А. K. Konchevsky and V. V. Paskhalov: From the History of the Study of Crimean Musical Folklore

This article examines the history of cooperation between the well-known amateur collector of Crimean songs and melodies Arkady Konchevsky and the Ethnographic Section of the State Institute for Musical Science (GIMN). With the financial support of the People’s Commissariat of Education of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, musical and ethnographic research on the songs of Crimean Tatars, Karaites, Krymchaks, and Greeks became one of GIMN’s priorities in the mid‑1920s. In 1923–1925 Konchevsky conducted three expeditions to record songs and melodies on phonographic cylinders. He submitted the material he collected to the Ethnographic Section, headed by Vyacheslav Paskhalov, who was engaged in analysis of the musical structure of Crimean songs. The songs were arranged by pianist Mikhail Stavitsky, who repeatedly accompanied Konchevsky on piano at ethnographic concert-lectures. Together Konchevsky, Paskhalov and Stavitsky prepared two songbooks for publication — ​“Songs of the Crimea” (1924) and “Songs of the East” (1925). The author describes the scholarly and ethnographic research on the musical folklore of Crimea at GIMN and reveals the reasons for which it was essentially curtailed. The article is based on previously unknown material from the archives of the Russian National Museum of Music.