Problems of ethnomusicology № 20

2024

S U M M A R Y

Svetlana Latysheva
Ethnoorganologist from the Gnessin Academy Tatyana Viktorovna Kiryushina
03.03.2024 Tatyana Kiryushina — Moscow ethnomusicologist, celebrated her anniversary. Most of her professional life is associated with the Gnessin Russian Academy of Music. The main areas of scientific interest of T. V. Kiryushina are the traditional musical culture of the Kostroma region and the Russian folk instrumental tradition. The article discusses the main milestones of the hero of the day’s life and scientific path.

Alexander Wexler
Shepherd’s zhaleika in the Zubtsovsky District of the Kalinin Region
The article is based on materials from a 1959 expedition to the Zubtsovsky District of the Kalinin (Tver) Region and is dedicated to the zhaleika, a traditional musical instrument of the Upper Volga shepherds. The author provides a detailed description of the instrument’s structure, the crafting techniques, and valuable insights into the performance tradition. The publication is supplemented with musical transcriptions of melodies recorded from the renowned Zubt

Yuri Yakolev
At an old Russian wedding
This essay by Yuri Yakolev, written after a 1960 expedition to the northern area of the Smolensk Region, documents a traditional wedding observed in the village of Perstyonki in the Safonovsky District. Drawing on his firsthand impressions, the author provides a detailed account of the wedding ritual, including the texts of the ritual songs that form part of the local wedding’s dramaturgy. Yakolev’s work is supplemented with musical transcriptions prepared specifically for this publication, as well as scholarly commentary.

Ksenia Tskhurbaeva
At the Tuala Gorge
The article is dedicated to one of K. G. Tskhurbayeva’s folklore expeditions to the Tuala gorge of the Republic of North Ossetia — Alanya at the turn of 1950–1960’s. The author briefly describes some genres of local tradition studied: funeral chanting, songs of mythological content, round dances, wedding and lyrical songs. Tskhurbayeva’s musical transcriptions of samples of different genres are published, in addition to them are given some examples of later recordings of other collectors.

A. Likhacheva
Matchmaking and wedding customs of the village of Ilyinskoye Dedenevskaya volost [Dmitrovsky County, Moscow Governorate]
The article presents the publication of a manuscript of the early XX century from the archival funds of the Museumreserve «Dmitrovsky Kremlin». It contains the description of wedding rites of Ilyinskoye village, Dmitrovsky County, Moscow Governorate. So far, this document has not yet been used as an ethnographic source, nor has it served as the subject of ethnomusicological research. The comments analyze the folklore texts included in the manuscript

Maria Sheremeteva
The agricultural rite «invocation of spring» in the Kaluga region
The article was written by ethnographer Maria Evgenievna Sheremeteva (1886-1963), whose scientific activity associated with various aspects of the traditional culture of the Kaluga region. The published work is devoted to the rite of spring meeting in the territory adjacent to Kaluga from the south and west. The study is based on rich field material collected by its author in the mid-1920s.

Varvara Kalyuzhnaya
The Invocation of Spring in the context of Early Spring ritual practices of the Kaluga Region: historical evidence of M. E. Sheremeteva and modern field research
The article attempts to continue the study of the customs of invoking spring, begun by M. E. Sheremeteva in the Kaluga Oka region as a whole. The archival materials are supplemented with contemporary field notes, as well as information from other works by M. E. Sheremeteva, which made it possible to organize the ethnographic information, propose a taxonomy of the poetic texts of spring invocations, and analyze their melodies.

Alexandra Shpakova
Maslenitsa (Shrovetide) rituals and songs in the Orsha region
Maslenitsa rituals occupy a secondary place in the folk culture of Belarus. However, an expedition survey of the Orsha district of the Vitebsk region showed their significant role in the local calendar cycle. This article attempts to comprehensively characterize the various components of the Orsha Maslenitsa ritual and the song material associated with it.

Maria Leonova, Inessa Nikitina
Wedding songs of the village of Bolshebykovo: some features of composition and rhythmic structure
Ethnomusicologists have been recording musical folklore in the Belgorod village of Bolshebykovo for more than half a century. However, the tradition still cannot be considered well studied. The authors of the article chose wedding songs as the subject of their research and focus on their rhythmic organization. The main attention is paid to the peculiarities of the compositional structure, as well as songs of the same rhythmic type, which occupies a leading position in the local wedding repertoire. The specificity of the studied rhythmic model is that poetic texts of different structures rely on it.

Oleg Gordienko
Facultative formations in the pieces of the shepherd-piper by N. I. Koshonkov
The article describes sporadic formations that modify the normative structure of traditional reed-pipe plays. These constructions  areconsidered on the example of the works of the Vladimir shepherdpiper N. I. Koshonkov, played on the single six-hole reed-pipe and on the Central Russian double reed-pipe. Their appearance in solo song and dance pieces shows that such a stable element of the structure of a work as a musical form also can become variable in folk instrumental music.