Having only recently learned of the collection of folk music by composer/ethnographic duo Alexei Lvov (transcriber) and Johann Pratsch (arranger) entitled "A Collection of Russian Folk Songs," the first of its kind to not only systematically record the folk songs of Russia but to apply categories to them as well (Frolova-Walker, 2008: 387), I am a bit behind.
Nevertheless, in my pursuit of understanding how Russian rap has come to embody much more than the legacy of blatnaya pesnya, urban romance, and chastushka but farther back into the 19th century, one could make the case that all of Russia's popular music starts with this single collection! What makes the case even more strong is the revelation that the way they were harmonized by Pratsch was done so to make them easier for the public to play and sing along-to (1). If this is not the methodology of popular music, what is?
It's relevant to note that the "authenticity" of the collection was held in utter suspicion to the "Kuchkists," the group of 19th century Russian composers responsible for much of what is considered 'quintessential Russian' repertoire today. Pratsch was not Russian but was Czech, and thus his interpretation of what Russian folk song was couldn't have been accurate (2). Despite this apparent 'inauthentic' stature, it's interesting to note that although Glinka is considered to be the Patriarch of the Russian musical tradition, as told by Frolova-Walker, "Glinka never came closer to Russian peasant music than Lvov-Prach" (3). Much of how Glinka treated folk-music was from the Western mind (4) and through an urban lens (5).
Nevertheless, he's considered to be the one who truly unified the Russian soul in music, and as Taruskin writes so well, "his Russians all speak in a single voice" (6).
Prior to University of Michigan's 1987 reprint (7), there is a lengthy pontification on the details of the collection, but in my pursuit of understanding its cultural importance from a rather broad perspective I'll only mention the most pressing elements in the collection's development. The collection had at least five different iterations, its first iteration in 1790 only including 100 songs before being significantly expanded to 150 by the second, etc. The song's themselves were sourced from St. Petersburg and this would cause many to argue about their folk authenticity due to the urban setting in which they were collected. With the introduction of the salon song in the 18th century (Rossiskaya pesnya), the whole idea of musical composition and domestic music making changed.
Song books began being created for purchase as early as 1759 (Teplov), and by the 1770s most of them were of the lyrical variety. The general name for these lyrical songs were kanti (kant sing.), denoting both spiritual and secular songs of many types. However, songbooks with notation weren't printed until 1776 (Trutovsky). An interesting point that is brought up is the usage of the word "narodnie" in the title, as in English it's translated to folk. However, in Russian it means much more than that, although an oddity arises as the songbook doesn't contain any "rossikie" songs (songs from the Russian 'nation') nor popular opera aria tunes.
Like I said before, this song book (and its iterations) was novel in that they delineated the kinds of folk songs they were and not simply the folk songs in and of themselves. Case in point LPC-2 (1806) which lists six versions, including among them protyazhnye songs, a style where the tempo is slower and the melody is prioritized over the text. Several other kinds are lists, but that will have to be for another time. I'll also have to go into the details of Prach's arrangement style in a following post, as it's much too interesting to summarize!
Notes
Frolova-Walker, 2008: 254
Ibid 1: 172
Ibid 1: 77
Ibid 1: 84
Ibid 1: 76
Taruskin, 1997: 41-47
Brown, 1987 [M 1756 LVO: For the University of Bristol]
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