Kliment Kvitka and the Folk Violin in the Early Field Research at the Moscow Conservatory

The article is devoted to the folk violin traditions that existed in the territory of the Bryansk region before the Second World War. Recorded by few expeditions of the Moscow Conservatory in the 1950–1960s, the art of Bryansk violinists remains poorly studied compared to the legacy of Smolensk, Pskov, Tver and Kursk musicians. The initiator of the study of folk violin in the Kursk, Smolensk and Bryansk regions was Kliment Kvitka (1880–1953), who headed the Cabinet for the Study of Musical Creativity of the Peoples of the USSR at the Moscow Conservatory in 1937. He made the first field recordings of Kursk and Smolensk violinists (in 1937, 1940). The study of musical folklore of the Bryansk region (primarily in that part of the region that in the 19th century belonged to the Chernihiv province), was started by Kliment Kvitka in 1951. Meanwhile the significant meetings with local folk violinists took place after his death. The merit of fixing rare violin samples in Starodubsky and Zhiryatinsky districts of the region belongs to his colleagues, Leo A. Bachinsky and Klavdia G. Svitova (1953), as well as a student of the Сonservatory, Vladimir L. Zhivov (1962). After Kliment Kvitka passed away, this project at the Moscow Conservatory was closed, and the recording of 1962 was already accidental. In fact, nowadays the ideas of ethnomusicologists about the existence of the folk violin in the Bryansk region are limited to those two field sessions. Nevertheless, this limited amount of field materials (audio recordings, handwritten ethnographic notes, photographs) gives some idea of the local violin school: about the diverse repertoire of folk performers, about their active participation in ceremonial actions (wedding), about the features of solo and ensemble playing. All these issues are considered in the article in the light of Kvitka’s observations reflected in printed and handwritten sources.