Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/43

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There is perhaps no other people in the world so musical as the Russian, and perhaps no other people whose body of national music approaches so near to the real psychology and philosophy of the nation's life, the people's joys and sorrows, aspirations and strivings, achievements and failures. For the Russian, music is a delight. It is the natural, inevitable expression of an emotional people, and Russians are highly emotional.

It may be said that the most characteristic feature of the so-called Russian "popular" song (which forms the real basis of the truly native musical art of the country) is, that it not only permeates, but actually dominates the whole spiritual life of the people. The peasant sings these songs as he follows the rhythmical movements of his plow, and in moments of hunger, joy, or grief. The workingman in the city, the mechanic, the servant, the student, the teacher,—all sing them, pouring into their strains their stifled longings for the ideal which is denied to them, but which unconsciously attracts them and beckons to them through the mist of life's grim realities.

No matter to what page you open the book of Russia's life, you will find running through the narrative a thread of eternal yearning, of poignant regret for things gone into the story, with nothing in the present to take their place. It is this strain, plaintive, and sometimes sad, which you find predominating in Russian folk-song, whose unpremeditated pathos springs from actual passion, actual pain, actual sorrow. But though plaintiveness is the prevailing note, the folk-songs express a wide and varied range of emotion. Sometimes they speak of sorrow, and solitude, and a great monotony, as if the vast plain of Russia had become articulate, and was expressing its spirit. Mournful too, are the wedding-songs of the Russian peasant-women, though sometimes the melody is a lighter one, telling archly of the ways of winning a bashful swain. And in many of the native airs there is conveyed a sense of the broad expanse of the steppe, where one can breathe free and deep, and know himself a man.

To be fully appreciated, Russian folk-music must be heard in its native surroundings. Rendered on the concert stage,