History of Music in Russia from Antiquity to 1800, Volume 1

From Antiquity to the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century

Nikolai Findeizen, Miloš Velimirovic, Claudia R. Jensen, Milos Velimirovic, Claudia R. Jensen

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9780253026378
• Topic: Medien & darstellende Kunst
• Subtopic: Musikgeschichte & -kritik

In its scope and command of primary sources and its generosity of scholarly inquiry, Nikolai Findeizen's monumental work, published in 1928 and 1929 in Soviet Russia, places the origins and development of music in Russia within the context of Russia's cultural and social history.

Volume 2 of Findeizen's landmark study surveys music in court life during the reigns of Elizabeth I and Catherine II, music in Russian domestic and public life in the second half of the 18th century, and the variety and vitality of Russian music at the end of the 18th century.

Editors’ Introduction to Volume 1

This work is a complete translation of Nikolai Findeizen’s Ocherki po istorii muzyki v Rossii (1928), a pathbreaking work which, in its scope and command of primary sources, and in its curiosity and generosity of scholarly inquiry, has remained a cornerstone for all subsequent studies of Russian music. A project of this nature is a collaboration from the outset. Findeizen, throughout his voluminous, even legendary, notes offers gracious thanks to the many scholars who contributed to his work, and it is a pleasure for us, the joint editors of this volume, to do the same. We must acknowledge, first and foremost, the heroic work of the original translator, Samuel William Pring, whose efforts and solutions to the many difficulties in this text were truly inspiring; our later work was in the nature of a dialogue not only with Findeizen but also with Pring, who managed to retain the author’s own voice and spirit in his translation. Our work was also made possible by the farsighted generosity, patience, and skill of an important group of people who realized the importance of Findeizen’s and Pring’s labors and who made it possible to bring them to light. Our deepest gratitude goes to Joseph Bloch, who not only understood the importance of Findeizen’s work but was willing to grant the financial support necessary to publish this English translation. We owe him many thanks for his foresight and generosity, and we dedicate this edition to him. We owe Malcolm Brown, editor of the Russian Music Series at Indiana University Press, unending thanks for his advice, timely prodding, and boundless patience. He was willing to discuss any passage, to ponder every thicket of translation, and, quite simply, his efforts made this project possible. Daniel C. Waugh, of the University of Washington, contributed to almost every page of this work, and his efforts in identifying manuscripts and puzzling out chronicle references gave this edition the same kind of scholarly rigor he has demonstrated throughout his career; we offer him our profound thanks. Finally, the editors at Indiana University Press have also given us nothing but patience and encouragement in our work on this difficult and complex text, and our thanks go to Janet Rabinowitch and her predecessor, Jeffrey Ankrom, the most supportive and tolerant editors we can imagine. We also wish to thank Rita Bernhard for her thoughtful and insightful work as copyeditor on this enormous project.

Although the editorial responsibilities for this volume rest with us, many scholars have given generously of their time and expertise, and it is a pleasure to acknowledge their contributions. We have tested the patience and generosity of Gregory Myers time and time again; his work on the most difficult passages of this volume and his willingness to answer voluminous e-mail messages on details of medieval Russian syntax put us greatly in his debt. Elena Dubinets has spent countless hours pouring over the text, patiently explaining subtleties of grammar and pronunciation; the work would not have been possible without her help. Dan Newton, of the University of Washington, has also invested many hours in solving riddles of translation, rendering a sometimes dense Russian prose into lucid English with cheerfulness and the requisite patience. Many have shared their knowledge of Russian music and Russian culture in our work on this far-ranging text, and to Olga Dolskaya, of the Conservatory at the University of Kansas, Missouri, and to Galina Averina, our thanks can be expressed only inadequately for the time and advice they have so willingly given. Jack Haney, of the University of Washington, contributed greatly to our work on the medieval bylina texts, responding generously to multiple questions and confirmations, as did Geoffrey Schwartz, also of the University of Washington, who translated the Ukrainian texts in chapter 7. We also thank the University of Washington Department of Slavic Languages and the School of Music for their support of this project.

Findeizen’s work covers an enormous range of topics, and we have benefited greatly from the specialized knowledge so readily shared by the scholarly community. Edward Williams shared his incomparable knowledge of Russian bells and bell ringing in a series of detailed, lucid communications, and his work clarified many passages in this text; Robert Karpiak, of the University of Waterloo, worked patiently with us on both volumes of Findeizen’s text in explaining nuances of keyboard terminology, as did Wanda Griffiths; and Elizabeth Sander generously gave her time and expertise in chapter 12 of this volume, sharing her work on the Bergholz diary—all these scholars enriched this project greatly. Alexander Levitsky and Elizabeth Sander also contributed graciously to the translations of the kant texts in chapter 12. For many years Martha Lahana has been most generous in sharing her expertise and work on Artemon Matveev and on late-seventeenth-century Muscovite culture, and she supplied many important printed and manuscript sources, as well as cheerful expert advice. Our understanding of early Russian terminology and sources has been deepened by contributions from Irina Lozovaia in Moscow, who graciously and frequently responded to our queries, and from Nicolas Schidlovsky, who was equally generous with his time. Thomas Mathiesen, at Indiana University, clarified issues of the Greek and Latin terminology in the volume, and George-Julius Papadopoulos was endlessly patient in his explanations of Greek accents, his discovery of crucial etymologies, and his solid advice—we owe him our deepest thanks for his work on both volumes. Our scholarly net was cast far and wide, and we thank Henry Cooper, at Indiana University, for his willing explanations of early Russian vocabulary; Isolde Thyrêt, of Kent State University, and Vladimir Morosan, of Musica Russica Press, for their contributions to our bibliography; and Michael Biggins, the Slavic librarian at the University of Washington, for his bibliographic wizardry over the course of many years. Nina Polina advised us on questions of translation, and Ben Albritton on terminology relating to musical instruments.

Of course, the one figure conspicuously absent in our listing above is that of Nikolai Fyodorovich Findeizen (1868–1928), who was one of the towering figures in Russian and Soviet music and musicology. Although his full biography remains to be written, we wish to provide some background on Findeizen’s labors on this book. He began his career as a writer early on, in his twenties, after a general education in music. It was to be a remarkably prolific career; the listings in the authoritative catalog Kto pisal o muzyke [Who wrote about music] lists more than three hundred works, large and small, scholarly and popular, written over the course of nearly forty years. One of his most important contributions was the establishment of the Russkaia muzykal’naia gazeta [Russian musical gazette], which he started in 1894 and which ran to 1918; this was the most significant musical journal of its time, covering concert life and modern composers, and also including historical studies, many of which Findeizen wrote himself. Findeizen was deeply involved with contemporary musical life and found a kindred spirit in the figure of the important music and art critic Vladimir Vasil’evich Stasov (1824–1906), whom he met shortly before starting his journal. From 1899 Findeizen was a corresponding member of the International Music Society, headquartered in Berlin, and in 1909, together with Aleksandr Il’ich Ziloti (1863–1945) and Stanislav Maksimovich Sonki (1853–1941), he founded a Society of Friends of Music, which he headed from 1911.

Findeizen’s long labors on his Ocherki are outlined in a collection of his papers, now at the Glinka Museum as f. 87, nos. 1067 (a small diary), 1068 (a larger diary with entries beginning ca. 1920), and 1069 (drafts of letters), which Miloš Velimirović was able to examine in 1991. No. 1069 contains a draft of a letter from May 1924 addressed to Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi (1877–1944), the well-known writer on music residing at the time in England, which gives a sense of the lengthy gestation period of the Ocherki. Findeizen writes: “In 1918 I completed a work conceived thirty years ago, going through a period of collecting materials and sources. That is the History of Music in Russia in the 17th and 18th Centuries. Then, in 1919, I was assigned to the chair of History of Music in Russia in the Archaeological Institute (now the Archaeological Division of the University). I teach a new course on musical archaeology, the earliest period of Old Russia (before the seventeenth century) and in the last two years a course on musical paleography (history of Russian chant notation).” Findeizen wonders about the possibility of having this book translated, estimating that it might comprise around 750 pages, which is just over the length of only one of the two volumes he eventually produced. He included a proposed list of chapters, which corresponds roughly to the content of the final volumes but which lacks some of the ethnographic elements he was to uncover in the course of his work at the Archaeological Institute, which he mentioned in his letter to Calvocoressi. Thus, as of 1924, the proposed book lacked chapters on the skomorokhi (itinerant entertainers) and on musical instruments in early Russia (chapters 5–7 in the final version), and differed in other, smaller details of organization and content.

Plans for an English-language version of the Ocherki were discussed almost immediately, and in June 1924 Findeizen writes that he had sent Calvocoressi two sample chapters for translation. On September 14, in a letter in which Findeizen enclosed a report for the Monthly Musical Record, he notes that he had taken his first English lesson. By October 1925 Findeizen already writes a letter in English, accompanying an article to the Musical Times.

Findeizen’s links to the English musical press in the 1920s reveal early contacts with the original translator of the present edition, Samuel William Pring (1866–1954), an amateur musician and polymath whose passion for Russian music, little known in England at the time, led him to learn the language on his own in order to pursue his interest in the subject. By the 1920s Pring had already translated many works on Russian music for the British musical press, so naturally he would have known of, and been interested in, Findeizen’s writings. Pring is associated with some of the earliest appearances of Findeizen’s name in English-language sources. Findeizen first appeared in British music periodicals in 1925, when Calvocoressi reviewed his book on Dargomyzhskii in the Musical Times (vol. 66, p. 45). His name again appeared in the same journal in 1928, when the Ocherki was mentioned in a column titled “The Musician’s Bookshelf” in a note signed “S.W.P.” An obituary appeared in the journal that same year. Earlier the Monthly Musical Record had published an article by Findeizen, “The Early Days of Chamber Music in Russia” (no. 55 [1925]: 262–63 and 292–93); in it, Calvocoressi, the translator, noted that it was an excerpt from a longer article written for Cobbett’s Cyclopedia. Indeed, Findeizen’s article on Russian chamber music does appear in volume 2 of Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music (1930), where the editor added a short note: “The remainder of Mr. Findeisen’s [sic] interesting article deals with the output of native composers during the period 1860–1920. These are treated in detail, under their own names in the Cyclopedia. It is with great regret that I have to add that our contributor died after an operation in September 1928.” An examination of Cobbett’s volumes would thus reveal more of Findeizen’s English-language publications. Findeizen’s works also appeared in the Monthly Musical Record in an article on Borodin in 1927 (vol. 57) and in a note about the Leningrad Philharmonic’s upcoming season (vol. 28 [1928]), both translated by Pring. A brief notice of Findeizen’s death appeared later that year.

In addition to his early efforts at making his work known in the English-language press, Findeizen also recorded his attempts and frustrations at getting his work published in Russia. According to one of his diaries (no. 1068), he had received proofs of the first fascicles of volume 1 from the Music Section of the State Publishing House in March 1927 after a delay of three months. He was apparently still continuing to work on the text, however, for in that same month he records his irritation at being unable to acquire photographs of the Kupriianov leaflets from the Academy of Sciences, although he had requested them three months earlier—it seems they had been temporarily misplaced! Typesetting began only in May, and in August 1927 Findeizen remarked that the first fascicle was “officially set” in type.

Just after this date the diaries reveal Findeizen’s declining health. In October 1927 he writes that he felt ill and that for the first time in his life he is “tired of work.” Eight days later, however, he delivered to the press the text of the second fascicle of the Ocherki. His health continued to decline, and his diaries include disconnected sentences: “tortured nerves,” “went to rest,” “Stukkel diabetics.” He continued his work nevertheless. Findeizen noted that, in spite of “a lot of unpleasantness and troubles,” he was still working, although he was forced to pay a proofreader to assist him. He continued his research on volume 2 at the same time, finally acquiring only in that year a copy of the Madonis Symphonies (1738) through the efforts of the distinguished Ukrainian folk music collector and scholar Kliment Vasil’evich Kvitka (1880–1953).

A copy of the first fascicle of the Ocherki was finally sent to the Censorship Office only in February 1928, at which time Findeizen remarked: “Already thirteen months spent on this fascicle and a lot of blood and nerves did it cost me!” He had two copies of the first fascicle delivered to the State Publishing House later that month, and evidently the presses started rolling at that time. He also received proofs of the second and part of the third fascicle that month, with the comment: “The press work is getting worse and worse.”

His health continued to deteriorate. The diary entries end in March 1928, but, according to the obituary by Zinaida F. Savelova, Findeizen spent the summer of 1928 at the Tchaikovskii Museum at Klin, near Moscow, where he consulted with physicians who recommended an immediate operation. His condition was not thought to be life-threatening, yet he died soon after the surgery, on September 20, in Leningrad. According to the obituary, on that same day A. N. Iurovskii, who was in charge of the Music Section of the State Publishing House, received a telegram informing him of Findeizen’s death; a few days later Iurovskii received a letter Findeizen had written on the eve of the operation in which he stated that, having finished the final editing of his Ocherki, he was about to undergo surgery. Although, he writes, the physicians had assured him that the operation was not a serious one, he was prepared for anything and thus wished to express his personal thanks to Iurovskii for the publication of his last work. The first volume and part of the second volume were published in 1928, and the remaining fascicles of the second volume in 1929. The work, then, was truly Findeizen’s scholarly testament.

Our editorial procedures in this translation are fairly straightforward. All editorial emendations and corrections are enclosed in square brackets and the notes to each chapter begin with a brief essay providing updated information on bibliography and current scholarship. In a few cases, we have supplied corrected or additional references to page numbers, or full bibliographic references for Findeizen’s notes; this kind of information is not indicated by square brackets. It has not been possible to verify all of Findeizen’s page references and we have not attempted to do so systematically. We have generally followed Findeizen’s footnote placement fairly closely in the translation, facilitating comparisons with the original volumes. Added footnotes are indicated by capital letters, thus note 1 is Findeizen’s, note 1A is our addition. We have been able to identify most of Findeizen’s sources, but for more information see the note to the bibliography.

Transliteration, always a difficult, even vexing, problem, follows the Library of Congress system, which we have generally adhered to rigorously. Our twin goals have been accuracy and consistency in rendering the complex terminology and references in Findeizen’s text; a strict transliteration facilitates comparisons with other sources, whether in Russian or English, and allows for ready identification of bibliographic references in the many online databases now available. A few exceptions, of course, remain. The stressed e, when it is pronounced as yo, is indicated here for common Russian names, for example, Fyodor (instead of Fedor) or Pyotr (instead of Petr); names of Russian rulers are designated by their familiar Latin versions (Peter I, Catherine II, and so forth), and familiar cities and terms are treated in the same manner (Moscow instead of Moskva, kopeck instead of kopeika); and names of liturgical books and a few other proper names are transliterated in a somewhat simplified manner, thus Stikhirar instead of Stikhirar’ or Igor instead of Igor’. Otherwise the Russian soft sign has been retained throughout and is indicated by an apostrophe (e.g., sopel’) requiring a softening of the previous consonant. The letters я and ю have been strictly rendered as ia and iu throughout, thus Iurii (instead of Yurii).

The comments we have supplied, in the form of addenda et corrigenda, by no means exhaust everything that might be added to Findeizen’s original text. Although Findeizen’s writing includes some unintended slips of the pen, the sheer volume and breadth of his work are indeed inspiring considering the time and circumstances under which he labored so valiantly—literally to his last breath—to see this work in print. It is only natural that modern research has uncovered data unknown to this indefatigable student and writer, and Findeizen himself would certainly have made some of the corrections and emendations we have supplied had he lived and had he had access to a broader spectrum of foreign source material (not to mention on-line databases and catalogs!). Yet anyone who reads this text, from the first page to the last, cannot but feel admiration for Findeizen’s persistence and devotion, which are manifest on every page of this, his magnum opus. It is our hope that this volume will inspire others to become involved in the study of this extremely rich Russian musical heritage, which has too long been ignored by too many and viewed as outside the mainstream of European culture, undoubtedly owing to that invisible yet still powerful “linguistic Iron Curtain.” This volume proves to the reader how wrong that attitude was and remains.

Miloš Velimirović
Claudia R. Jensen

Abbreviations

ADIT	Arkhiv Direktsii Imperatorskikh teatrov [Archive of the Directorate of Imperial Theaters]. St. Petersburg: Direktsiia Imperatorskikh teatrov, 1892.
AE	Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik [...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Editors’ Introduction to Volume 1
• List of Abbreviations
• Author’s Preface
• 1. Introduction: The Predecessors of the Slavs
• 2. Pagan Rus’
• 3. Kievan Rus’
• 4. Novgorod the Great
• 5. The Activities of the Skomorokhi in Russia
• 6. Music and Musical Instruments in Russian Miniatures, Woodcuts, and Glossaries
• 7. A Survey of Old Russian Folk Instruments
• 8. Music in Ancient Moscow (Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries)
• 9. Music in the Monastery. Chashi (Toasts). Bell Ringing. Sacred Performances (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries)
• 10. Music in Court Life in the Seventeenth Century
• 11. A Brief Survey of Singers, Composers, and Music Theorists of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
• 12. Music and Theater in the Age of Peter the Great
• Music Appendix
• Notes
• Volume 1 Bibliography
• Index
• Author Biographies