On the Relict Scales and Melodic Structures in the Seto Shepherd Tune Kar´ahääl
On the Relict Scales and Melodic Structures in the Seto Shepherd Tune Kar´ahääl

Summary/Abstract: Our knowledge of the past is inevitably fragmentary, especially if we speak about such an ‘immaterial’ subject as music. The only possibility to unveil the sounds of the past is to ‘excavate’ information from contemporary performances, archival sound recordings, and musical transcriptions. Some older musical genres that preserved their ancient features until the era of sound recording provide the best opportunities for the research of the traditional musical thinking, including its deepest roots. The Seto shepherd songs, which are the subject of the analysis in this article, constitute one of such genres. This research concentrates on two aspects of the musical structure of the Seto shepherd tune kar´ahääl: the structure of musical scales and the melodic contours. The material of analysis is the collection by Anu Vissel, Eesti karjaselaulud I. Setu karjaselaulud (Estonian Shepherd Songs I. Setu Shepherd Songs, 1982), which consists of transcriptions of 99 shepherd songs; about 90 of them are variants of the same tune type. According to this publication, the intervallic structures of the shepherd tune’s scales are extremely various; there are also many different melodic contours. The present research aims to reveal the system behind the various scale structures and melodic contours, and, on this ground, tries to reconstruct the possible processes of formation of the musical scales and melody in this particular tune and make some hypotheses about such processes in early traditional music.

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