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Philosophy and Culture
Reference:

About the work "Yakut folk music" by M.N.Zhirkov

Pavlova-Borisova Tat'yana Vladimirovna

PhD in Art History

Associate Professor, Department of Culturology, Ammosov North-Eastern Federal University

677000, Russia, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Yakutsk, Kulakovsky str., 42

pavlovaborisova@mail.ru
Other publications by this author
 

 

DOI:

10.7256/2454-0757.2023.6.40720

EDN:

ZBYMVM

Received:

06-05-2023


Published:

13-05-2023


Abstract: The subject of the study is the research work of M.N. Zhirkov, which became the first monographic study of the musical culture of the Yakuts. The object of the study is the problems of musicology first posed by the author of this study. The article discusses such aspects as the difficult fate of the manuscript of M.N. Zhirkov's research, which was unpublished for a long time, and at the first publication was not published in its full form, in addition, the experience of a new reprint of this work in the 9th volume of M.N. Zhirkov's "Collected Works". Special attention is paid to those areas of his work that at that time were in the circle of the most pressing theoretical problems of musical culture of the peoples of the former Soviet Union.   The main conclusions of the study are the author's generalizations of the fundamental results of M.N. Zhirkov's work, which at the time of writing this work were advanced not only in terms of the level of development of Russian musicology, but now look quite modern in their relevance and fundamental nature. A special contribution of the author to the topic under development is the analysis of those parts of the study that were not published in the first publication of 1981. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that for the first time attention is drawn to the original full text of the original version of the "Yakut folk Music" by M.N.Zhirkov. The article summarizes the author's experience of the new edition of this unique work.


Keywords:

Mark Zhirkov, Yakut folk music, musical culture, activity, study, edition, Collected Works, musical folklore, mutual influence, work

This article is automatically translated. You can find original text of the article here.

The first Yakut composer Mark Nikolaevich Zhirkov, in addition to his active creative, organizational and social activities, made a great contribution to the study of Yakut folk music. The intonation-cultural environment in which M.N. Zhirkov grew up caused his passion for folk music, love and sincere interest in which, as a researcher, he carried through his whole life.M.N. Zhirkov began to systematically study Yakut folk music from 1947 until his premature death in 1951.

During these years, he was in charge of the art history sector at the Institute of Language, Literature, History and Art History of the Yakut Base of the USSR Academy of Sciences (now the Institute for Humanitarian Studies and Problems of Small Peoples of the North of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences), where he moved to work after the closure of the Musical Theater Studio in 1948.

Many years of folklore practice allowed M.N. Zhirkov, on the basis of collected observations in the period from 1947 to 1949, to write an outstanding work of his life - the first monographic study "Yakut folk music" (stored in the Manuscript Department of the IGI and PMNS SB RAS, as well as in the Manuscript Fund of notes of the National Bank of the RS (Ya)), of a similar level of fundamental the problems were not raised by the predecessors [2; 4; 5; 6; 7; 8; 9; 10].

It would be wrong to assume that this work was written only during the years of work at the Institute. It became a generalization of M.N. Zhirkov's thoughts, observations, reflections on Yakut folk music, the history of its study, existence, the main ways and prospects of development, which worried him and were relevant to him throughout his professional creative and research activities.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the first in the history of Yakut musical culture fundamental research "Yakut folk music", carried out by the first Yakut composer M.N. Zhirkov.

 After M.N. Zhirkov passed away, the manuscript of his research was kept in the storerooms for many years. Specialists knew about the existence of this work, relied on its main provisions in their scientific works, composers used folk motifs and melodies recorded by M.N. Zhirkov in their compositions on the Yakut theme.

A very significant work by M.N. Zhirkov was published only in 1981, thanks to the efforts of a musicologist, the first Yakut woman-Doctor of art history G.G. Alekseeva, who prepared the book for publication. Published three decades later, it has lost its novelty and relevance due to a number of factors, but it is still a very valuable source of information about Yakut folk music, the focus of original musical notation, demanded by more than one generation of readers.

 Here is what G.G. Alekseeva writes about this: "We have tried in this work, preserving the style of the author, his original definitions of the means of musical expression, to convey to the reader the seriousness of thoughts, concern about the problems of the musical life of the republic… What he deeply experienced and felt became part of his biography" [1, p.9]. She further notes: "In a work written more than thirty years ago, editorial changes had to be made. References of settlements, districts of the Yakut ASSR are given. In addition, lists of used and recommended literature are attached. The book is supplemented with information about the researchers mentioned in the work, and drawings of musical instruments from the composer's personal archive. The given musical examples have been edited" [1, pp.9-10].

 Without detracting from the importance of the editorial work carried out by the previous compiler, the author of these lines found it possible to present a new edition of the study "Yakut Folk Music" by M.N. Zhirkov as a scientific editor of this series in the 9th volume within the framework of the publication of the Collected Works of M.N. Zhirkov, which is very popular with the population and the musical community of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia).Zhirkova. The version offered to the reader's attention presents the most complete version of the text of this work to date, while preserving the author's style and presentation features. Intervention in the existing text was made at the level of correcting typos and grammatical inaccuracies.

The study consists of an introduction, three sections, each of which includes several chapters, musical appendices.

M.N. Zhirkov, justifying the value and significance of Yakut folk music, briefly describes the leading genres of Yakut folk art, which by that time were practically unexplored, including two fundamental Yakut song styles – dyeretii and degeren.The author gives an overview of the history of the study of Yakut folk music, starting from the pre-revolutionary period of A.F. Middendorf, A. Maslov up to the research of Soviet musicologists and composers of those years.

Also noteworthy is the professional assessment given by M.N. Zhirkov to the first collections of Yakut songs by A. Scriabin and F. Argunov in terms of figurative content and authenticity of the tunes published in their composition.  Having analyzed the conclusions made by Soviet musicologists and composers of those years - D.R. Rogal-Levitsky, V.M. Belyaev, N. Peiko and I. Steinman, relying on the materials of these first Yakut song collections prepared by A. Scriabin and F. Argunov. M.N. Zhirkov defines a number of songs from these publications as "cultivated", "Rapmovsky" - that is, without preserving the national spirit, artificially created in line with the trends of the ideology of the musical and public organization - the "Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians" (RAPM), which aimed to create a mass musical repertoire. M.N. Zhirkov believed that musicologist V.M. Belyaev failed to make a "historical analysis of Yakut music, to consider the kinship ties of the Yakut musical culture with the music of other fraternal nationalities on the basis of the fret, melodic pattern and principles of their construction; the ancient music of the Yakuts, as well as the fret structure of the Yakut song-instrumental music and Yakut national musical instruments of antiquity, etc.", since there was a lack of "documented authentic folk song original folklore of the Yakut people" [3].

The author of the study entered into a scientific discussion with D. Rogal-Levitsky on his conclusion about the Yakut song as a "forgotten value of the Yakut people" and that it "went out of general use", noting that this conclusion may be to some extent fair in relation to the shamanic songs described by the Moscow musicologist, which according to the facts are not present in the analyzed material.

In the article by composer N. Peiko and musicologist I. Steinman "On the music of the Yakuts" M.N. Zhirkov revealed "many descriptive and ascertaining moments that are a repetition of the scientific work of V.M. Belyaev and pre-revolutionary researchers of Yakutia" [3]. Recognizing the high qualifications of these researchers, he noted that the improvisational nature of Yakut folk music is not a consequence of "archaic disorder" and without fixing the timbre features of Yakut folk music – melisms, trills, tremolos with the inability to put them in a tempered system (this statement is made in relation to the style of dyeretia yrya, epic tunes), all their national originality and originality. He developed reflections on these features of Yakut music in the subsequent chapters of the monograph.

Mark Nikolaevich gave a detailed description of the Yakut epic olonkho and the tunes that are part of it. He stated the fact that Yakut storytellers-Olonkhosuts freely improvise when performing epic tunes and, unlike a number of Turkic peoples (such as Khakas, Altaians), do not accompany them by playing musical instruments, the songs of the heroes of Olonkho have their own leitmotifs. M.N. Zhirkov paid special attention to the manner of performing the tunes of the Dierethii, noting that the mechanism of singing of the Olonkhosuts and Yakut folk singers is very peculiar and strikingly different from the European manner of singing and the technique of performing songs of fraternal peoples.

In this regard, trying to record folk tunes, M. N. Zhirkov did not abandon the idea of creating a system for recording Yakut musical folklore. To do this, he was interested in the comparative study of traditional music of related ethnic groups: Tatars, Bashkirs, Kirghiz, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Turkmens. A milestone is the application of a 24-step scale to the traditional musical culture of the Yakuts - he turned to the peculiarities of musical notation according to the system of I.S. Tezavrovsky. The author highlights the complexity of recording the melodies of the style of dyeretia. On this occasion, N. N. Zhirkov consulted with the Soviet music theorist, acoustics, Doctor of Art History N.A. Garbuzov [3].

The critical approach allowed the author to draw important conclusions about the development of Yakut folklore studies as of that time period, about the pressing problems of studying the traditional musical culture of the Yakuts, about the difficulties of notating samples of the diie-buo song style, about the peculiarities of performance, about the prospects for the development of folk song creativity, etc.

 M.N. Zhirkov described the existence of folk music, carried out its classification, samples recorded at different times were considered, including the expanded corpus of olonkho tunes presented in such volume for the first time.

The fundamental conclusion is that songs of the degeren type arose in the process of processing, polishing the intonations of the original forms of the Dyereti style. M.N. Zhirkov gives samples of Yakut folk songs of the degeren style and refers the reader to the musical appendix to this book.

For the first time, the dance art of the Yakuts is described, the folk dance o h uohai, which is performed by both women and men in the summer during the traditional holiday of ysyakh. M.N. Zhirkov draws analogies between the performance of o h uohai and dances of other peoples - Georgian perkhuli, Buryat yekhar [3].

Employees who worked with M.N. Zhirkov were involved in the work of collecting the material. So, one of the first ballerinas of Yakutia, a native of Dnepropetrovsk, Maria Yakovlevna Zhornitskaya, began to engage in research in the field of dance art of the peoples of the republic precisely under the influence of the first Yakut composer. Since 1948, she worked under the guidance of M.N. Zhirkov in the sector of art history and the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and in 1965 defended her PhD thesis on "Folk dances of Yakutia".

M.N. Zhirkov for the first time raises the question of the logic and prospects for the development of Yakut music, rightly believing that there should be a transition from monodic thinking to polyphony, from folklore to developed forms of professional art, which should be formed on the fertile soil of traditional musical culture: "The limited range of the majority of samples of Yakut folk songs attached to this speaks about that without organic mastery of the means of musical expression accumulated by world art, and, first of all, the art of the great Russian people, Yakut music cannot be able to adequately reflect the consciousness of the people who made the leap from feudalism to socialism, nor fully contribute to the further enrichment of the musical culture of the Yakut people" [3, p.54].

He continues further: "Therefore, an urgent task was put forward to me as a musical figure working on the theme "Yakut folk Music": revealing the national peculiarities of folklore material, to find a new style of Yakut Soviet music, to find ways of developing Yakut melodies, ways of enriching their drawings and range, to find ways of using Yakut musical folklore as in terms of direct processing, and in terms of free implementation" [3, p.41].

M.N. Zhirkov identified the genres of Yakut academic music that needed to be laid in order to develop the professional musical art of the young northern republic, positioning itself in the Russian and international space as an equal participant in active cultural transformations, in which the presence of developed forms of musical art, the Yakut national school of composition were evidence of loyalty to the chosen path of socialist construction and the Soviet system - solo and choral songs, ballet, musical drama and opera, instrumental works, symphonic music.

The author presented the results of experimental work undertaken by him to search for a "new style of Yakut Soviet music", the development of Yakut melodies, songwriting, undertaken by him in the genre of solo and choral songs. If we analyze the presented samples, they clearly show the repetition of the initial melodic-rhythmic formula, in some cases already with the introduction of additional intonation moves, and the expansion of the range is due to movement along the sounds of the main triads of the fret, jumps at wide intervals up to octave disclosure. The songs are presented in 2- and 3-voice presentation.

M.N. Zhirkov describes the process of writing the ballets "Wild Flower" and "Scarlet Handkerchief", the first in the history of Yakut music, gives examples of the use of these works of folk songs in music, such as "Lullaby", "Lyrical Love Song", "Satire over the collective farm idler", etc. The genre of ballet in Yakut art was created by him in creative collaboration with the Moscow composer G.I. Litinsky. Thus, he notes with satisfaction that the foundation for the successful formation of this genre of Yakut professional art has been successfully laid.

In a monographic study, M.N. Zhirkov raises the topic "composer and folklore". The authors of the music of the first Yakut opera "Nyurgun Bootur" tried to preserve the original spirit of folk melodies. The musical drama, and later the opera "Nyurgun Bootur" were based on authentic folk tunes. To do this, traditional performers were invited from all over Yakutia – masters of the Yakut folk song, leading performers with whom the production group and theater artists had direct communication..

Olonkho's recordable tunes were widely recorded, which in itself was a unique phenomenon. Solo parts were recorded what is called "from the voice" - so stable musical notes were obtained, according to which the Yakut artists involved in the production actually learned them on the move. The creators of the opera sought to preserve the peculiarities of Olonkho's melody in it, entrusting the orchestra with the role of harmonic support for the vocal part.

This edition contains epic tunes from olonkho and original folk songs recorded by the chorus artist E.A. Zakharova, dramatic artists A.F. Novgorodova, D.P. Mosorkina, Honored Artist of the RSFSR V.A. Savvin, Honored Artists of the RSFSR M.V. Zhirkov, I.D. Izbekov and U.G. Nokhsorov, Honored Artist of the RSFSR S.A. Zverev; musical fragments of the themes of the arias of the opera heroes created on their basis.

A different situation developed when writing the second Yakut opera "Sygy Kyrynaastyr", created by M.N. Zhirkov in collaboration with G.I. Litinsky in 1945-1946. on the plot of a historical and heroic legend, revised by a connoisseur of Yakut folklore, drama artist I.D. Izbekov about two opposing Yakut medieval clans. Unlike the opera "Nyurgun Bootur", the style of the song style of degeren, intonations of the Soviet mass song, Yakut melodies of those years in their free variant development prevail in "Sygy Kyrynaastyr". The thematic material of choirs and mass dance scenes is also based on Yakut folk intonations that convey ethnic flavor and embody national character in music.

M.N. Zhirkov had the idea of writing the third Yakut opera on a modern plot, taking into account the shortcomings that he, as a real creative person, found in his first two opera compositions. Unfortunately, the plans of the first Yakut composer were not destined to come true and we cannot find out what it would have been, but I dare to assume that if M.N. Zhirkov could have heard G.A. Grigoryan's operetta "Flower of the North" about the life of ordinary Yakut workers who dream of building a garden city, then by the nature of her work the author with the Yakut musical material and the resulting artistic result, the founder of the Yakut musical art and the national school of composition, in our opinion, would approve of him.

In the section of the publication devoted to the description of musical instruments and the prospects for the development of the Yakut folk musical instrumental culture, M.N. Zhirkov gives a description of the main types of musical instruments, distinguishing three groups in them: percussion – with a division into percussion and noisy; wind – embouchure (pipes), flute, tongue; string - plucked and bowed. In each species, he identified the so–called "prototypes" that prompted ancient people to think about specific sound production: in reed wind instruments, this is a leaf of grass clamped at the mouth or in the hands; in flute instruments, a hollow nut with a hole, when an air jet is blown into it, a sound is formed; in pipes, hollow shells, stems plants, tubular bones of animals (Appendix 4, Fig. 4), strings have stretched veins, threads, a bowstring of a hunting bow; percussionists have palms of hands hitting wood and other objects [1, pp. 63-64].

A comparative analysis conducted by the first Yakut composer after studying the samples exhibited at the first All-Union Exhibition of musical instruments of the Peoples of the USSR, held by the N.K. Krupskaya All-Union House of Folk Art for the twentieth anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, allowed the author to note that Yakut folk instruments are very few and unknown to a wide audience. He believed that after collecting all the information about the Yakut folk musical instruments, studying the data, it is necessary to work on their modernization in order to introduce professional Yakut musicians into the practice of playing music.

The author provides information available at that time in the scientific literature. M.N. Zhirkov describes in sufficient detail the dugure of R.K. Maak with stretched strings and a metal shovel, which, in addition to hitting the tambourine, could be used as a plectrum to sort out the strings stretched from the back side. He considered this instrument, which was never recorded in real practice, a transitional string-percussion instrument, a milestone for the evolutionary development of the musical culture of the Yakut people.

M.N. Zhirkov correlated the stages of development of the musical culture of the Yakuts with the general historical and social processes of the studied region. Being well acquainted with the works of Doctor of Historical Sciences A.P. Okladnikov "The History of Yakutia", he dwells in sufficient detail on the examination of an oblong bone tube with holes found during excavations in the Munku locality on the Kullaty River (a tributary of the Lena River), defined as the simplest musical instrument of the pipe type.

 With the opinion of researchers Z. Evald, V. Kosovanova, S. Abayantseva on the "primitive stage of musical thinking of the northern peoples", including the Yakuts, compared to the peoples of Siberia, M.N. Zhirkov disagreed: "The southern ancestors of the Yakuts, abandoned far to the north, as our historians report in their writings, have lost not only direct ties with these tribes, but they also gradually lost many essential elements of the ancient cultural heritage, which survived, are being restored and developed by many peoples of Central Asia and the Baikal region related to the Yakuts" [3, p.70].

A consistent description of wind, percussion, noise and string instruments, supplemented by illustrations made by the artist M. M.Nosov, pupils of the Yakut Art School E.M. Shaposhnikov and E.P. Shestakov (Appendix 4), which gives greater persuasiveness, clarity and reliability to the material presented. Many of the folk instruments described by M.N. Zhirkov are not used in the musical practice of the Yakut people, but they are of great interest and still cause scientific discussions among modern researchers.

M. N. Zhirkov describes the instruments of related Turkic peoples: Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, emphasizing that before the establishment of Soviet power, the corpus of their national instruments was quite limited, he provides information that ensembles and orchestra of Kyrgyz folk musical instruments with a number of 15 to 100 performers were recreated on the basis of timir khomus and string komuz, and in the national ensembles of Kyrgyzstan there are instruments of related peoples.

The Yakut composer suggests following the path of recreating “lost”, in his opinion, national Yakut instruments that can be reconstructed, for which M.N.Zhirkov traveled to Tashkent for 15 days in 1947. He and the Research Institute of Art Studies of the Uzbek SSR, with the participation of the State Orchestra of Folk Instruments of the Ukrainian SSR, singers of the State Philharmonic of the Ukrainian SSR and the choir of the Radio Committee under the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR, conducted a unique experiment on the performance of treatments of Yakut songs prepared by composer B.F. Gienko, as a result of which M.N. Zhirkov and Uzbek art figures concluded that the sound of Uzbek national instruments and Yakut national musical material. Uzbek performers accompanied Yakut singers who performed the songs “uru? tulluk kurduk duo?”, “uru? tulluk ere mol'bostuur", “hara?abyt halbaryida", “ke?e". Phonorecording of these works was performed by Yakut soloists and the Uzbek National Orchestra. Professional assistance to M.N. Zhirkov was provided by S.E. Didenko and A.I. Petrosyan. Together with them, he worked on amplifying the sound of the khomus, studied the timbral correspondence of Central Asian instruments to the sound of the Yakut folk song, developed possibilities for improving all types of ancient Yakut instruments on the model of the Uzbek national orchestra.

M.N. Zhirkov gives practical recommendations on the reconstruction of original instruments, considering the possibility of borrowing the tools of related peoples. He mentions cooperation with the master of the experimental laboratory for the reconstruction of Uzbek folk musical instruments at the Research Institute of Art Studies of the Uzbek USSR S.E. Didenko. According to the recommendations of Uzbek specialists, M.N. Zhirkov proposed to modify the Yakut khomus in order to enhance the sonority. He believed that it was necessary to create thirteen khomuses of different heights within an octave in order to build an ensemble of khomusists according to a tempered system, and then create an orchestra of recostruized khomuses. It was suggested that the modernized khomus could enter into the practice of related Turkic peoples.

A few decades later, Bashkir kubyz virtuoso R.A. Zagretdinov created a chromatic kubyz, the author of these lines personally heard the game performed by R.A. Zagretdinov in Yakutsk in 1988 during his participation at the I All-Union Conference "Harp (Khomus) and his music", and the Bashkir performer patented a number of other kubyz modifications created by him - Bashkir version of the harp.

Russian Russian folk songs, games, dances, M.N. Zhirkov also poses the problem of mutual influence of Russian and Yakut musical cultures and examines the influence of melodies of Russian folk songs on Yakut ones on concrete musical examples [3, pp.98-110], the original result of their interaction, as well as the activities of musicians who came from Russia.

 The author convincingly showed how samples of Russian folk music - round dances, soldier songs, ditties, dance tunes were influenced by Yakut folk songs. The reverse influence of Russian folk and Soviet mass songs on the formation of the Yakut song genre was also observed. Russian Russian culture and the development of the peoples of Yakutia were also considered by Zhirkov; he attached great importance to the influence of Russian songwriting on the formation of songs of the dageren style of the Yakut mass song. Using concrete examples, he shows the gradual transformation and rebirth of Russian folk songs into Yakut ones. Russian Russian folk songs that existed in pre-revolutionary Yakutia (labor, round dance, dance, soldier, revolutionary), dances, instruments, and on the example of musical life in Vilyuysk convincingly substantiates the idea of the influence of Russian culture on Yakut musical folklore" [1, p.58].

The main merit of M.N. Zhirkov as a researcher is that he is the first to bring the study of Yakut folk music to the theoretical level, considering its problems in a comparative aspect.

In his fundamental research, M.N. Zhirkov raised such basic problems as:

1) the need for a reliable study and the maximum possible immersion in a given situation in the problematic field of research of the historical development of Yakut musical folklore from the first mentions of travelers and researchers of the pre-revolutionary period almost to the middle of the XX century.;

2) a large number of unexplored gaps, the presence of a large problem field in the field of Yakut folk music;

3) the urgent relevance of studying the traditional musical culture of the Yakuts in the conditions of the beginning of the process of loss of traditional culture, in particular ritual and ritual practices – for the purpose of fixation and further archiving;

4) the difficulty of notation of diie-buo songs, the search for ways to more accurately fix the timbre features of Yakut traditional singing, such as, for example, kyli h ahi;

5) intercultural communication for the purpose of interaction of traditional musical cultures, the influence of Russian culture on the development of musical culture of the Yakuts;

6) reconstruction and modernization of Yakut musical instruments.

      M.N. Zhirkov for the first time drew attention within the framework of the Yakut musical culture to the theme "composer and folklore". He stressed that it is important to work with the Yakut musical folklore as the basis of the professional musical art of the Yakut people. He raised the problems of fixing and considering the corpus of Yakut epic tunes of dyeretia, studying the features of Yakut folk dances and elements of traditional sports, traditional kinesics of the Yakut people, introducing the melodic fund of Yakut tunes of the degeren style into scientific circulation.

The author of the first ever monographic study on Yakut folk music presented the genre composition of folk songs, highlighting playful, lyrical, patriotic, satirical, comic songs, gave them a characteristic and, being himself their performer and expert, revealed their content, themes and ideological orientation, as well as the features of the melodic structure and outlined the ways of development of the national songwriting.

As informants, along with recognized storytellers and singers of such a level as S.A. Zverev-Kyyl Uola, L.A. Tourin, U.G. Nokhsorov, I.P. Kuturukov, schoolchildren and collective farm youth were also involved. In the future, M.N. Zhirkov planned to create a wider network of informants to carry out more painstaking and effective work.

Of great interest are the epic tunes of olonkho, tunes of degeren, Yakut dances, color illustrations of Yakut folk musical instruments, diagrams, drawings, tables, photographs, a list of bibliographic sources for the study "Yakut folk music", published in the "Collected Works" for the first time in the form of appendices, which must be paid attention to.

The assessment of the state of Yakut folklore studies of those years, the identification of the problems of studying the traditional musical culture of the Yakuts in comparison with the musical cultures of related peoples, traditional instruments and other core issues were first touched upon in this fundamental work for the future Yakut musical science, which gave rise to the emergence of Yakut ethnomusicology, whose representatives subsequently gained fame at the Russian, union and international levels. Zhirkov materials served to further the emergence of ethnomusicological studies with..A. Kondratiev, E.E. Alekseev, G.G. Alekseeva, N.N. Nikolaeva, as well as a number of works by their followers – Yakut folklorists and musicologists.

The fundamental work of M.N. Zhirkov "Yakut folk music" served as a starting point for the subsequent development of Yakut musicology and ethnomusicology as part of the national musical science.

 

 

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The author submitted his article "On the work "Yakut folk Music" by M.N.Zhirkov" to the journal "Philosophy and Culture", in which a study of the musicological field of activity of the Yakut composer was conducted. The author proceeds in studying this issue from the fact that the main merit of M.N. Zhirkov as a researcher is that for the first time he brings the study of Yakut folk music to a theoretical level, considering its problems in a comparative aspect. The fundamental work of M.N. Zhirkov "Yakut folk Music" served as a starting point for the subsequent development of Yakut musicology and ethnomusicology as part of the national musical science. His materials served to further the emergence of ethnomusicological studies by S.A. Kondratiev, E.E. Alekseev, G.G. Alekseeva, N.N. Nikolaeva, as well as a number of works by their followers – Yakut folklorists and musicologists. The relevance of the research is due to the insufficient study of both the objects of the intangible historical and cultural heritage of the small peoples of the country and the activities of researchers working in this direction. The author's analysis of the studied issues constitutes the scientific novelty of the study. In the course of the research, the author used general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, as well as biographical and bibliographic methods, and content analysis. The theoretical basis is the works of such scientists as Yumasheva Yu.Yu., Ivanov V.F., Anosov D.V., Borisov A.A. and others. The empirical base was compiled by M.N. Zhirkov's work "Yakut folk Music". The purpose of the study is to analyze the first fundamental research in the history of Yakut musical culture, "Yakut folk music", carried out by the first Yakut composer M.N. Zhirkov. The author conducted a detailed content analysis of the scientific work of the Yakut composer. The author traces M.N. Zhirkov's research in two directions: theoretical and empirical. The author sees M.N. Zhirkov's main merit as a researcher in the fact that he is the first to bring the study of Yakut folk music to a theoretical level, considering its problems in a comparative aspect. In his fundamental research, as the author records, M.N. Zhirkov raised such basic problems as: the need for reliable study and the maximum possible immersion in the problematic field of research of the historical development of Yakut musical folklore from the first mentions of travelers and researchers of the pre-revolutionary period almost to the middle of the XX century; a large number of unexplored lacunae, the presence of There is a large problem field in the field of Yakut folk music; the urgent relevance of studying the traditional musical culture of the Yakuts in the context of the process of loss of traditional culture, in particular ritual and ritual practices, in order to fix and further archive; the difficulty of notation of diie–buo songs, the search for ways to more accurately fix the timbre features of Yakut traditional singing, such as, for example, kyli h ahi ; intercultural communications for the purpose of interaction of traditional musical cultures, the influence of Russian culture on the development of the musical culture of the Yakuts; reconstruction and modernization of the Yakut musical instruments. Indicating the practical significance of the scientific work, the author notes that M.N. Zhirkov, justifying the value and significance of Yakut folk music, briefly describes the leading genres of Yakut folk art, which by that time were practically unexplored, including two fundamental Yakut song styles – dyeretii and degeren. The author gives an overview of the history of the study of Yakut folk music, starting from the pre-revolutionary period of A.F. Middendorf, A. Maslov up to the research of Soviet musicologists and composers of those years. M.N. gave a detailed description of the Yakut epic olonkho and the tunes included in it. M.N. Zhirkov described the existence of folk music, conducted its classification, Samples recorded at different times were considered, including the expanded corpus of olonkho melodies presented in such volume for the first time. In conclusion, the author presents a conclusion on the conducted research, which contains all the key provisions of the presented material. It seems that the author in his material touched upon relevant and interesting issues for modern socio-humanitarian knowledge, choosing a topic for analysis, consideration of which in scientific research discourse will entail certain changes in the established approaches and directions of analysis of the problem addressed in the presented article. The results obtained allow us to assert that the study and fixation of the intangible cultural heritage of a particular ethnic group that forms its cultural identity, as well as the analysis of the ethnographic activities of researchers, is of undoubted theoretical and practical cultural interest and can serve as a source of further research. The material presented in the work has a clear, logically structured structure that contributes to a more complete assimilation of the material. An adequate choice of methodological base also contributes to this. Although the bibliographic list of the study consists of 10 sources, it seems sufficient for generalization and analysis of scientific discourse on the subject under study due to the specifics of the subject of the study. The author fulfilled his goal, obtained certain scientific results that made it possible to summarize the material, showed deep knowledge of the studied issues. It should be noted that the article may be of interest to readers and deserves to be published in a reputable scientific publication.