The Fifth International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony ...

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Mikhail Lobanov
due to the lowering of the second and fifth steps (as in Shostakovich’s modes), their tunes acquire dramatism
and some indefinable mournful sounding. Such is, for instance, the song Rosun’ka, oh, rosa (My Little Dewdrop,
oh Dew-drop) (Gudkov, Levi, 1941: 70) of northern Vepses. It follows therefore that each strophe is
ended by a long-drawn tone which goes on sounding even when the leading singer starts singing the following
strophe. Apart from the regulated heterophony the multipart singing of Vepses also includes an element of
drone singing. <strong>The</strong> long cadential note is drawn out by all the singers as long as their breath allows them
to, this renders the performance an unusual suggestive power. This tone is never passed on in the form of
chain breathing – imperceptibly, the leading singer takes a pause and backed by the choir begins singing
the following strophe.
<strong>The</strong> strophes of the long-drawn songs have a chain character, i.e. every next strophe begins by repeating
the last words of the preceding one. Such a repetition differs in volume and form. <strong>The</strong> long-drawn song uses
its different forms (e.g. AB BC CD…), but it was the long-drawn song that one of them, the so-called middle
coupling solo part (Popova, 1977: 120) or the singled out solo part (Gippius, 1957: 248) stemmed from, its
expressiveness being the most prominent (AB bCD dEF…).
In the Vepses’ songs the limit of the length of drone singing is equal to the coupling solo part. <strong>The</strong> verbal
text of such a solo part sounds as a trace of the preceding idea. Its projection on the future is perceived in the
new strophe and the drone tone is considered to be the long-drawn musical finale of the preceding one. It would
be more correct to call it “the drone trace”. As for the provenance of this structure in Vepses’ joint singing
there may be at least three versions.
Firstly, it can be assumed that the drone trace was widespread in the Russian songs, but it is still retained
by the Vepses, as they are the nation preserved most unchanged in the northwest part of Russia. Though
looking at the materials, published in various sources, showed that this method practically never occurs in
Russian songs. It is not attested even in the part of the Vologda Region, where as late as the nineteenth century
the Chuds, who had the language of their own, still lived, but quite soon they were assimilated by the Russian
population of the area (western regions in the neighbourhood of Beloozero, the town Kaduj and elsewhere).
Though some songs of Tarnoga district (Vologda Region) or the Ustia district of the Archangelsk Region
reveal only weak traces of drone singing (Mekhnetsov, Marchenko, Melni, 1983: No. 12, 34) (ex. 4), they
still might be considered the areas populated with the participation by Chud’ (Vepses) ethnic component?. All
this bears witness to the fact that the traces of the drone singing were too weak and occurring only locally to
be considered a common Russian manner of multipart singing.
Secondly, we could suggest the opposite: the drone trace emerged among the Vepses, being associated
with the lyric long-drawn songs in the Russian language. But this version also has its weak points. Long-drawn
singing is generally supposed to have emerged at a later date (Zemtsovski, 1967), but now the idea that this
genre emerged not simply at a later date but quite a long time ago, is gaining strength, the first information
about it appeared just before Peter I’s reforms (Vlasov, 2009; Lobanov, 2005). Long-drawn singing came to
Vepses when their ethnogenesis had already been completed and at the same time their division into three
dialectal groups of northern, middle and southern Vepses, living far apart from one another and practically not
maintaining any relationships may have already taken shape. But the presence of such a specific manner as the
traces of drone singing in the lyrics of all these groups suggests that either the idea of disconnection among
these groups, based on the linguistic data, is greatly exaggerated, or it has another cause. So a third version
comes into existence: drone songs with Vepses was a very early form of multipart singing, connected with
other genres and another language. <strong>The</strong> previous forms of singing sank into oblivion, they were superseded