Abstract
THE northern provinces of Russia are the parts of the empire where the old popular songs are still kept in the memory of the people in their greatest purity. Elsewhere they are often forgotten, or are altered by the intrusion of modern music, very often of the music-hall type. In 1886 the Russian Geographical Society sent out a small expedition in order to collect the really old popular songs — religious, epic, wedding, and so on—and 1190 of them are now published,both words and music, in the above-named collection. The words have been taken down by M. Istomin, and the music by M. Dütsch, who have both had a great deal of previous experience in that sort of work. Several songs of the collection are quite new, but the book's chief value is in the melodies of the epic songs (byliny), which now become known for the first time. It had always been supposed that the epic songs had no melodies, and were simply delivered in a sort of monotonous recitative; but it now appears that some of them have their special melodies, grave, most beautiful, and bearing the stamp of great antiquity. A map appended to the book shows the places visited by the expedition.
Songs of the Russian People.
Collected in the Governments of Arkhangelsk and Olonetz, by Th. M. Istomin and G. O. Dütsch. (St. Petersburg, 1894.)
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[Book Reviews]. Nature 50, 594 (1894). https://doi.org/10.1038/050594a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/050594a0