THE ARCHAIC INDO-EUROPEAN BASIS OF THE MELODY OF UKRAINIAN RITUAL SONGS

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to identify archaic Indo-European musical structures outlined in the works of Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras in Ukrainian ritual songs. The research methodology combines comparative historical and musicological methods. Scientific novelty. The article is the first to analyse musical forms based on Pythagoras' "Perfect Unchanging System", which embodies elements of the four elements and Platonic-Aristotelian structures in the vesnianka "And in that garden"; in the hayivka "Oh my gai, gai"; in the obzhynka "Reaper" and "Four brothers mowed the grass"; and in the Cossack song "There is a sycamore tree over the water". For the first time, a split tetrachord is traced in the vesnianka "And in that garden", which according to the Pythagorean sound system corresponds to the element of fire and the upward jump of a quartet, which personifies the element of air. In the song "Oh, my grove, my grove", we state the presence of musical structures that express a pair of dense elements: water-earth and a pair that embodies the element of air. It is concluded that all of the above ritual songs and the Cossack song "The sycamore tree stands over the water" contain elements of the "Perfect Unchanging System of Pythagorean Sound System", namely, the Pythagorean tetractid fireearth- water-air. These musical structures form a pair of dense and dilute elements, and also occur as separate elements. In the vesnianka "And in that garden" we can see a pair of Pythagorean dense elements fire and air. In the song "Oh, my grove, my grove", the pair of dense elements water-earth and the double expression of the element air are clearly expressed. In the Obzhynka song "Reapers", the element of air is encountered twice at the beginning and end of the piece, and in the song of the same genre "Four brothers mowed the grass", the element of air is intertwined with the element of earth, which in turn verbally describes the phrase "mowing the grass". In the Cossack song "The Sycamore Tree Stands Over the Water", the element of water, indicated by the ascending interval of the quintet, also emphasises the verbal phrase describing this natural phenomenon.