A. Pchelintsev

Academic Folk Instruments: In the Search of New Sound Identity

The article is devoted to the role of arrangement in the formation of domra and balalaika as instruments of academic tradition. The search for new expressive possibilities is considered in the context of solo-concert performing. An important component here was a significant expansion of genre and stylistic boundaries of the performed music, first of all – the classical one. The article describes the conditions which are to overcome the inertia of perception of stringed folk instruments as only folk ones. The rapid development of new performing techniques is considered to be the means of rethinking of stringed folk instruments’ timbre. Their specific timbre-register qualities acquire a new expressive meaning in the context of modern intonation. A brief analysis of several works is given as examples of transcriptional work for domra. In one of them, the transformation of artistic image of the primary source is accompanied by the solution of virtuoso issues. Another example given as a model of stylistic re-intoning of the primary source, and also as a fusion of origins by two composers. Due to historical conditions, the development of transcription art for balalaika have a longer history. It is based on the way from a simplified interpretation of the samples that belong to the beginning of the last century – to arrangements and transcriptions based on a strict attitude to the author’s source, creating their own musical text through the expansion of technical and expressive capabilities of the instrument. The rapid development of arrangement art for stringed folk instruments served not only as a powerful impetus to the development of instruments, but also as the basis for a completely new significant expansion of their expressive possibilities. It is a result of adaptation to new genre-stylistic conditions, based on timbre re-intoning, interpretation of the sound identity of balalaika and domra.

Key words

arrangement, transcription, domra, balalaika, timbral rethinking, stylistic re-intoning.

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