Bulgarian-Macedonian Folk Music by Boris A. KremenlievReview by: K. NaumovThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 34, No. 82 (Dec., 1955), pp. 272-275Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4204735 .

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272 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

final count, as his biographer rightly points out, it is the creative artist in Goncharov that assures his survival.

London Nina Brodiansky

Bulgarian-Macedonian Folk Music. By Boris A. Kremenliev. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1952. 165 pages. Bibliography and three indices.

Several books, most of them dissertations, and articles have been written

by Bulgarians in German and French on Bulgarian folk music. To Mr

Kremenliev, a Macedonian by birth, who received his musical education in the U.S.A. and who is at present Associate Professor of Music at the

University of Los Angeles, goes the credit of writing the first book on this

subject in English. In his preface the author tells of his experience with conductors and instrumentalists who have found it difficult to under? stand the 'metric structures' of Bulgarian folk music. 'I refused', states Mr Kremenliev,

' to believe that patterns which seem quite natural and

simple to the Bulgarian peasant must remain a closed mystery' to others. The author has studied about 12,000 songs derived from various sources and mostly included in Vasil Stoin's collections.

The study opens with an introduction of a general nature in which a

survey is made of the various theories on the origin of folk music, beginning with J. J. Rousseau and ending with Bela Bartok. This is followed by a

chapter on 'historic background', covering briefly the history of the

Bulgarian people?past and present. It is inaccurate, vague, and swarms with unpardonable errors. How irresponsibly the 'historic background' is treated can be seen from a few examples. The reader is told that after the reign of Simeon (893-927) 'a separate Western empire . . . was founded at Ohrid under Shishman of Turnovo' (p. 9). Yet this did not

happen until after 971 under Samuel (cf. S. Runciman, A History of the First Bulgarian Empire, London, 1930, p. 217 ff.). The first Bulgarian ruler called Shishman lived during the second half of the 13th century and he was connected not with Ohrida, but with Vidin. Paisy's History (1762) is not, as the author affirms,

' the first volume of Bulgarian literature still

extant, all earlier writings having been systematically burned by the Turks'

(p. io). We have several Damaskins?to mention only one kind of litera?

ture?belonging to the 16th and 17th centuries. Referring to the present time we are informed that Bulgaria became a 'national' republic in

1944 (p. io). The date is 15 September 1946. Bulgaria has not 'some

6,000,000 inhabitants' (ib.), but 7,022,206, according to the census of December 1946. On the same page we are told that Bulgaria's territory covers 'about 40,000 sq. miles', but later (p. 143) we are surprised to learn that it has grown to 42,741 sq. miles. . . . The correct figure is

42,796. The student of Slavonic religion will be surprised to hear that the ancient Slavs 'had a superstitious faith in the power of sound' (p. io).

To the proper subject of the book five chapters (pp. 16-142) are dedi?

cated, followed by a short conclusion. The various aspects of Bulgarian

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REVIEWS 273

folk music are well illustrated by 219 songs, some given in fragmentary form, others in full, with transliterated texts in the original. The songs are translated by the author, who, as he himself admits, makes no literary claims (preface, p. viii). The translations are heavy and not always very accurate. According to place of origin most of the songs come from North? western and Central Bulgaria. Two of the most interesting regions?the Rhodope Mountains and Macedonia?are poorly represented by six songs from each.

Chapter three (pp. 16-50) introduces the reader to the most important part of Bulgarian folk music?its various metrical patterns: regular, asym? metric, unmeasured, and their combinations, each being illustrated by several examples. In this Mr Kremenliev follows the traditional path outlined by D. Khristov and his disciples, especially V. Stoin, the most

outstanding among them. Stoin believed that it would be possible to increase the variety of medical patterns in Bulgarian folk music with such as 15/16, 17/16, 23/16, etc. Mr Kremenliev believes that he has made a contribution in this respect by having drawn attention to the only printed example of a 17/16 metrical pattern, which 'other Bulgarian musicologists do not even mention' (p. 33, example 37). This song is taken from Stoin's

Bulgarian Folk Music (Sofia, 1927). But in the same book there is a second

example on p. 74, No. 181. Both of these are given by Stoyan Djoudjeff in his Rythme et mesure dans la musique populaire bulgare (Paris, 1931, pp. 237 and 312.) Djoudjeff's comments are to be found on p. 236 and 346 ff.

Obviously Mr Kremenliev has overlooked both Stoin and Djoudjeff. The scales on which Bulgarian folk music is based are treated in chapter

four (pp. 51-81). Nothing new is added to our knowledge, with the

exception of some fanciful theories, especially in the paragraph on ecclesiastical modes (pp. 58-64). It would hardly be possible, however, to find a student of music who seriously maintains that ' the eight-mode singing is of Slav origin' (p. 58), and, to be more precise, that it' originated in Bulgaria' (p. 59).

In chapter five (pp. 82-107) we have a survey of the rhythmic groups or musical periods, taken in relation to the texts of the songs. It seems to us that the proper place of this chapter should have been after chapter three as the rhythmic groups are organically linked with the metrical

patterns. Chapter six (pp. 108-34) provides a good introduction to the various types of folk-songs, classified according to their subject matter. A brief description of the musical instruments, their music, and their

place in the life of the people is given in the final chapter (pp. 135-42), followed by a short conclusion (pp. 143-44), in which the author ex?

presses his hope that the present study 'will open the field to interested students of folklore and musicology who formerly were unable to investi?

gate the folk music of Bulgaria and Macedonia' (p. 144). Mr Kremenliev's bibliography is impressive, but unreliable and mis?

leading. It consists of 11 pages, listing 299 authors and about 468 titles of books, articles and compositions. Of these only 55 are quoted in the book and few of them are truly related to the subject, whereas valuable studies by Bulgarian students of music, such as Dr St. Braschowanov,

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274 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

W. Spasov, Dr L. Romanski, and A. Karastoyanov, although listed in the bibliography, are never mentioned in the book. We find in the biblio?

graphy Bulgarian books, five of them important for the study of Bul?

garian music, with incomplete titles. There are books which, according to Mr Kremenliev, are not dated, but this is not correct. To this category belong, for instance, one work by Ivan Kamburov, Bdlgarskata muzika . . .

(p. 149), published in 1926, marked 'not dated' in the bibliography, and another by Asen Karastoyanov, Tonalnite osnovi na balgarskite narodni pesni, again marked 'not dated', but in fact dated 1950, etc. These and other

"examples show that the author has perhaps been unable to consult some of the books and articles he lists.

Mr Kremenliev gives the titles of several collections containing songs, but he found it unnecessary to indicate whether they provide only texts or both text and music. It should be added that most of these collections are out of date and of little use. If books are not listed carefully, the

position regarding articles in periodicals is still worse. We are faced with the following picture: most of the 57 periodicals lack place of publication, 122 volumes have their number indicated while 17 are left without; 68 volumes bear the date of their publication and 61 have no date; in 52 volumes the number of the page is given whilst in 80 volumes such indica? tion is lacking.

Mr Kremenliev's system of transliteration of the Bulgarian and Russian alphabets is not used either in the U.S.A. or in this country. Even worse is the fact that he fails to follow his own rudimentary system, given on p. xv, when transcribing Bulgarian symbols. He writes, for

instance, 'Kukuzel'?the name of a mediaeval Slavonic-Byzantine writer of church music (p. 12). As Mr Kremenliev accepts that 'y' =u it should have been transliterated 'Kukuzel'; 'Kamburov'?not 'Kamburov'

(pp. viii, ix, 15, 80, 137, 149); 'Bukoreshtliev'?not ' Bukoreshtliev'

(pp. 65, 146), etc. As for transliteration of Russian symbols the following example speaks for itself: A. B. Ilpeo6pa>KeHCKijHH KyjibTOBan My3HKa b Pocchh is given as A. B. Preobrazenski, Kultovaia musika v Rossia (p. 152), or five mistakes according to Mr Kremenliev's own system, and one

grammatical error?Rossia instead of Rossii. After all this we shall not be surprised if the book contains other errors

and misprints. In the map inside the binding we notice that the Rumanian town of Constanta is placed in Bulgaria, near Varna, now Stalin. Pleven is described as 'a city in the Danube Valley of South ern Bulgaria' (p. 109, note 3). And the author states that 'the Pomaks . . . inhabit the regions from Chepino to the Rhodope Mountains . . .' (p. 66, note 27). But

Chepino is in the Rhodope Mountains. The Christian name of Smolensky the well-known authority on Russian church music, is not 'Vassilii', but

Stepan and his father's name Vasily. And finally there are numerous

misprints in the titles of books, author's names, and place-names. We may be asked whether Mr Kremenliev's book is of any value and

what is its contribution to the study of Bulgarian folk music. The answer to the last question is that Mr Kremenliev has nothing new to add to our

general knowledge on the subject. The value of his book lies in the fact

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REVIEWS 275

that Mr Kremenliev has collected a good cross-section of songs, not

easily accessible to the English-reading student of music, thus providing material for the study of Bulgarian folk music. But the student must remember to treat this material with the reservation suggested by the author himself in his preface, that in the study of Bulgarian folk music we have to do with 'structures which cannot be accurately reproduced under standard metric signatures and the present method of music notation' (p. vii, sf. pp. 24 and 51).

Reading K. Naumov

Summary Notices

Slovo o polku Igoreve v perevodakh kontsa vosemnadtsatogo veka. (The Lay of

Igor' in Translations of the End of the 18th Century.) By A.

Solov'yov and R. Jakobson. E. J. Brill, Leiden, 1954. viii+ 52 pages/Three reproductions.

Professor A. V. Solov'yov, of the University of Geneva, is the author of the first article 'Catherine's Copy and the First Edition of the Slovo\ which aims at disproving Professor Andre Mazon's theory that the most probable author of the Slovo (The Lay of Igor') was the well-known archivist N. N.

Bantysh-Kamensky. Solov'yov is an authority on the history of Kiev Rus' and, as such, advances the convincing argument that 'if Bantysh- Kamensky was the author of the Slovo, then he must have understood what he was writing about'. After a detailed analysis of A. V. Malinovsky, N. N. Bantysh-Kamensky and Count A. I. Musin-Pushkin's joint trans? lation of the Slovo, first published in 1800, and after having compared it with the 1795 translation prepared, in part by Bantysh-Kamensky, for the Empress Catherine II, the author reaches the following important conclusions, viz. 'that this group i.e., pre-eminently Bantysh-Kamensky and later his assistant Malinovsky, did not understand the simplest verbal

forms, was ignorant of the rules of Russian pronunciation (polnoglasiye), failed to understand the meaning of such words as "shelomya", "boron"', "lada", and was entirely unable to translate certain phrases.' In parts, indeed, their translation is absurd. The historical knowledge of this

group was limited to their reading of Tatishchev's chronicles and Stitter's

genealogical tables. Both archivists were completely ignorant of the his?

tory of Kiev Rus' and came to grief over the complexity of the 12th-

century relationships among the princes and helplessly burrow into the

genealogical trees for various 'unknown Svyatopolks, Glebs, Vsevolods and Davids'. They were also ignorant of Slavonic mythology. Solov'yov avers that the patriotic fervour of the Slovo and its historical interest left them unmoved; for to them these were merely 'certain unimportant details natural to that century'. The Slovo was valuable only in so much as they found in it examples of rhetoric and the spirit of Ossian. That the

mythical Div should be turned into an Ossianic owl, 'habits and customs'

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