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Philosophy and Culture
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The Significance of B. B. Granovsky's Activity in the Study of Song Folklore from the Archive of V. F. Odoevsky (to the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of B. B. Granovsky)

Vereshchagina Katarina Sergeevna

ORCID: 0000-0002-6830-5199

Senior Lecturer of the Department of Acting, Stage Speech and Stage Movement (Stage Speech Section) at the Far Eastern State Institute of Arts

690090, Russia, Primorsky Krai, Vladivostok, Petra Velikogo st., 3a

katarina16@rambler.ru
Other publications by this author
 

 

DOI:

10.7256/2454-0757.2023.7.39268

EDN:

TQXJLW

Received:

28-11-2022


Published:

04-08-2023


Abstract: The relevance of the research is due to the fact that the musical and folklore heritage of V. F. Odoevsky is of great value for modern musicology, since it contains many unique recordings of Russian folk songs and songs of 26 other ethnic groups. V. F. Odoevsky is the first folklorist who recorded song folklore in a scientific way. His recordings are the first reliable examples of folklore in the history of Russian musicology. At the same time, the archives of V. F. Odoevsky are practically not studied. The article examines the publications of B. B. Granovsky, since this scientist has been deciphering materials from the archive of V. F. Odoevsky for many years and introducing them into scientific circulation. The article considers that these publications reveal the style of the scientific method of V. F. Odoevsky, which is of great value in the study of the history and development of Russian ethnomusicology. Thanks to the works of B. B. Granovsky, rare songs of the peoples of Russia, which were recorded by V. F. Odoevsky, have been studied. In addition, the article shows that B. B. Granovsky not only deciphered many archival recordings of V. F. Odoevsky, but also published them in a musical collection of Russian folk songs.


Keywords:

Granovsky, music archive of Odoevsky, song folklore of the peoples of Russia, history of ethnomusicology, actualization of Russian song folklore, preservation of folk culture, Russian folk songs, Odoevsky, collection of Russian songs, music culture of Russia

This article is automatically translated.

Legacy of V. F. Odoevsky has been of interest to scientists for many years — he made a significant contribution to the development of the culture of Russia of the XIX century in a variety of fields: education, literature, and music. In June 2019, a conference dedicated to the 150th anniversary of V. F.'s death was held at the Losev House. Odoevsky, where at the opening of E. A. Tahodi noted that it was a surprise to her that "the creativity of V. F. Odoevsky aroused such genuine interest" [1].

In the field of musicology , V. F. 's archival documents are of great value . Odoevsky, related to recordings of musical folklore of the peoples of Russia. They can rightfully be considered the first (they were made more than 150 years ago) samples of folk music recorded scientifically (without treatments and changes) [2, p. 94].

In the conditions of the active loss of the culture of folk singing [3, pp. 80-81], comparative historical research is of great importance. They allow us to identify the nature and intensity of changes in the repertoire over time, to recreate those tunes that were performed earlier in a particular region. The scientific community has even formed the practice of expeditions "in the footsteps" of one or another collector of folklore, which is designed to track the state of singing culture [4; 5]. In this case, the recordings of folk music made by V. F. Odoevsky, can become an important source of data.

However, despite the importance of these materials, it is worth noting that a significant part of them remains in the archive and has not yet been studied and published. In the XIX century . during the life of V. F. Even after his death, some folk songs from his collection were printed [6; 7], and in the XX century, with the exception of some works [8; 9], only B. B. Granovsky dealt with this issue in detail. His publications of different years are connected with this.

Article "Songs of the peoples of Russia in the musical collection and works of V. F. Odoevsky" [10] is a review study devoted to this topic. It discusses several important points.

First of all, B. B. Granovsky described the fate of the documents left after V. F.'s death. Odoevsky and the difficulties encountered in collecting information about folk songs: first, all the materials of V. F. Odoevsky's materials were systematized on a thematic basis, then on a chronological basis, in addition, the analysis of materials continued for many years and, as a result, the archive dispersed in parts to various repositories [10, pp. 313-314]. As B. B. Granovsky noted: "The absence of a consolidated inventory of the entire manuscript heritage of Odoevsky extremely complicates the work of every researcher, especially when referring to the section of musical folklore" [10, p. 315]. Therefore, to recreate the entire volume of folklore records, information from diaries was involved, and the contents of the funds were studied in detail, which made it possible to determine a huge number of not only completed folklore records, but also all kinds of drafts and sketches that require detailed consideration [10, pp. 315-319].

As a basis for his scientific work, B. B. Granovsky chose the "meridian method" (as he himself conditionally designated it), which consists "in a cross-cutting study of each fund in order to identify all mutually correlated information, records, fragments, etc." [10, p. 318]. The researcher recorded any records related to folklore and systematized them both by content and by type of text (article, note, note) [10, p. 318]. Largely thanks to this method, those recordings that had an unfinished character were "read", since a significant part of the notes were "excerpts from unknown compositions without beginning and end, separate musical lines with one or two bars of melody and subtext, sheet music with individual letters or musical signs without subtext" [10, p. 319].

In total, about 500 units were deciphered, which, first of all, are samples of Russian (220 songs) folklore and twenty-six other ethnic groups (180 songs) [10, pp. 319-320].

It is worth noting that many examples may be the first recordings of musical folklore of other peoples in Russia. According to B. B. Granovsky, two Bulgarian songs from the archive of V. F. Odoyevsky's works are the earliest known ones, since before that it was believed that musical samples of folklore of this people were made only in the late 1870s [10, p. 329]. The same can be said about the six Chechen songs that were recorded in the second half of the 1840s [10, p. 330].

In our opinion, the part of this work deserves special attention, where B. B. Granovsky shows how V. F. Odoevsky recorded musical and folklore material. To do this, he cited all the versions preserved in the archive (5 autographs in total) of the song "Goodbye girls".

Thanks to these examples , the method of V. F. Odoevsky as a folklorist becomes more understandable. Apparently, he recorded the song several times with possible variants, and then repeatedly rechecked the recordings made. That is why there are differences in different autographs, first of all, in the subtext. As noted by B. B. Granovsky: "among the contemporary folklore music recordings of Odoevsky (except for the collection of Russian folk songs by M. A. Balakirev, 1866), there are no recordings that would have been made with such high accuracy" [10, p. 324]. It is important to understand that since at that time there were no ways of audio fixation, V. F. Odoevsky resorted to the method of "musical folklore shorthand" (quite probably the most accurate method for that time), which consisted in instant recording of the melody he heard. This is evidenced, among other things, by the fact that the sketches "are sometimes written in cursive between, above or under the musical lines of Odoevsky's own composition, on top of the printed musical text, inside a drawing in a travel album, etc." [10, p. 324].

No less important are the information that V. F. Odoevsky supplied musical examples. Many of them contained both the passport data of the tune (where, from whom and under what circumstances the recording was made) and notes about the nature and features of the performance [10, pp. 320-325].

This article outlines all the main activities of V. F. Odoevsky as a folklorist and the key points that need further study.

In the publication "Russian (from I. E. Molchanov), Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Kazakh, Chechen songs and tunes in the collection of V. F. Numerous transcripts of the text (notes, comments, etc.) and musical samples of folklore of different ethnic groups were presented. Russian Russian, Lithuanian, Kazakh and Chechen songs are presented in full, and only from the singer I. E. Molchanov (since the entire corpus of Russian folk music is too large). 

The work is interesting because it presents a very diverse musical material, for example, in the section of Ukrainian songs there are one-voice tunes with subtext, melodies without text, works with accompaniment and even choral scores [11, pp. 203-229].

B. B. Granovsky gave detailed comments to each part of this article. They are akin to a small investigation in which the history of each melody is revealed step by step — how it could have ended up in the collection of V. F. Odoevsky.

Recordings from I. E. Molchanov are not only transcripts of archival documents. The Appendix contained 4 analytical editions with comments by E. V. Gippius [11, pp. 256-258]. These samples are of great interest because they bring archival material into the practical sphere, which is interesting not only for theoretical musicologists, but also for performing musicians, which will be discussed further.

 This study continues the first work, however, here specific musical samples are presented in more detail, in detail. They form a complete holistic view of a particular archival material.

In the following publication [12], transcripts of songs collected by V. F. were made. Odoevsky from the peasant I. Fomin. Exact information about this man has not been preserved, only that the records from him V. F. Odoevsky did it in the village of Kozlovo, Tver province [12, pp. 28-29]. Apparently, he was a talented performer who stood out among other peasants. "Fomin sang in a very free, improvisational manner, each time "singing" separate stanzas, which can be judged by the variants of various bars, turns and whole musical periods in Odoevsky's recording" [12, p. 32].

It is worth noting a number of significant points identified by B. B. Granovsky. Firstly, the songs were recorded in the order in which they were sung by I. Fomin, forming a kind of cycle that includes "ten long songs, four playing, one dancing, three soldiers, as well as three song tunes, two of which also belong to long songs" [12, p. 31]. Secondly, the fixation was carried out with great attention to detail, for example, V. F. Odoevsky tried to note any changes in the intonation of individual notes, motifs, phrases [12, p. 32]. Thirdly, the songs have full lyrics, which is not always present in recordings from other singers. Folklore work was carried out in the field (all songs from I. Fomin were made in pencil, "which is a characteristic feature of Odoevsky recording field recordings" [12, p. 28]) together with assistants — with A. B.'s niece. Vraska and, possibly, with V. I. Dahl [12, p. 32]. The texts exist in three versions: draft, which was recorded directly from the voice, verified — with possible edits and final [12, pp. 32-33].

The appendix presented the versions of songs performed by E. V. Gippius. They are given with comments clarifying individual fragments of records [12, pp. 69-86].

This article is akin to the previous publication. Having limited himself to materials from only one singer, B. B. Granovsky comprehensively studied the context of their appearance in the archive, made a transcript, and thanks to the help of E. V. Gippius prepared analytical editions of 14 songs — most of the tunes (20 songs were deciphered in total, of which 3 samples are only sketches of a melody with fragmentary text or no text at all).

The last great work of B. B. Granovsky was the sheet music edition of songs from I. Molchanov and I. Fomin [13]. The extensive introduction at the beginning duplicates the basic information from the above-mentioned studies on the folklore heritage of V. F. Odoevsky [13, pp. 3-10].

The collection contains 15 issues from I. Fomin and 18 from I. Molchanov. In the first section (from I. Fomin), only the song "Don't stagger, ah, well, don't wallow" was added [13, p. 19], and all the other samples are editorials by E. V. Gippius. But the part devoted to songs from I. Molchanov was significantly supplemented. All songs are presented with lyrics in one-voice presentation.

Briefly summarizing the activities of B. B. Granovsky on the study of the musical and folklore collection of V. F. Odoevsky, it should be noted that:

1. Over 500 samples of musical folklore, Russian and 26 other ethnic groups were identified.

2. These samples are quite likely the very first reliable musical notation in Russia.

3. Songs from I. Fomin and I. Molchanov have been fully deciphered from the collection of Russian song folklore, and notes consisting of 33 numbers have been published on their basis.

B. B. Granovsky's long-term research goes far beyond the archive of one person. These documents allow us to understand what (who and even how) was sung in the middle of the XIX century, because V. F. Odoevsky approached the fixation of folklore with great responsibility. It is quite possible that these are the most accurate musical notations of that time. In theoretical musicology, there is always a need for such information, since it is useful for conducting comparative historical studies, folklore reconstructions, analyzing the repertoire, identifying ladomelodic and metrorhythmic features of song samples, etc.

 In addition, it was fundamentally not easy for B. B. Granovsky to "read" the documents, he sought to "revive" the material, make it accessible not only to musicologists, but also to folk music performers. That is why all the processed transcripts have become part of the songbook.

Despite the great value of these materials, they, by and large, remain unnoticed in the scientific community. The search for B. B. Granovsky's publications reviewed in this article on the eLibrary portal showed only the only mention in the work of A. Y. Patoshina [14]. The author of this article expresses confidence that over time, B. B. Granovsky's long-term efforts to study and preserve song folklore will be appreciated.

 

Appendix 1

 

1. Autographs of the song "Many berries were born in the forest" from the archive of V. F. Odoevsky [11, p. 201].

 

2. The same song in the publication "Tunes of Russian songs recorded by V. F. Odoevsky" prepared by V. N. Kashperov [7, p. 132].

 

3. A variant in the publication "Songs of the Nugget singers Ivan Fomin and Ivan Molchanov in the collection of V. F. Odoevsky", edited by B. B. Granovsky [13, p. 56].

References
1. International Scientific Conference “Literature and Philosophy: From Romanticism to the 20th Century. To the 150th anniversary of the death of V. F. Odoevsky. Morning plenary session June 18, 2019. Biblioteka-Muzej Dom Loseva [Losev’s House Library-Museum], https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2B7yG43veI&list=PLjRdPAc7-AcJCI4rTR6vBtjm1RAdXjhEx&index=91 (accessed: 11.08.2022).
2. Gippius, E. V. (2003). Review of the most important collections of musical recordings of Russian folk songs from the 60s of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century. In: Materialy i stat'i. K 100-letiju so dnja rozhdenija E. V. Gippiusa [Materials and Articles. To the 100th anniversary of the birth of E. V. Gippius] (pp. 112–169). M.: Kompozitor.
3. Dorohova, E. A. (2016) Limits of reconstruction. In: Fol'klornoe dvizhenie v sovremennom mire: Sbornik statej [Folklore movement in the modern world: Collection of articles] (pp. 80–94). M.: Gosudarstvennyj respublikanskij centr russkogo fol'klora.
4. Pushkina, S. I. (1978) Po sledam N. E. Pal'chikova [In the footsteps of N. E. Palchikov]. M.: Sovetskij kompozitor.
5. Savel'eva, N. M. (2013). In the footsteps of Alexander Ivanovich Rubets. Voprosy jetnomuzykoznanija [Questions of Ethnomusicology], 2 (3), 112–126.
6. Odoevsky, V. F. (1863). Ancient song. In: Russkij arhiv [Russian archive], 2, colomns 107–111.
7. Tunes of Russian songs recorded by V. F. Odoevsky (1876) In: V. N. Kashperov (Ed.), Vestnik obshhestva drevnerusskogo iskusstva pri moskovskom publichnom muzee [Bulletin of the Society of Old Russian Art at the Moscow Public Museum] 11–12, 127–134. M.: V universitetskoj tipografii (Katkov) na Strastnom bul'vare.
8. Odoevsky, V. F. (1956). Muzykal'no-literaturnoe nasledie [Musical and Literary heritage], G. B. Bernandt (Ed.). M.: Muzgiz.
9. Vereshńhagina, K. S. (2020). ‘The Worldly Song Written in Eight Tones by Neumes with Cinnabar Marks’ from the archive of Vladimir Odoevsky. Muzykal’naya aka¬demiya [Music Academy], no. 3, (pp. 26–41), doi:10.34690/83.
10. Granovsky, B. B. (1980). Songs of the peoples of Russia in the musical collection and works of V. F. Odoevsky: Research experience. In: Tipologija i vzaimosvjazi narodov SSSR. Pojetika i stilistika. Sbornik statej [Typology and interconnections of the peoples of the USSR. Poetics and stylistics. Collection of articles] (pp. 312–341). M.: Nauka.
11. Granovsky, B. B. (1991). Russian (from I. E. Molchanov), Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Kazakh, Chechen songs and melodies in the collection of V. F. Odoevsky. In: Fol'klor: Pesennoe nasledie [Folklore: Song heritage] (pp. 176–260). M.: Nauka.
12. Granovsky, B. B. (1995). Songs and tunes of I. Fomin in the collection of V. F. Odoevsky. In: Russkaja narodnaja pesnja. Neizvestnye stranicy muzykal'noj istorii. Sbornik nauchnyh trudov [Russian folk song. Unknown pages of musical history. Collection of scientific papers] (pp. 26–86). SPb.: RIII.
13. Granovsky, B. B. (1998). Pesni pevcov-samorodkov Ivana Fomina i Ivana Molchanova v sobranii V. F. Odoevskogo [Songs of nugget singers Ivan Fomin and Ivan Molchanov in the collection of V. F. Odoevsky]. M.: MGFC «Russkaja pesnja».
14. Patoshina, A. Ju. (2001). To the question of the relationship between traditional and scenic folk singing art. In: Kul'tura narodnogo penija: tradicii i iskusstvo: Materialy nauchno-prakticheskoj konferencii [Culture of folk singing: traditions and art: Materials of the scientific and practical conference] (pp. 35–41). M.: MGIM im. A. G. Shnitke.

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In the journal "Philosophy and Culture", the author presented his article "The significance of B. B. Granovsky's activities in the study of song folklore from the archive of V.F. Odoevsky (to the 100th anniversary of the birth of B. B. Granovsky)", in which a study of the potential of scientific works of the Russian musicologist and teacher of the twentieth century devoted to the activities of V.F. Odoevsky was conducted. The author proceeds in the study of this issue from the fact that in the conditions of the active loss of the culture of folk singing, comparative historical research is of great importance. They allow us to identify the nature and intensity of changes in the repertoire over time, to recreate those tunes that were performed earlier in a particular region. The scientific community has even formed the practice of expeditions "in the footsteps" of one or another collector of folklore, which is designed to track the state of singing culture. In this case, recordings of folk music made by V. F. Odoevsky can become an important source of data. Russian Russian musicology The author notes the key importance of the legacy of V.F. Odoevsky as one of the founders of Russian musicology in the preservation and broadcasting of traditional Russian culture. At the same time, the author points out the insufficient study of the archival materials of the Russian thinker. According to the author, B.B. Granovsky was the only musicologist who conducted research in this direction. The relevance of the research is due to the fact that despite the great value of these materials, they, by and large, remain unnoticed in the scientific community. As proof, the author presents the search results on the eLibrary portal. The author of this article expresses confidence that over time, B.B. Granovsky's long-term efforts to study and preserve song folklore will be appreciated. The scientific novelty was made up of a bibliographic analysis of the activities of B.B. Granovsky. The theoretical basis of the research was the works of such musicologists as Gippius E.V. Patoshina A.Yu. Patoshina A.Yu. and others. The empirical basis of the research was the scientific works of B.B. Granovsky and the archive fund of V.F. Odoevsky. The methodological basis of the work is a bibliographic analysis. The purpose of the study is to analyze the scientific activity of B.B. Granovsky in the position of its importance in the study of the musical and folkloristic collection of V. F. Odoevsky. The author of the study presents an analysis of B.B. Granovsky's article "Songs of the peoples of Russia in the musical collection and works of V.F. Odoevsky", which is an in-depth review study of the musicologist, and highlights the main directions of scientific research: description of documents left after V.F. Odoevsky's death, their systematization by thematic and chronological basis. The author pays special attention to the methodology of B.B. Granovsky's work. As the basis for his scientific work, the researcher chose the "meridian method", which consists "in an end-to-end study of each fund in order to identify all mutually correlated information, records, fragments, etc. The musicologist recorded any records related to folklore and systematized them both by content and by type of text (article, note, note). As the author states, in total, Granovsky deciphered about 500 units, which, first of all, are samples of Russian (220 songs) folklore and twenty-six other ethnic groups (180 songs) B.B. Granovsky gave detailed comments on each part of this article. The author considers the advantage of B.B. Granovsky's activity to be the fact that it was fundamentally not easy for the researcher to read the documents, he sought to update the material, make it accessible not only to musicologists, but also to folk music performers. That is why all the processed transcripts have become part of the songbook. According to the author, the work is interesting because it presents a very diverse musical material, for example, in the section of Ukrainian songs there are single-voiced melodies with subtext, melodies without text, works with accompaniment and even choral scores. In conclusion, the author presents the conclusions on the studied material and concludes that B.B. Granovsky's long-term research goes far beyond the archive of one person. These documents allow us to understand the repertoire and manner of performing folk songs of the middle of the XIX century, because V.F. Odoevsky approached the fixation of folklore with great responsibility. In theoretical musicology, there is always a need for such information, since it is useful for conducting comparative historical research, folklore reconstructions, analyzing the repertoire, identifying the melodic and metrorhythmic features of song samples. It seems that the author in his material touched upon relevant and interesting issues for modern socio-humanitarian knowledge, choosing a topic for analysis, consideration of which in scientific research discourse will entail certain changes in the established approaches and directions of analysis of the problem addressed in the presented article. The results obtained allow us to assert that the study of archival materials, collections of samples of folk culture is of undoubted scientific and practical cultural significance. The obtained material can serve as a basis for further research within the framework of this issue. The material presented in the work has a clear, logically structured structure that contributes to a more complete assimilation of the material. This is also facilitated by an adequate choice of an appropriate methodological framework. The bibliographic list of the study consists of 14 sources, which seems sufficient for the generalization and analysis of scientific discourse on the subject under study due to the specificity of the subject of the study. The author fulfilled his goal, received certain scientific results that allowed him to summarize the material. It should be noted that the article may be of interest to readers and deserves to be published in a reputable scientific publication.