Wedding Songs of the Kharkiv Region: All-Ukrainian and Regional Features

Author

Yefremova Liudmyla

a Doctor of Art Studies, a leading research fellow at the Musicology and Ethnomusicology Department of M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine).

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6272-5435

Wedding Songs of the Kharkiv Region: All-Ukrainian and Regional Features

Abstract

The article examines wedding songs recorded in the Kharkiv region in the context of the Ukrainian tradition. Their regional features are revealed. The Kharkiv region is defined as the central part of Sloboda Ukraine, which, together with the indigenous and migratory population, forms a local tradition of wedding singing. The Central Slobodshchyna also contains a number of local traditions. The relevance of the study stems from the ongoing Russian aggression against sovereign Ukraine and the resulting migration processes in the Kharkiv region.

The main typical tunes of wedding songs include songs reflecting the festive emotional tone of the wedding ceremony, in particular, formulaic tunes, which consist of repetitions of a single melodic formula. The melodies of a typical intonation structure, mainly four-line monostrophic tirades, include the melody of a typical intonation structure without a prelude, or with a solo prelude on the first line of the stanza-tirade, consisting of a twice-repeated chant-formula, a pre-cadence and a cadence segment. In contrastive intonation types, the basic melodic formula consists of two contrasting intonations.

Strophic songs mostly correspond to the sad emotional sphere of the wedding. These include songs with the aab stanza structure and rhythmic formulas such as 6+3 or 8+2, songs with syllable count 4+4+5/5 with interstrophe concatenation and (5+5+7)2. The most common songs in the context of a wedding ceremony, the musical features and texture of group performance are examined.

The cycles of wedding songs of the settlements of Kamianka, Izyumsky district, Nesterenky, Valkivsky district, Lyman, Zmiyivsky district, Kyseli, Pervomaysky district, and Pisky Radkivski, Borivsky district, were analyzed.

The main features of the wedding songs of the Kharkiv region: the predominance of strophic songs of a negative emotional sphere, slowed-down polyphony with interstrophic concatenations, the predominance of the sixth (sext) interval range over the fifth (quint) in melodies of a typical intonation structure.

Keywords

wedding songs, Kharkiv region, melodies, tirades, strophic songs, regional features, wedding song cycles.

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