The legacy of Georgy Ivanovich Blagodatov and modern organology: following in the footsteps of the XV anniversary International Organology Congress "Blagodatovsky Readings"

Bulatova Dinara Aidarovna ORCID: 0000-0001-7617-0354 PhD in Art History Senior Researcher; Organology Department; Federal State Budgetary Research Institution 'Russian Institute for the History of the Arts' 190000, Russia, Saint Petersburg, Isaakievskaya pl., 5 dinara.bulatova@mail.ru

This year's 120th anniversary of the birth of the outstanding Russian instrumentologist, conductor, musician and educator Georgy Ivanovich Blagodatov (1904-1982) served as an occasion to once again recall the scientist's services to music science, as well as to demonstrate the continuation of his ideas in the research of followers of his scientific school. The XV International Instrumental Congress "Blagodatov Readings", held from November 25 to 27, 2024, made it possible to verify the decent level of modern instrumentation, continuing the traditions laid down at the Russian Institute of Art History more than half a century ago by the classics of the Russian organological school, among which the name of G. I. Blagodatov occupies a worthy place. More than 40 participants from Armenia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, China, as well as various cities of Russia – St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kazan, Saratov, Izhevsk, Yekaterinburg, Petrozavodsk, Novosibirsk - gathered to honor the memory of this scientist, as well as share their achievements and discoveries in the field of musical organology.

Blagodatovo Readings is the only regular international instrumental congress in the country. The forums held by the Instrument science sector of the RIII regularly bring together specialists who study musical instruments and instrumental music, as well as instrumentalists who use the results of their scientific work in practice, experts in the field of collecting musical instruments and representatives of other research fields. In the more than 30-year history of this scientific congress (the first Blagodatov readings were held in 1993 and became a kind of demonstration of the scientific forces of the new sector of instrumentation, revived by the largest Russian organologist I.V. Matsievsky after almost a 20-year hiatus), outstanding minds of Eurasian instrumentation showed themselves in it (V. Bachman, J. Montague, E. Hickman, E. Shtokman, and others), as well as novice scientists. The integration of new scientific results of the congress participants into the scientific space takes place not only at the congress itself, but also through the research series "Questions of Instrumentation", which publishes the materials of its reports.

The St. Petersburg Instrumental School, now headed by I.V. Matsievsky, arose on the solid foundation of the advanced center for the study of musical instruments, which has been established at the Russian Institute of Art History since its very beginning, rich in its history and associated with the names of outstanding scientists – S. L. Ginzburg, E. V. Gippius, K. A. Vertkov, S. Ya. Levin, T. M. Vyzgo, A.M. Mireka, and others ^[13]. Back in the second half of the 1920s - 1930s, the Institute operated such divisions as the cabinet of musical instrumentation, renamed the cabinet of comparative musicology and instrumentation, the cabinet of musical acoustics and psychophysiology, the experimental music laboratory, renamed the sector of new musical instruments, and then the laboratory of electro–musical instruments ^[15]. Since 1946, the Institute has opened a branch of instrumentation, headed by K. A. Vertkov until 1972, and after his death by G. I. Blagodatov ^[14].

The congress bears the name of G. I. Blagodatov for a reason. The uniqueness of his personality manifested itself in his multifaceted activities as an outstanding scientist, talented musician, orchestral conductor, and inquisitive organizer of musical and historical evenings, who tirelessly engaged in the revival of ancient music. ^{[6, 10-12, 17, 19, 21]}. Russian Russian harmonica (monograph "Russian harmonica: An essay on the history of the instrument and its role in Russian folk musical culture" (1960) ^[5]), instruments of other nations (in the Atlas of Musical Instruments), the originality of his mind can be traced in his scientific work: he wrote equally argumentatively about both traditional musical instruments and instrumental music. the peoples of the USSR" (1963; 1975) ^{[7, 8]}, for the creation of which G. I. Blagodatov, as part of the author's team, was awarded the Glinka State Prize of the RSFSR, he created sections dedicated to the Volga region, the Urals, the Komi ASSR, the Far East and Siberia), and on academic instrumental art: He is the author of the monograph "The History of the Symphony Orchestra" (1969) ^[2]. The encyclopedic mindset of G. I. Blagodatov served as an example for subsequent generations of scientists, and his fields of activity as an ethnoinstrumentologist and organologist-academic formed the basis of the main directions of both the work of the instrumentation sector and the congresses organized by him.

The life of G. I. Blagodatov, rich in creative events, and the vicissitudes of his scientific activity became the topic of the title lecture-report by I.V. Matsievsky. The main creative milestones and themes of G. I. Blagodatov's scientific works were continued in the speeches of A. A. Mikhailova (on the role of the Saratov harmonica in the Volga ditto), D. J. Amirova (on the harmonica in the Kazakh song culture). The reports revealed not only the enormous contribution of the scientist to the development of scientific areas of instrument science, but also identified certain provisions of his work that raise questions and discussions. Thus, a leading expert on Saratov harmonica, Doctor of Art History A. A. Mikhailova, who has many years of expedition experience, pointed out the erroneous judgment of G.I. Blagodatov about the constructive structure of this type of harmonica with basses that make up different minor chords on opening and closing. As G. I. Blagodatov writes, "a third key ("sub-voice") was added in the left hand, which gives the bellows A minor when stretched, and a D minor quartsextaccord when compressed" ^{[5, p. 18]}. Such a conclusion was made by the scientist not on the basis of studying the morphology of the Saratov harmonica, but after analyzing the musical material of Saratov ditties published in O. Kovaleva's work "For the village. The study of songs and ditties" (Moscow, 1925) ^[9]. According to the speaker, "such instruments were not found in the Saratov tradition, and minor ditties for the Saratov harmonica were not sung." A. A. Mikhailova recorded a similar type of instrument with minor chords, which was custom-made for Nogai karagashes and Astrakhan Tatars, who played their tunes on it (this instrument, which is a variation of Saratov harmonics, called saz).

Similar inaccuracies were also noticed by the authors of the reports on the "Atlas of Musical Instruments of the peoples of the USSR" (1964; 1975), in which G.I. Blagodatov was one of the authors, along with K. A. Vertkov and E. E. Yazovitskaya. A. Tattibaykyzy noted an error made by the authors in defining one of the instruments: the Kazakh kobyz in the first edition. The book was attributed to the Karakalpak gyrzhak, an instrument of a different constructive type, in the second edition – to the Karakalpak kobuz. Most likely, the reason for this confusion was caused by incorrect attribution of the instrument from the museum collection. The speaker from Kazakhstan was also perplexed by the incorrect spelling of the surname of her great-grandfather, the famous Kazakh kuishi Atlas Dukenov, who appears as Ilkhas in the second edition of the publication. A. Tattibaykyzy suggested correcting these errors with a possible third edition of the Atlas.

Another significant problem, which was noted in our report on the study of Turkic bowed chordophones in the Atlas of Musical Instruments of the Peoples of the USSR, is related to the peculiarities of the cultural policy of the Soviet era, in which the study of traditional cultures was usually correlated with the administrative-territorial division of the former USSR. Such an approach – to present the material not by peoples, but by union and autonomous republics and regions – entailed many problems of different levels. Due to the fact that in addition to the titular peoples in certain republics, there were others, smaller in number, but with their own musical instruments, the authors could not ignore them. So, in the section devoted to the Kazakh SSR, there is an additional subsection dedicated to the Uighurs, in the section "Khakass AO" - the Shorts and Tofalars, etc. Only one section in the Atlas is guided not by an administrative-territorial, but by an ethnic division – "The Peoples of the Far East and Northeastern Siberia" (authored by G. I. Blagodatov).

A much more significant problem is found in the sections devoted to the Adyghe, Karachay-Cherkess Autonomous Okrug and Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, where historically peoples of different ethnogenesis and ethnolanguage lived – firstly, Adygs, Circassians and Kabardins (historical, political and ethnoregional names of one ethnic group), secondly, Karachays and Balkarians (Turkic-speaking peoples who are close in culture and language). Due to the lack of ethnic gradation in these sections, it is difficult to understand the descriptions of the instruments of which particular people are meant in one case or another. In addition, in the section "Karachay-Cherkess Autonomous District", the term "khamlach" is used in relation to the bowed instrument, which is not traceable to ethnographic, historical and archival sources, and is most likely erroneous, migrated to the Atlas from the museum inventory (this error later began to pass into other publications, for example, in the book by I.M. Khashba about musical instruments of the Abkhazians ^{[20, pp. 209-210]}).

Most of the reports of the 15th Congress were related to the main fields of activity of G. I. Blagodatov - the study of ethnic and academic musical instruments. The speakers focused on a wide range of topical issues of studying and understanding the role of traditional musical instruments in culture, as well as instruments of the European Symphony Orchestra. The problems of ethnoinstrumentation were reflected in the speeches of T. M. Janizade (on the search for the prototype of the Iranian-Azerbaijani tare), M. V. Esipova (on the origin of the ancient Indian single-stringed zither), N. F. Klobukova (on the history of Japanese archaic zithers), I. V. Solovyov (on the performance specifics of playing the Sami tambourine), A. Tattibaykyzy (on the study and voicing of Kazakh kobyz from museum collections), I. V. Pchelovodova (on the Udmurt natural pipe chipchirgan), S. K. Kurbangadieva (on musical instruments of the peoples of Dagestan), E. S. Tanikova (on the analytical reconstruction of Mari gusel melodies), R. G. Pikichyan (on musical instruments in the life of Armenian children), Yu. S. Ovchinnikova (on the crow rattle of the indigenous peoples of the northwest coast of Canada), as well as a number of campanological reports (A. B. Nikanorov, A.V. Talashkin, L. D. Blagoveshchenskaya, I. V. Konovalov, I. V. Esipova). The academic branch was demonstrated in the topics of A.V. Ustyugova on the Baroque bow in German violin performance, I. V. Viskova on the school of trumpet playing according to the method of Girolamo Fantini, as well as musical instruments of composer music – E. A. Nikolaeva, A. S. Arevshatyan, A. B. Tikhomirova, A. S. Mikheeva. The problems of reconstruction of musical instruments, description, systematization and attribution of museum artifacts, which are important for G. I. Blagodatov's scientific and practical activities, were raised in the reports of P. I. Kravchun (on the problems of reconstruction of historical organs of St. Petersburg), M. V. Sergeev (on the description and systematization of the funds of Russian piano museums), A. A. Gadzhieva (on attribution varganov from the collection of the Russian Ethnographic Museum). The ascetic activity of G. I. Blagodatov in the revival of ancient musical instruments and his series of "historical concerts" were highlighted at a lecture-concert in memory of the scientist and musician, conducted by a researcher at the Institute M. A. Sen.

The scientific seminars held during the congress became vivid examples of the realization of the scientific aspirations of its participants in creative practice, which G. I. Blagodatov tirelessly implemented in his work. The seminar on traditional musical instruments and instrumental music of the mountainous region of Montenegro, held on the first day of the congress, included a performance by musician, laureate of international competitions M. Lovchensky, who presented the distinctive traditions of Montenegrin playing on the bowed chordophone gusle, aerophones dipla and dvoenice. The congress ended with an international seminar on the modification of traditional musical instruments, which presented experiments on the reconstruction of Uzbek musical instruments for ensemble music making in preschool music education (report by A. R. Tashmatova), the formation of a repertoire for the orchestra of folk musical instruments of the Republic of Uzbekistan using the example of the Sogdiana orchestra under the leadership of Honored Artist of the Republic of Uzbekistan F. R. Abdurakhimova.

The discussion and development of the ideas of G. I. Blagodatov, his associates and followers has always been an important part of the congress, the area of his memory studies. The 15th Congress was no exception, where attention was paid to the problems of the formation of musical archeology in Russia (A. A. Timoshenko), the history of Eurasian organology, represented by the names of P. Florensky (I. A. Chudinov), J. Ganjin (J. V. Knyazev), K. Sachs (M. I. Karpets), M. Nigmedzyanov (V. I. Yakovlev). In their speeches, the speakers honored the memory of the famous scientists who left this world and made a significant contribution to the study of musical instruments – Algirdas Vizhintas, Vladimir Bychkov, Pernebek Shegebayev, Suraya Agayeva.

Little-known archival materials formed the basis of O. V. Kolganova's report on the electric light and sound apparatus of M.A. Dymshits (1926-1927). The participants of the congress witnessed the emergence of a new direction of organology – musical architecture: in his report, L. Jiajun demonstrated the relationship of the symbolic image of the traditional Chinese instrument guqin in the architectural concept of the Qingtai Bolshoi Theater in Wuhan.

The important mission of the instrumental congresses of the Blagodatov Readings cycle is to support the continuity of the past of Russian organology, scientific ideas and concepts of its best representatives, and to promote the development of the science of studying musical instruments and instrumental music. The connection of scientific research with creative practice, which G. I. Blagodatov advocated so much, was fruitfully embodied in the 15th Congress and, hopefully, will be continued in subsequent scientific forums of the RIII instrumentation sector.