The Principles and Methods of the Gnesins’ School of Musicology in the Study of the Kuban Traditional Music Culture

Abstract

The article presents an analysis of the application of the principles and methods developed by the musicological school of the Gnesins’ State Musical-Pedagogical Institute (later, the Gnesins Russian Academy of Music) in the study of the folk music tradition of the eastern Slavic population of the Kuban region. Making use of the principles and methods of history and ethnography, the Moscow-based musicologists have made a considerable amount of progress in understanding the character of this regional culture. The study of folk music from the Kuban region based on the achievements of the Gnesins’ school of musicology began in the 1990s and has continued up to the present time. It was forestalled by Victor Zakharchenko’s professional communication with Evgeny Gippius on musicological subject matter and the combined work of the two masters on the folk music material from the Kuban region. The principles and methods of the researchers from the Gnesin Academy have been applied both at the stage of field activities of folk music ethnographic expeditions and during the cameral activities (analysis and notation of the songs). The folklorists from the Kuban region possess the principles of structural-typological analysis, which allows them to cognize successfully the material of the traditions of late formation. In recent years, fundamental works based on the methods of the Gnesins’ school of folk music studies have been written.

Keywords: folk music from the Kuban, Gnesins’ school of folklorists, traditions of musical culture, methods of folklore research