Volynian Calendar and Ritual Melotypology: the Classical Lviv School and an Alternative Approach
Authors:   Ukrainian National Academy of Music, Klymenko Iryna 
Published: December 2024

In 2021, the folk songs collection of ethnographic Volynia in the recordings of
1934-1935 Volhynian Folk Songs from the Archive of Filaret Kolessa was published

in Lviv. The collection was compiled and prepared for publication by Lviv ethnomusi-
cologists Viktoriya Yarmola and Yuriy Rybak on the basis of archival materials found

in the archive of F. Kolessa by Professor Iryna Dovhaliuk.
The book contains a detailed preface and an analytical article by Yuriy Rybak,
which outlines the principles of compiling the oldest layer of melodies associated with
the ancient rituals of the annual agricultural cycle (carols, shchedrivkas, kolodka’s
songs, spring songs, hayivkas (spring dances), spring games, kupala songs, songs of
the summer season, and harvest songs). Yuriy Rybak explains the principles of genre
division of songs into groups according to their functions, and within the groups –

the principles of their typological ordering, based on the methods of national eth-
nomusicology (Filaret Kolessa, Stanislav Liudkevych, Klyment Kvitka, Volodymyr

102

Hoshovsky, Bohdan Lukaniuk) about the primacy of verbal-rhythmic and musical-
rhythmic structures (formulas) in determining morphological types of songs.

Contemporary melotypological schools in Ukraine are concentrated in two cen-
tres research ethnomusicological laboratories at the Kyiv and Lviv music academies.

Although both centres build their strategy on the rhythmotypological foundations of
Klyment Kvitka, there are still noticeable contraversions between them. It provokes a

number of questions about Rybak’s system. These questions are discussed in this ar-
ticle, which focuses on a critical analysis of the principles of arranging musical pieces

in the ritual part of the collection.
The author of the article has her own field experience in collecting folk music
in Volynia and the neighbouring region of Volynian Polissya (more than 80 villages

were investigated). There are also numerous publications of Volynian musical folk-
lore. All of this information was accumulated in a special database, the Register of

Ritual Melodies of Ukrainians (RRMU), and later mapped onto special typological
maps that made up the Atlas of Ritual Melodies of Ukrainians by Iryna Klymenko
(published in Kyiv in 2020).

On the basis of these studies, the author of the article suggests alternative ap-
proaches to the ritual melotypology of Volynia, namely its western and middle seg-
ments. The main differences in the approaches to the ordering of melodies and their

theoretical description are caused by the ‘alphabetical ordering’ applied by Yurii Ry-
bak in ascending numerical indexes of syllabic formulas (a formal approach formed

in the early twentieth century). Instead, the author of the article uses morphological
ordering based on musical and rhythmic models combined with variable silabics (this
approach was formed at the end of the twentieth century). This second method has

been practiced for over 30 years in the works of researchers of the Kyiv school (Labo-
ratory of Ethnomusicology of the National Music Academy of Ukraine).