is divided not into lines but stanzas. Every musical stanza consists of two (or rarely three) melodic lines: initial and repeated. Usually the latter is repeated as the logic of the text demands, accentuating complete sections of the narrative (according to the formula ABB or ABCC). Another local tradition of the northern bīlinī that is not archaic in style is found along the Karelian coast. Here couplet bīlinī are found, with songlike stanzas.

Vasil'yeva (1976) has shown only one bīlina form to be widespread: the one-line melody, which corresponds to a single verse line. (The oldest are those along the Mezen' River, but they are also found on the Kuloy and Pinega rivers, in the Pudozh area, in the region east of Lake Onega in general and on the southern coast of the White Sea.) The classic collection of one-line bīlinī is Grigor'yev’s three-volume Arkhangel'skiye bīlinī (notated from phonograph recordings by I.S. Tezavrovsky made in the Arkhangel'sk government in 1899–1901). They are in additive metre with accents at the beginning and at the cadence, with a typical bar structure of (3 + 4)/4 or 11/8; the chief feature, however, is the required rhythmic stress of the close. The last three syllables, which form the cadence, either stand apart syntactically (as in the north-east of the bīlina tradition, including the area along the Pechora river), or they are distinguished by a weighting of the metric unit (e.g. a crotchet in place of a quaver), in other words, by a slowing down of the movement of the melody (ex.8). It is the cadence, corresponding to the close of the poetic line, that is the striking feature of the bīlina melos and the most important factor in creating its form. Rhythmic equalization of the cadence transforms a bīlina into a skomoroshina, essentially an anti-bīlina. In the latter, the 12- to 14-syllable line with three basic stresses (called ‘the full epic scale’) is changed into an 8- to 11-syllable line with two basic stresses which is the skomorokh line, a recitative fast patter. In turn, a change in the function of the beginning of the line (the anacrusis), the second most important element of the bīlina melody, in such a way as to emphasize the beginning of the melody, makes the bīlina into a lyric song (as in the repertory of the Pechora region, for example). The compositional features of the one-line bīlinī that have been mentioned belong to various melodic types.

Essentially, bīlinī, in terms of musical intonation, have never become a distinct musical genre. However, the traditional way of performing bīlina, literally ‘to tell’ it, is a unique form of musical narration. The bīlina has a distinct verse, a stereotyped cadence, a compositionally related beginning and ending, but no special definitive musical content in terms of pitch design. Maslov (1911) observed that ‘most bīlina melodies are a reworking of turns and tunes long known by the people, packed together in a definite rhythm worked out for bīlinī’ (p.325). Melodies that are linked melodically with other song genres (laudatory wedding songs, lyric khorovod and dance-songs) make up a considerable group of bīlina tunes. The bīlina ‘reworking’ of song melodies takes place within the limits of a type of intonation specific to bīlinī. The combination of the ‘flight of quavers’ and the tranquil solid ‘singing forth’ of three crotchets in the cadence creates a particularly lively structure: mobile speech (the ‘utterance’ of the verse) returns periodically, at the end of each verse line, to a conventional narrative, demanding also a measured singing, usually based on the framework of a 4th. This type of intonation creates a conventional form (almost a formula) of the bīlina melos, which can be observed in principle in various modal-melodic traditions. The performers also distinguish the bīlinī in terminology: ‘I will tell you, brothers, but I won’t tell a tale, I won’t sing a song, but I’ll sing you an ancient verse, a Kievan bīlina’ (Astakhova, 1938–51, ii, 394).

The fixed association of certain melodies with certain texts is not known in the northern bīlinī. The starinshchik (the performer of bīlinī) can perform his entire repertory of bīlinī to one or two melodies or he may use a different melody when he repeats a bīlina. There are melodies common to a whole region. The melodies do not convey poetic images but dispose the listener to receive them, and then, by concentrating the attention on the content of the bīlinī, they lead the audience into their special artistic world.

Russian Federation, §II, 1: Russian traditional music: Song

(iii) Dance.

Tanets is a general term covering all types of folk dance, which at first was associated with ritual work songs, especially those connected with the calendar cycle. In modern practice their old associations with the seasons and with particular venues (on the street, at home, in the meadow or the forest glade) are being forgotten and the dances are mixed together. However, there has been a certain lack of clarity in differentiation for a long time: the same song has been recorded in various places as a khorovod, a dramatic dance-song or a plyaska. Songs of other genres have also crossed over into the category of khorovod and plyaska songs, changing their structure accordingly. Purer types of these various song categories do exist, however, connected with particular choreographic movements. The texts cover a wide range of subjects (e.g. working themes, family relationships, social satire etc.).

The khorovod, igrovīye dances (dramatic or game dances, similar to the English ‘London Bridge is falling down’) and individual plyaski were apparently slow to take form as independent genres. They are distinguished not so much by melodic content (being close to the song melodies of other genres such as calendar, wedding and lyric songs) as by their structure and rhythm, directly connected with the corresponding type of movement (pantomime, couple-dance etc.). This is reflected in the indigenous folk terms: krugovīye (in a circle), gulebnīye (holiday walking songs), khodovīye (walking), igrishchnīye (grand game songs), stenka na stenku (a line of youths moving towards a line of girls), skakul'nīye (jumping songs).

The khorovod is most typically a girls’ circle-dance, the performers moving from right to left (the direction of the sun) and singing, with individuals inside the circle acting out the subject of the song. Young men may also take part. The khorovod can also be a formation dance, with dancers in rows facing each other, or in columns, figures of eight etc. Khorovod dances and khorovod processions are mass dances. In the spring khorovodī between 200 and 300 people may take part, usually girls. They are led (vodyat), people walk (khodyat) in them, and there is even a folk expression khodit' pesni, ‘to walk songs’. All the dancers make the same movements and sing and dance at the same time. Circle and figure khorovodī are differentiated by the character of their movements, as, for example, zmeykoy (‘like a snake’), gus'kom (single file), rucheykom (‘in a stream’, walking in rows of four or more), veryovochkoy (similar to zmeykoy or ulitsey), ulitsey (‘along the road’), cherez vorottsa (when couples hold hands high and other dancers pass underneath) or stenoy (‘along the wall’). The circle-dance melodies have a cyclic structure. In dramatic khorovodī the singers stand in a circle inside which a scene is acted, the leading singer singing the basic text and the chorus singing the refrain. The melodies of these and of the figured khorovodī are strophic, for instance AABB, ABAB or ABBA.

Khorovod dances also have divided melodies with a fixed caesura corresponding to the verse line: 4 + 3 + 3 as in ‘A mī proso/seyali/seyali’ (‘We were sowing millet’) or 5 + 3 + 3 as in ‘Kak vo gorode/tsarevna/tsarevna’ (‘There was an empress in the town’). Many khorovod melodies have refrains such as ‘Oy li oy lyuli’ or ‘Oy lyushen'ki lyuli’. Characteristic is a four-line strophe whose fourth line is a repetition of the second. When a khorovod is performed the dance may span three or four songs sung to the same melody. Such melodic formulae are found especially in vecherochnīye (evening) songs, whose function is close to the wedding laudatory songs (the pripevaniya, sung by the young man to the girl).

Plyaski differ from khorovodī in choreography and musical structure. The former is primarily an individual dance, predominantly for men, although women also dance singly. At best the dancer interacts with his immediate partner, but his movements are independent of the other dancers (if there are any). The dancers of a plyaska themselves do not sing: the onlookers sing to them. In contrast to the circle khorovodī, the melodies of the plyaski do not have complicated contradictory rhythms, but are always based upon short repeating rhythmic figures, usually with stress at the ends of phrases or off the beat (see ex.9 for plyaska rhythmic formulae). In these dances polyrhythm is possible between the melody and the choreography. Plyaski are definable as a special genre only when considered as a whole: musically or textually they do not really constitute a separate genre. For example, the plyaska may be accompanied by a humorous text without a plot; various ideas and images may be linked together at random. The duration of the texts thus assembled depends solely on how long the dancers want to dance. A plyaska may also be performed to an endlessly repeated series of meaningless words, which have the function of an accompanying instrument. In general, khorovodī and plyaski with instrumental accompaniment (by solo instruments or ensembles) are a common occurrence in Russian folk music.

Russian Federation, §II, 1: Russian traditional music: Song

(iv) Chastushki.

The chastushka is a vocal-instrumental genre consisting of short, single-stanza couplets; these usually have four lines (more rarely two or six), are rhymed, and are linked with the old dance (plyasovaya) song and the humorous pripevki (see above) of fair, carnival and wedding joke-makers (draznilki). The crystallization of chastushki as a specific genre with unlimited subject matter took place in post-Reform Russia (i.e. in the last third of the 19th century), being linked with the destruction of the old village organization, and the growing demand in folklore for swift up-to-date critical statements about the new life pattern and human relations. The division of chastushki from traditional pripevki is very clear; the spread of the accordion into the village (c1830–60) may have influenced the fact that pripevki began to be performed not only with the dance. The rhythmic kinship of all chastushki (usually with a structure of 8 + 7 + 8 + 7 syllables in trochaic tetrameters) contributed to their easy dissemination and to the combination of many texts with one melody (or with any melody belonging to one type). ‘Chastushki’ (from the adjective chastīy: ‘quick’) is not the only term used: in different dialects it may be called pripevki, pribaski, korotushki, prigudki; with the dance, the taratorki, priplyaski; with promenading, khodovīye etc. Stradan'ya (‘sufferings’) are a variety of chastushka that is expanded melodically, often in two lines (with 8 + 8 syllables), found in the Volga and Voronezh areas. The neskladī (‘nonsense songs’) are chastushki without rhyme, particularly nonsensical ones. Those called pod yazīk (‘under the tongue’) or rotovushki (from rot: ‘mouth’) are performed to a vocal accompaniment which imitates an instrument (similar to mouth-music in Scotland). Chastushki are usually performed with an accordion or balalaika. The predominant melodic type is an extremely varied and expressive recitative. The instrumental accompaniment gives much scope to a talented improviser. Since the 1920s there has been a vigorous development in the playing of instrumental variations on the accordion accompanying the chastushka. Sometimes there is polyrhythm between voice and accompaniment, when the ostinato formula of the latter is not dependent on the vocal phrasing (see ex.10).

Chastushki may be performed solo, as a duet (often in the form of a dialogue between friends, called singing na otvet: ‘to an answer’), or by a chorus with or without instrumental accompaniment; they may be performed to a dance, to walking, or simply as a lyric expression. Some forms of chastushki are found among all Russians, others (such as the stradan'ya) only in certain areas; others appear to be unique in form, such as the spasovskiye, which have various repetitions of words expanding the strophe to 8 + 11 + 8 + 11 syllables. An example of chastushki that are original in form and performance style are those sung in the villages along the River Oyati (in the St Petersburg region), called kachel'nīye (‘on the swings’), pokosnīye (‘reaping’), zhnivnīye (‘harvest’) and lesnīye (‘forest’); they are linked with the agricultural calendar and convey a special feeling for the landscape that cannot be conveyed in transcription (ex.11).

Northern, central and south Russian regional chastushka styles differ also in melody and style of singing. The interrelation of melody and text is not always arbitrary: the performance of a cycle of chastushki related to each other in meaning is known, and there are stable groups of texts, such as those called semyonovna, yablochko (‘little apple’), tsīganochka (‘little Gypsy girl’) and podgornaya (‘foothill’). Reliable musical transcriptions were made only after the communist revolution (e.g. 11 chastushka melodies in the collection by Gippius and Eval'd, 1937, and the Academy collection Chastushki v zapisyakh sovetskovo vremeni, 1965).

Russian Federation, §II, 1: Russian traditional music: Song

(v) Instrumental music.

Instrumental music is the least studied aspect of Russian folk music; in general Russian folk music is nearly always associated with the vocal tradition. Scholarly publications on instruments have appeared primarily since 1960. Centuries of persecution by the church against folk instruments played a crucial role in their fate. Shepherds’ instruments, which were best preserved, are gradually disappearing with the change in the life of the shepherd. Nevertheless, the most recent research by folk instrument specialists in various regions of the Russian Federation have been very fruitful, even going as far as discovering hitherto unknown musical instruments.

Folk instruments of the four basic types (idiophones, membranophones, aerophones and chordophones) are used by the Russians in solo and ensemble performance. The best known aerophones include the dudka, also called the sopel' or pīzhatka, a duct flute made of maple, bird-cherry or willow, between about 30 and 40 cm long with five or six finger-holes. It has a range of a 6th or 7th, and with overblowing up to two and a half octaves. The zhaleyka (rozhok, bryolka) is a pastoral single-reed instrument made of willow or elder, about 15 cm long, with a bell (rastrub) of cow horn or birch bark at the lower end. It has three to seven finger-holes, producing a diatonic scale. Zhaleyki with one pipe are found in the north, double ones in the southern regions. When ‘rozhok’ does not designate a zhaleyka, it is a shepherd’s horn, made of birch bark, maple or juniper, between 40 and 50 cm long with four or five finger-holes and an additional hole on the underside. There is also a shepherd’s rog (horn) made of animal horn or wood with a mouthpiece but no finger-holes, 90–100 cm long. Signals and simple diatonic melodies are played on it.

The kuviklī or kugiklī are panpipes, a woman’s instrument, played in the south-western regions. They consist of two to five stopped reed pipes of the same diameter but of various lengths (10–16 cm). Dance-tunes are usually played on kuviklī with five pipes, while those with three or four pipes are played in ensemble as accompanying instruments. The usual ensemble of performers (kugikal'nitsī) consists of three or four women (see Rudneva, 1975, pp.141ff). One or two play the pipes, at the same time producing sounds with the voice similar to those of the pipes, a device known as fifkan'ye. The other two women accompany the basic tune with harmony notes in syncopation. Each set of pipes played by one performer is known as a ‘pair’, regardless of the actual number of pipes: the commonest number is five. They are usually tuned to a pentachord containing a neutral 3rd.

The string instruments include the skripka (fiddle); formerly home-made but now usually bought mass-produced (the home-made ones often have three strings, tuned in 4ths); the gusli, a kind of psaltery with five to 14 strings tuned diatonically, found mainly in the north-west in the Pskov area; and the balalaika. Another shepherds’ instrument is the baraban (drum). More modern instruments now in use are the seven-string guitar, the accordion and the bayan (a type of accordion introduced in 1907, with a chromatic keyboard and chord buttons).

Folk instruments are mostly used either by shepherds or for the accompaniment of dances and songs, including ritual songs. Instruments used by shepherds are the flute, zhaleyka and the ‘natural trumpet’; the accordion and balalaika are used for dancing. Some pastoral tunes are purely instrumental: the Yaroslav zhaleyka for example, has two finger-holes and a scale of four whole tones; it cannot be used to play song- or dance-melodies. Other pastoral instruments, such as the rozhok, can be used to play signals (e.g. to bring the herd together) as well as songs and dance-tunes. When the rozhok accompanies choral singing it doubles one of the vocal parts. The khor rozhechnikov (chorus of horn players) was a well-known group, whose playing in many parts was first notated by Yu.N. Mel'gunov in 1879. From the end of the 19th century the horn ensemble also performed with an accordion. The repertory of instrumental ensembles is based on folksongs, transformed in various ways. During performance the melody and text of a song is ‘reconceived’, becoming a kind of theme with variations. On the other hand, the playing of dance-tunes does not have to conform to a text and is thus more original, both in solo improvisations and in polyphonic ensembles. The many-sided interrelations of the vocal, vocal-choreographic and instrumental elements in Russian folk music constitute an important study.

Russian Federation, §II, 1: Russian traditional music: Song

(vi) Ethnomusicologial and musical developments.

Contemporary Russian ethnomusicologists recognize that there is not a single system of ‘musical folklore’ that unites all local traditions and dialects and that there are no single systems of genre, mode, rhythm, timbre or texture, either. Rather, there are diverse local styles as well as local genre and tuning systems and a variety of sound-ideals. There are many vague and transitory musical forms resulting from complex waves of colonization and migration within the country. Behind these processes lies the historically deep phenomenon of ethnogenesis. Ethnic traditions may be viewed as comparable to a multitude of local dialects. In addition, though, musical conceptualization varies within the same tradition according to other factors, such as generation and occupation. Similarly, the classification of a type of music as ‘archaic’ has no meaning for those people who perform that music as part of their everyday musical self-realization. As a result of intensive ethnomusicological fieldwork throughout the whole of Russia, the variety of newly discovered local tradition and styles has come to the fore. Moreover, there are newly recognized musical forms and types of music-making, particularly in the field of part-singing (see Polyphony, §II, 3. Russian ethnomusicologists still study mainly the folklore of their own people and see their leading task as the creation of a new picture of Russian music of the oral tradition, which is one that relates to imaginary landscapes. These comprise three coexisting landscapes: the musical landscape as a sound portrait of the ethnic culture being studied, that is, musical dialects as a subject of ethnomusical geography (which leads to the constant discovery of microdialects); the ‘notational landscape’, which has been radically transformed by new methodology (e.g. the ‘analytical transcription’ of Yevgeny Gippius and his followers); and the whole ‘sound landscape’ of Russia, which has been changed both by modern technology (radio, television, records, CDs, videos and so on) and by the ‘ethnographic concerts’ of the 1960s, when performers from remote villages travelled to Moscow, Leningrad and other large cities to perform their traditional folk repertories. As a result, ‘secondary folklore’ and a huge revival movement called ‘folklorism’ by Russians (following the Germans) has appeared in modern Russian life.

The best-known ensemble of this genre was led from the 1970s to the 90s by Dmitry Pokrovsky (1944–96). This was initially a folklore group in which ethnomusicologists and other professional musicians became folk singers or instrumentalists by undertaking fieldwork and learning directly from rural traditional singers and musicians. Using traditional principles, they improvised rather than imitated folklore. Pokrovsky's approach inspired numerous followers and, after perestroika, many other groups were formed. They are now able to perform those genres that were forbidden in the recent Soviet past, such as religious folklore, ‘spiritual verses’ and Christmas dramas (Porter, 1997).

Russian Federation, §II: Russian traditional music

2. Non-Russian peoples in European Russia.

For the purposes of the present article the non-Russian peoples of the European part of the Russian Federation under discussion include the Finno-Ugric peoples in the Republic of Komi and the Komi-Permyak autonomous region, namely the Komis (formerly known as Zīryan) and Permyaks; the Finno-Ugric and Turkic peoples living along the great central bend of the Volga River (Povolzh'ye) and the nearby Kama and Ural rivers, namely the contiguous Udmurts (formerly known as Votyaks), Mordvins, Maris (formerly known as Cheremis), Chuvashes, Tatars and Bashkirs; and the Kalmīk Mongols, who live near the Volga delta some distance south. The Volga peoples and the Kalmyks have their own republics within the Russian Federation (Udmurtiya, Mordoviya, Mari Ėl, Chuvashiya, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan and Kalmīkiya respectively). The Komis and Permyaks number about 500,000. The estimated total population of the Volga Ugriss is about 2ˇ5 million, the Volga Turkic peoples number about 9ˇ9 million and the Kalmīk Mongols about 142,000. For adjacent and related musical cultures see Finland, §II and Estonia, §II and for the Russian Sámi (800) of Murmansk province see Sámi music.

The languages of the Finnic peoples, the Komis and Permyaks, and the Maris, Udmurts and Mordvins, belong to the Finno-Ugric (Uralic) language family. The Chuvashes, Tatars and Bashkirs have Turkic languages, related to Mongol languages including Kalmīk, and together these form the Turco-Mongol branch of the Altaic language family.

Inhabitants of the Volga-Ural area are descendants of a wide variety of peoples, ranging from the Huns and medieval Bulgars to the Mongols of Genghis (Chinggis) Khan’s time, and have lived for centuries with a large eastern Slav and Finno-Ugric population in their midst. The Kalmīks are Oirat or Western Mongols who arrived in their present area in two waves, that is, when a group of Torgut and Dörbet Mongols migrated to the Trans-Volga steppe in 1630 to escape from the powerful Jungar leader Khara Khula, and then in 1758, after the majority of Oirats were destroyed by the Qing-Mongol army and the Jungar State fell.

Musically, the diversity just cited is well reflected in the instruments used by the Volga-Ural peoples. Particularly striking are the Kalmīks, who play lutes associated with the Mongols, the Altai Turkic peoples and the Kazakhs, one zither relating to Siberia and another to eastern Europe, and a whole set of religious instruments integral to Buddhist worship which stem from Tibet. The six peoples of the central Volga-Ural region can be roughly divided into two groups in terms of their musical instruments. The Tatars and Bashkirs seem closer to Central Asia in their use of long open end-blown flutes and lutes similar to the Kazakh dömbra, while the Maris, Chuvashes, Mordvins and Udmurts lean more towards fipple flutes, bagpipes and zithers related to east European instruments. Unique to the area are the musical bow (kon-kķn) of the Maris and the chīpchīrgán of the Udmurts, an open pipe between 1ˇ5 and 2 metres long played by inhalation. Common to the entire region is the adoption of various forms of accordion prevalent in Russia, together with local variants.

(i) Komis and Permyaks.

(ii) Udmurts (Votyaks).

(iii) Maris (Cheremis).

(iv) Mordvins.

(v) Chuvashes.

(vi) Tatars.

(vii) Bashkirs.

(viii) Kalmīks.

Russian Federation, §II, 2: Russian traditional music: Epics

(i) Komis and Permyaks.

The Komis are an exception among the Finno-Ugric peoples in the sense that they formed an autochthonous, semi-independent feudal state by the 14th century, when they were included in the Moscow Rus of the Slavs. The Komis and Permyaks live in vast territories covered with subarctic coniferous forests and a multitude of rivers, lakes and swamps, and their music forms a distinctive style area with several local subareas according to geographical location. Komi musical traditions are usually classified according to peoples living in different river areas, that is, the Vīchegda-Sīsola area in the south-west and south, the Izhma-Pechora area in the north and east, and the Vīm-Udora area in the north-west and west. The song traditions of the Izhma-Pechora Komis include improvised work and journey songs, and epic narratives with themes that overlap with those of the adjacent Nenets Samoyeds. The Vīm-Udora Komis perform archaic songs of annual agricultural rituals as well as contemporary Russian-style songs. Ritual laments have been important in weddings, funerals and recruiting rituals everywhere, especially among the Vīm-Udorans.

Southern Komi heroic epics (for instance those about the heroes Pedor Kiron and Kir'yan Var'yan) express the history of the Komis, telling how their heroes fought together with the Rus against the Tatar Mongols, while epics of the Izhma-Pechora Komis describe the tribal activities of the northern reindeer herders. Permyak epics include myths of origin, such as the bear-ancestor myth in the Kudym-Osha or Pera epic cycles of the Finno-Permyans. Tales and legends about the ancient Chuds (a Finno-Ugric native population in the tales of northern Russia) are also widely distributed among the Permyaks.

Wedding rituals among the Komis and Permyaks are complex, being dominated musically by ritual laments that occur during different phases of the process. Russian influences are notable in the lyrical and chastushka-type songs.

The dominant musical features in Komi and Permyak traditional music are a tonal system based on simple diatonicism with only a few pitches used in a modest melodic movement of 2nds and 3rds. Contemporary songs tend to have wider ambitus than earlier ones, with Mixolydian and Aeolian modes predominating. Anhemitonicism is very rare and restricted only to the genres thought to be the most archaic. There are both syllabic and melismatic melodic styles; melismatic styles are used mostly in improvised work songs of the Izhma Komis. There are several styles of multi-part singing, from the simple heterophony of Izhma Komi improvised songs to polyphonic songs proper. The Komi and Permyak instrumentarium includes idiophones such as the shepherd’s signal instruments pu baraban (wooden board), pu pan'yas (wooden spoons), gīrnich'yas (series of clay pots, beaten with hands) and chordophones, such as the plucked three- and four-string box zithers sigudök-pöv or sigudök-kumli, or the plucked log zither, brungan. Sigudök (Russ. gudok) is a wooden bowed lute or spike fiddle with three strings and variously shaped body. Most variety, however, occurs among the aerophones, which range from simple free reed instruments such as the syumöd kil', made from a piece of birchbark, to flutes such as kuima chipsan, an open triple flute made from the stems of umbellate plants, clarinets such as bad'pu pölyan, an idioglot clarinet usually with three finger-holes, and trumpets such as syumöd buksan, also made from birchbark.

Russian Federation, §II, 2: Russian traditional music: Epics

(ii) Udmurts (Votyaks).

Like their Mari neighbours, the Udmurts traditionally placed great stress on a complex set of religious beliefs and rituals – for example, the agricultural spring ritual akashka. Communal prayers (e.g. kuris'kon) and sacrifices were organized on a clan (vorshud) basis. Songs are highly valued by the Udmurts and the melodies of songs used in important rituals, such as the wedding songs (syuan gur, or börīs' gur), are identified according to clans and their villages. In tsarist times, recruits were expected to leave songs of their own composition behind as souvenirs when they left their village. This custom also applied to girls who married out of the community. During domestic festivities the hosts were required to compose songs for the guests, while the latter had to return the obligation by improvising additional songs of their own. Riddles and fairy tales are also favourites, with whole evenings being devoted to these entertainments. Udmurt music may be divided into northern and southern styles. Northerners prefer epic recitation with thematic features in common with their Permian neighbours, while southerners lean more towards love-songs in a style close to that of the Tatars and Bashkirs. Songs are mostly performed without instrumental accompaniment.

In ritual songs in particular, only trichords with major 2nds are used (e.g. C–D–E), occasionally expanded to an anhemitonic tetrachord (e.g. C–D–E–G). A wide variety of verse types is used, usually with a combination of 7- to 15-syllable half lines of text. Among the southern Udmurts, ritual songs have two or three parts, which results in a heterophonic melodic contour.

Modern Udmurt music, introduced during the Soviet period, began with productions by local theatrical organizations. The first presentations were based on Udmurt folk music and ceremonial themes, such as Maiorov’s Udmurt Wedding of 1918. Of particular importance in the early years was the work of K. Gerd, an actor, playwright and collector of folksongs, whose anthologies were published in the 1920s.

Russian Federation, §II, 2: Russian traditional music: Epics

(iii) Maris (Cheremis).

The western Mari areas are covered with huge forests, while the central and eastern regions are mostly fields and pastures; the rural population makes its living partly by forestry and partly by agriculture. Fishing and bee-keeping are also important occupations. According to geographical position, dialects and musical and other traditions, four groups of Mari people can be distinguished. The Meadow Maris occupy three-quarters of the republic’s territory: theirs is the official and literary language. The remaining south-west region is the home of the Hill Maris. The third group, the north-western Maris, live in the Nizhegorodskaya and Kirov provinces, adjacent to Mari Ėl and the fourth, the eastern groups of Mari, live in the republics of Tartarstan, Udmurtia and Bashkortostan, and in Perm' and Sverdlovsk provinces. According to their musical traditions, these eastern groups may be further subdivided into the western or Yelabuga Maris (Tatarstan and Udmurtia), southern or Ufa Maris (Bashkortostan), northern or Perm' Maris and the eastern or Sverdlovsk Maris.

As a result of their living at the meeting-point of Finno-Ugric, Slavonic and Turkic cultures, the music of the Maris shows extensive foreign influence and several different musical styles. Interaction of the Finno-Ugric and Turkic peoples was facilitated by the monophonic nature of both musical cultures, which may be a reason why the Maris and the neighbouring Turkic-speaking peoples have not borrowed many musical elements from Russian folk music, which is predominantly polyphonic.

The Mari musical tradition is still a living, changing and integral part of everyday life. Weddings, funerals, soldiers’ farewells, the arrival of guests, young people’s partings from the paternal home, midsummer and midwinter greetings and brewing are all occasions for singing. Short, lyrical songs predominate and Mari folk poetry has none of the epic traditions so characteristic of other Finno-Ugric peoples.

The eastern Maris have retained innumerable elements of ancient Mari culture, such as pre-Christian beliefs, rituals performed in gatherings in the forests, animal offerings and funeral rituals. Their melodies are also archaic. The major-sounding pentatonic tunes with four short lines, simple construction and ample repetitions are very different from those of the surrounding Bashkir, Tatar or Russian musical traditions. At most, there is some resemblance to certain melodic types of the Meadow Maris.

In the music of the Meadow Maris two basic, sharply divergent forms can be observed. The first consists of four-line melodies typical of the eastern and northern regions of the republic. Their range encompasses mostly the pentatonic scale G–A–C–D–E, but in some areas one with the structure C–D–E–G–A is used. Among these songs a typical construction is that in which the third line is a lower, possibly varied, repetition of the first line, a 2nd to a 4th below, and the fourth line is a repetition of the second (ex.12). There are, however, numerous tunes of different form, with a descending melodic line and motifs of varied shape. Tetratonic melodies are occasionally found and are presumably of earlier origin.

The music of the southern Meadow Maris is characterized by arched melodies with a 5th-shift: in four-line melodies, the third and fourth lines are exact repetitions of the first two, a 5th lower. When the two halves of the melody appear to be in different keys, the range remains anhemitonic pentatonic of the type G–A–C–D–E: this is a 5th-shift with a real answer. One of the main characteristics of Meadow Mari 5th-shift melodies is 6/8 metre, as opposed to other Mari tunes where 2/4 and 4/4 metres predominate. It is probable that Mari 5th-shift melodies developed under the influence of the neighbouring Turkic musical cultures. In the music of the eastern Mari the 5th-shift is unknown.

From among the different Mari melodies, the 5th-shift tunes of the Hill Maris are the most widely known. Here the 5th-shift is not real but tonal, so that the pentatonic scale remains unchanged and the 5th-shift is more or less modified (ex.13). Upon analysing the characteristics of Mari and Chuvash 5th-shift melodies Bartķk and Kodály revealed the close relationship between these and the old Hungarian songs with a 5th-shift.

Mari folk instruments include: the küsle, a trapeziform zither with between 20 and 22 strings plucked with the hands; the shüvīr (fig.8), a bagpipe with a single or double chanter, which is accompanied at weddings by a tümīr (drum); the shialtīsh (wooden flute with two to five finger-holes); the shüshpīk, clay ocarinas shaped like animals; the kovīzh, a carved wooden two-string fiddle; and three types of horn, the puch (of cow horn), shīzhe-puch (wooden) and the bark sürem-puch, which is between 150 and 200 cm long. These were traditionally used to announce that a house had a marriageable girl, or were played during the many ceremonies of animal sacrifice.

Like the music cultures of other Volga-Ural peoples, Mari traditional music underwent considerable development during the 20th century. The work of local composers resulted in a considerable output of compositions on Mari themes, and Russian composers have also written compositions based on Mari source material. Musical schools and institutes have been established and folk ensembles abound.

Russian Federation, §II, 2: Russian traditional music: Epics

(iv) Mordvins.

A 19th-century Russian traveller reported hearing Mordvins singing when he was five miles away from a village. This account is evidence of the Mordvins’ love of song, both on special occasions or simply to pass the time during long winter nights. Mordvin traditional music encompasses a considerable range of scalar structures, voices and metro-rhythmic patterns, and the peculiarities of the local traditions correspond both with the distribution of the two Mordvin languages, namely Moksha and Ėrzya, and with the fused traditions of their multi-ethnic environment. Among monophonic songs slow or moderately paced pentatonic tunes are found with extensive narrative texts, sometimes telling an entire tale. These may be in a uniform metre or heterometric. Two- and three-part songs often begin with a soloist’s introduction and reveal a wide variety of treatment. The lower voice may sound in unison with the upper voices with or without a drone, or they may move as relatively free contrapuntal lines. The use of parallel 3rds and a final cadence on an octave or unison, also reminiscent of Russian folksongs, is quite common. The Ėrzyans are praised particularly for their abilities to sing Russian polyphonic songs.

Such echoes of the neighbouring Russians are not surprising. A document of 1696 describes interested Mordvin spectators watching an outdoor Russian minstrel-theatrical production, and Russian influence has been steady ever since then. The widespread presence of the European violin and accordion also testify to the Russian impact. Whether or not the Mordvin nyudi, a paired single-reed pipe, is related directly to the Russian zhaleyka is difficult to determine, but the nyudi marks the eastern limit of such aerophones, which have no Central Asian representative between the Mordvins and the Uzbek qoshnai far to the south-east.

Of particular interest socially is the body of traditional Mordvin wedding songs. As weddings were seen as a struggle between two opposing clans, songs for the occasion were divided musically between the bride’s and the groom’s camps, with each side maintaining its own melodic motif. Various greetings and benedictory songs also occur in the wedding ceremony. The bride was expected to change from a ‘maiden’s voice’ (teiter'ks chin val'gei) to a deeper, coarser ‘woman’s voice’ (ure val'gei) after the wedding. The bride’s lament was a highly developed genre, being expressed most fully by a long night of solo singing out of doors. In that time the bride directed individual songs to the four points of the compass, the upper and household gods, the family well, her ancestors, the sunrise and her village, in this order.

The early development of modern Mordvin music is closely linked with the activities of M.Ye. Yevsev'yev and L. Kiryukov. An orchestra of Mordvin folk instruments existed by 1918.

Russian Federation, §II, 2: Russian traditional music: Epics

(v) Chuvashes.

The Chuvashes are descendants of the earliest inhabitants of the central Volga region, originating in the mingling of Finno-Ugric, Bulgar-Turkish and Tatar tribes. Most Chuvashes are now settled within the confines of Chuvashiya, while a minority lives in the central and western territories of Tatarstan. Agriculture is the chief occupation of the population. The firmly rooted oral tradition plays a significant role in Chuvash culture. Folk music is an integral part of festivities such as those for Shrove Tuesday, weddings, hay-making or burial.

Three main Chuvash groups may be distinguished: the Viryal Chuvashes, in the northern areas of the republic; the Anatri (and Anat Yenchi) Chuvashes, in the central and southern regions; and the Chuvashes who settled in such places as Buinsk, Tyetushi, Aksubayevo and Tseremshan in Tatarstan. The last are particularly notable, for as a result of their isolation they have retained a more archaic culture. Their rich tradition resembles that of the Anatri Chuvashes.

The fact that peoples in the central Volga region had lived together for centuries played a decisive role in the development of the different melodic patterns of Chuvash folk music. The Chuvashes were in close contact with the Tatars of Kazan' on the one hand and the Maris on the other. Signs of this contact may be discerned in their music, fused with original Chuvash stylistic features. The texts of Chuvash melodies are exclusively lyrical. Epic tradition is as rare among them as among the Maris. The generic borderlines of the songs coincide with the thematic content of the songs, as in tuy (wedding), saltak (recruiting), váyá (spring feast), kéréke, yupa (ritual) or tashá yurrisem (dance songs).

Viryal Chuvash folksongs are characterized by a descending melodic line, an anhemitonic pentatonic scale and four-section structure. At the northern border, where they live close to the Mountain Maris, they sing tunes similar to Mari ones, using the 5th-shift construction but with Chuvash texts. The melodic line remains descending even in the absence of the 5th-shift construction. In addition to even metres, bars with asymmetrical metres (5/4, 7/8 etc.) occur remarkably often. Fast songs are syllabic; slow songs are typically recited with moderate ornamentation of the main notes. The pentatonic scale and the 5th-shift construction were presumably introduced into Mari and Hungarian music through Chuvash mediation, and the congruences in the music of the two Finno-Ugric peoples (Maris and Hungarians) originate from a third Turkic-speaking source, the Chuvashes.

Among the southern Anatri Chuvashes, songs consist predominantly of three-line stanzas. The three lines do not contain three separate musical patterns: the second line is usually repeated with a new text (ABB). A five-line form is obtained when the second or third lines are repeated with a new text. The range of these melodies is generally narrower than that of the quatrain (i.e. the descending melodies with 5th-shift construction) and it moves around a 6th, only seldom exceeding an octave. The length of the melodic lines is, however, not restricted. On average there are four bars to each line and the number of syllables varies between 9 and 14. The Chuvash anhemitonic pentatonic scales (D–E–G–A–H, E–G–A–H–D, G–A–H–D–E and A–H–D–E–G) often alternate with the semitonal scale (G–B–C–D–E). An example of the latter is the well-known two-line melody of a wedding lament, in which the bride takes leave of her parents (ex.14).

The Chuvashes living in Tatar territories have kept characteristic musical features that once might have existed among Anatri Chuvash people. It may be presumed that melodies consisting of three or four notes, and repeating and varying one single line, represent the oldest layer of Chuvash folk music and the original practice of improvisation. The extremely rich ornamentation may have been introduced under Tatar influence.

Chuvash instrumental music can mostly be traced to vocal origins: melodies performed on instruments are identical with those generally sung. The only exceptions are the fast dance-songs played on the violin, accordion or the küsle (trapeziform zither with 17 strings or more; see fig.9). Other instruments used by the Chuvashes include tam-shakhlīcha (clay whistles), shakhlīcha (duct flute with two, four or seven finger-holes), shabr (a bladder-pipe with a double chanter), sarnay (a bagpipe with one melody pipe and two drones), tutut (birch-bark horn 45 to 50 cm long) and the parappan (double-headed drum).

A large-scale movement developed among the Chuvash intelligentsia in the late 1920s in which composers participated. S. Maksimov, M. Ilin and V. Vorobyov started to collect folksongs systematically, but few of the several thousand folksongs recorded by Maksimov and others have been published. Between 1964 and 1970 Lászlķ Vikár and Gábor Bereczki visited all the dialect regions and recorded 800 tunes.

Modern Chuvash music began early: the first national chorus performed in Moscow in 1923. A music college was opened in 1929, and the symphony orchestra was founded in 1932. F.P. Pavlov was an important musical pioneer, active as a composer, organizer, collector of folksongs and theorist.

Russian Federation, §II, 2: Russian traditional music: Epics

(vi) Tatars.

The Volga Tatars are to be distinguished from their namesakes of the Crimea, of Astrakhan and of western Siberia. They are usually subdivided into two large groups, the Kazan' Tatars and Mishar Tatars. Within these subdivisions one must also differentiate between Muslim and Christian Tatars (the main groups of the latter are the Tatar-Kryashens of the Kama river and the Nagaybaks of the southern Urals), located as they are at the juncture of Islam and Christianity. Though the Christian Tatars have had closer cultural ties with nearby co-religionists (Mordvins, Chuvashes, Maris and Russians), they have nevertheless preserved a significant portion of the common Tatar heritage.

Among the Tatars, as among the Bashkirs, there is an important division of song types which is more closely related to practice in the Altai region and Mongolia than to traditions to the west. The two basic genres are the ‘long-song’ (özen küi) and the ‘short-song’. The long-song is marked by highly ornamented, melismatic melody, free rhythm, free use of text (including fragmentation of words), extreme lengthening of final syllables and slow tempo, in contrast to the quick, syllabic, sparsely ornamented style of the short-song. Its style is analogous to that of the Russian protyazhnaya pesnya or the Turkish uzun hava. The fully developed özen küi is used less among the Mishar and Christian Tatars. Ex.15 shows the opening of an özen küi. As among the Bashkirs, Tatars also sing songs in styles somewhere between those of the long- and short-song, for example the takmak, bait and khushavaz.

Though pentatonic scales play an important role in Tatar music, other scalar structures abound. Melodic contour is similarly varied. Tunes with a two-part structure in which the tune is transposed up or down a fixed distance, like those noted for the Maris and Chuvashes, occur frequently in Tatar music, but there are also many songs with a gradual descent to the tonic or in arch form. A tendency in Turkic folk poetry to insert great numbers of non-text syllables in a text is often observed in Tatar folksong texts. Here, for example, are two lines of a song text in which the non-text syllables are given in parentheses:

zhe (ie) ge (e)t cha(ia) klar(i) da (di le) bar (la)da(la) j (ie) de
Ki (e)ng u(iu)ram(i) nar da be(ie) ege (le) ai tar i (ie) de
(When we were young broad streets seemed narrow.)

Like the Bashkirs, the Tatars play the kuray (an end-blown flute) and the dumbra (a lute, related to the Kazakh dömbra), although the latter is now rare.

Because Kazan' has long been a key city for both Tatars and Russians, the Tatars have been in close contact with Russian culture since Ivan the Terrible’s conquest of the city in 1552. Russian and European music were introduced early, well before Soviet times. Clearly one of the earliest borrowings from Europe was the accordion which, after being modified to suit local taste, became the chief accompanying instrument from the late 19th century. After the Revolution professional music in the European sense developed among the Tatars, leading to the establishment of the Kazan' State Conservatory in 1945. Sultan Gabyashi (1891–1942) is usually cited as the first Tatar musicologist and composer.

Russian Federation, §II, 2: Russian traditional music: Epics

(vii) Bashkirs.

Like the Tatars, the Bashkirs distinguish between ‘long-songs’ (uzun küi), marked by free rhythm, highly melismatic melody, fragmented text and extremely extended final syllables, and ‘short-songs’ (kiska küi), syllabic songs in fairly quick tempo with more or less even note values. A story is basic to the long-song, with singers taking on the mood of the characters being depicted. Within the category of short-songs, a newer variety called takmak was developed in the 19th century, apparently connected with the rise of the accordion as an accompanying instrument and related to the Russian chastushka.

Other basic types of song include the kubair, or epic recitation, which was evidently dying out in the 19th century, the senliau (bride’s lament) and teliak (greeting of the bride by the groom’s kin), which are examples of wedding songs, and the newer bait, a topical song, for example a 19th-century tune on the subject of the introduction of tea-drinking among the Bashkirs. One highly distinctive genre not practised by other Volga-Ural peoples is the uzlyau, a method of guttural singing whereby the performer first produces a deep chest tone and then simultaneously projects of high-pitched melody line based on the upper partials of the fundamental, creating two-part music by a single singer. This technique, quite rare even in the 19th century, is paralleled among the Altai Turks, Tuvans and Mongols (see also Inner Asia, §1, Overtone-singing and Mongol music, §4). Ex.16 is an example of uzlyau transcribed in the 1930s.

As with the neighbouring Kazakhs and Kirghiz, Bashkir instrumental music traditionally contained strong elements of story. Thus, players of the kurai (long end-blown flute, usually with four finger-holes) are able with their music to project a plot to listeners. Kurai players seem to be accorded the importance associated with lutenists among the Kazakhs and Kirghiz. They participate in contests of skill and receive high praise as wandering minstrels. The kurai player can perform in a manner analogous to that of the uzlyau song by maintaining a strong, steady, fundamental hum under a lively flute tune. Such a style can be found among widely separated players of open end-blown flutes, such as the Baluchi (in Iran and Afghanistan), the Altai Urianghais, Tuvans and Kazakhs (West Mongolia), and certain east Europeans, for instance Romanians, Slovaks and Serbs.

The era of modern Bashkir music began in 1919 with the establishment of the professional theatre and opening of the first music school. The first Bashkir opera was M. Val'eyev’s Khakmar, produced in 1940.

Russian Federation, §II, 2: Russian traditional music: Epics

(viii) Kalmīks.

The Kalmīks, though separated from their homeland and compatriots for over 350 years, have preserved a significant portion of their Mongol musical heritage, despite considerable acculturation to Tatar, Cossack and Russian cultural patterns. Their songs frequently fall into the long-short (ut dun–akhr dun) dichotomy described for the Tatars and Bashkirs. Two-register songs featuring melodic transposition are found, as well as songs with large melodic leaps. Long-songs, ut dun, are predominantly melismatic. The (usually) hexasyllabic text line is begun in a declamatory style but then is stretched into a melismatic tail. The melodic line is composed of two layers of anhemitonic tonal space, between which the melody moves as a ‘question-answer’ pattern.

Song texts and performing practice reflect a wide range of subject matter, from work songs associated with fishing and herding to love-songs and the epic tales of the hero Janggar. The elongation of syllables is also used as a vocal technique during epic performances, and Overtone-singing is also used in some passages. Long-songs (ut dun or shastr dun) are used during official events, such as weddings (ex.10), and long-song vocal techniques are sometimes employed in other genres, such as praise-songs or magtal dun and in küük uulyuldg dun, that is, lament-like songs about the hardships of the bride in the house of the groom’s family.

Instrumental music is usually played to accompany dancing, an entertainment widespread among Kalmīks. A solo dancer takes his cues from the dömbra (lute) player, performing a variety of gestures while standing in place.

Kalmīk association with Russian and European music is quite old. According to one account, a Kalmīk khan used to maintain a household orchestra, which included European instruments, capable of playing Mozart and Rossini overtures. In the late 19th century the Kalmīk cellist Dordzhi Mandzhiyev performed in St Petersburg. Since then, these musical ties with Europe have been strengthened and broadened, resulting in the appearance of Kalmīk composers of European-style classical music and a repertory which includes operas and symphonies.

Russian Federation, §II: Russian traditional music

3. Siberian peoples.

Siberia is a vast area of subarctic and arctic zones in Russian northern Asia. It is usually defined as bordering the Ural mountains in the west, the Central Asian steppes and Inner Asian mountains in the south and reaching the Pacific and Arctic Oceans in the east and north. Siberian indigenous peoples traditionally hunt, fish or breed cattle. Including the Siberian Tatars and the northern indigenous minorities of China and Mongolia their population is around two million, of which speakers of native languages comprise roughly 1ˇ2 million. Great changes in their traditional socio-economic and cultural systems have occurred, especially during the 20th century.

Fig.10 illustrates the ethnic groups and their localities. Several ethnonyms encompass local sub-groups, between which languages or dialects may be incomprehensible. Mostly this classification conforms to the boundaries of the major Siberian language groups: the Uralic Sámi (see Sámi music), Samoyed and Ob-Ugrian languages; and the Turkic (Tatar, Altai and Khakass), Mongol (Buryat) and Tungus languages. Others are either remnants of small language groups or isolated languages, for example those of the Ket, Yukagir, Itelmen, Nivkh, Chukchi-Koryak and Yupik-Aleut languages.

I The Ob-Ugrians: Mansis and Khantys.II Northern Samoyeds: the tundra Nenetses, forest Nenetses (Nyeshang), tundra (Somatu) and forest (Bai) Enets and Nganasans. (The singing styles of the various Sámi groups in Kola peninsula (in Russia) and Scandinavia (in Finland, Norway and Sweden) are not dealt here because of the entry definition, but they belong to the indigenous peoples of the vast Siberian/Arcticarea.)III Selkup Samoyeds and the Yeniseian peoples: the northern, central and southern Selkups and the Kureys, Imbats and Sym KesIV The Siberian Tatars: the Tobol's, Barabas, Chulyms, Eushtin (Bukhara and Chaty) Tatars.V The southern Altais: the Altai-Kizhis and Telengits.VI The northern Altais: the Kumandins, Chelkans and Tubas.VII The Kuznetsk Turks: the Mrassus, Kondoma Shors and Teleus.VIII The Khakass (including the Abakan and Minusinsk Tatars: the Kyzyls, Kachas, Sagays, Koybals and Beltirs)IX The Sayan Turkic peoples: the Uryankhais, Tofas and Tuvans.X The Buryats: the western, central and eastern Buryats.XI The northern Turkic peoples: the Sakhas (Yakhuts) of Lena, Vilyui and the north-east; the reindeer-herding Sakhas and the Dolgans.XII The northern Tungus peoples: the Evenki groups in the areas of Yenisei, Baikal, Lena and Amur (Orochon), and the Evens.XIII The Amur Tungus peoples: the Udes, the Nanais (of the Amur and Ussur regions), the Orochs, Ulchas, Negidals and Oroks.XIV The Nivkhs of the Amur–Sakhalin regionXV The north-east Siberian peoples: the forest (Odul), tundra (Wadul) and ‘Chuvan’ Yukagirs, the Kovran and Tigil Itelmens, the coastal, inland and Alyutor Koryaks, the Kereks, Chukchis and Yupighyts (Yuits) (= Invit groups in Naukan, Chaplin and Sirenik (Inuit)).

(i) Musical characteristics and influences.

(ii) Vocal music.

(iii) Ritual.

(iv) Dance.

(v) Instruments.

(vi) Research.

(vii) 20th-century developments

Russian Federation, §II, 3: Russian traditional music: Dance

(i) Musical characteristics and influences.

The music of indigenous Siberians is predominantly vocal. Sound imitations, signals and short melodies in various song, shamanistic and dance genres are important in the vocal domain. Characteristic features include: a system of intonation based on timbres, where pitch is of secondary importance (e.g. inhalation-exhalation throat singing, whirling and rotating aerophones); lyrical, ritual and epic melodies based on single-timbre voice production; and the use of large intervallic leaps. Characteristic of melodies of Arctic nomads and hunters, such as the Nenetses, Nganasans, Yukagirs and Chukchis, are pitch sets that tend to change and expand during performance. Musical instruments are marginal and often used as non-tonal sound or signal instruments.

Where instruments are more important, they influence vocal ranges and define rhythm (e.g. celebration songs and shaman's songs accompanied by drum, wood log, pendant rattles). When flutes, trumpets, zithers, lutes or harps are used they affect tonal and modal norms, especially during shamanistic rituals, bear ceremonies and the epic performances. Monodic singing with an instrumental accompaniment is a tradition of the Ob-Ugrians, Altai and Sayan Turks, Khakasses and Buryats.

The music cultures of southern Siberia that border and have a long history of contact with China, Central Asia and Russia, have adopted traditions of musical conceptualization from these adjoining cultures, along with their own fixed systems of intonation. Cultural influences, such as the practices of Buddhism, Islam or Christianity, have been adopted by some of the Siberian groups as well as musical instruments and melodies. The latter can be seen in the stanza form of songs, in the concept of initial and final tones in pentatonic systems (the Tuvans, Buryats and the peoples of Amur) and the metricization and in change towards the Western major–minor tonality in the traditional melodies of the Altai Turks, Evenkis, Sakhas and Itelmens.

Russian Federation, §II, 3: Russian traditional music: Dance

(ii) Vocal music.

(a) Sound imitations and signals.

Each Siberian group uses sounds that imitate, embody and interact with sounds of the natural world. A collection of onomatopoeic ‘titular’ signals represent the voices of animals and birds important to the group's culture of intonation (e.g. the cuckoo, owl and ptarmigan). In addition there are luring, decoy and imitative sound signals addressed to various animals during hunting and cattle breeding, and exclamations used for controlling animals during the hunt and herding. Buryats, Tuvans and Altai Turks perform melodies while feeding the new-born animals and during milking.

Sounds used as lullabies occur among the Nganasans (n'uo l'anterī), Evenkis (kumakan hegan), Koryaks (karwel'u) and Chukchis (kīnil'etkin grep). Songs of childhood are composed for an individual child. These are found among the Odul Yukagirs (shiishii), Chukchis (chakchechang), Koryaks (cakhcichang), Kereks (t'akyit'an) and Nenetses (ngatsyekī syo, nyukubts).

(b) Song.

Vocal forms display great variation. Some local traditions have improvised melodies, the texts of which consist predominantly of vocables. In others there may be some semantic text in the songs, but they remain subordinate to the song's timbral and melodic features. These can be found in the individual songs of the Northern Sámi of Scandinavia, the Ob-Ugrians (sow, sowe, sahe), Samoyed-speaking peoples (syo, shyo, say), southern Altai Turks and Teleuts (küü), northern Altai Turks (tabīsh), Khakasses and Shors (kög), Sayan Turks and Buryats (ayalga), northern Tunguses (haan, hagaawun, og, ogen), Udes (dzaga), Nivkhs (yu, au) and Chukchi-Koryak and Yupik-Aleut peoples (angadel'il, khodilakht, angalek, tipeyngen, kīmni). These songs are one of the fundamentals of the Arctic music cultures, comparable to the singer's personal name as a means of self-identification (ex.17a).

Improvisatory songs that have a more fixed melody may have texts that are metrically unfixed and alterable. However, as with the improvised melodies discussed above, they can conform to their own laws of metricization, although these are not verbalized, as for example among the Nenetses and the Khantys. Sometimes these songs have meaning as family songs, comparable to the individual songs above. These are found among the Ob-Ugrians (erīkh, erey, ar, are, arekh), northern Samoyedic peoples (khīnabts, kīnawsh, bare, belī), Selkup Samoyeds and Yenisei Kets (īngīma, il'ir), northern Tunguses (iken, ike), Amur Tunguses (iekhe, dzarin, ike, yaya, ikheian, hege), Nivkhs (lu, lund) and the Chukchi-Koryak and Yupik-Aleut peoples (yakhtel, chakales repnun, qul'iqul', grep, uglyutkun, uglyut, kogyak; see ex.17b.)

The versified songs have an invariable metric structure for both the melody and text, and also fixed and verbalized principles for regulating the relationship between them. Improvisation in these songs is governed by fairly strict rules and concerns only the themes. These songs predominate among the southern Altai Turks (qozhong), Siberian Tatars (īr, iyr), northern Turks (īraya), Tofas (īr) and Sakhas (īrīa). A distinction is made between rhythmic ‘short-song’ songs with verses and metrically free and melismatic ‘long-songs’ among Buryats (uta duun/bogoni duun, ‘long-song/short-song’), Tuvans (īr/qozhamīq), Teleuts (sarīn/tandīr), Khakasses, northern Altai Turks and Shors (sarīn/takhpakh; see ex.17c).

Allegorical songs with verses are found among the Nganasans (keyngeyrsya), Nivkhs (walhlu, alhtund) and Mansis (ulilap). They form a distinct genre with particular melodies, and a system of allegorical poetic expression with specific principles governing the relationship between text and melody.

In other songs the musical structure may be cumulative and dynamically expanding, and the textual themes may have distinct melodic expressions. These occur, for instance, among the Sakhas (ex.17e), Yuits (il'agan), Ulchas (haund'ari) and Evenkis (dawlaawun, kochindz'a). The epic songs of the northern Samoyeds (yarabts, shotpyalsh, d'öre, d'urīmī) lie between these songs and epic poetry.

Overtone-singing (see Tuvan music, and §II, 3(vii) and (vii), above) is an extraordinary vocal technique in which overtones are produced by a single singer using the chest or oral cavities to create resonances that form a two- or three-voiced texture (ex.17f). It occurs with many variations among the Tuvans (khömey, sīgīt, ezengileer, kargīraa and borbangnadīr), Altai Turks (karkīraa), Sakhas (khabarga), and among Mongols just south of Siberia. Usually, when occurring during song, the text and overtone passages form separate sections. Overtone-singing has connections with ritual practices and epic poetry.

(c) Epics.

The term ‘epic’ is used here to refer to the performance of myths, legends or tales in sung, recited or prose form, sometimes with instrumental passages.

Epic songs may be grouped according to three melodic types. One type of epic uses melodies of lyric songs, differing only in the length of the narrative. Among the Nivkhs they are called ngīzit and ngastund or tīlgu and tīlgund; among the Evenkis ugun, hugun and ulgur; among Kets as'kit, as'ket and askeht; and among Selkups kööl'tyma (ex.18a). A second type uses various forms of melodic recitation. They are known among the western Buryats as uliger; among the northern Samoyedic peoples as syudbabts, shotpyalsh, syudobichu and sitåbi; and among the Ob-Ugrians as ternīng erīgh and tarnīng ar (ex.18b). Here the melodic types are usually identified and associated with the name of the main character of the tale. A third type of epic performance is recited with a special vocal tone, related to overtone-singing, that sets it apart from the usual singing or speaking voice. This type is called tool by the Tuvans, performed with a vocal style known as alganir (ex.18c); kai shördzhök by the Chelkans; kay chörchök by the Teleuts; and tuul' khäälakh by the Altai Urianghais of West Mongolia. Epics performed using this special vocal tone are accompanied by a two-string plucked lute (topshuur) among the southern Altai Turks, the Teleuts and the west Mongolian Altai Urianghais.

In epic narratives with sung passages the text, which emphasizes the metre (sometimes using a free speech form of narration), is interrupted by the singing in the personae of the characters in the tale. These passages may be recited, sung or performed with special intonation (ex.18d).

Epic recitatives may be myths, as among the Yukagirs, Chukchi-Koryak and Yupik-Aleut peoples (chul'dzhil, karawal, amngel', l'īmngīl' and unipgan) and Buryats (ontokhon), or as tales as among the Buryats (ontokhon), Sakhas (kepsen), Yenisei and Baykal Evenkis (nimngakan), Evens (nimkan, tangran) and the Amur Tunguses (nimangku, ningman, imga, nimapu, ningma and telungma; ex.18e). Epics in song form that represent the heroes by their specific melodies and motifs (usually introductory or refrain motifs) occur among the Sakhas where they are called olongkho (ex.18f). They are known among the Dolgans as olongko; among the Orochon Evenkis as nimngakan; among the hunting, mountain and continental Evenkis as nimkan; and among the central Buryats as uliger. Epics performed using special vocal techniques by which the epic heroes are identified and which are performed to the accompaniment of a plucked box zither (chatkhan) are found among the Khakasses (khai nīmakh; ex.18g); and to the accompaniment of a plucked lute (cherchen komus) among the Shors (kai nabak).

Russian Federation, §II, 3: Russian traditional music: Dance

(iii) Ritual.

(a) Shamanistic rituals.

These have their own specific forms of music and song and are performed by a male or female shaman at séances for healing or divination through communication with spirits. Although shamanistic practices vary substantially according to local traditions, the shamanistic music of Siberia has several common features.

Invocations are addressed by the shaman to specific spirits. Each ethnic group has its own terms for these songs. They are known by the Ob-Ugrians as kayne erīkh, s'artī kho ar and t'ertī qo arekh; by northern Samoyedic peoples as sambadabts, tadibe bare and ngetethet'ie belī; by Selkup Samoyeds and the Kets as s'umpt'a and qut; by southern Altai Turks as kamdar kay and kamdar qozhong (ex.19a); by northern Altai Turks as kamdar sarīn aptelekh; by Kuznetsk Turks as kamdar sarīn chalbar; by Khakasses as tostartchanī, alqanī, chapqanī, khamdīkh and kibelesi; by Sayan Turks as ham īrī, ayahanīr, khamnaashkīn and kham alganīr; by Buryats as boheldon, shepshelge and durdalga; by northern Turks as kīrī, kīrar and kuturar; by northern Tunguses as eriwun, yayawun, dzariwka and n'aya; Amur Tunguses as yaya, yeyi, epili and leusu; and by Chukchi-Koryak and Yupik-Aleut peoples as yaltīn'al yakhtel, alman yakhtel, wolmomal, chailangi yuoieng yakhte, kmali chineh, angangyan, yarakolet and kanīmsut.

When the shaman enters an altered state of consciousness, sometimes referred to as ecstatic trance, the voices of his or her helping spirits are produced as well as various types of vocal expressions. These may include interjections, grunts, words, vocables and slight tonal and rhythmic inflections relevant to the shaman's emotional state (ex.19b). The ritual performance often involves use of percussive devices such as the frame drum and rattles, and sometimes psychotropic drugs, such as the smoke of ledum (marsh tea) or heather, a drug made from fly-agaric or alcohol. Special songs involving the use of psychotropic drugs occur among the Khantys (kuchum ar, kut' arekh, pongl'at kho ar and pangkel'ta ko arekh); forest Nenets (wipi kīnawsh); Nganasans (hoangkutuo balī); Evens (hoghen); Udes (haunde); Nivkhs (handud' and khaydat); Odul Yukagirs (yummul yakhte, yemorodolo and shanpaydie yakhtale); Nymylan Koryaks (yurh'ain'ek, lal'quliqīl and iw'isi quliqul); Chukchis (wapaqen grep); and Sakhas (menerier). (See exx.19c–d.)

During a shamanistic séance, the shaman's assistant (known as teltanggoda, tetagude or tuoptusi among northern Samoyeds, quqīltīmpīl qup among Selkups and beledzert, belnedz or belemnge kuturuksut among northern Turks) may also sing imitatory or responsorial songs. While the shaman's words are important in that they are believed to be the words of the spirits, they are dangerous to human ears and thus an assistant is needed to repeat them. In some places, however, audience members may participate in the performance (ex.19e). Among the Buryats (where it is known as böölööshen) and Itelmens, heterophonic singing between the shaman and those participating in the séance occurs (ex.19f). A drum introduction to the shaman's ritual, in which those participating take part in turn, is found among the Amur Tunguses (gongoyni, gong-gong and takun-tau), Chukchi-Koryak and Yupik-Aleut peoples (ex.19g).

(b) The bear ceremony.

Bear ceremony traditions comprise an important syncretic ritual for some Siberian peoples in the taiga zone. The ceremony is a symbolic representation of the totemic belief of the bear as the original ancestor of the ‘tribe’ or ethnic group. As a ritual complex, lasting many days, it includes an integral cycle of music. Such traditions are found in two regions of Siberia; the Amur-Sakhalin region (among the Nivkhs, Orochs, Ulchas and Negidals) and among the Ob-Ugrian peoples (Khantys and Mansis).

The music of the bear ceremony in the Amur-Sakhalin region is performed only by women. Tunes played on a musical log (ex.20a) continuously accompany the performance of myths and rituals, as well as private and public festival and domestic feasting phases of the ceremony (tug's pīznd, tungu, tunkure and tungkere). Ritual melodies are played when the bear is released from his cage, as he is led around the settlement, during the killing and cutting-up of the carcass and the making of sacrificial offerings. Music accompanies recitations of myths, including those describing the marriage of a woman and a bear, the fate of their children and the significance of the raven and the owl (ex.20b). Festival melodies accompany sporting contests and domestic feasts. Women's dances, using branches, bundles of twigs and rattles, are also performed during the feast (ex.20c).

The music of the Ob-Ugrian bear ceremony is performed principally by men. There are more than 300 obligatory songs, between which interludes are played on the lyre (zither variants of this instrument also exist), harp and lute (ex.20d). The genre system is made up of seven cycles of songs. Invocation songs are performed at the start of each day in order to ‘arouse’ the bear's understanding of the ceremony. Among the Mansis such songs are called kholi erīkh and among the Khantys atīn ar and a'lkhem arekh (ex.20e). Songs for the supreme gods that have a heterophonic texture, although performed monophonically, may be recited in melodic or declamatory tones, and tell of the creation of the world and the gods. Among the Mansis they are known as kastil erīkh and among Khantys as kayoyang ar and lhangīltep (ex.20f). Songs for the earthly gods are more melodic with a complex allegoric and poetic style, known by the Mansis as yalpīng moyt erīkh and the Khantys as po yaktu ar, w'on ar, mish ar and wont lhunq lhangīlhtep (ex.20g). Re-enactment songs with non-religious subject matter, for which the singer wears a mask and special costume, are performed by both the Mansis (tulīglap) and Khantys (lhungulhtuptii and lhangīlhtep; ex.20h). Dance-songs or dances of the spirits alternate with these re-enactment songs. These are accompanied by instruments playing songs and tunes, called pupīgh yikw by the Mansis and lungh yaktī and lunq yeqta by the Khantys (ex.20i). During the last day of the ceremony, specific songs known as w'on ar (Mansis) and iymeng lhangīlhtep (Khantys) are performed (ex.20j). The final performances of the bear ceremony involve sleep-inducing song, which comprise a eulogy and ritual farewell to both the bear and the ceremony. This is called uy ulilap among the Mansis and ul'tī ar and olte lhangīlhtep among the Khantys (ex.20k).

Russian Federation, §II, 3: Russian traditional music: Dance

(iv) Dance.

Dance music is predominantly vocal and involves either sounds produced with a special ‘throat singing’ technique or round dance-songs and melodies. ‘Throat singing’ is unique to the peoples of eastern Siberia. It is a mixture of rasping, grunting sounds, produced both by inhalation and exhalation, and tonal sounds in singing voice. It can be performed alone or in a group; group performances may consist of a ‘canon-like’ sound mixture.

Various throat-singing styles accompany individual dances, round-dances and games. Melodized shouts are heard at the end of a song couplet as a refrain. They are heard in both women's and men's song-dances among Itelmens who know them as khekhmīkels and khemkhekudzen (ex.21a). Signal melodies accompany men's and women's round-dances among Odul Yukagirs (longdol and tunmun hontol; ex.21b), Kolyma Chukchis and Wadul Yukagirs (pilcheyngen), Evens (nörgen, nürgenek and nergene) and reindeer herding Sakhas (chömchöököidüür). Sounds imitating the voice of the bear in the ritual round-dance are known by Nganasans (b'etīrs'a and ngarka kuntī; ex.21c) and Enetses (khukhoy). Sound games accompany physical exercise and role games among the Nanays (adzikachin, aqolachin and erieken), Udes and Orochs (hakaku; ex.21d), Buryats (khurīn nadan), Evenkis (engtevkekel) and Ulchas (khahī). Sound expressions symbolizing, for example, sexuality or the voices of animals, and for the processing of fur hides, are performed only by women among Chukchis (pilcheyngen), Koryaks (k'arg'ayngetīk, kīkaretken, kukalya'ayngan and q'ameq'isitiqing), Kereks (pilgayngan) and Yuits (saiag'ak'ut and pisaynga) (ex.21e).

Songs accompanying round-dances or round dance-songs are part of seasonal ‘tribal’ offerings and family celebrations. Heterophonic swaying songs are performed by the participants of a round-dance with joined hands. They are known among the Buryats as naygar and ner'elge and among the southern Altai Turks as küreley (ex.21f). Antiphonal songs performed by two groups accompany round- and line-dances among the Kuznetsk and northern Altai Turks who call them tabīr (ex.21g). Responsorial songs with solo introduction and choral repetition are known among the Sakhas (ohuokhay) and Evenkis (osokay; ex.21h). Responsorial songs with a variable solo part followed by an invariable choral refrain are known among western Buryats (yokhor and osoo), Evenkis (yekherie, gesuger and deweyde), Evens (dzakhuria), Dolgans and reindeer-herding Sakhas (kheyro; ex.21i). Responsorial melodic shouts, consisting of two- or three-syllable solo shouts with group answers are known among the Evens, Evenkis, Negidals and Oroks (hedze, hodzo and edza) (ex.21j).

Russian Federation, §II, 3: Russian traditional music: Dance

(v) Instruments.

(a) Idiophones.

Rattles are the most representative idiophone. Pastoral rattles are worn on the horns and around the necks of herd animals. Rattles are also found on a child's cradle, a woman's apron and as part of a burial edifice. The equipment of a shaman includes pendants and percussive decorations on both the costume and the drum.

Jew's harps are found among all ethnic groups (except the Samoyeds, Wadul Yukagirs and Yuits). Siberian jew's harps are of five types: those made of simple reeds, trident reeds, branch angles or consisting of idioglottic lamellae and heteroglottic frames (fig.11).

Of the idiophones found in east Siberia, the most important is the suspended log used during the bear ceremony among the Nivkhs (zas t'as, zas tihr, chachand and t'at'at'khas) and the Amur Tunguses (odzapu, udzadzinki, udzadzupu and tumkewun). A structural variant is found among the Sakhas in the form of a slit-drum (dzhälärkäi küpsüür) (fig.12).

The shoulder blade of a reindeer is used as a friction idiophone after inserting into it a rotatable stick. It is used as both a sound imitator and instrument among the Wadul Yukagirs (pidzensaburka amon) and the Indigirka Evens and Kolyma (idiki amunen).

(b) Aerophones.

The most widely distributed aerophones have string buzzers spun between the hands or bull-roarers rotating on a longer string. These instruments vary in function from a child's toy to a sacral instrument. The Itelmens and the Karagin Koryaks organize a seasonal pan-‘tribal’ festival around such an instrument (fig.13). Other aerophones include the whistling arrow, the whistling and slapping whip, sound instruments played by the wind (among the Sakhas) and birch-bark whistles with a single or double leaf.

Among the aerophones with an air channel, special mention should be made of the single-reed quill whistles, fifes made from small reeds and open flutes with an internal slit and finger-holes. Trumpets are also found. The Siberian Tatars, southern and northern Altai Turks, Khakasses, Sayan, Kuznetsk and northern Turks, Buryats and northern and Amur Tunguses use a conical birch-bark trumpet and a thin, cylindrical trumpet (abīrga or bīrgī among the Altai Turks) made out of hollowed-out wood (fig.14) for enticing the reindeer. A unique variant is a long trumpet made from the stem of a hollow grass (Emilia flammaea) known as kiungki and kinguliachikchi among the Udes and k'al'ni and kīla pews among the Nivkhs. On this instrument the sound is produced not by blowing but by sucking.

Trumpet-shaped mirlitons are used by the Itelmens who call them kowon and kalkham, the Koryaks who call them g'eynetkuchg'īn and Nivkhs who call them kal'ni and ikwp'ewrsh. The leaf mirliton is used by the Khantys, Odul Yukagirs and Tuvans.

(c) Membranophones.

The most characteristic membranophone is the frame-drum used by shamans. This may be classified into eight regional types: the Tatar type (tüngür); Altain type (chazim tüngür, kanīm tüür, mars tüür, düngür and khese); Sayan-Yeniseian type (dünkür, nunga, pīngīr, koyem, khas, fas and ungtuwun); north Siberian type (ungtuwun, nimngangku, düngür, pyenzyer, peddi and khendir); Ob-Ugrian type (koyp, kuyup, pyenzyer and pyenshal); Amur type (ungtu, ungtukhu, ungchukhī, untsukhu, untuwun, dali and k'as); Kamchatkan type (yayar, yarar, ul'pa yaay, yerkeye, yalgil and ungtun); and Chukotkan type (sayak, saquyak and yarar; see fig.15.)

Peoples of the Amur and Sakhalin regions use a framed rattle tambourine with a fish-skin membrane as an accompaniment to women's dances during the bear ceremony. During Buddhist rituals various drums are used by the Buryats and Tuvans. Siberian Tatars use the kettledrums of Inner Asia. A unique membranophone is the large frame-mounted drum made from the entire hide of a sacrificed horse, held by an angular support or stretched over a square frame. This is found among Sakhas who call it a tabīk, Buryats (zükheli), Teleuts (baydara) and Khakasses (tayīgh).

(d) Chordophones.

The musical bow has an almost overall distribution in the region. Among the Samoyedic peoples, Yukagirs and Yuits it is used instead of the jew's harp, while among the Ob-Ugrians, Selkups, Kets, northern and Amur Tunguses, Chukchi-Koryak, Yupik-Aleuts and the Kamchatkan peoples it is known as the women's jew's harp. Among the northern and southern Altai Turks, Kuznetsk Turks, Sayan Turks and Khakasses it is used by shamans for divination.

Varieties of bowed lutes are also found: the spike fiddle of the Tuvans, Buryats, Sakhas, Amur-Tunguses, Nivkhs and Chukotkan-Kamchatkan peoples; a bowed lute made from a single piece of wood among the Ob-Ugrians, Selkups, Kets, Siberian Tatars, southern Altai Turks, Khakasses, Sayan Turks, Buryats, Sakhas, Evenkis, Nanays, Chukchis, Yuits and Itelmens. A box-shaped bowed lute with the neck and resonator made from separate pieces of wood is found among the Ob-Ugrians, Selkups, Kets, Siberian Tatars, southern Altai Turks, Khakasses, Sayan Turks, Buryats, Sakhas and Evenkis.

The most complex chordophones are played in southern and western Siberia: the plucked box lute among the Khantys, Selkups, Siberian Tatars, southern and northern Altai Turks, Kuznetsk Turks, Khakasses, Sayan Turks, Buryats and Sakhas; the oblong hollowed-out five string lyre (zither variants also exist) among the Ob-Ugrians and Selkups; the oblong seven-string box zither with movable bridges among the Khakasses (where it is known as the chatkhan), Sayan Turks, southern Altai Turks, Siberian Tatars and Buryats. A unique chordophone is the angle harp of the Ob-Ugrians, known as the tarīg-sīp-yiw, torop-yukh, tor-sapl-yukh, taren-sapt-yuk, taregh-ogher-yuk and toorīgh-oup-yukh, and the pyngkyr among the Selkups. (See fig.16.)

Russian Federation, §II, 3: Russian traditional music: Dance

(vi) Research.

Information on the music of Siberian peoples came first from travellers in the 17th century, and then particularly from Russian ethnographers at the turn of the 19th century: V.G. Bogoraz-Tan and V.I. Iokhel'son who worked with peoples of north-eastern Siberia; S.M. Shirokogorov with the Tungus peoples; L.Ya. Shternberg with the Nivkhs; F.Ya. Kon with the Turkic peoples of central Siberia; and A.A. Dunin-Gorkavich with the peoples of the Ob' region. The most wide-ranging collections of field materials were made by the Russian ethnomusicologist Igor' Bogdanov, beginning in the 1950s and published as recordings between the 1970s and 90s. Since the 1980s researchers from the Novosibirsk conservatory have carried out extensive fieldwork with various Siberian peoples, especially in central and eastern Siberia.

Russian Federation, §II, 3: Russian traditional music: Dance

(vii) 20th-century developments

During the 20th century, beginning in the Soviet period, urban music infrastructures (such as the conservatory and music school system) have strengthened Siberian contacts with Western music. This has resulted in Siberian professional practitioners of Western music (e.g. in the works of the Nenets composer Semyon Nyaruy) and the appropriation of local traditions into the Western system of ‘folkloristic’ music. Opera and ballet companies have been established in the Buryat and Sakha republics, musical theatres in the republics of Altai, Khakassia and Tuva, and music and dance ensembles in the regions of the Koryaks (‘Mengo’), Chukchis (‘Ergīron’), Khantys and Mansis (‘Misne’) and Evenkis (‘Osiktakan’). In Buryatia, Sakha, Khakassia and Tuva, technologies associated with contemporary Western composition have become significant. There are about 1000 primary music schools, more than 30 music colleges and four higher music institutions (in Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Yakutsk and Vladivostok) in Siberia.

During the 1990s, with the popularization of overtone-singing, musical fusions and neo-shamanism, some Tuvan artists and groups, e.g. Sainkho Namchylak, Kongar-ool Ondar, Huun-Huur-Tu, Yat-Kha and Shu-De, and Sakha artists and groups such as Stepanida Borisova, Ay-Tal, Serge, Cholbon and Choroon, have gained international success.

Russian Federation, §II: Russian traditional music

BIBLIOGRAPHY

and other resources

russian

non-russian peoples: european russia

siberia

Russian Federation, §II: Russian traditional music: Bibliography

russian

collections

catalogues, collections of studies, general studies

instruments and instrumental music

polyphonic

song genres

theoretical

other studies

recordings

Russian Federation, §II: Russian traditional music: Bibliography

collections

N. L'vov and I. Prach: Sobraniye narodnīkh russkikh pesen s ikh golosami [Collection of Russian folksongs with their melodies] (St Petersburg, 1790, 5/1955)

M. Balakirev: Sbornik russkikh narodnīkh pesen [Collection of Russian folksongs] (St Petersburg, 1866); ed. E. Gippius (Moscow, 4/1957)

N. Rimsky-Korsakov: Sto russkikh narodnīkh pesen [100 Russian folksongs] (Moscow and St Petersburg, 1876, 4/1951)

N. Lopatin and V. Prokunin: Sbornik russkikh narodnīkh liricheskikh pesen [Collection of Russian lyric folksongs] (Moscow, 1889, 2/1956)

F. Istomin and G. Dyutsh [Djutš]: Pesni russkogo naroda [Songs of the Russian people] (St Petersburg, 1894)

F. Istomin and S. Lyapunov: Pesni russkogo naroda (St Petersburg, 1899)

A. Grigor'yev: Arkhangel'skiye bīlinī i istoricheskiye pesni [Arkhangel'sk heroic and historical songs], i (Moscow, 1904); ii (Prague, 1939); iii (St Petersburg, 1910)

E. Lineva: Velikorusskiye pesni v narodnoy garmonizatsii [Great Russian songs in the folk harmonization] (St Petersburg, 1904–9; Eng. trans., 1905–12 as The Peasant Songs of Great Russia as they are in the Folk's Harmonization)

A. Ushakov: Krest'yanskaya svad'ba kontsa 19 veka v Straitskom uyezde Tverkoy gubernii [The peasant wedding at the end of the 19th century in the Staritsa uyezd of the Tver province] (Staritsa, 1907)

E. Gippius and Z. Eval'd: Pesni Pinezh'ya [Songs of the Pinega River area] (Moscow, 1937)

A. Astakhova, ed.: Bīlinī severa [Heroic songs of the north] (Moscow and Leningrad, 1938–51)

A. Novikov: Russkiye narodnīye pesni [Russian folksongs] (Moscow, 1936–7)

A. Listopadov: Pesni donskikh kazakov [Songs of the Don Cossacks] (Moscow, 1949–54)

B. Dobrovol'sky and A. Soymonov: Russkiye narodnīye pesni o krest'yanskikh voynakh i vosstaniyakh [Russian folksongs about peasant wars and uprisings] (Moscow and Leningrad, 1956)

N. Kotikova: Russkiye chastushki (Leningrad, 1956, 2/1961)

A. Rudneva: Narodnīye pesni Kurskoy oblasti [Folksongs of the Kursk oblast] (Moscow, 1957)

F. Rubtsov: Narodnīye pesni Leningradskoy oblasti (Moscow, 1958)

Sbornik Kirshi Danilova [The Collection of Kirsha Danilov], ed. Akademiya Nauk SSSR (Moscow and Leningrad, 1958)

V. Zakharov: Khor imeni Pyatnitskovo: Sto russkikh narodnīkh pesen [The Pyatnitskiy chorus: 100 folksongs] (Moscow, 1958)

V.I. Khar'kov and A.V. Rudneva: Russkiye narodnīye pesni Krasnoyarskovo kraya [Russian folksongs of the Krasnoyarsk area] (Moscow, 1959–62)

L. Kulakovsky: Iskusstvo sela Dorozhevo [The art of the village of Dorozhevo] (Moscow, 1959, 2/1965)

A. Lyadov: Pesni russkogo naroda [Songs of the Russian people] (Moscow, 1959)

B. Smirnov: Iskusstvo Vladimirskikh rozhechnikov [The art of the Vladimir horn players] (Moscow, 1959, 2/1965)

F. Sokolov: Gusli zvonchatīye [The ringing gusli] (Moscow, 1959)

F. Sokolov: Russkaya narodnaya balalayka [The Russian folk balalaika] (Moscow, 1962)

Pesni Pechorī [Songs of the Pechora], ed. Akademiya Nauk SSSR (Moscow and Leningrad, 1963)

Chastushki v zapisyakh sovetskovo vremeni [Chastushki collected since 1917], ed. Akademiya Nauk SSSR (Moscow and Leningrad, 1965)

N. Kotikova: Narodnīye pesni Pskovskoy oblasti [Folksongs of the Pskov oblast] (Moscow, 1966)

K. Svitova: Narodnīye pesni Bryanskoy oblasti (Moscow, 1966)

I. Zemtsovsky: Russkiye narodnīye protyazhnīye pesni: antologiya [Russian folk long-drawn-out songs: an anthology] (Leningrad, 1966)

Pesennīy fol'klor Mezeni [Folksongs of the Mezen' River], ed. Akademiya Nauk SSSR (Leningrad, 1967)

I. Zemtsovsky: Toropetskiye pesni: pesni rodinī M. Musorgskovo [Songs of the town of Toropets and surroundings: songs of Musorgsky's birthplace] (Leningrad, 1967)

D. Balashov and Y. Krasovskaya: Russkiye svadebnīye pesni Terskovo berega Belovo morya [Russian wedding songs of the Tersk shore of the White Sea] (Leningrad, 1969)

G. Pavlova: Pesni Smolenskoy oblasti, napetīye A. Glinkinoy [Songs of the Smolensk oblast, sung by A. Glinkina] (Moscow, 1969)

S. Pushkina and V. Grigorenko: Priokskiye narodnīye pesni [Folksongs from the Oka River valley] (Moscow, 1970)

F. Sokolov, ed.: Sto russkikh narodīkh pesen [100 Russian folksongs] (Leningrad, 1970)

A. Banin: Trudovīye artel'nīye pesni i pripevki [Artel work songs and refrains] (Moscow, 1971)

I. Zemtsovsky: Obraztsī narodnovo mnogogolosiya [Examples of folk polyphony] (Leningrad and Moscow, 1972)

I. Zemtsovsky: Uglichskiye narodnīye pesni [Uglich folksongs] (Leningrad, 1974)

A.V. Rudneva, V.M. Shchurov and S.I. Pushkina: Russkiye narodnīye pesni v mnogomikrofonnoy zapisi [Russian folksongs in multimicrophone recording] (Moscow, 1979)

B.B. Efimenkova: Severnorusskaya prichet' [North Russian laments] (Moscow, 1980)

B.M. Dobrovol'sky and V.V. Korguzalov: Bīlinī, Russkiy muzīkal'nīy ėpos: antologiya [Bīlinī, Russian epics: an anthology] (Moscow, 1981)

D.M. Balashov, Yu. Marchenko and N.I. Kalmīkova: Russkaya svad'ba [The Russian wedding] (Moscow, 1985) [summary in Eng., 4 sound discs]

T.V. Krasnopolskaya: Pesni Zaonezh'ya v zapisyakh 1880–1980 godov [Songs of the Onega district in recordings from 1880 to 1980], ed. E.V. Gippius (Leningrad, 1987)

N.I. Dorofeev: Russkiye narodnīye pesni Zabaikal'ia: semeiskiy raspev [Russian folksongs from the behind of Baikal Lake: the Old Believer's part singing style]

M.A. Lobanov, ed.: Ekspeditsionnīye otkrytiya poslednīkh let: narodnaya muzīka slovesnost', obridī v zapisyakh 1970–1990–kh godov [Fieldwork discoveries of the latest years: folk music in recordings of the 1970s to the 1990s] (St Petersburg, 1996)

B.B. Granovskiy: Pesni pevtsov-samorodkov Ivana Fomina i Ivana Molchanova v sobrabii V.F. Odoevskogo [Songs of the singers Ivan Fomin and Ivan Molchanov in the collection of Vladimir Odoevskiy] (Moscow, 1998)

T.I. Kaluzhnikova: Pesni ural'skikh kazakov [Songs of the Ural Cossacks] (Yekaterinburg, 1998)

M.A. Lobanov, K.E. Korepova and A.F. Nekrylova, eds.: Nishegorodskaya svad'ba: Pushkinskiye mesta – Nizhegorodskoye Povolzh'e – Vetluzhskiy kray: Obryady, prichitaniya, pesni, prigovorī [The Nizhnii Novgorod wedding: Pushkin places – Nizhniy Novgorod Povolzh'e – Vetluga district: rites, songs, laments, sayings] (St Petersburg, 1998)

Ye.N. Razumovskaya, ed.: Traditsionnaya muzīka Russkogo Poozer'ya (Po materialam expeditsii 1971–1992 godov) [Traditional music of the Russian Poozer'ye district: fieldwork material from 1971–92] (St Petersburg, 1998)

Russian Federation, §II: Russian traditional music: Bibliography

catalogues, collections of studies, general studies

A.N. Serov: Russkaya narodnaya pesnya kak predmet nauki [The Russian folksong as a subject for science] (Moscow, 1869–71; Ger. trans., ed. N. Notowicz, Aufsätze zur Musikgeschichte, 1955, 119–54)

P. Sokal'sky: Russkaya narodnaya muzīka, Velikorusskaya i Malorusskaya, v yeya stroyeniyi melodicheskom i ritmicheskom [Russian folk music, Great Russian and Little Russian (Ukrainian), in its melodic and rhythmic structure] (Kharkiv, 1888; Ukr. trans., 2/1959)

T. Popova: Russkoye narodnoye muzīkal'noye tvorchestvo [Russian folk music] (Moscow, 1955–7, 2/1962–4)

M.I. Melts: Russkiy fol'klor 1901–1975: bibliograficheskiy ukazatel' v pyati tomakh [Russian folklore: bibliographic index: 1901–75, in five vols.] (Leningrad, 1961–85)

I. Zemtsovsky: Russkaya narodnaya pesnya [The Russian folksong] (Leningrad, 1964)

E. Stockmann, ed.: Sowjetische Volkslied- und Volkmusikforschung: Ausgewählte Studien (Berlin, 1967)

V.L. Goshovsky, ed.: Klyment Kvitka: Izbrannīye trudī [Selected works] (Moscow, 1971–3)

A. Banin, ed.: Muzīkal'naya fol'kloristika: sbornik statey [Folk music studies: a collection of articles], i (Moscow, 1973)

F. Rubtsov: Stat'i po muzīkal'nomu fol'kloru [Articles on folk music] (Leningrad, 1973)

P.A. Vulfius: Russkaya mīsl' o muzīkal'nom fol'klore: materialī i dokumentī [Russian thought on musical folklore] (Moscow, 1979)

D. Batser and B. Rabinovich, eds.: Russkaya narodnaya muzīka: notograficheskiy ukazatel': 1776–1973 [Russian folk music: index] (Moscow, 1981–4)

B.V. Asaf'ev: O narodnoy muzīke [On folk music] (Leningrad, 1987)

E. Warner and E. Kustovskii: Russian Traditional Folksong (Hull, 1990)

I.I. Zemtsovsky: Narodnaya muzīka SSSR: opīt diskografii [Folk music of the USSR: an attempt at a discography] (Moscow, 1991)

A.V. Rudneva: Russkoye narodnoye muzīkal'noye tvorchestvo: ocherki po teorii fol'klora [Russian folk musical creation: essays on the theory of folklore], ed. N. Gilyarova and L. Kostyukovets (Moscow, 1994)

V.A. Lapin: Russkiy muzīkal'nīy fol'klor i istoriya: (k fenomenologii muzīkal'nīkh traditsiy): ocherki i ėtyudī [Russian musical folklore and history: towards a phenomenology of musical traditions: sketches and studies] (Moscow, 1995)

I.I. Zemtsovsky: Russkaya narodnaya pesnya: neizvestnīye stranitsīye muzīkal'noy istorii [The Russian folksong: the unknown pages of musical history] (St Petersburg, 1995)

J. Porter, ed.: Folklore and Traditional Music in the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (Los Angeles, 1997)

V.M. Shchurov: Stilevīye osnvī russkoy narodnoy muzīki [The stylistic basis of Russian folk music] (Moscow, 1998)

Russian Federation, §II: Russian traditional music: Bibliography

instruments and instrumental music

D. Tikhomirov: Istoriya gusley [A history of the gusli] (Tartu, 1962)

K.A. Vertkov, G.I. Blagodatov and E.E. Yazovitskaya: Atlas muzīkal'nīkh instrumentov narodov SSSR [Atlas of musical instrument of the peoples inhabiting the USSR] (Moscow, 1963, enlarged 2/1975, with Eng. summary)

K.A. Vertkov: ‘Tipī russkikh gusley’ [Types of Russian gusli], Slavyanskiy muzīkal'nīy fol'klor, ed. I. Zemtsovsky (Moscow, 1972), 275

I. Matsiyevsky: ‘Russkiye narodnīye instrumenti’ [Russian folk instruments], Ruská hudba enciklopedickũ, ed. J. Tvrdoň (Bratislava, 1974)

K.A. Vertkov: Russkiye narodnīye muzīkal'nīye instrumentī [Russian folk instruments] (Leningrad, 1975)

M. Imkhanitskiy: U istokov russkoy narodnoy orkestrovoy kul'turī [The origins of the Russian folk instrument-orchestra tradition] (Moscow, 1987) [summary in Eng.]

I.V. Macjiewski and E.V. Gippius, eds.: Narodnīye muzīkal'nīye instrumentī i instrumental'naya muzīka [Folk musical instruments and instrumental music] (Moscow, 1987–8)

U. Morgenstern: Volkmusikinstrumente und instrumentale Volkmusik in Russland (Berlin 1995)

A.A. Banin: Russkaya instrumental'naya muzīka fol'klornoy traditsii [Russian instrumental music of the folkloric tradition] (Moscow, 1997)

Russian Federation, §II: Russian traditional music: Bibliography

polyphonic

E. Gippius: ‘O russkoy narodnoy podgolosochnoy polifonii v kontse XVIII – nachale XIX veka’ [On Russian folk descant polyphony at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries], Sovetskaya ėtnografiya (1948), no.2, pp.86–104

A. Kastal'sky: Osnovī narodnovo mnogogolosiya [Principles of folk polyphony] (Moscow and Leningrad, 1948)

L. Kulakovsky: Russkoye narodnoye mnogogolosiye [Russian folk polyphony] (Moscow, 1951)

T. Bershadskaya: Osnovnīye kompozitsionnīye zakonomernosti mnogogolosiya russkoy narodnoy pesni [The basic laws of composition of polyphony of the Russian folksong] (Leningrad, 1961)

M.A. Engovatova: ‘Dukhgolosiye s podvodkoy v kul'ture russkoy liricheskoy pesni’ [Two-part singing with podvodka in the culture of Russian lyric songs], Pesennoye mnogogolosiye narodov Rossii (Moscow, 1989), 23–7

S. Arom and C. Meyer, eds.: Les polyphonies populaires russes (Paris, 1993) [incl. CD]

Russian Federation, §II: Russian traditional music: Bibliography

song genres

A. Maslov: ‘Bīlinī, ikh proiskhozhdeniye, ritmicheskiy i melodicheskiy sklad’ [Bīlinī, their origin, rhythmic and melodic formation], Trudī Muzīkal'noėtnograficheskoy kommissii, ii (1911), 299–327

N.A. Yanchuk: ‘O muzīke bilin v svyazi s istoryey ikh izucheniya’ [On the music of bīlinī in connection with the history of their study], Russkaya ustnaya slovesnost' [Russian oral literature], ii (1919), 527–70

A. Finagin: Russkaya narodnaya pesnya [The Russian folksong] (Petrograd, 1923)

B. Shteynpress: K istorii ‘tsīganskovo peniya’ v Rossii [On the history of the ‘Gypsy song’ in Russia] (Moscow, 1934) [see also M.S. Druskin, SovM (1934), no.12, 96–105

E. Mahler: Die russische Totenklage (Leipzig, 1935/R)

E. Gippius: ‘Intonatsionnīye elementī russkoy chastushki’, Sovetskiy folk'lor, iv–v (1936), 97–142

M.S. Druskin: Russkaya revolyutsionnaya pesnya [The Russian revolutionary song] (Moscow, 1954)

I. Zemtsovsky: Russkaya protyazhnaya pesnya [The Russian long-drawn-out song] (Leningrad, 1967) [with Ger. summary]

B. Stephan: Studien zur russischen Častuška und ihrer Entwicklung (Munich, 1969)

S. P'yankova: ‘Napev-frmulī russkoy svad'bī’ [Song formulae of the Russian wedding], Slavyanskiy muzīkal'nīy fol'klor, ed. I. Zemtsovsky (Moscow, 1972), 205

S. P'yankova: ‘Nekotorīye osobennosti napevov v russkoy svad'be [Some characteristics of Russian wedding melodies], Problemī muzīkal'nogo fol'klora narodov SSSR, ed. I. Zemtsovsky (Moscow, 1973), 17

V. Lapin: ‘Napevī svadebnīkh pesen Pomorskovo berega Belovo morya’ [The melodies of wedding songs on the White Sea coast south-east of Belomorsk], Fol'klor i ėtnografiya: obryadovīy fol'klor [Folklore and ethnography: rituals and ritual folklore] (Leningrad, 1974)

I. Zemtsovsky: Melodika kalendarnīkh pesen [The melodies of calendar songs] (Leningrad, 1975)

E. Vasil'yeva: Kompozitsiya severo-russkikh bīlin [The composition of north Russian bīlinī] (diss., Institut teatra, muzīki i kinematografii, Leningrad, 1976)

N. Vladīkina-Bachinskaya: Muzīkal'niy stil' russkikh khorovodnīkh pesen [The musical style of Russian khorovod songs] (Moscow, 1976)

I.I. Zemtsovsky: ‘Problema russkoy chastushki’ [The problem of Russian chastushka], SovM (1987), no.7, 73–9

Russian Federation, §II: Russian traditional music: Bibliography

theoretical

K. Bücher: Arbeit und Rhythmus (Leipzig, 1896, 5/1918; Russ. trans., 1923, as Rabota i ritm)

A. Kastal'sky: Osobennosti narodno-russkoy muzī'noy sistemī [Characteristics of the Russian folk musical system] (Moscow and Petrograd, 1923, 2/1961)

L. Kulakovsky: Pesnya: eyo yazīk, struktura, sud'bī [The song: its language, structure and fate] (Moscow, 1962)

V. Propp: ‘Zhanrovīy sostav russkovo fol'klora’ [The genre structure of Russian folklore], Russkaya literatura (1964), no.4, p.58

I. Zemtsovsky: ‘O kompozitsii russkikh “kvartovīkh” liricheskikh pesen’ [On the composition of Russian lyric songs with ambitus or basic intonations of a 4th], Voprosī teorii i estetiki muzīki, iv (1965), 133

I. Zemtsovsky: ‘O kompoiztsii russkikh “kvintovīkh” liricheskikh pesen’ [On the composition of Russian lyric songs with ambitus or basic intonations of a 5th], Voprosī teorii i estetiki muzīki, v (1965), 230

B. Dobrovol'sky: ‘Tsepnaya strofika russkikh narodnīkh pesen’ [The chain strophe pattern of Russian folksongs], Russkiy fol'klor, x (1966), 237

I.I. Zemtsovsky: ‘O melodicheskoy “formul'nosti” v russkom fol'klore’ [The melodic ‘formula’ in Russian folklore] Russkiy fol'klor, xxiv (1987), 117–28

J. Bailey: Three Russian Lyric Folksong Meters (Columbus, OH, 1993)

B.B. Efimenkova: Ritmika russkikh narodnīkh pesen [The rhythm of Russian folksongs] (Moscow, 1993)

Russian Federation, §II: Russian traditional music: Bibliography

other studies

A.S. Famintsīn: Akomorokhi na Rusi [Russian minstrels] (St Petersburg, 1889, 2/1995)

P.A. Vul'fius: ‘U istokov liricheskoy narodnoy pesni’ [At the source of the lyric folksong], Voprosī teorii i esteiki muzīki, i (1962), 148

I. Zemtsovsky: ‘Russkaya sovetskaya muzīkal'naya fol'kloristika’, Voprosī teorii i estetiki muzīki, vi–vii (1967), 215–62

A.J. Swan: Russian Music and its Sources in Chant and Folksong (New York, 1973)

A. Rudneva: Kurskiye tanki i karagodī [Dances and khorovodī from Kursk] (Moscow, 1975)

V.M. Shchurov: Yuzhnorusskaya pesennaya traditsiya [The south Russian song tradition] (Moscow, 1987)

V.S. Vinogradov, ed.: Russkiye pesennitsī nashikh dney [Russian folksingers of today] (Moscow, 1988)

I.I. Zemtsovsky: ‘“Skazhite mīslī”: ėtyud k monografii ob odnoy liricheskoy pesne russkogo severo-zapada’ [‘Tell me my thoughts’: a sketch for a monograph on a Russian lyric song], Muzīkal'naya kul'tura Karlii (Leningrad, 1988), 29–74

I.I. Zemtsovsky, ed.: Muzīka ėposa [The music of epics] (Yoshkar-Ola, 1989)

V. Korguzalov and Ye. Troitskaya: ‘The Phonogram Archive of the Institute for Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg’, World of Music, xxxv/1 (1993), 115–20

M.A. Lobanov: Lesniye klichi vokal'nīye melodii-signali na severo-zapade Rossii [Forest calls: vocal melody-signals in northwest Russia] (St Petersburg, 1997)

J. Bailey and M. Lobanov: ‘A Collection of Translations of Russian Folksongs: E.E. Lineva's Visit to America (1892–1896)’, The Journal of the Slavic and East European Folklore Association, iv/1 (1999)

Russian Federation, §II: Russian traditional music: Bibliography

recordings

Russian Northern Wedding: an Ancient Traditional Wedding Performance with Dialogues and Songs, rec. 1989, Melodiya SUCD 11–00325 (1991)

Sīgray, Vanya [Play, Vanya]: Folk Instrumental Music and its Vocal Counterpart in Southern, Western and Central Russia, rec. 1968, 1989, PAN 2002CD (1991)

Tam Letal Pavlin [A Peacock once went Flying] Songs from the Area of Belgorod Town and the Oskol River (Belgorod Prioskolye), rec. 1967–9, 1982–7, PAN 2001CD (1991)

Songs of the People of Russia: Regions of Bryansk, Tula, Arkhangelsk, Yekaterinburg and Others, Le chant du monde CDM CMT 274978 (1994)

Igray, dudka! [Play, bagpipe!], perf. A.V. Romodin LUBO-MUSIK LBC 1001, LC 7154 (1995) [notes in Ger., U. Morgenstern]

Old Believers: Songs of the Nekrasov Cossacks, Smithsonian Folkways CD 40462 (1995)

Siniye Lipyagi: Village of Blue Linden Trees [South Russian Wedding songs], perf. I. Raspopova and J. Howe, rec. 1993, PAN and Paradox Records CD2039 (1996)

Russian Federation, §II: Russian traditional music: Bibliography

non-russian peoples: european russia

studies and collections

G.G. Lovachev: Pesni naroda Mari [Songs of the Mari people] (Moscow, 1930)

V. Koukal': Mariy kalīk muro [Mari folksongs] (Leningrad, 1951)

K. Smirnov: Ervel mariy muro [Eastern mountain Mari folksongs] (Yoshkar Ola, 1951)

K. Smirnov: Olīk mariy muro [Meadow Mari folksongs] (Yoshkar Ola, 1955)

B. Nettl: Cheremis Musical Styles (Bloomington, IN, 1960)

A.K. Mikushev and P.I. Chistalyov: Komi narodnīye pesni [Folksongs of the Komi] (Sīktīvkar, 1966–71)

Yu.A. Ilyukhin, ed.: Chavash khalakh yurrisem [Chuvash folksongs] (Cheboksarī, 1969)

L. Vikár and G. Bereczki: Cheremis Folksongs (Budapest, 1971)

P.I. Chistalyov: ‘Komi narodnaya muzīka’ [Folk music of the Komi], Muzīkal'noye naslediye finno-ugorskikh narodov [The musical inheritance of Finno-Ugric peoples], ed. I. Rüütel (Tallinn, 1977), 451–72

A.S. Mirbadaleva, M.M. Sagitov and A.I. Kharisov, eds.: Bashkort khalīk ėposī [The folk epos of the Bashkir] (Moscow, 1977)

P.I. Chistalyov: Muzīkal'nīye instrumentī permskikh narodov [Musical instruments of the Permian peoples] (Sīktīvkar, 1980)

N.I. Boyarkin: Pamyatniki mordovskogo narodnogo muzīkal'nogo iskusstva [Monuments of the Mordvin art of folk music] (Saransk, 1981–8)

M.G. Kondrat'yev, ed.: Pesni nizovīkh chuvashey [Songs of the southern Chuvash] (Cheboksarī, 1981–2)

L. Barag and others, eds.: Bashkirskoye narodnoye tvorchestvo: pesni i naigrīshi [Bashkir folk tradition: songs and instrumental pieces] (Ufa, 1983)

N.I. Boyarkin: Mordovskoye narodnoye muzīkal'noye iskusstvo [Mordvin art of folk music] (Saransk, 1983)

M. Nigmedzyanov: Tatarskiye narodnīye pesni [Tatar folksongs] (Kazan', 1984)

R.A. Churakova: Udmurtskiye svadebnīye pesni [Udmurt wedding songs], ed. Ye.V. Gippius (Ustinov, 1986)

A. Klucharyov: Tatar khalīk dzhīrlarī [Tatar folksongs] (Kazan', 1986)

V.K. Shivlyanova: ‘Kalmītskaya narodnaya protyazhnaya pesnya v svadebnom obryade’ [The traditional Kalmīk long-song in the wedding ritual], Muzīka v svadebnom obryade finno-ugrov i sosednikh narodov [Music in the wedding ritual of Finno-Ugric and neighbouring peoples], ed. I. Rüütel (Tallinn, 1986), 350–58

A.K. Mikushev: Komi yözkostsa ėpos [Komi folk epos] (Moscow, 1987)

N. Al'meyeva: ‘K opredeleniyu zhanrovoy sistemī i stilevīkh plastov v pesennoy traditsii tatar-kryashen’ [Towards a definition of the genre system and the style layers in the song tradition of the Tatar-Kryashen], Traditsionnaya muzīka narodov Povolzh'ya i Priural'ya [Traditional music of the peoples of the Volga region and the Urals] (Kazan', 1989), 5–20

L. Vikár and G. Bereczki: Chuvash Folksongs (Budapest, 1989)

G.M. Nastipova: ‘Ėpicheskiye napevī “Dzhanggara”’ [Epic melodies in “Dzhanghar”], Dzhanghr: khal'mg baatrlg ėpos, ed. N.Ts. Biteyeva and Ye.B. Ovalova (Moscow, 1990), 431–52

V.S. Chernov: ‘Chuvashskiye narodnīye muzīkal'nīye instrumentī’ [The folk music instruments of the Chuvash], Narodnoye muzīkal'noye iskusstvo Chuvashii (Cheboksarī, 1991), 66–80

V. Yakovlev: Traditsionnīye muzīkal'nīye instrumentī narodov Srednego Povolzh'ya [Traditional musical instruments of the peoples of the Middle Volga region] (Kazan', 1991)

Ye.B. Boykova and T.G. Vladīkina: Udmurtskiy fol'klor: pesni yuzhnīkh udmurtov [Folklore of the Udmurt: songs of the southern Udmurt] (Izhevsk, 1992–8)

O.M. Gerasimov: Modmo da kushtīmo mariy muro-vlak [Play and dance-songs of the Mari] (Yoshkar Ola, 1993)

S. Gabyashi: ‘O tatarskoy muzīke’ [About Tatar music], Sultan Gabyashi: materialī i issledovaniya (Kazan', 1994), 46–60

O.M. Gerasimov: Muzīkal'nīy fol'klor yelabuzhskikh mari [The musical folklore of the Yelabuga Mari] (Moscow, 1995)

M.G. Kondrat'yev: Chuvashskaya narodnaya muzīkal'no-poticheskaya sistema i yego inonatsional'nīye paralleli [The Chuvash folk musical and poetical system and its parallels among the other peoples] (Moscow, 1995)

I.M. Nuriyeva: Udmurtskiy fol'klor: pesni zavyatskikh udmurtov [Folklore of the Udmurt: songs of the Udmurts beyond the Vyatka] (Izhevsk, 1995)

R. Suleymanova: Zhemchuzhinī narodnogo tvorchestva Urala [The pearls of the folk tradition of the Ural] (Ufa, 1995)

O.M. Gerasimov: Narodnīye muzikal'nīye instrumentī mari [The traditional musical instruments of the Mari] (Yoshkar Ola, 1996)

M.G. Khodīreva: Pesni severnīkh udmurtov [Songs of the northern Udmurts] (Izhevsk, 1996)

R. Iskhakova-Bamba: Tatarskoye narodnoye muzīkal'noye tvorchestvo [The folk music tradition of the Tatars] (Kazan', 1997)

N.I. Boyarkin: Pamyatniki mordovskogo narodnogo muzīkal'nogo iskusstva, iv: Ėrzyanskiye nepriurochyonnīye ėpicheskiye i liricheskiye pesni [Monuments of the Mordvin art of folk music, iv: Ėrzyan non-calendric epic and lyric songs] (Saransk, forthcoming)

recordings

Tatarskiye pesni [Tatar songs], perf. I. Shakirov, Melodiya S30 05975 76 (1978)

Ersämordva rahvalaule [Ėrzya Mordvin folksongs], Melodiya M30 42095 6 (1982)

Mordoviyan' fol'klors': Levzha velen' folklornay ansambl's' sire Terizmorgan' velen' khors' [Folklore of Mordovia: Mokshan songs from the villages of Levzha and Terizmorgan'], Melodiya S30 18051 2 (1983)

Folk Music of Finno-Ugric and Turkic Peoples, Hungaroton LPX 18087 89 (1984) [incl. notes and notations by L. Vikár]

Kende vele: pro selo Chindyanovo [Kende vele: for the village of Chindyanovo], perf. Ėtnograficheskiy Ansambl', Melodiya S30 29309 006 (1989)

Idel mongnarī: Volzhskiye melodii [Melodies from the Volga], perf. Dzhīr Näm Biyu Däülät Ansamble, Melodiya S30 29047 000 (1989)

Mother Volga: Music of the Volga, coll. V. Shchurov, PAN 2008CD (1992) [Mari and Chuvash music]

Uzliau: Guttural Singing of the Peoples of the Sayan, Altai and Ural Mountains, coll. V. Shchurov, rec. 1992, PAN 2019CD (1993)

Chilik: Songs and Melodies of the Nagaybaks, coll. V. Shchurov, rec. 1992, PAN 7003CD (1995)

Ural: Traditional Music of Bashkortostan, coll. V. Shchurov, rec. 1992, PAN 2018CD (1995)

Finno-Ugric and Turkic Melodies in the Volga-Kama Area, coll. L. Vikár and G. Bereczki, rec. 1958–79, Hungaroton HCD 18229 (1996) [incl. notes by L. Vikár]

Russian Federation, §II: Russian traditional music: Bibliography

siberia

studies and collections

V.N. Steshenko-Kuftina: ‘Ėlementī muzīka'lnoy kul'turī paleoaziatov i tungusov’ [Elements of musical culture of the Palaeo-asiatic and Tungus peoples], Ėtnografiya, iii (1930), 81–108

Z.V. Ėvald, V. Kosovanov and S. Abayantsev: ‘Muzīka i muzīkal'nīye instrumentī’ [Music and musical instruments], Sibirskaya sovetskaya ėntsiklopediya [Siberian Soviet encyclopedia], iii (Moscow, Leningrad and Novosibirsk, 1930), 577–96

A.O. Väisänen: Wogulische und Ostjakische Melodien (Helsinki, 1937)

A.O. Väisänen: Untersuchungen über die ob-ugrischen Melodien (Helsinki, 1939)

A.A. Kenel': Muzīkal'noye tvorchestvo khakasov [The musical traditions of the Khakas] (Abakan, 1955)

P. Collaer: ‘Chants et airs des peuples de l'extręme Nord’, Ethnomusicologie II: Wégimont 1956

H.Ya. Narva and V.V. Portugalov, eds.: Pesni narodov Severa [Songs of the people of the North] (Magadan, 1960)

S.A. Kondrat'yev: Yakutskaya narodnaya pesnya [Yakut folksong] (Moscow, 1963)

D.S. Dugarov: Buryatskiye narodnīye pesni [Folksongs of the Buryats] (Ulan-Ude, 1964–80)

G.A. Grigoryan, ed.: Pesni Severa [Songs of the North] (Yakutsk, 1964)

Z.N. Kupriyanova: Ėpicheskiye pesni nentsev, ed. Ye.M. Meletinsky (Moscow, 1965)

A.O. Väisänen: Samojedische Melodien (Helsinki, 1965)

A.M. Ayzenshtadt: ‘Muzīkal'nīy fol'klor narodov Nizhnego Priamur'ya’ [The musical folklore of the peoples of the Lower Amur region], Muzīkal'nīy fol'klor narodov Severa i Sibiri [The musical folklore of the peoples of the North and Siberia], ed. A.M. Ayzenshtadt, H.Ya. Narva and V.V. Portugalov (Moscow, 1966), 3–94

V.A. Litkin: Novaya zhizhn' – novīye pesni [New life – new songs] (Magadan, 1970)

Ė.Ye. Aleyseyev: Problemī formirovaniya lada (na materiale yakutskoy narodonoy pesni) [Problems with the emergence of the mode (in relation to Yakut folksong material] (Moscow, 1976)

I.A. Brodsky: ‘K izucheniyu muzīki narodov Severa RSFSR’ [Towards study of the music of the northern peoples of the Soviet Russian Federation], Traditsionnoye i sovremennoye narodnoye muzīkal'noye [Traditional and modern folk art], ed. B.B. Yefimenkova (Moscow, 1976), 244–57

A.K. Stoyanov: Tofalarskiye narodnīye pesni: materialī fol'klornīkh ėkspeditsiy 1975–76 gg. [Tofalar folksongs: material from folklore expeditions of 1975–76], ed. V.I. Rassadin (Irkutsk, 1980)

A.M. Ayzenshtadt: ‘U ketov i sel'kupov’ [Among the Ket and Selkup], Muzīka Sibiri i Dal'nego Vostoka [The Music of Siberia and the Far East], ed. I. Romashchuk (Moscow, 1982), 172–204

G.M. Krivoshapko: Muzīkal'naya kul'tura yakutskogo naroda [The musical culture of the people of Yakutiya] (Yakutsk, 1982)

T.D. Bulgakova and S.N. Onenko, eds.: Nanayskiye napevī [Nanay melodies] (Khabarovsk, 1983)

I.A. Brodsky: ‘Khantīskaya i mansiyskaya muzīka’ [The music of the Khantys and Mansis], Muzīkal'naya ėntsklopediya, v (Moscow, 1984), 1025–8

H. Silvet: ‘O khantīyskom muzīkal'nom instrumente torop-yukh’ [On a Khanty musical instrument, torop-yukh], Iskusstvo i fol'klor narodov zapadnoy Sibiri [Art and folklore of the peoples of western Siberia], ed. N.V. Lukina (Tomsk, 1984)

T.D. Bulgakova: ‘Ėpili: shamanskiy zhanr muzīkal'nogo nanayskogo fol'klora’ [Epili: a shamanistic genre in the musical folklore of the Nanays], Artes populares, xiv (Budapest, 1985)

L.P. Nenyang: Nenetskiye pesni [Songs of the Nenets], ed. L. Maslennikov (Krasnoyarsk, 1985)

N.I. Golovnyova, ed.: Muzīkal'noye tvorchestvo narodov Sibiri i Dal'nego Vostoka (sb. nauchnīkh trudov) [The musical traditions of the peoples of Siberia and the far East (collection of scientific articles)] (Novosibirsk, 1986)

V.A. Rīzhkov, ed.: Ken'aketoy: repertuarnīy sbornik koryakskikh i itel'menskikh napevov [Ken'aketoy: a repertory collection of Koryak and Itelmen melodies] (Palana, 1987)

P.N. Starkov and N.S. Tolbonova, eds.: Pesni olen'yego kraya [Songs of the reindeer country] (Yakutsk, 1987)

Ye.A. Alekseyenko: Muzīkal'nīye instrumentī narodov severa Zapadnoy Sibiri [The musical instruments of the people of the north of Western Siberia] (Leningrad, 1988)

Yu.I. Sheykin, ed.: Muzīkal'naya ėtnografiya Severnoy Azii (sb. nauchnīkh trudov) [The musical ethnography of Northern Asia (collection of scientific articles)] (Novosibirsk, 1988)

V.F. Khokholkov, ed.: Kompozitor Andrey Viktorovich Anokhin: skazaniye ob Altaye [The composer Andrey Viktorovich Anokhin: a tale about Altai] (Gorno-Altaysk, 1989)

I.A. Brodsky: ‘Muzīka narodov Severa, Sibiri i Dal'nego Vostoka SSSR’ [The music of the peoples of the North, Siberia and the far east of the USSR], Muzīkal'naya ėntsiklopedicheskaya slovar' [Encyclopedic dictionary of music], ed. G.V. Keldīsh (Moscow, 1990), 372–3

T. Ojamaa: Nganasan improvisatory chants (Tallinn, 1990)

Yu.I. Sheykin, ed.: Instrumental'naya muzīka Yugri [Instrumental music of the Yugra] (Novosibirsk, 1990)

T.I. Ignat'yeva and Yu.I. Sheykin: Obraztsī muzīkal'nogo fol'klora verkhnekolīmskikh yukagirov [Examples of the musical folklore of the Upper Kolīma Yukagir] (Yakutsk, 1993)

N.N. Nikolayeva: Ėpos olonkho i yakutskaya opera [The Olonkho folk epic and Yakut opera] (Yakutsk, 1993)

O.Ė. Dobzhanskaya: ‘Muzīka v shamanskom obryade nganasanov (na primere ritualov Tubyaku Kostyorkina)’ [Music in the shamanistic rituals among the Nganasans (based on the rituals of Tubyaku Kostyorkin)], Taymīrskiy ėtnolingvisticheskiy sbornik [The Taymīr ethno-linguistic miscellany], i (Moscow, 1994), 147–71

A.M. Ayzenshtadt: Pesennaya kul'tura ėvenkov [The song culture of the Evenkis] (Krasnoyarsk, 1995)

O.Ė. Dobzhanskaya: Pesni nganasan, ed. A.N. Nemtushkin (Krasnoyarsk, 1995)

S.N. Nyaruy and Yu. Yunkerov: Prazdnik tundrī: sbornik pesen [Celebration of the tundra: a collection of songs] (Moscow, 1995–7)

K. Lázár: A keleti hantik vokális népzenéje [Vocal folk music of the eastern Khantys] (Budapest, 1996)

N.A. Mamcheva: Nivkhskaya muzīka kak obrazets rannefol'klornoy monodii [The music of the Nivkh as an example of pre-folkloric monody] (Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, 1996)

Yu.I. Sheykin: Muzīkal'naya kul'tura narodov Severnoy Azii [The musical culture of the peoples of northern Asia] (Yakutsk, 1996)

J. Niemi: The Nenets Songs: a Structural Analysis of Text and Melody (Tampere, 1998)

recordings

Tīva ayalgalar [Tuvan melodies], Melodiya D 030773 4 (1969)

Tuvinskiye pesni i instrumental'nīe naigrīshi [Tuvan songs and instrumental pieces], Melodiya D 030639 70 (1970)

Iz yakutskogo muzīkal'nogo fol'klora [From Yakut musical folklore], Melodiya D 030639 40 (1971)

Muzīka narodov Dal'nego Vostoka SSSR [Music of the peoples of the far East of the Soviet Union], Melodiya D 033187 8 (1973)

Chukotskaya i ėskimosskaya muzīka [The music of the Chukchi and the Eskimo], Melodiya D 035505 6 (1974)

Yakutskiyr pesni v ispol'nenii Ustinī Nokhsorovoy [Yakut songs performed by Ustina Nokhsorova], Melodiya M30 39765 6 (1977)

Muzīka narodnostey Chukotki [Music of the peoples of the Chukhci Peninsula], Melodiya M30 43075 6 (1981)

Nganasanskaya muzīka [The music of the Nganasan], Melodiya S30 17651 005 (1981)

Khantīyskiye pesni [Songs of the Khantys], Melodiya S30 10877 8 (1980)

Tuvinskiy fol'klor, Melodiya S60 14937 42 (1981)

Saamskiye pesni [Sámi songs], Melodiya S32 17419 000 (1983)

Samodeyatel'noye iskusstvo narodnostey Severa [The amateur art of the northern native peoples], Melodiya S90 19759 007 (1983)

Altai baatīrlar-kay [Heroes of the Altai-Kay], Melodiya S90 21979 007 (1985)

Voyage en URSS – Anthologie de la musique instrumentale et vocale des peuples de l'URSS, 10: Sibérie/extręme orient/extręme nord/Instrumental music of the peoples of Siberia and of the far east and north of the Soviet Union, Le chant du monde LDX 74010/Melodiya S90 23261 2 004

Musiques de la toundra et de la taīga: URSS: Bouriates, Yakoutes et Toungouses, Maison des Cultures du Monde MCM 160 004 (1987)

Narodnaya muzīka saamov SSSR [Folk music of the Sámi of the USSR], Melodiya S90 25923 000 (1987)

Pod polyarnoy zvezdoy: traditsionnīy i sovremennīy nenetskiy i pechorskiy fol'klor [Under the Pole Star: the traditional and modern Nenets and Pechoran folklore (i.e. songs of the Western Nenets and some Komi and Russian songs)], Melodiya M90 48949 008 (1988)

Syoyotey Yamal – pevuchiy Yamal [Songs of the Yamal Nenets], Melodiya S90 27639 003 (1988)

Muzīka severnogo siyaniya [Music of the Northern Lights], Melodiya S90 30129 001 (1990)

Soome-ugri rahvastelaule: Saami rahvalaule [Finno-Ugric folksongs: Lapp folksongs], Forte Studio SP02-003 (1992)

Tabīk: sovremennaya muzīka naroda Sakha [Tabīk: modern music of the Sakha people], FeeLee FL 3018/019 (1993)

Chant chamaniques et narratifs de l'arctique Sibérien: Nganasan, BUDA CD 92564-2 (1995)

Cukc, Even, Jukaghir: Kolyma: Chants de nature et d'animaux, BUDA CD 92566-2 (1995)

Korjak: Kamtchatka: tambours de danse de l'extręme-orient Sibérien, BUDA CD 92598-2 (1995)

Sakha: Yakoutie: épopées et improvisations, BUDA CD 92565-2 (1995)

Chants épiques et diphoniquesL Asie Centrale, Sibérie, CD W 260067 (1996)

Nanaj, Oroc, Udégé, Ulc: chants chamaniques et quotidiens du bassin de l'Amour, BUDA CD 92671-2 (1996)

Musiques de la toundra et de la taīga: Bouriates, Yakoutes, Nenets, Toungouses et Nganasan, CD W 260019 (1997)

Nivkh Ujl'Ta: Sakhaline: Musique vocale et instrumentale, BUDA CD 92721-2 (1998)