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Modernist Trends In Estonian Musicology In The 1970s–1980s And The Study Of Folk Melodies

2008; Routledge; Volume: 39; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01629770802250099

1751-7877

Urve Lippus,

Music History and Culture

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Notes 1 On musicology in Finland and Sweden in the early twentieth century, see Bengtsson (Citation1976), Haapanen (Citation1939) and Lappalainen (Citation1990). 2 Leichter's article originally appeared in Kunst ja Kirjandus, a supplement to the daily newspaper Päevaleht, 31 March 1940. 3 It should be noted, however, that the faculty of the Tallinn Conservatory also had to conduct research as part of their workload; this was a requirement at all university-level institutions. Practicing musicians were permitted to substitute composing or performing for written research, but many chose instead to study the history of their field or any number of pedagogical problems. A handful of musicologists (mostly folklorists) were also employed within the system of the Academy of Sciences. 4 Leichter's copy of this letter is preserved in the archives of the Estonian Museum of Theatre and Music: TMM, f. M 159, n. 1, s.ü. 553, l. 28. Leichter's plans for the department (TMM, M159, s.ü. 553, l. 34–5) read: A. Estonian music history: (1) Riho Päts (part-time), ‘The Life and Works of Rudolf Tobias’, (2) Aurora Semper (part-time), ‘Miina Härma and Her Musical Life-Work’, (3) Karl Leichter (part-time), ‘The Development of Estonian Music (General Survey)’, (4) Hillar Saha (senior researcher), ‘Music in Estonia in the Middle Ages’, (5) Paul Sarv (junior researcher), ‘The Life and Works of Aleksander Läte’; B. Collecting and studying Estonian folk music: (a) continuation of collecting folk music in cooperation with the students of folklore at the University of Tartu and the Tallinn Conservatory, (b) systematization of folk melodies, (c) publication of folk melodies, (d) investigation of Estonian instrumental folk music and folk instruments; researchers: (1) the best leader for the field is Herbert Tampere, (2) Elman Pass (senior researcher), (3) and (4) technical assistants; equipment: (1) library, (2) four phonographs, (3) two transportable tape-recorders. 5 Some drafts of the content list for this study include a chapter on folk music. However, the published study opens instead with a brief survey of early art music in Estonia and continues by concentrating upon the rise of Estonian musical life and music composed by Estonians in the nineteenth century. 6 For example, Ofelia Tuisk wrote in the introduction of her article ‘Muusika sümfooniaorkestrile’ [Music for the Symphony Orchestra] (Tuisk Citation1975, p. 181): ‘A new generation of symphonists became active only in the beginning of the 1930s, and only a few of them could compete, in terms of their professional level, with earlier graduates of the St. Petersburg Conservatory. (We must remember that Don Carlos by Arthur Kapp, Dawn by [Heino] Eller, Julius Caesar by [Rudolf] Tobias, and the First Symphony of [Arthur] Lemba were all student works!) Nevertheless, the natural potential of the new generation of symphonists was not less than the talents of their teachers. It is also important to note that the professional profile of these [Estonian] composers was narrower. While graduates of the St. Petersburg Conservatory had a wide profile and became prominent as composers and performers, organizers of musical life, theoreticians, and critics, graduates of Estonian music schools, as a rule, were trained narrowly, only as composers.’ We must note, however, that this declaration does not prevent Tuisk from evaluating the student compositions of Eduard Tubin very highly, and his later works as the greatest of all symphonic music composed during these years. Though criticizing impersonally the narrow profile of local graduates, Tuisk nonetheless praised a number of young Estonian composers (Tubin, Karl Leichter, Riho Päts, Voldemar Leemets, Eduard Oja) for their competent criticism, especially when compared to a more conservative older generation of reviewers. 7 I provide additional discussion of this situation in Lippus (Citation1999). 8 Tampere's five-volume collection of Estonian folksongs, published during this period, was of seminal importance for Estonian music and musicology (Tampere Citation1956–1965). Tampere's basic systematic grouping of songs into genres according to their function is still used, although his own description of melodic types based upon this system (Tampere Citation1965) has been largely superseded by more recent descriptive schema. 9 In the 1970s, an ethnographer, Igor Tõnurist, and a musicologist, Ofelia Tuisk, served as researchers at the Institute of History. A handful of other musicologists were affiliated with the Institute as aspirants (postgraduate students writing their dissertations). 10 Rüütel defended her dissertation, ‘Eesti uuema rahvalaulu kujunemine’ (The Formation of the More Recent Style of Estonian Folk Song), at the University of Tartu in 1969, and published several articles based upon this research in the 1960s (e.g. Rüütel Citation1969). Her later work includes the two-volume folksong collection Eesti uuemad laulumängud (Rüütel Citation1980–1983). Her more recent research focuses upon ancient folksongs of the Estonians and other Baltic-Finnish peoples. Olli Kõiva's work has touched less strongly upon music, but her dissertation on the wedding tradition and songs of Kihnu Island (‘Regivärsilise rahvalaulu traditsioon Kihnu saarel’, University of Tartu, 1965), along with numerous publications (e.g. Kõiva Citation1961) based upon that research, constitute important contributions to our understanding of that singing tradition. 11 The last conference, held in 1989 after Estonia had become a member of the International Council of Folklore Festivals (Conseil International des Organisations de Festivals de Folklore et d’Arts Traditionnels), was part of the first international Baltica festival. It was open to all scholars and had two working languages, English and Russian. 12 See, for instance, Lippus (Citation1981). The problem discussed in this article was abstract and could be applied to diverse sets of melodies. 13 Gasparov visited the seminar twice. On 24 and 25 November 1975, he delivered the lectures ‘The Structure of the Syntactic Component of Musical Language’ and ‘The Role of Acoustical Principle and Cultural Environment in the Formation of Musical Structure’. On 4 and 5 March 1976, he delivered two lectures on monographic analysis: ‘Johann Sebastian Bach: St. John Passion and St. Matthew Passion’ and ‘Modest Mussorgsky: Khovanshchina’. The term ‘monographic analysis’ was used by Lotman's group to refer to a detailed analysis of a single artwork approached from a variety of methodological directions. 14 In the spring of 1976, the seminar's participants, including myself, analyzed three songs, based upon folk melodies, by Veljo Tormis, describing their sources, text, form, texture and acoustics; see Sarv et al. (Citation1976). In this study, an attempt was made to avoid using traditional approaches to music analysis (classifying formal schemes, describing the tonal plan, etc.), and to examine instead means of segmentation and the appearance of groupings based upon different structural characteristics. At the time, our attempt at discussing these various methodological aspects of analyzing music proved more valuable than the published text that was finally produced. In the late 1980s, together with Jaan Ross (and without Mart Remmel), we revived the seminar for the purpose of discussing recent works and organizing lectures of visiting scholars (e.g. Raymond Monelle and Johan Sundberg in 1989, Eugene Narmour and Charles Rosen in 1990). 15 With the rapid development of personal computers and commercial hardware for speech analysis, this area of research grew considerably in popularity during the 1980s. See, for instance, Lippus (Citation1980); Remmel and Rüütel (Citation1980); Rüütel and Ross (Citation1985).