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

68UkraineRegarding polyphonic singing traditions, the second largest country of Europe(after Russia), the Ukraine has quite a paradoxical situation. On one hand, Ukraine is ahome of very interesting and rich forms of traditional polyphony (in Ukrainianbogatogolosie) and on the other hand most of the Ukrainian ethnomusicologists displayalmost total neglect towards their own polyphonic traditions.Founders and the greatest representatives of early Ukrainian musicology FilaretKolessa (beginning of the 20 th century) and Klyment Kvitka (from the 1920s and 1930s)were concentrated on the study of solo professional singers (mostly blind musicianminstrels,kobzars). Polyphonic singing (“Gurtovoe penie”) was not in the mainstream oftheir research interests. K. Kvitka, considering polyphony a late phenomenon, wrote withregret about the replacement of the ancient monophonic tradition of refined music withthe late mass tradition of “gurtovoe penie” (group singing, or choral polyphony. Kvitka,1986:87).One of the best publications of the beginning of the 20 th century, representing theUkrainian polyphony (unfortunately, regionally very limited), was published by Russianscholar Evgeniya Lineva (Lineva, 1991, the first edition –1905). Severely criticized byKvitka, the publication did not have much influence on the development of Ukrainianethnomusicology. It is clear today that at least some points of the critique were notdeserved by Lineva. For example, Kvitka wrote that the transcription of traditional songsby the ear from memory is much more scholarly appropriate than the transcription fromthe phonographic recording (as it was done by Lineva).A monumental volume “Ukrainian Traditional Polyphony” was published in 1962(Iashchenko, 1962). A special research article about the Ukrainian polyphony came out asa part of this volume. Unfortunately, although the songbook gives plenty of examples ofUkrainian polyphony, the songbook (1) did not provide the regional study of polyphonictraditions; (2) failed to pay any attention to the most important polyphonic northernregion of the Ukraine – so called “Polissia”, and (3) failed even to mention the drone typeof polyphony on the territory of the Ukraine (more so: there is a special declaration thatdrone in Ukrainian music exists only in instrumental music, and not in a vocal music.Iashchenko, 1962:57). The whole volume represents solely the examples of late stylepolyphony, obviously influenced by European classical music (with parallel thirds andEuropean style triadic harmony). There is almost no mentioning of any possible parallelsof Ukrainian polyphony in the accompanying the songbook research (even with EasternSlav polyphonic traditions), and the polyphonic traditions in Ukrainian music aredeclared to be a result of the late influence of European classical polyphony on Ukrainiantraditional monophonic music. My colleagues would agree that this position wasgenerally abandoned in European musicology at least after the first publication ofSchneider’s “History of Polyphony” in 1934-35.In my opinion, the most informative publication on Ukrainian polyphony is arelatively small article (14 pages) of Vladimir Matvienko “On some peculiarities ofUkrainian Traditional Polyphony” (Matvienko, 1967). Matvienko rejected the idea of late(19 th –20 th century) origin or Ukrainian polyphony and suggests that the traditionalpolyphony was one of the main forces behind the development of Ukrainian professionalpolyphonic music. Matvienko was also the first who wrote about the existence of drone