“Rejoicing Discovery”
Revisited: Re-accentuation in Russian Folklore and Stravinsky’s Music
Marina Lupishko
To Valeriya Fyodorovna Kravets, my first Russian music Teacher (1940-2007)
They [the members of Camerata] advised me to assimilate the manner praised by Plato and
other philosophers who claim that music is nothing but word,
then rhythm, and finally sound but not the other way
around.
(Giulio Caccini, Le nuove musiche, 1601, cit. in
Vasina-Grossman 1972: 60-1).
Igor Stravinsky is known to have
assimilated precisely those traits of Russian folklore that later became the
elements of his own mature style – a lack of formal and motivic development,
harmonic ambiguity, and rhythmic and metric unpredictability. As a pre-eminent
reformer of rhythm Stravinsky has been addressed in numerous studies in English
and other European languages (White 1979, Lindlar 1982, Van den Toorn 1983, Vlad 1985, Walsh 1988, etc.). Although all
these authors are aware of the folk origins of Stravinsky’s musical language,
most of them, however, pay little attention to the fact, self-evident for a
Russian researcher, that Stravinsky’s rhythmic innovations resulted to a great
extent from his exploration of the rhythmic peculiarities of his native
language, particularly the language of Russian peasant poetry.
Since
the pioneering studies of Asafiev and Belyaev were made in the 1920s and
subsequently translated into English (Asafiev 1977, 1982; Belyaev 1928, 1972),
many Soviet musicologists have touched upon the subject of Stravinsky and
folklore (Birkan 1966, 1971; Vershinina 1967; Yarustovsky 1982; Grigoriyeva
1969; Kholopova 1971; Alexandrov 1976; Meyen 1978; Golovinsky 1981,[1]
1985; Druskin 1979; Paisov 1973, 1985; Kon 1992, etc.). With the exception of
Yarustovsky (Jarustowsky) 1966, Kholopova 1974, and Druskin 1983, these works
have not been translated into European languages and thus are almost unknown to
the western reader.[2]
Yet for the purpose of conciseness I shall discuss here only four authors whose
works served as the main inspiration for the present study: two Americans,
Richard Taruskin and James Bailey, and two Russians, Valentina Kholopova and Miron
Kharlap.
Taruskin was the one who literally
“opened the door” to the mystery of Stravinsky’s prosody in his 1987 article
entitled “Stravinsky’s ‘Rejoicing Discovery’ and What It Meant: In Defense of
His Notorious Text Setting.” This article later entered as a constituent part
into the two-volume Stravinsky and the
Russian Traditions: A Biography of the Works through Mavra (Taruskin 1996),
where for the first time the folk sources of Stravinsky’s texts and music are
studied systematically. Kholopova, although not concerning herself directly
with Stravinsky’s text setting, can be credited with initiating discussion of
the interaction of poetic and musical rhythms in Russian art music in her 1978
article subtitled “Russian musical dactyls and pentasyllabic meters.” Drawing
on Asafiev’s theory of intonation and on the related works of contemporary
philologists and linguists (Shtokmar 1952, Propp 1961, Zhirmunsky 1975, etc.),
this analytical study substantiates the existence of the typically “Russian
musical meters” borrowed from literary and folk verse in the works of almost
all major Russian composers of the 19th century. The article was later
published in its expanded version, covering all periods of Russian music
history, as Russian musical rhythm
(Kholopova 1983). Unfortunately, neither Taruskin’s groundbreaking piece of
research, nor Kholopova’s interesting metric studies have ever been translated
into each other’s languages.[3]
The other two authors, Bailey and
Kharlap, are both linguists by profession who had a musical education as well.
A student and follower of Roman Jakobson and Kirill Taranovsky, Bailey had
devoted over twenty years to the study of Russian lyric folk verse before publishing in 1993 Three Russian Lyric Folk Song Meters, a much-needed study since
exclusively Russian epic folk verse
had been thoroughly researched by his predecessors.[4]
The preparatory and parallel work to this opus in the form of twelve landmark
articles has been recently translated into Russian and published in Moscow
under the title Selected papers on
Russian folk verse (2001). Finally, the Soviet musicologist-linguist
Kharlap (d. 1991) is the author of, among many other things, the 1972 article
entitled “Russian folk barring system and the problem of music’s origin.” This
very original interdisciplinary study uses a holistic approach to the problem
of the irregular metric scheme of Russian folk verse cum music, exploring the link between the poetic and the musical
rhythm, as well as between the rhythm and the melody of Russian folk song.
And yet, the main incentive to this
project was the discrepancy between the approaches of the two American
researchers, Bailey and Taruskin, to the very controversial topic of the re-accentuation
(shifting stress) of Russian folk verse. Taruskin (1996: 1207) sides with the
late Stravinsky (Expo: 121) that the
shifting stress of Russian folklore is caused by the distortion of the literary
accents of the verse by means of music, while Bailey (1993: 15) explains that
the phenomenon is brought about by the necessity to adapt the stress-flexible
language of Russian folk poetry to the specific folk poetic meters. In the 1993
monograph, Bailey concerns himself in particular with pesennïe metrï (lyric folksong meters); however, his findings can
be applied to a number of genres of Russian folk verse – spoken and sung,
ancient and recent.
At the same time, it would be a
mistake to suggest that the folk re-accentuation occurs only because of the
verbal rhythm. It is an established fact that in the folksong collections of
Tchaikovsky, Lyadov, and Rimsky-Korsakov, to which Stravinsky was exposed early
in his life (Mem: 97), the accents of
the spoken verse are often distorted to a greater or lesser extent in the
music.[5]
Thus the problem under consideration becomes a very complex interdisciplinary
puzzle that needs to be disentangled from both ends, linguistic and musical.
The title of this paper points to
several directions at once: those of vocal music theory, prosody and phonology
of the Russian language, Russian literary and folk versification, Russian
ethnomusicology, etc. Some of the topics addressed here have been clarified,
others have been raised and still await an answer, yet many others have been
passed over in silence almost entirely. Intended more as a methodological
glossary than as a catechism, this paper will try to resolve only the most
essential of them. Several specific cases of re-accentuation in Stravinsky’s Russian
vocal music of the early Swiss period (1913-17)[6]
that have parallels in Russian folklore will be discussed briefly at the end.
Vocal Music versus
Poetry
As is well known, everyday speech in
any language has at least two common grounds with music: rhythm and intonation.
Poetry (that is, metrically organized poetry and not vers
libre) has at least one additional parameter
in common with music – that of meter.[7]
The problem of transformation of poetry by way of music leads to the question of
correspondence between poetic feet and musical measures, the two smallest units
of these two very different metric systems (Monelle 1989). It needs to be
specified right away that the present study will examine solely Russian
versification in relation to the western European measure system – the two
“main ingredients” of Stravinsky’s vocal works of the Swiss period.
“[It is a] well-known fact that
Russian verse allows the tonic accent only” (Chron: 78). Stravinsky’s statement is true in general: Russian
poetry is qualitative and not quantitative, that is to say, accentuation is
achieved predominantly by the placement of expiratory accent (accent tonique in French) and not by the durational ratios between
long and short vowels. To be more precise, Russian classical poetic meters are
frequently referred to as “syllabo-tonic meters,” i.e., both the number and
position of accents and the number of
syllables per line are significant. Roughly speaking, Russian literary verse is
made up of a constant number of uniform poetic feet, either two-syllable ones
(trochee Sw, iamb wS), or three-syllable ones (dactyl Sww, amphibrach wSw,
anapest wwS).[8]
It is obvious that only trochees and dactyls can be directly “translated” into
music as two-beat (2/4) and three-beat (3/4) measures, while other poetic
meters will have the appearance of over-the-measure rhythmic motives, either
with a one-beat anacrusis (iamb, amphibrach) or with a two-beat anacrusis
(anapest).
On the
other hand, music possesses a quantitative aspect, not characteristic of
Russian or western European versification. In western European music, the basic
metric components are conventionally in a strict double or triple durational
ratio to each other, although more complex ratios are also possible. Because of
this aspect, there exist numerous ways of musical transformation of, let us
say, a simple trochaic foot: qualitative (metrically fore-stressed),
quantitative (prolonged first syllable), with a dotted-note rhythm, syncopated,
in augmentation, diminution, or any combination thereof.[9]
On the whole, the poetic meters with three-syllable feet – dactyls,
amphibrachs, and anapests – generally have fewer possibilities for musical
transformation than those with two-syllable feet (Ruch’yevskaya 1966: 82).[10]
This happens because in two-syllable meters even ictuses are accented sometimes
stronger or weaker than odd ones – in the same way as there are strong and
relatively strong beats in the musical meter 4/4. This phenomenon (called
“accentual dissimilation” – see below) is not very typical for ternary poetic
meters, usually represented as 3/4, where ictuses are usually fulfilled by a
stress in the rhythm.
In comparison with music, which is
governed by a complex system of metric, rhythmic, dynamic accents, etc., there
are only two different kinds of accents in poetry – word accents and phrasal
accents. Word accents are considered metrical when they correspond to an ictus
in the poetic meter, and non-metrical when they do not. Consider this famous
line from Lermontov:
Meter Rhythm
Белеет
парус
одинокий[11]
Beléyet párus odinókiy wS wS wS wSw wS wS ww
wSw
The poetic meter of this line is a four-foot
iamb (iambic tetrameter) with a feminine ending. Here the word accents coincide
with the ictuses in all instances but one: the first “o-” in “odinókiy.” The
rhythm of the poem is different from its meter because the ictus corresponding
to the first syllable in “odinókiy” does not receive a stress in the rhythm.[12]
Compare now with a line from Nekrasov:
Meter
and Rhythm
Однажды в
студёную
зимнюю пору[13]
Odnázhdï v
studyónuyu zímnyuyu póru wSw wSw wSw wSw
This is a
four-foot amphibrach (amphibrachic tetrameter) with a feminine ending. Here all
the ictuses are fulfilled because they coincide with the word accents, and thus
the rhythm and meter of the poem are in perfect correspondence with each other.
In contrast to poetry where some ictuses can be perceived as virtual (being
unfulfilled in the rhythm), in vocal music all ictuses are always perceived as
real (being fulfilled in the rhythm). The general slowing down of the text of
vocal music as compared to the spoken verse (with the exception of musical
patter) can sometimes undermine or even destroy the regularity of the poetic
meter. On the other hand, total correspondence between two- and particularly
three-beat musical measures and two- and three-syllable poetic feet over an extended
period of time quickly leads to an unbearable monotony in vocal music,
especially in a slow tempo (Ruch’yevskaya 1966: 82-3).
In the literary Russian language,
word accent can fall on any syllable of a word, and there are usually no variants
in accentuation of one and the same word (case changes notwithstanding),
although Russian literary accentuation has changed considerably over the last
two centuries. Correct word accents are as important in Russian as in English,
and their non-observance can lead to a total change in meaning, as, for
instance, in “zámok” (castle) and “zamók” (lock). Correct literary accentuation
distinguishes a Russian native speaker from a foreigner, an educated person
from an uneducated one, and a resident of the capital from a dialect-speaker.
In vocal music, there exists a method of correlation between musical and poetic
metric accents, the so-called “rule of prosody,” allowing for better
understanding of the text on the part of the listener. The unwritten rule states
that ictuses in poetry should always fall on strong or relatively strong beats
in music. However, a too strict observance of this rule can be tedious because
the temporal aspect is of much greater importance in music than in poetry. For
this and other reasons (many of them are yet to be found), in all European
vocal music – ancient and modern, classical and popular, small-scale and
operatic – an occasional shift of the
correct accent is not only permissible but sometimes desirable and even
unavoidable.
Russian Folk Song
versus Russian Folk Verse
Stravinsky was not the first Russian
composer to write vocal works, nor was he the only one to become interested in
the theoretical possibilities of bringing out the essence of Russian language
by way of music. As Kholopova argues in her article (1978: 164), the problem of
approach to the study of “Russian musical rhythm” is one of methodology, and
the methods are suggested by the historic conditions of the development of
Russian professional music over the previous two centuries. One of them is the
conscious exploration by virtually all 19th-century Russian composers of the
link between music and word – i.e., between musical rhythm and common speech,
folk and literary verse, etc. – as a way to ensure the creation of a truly
national art, which explains the increased attention these composers always
paid to vocal music. From Dargomyzhsky’s credo (“I want [musical] sound to
directly reflect word”), through Balakirev’s declaration of the direct dependence
of music upon word, to the metrically complex Lieder of Borodin, the picturesque recitatives of Musorgsky, and
the compound speech-like meters of Rimsky-Korsakov, the realm of Russian
language historically served as an impulse for the most daring musical
innovations. According to Kholopova, these and other composers relied heavily
on verse theory in their attempts to describe the peculiar rhythmic qualities
of their music (1978: 165). Numerous parallels appeared – those between poetic
feet patterns and specific musical rhythmic formulae, between metric structures
of verses and measure groupings, between the rule of alternance[14]
in poetry and its realization in music, and so on (1978: 166).
The specifically folk Russian rhythmic formulae, also
prominent in Russian literary poetry imitative of folk verse – final dactyls
and pyatislozhniki (pentasyllabic
meters) – are studied thoroughly by Kholopova (1978: 185-228), who finds them
in vocal and instrumental works of all the significant Russian composers of the
19th century. Both formulae have their origin in the following Russian lyric
folksong meters, tentatively presented in a chronological order by Bailey
(1993) – from the archaic trochaic tetrameter to a more recent two-stress tonic
verse:[15]
1) SwSw SwSww Trochaic
tetrameter with dactylic endings:
Отставала
лебедь белая Otstavála
lébed’ bélaya (Bailey 2001: 112)
Как
от стада
лебединого[16]
Kak ot stáda lebedínogo
2) wwSww wwSww
5+5
meter with a caesura in the middle:
Я вечор млада во пиру была, Ya vechór mladá vo pirú bïlá, (Ibid.: 213)
Во
пиру была, во
беседушке[17]
Vo pirú bïlá, vo besédushke
3) wwSwww wwSww Two-stress
tonic verse with dactylic endings:
wwSwwwww wwSww
Я
вечор молода
во пиру была, Ya
vechór molodá vo pirú bïlá, (Ibid.: 213)
Во
пиру была
пирочке, во
беседушке[18]
Vo
pirú bïlá piróchke, vo besédushke
What pushed Bailey into his exploration
was the insufficiently known Russian lyric folk verse, on the one hand, and the
rejection by virtually all verse theorists of the 19th and 20th centuries of
the existence of any repeated classical poetic meters in Russian folk verse, on
the other hand. Perhaps one reason for this rejection was the habit of linking
all classical poetic meters to western European literary versification. This
very popular contraposition of Russian and non-Russian ways of cultural
development also implied that Russian folk verse had nothing in common with
Russian literary poetry, heavily influenced by western European models (Bailey
2001: 63). Using numerous (in fact, many thousands) examples of folk song
texts, Bailey refutes this theory. The author demonstrates not only that
regular poetic meters are better preserved in lyric verse than in epic verse
(Ibid.: 215), but also that trochees are widespread in various traditional
genres of Russian folk song texts (bïlinas,
historic songs, funeral laments, ballades, wedding and love songs, etc.). This
proves to some extent that the folk trochaic meters are more ancient than the
irregular two- and three-stress tonic verse patterns, previously considered as the most typical of Russian folk poetry.
In fact, all the three poetic meters
are variants of each other, for the phenomenon of “accentual dissimilation,”
present in the trochaic tetrameter (Bailey 2001: 43), stands for the fact that in Russian folk verses even ictuses are
often accented stronger than odd ones (as in the trochaic tetrameter with
dactylic endings “Otstavála lébed’ bélaya”) – hence the difference between S
and S on the scheme above. Therefore, one can roughly speak of the following
three common features of these meters: (1) the initial anapest wwS, (2)
the final dactyl Sww, and (3) the two-stress tonic verse pattern with a
variable number of syllables per line wwS…Sww. The dactylic
ending is recognized by many Slavists beginning from Tred’yakovsky (1752) as
the most stable and typically Russian folk element, found both in lyric and
epic folk verses. On the other hand, the initial anapest in Russian folk poetry
is found to be frequent but not constant (Bailey 2001: 334).
The combination
“initial anapest + dactylic ending” produces a centrally stressed five-syllable
formula, very typical of Russian lyric folk poetry: wwSww. The
expressions “krasna dévitsa” (lovely girl), “dobrïy
mólodets” (fine fellow), “chudo chúdnoe” (wonderful wonder), “divo dívnoe”
(miraculous miracle), “okeán-more” (ocean-sea), and the essential “ya lyublyú
tebya” (I love you) are all cases in point.[19] The abundance of
such pentasyllabic idioms supports the presence of a caesura (metric pause)
between the two hemistiches of the 5+5 meter. Sometimes folk singers insert the
particle “da” in place of the caesura (note the typical folk accent in
“lyúdi”):
Все люди
живут – как
цветы
цветут,
А моя
глава да
вянет как
трава.[20]
Vse lyudI zhivút – kak tsvetï tsvetút, wwSww wwSww
A
moyá glavá da vyánet kak travá. wwSww (w) wwSww
These instances do not ruin the basic
5+5 meter (Bailey 2001: 83). The ten-syllable poetic line is the basic metric unit
here because major syntactic articulations come at the end of even hemistiches.
Interestingly, the phenomenon of “accentual dissimilation” is also present to
some extent in the 5+5 meter, if the caesura between the two hemistiches is
taken into account as a substitution for a weak syllable. As Bailey proves by
his statistical analysis, the third and eighth syllables are constantly
stressed, and the first, fifth, sixth, and tenth syllables reveal a tendency to
be stressed – SwSwS SwSwS (Ibid.: 85).
As Kholopova demonstrates, folk
pentasyllabic meters were appropriated by several major 19th-century Russian
poets, notably Lermontov, Kol’tsov, and Nekrasov, and transformed by
professional composers directly into the 5/4 musical meters found in Glinka,
Balakirev, Borodin, Musorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Arensky, Tchaikovsky, Lyadov,
Glazunov, Scriabin, etc. (Kholopova 1978: 204-228). Paradoxically, in Russian
genuine folk music this five-syllable formula is often extended to fit a six-beat musical measure by doubling the
rhythmic value corresponding to the third or the fifth syllable of each
hemistich (Popova 1955I, cited by Kholopova 1978: 182). The beginning of the bïlina “Kak vo gorode stol’no-Kievskom,”
cited by Kholopova on p. 181, serves as an example of lengthening the fifth
syllable of each hemistich of the 5+5 meter (see Example 1):
Как во городе стольно-Киевском
Kak vo górode stol’no-Kíevskom wwSww wwSww
У Владимира Красна Солнышка[21] U Vladímira Krasna
Sólnïshka wwSww wwSww
Example 1: Bïlina "Kak vo gorode stol’no-Kievskom"
(Kholopova 1978: 181)
On the other hand, musical five-beat
meters are also present in Russian folk song but achieved in a different way:
usually by adding melismas to the trochaic tetrameter (Kholopova 1978: 183; no
example is given). Cases of melismatic lengthening of the trochaic tetrameter
and other folk poetic meters in the melody of the slow lyric drawn-out song (protyazhnaya pesnya) are all too
numerous – consider, for instance, the famous “Step’ Mozdokskaya” (Belyaev
1971: 61-2), where each line of the text, a four-foot trochee with masculine
endings, is followed with a long sigh “A-akh!” The music reflects neither the
trochee, nor the 5+5 meter of another variant of this text: “Uzh tï step’ moyá,
/Step’ Mozdókskaya” – it is an elaborate and ornate cantilena (Example 2):
Уж ты степь ты, моя степь,(ах) Uzh tï
step' tï, moya step', (akh) Sw Sw Sw S
Степь моя
Моздокская,(ах)[22] Step' moyá Mozdókskaya, (akh) Sw Sw Sw S
Example 2: Drawn-out
Song "Step' Mozdokskaya" (Belyaev 1971: 61-2)
Dolzhansky has also noted this
peculiarity:
As a general rule, [Russian folk songs] contain various
melismas; this is why the poetic meter of the text is not usually reflected in
the melody, and the melody is not governed by the poetic meter. Syllabic
settings of poetry in Russian folk songs, where each syllable of the text
corresponds to only one pitch of the melody, are not too numerous.[23]
Metrically regular syllabic setting of
the trochaic tetrameter also exists in Russian folklore and is more
characteristic of children’s songs and dance songs – the two genres that often
display a direct correspondence between poetic and musical meters in any
language (Burling 1966, Brailoiu 1973). This notwithstanding, the majority of
Russian folk songs do not usually preserve the poetic meter of Russian folk
verse. Thus one must speak primarily of the absorption by the professional
composers of poetic, rather than musical, Russian folk meters.[24]
Re-accentuation in Russian Folklore
Before Stravinsky only Lyadov and
Musorgsky set Russian folk poetry to music.[25]
However, literary poems modeled on folk poetic meters were set by virtually all
the composers beginning with Alyabiev (1787-1851), Varlamov (1801-1848), and
Gurilyov (1803-1858). These settings more or less obeyed the rule of prosody –
a topic for ardent discussions within the circle of the Mighty Five and beyond.[26]
It is known that musically conservative Tchaikovsky, for instance, called it
“the capital rhythmic law” and criticized Bortnyansky (1751-1825), whose sacred
concertos he edited and sometimes even rebarred, for not submitting to it fully
(Kholopova 1983: 100).
The
exaggerated lack of correspondence between textual and musical accentuation in
the Russian vocal works of Stravinsky has been noticed by many scholars. It has
become a commonplace to quote the late Stravinsky’s own explanation in Robert
Craft’s retelling:
One important characteristic of
Russian popular verse is that the accents of the spoken verse are ignored when
the verse is sung. The recognition of the musical possibilities inherent in
this fact was one of the most rejoicing discoveries of my life; I was like a
man who suddenly finds that his finger can be bent from the second joint as
well as from the first.[27]
Taruskin bases his entire treatment of
re-accentuation in Stravinsky’s Russian vocal works on this quotation (1996:
1206-36), believing that Russian folk verse features literary accentuation,
which is afterwards “adjusted” by authentic performers of Russian folk song in
accordance with their musical needs.[28]
As an illustration, Taruskin quotes the third stanza of the well-known round-dance
song “Akh vï, seni moi, seni,” which, according to Simon Karlinsky, “the late
Roman Jakobson liked quoting to his students” (see his fn. 138 on p. 1207 and
his Example 15.22, cit. in my Example 3).
In his chapter on
Stravinsky’s chansons russes, Taruskin’s
Russian musical examples are all underlaid with the normative literary accentuation instead of the folk one, as in “Uzh kak po mostú, po mostú, po shirokomu mostú”
(Taruskin 1996: 1207) – instead of the well-known “Uzh kak pó mostu, po móstu,
po shirokomu mostú.” Actually, Roman Jakobson need not have quoted this verse
as a musical example – he could have simply recited it. In fact, the triple
shift of accentuation of “po mostu” is caused primarily by the requirements of
the regular poetic meter, the trochaic tetrameter with (alternately) feminine
and masculine endings. Besides, all the three variants of “po mostu” coexist on
equal terms in folk verse. They are examples of the so-called “folk
accentuation” (see my explanation below):
Уж как по
мосту, по
мосту,
Uzh kak pó mostu, po móstu, Sw Sw Sw Sw
По
широкому
мосту[29]
Po shirókomu mostú Sw Sw Sw S
Example 3: Round-dance
Song "Akh vï, seni moi, seni," 3rd Stanza (Taruskin 1996: 1207)
Another point of departure for Taruskin’s ideas was Evgeniya Linyova’s
preface to her first volume of The Peasant
Songs of Great Russia as They Are in the Folk’s Harmonization (1904): “The
accent in folk song moves from one syllable to another within a word or from
one word to another within a verse, according to the demands of sense in verse
or melody, which are closely bound together and mutually influential” (Linyova
1904I: xvi, cit. in Taruskin 1996: 1213).[30]
However, Stravinsky-Taruskin-Linyova’s explanation of the re-accentuation
phenomenon does not stand apart as something new and original. In fact, this explanation
reflects the tendency of some late 19th-century/early 20th-century linguists to
attribute the irregularity of Russian folk verse to the complexity of the music
of Russian folk song – the so-called “musical theory” (muzïkal’no-taktovaya teoriya) of Russian folk verse (Korsh 1901) – and is neither complete nor
accurate.[31]
It is accepted today among linguists that the problem of re-accentuation in
Russian folk verse is primarily a philological, and only secondarily an
ethnomusicological problem. As Bailey has shown in his pioneering study (1993),
(1) the standard literary Russian language accentuation differs significantly
from the one of folk poetry,[32]
(2) the shifted accentuation is a normative feature of Russian folk verse, not only Russian folk song,[33]
and (3) although the shifted accentuation often occurs in order to coordinate
the two rhythms, poetic and musical, in many cases, it is the Russian folk poetic meters that make the shifted
accentuation necessary.[34]
Another reason, touched upon by Kholopova, who justifies Bortnyansky’s
re-accentuation by the oral performance practice of old Slavonic liturgical
texts (Kholopova 1983: 101), is a link between re-accentuation and phonetics.
As Vasina-Grossman points out (1972: 31), in Russian speech (as well as, for
that matter, in English and German), only stressed vowels are phonetically
clear, while the rest have some sort of mixed or reduced pronunciation. In this
aspect Russian differs, for instance, from the Italian language, where all vowels
are always pronounced clearly. It is known that the place of an accent in the
Russian language is not fixed – as opposed to the Czech, Polish, or French
languages, where the stress always comes on the first, penultimate, or last
syllable of any word, respectively. As to the ways of accentuation of a
stressed syllable in any language, they are at least three: intensity,
duration, and pitch. Some languages use only one of these properties (as, e.g.,
the English language uses intensity, modern Greek uses duration, and Chinese
and Vietnamese use pitch), while others use a combination thereof. In the
Norwegian and Swedish languages, for example, musical accent is accompanied by
an amplification of volume. In the Russian language, a stressed vowel is both
slightly longer and louder in
comparison with the rest; therefore, every clearly pronounced, prolonged or
simply sung Russian vowel could be easily perceived as stressed.
Therefore, it is not surprising that many verse theorists have always
regarded Russian folk verse as being made up of accents of different strengths
at different places. In the beginning of the 20th century, a theory existed
(which, by the way, also belonged to F. E. Korsh) that regarded dactylic
endings as double-stressed, for it is precisely the final syllable of the line that is often prolonged in folk songs
(“krasna dévitsà,” “dobrïy mólodèts,” “chudo chúdnoè,”
etc.). On the other hand, the investigators of the 18th century beginning with
Tred’yakovsky (1752) regarded “dóbrïy mólodets” as a “trochee-dactyl,” ignoring
the secondary final stress altogether. From the 19th century onwards, a theory
of clictics was popular: the main
phrasal accent falls on the middle syllable of the 5+5 meter, while all other
words lose their word accents and become proclictics
(“krasna dévitsa,” “dobrïy
mólodets,” “chudo chúdnoe”) or enclictics
(“okeán-more”). At present, the accepted view is that of Taranovsky who
was the first to introduce the notions of “word accent,” “phrasal accent,” and “accentual
dissimilation” with its constants and tendencies. The author explained that the
order of parts of speech in a pentasyllabic phrase is what makes a difference
in the accent order: “In phrases like ‘vo chistó polyò’ [adjective + noun] the
accent is usually shifted backward, in phrases like ‘kònya dóbrogo’ [noun +
adjective] forward. In both cases, the strongest phrasal accent always falls on
the middle syllable, while weaker word accents fall on other words.”
(Taranovsky 1956, cit. in Bailey 2001: 195). I will summarize this clash of
opinions below:
SwSww Tred’yakovsky
wwSwS Korsh
wwSww The theory of clictics
SwSwS Taranovsky-Bailey
Thus
the Russian folk 5+5 meter is built around one main phrasal accent, placed in
the middle of a hemistich and dominating other word accents in the hemistich. A
similar hierarchy of accents – although more differentiated and more obvious to
our perception – is intrinsic to music at the stage of barring notation
(roughly from the 16th century onward), which perhaps could explain the
following confession made by the younger Stravinsky in Chroniques de ma vie:
What fascinated me in this verse was
not so much the stories, which were often crude, or the pictures and metaphors,
always so deliciously unexpected, as the sequence of the words and syllables,
and the cadence they create, which produces an effect on one’s sensibilities
very closely akin to that of music. [35]
But
as far as Stravinsky’s chansons russes
are concerned, where unjustified re-accentuation abounds, this is not “the
whole truth” either. There exists yet another type of interdependence: that
between re-accentuation and musical intonation. In his 1972 article, Kharlap
draws attention in passing to a case of re-accentuation, driven by the need to
raise the reciting pitch in accordance with a more or less fixed melodic
formula. What Linyova and Taruskin call “logical accent” – a rather subjective
and somewhat outdated term in Russian metrics[36]
– Kharlap (1972: 230-1) describes as a balance between a pair of emphases found
in each hemistich, one high and one low, arsis
and thesis, both of equal importance.[37]
Their distance from each other, as well as the number of syllables in each of
the two hemistiches, is only approximately
the same (1972: 230-1, italics mine). Using numerous examples, mostly taken
from epic folk verses, the author demonstrates that arses are usually placed one full step higher than theses in melody.
Thus the need for preservation of the same descending melodic line in each
poetic line of the stanza (something typical of epic folk songs) might
occasionally cause a change in normal accentuation:
Жил
Святослав
девяносто
лет, Zhíl Svyatoslàv devyanósto lèt,
Жил
Святослав да
переставился.
Zhíl Svyatoslàv da perestávilsyà.
Оставалось
от него чадо
милое, Ostaválos’ ot negò chado míloè,
Молодой
Вольга (да)
Святославгович.[38] MOlodoy Vol’gà (da) Svyatoslávgovìch.
This
is a bïlina, a large-scale
mythological epic, which is nowadays generally considered to be a three-stress
tonic verse (arsis and thesis in each hemistich are marked with the symbols ´
and `). The biggest problem, says Kharlap, is that if Russian folk meters are
viewed as tonic, the need for additional words – conjunctions, interjections,
particles like “(da)” in the verse above, etc. – employed by performers, as
well as for shifted stress in general becomes unclear (1972: 228). Thus,
Kharlap says, the shift of accent in “molodóy” of the fourth line cannot be
explained by any other reason than by the need to raise intonation at the
beginning of the line in compliance with the already established arsis and thesis (see his musical example on p. 258, copied in my Example 4,
arses and theses are shown above).
Молодой Вольга (да) Святославгович
MOlodoy Vol’gà (da) Svyatoslávgovìch.
Example 4: Bïlina "Vol'ga i Mikula," 1st Stanza, 4th
Line (Kharlap 1972: 258)
Sometimes,
however, with the main intonation being preserved, fluctuations in the size of
a hemistich and in the placement of accents are possible. Thus the line
‘Mólodoy Vol’gà (da) Svyatoslávgovìch’ can be read, without destroying the meter, with the literary stress on ‘molodóy’
instead of the bïlina-stress ‘mólodoy.’ Therefore, although
the musical structure is quite clear from the text here, it is sometimes useful
for clarification of the rhythmic structure of the verse to know how it is
sung.[39]
The complexity of the re-accentuation issue
thus becomes even more pronounced: Stravinsky, Linyova, and Taruskin all seem
right in that in certain cases the
shift of accent in Russian folk songs is not required by the metric formula of
the verse but is caused by the urge to maintain the established melodic
structure. Such cases are genre-specific and thus cannot lay claim to be a
general rule, because this type of re-accentuation is not typical of faster
genres of Russian folk songs where the metric scheme is more regular and the
vocal melody is less flexible than in bïlinas. These faster genres often feature a different
type of re-accentuation (see below).
Russian Folk Versification and the Problem of
Incomplete Poetic Feet
Since
re-accentuation is an evident feature of both Russian folk verse and Russian
folk song, there have been numerous attempts to explain this phenomenon from
the point of view of both musicians and linguists. However, these attempts
often resembled a search for one unknown quantity through another, even lesser
known one. Indeed, the main stumbling block has often been the irregular metric
scheme of Russian peasant poetry. In the final part of this article, I will
shed some light on the distinction between the “foot” (stopnaya), “tonic” (tonicheskaya),
and “musical” (muzïkal’no-taktovaya)
theories of Russian folk versification. This distinction is necessary,
primarily, in order to better understand the differences between tonic
(irregular) and isometric (regular) folk poetic structures discussed above, and
secondarily, because it can help clarify the phenomenon of “incomplete poetic
feet.” In its turn, the notion of “incomplete feet” will bring us to the
discussion of the last type of Russian folk re-accentuation.
The
question of metrics in Russian folk verse was first put forward in the middle
of the 18th century by Tred’yakovsky (1752), one of the two reformers – along
with Lomonosov – of Russian literary versification according to western
European standards. Tred’yakovsky’s “foot” theory viewed Russian folk verse as
tonic-syllabic (sillabo-tonicheskiy stikh),
that is, as consisting of a constant number of identical poetic feet per line.
According to this theory, all metric curiosities result from a combination of
different poetic feet, as in the familiar “trochee-dactyl” “dóbrïy mólodets.”
However, it was soon found that many folk metric phenomena (as, e.g., the 5+5
meter) could not be explained by a simple combination of two heterogeneous feet
into one. Therefore, in the beginning of the 19th century, a critical attitude
toward this theory arose, which later prompted the writings of Vostokov (1817).
Vostokov put forward a completely new concept of word stress, linked to the breathing process during singing or
recitation of a verse. His “tonic” theory denies the existence of poetic feet
in Russian folk verse and regards it as “purely tonic” (chisto-tonicheskiy stikh), that is, a verse that has a constant
number (normally 2 or 3) of main stresses (phonetic, syntagmatic, or logical –
that was still a question to answer) per line. Unlike the “foot” theory, which
was gradually losing its significance during the 19th century, Vostokov’s
highly original concept grew even stronger, spawning later linguistic
doctrines, including the theories of “syntactical feet” by Potebnya (1884) and
of “free meter” (vol’nïy razmer) by
Sokal’sky (1888), the two reference points for Kharlap’s investigations. With
small modifications, this concept ended up in modern textbooks.
However, already in the 19th century, there arose a
discontent with the theory, as it had failed to explain the basic difference
between Russian folk verse and prose. In addition, some works appeared that
directly addressed the insufficiency of accent-counting on the grounds that
“not all four-storeyed buildings are of the same height” (Shtokmar 1952: 43).
At the beginning of the 20th century, Korsh (1901) put forward his “musical”
theory, which regarded Russian folk verse as isochronic (ravnodolgotnïy stikh): the verse is inseparable from its vocal performance and is organized
metrically by its tune. Popular during the period when the first phonographic
records of Russian folk songs were made, this theory did not receive much
scientific recognition afterwards, for it skirted the question of poetic metrics
altogether, having granted the exclusive right to deal with it to
ethnomusicologists (Shtokmar 1952: 106).
This
mass of contradictions began to disentangle in the 1930s, when Russian folk
epic verse became the subject of the “Russian” linguistic-statistical method of
analysis in the writings of Jakobson (1966 [1929]), Trubetskoy (1990 [1937]),
and Taranovsky (1956). Only at the end of the century did Bailey (1993) succeed
in reconciling many controversial viewpoints by considering Russian folk verse
as co-existent in many different metric variants, both tonic and regular, and
sometimes even non-metric (prose-like). Bailey also surmised that tonic verse
was very likely a secondary formation as compared to regular verse, and that it
represented the first step toward the
disintegration of Russian folk versification into prose. The habit of adding
small words in order to adjust the verse to the regular meter – conjunctions,
interjections, particles like “da” in the bïlina
above, etc. – on the part of the performers gradually led to an abuse of this
practice, which was probably one of the causes of this disintegration (Bailey
2001: 378).
Nowadays, the standard scientific
approach to the problem of metrics of Russian folk versification has the genre
of a particular verse as its basis (Propp 1961: 46). The division of Russian
folk verse into epic, lyric, and spoken (skazovïy
stikh), where the first is less metrically regular than the other two, is
accepted by all modern folklorists.[40]
According to Propp, lyric folk songs about love and family are divided into two
parts – protyazhnïe (“sad and slow”
drawn-out cantilena songs) and chastïe
(“happy and rapid” dance and game songs, that is, songs connected with physical
movement) (Ibid.: 14-16). “Happy and rapid” songs can be easily distributed
into musical measures, and the reason for this is simple: the western European
measure system appeared due to the influence of popular dances on the music of
professional composers. In the preface to his collection of lyric folk song
texts (1961), Propp examines several widespread types of the four-foot trochee
– the most characteristic poetic meter of dancing (plyasovïe), round-dancing (khorovodnïe),
and game songs (igrovïe pesni). He
notes that absolute correspondence between poetic feet and musical measures is
quite rare, but he does not elucidate in detail the phenomenon of incomplete (or silent syllable) poetic feet – the main reason behind the formation
of so many kinds of the trochaic tetrameter.
Although extremely widespread in children’s, dance, and game songs,
“incomplete feet” as applied to Russian folklore have never been the subject of
a special study, for the very existence of homogeneous poetic feet in Russian
folk verse is still put into doubt by many linguists. This is why the author of
the present study had to rely on generative linguistic studies of English folk
verse for clarification of this phenomenon (Hayes, Kaun 1996; Hayes, MacEachern
1996, 1998). In my opinion, the concept of “incomplete feet” is merely a
special case of musical isochronism
or temporal equality of the two hemistiches achieved in singing – which was one
of the subjects of the “musical” theory of Russian folk verse. Musical
isochronism, interpreted as a certain “contraction” of two short syllables into
one long syllable, is discussed by linguists beginning from the middle of the
19th century well into the 20th (to repeat: the phonetic difference between
short and long vowels does not exist in Russian). Potebnya (1884), for
instance, has expanded the concept of musical isochronism by applying it to
spoken verse (Shtokmar 1952: 68-69). As concerns Soviet ethnomusicologists, who
have never paid enough attention to the metric structure of Russian folk verse
(Bailey 2001: 27), some of them addressed the issue in detail. Viktor Belyaev,
for instance, the author mostly known in the western world for his outline of Les Noces (1928), explains the
phenomenon as follows:
One of the most widely disseminated meters in the world is
the trochaic tetrameter. This and other poetic meters are often used with
sporadic deviations from standard types – e.g., with omissions of structurally
important syllables from the poetic feet or, vice versa, with extra syllables
inserted into them. Our analysis of this creative method allows us to draw two
important conclusions.
Firstly, the predominance of omitted
syllables in poetic lines is typical of the earliest stage of formation of
poetic meters. It is observed mostly in underdeveloped song cultures and
preserved to our day in children’s folk songs…
Secondly, the predominance of
inserted extra syllables is characteristic of the formation of new poetic
meters and of further development of poetic rhythm in general.[41]
The
author provides numerous musical examples in order to illustrate these two
principles.[42]
The two excerpts of text below correspond to my musical Examples 5 and 6,
respectively. Belyaev explains ibidem
(and his explanation is entirely pertinent to my Example 5) that in the first
case complete classical 7- or 8-syllable poetic lines (i.e. trochaic lines with
masculine or feminine endings) are replaced with incomplete 6-syllable poetic
lines, although the four-beat structure of the verse remains clear and intact.
In the second case, the insertion of one-syllable words “oy” (oh) and “da” (and)
into the six-foot trochee leads to an appearance of a more heterogeneous poetic
structure with dactylic elements:
Дождик,
дождик, пуще, Dózhdik, dózhdik, púshche, Sw Sw Sw à Sw Sw S
S
Дадим
тебе гущи[43]
DAdim tEbe gúshchi Sw Sw Sw à Sw Sw S
S
Example 5: Children’s Game Song “Dozhdik,
dozhdik, pushche" (Kharlap, 1971: 248)
Горе,
горе
лебеденьку
моему[44]
Góre, góre lebedén’ku moemú Sw Sw Sw Sw Sw S
Ой горе, горе да
лебеденьку
моему
Oy gore, góre da lebedén’ku
moemú à Sww Sw Sww Sw Sw S
Example 6: Lyric Song “Oy gore, gore” (Belyaev
1971: 56)
“The melodic
rhythm in these examples coincides with the rhythm of a cantilena-like
declamation of these poems,” says the author (Belyaev 1971: 55). This last
statement is very important, as it proves that Belyaev is aware of the fact
that the incomplete feet phenomenon belongs to both the realm of poetry (or, to
be precise, poetic performance practice) and that of music. Let me show the
existence of incomplete trochaic feet in the following three excerpts from
children’s verse (Shein 1989: 33-4):
Тилим-бом,
тилим-бом, Tilim-bóm,
tilim-bóm, Sw S Sw
S
Загорелся
козий дом.[45]
Zagorélsya kóziy dom. Sw Sw Sw S
Трах,
трах,
тарарах! Trakh, trakh, tararákh! S S
Sw S
Едет
баба на
волах.[46] Edet bába na volákh. Sw Sw Sw S
Уж дождь дождём, Uzh dozhd’ dozhdyóm, S
S S S
Поливай ковшом![47] Poliváy kovshóm! Sw S S
S
In the first example above, there is
an alternation between a complete four-foot trochaic line with a masculine ending
and a four-foot trochaic line with two incomplete feet. In the second example,
there are as many as three incomplete feet in the first line. Finally, in the
first line of the last example, all trochaic feet are incomplete.
Sometimes the organizational potential of the trochaic
tetrameter is so strong that it outweighs other poetic meters. Consider these
two examples, the second of which is supplied with music (Example 7):
Жила-была
Дуня, ZhIla-bïla Dúnya, Sw Sw Sw à Sw Sw S
S
Дуня-тонкопряха.[48] Dúnya-tonkopryákha. Sw Sw Sw à Sw Sw S
S
А было у
бабки A bïlo u bábki wSw wSw à
Sw Sw S
S
Четыре
вола. Chetïre volá.
wSw wS à
Sw Sw S
Ø
Приехало
к бабке Priékhalo k bábke wSw wSw à Sw Sw S S
Четыре
купца.[49]
Chetïre kuptsá. wSw wS
à Sw Sw S
Ø
Example 7: Lullaby "A
bïlo u babki chetïre vola" (Rubtsov 1967: 196)
In the first example, the three-foot trochee is “distributed into four measures
in singing” (Propp 1961: 45) precisely because the third complete trochaic foot in the poem turns into the last two incomplete trochaic feet in the song.
The second example, taken from Rubtsov (1967: 196), shows a very curious
transformation of the amphibrachic dimeter of the spoken verse into a trochaic
tetrameter with incomplete feet in the music. Moreover, the normative literary
accents of “A bïlo,” “Chetïre” and “Priékhalo” are fore-shifted in the process of this
transformation: “A bïlo,” “ChEtïre” and “PrIekhalo.” Prima facie, one would consider this example a perfect illustration
of the Stravinsky-Taruskin-Linyova theory. In fact, such transformation is only
a matter of altering the metrical organization of the verse during declamation.[50]
Although the spoken verse resembles children’s nonsense poems, its musical
embodiment suggests a lullaby – a genre that tends to favor regularity and slow
tempo more than anything else. Rubtsov surmises that the tune and the verse
might have existed independently of each other, and that this text could have
been taken by the performer merely for lack of a more appropriate one (Ibid.).
The problem of incomplete feet leads
us to the last, very special type of Russian folk re-accentuation – the one
that is there for color effect and nothing else. This type mainly concerns
children’s spoken verse pribaoutki,
as well as dance songs and game songs, performed solo or in a group. As in the
two previous cases, this type of re-accentuation is not evident from a printed
text and is indeed “fully revealed only in singing” (Taruskin); however, a
metrically organized declamation will also give a good idea of it. This type
concerns an immediate repetition of one and the same word, which keeps the main
metric parameters intact but slightly shifts the agogic emphasis from a
stressed syllable to an unstressed one. Kholopova (1983: 146) calls this type
“accentual variation of a word-motive” and mentions several cases of its
employment by 18th- and 19th-century Russian composers. Shtokmar (1952: 204-5)
has also noted this peculiarity: “A play of overt, even provoking stress shifts
is finding its advocates and gradually becoming legalized by the poetic folk
tradition. There appear certain verses where all accent variants of one and the
same word are catalogued, as it were, by the folk singer.” Consider, e.g., the
shifts of accents in “lúgu” (meadow in the dative), “mólodtsa” (fine fellow in
the genetive), and “boyús’” ([I’m] afraid) (Shein 1989: 65-6):
Как по
лугу, по лугу, Kak po lúgu, po lugU, Sw Sw Sw S
По
зелёному
лугу[51] Po zelyónomu lugU Sw Sw Sw S
Как у
молодца,
молодца Kak u mólodtsa, molOdtsa Sw Sw Sw Sw
Разгорелися
глаза[52] Razgorélisya glazá Sw Sw Sw S
Не
боюсь я
вечной муки,
Ne boyús’ ya véchnoy múki, Sw Sw Sw Sw
Боюсь
с миленьким
разлуки[53] BOyus’ s mílen’kim razlúki Sw Sw Sw Sw
As
a matter of fact, this type of re-accentuation can only be explained by using
the notion of incomplete feet. Here is the beginning of the famous round-dance
folk song “Oh we sowed the millet,” mentioned by Taruskin apropos Stravinsky’s “rejoicing discovery”:
А мы просо
сеяли, сеяли![54] A mï próso séyali, seyalI! Sw
Sw S Sw Sw S
Ой, дид-Ладо! Сеяли, сеяли! Oy, did-Ládo! Séyali, seyalI! Sw Sw S Sw Sw S
Example 8: Round-dance Song "A mï proso
seyali" (Taruskin 1996: 1209)
This three-stress
tonic verse becomes surprisingly regular (trochaic) in the music.[55]
The interplay of accents in “seyali” is due to the “incomplete + complete” foot
combination in the former case and the “complete + incomplete” foot combination
in the latter case (S Sw vs. Sw S). The accent, as it were, “jumps over”
from the first to the last syllable of the same word. Notice, however, that in
the music the doubling of the rhythmic value coincides with the metric accent
only in the first “seyali,” while the second “seyali” is agogically back-stressed but metrically
fore-stressed (“sèyalí”).
Conclusion: What Does It All Have to Do
with Stravinsky?
After the
excursus into the area of Russian folk versification, it becomes obvious that
the late Stravinsky’s explanation of the phenomenon of Russian folk
re-accentuation should be taken with caution. Above I argue that the problem of
re-accentuation in Russian folk verse and song is seen today primarily as
linguistic, and only secondarily as an ethnomusicological problem. At the same
time, it would be no more appropriate to dismiss entirely the role of purely
musical factors in the emergence of re-accentuation in Russian folk songs,
especially considering the abundance of “musical” re-accentuation in the famous
folksong collections consulted by Stravinsky from his youth onward. Quite
often, the effect of re-accentuation
can be caused, for example, by a prolongation or melismatic extension of a
syllable while singing (phonetic factor), by a rise of musical intonation in
accordance with the already established melodic pattern (intonational factor),
or by a creative urge to destroy monotony at an immediate repetition of one and
the same word (agogic factor). However, such types of re-accentuation are often
genre-specific: the first is more typical of slow drawn-out songs, the second
is more characteristic of epic songs with their irregular metric structure,
while the third type is found mainly in rapid lyric folk songs – children’s,
dance, round-dance, and game songs, that is, in songs connected with physical movement.
In the light of the above discussion,
the reasons for re-accentuation in Stravinsky’s settings of Russian folklore
texts can be divided schematically into two parts: (1) “primary”
re-accentuation that is already present
in Stravinsky’s text sources, and (2) “secondary” re-accentuation that is
present in the works of Stravinsky but absent
from his text sources. The latter is the most numerous category including
stresses shifted for rhythmic or metric purposes, for semantic purposes, for
preservation of the same melodic material, for color effect, for the purpose of
deviation from the traditional poetic structures, etc. However, the former
predominates in his early settings of Russian folk verse: “rïzhikI,”
“senatOrï,” “sidyuchI,” “glyadyuchI” in “Kak gribï na voynu sobiralis’” dating back to 1904 (“How the Mushrooms Prepared for
War”), “vskOchila,” “slOmila” in “Sorochen’ka” (“The Magpie”) and “nA vecher” in “Chicher-Yacher” from Souvenirs de mon enfance (1906-13),
“stOit” and “gorYO-toskú” in “Kornilo,” “medovAya” and “zharU” in “Natashka”
from Pribaoutki (1914), “kOza,”
“glAza,” in “Tilim-bom,” “vOrobey,” “tArakan,” ”banyU” in
“Gusi-lebedi” (“Geese, swans”) from Trois
histoires pour enfants (1915-17), etc.[56]
In most such cases, we deal either
with the folk accentuation (“sidyuchI,” Example 9, mm. 5-6) or with a stress
shift caused by a necessity to adjust the poetic line to the regular – mainly
trochaic (although there is one case of an amphibrach in “Natashka”) – folk
verse pattern. The difference between the two causes of re-accentuation is
barely noticeable even to a native speaker; indeed, most of these words are
found in the appendices of folk stress variants in Bailey 1993 (cf. “gorYO” on p. 320,
“dubOm” on p. 323, “medovOy” on p. 329) and
Bailey 2001 (cf. “sidyuchI” on pp.
77, 102). These are all cases of the “primary”
re-accentuation to which Russian folk singers and Russian-speaking readers of
folk poetry rarely pay attention. Who, for instance, would seriously doubt the
presence of two stresses in the word “zAgorélsya,” one primary – the literary stress on the
third syllable – and one secondary, a folk trochaic shift? Accentual dissimilation is responsible for the
difference in intensity of these two stresses.
Под дубом сидючи, Pod
dubóm sidyuchI, Sw S Sw S
На грибы глядючи, [57] Na gribï glyadyuchI, Sw S Sw S
Example 9:
“How the Mushrooms Prepared for War” (mm. 1-11)
© Copyright 1979 Boosey &
Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd. Reprinted by permission
Such stress
shifts as “ZAgorelsya koziy dom” (Example 10, mm. 3-4) or “Otkazalis’ rïzhikI”
(Example 11, mm. 84-85) are so widespread in Russian folk tradition that to
call them “re-accentuation” would seem a bit of an exaggeration for a native
speaker (especially a child), who would most likely pass them by unnoticed. But
the stress shifts in “senatOrï” (Example 12, m. 38),
“vskOchila” (Example 13, m. 6), “slOmila” (Example 13, m. 8),
“gorYO-toskú” (Example 14, mm. 11-13) and “medovAya” (Example 15, mm. 5-6) are
quite another matter, because the stress shift here falls on a syllable
adjacent to the literary stress and thus contradicts
the accentual dissimilation, natural to the word itself. Stravinsky, born
linguist that he was, could hardly pass over these stress shifts unnoticed.
Precisely these cases of folk accentuation (notice that they still belong to
the “primary” re-accentuation) were so engraved in his memory that even in old
age he spoke of some curious capacity of folk performers to ignore literary
accents while singing:
One important characteristic of
Russian popular verse is that the accents of the spoken verse are ignored when
the verse is sung. The recognition of the musical possibilities inherent in
this fact was one of the most rejoicing discoveries of my life; I was like a
man who suddenly finds that his finger can be bent from the second joint as
well as from the first.[58]
Тилим-бом, тилим-бом, Tilim-bóm,
tilim-bóm, Sw S Sw S
Загорелся козий дом.
Zagorélsya kóziy dom. Sw Sw Sw S
Коза выскочила, KOza
vïskochila, Sw
S Sw S
Глаза выпучила,[59]
GlAza vïpuchila, Sw S
Sw S
Example 10: "Tilim-bom" (mm. 1-9)
Отказались рыжики:
Otkazális’ rïzhikI: Sw Sw Sw S
«Мы простые мужики,[60] “Mï
prostïe muzhikí, Sw Sw Sw S
Example 11:
“How the Mushrooms Prepared for War” (mm. 83-90)
© Copyright 1979 Boosey &
Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd. Reprinted by permission
Отказались мухоморы,
Otkazális’ mukhomórï, Sw
Sw Sw Sw
Говорят, мы сенаторы, [61]
Govoryát, mï senatOrï, Sw Sw Sw Sw
Example 12:
“How the Mushrooms Prepared for War” (mm. 36-40)
© Copyright 1979 Boosey &
Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd. Reprinted by permission
Вскочила на ёлочку, VskOchila
na yólochku, Sw Sw S Sw
Сломила головушку. [62] SlOmila
golóvushku. Sw Sw S Sw
Example 13: Souvenirs de mon enfance “Soroka” / "The Magpie" (mm. 6-10)
Приразмычь горё-тоску: Prirazmïch’ gorYO-toskú: Sw Sw Sw S
Стоит бражка в туяску, [63] StOit
brázhka v tuyaskú, Sw Sw Sw S
Example 14: “Kornilo” (mm. 10-14)
Сладка медовая, Sladká
medovAya, wSw wSw
В печи не
бывала, V pechí ne bïvála, wSw wSw
Жару не
видала.[64] ZharU ne vidála. wSw wSw
Example 15: “Natashka” (mm. 1-10)
Beginning from the
early-to-middle period of his, so to say, sensitivity to Russian folk verse,
Stravinsky starts to systematically introduce the “secondary” or “musical”
re-accentuation, the one that does not exist in his text sources. But already
in “Vorona” (“The Rook”) from Souvenirs
de mon enfance, he shifts the accent from one stressed syllable to the other,
unstressed one, in “móknet” and “sókhnet” at their repetitions, imitating a
similar procedure in folklore (cf. “A mï próso séyali, seyalI”).
This shift results in an interplay of fore-shifts and back-shifts (Example 16,
mm. 25-28):
Пусть ворона сохнет, Pust’
voróna sókhnet, Sw Sw
S S
Пусть
ворона
сохнет. [65] Pust’ voróna sokhnEt. Sw Sw S S
Example 16: Souvenirs de mon enfance,”Vorona” / ”The Rook” (mm. 23-28)
Opening the first song of Trois histoires pour enfants “Tilim-bom”
as a very conventional setting of a popular nursery rhyme, he soon turns off
the road of predictability, accelerating or slowing down the syllabic rhythm of
the poem as compared to the “prosodic norm” (the term is taken from Ogolevets
1960). In so doing, he introduces utterly distorted accents, alien to the
rhythmic structure of the text (refer back to Example 10, mm. 5-7):
“vïskochIla,” “vïpuchIla” (cf. “vïskochila,” “vïpuchila”), etc. Another interesting case of inversion
of the natural accentuation of the tonic verse is found in the setting of the
first two lines of the irregular tonic verse of “Polkovnik” (“The Colonel”)
from Pribaoutki, which aims to mark
the initial “Ps” of the tongue-twister (Example 17):
Пошёл
полковник
погулять.
Поймал
птичку-перепёлочку.[66]
Poshyól
polkóvnik pogulyát’. à POshyol pOlkovnik pOgulyat’.
Poymál
ptíchku-perepyólochku. à POymal ptíchku-perepyólochku.
Example 17: Pribaoutki, "Polkovnik"/ "The
Colonel" (mm. 6-9, 15-18)
The setting of the tonic verse of
“Starets i zayats” (“The Old Man and the Hare”) also abounds with
re-accentuation of this type, totally unjustified by any logical reason except,
perhaps, by the “contrafact” method of text-setting (Taruskin 1996: 1277):
“kOsoy zaYAts” (Example 18, mm. 18-19), “prosIt izvarEts” (mm. 23-24), and so
on and so forth. These shifts of accents result from a conscious breaking-up on
the part of the composer of the natural prosody of children folk poetry, either
sung or spoken:
Прибежал
косой заяц Pribezhál kosóy záyats à
Pribezhál kOsoy zaYAts
И просит
изварец.[67] I prósit izvárets. à I prosIt izvarEts.
Example 18: Pribaoutki, "Starets i
zayats"/ "The Old Man and the Hare" (mm. 15-27)
“Pesenka medvedya” (“The Bear”,
Example 19), the last one of Trois
histoires pour enfants, stands out from all the chansons russes as the quintessence of Stravinsky’s newly
discovered “new technique of text-setting” (Expo:
120). The most distinctive feature of this song is its metric ambiguity: the quasi-iambic poetic meter perpetually clashes
with the 2/4 meter of the music. The first two lines of the poem, an iambic
dimeter and an anapestic dimeter, are set as if they were trochaic tetrameters:
a “Chicher-Yacher” (see Example 20) type with four incomplete feet and a
“Tilim-bom, tilim-bom” type that is further transformed into a trimeter with
one silent foot. The result of such a conversion of the poetic meters is a
complete distortion of the natural accentuation of the poem: “SkrIpi, nOga,/
SkrIpi, lipovAya” (Example 19, mm. 1-4):
Скрипи,
нога! Skripí, nogá! wS wS à S S
S S à S S
S S
Скрипи,
липовая![68] Skripí, lípovaya! wwS wwS à Sw S Sw S
à Sw Sw Sw
Ø
Example 19: Trois histoires pour enfants, "Pesenka
medvedya"/"The Bear" (mm. 1-7)
Чичер-Ячер Chícher-Yácher S S S S[69]
Собирался
на вечер.[70]
Sobirálsya nA vecher. Sw Sw Sw S
Example 20: Souvenirs de
mon enfance, “Chicher-Yacher” (mm. 1-3)
The Stravinsky analysis above confirms that each of
the two types of Russian folk re-accentuation – “primary” (required by the
regular poetic meter) and “secondary” (caused by the totality of musical
factors) – coexist on equal terms in his music. Similarly, these two tendencies
coexist peacefully in Russian folklore; however, the deliberate and systematic
distortion of prosody – rare if inexistent in folklore – in Stravinsky’s music
gradually acquires a status of a prominent feature. Such distortion will soon
become the quintessence of the composer’s mature style in the late chansons russes, Bayka, Svadebka, and
other works.
Transliteration
The New Grove system of transliterating Russian vowels is adopted with minor
amendments. The letter ы is transliterated as ї, the letter й is transliterated as y, ю and я as yu and ya, ё as yo, e as e, but after hard
or soft signs (both are represented as ’) or between two vowels “e” it is
transliterated as ye. Standard renderings of proper names (Dargomyzhsky, Musorgsky,
Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Scriabin, etc.) are used.
Symbols for Prosodic Analysis
Accents
(primary ´ and secondary `) are given in the transliterations of Russian folk
poetry. Re-accented vowels are marked in capital letters. Other symbols are
used as follows (the parentheses around the masculine ending are only meant to
show the extra space after S):
S
|
strong syllable |
|
w |
weak syllable |
Sw
|
trochaic foot |
|
wS |
|
Sww
|
dactylic foot |
|
wSw |
amphibrachic foot |
|
wwS |
anapestic foot |
Sw
|
feminine ending (complete foot) |
(S )
|
masculine ending (incomplete foot) |
Ø
|
|
|
primary stress vs. secondary |
|
|
Sww |
Abbreviations
Chron Stravinsky,
Igor. Chronicle of My Life. London:
Victor Gollancz, 1936.
Expo Stravinsky, Igor, and Robert
Craft. Expositions and Developments. London:
Faber and Faber, 1962.
Mem Stravinsky,
Igor, and Robert Craft. Memories and
Commentaries. London: Faber and Faber, 1960.
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1977 Kniga o Stravinskom (A book
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___________1982 A Book About Stravinsky. Translated by Richard F. French,
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__________2001 Izbrannïe stat’i po russkomu narodnomu stikhu (Selected papers on
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____________1971
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____________1972 Musorgsky, Scriabin, Stravinsky. Sbornik
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______________
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