From the History of Early Expeditions of Musicologists from the Gnesins’ Institute to the Russian North (1950–1970s)

Abstract

The article presents a brief excursus into the history of the folk music expeditions organized by music scholars from the Gnesins’ Institute to the Russian North. The beginning of the expeditionary study of the Northern Russian territories and the formation of a fund of musical and ethnographic materials on this region dates back to the creation of the Cabinet for Folk Music at the Gnesins’ Institute (1958). Its leader was the famous folklorist Vladimir Kharkov, who during the time period between the 1950s and the 1970s determined the routes and methods of expeditionary work. Since 1959, under his leadership, the traditions of the Kirov Region have been collectively and systematically studied. Individual expeditions were sent to other northern Russian areas with the participation of musicologists specializing in musical folklore: Igor Istomin explored the basins of the rivers Northern Dvina, Vaga, and Mezen (in the Arkhangelsk Region), while Ksenia Bromley explored the upper Volga region. 

The prominent national ethnomusicologist Evgeny Gippius played an important role in the study of the folk music traditions of the Russian North by the scholars of the Gnesins’ Institute. Since the mid-1960s, he supervised the expeditionary and scholarly work of Borislava Efimenkova on the study of the lamentation culture of the eastern Vologda region, in the 1970s he initiated the expeditions of Evgeniya Reznichenko on the Onega River in the Arkhangelsk region, which ended with the discovery of the traditions of Pomorye. The continuous research of these territories and the mass recording of the material has made it possible to carry out the structural-typological and arealogical interpretation of the Vologda and Pomorye traditions of lamentations.

The most important result of the early expeditions of the musicologists from the Gnesins’ Institute to the Russian North were the published collections of folk music of various genres and many scholarly studies, including dissertations, on the traditional culture of the region.

Keywords: Russian North, musical and ethnographic expeditions, folklore archive of the Gnesin Russian Academy of Music