Zoning of the Types of Musical Forms of Wedding Songs in the Interfluve of Orel, Vovcha and Siverskyi Donets

The article examines wedding songs that are popular in one of the local areas of steppe Ukraine - the basins of the Orel, Vovcha, and Siverskyi Donets rivers. These lands are located on the border between Sloboda and Middle Naddniprianshchyna, and are therefore considered a transitional zone. Historians and archaeologists rightly define these two large regions of Ukraine as territories of later settlement by Ukrainians, so local ethno-cultural traditions are interesting from two points of view: how they are connected with the traditions of two neighboring regions, and what influence the historical events of recent centuries have had on them. In the context of the study of musical wedding and ceremonial traditions, the following questions naturally arise: to what extent and in what forms have the ancient ceremonial chants been preserved here; how historical circumstances, fluidity, and diversity of the local ethno-social environment influenced the content and melodic structure of wedding songs; what differences are observed in the musical forms of wedding chants of this area due to their functioning in a transitional ethno-cultural zone. In covering these issues, the author of the article relies on scientific methods and the experience of domestic researchers-typologists, applying the method of mapping musical forms in practice. The appendices to the article demonstrate the positive results of using, first of all, the typological method of research and mapping of ritual melodies, which is carried out for the first time in the outlined territory of Steppe Ukraine. The studied traditions include tunes of eight well-known wedding melodies typical of Naddniprianshchyna Ukraine. They are described by scholars on the basis of materials from neighboring areas. Local samples have certain structural differences, as well as peculiarities of territorial distribution, first established by the author through mapping. The zoning of the wedding melodies of the transition zone conveys the current state of their functioning, reflects the differences of the melodies in the context of this study, and leaves open the question of supplementing melogeographic maps with new song samples, generalizing them, and comparing the melodies of the transition zone with the wedding melodies of the entire Ukrainian territory.