Musical comparative studies of the folklore traditions of Volga region peoples. Book review: Kondratiev M. G. Chuvash music in the mirror of parallels: on the problem of Volga-Urals musical civilization.

Abstract

The book by the Chuvash musicologist M. G. Kondratiev is one of the generalizing works in ethnomusicological comparative studies of the Volga region peoples’ folklore traditions. The author of the monograph focuses on re- vealing the common phenomena at different levels of organization of folklore works in the traditional cultures of Chuvash, Tatars, Mari, and Udmurts. Musical traditions of the ethnic groups concerned are considered in comparison with the Chuvash folklore by using the specified parameter analysis. The three chapters of the first part consider the peculiarities of the Volga region historic-ethnographical location formation and analyze the musical and aesthetic conceptions of the tradition bearers in specified ethnic groups. The second part, composed of four chapters, is dedicated to analyzing the morphology and text structures of song lines of different lengths. The third part deals with contextual and structural regularities of short plot samples of Chuvash folk poetry shavra youra compared with similar monostrophic forms of Tatar, Mari, and Udmurt folk lyrics. The fourth part thoroughly examines the relations of Chuvash and individual local groups of other Volga ethnic groups at the level of genre correspondences and intonation pattern. In the summary, the author argues for his concept of the Volga-Urals civilization, determining the place of Chuvash culture within this concept as fundamentally important. The methodology approbated in M. G. Kondratiev’s book is expected to be actual for studying the problems of interaction of music-folklore traditions of Siberian peoples.