Vocal elegy in the works of composers of the Mighty Handful

The study aims to substantiate the possibility that vocal elegies were created and performed within the aesthetic culture of the intelligentsia and composers’ musical circles in Russia in the mid-19th century. The article examines the romances of C. Cui, M. Mussorgsky, N. Rimsky-Korsakov, and A. Borodin. The scientific novelty of the work is due to the fact that the analysis of the romances has been conducted by Russian art historians in the context of a virtually non-existent definition for the genre of elegy. Elegy, which originates from funeral chants and has specific characteristics, was replaced in the early 19th century by art historians with a rather vague genre based on V. Belinsky’s designation of a “sad song”. The inevitable searches by art historians for elegies among the most diverse romances that have content close to a “sophisticated small talk” with elements of disappointment in love and sadness as the main emotional state lead researchers to rather controversial conclusions. This causes considerable inconvenience to the main participants in the cultural space, i.e., performers, and raises a number of questions. Typically, such conclusions are drawn based on the analysis of poetic and musical texts, but the main topic, namely, the place of elegy as a sounding genre in the Russian musical cultural life of the mid-19th century, remains outside their scope. The scientific novelty of this article lies in examining the romances of the composers of the Mighty Handful from the perspective of defining the genre of elegy as a “tragic monologue” and the possibility of its existence within the aesthetic platform of the intelligentsia and composers’ musical circles to which the composers of the group belonged. Such a practice is viewed as quite beneficial for Russian musicology in terms of examining domestic chamber-vocal music through the lens of the identified characteristics of elegy. As a result of the study, it has been found that, contrary to the widespread opinion in Russian musicology regarding the presence of a large number of vocal elegies in the works of composers from the Mighty Handful, the genre of elegy, having a genetic foundation in a mourning song, is incompatible with the usual place of chamber-vocal music and is exceptionally rare.