Песента като исторически феномен
Songs as Historical Phenomena

Summary/Abstract: Entirely different vocal and artistic phenomena are quite impermissibly united under one term, ‘song’, in folklore and ethnomusicology. A song originates in folklore but does not stand at its sources. The phenomenon denoted by ‘real song’ is the result of a prolonged historical development of the terms of vocalization. Traditional folklore as a whole does not succeed in covering the historical road to a ‘song’: this trend is finally realized outside folklore, at the level of professional written culture. Consequently two stage types of ‘song’ exist as products of oral and of written culture. The phenomenological non-coincidence of oral and written ‘songs’ has a historical-stage character. The phenomenon ‘folk-song’ is historical in three senses: its origin is historically conditioned; songs of various epochs differ on principle, and the ‘song’ phenomenon itself is not primordial in the folklore tradition. The author bases himself on the popular terminology, connected with the concepts of ‘song’ and ‘singing’, on the facts of wordless singing, and on the so-called ‘personal’ songs, on the phenomenon ‘tune-formulae’, repeated with different texts, etc. In some cases the pre-genre musical formula can be called pre-melodic, while the stage formula can be called a pre-song phenomenon. The criteria as to what is defined as a ‘song’ are historical, just as the phenomenon ‘song’, is also historical. The author proposes that songs should be considered as a special typologically indivisible phenomenon, moving of themselves in the system of permanent historical transmutations and unsusceptible to the usual causal-consequential definitions. Folklore is a field for the global co-existence of various stages of embodiments of historical trends towards song forms – from pre-song improvisations, through ‘guasi-songs’ to real folkloric (polyvariant, dynamic ‘inexact’) songs. This article is an attempt at seeing the song phenomenon in the aspect of the clash and relationship of two fundamentally typological cultures on an international scale (oral and written), and also at emphasizing the fact that the way from one type to another matures and is partially realized in folklore.

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