M.N. Zhirkov – the first researcher of the Yakut khomus: questions of origin, execution, existence

Pavlova-Borisova Tat'yana Vladimirovna PhD in Art History Associate Professor, Department of Culturology, Ammosov North-Eastern Federal University 677000, Russia, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Yakutsk, Kulakovsky str., 42 pavlovaborisova@mail.ru Other publications by this author

The first Yakut composer, the founder of the national school of composition, M.N. Zhirkov, throughout his life, carried out a lot of work on collecting materials and studying Yakut folk music, including folk instruments. The result of his scientific activity was the writing of the study "Yakut folk music", which for many years after the premature departure of the composer from life was kept in the storerooms unpublished. For a long time, M.N. Zhirkov's materials were little known to a wide range of fans of Yakut folk music, including folk instruments and, in particular, about khomus ^{[5; 14]}. Almost half a century later, the Yakut musicologist G.G. Alekseeva published the work of M.N. Zhirkov in 1981 ^[5].

The second edition was carried out four decades later in 2022 by the author of this article as part of the publication of the Collected Works of M.N. Zhirkov as volume IX - in an edition preserving the peculiarities of the researcher's scientific style ^[4].

In general, the Yakut khomus is known as a phenomenon in science and has been actively studied in recent years ^{[1; 2; 3; 6; 7; 8; 17; 18; 19; 20; 22; 23]}, but, as the materials of our research show, the fundamental role in the development of problems about the Yakut khomus especially in the initial period of development of the Yakut musical science, belongs to M.N.Zhirkov ^{[13; 14; 15; 16]}.

The purpose of this article is to consider the main scientific views of M.N.Zhirkov on the origin of the Yakut khomus, its existence, and the peculiarities of performance, as well as to study his contribution as the first researcher of this instrument in the field of historical regional musicology.

The article uses a retrospective, historical-comparative, organological method as well as a comprehensive research method, in which the khomus is considered as an integral part of the traditional, and now the entire musical culture of the Yakuts, taking into account the data available to date from archaeology, ethnography, and history.

In his fundamental work, M.N. Zhirkov outlined the fundamental views on the genre, style composition, history of the study of Yakut folk music, intonation and rhythmic features of folk tunes, as well as the existence and prospects for the development of national musical instruments.

   Among them, special attention was paid by the researcher to the Yakut harp - khomus.  He further notes that the German harp is better known as a maultrommel – it is characterized by motor sound production and in joint compositions it is more used as an instrument that sets the rhythmic basis, so it obviously has a name – "mouth drum". By chang, the Iranian angular harp, common among the peoples of the East, the Yakut composer, apparently, meant the eastern harp of chankovuz. In Uzbekistan, he is better known as kopuz. In modern science studying the harp, interest in it does not subside, researchers find new forms of this instrument among other peoples, conduct a comparative analysis ^[21].

In the light of modern theoretical studies of the harp as a widespread musical instrument ^{[9; 10; 11; 24; 25; 26]} the historical significance of the Yakut khomus looks in a new way. In the world classification of the harp, it occupies a special place as a kind of musical instrument in Northeast Asia at the junction of various ethnic cultures.

M.N. Zhirkov disagreed with Z.'s researchers. Ewald, V. Kosovanov, S. Avayantsev, according to whom "... due to the delay in the processes of decomposition of the tribal system (...) in the field of ideological superstructures," all the northern tribes of Siberia generally have "the most primitive stage of musical thinking, compared with other Siberian nationalities" and "extremely weak development of instrumental music - "...the instruments of the described nationalities are limited to the so-called "harp", common among all the peoples of the north..." ^{[4, p.73]}, but at the same time M.N. Zhirkov supports the position of scientists of that period that the khomus is "the most common musical instrument among the Yakut people" from the very limited traditional musical instruments of this ethnic group.

M.N. Zhirkov in chapter 2 "On musical instruments of the Yakut people in the historical and ethnographic literature" of his study "Yakut folk music" examines the first mentions of khomus, which were known by that time in the sources of the pre-revolutionary period - the works of Russian travelers and researchers.

The Russian traveler of German origin A.F. Middendorf wrote the following: "These, full of life, observers of nature are ready to sing at any time, but the only musical instruments that I met with them were (...) violin and harp. Both are obviously borrowed from the Russians."^[8],  

Researcher and naturalist R.K. Maak believed that: "Yakut dances are never accompanied by music and in general the Vilyui Yakuts do not know any music and do not know any musical instruments and do not have any musical instruments, except for the ill-sounding harp borrowed from Russians, on which idle Yakuts sometimes strum for whole days" ^[7].

Political messenger V.L. Seroshevsky noted that: "The Yakuts are very fond of listening to instrumental music, especially playing the violin. They themselves do not have any musical instruments except khamys, an instrument consisting of an iron frame with a spring in the middle, which is played with fingers, taking the frame in their lips and varying the tones with the help of teeth and tongue. This device is similar to the Little Russian "drum". I saw him in the valley of the Carpathian Mountains in the hands of shepherds. I wonder if he was brought there from Asia or, conversely, made his way to the far northeast along with the conquering Cossacks. The accompaniment to the song on khamys is impossible, and the singer inserts its silvery, gentle sounds only as an ornament, like the blows of a cymbal. However, I know one song that describes the spring flight of birds and where the singing of the latter in the intervals between verses is reproduced exclusively by playing the khamys" ^{[17, pp.570-571]}.

   M.N. Zhirkov offers his own version of the interpretation of the etymology of this national term, given by V.Seroshevsky: "It can be assumed that the name of the Yakut musical instrument khomus came from the plant "reed", since reed in Yakut is khomus. Probably, many of us were fond of homemade khomuses made of kindling or reeds from under tea reed boxes in childhood. They sounded, however, muffled, but still made a musical sound" ^{[4, p.76]}.

Thus, the composer hypothesizes that the title  The Yakut instrument khomus-khamys comes from the word "reed", common in the Turkic languages (Turk., kypch., Crimea.-tat., Azerbaijan., tat. kamys - i.e. "plant", "reed beds" (according to Radlov) ^[12].

M.N. Zhirkov gives an image of a homemade khomus made of a splinter or reed ^{[4, p.71]} - kulu h un khomus. It was made of a thin splinter (wood chips) or a reed plate with a protruding narrow edge – the so-called "applied" (M.N. Zhirkov's definition) reed tongue, which, when struck with the fingers of a hand, as a result of vibration, emitted a dull sound of a certain height.

Fig.1. A chomus made of wood

It should be noted that such a plate harp among the Yakuts, made of chips, splinters, wood, was called wooden - mas khomus - according to the material from which it could be made, but did not have a wide existence. There is also a mention of the existence among the Yakuts of a lamellar harp made of bone - the so-called bone - uoh khomus or horn, i.e. from the horn of an animal - muos khomus, but M.N. Zhirkov does not provide information about them. These plate harps according to the systematics of musical instruments by E.Hornbostel and K.Sachs They belong to idioglottic harps - plucked idiophones, index 121.21. In the Yakut culture, they were perceived rather as toys-crafts for brightening up leisure, including children's, since they were easy to manufacture and use.

Attention should be paid to the fact that M.N.Zhirkov, in the classification of musical instruments of the Yakut people proposed by him in this work, refers the khomus to wind reed instruments. This observation needs to be corrected - according to the widely known taxonomy of E.Hornbostel and K.Sachs apply index 121.221 to the Yakut metal chomus, a class of plucked heteroglottic (with a tongue attached to the instrument frame) arc idiophones.

Among the prototypes of the so-called "wind reed instruments" M.N. Zhirkov singled out "a leaf of grass clamped between lips or fingers..." p^{[4, p. 70]}.

When identifying the spectral textures of music performed on harps made of five different materials, researchers A.V. Nikolsky, E.E. Alekseev, I.E. Alekseev, V.E. Dyakonova came to the conclusion that "grass and metal arc harps form two poles of textured arrangement. Between them are bamboo, bone and wooden frame harps. The order of increasing sampling of batches (components of the spectral texture) coincides with the order of increasing complexity of manufacturing technology and limiting the availability of appropriate material for the general public" ^{[11, p.13]}.

In their opinion, these materials are divided into the following groups:

"1. Herbal instruments are distinguished by a simple quiet clicking sound, low harmony, lack of a pedal and poor texture differentiation, which also characterizes the yash-komus, mas khomus and komus charts attributed by Yu.I. Sheikin to proto-drums ^[19].

2. Bamboo, wooden and bone instruments are distinguished by a loud, low and harsh tone of heterogeneous content, noticeable harmony, good or incomplete texture differentiation and the presence of two or three types of texture for each of the materials.

3. Metal instruments are distinguished by the longest-sounding, full and homogeneous tone with the highest harmony and excellent control over the tonal organization (TO) of each of the parties - from triad to microchromatic" ^{[11, pp. 13-14]}.

 As Yu.I. Sheikin wrote, "the simplicity of manufacturing brings the sounding vein closer to the harp and especially the harp - idiophones in the form of elastic tongues made of chips, twigs and thin pointed bone. A sliver - mas khomus - made of birch or dried larch on the root is known among the Sakha people as a children's sound toy. According to the memoirs of the outstanding bearer of the Sakha folklore tradition in the XX century, S.A. Zverev - Kyl Uol, the mas khomus was almost the first instrument of the Sakha, because a child could make and master it. An ordinary sliver with a thin tip of the tutar bocciuog was used, which was brought to the slightly open mouth, and a slight pinch of the finger produced a sound vibration (Chakhov A.I. Sakha was a musical instrument. Yakutsk, 1993. pp.6-7). A.P. Reshetnikova rightly draws attention to one of the tales of Sakha, in which the hero, getting angry, "began to speak so loudly that the khomuses broke off from strong pillars," i.e. slivers-harps - "sounding slivers" ^{[22, p.80]}.

 About the arc metal Yakut khomus in the named work, the author left the following description: "The most common musical instrument among the Yakut people, belonging by nature to the specified group of instruments, is the khomus. It consists of a horseshoe-shaped iron rim with elongated legs. A steel plate in the form of a dragonfly leg with a curved thin end is attached to this horseshoe at one end" ^{[4, p.76]}.

 Fig.2. Yakut metal chomus

 As illustrations, M.N. Zhirkov cites images made by graphic artist E.M. Shaposhnikov and member of the Union of Writers of the USSR E.P. Shestakov (Erciman).

 One of them depicts a Yakut girl in a national costume playing a khomus. The instrument itself is practically not visible in her hands, but the reader defines her as a khomusist by the characteristic position of her hands – with her left hand she holds the khomus at her mouth, and with her right she methodically strikes his tongue.

According to the sitting position of the performer, the position of the body, the tilt of her head down, the collected position of the hands, in which the elbows are slightly pressed against the body, we can conclude about the traditional style of playing on the khomus, called syyy tardy – i.e., "moderate", "long-drawn" game with calm phases of inhalation and exhalation, with a long intense

Fig.3. Yakutka playing on a khomus

 sound production, in contrast to the dynamic manner of playing practiced by modern Yakut performers on the khomus - with fast phases of inhalation and exhalation at a sufficiently high tempo, especially in the final parts of the compositions.  It can be sustained, as a rule, standing straight, when the shoulders are widely deployed, the elbows are raised and spread apart, which allows you to achieve a multiple, methodically repeated sharp wrist swing, providing greater sound dynamics.        

Indeed, during the years of M.N. Zhirkov's writing of the study "Yakut folk Music", the traditional manner of performing on a khomus was practiced - syya tardy (from syya - i.e. "gradually" and tardy - i.e. "twitching, twitching")  It was the women who filled their leisure time in this way: "They play on it, biting it with their teeth and adjusting the sounds with their lips and tongue. This instrument was widespread among the Yakuts, but it was mainly played by women," the composer wrote quite rightly ^{[4, p.76]}.

Currently, a large number of young male homusists have come forward, striving for virtuoso mastery of this instrument for public performances in the framework of both amateur, amateur and professional concert performance.

The composer further mentions in his work: "... researchers have not yet established the names of the most prominent virtuoso performers on this instrument, who were and are among the people," which allows us to conclude that the existence of this Yakut instrument during the period described by the author of the study was characteristic of traditional culture, including with a certain characteristic the anonymity of musical creativity.     

In contrast, starting from the 30s of the twentieth century, the names of Yakut homusists began to be more actively introduced into the musical and cultural context of the Soviet era - among them it is necessary first of all to mention Luka Tournina, Prokopy Sleptsova, and later Ivan Alekseev-Khomus Uybaan, etc. Currently, many well-known modern homusist performers are almost all amateur or professional artists who lead an active performing practice, including on the concert stage.

M.N. Zhirkov also notes that the khomus as an artifact was not found by archaeologists during excavations on the territory of Yakutia, in particular, it relies on data obtained by academician A.P. Okladnikov, who mentions only the discovery of an object similar to a bone flute by him ^{[4, C.77]}, unlike, for example, the harps of the ancient Slavic culture of the Ekimauka settlement, dating from the IX-X centuries, as well as Russian harps found during excavations in Veliky Novgorod, which belong to the period of the XI-XV centuries. 

Based on this circumstance, the researcher agrees with the opinion of R.K. Maak and A.F. Middendorf that the khomus was borrowed by the Yakuts from the Russians: "It is unclear exactly where this instrument was borrowed by the Yakuts. It is only known that the Golds and Orochons borrowed it from the Yakuts. The harp or khomus was widespread among many peoples throughout Russia, as well as in Austria-Hungary, among the Balkan peoples, Turkic, Finnish, Mongolian tribes and many others. Among Russians it was called dyrdla, among Ukrainians – drymba, among Serbo-Croats – drambule, among Cheremis and Chuvash – kabash or kabas, among Germans – zimngelkugel, among Kirghiz – Timir komuz, among Uzbeks – chang. During archaeological excavations in Yakutia, the khomus was not found anywhere. This gives reason to agree with the opinions of R. Maak and A.F. Middendorf on the borrowing of khomus Yakuts among Russians" ^{[4, p.76]}.

Nevertheless, according to A.V. Nikolsky, E.E. Alekseev, I.E. Alekseev, V.E. Dyakonova, "the time of the genesis of the first organic harps can be established by dating the migration of the Siberian indigenous population to America... but there are absolutely no facts of the use of the harp by the indigenous population of America in the pre-Columbian era," and then they continue: "Altai and Sayan are the homeland of the harp. The Yakuts, for whom the khomus represents the national emblem, originate, judging by linguistic data, from the same region" ^{[11, p.21]}.

Thus, additional sources and materials are needed to solve this problem - the issue requires further research involving more data, including from archaeological sources, to clarify the hypothesis expressed by M.N. Zhirkov in support of the conclusions of R. Maak and A.F. Middendorf.

In accordance with the above facts, it is necessary to draw the following conclusions about the explication of M.N.Zhirkov's scientific views on khomus:

1. The founder of the Yakut school of composition, M.N. Zhirkov, was one of the first to investigate the issues of origin, history, existence, and performance in the Yakut language in the period up to the first half of the XX century.

2. M.N. Zhirkov's materials are of great scientific interest and are very relevant in modern conditions, when interest in the Yakut khomus and the practice of playing it has grown significantly.

3. M.N. Zhirkov in his research provided information about two types of khomuses:

 - wooden (reed) lamellar khomus/ khamys - which was much less common among the Yakuts;

- metal arc clamp is widely and universally used.

4. M.N. Zhirkov supported the hypothesis expressed by the first Russian travelers, researchers of the life and way of life of the Yakut people R. Maak and A.F. Middendorf, expressed by them in relation to the Yakuts borrowing a harp from Russian explorers.

5. This hypothesis currently does not find wide support among modern researchers of the Yakut Khomus and additional sources and materials, including those of archaeological origin, are needed to solve this problem in order to shed light on this issue to one extent or another.

6. The observations made by M.N. Zhirkov, the images of the Yakut khomus known to him at that time indicate that this national practice was actively present in the musical culture of the Yakuts.

7. Having studied the khomus as a phenomenon of the national musical culture of the Yakuts, composer M.N. Zhirkov subsequently began to take active measures to modernize it in order to introduce it into the professional musical culture of this ethnic group.

8. The information collected and introduced by M.N. Zhirkov into musical and cultural circulation has had a great impact on modern generations of Yakut khomus makers, khomus performers who are currently guided by the data provided by him.