E-mail: mari_sh_nt@mail.ru
Tel.: +7 (812) 312-21-29
2a, Glinki str., St. Petersburg, 190000, Russian Federation
Leading expert in folklore, A. Mekhnetsov Folklore Center, lecturer, Rimskiy-Korsakov
St. Petersburg State Conservatory
This research highlights a significant layer of the Russian folk song culture — male lyrical songs, so-called songs of lads. Studies based on comparative analysis of lyrical songs started in the end of the 19th century. This issue remains most actual now as well. Contemporary state of ethnomusicology allows to expand the range of sources, to enhance veracity of musical notation, to accomplish a comprehensive typological analysis. Within the framework of the paper, legitimacy of the used term “molodetskaya lirika” (lads’ lyrical songs) in relation to the variants of male songs processing one of classical plots “dream-portent of lad’s misfortune” (signing hero’s / recruit’s death in the foreign land). Samples of tunes and texts with a designated plot, recorded in the traditions of the western regions of Russia, were chosen to exemplify this plot. Smolensk and Tver’ lyrical songs often coincide with folk calendar and thus have caused continual scholarly controversy in regarding genre and style specificity. Key criteria to determine belonging of songs to the group of “lads’ lyrics” contains in their comprehensive analysis — at the level of poetic and musical components of the artistic form, as a result of which the style indicators characteristic of the local tradition are distinguished. There in this paper particular attention is paid to special singing techniques of male vocal performance.
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