who asked the first question? - International Research Center For ...

50famously declared that to verify “Russianness” of a song, the song must comply to thefollowing two conditions: (1) it should be playable on black keys of the piano only(pointing to the pentatonic character of scales) and (2) it should be playable (on a pianoagain) with one finger only (pointing to the monophonic character of Russian traditionalmusic).The first serious blow to this unfounded generalization was the publication of thecollection of Russian folk songs by Yuly Melgunov (Melgunov, 1879). Although thecollection itself represented a collection of professional arrangements of the folk tuneswith the piano accompaniment (therefore had not much value for representing thetraditional Russian polyphony), in his descriptions of the Russian traditional singing styleMelgunov was able to verbalize the essence of Russian traditional polyphony. Accordingto his notes, Russian traditional polyphony is generally built around one main melody,sung in a large group, but it is crucial that participating voices do not sing in unison allthe time. Instead they often depart from the main melody, creating interesting multipartharmonies. These “departures” from the unison happen in specified moments of themelody, and going back to the unison also happens in specified moments – to mark themost important sections of the song (like the beginning and the ending of the sections).This was actually the first description of Russian polyphonic style, today known inRussia as “Podgolosochnaia polifonia” (literary – “polyphony of subsidiary voices”). Bythe way, the term “podgolosok”, very popular in Russian, then Soviet, and now post-Soviet ethnomusicology, was introduced by Melgunov. In western musicology andethnomusicology the closest term to describe “podgolosochnaia polifonia” is “variantheterophony”, although to be more precise, besides the heterophonic “thick” groupsinging of the melody “podgolosochnaia polifonia” also contains a very importantadditional, functionally contrasting part, mostly sung by a soloist higher than a mainmelody (see about this below).In 1905 –1912 Evgeniya Lineva published her landmark collection of Russiantraditional songs (Lineva, 1905-1912). The collection represented well-documentedtranscriptions of the recordings made by the phonograph. This collection proved thecorrectness of the Melgunov’s ideas about the character of Russian polyphony. Laterstudies revealed more complex character of Russian traditional polyphony. Recordings ofRussian polyphonic songs on multi-channel technology (Rudneva et al, 1979) wereparticularly important in this regard.Discussing different styles of Russian traditional polyphony, Zemtsovsky listsfive main types:(1) Singing in “almost unison”. In this style small polyphonic elementsusually occur just before the cadences;(2) So called “heterophonic polyphony” (or variant heterophony). Thisstyle is widespread, particularly in the northern half of Russia.Zemtsovsky points the differences of the performer’s intentions increating this texture: in one case “the intention is monophonic, with aheterophonic result: in the second, the intention is polyphonic, andcreates a heterophonic structure” (Zemtsovsky, 2000:757).(3) Drone polyphony was maybe the most neglected among the Russianpolyphonic types (possibly because of the so-called “Podgolosochnaia