Ukrainian song «Ikhav Kozak za Dunaj» arranged by L. van Beethoven for piano trio and voice: genre and stylistic metamorphoses
Authors: Davitadze А.G. 
Published: June 2019

The scientifi c fi eld of the problem «folklore and composer» has a lot of aspects of its subject manifestation. One of them is the creative heritage of L. van Beethoven in the context of the composer’s addressing the folk song sources and analysis of the author’s arrangement. Although the selected theme is not a scientifi c discovery, it contains signifi cant prospects. These include: the expansion of a well-known typology of the folklore embodiment in the author’s work, the search and discovery of the Beethoven’s method of folklore arrangement, which in its turn complements the context of the already existing “psychogram of the artist” (see Varnava’s thesis, for more details). In addition, the chosen theme will help to expand the idea of musical and cultural life development in the early 19th century Objectives. The paper will consider and analyze, fi rstly, the history of writing and the subsequent fate of the author’s Ukrainian song «Ikhav Kozak za Dunaj» in European culture at the end of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; secondly, harmonization of I. Prach from the «Collection of Folk Russian Songs with their voices set to music by Ivan Prach» as the one that could be known to the German master; thirdly, L. van Beethoven’s vocal-instrumental arrangement of this song in the collection «The Songs of Different Peoples» – No. 19 «Air Cosaque». Methods. The methods applied in this work are hermeneutic, structural, historiographical and genre-stylistic. The historiographical method in the article represents the problem of «composer and folklore». Hermeneutic method is universal, and its task is to interpret texts and understand their meanings. The use of the structural method is necessary for simultaneous presentation of the whole, its parts and their interaction with each other. The systematic use of the above-mentioned methods will help to enrich the analytical part and reveal genre-stylistic metamorphoses in the Ukrainian song arrangement. Results. The results of the analytical part are as follows. As the article says, the Ukrainian song «Ikhav Kozak za Dunaj» was taken by L. Van Beethoven from the Russian collection «Folk Russian Songs with their voices set to music by Ivan Prach». So, we think it is necessary to make its thorough analysis. I. Prach’s arrangement (harmonizer and arranger of this collection) is a four-voice harmonization of the Ukrainian melody. In general, the harmonic sequence in the arrangement consists of quarto-quintal basses in the left hand and chords of main degrees in the right hand. Harmonious peculiarities of the song are directly interconnected with the rhythmic component of the work, both musical and verbal. The well-known content of the song (the Cossack sets off on the horse beyond the Danube leaving his girlfriend) contains the rhythm of the pace (in this case, this is the horse’s pace), which leads to the appearance of a uniformly accented rhythm in the song – the entire melody of the song moves in eighths. In addition, piano accompaniment in the right hand part echoes the main melody, and all its structure in the form of two-voice texture moves in eighths, too. L. van Beethoven goes in the opposite direction. The process of musical arrangement occurs at all levels of musical content – from the intonation through composition to the dramaturgy. The German composer’s arrangement features phrasing slurs in violin, piano, rarely cello parts; dynamic markings, including piano, pianissimo, crescendo, diminuendo. Besides, in the cello part we fi nd the composer’s remarks on the methods of sound production, such as alternating between pizzicato and arco (as a return to the main method). Then the German master creates a great instrumental part for the song – introduction and conclusion. The introduction of a non-square, monolithic structure has an unfi nished character and ends with a dominant harmony before the basic a-moll tonality. The fourth stanza is complemented with a three-bar expansion (instrumental break) on the introduction material, but it is a bit modifi ed – it is a pattern in the form of three subsequent segments of the descending motion (melodic and harmonic complex). This addition is made in the form of instrumental breaks after imperfect cadence, and after that come 12 bars of trio-conclusion. In general, the form of the song is a long period of two sentences of the verse-chorus structure a – C – a (a tonal plan). The instrumental part of the song makes up 29 bars, and the vocal one – 16 bars, so the proportions are actually closer to the defi nition of 2:1, which indicates a signifi cant role of the trio-accompanient (46 bars overall). The thorough analysis of the instrumental part of the whole song reveals the following: the arrangement has fi ve motifs and thematic elements, three of which belong to L. van Beethoven: «E – F – E» lamenting motif, quarto-quintal response to it – «E - A – B» or «E - B – C», and the last one, which gets its development at the end of the fi nal part of the trio accompaniment in somewhat varied form (melodic variation): «Gsharp - A – G» and the response «G-sharp - A – D». The other two – melodic pattern «E – G-sharp - E – G-sharp» (pedaling of the dominant function) and descending tetrachord between the third and seventh ascending degrees («C - A – G-sharp») – belong to the author of the Ukrainian song Semen Klymovsky. These motives are combined into dialogical formulas. This can be explained by the content of the song lyrics, where there are several characters, who the Cossack addresses in a virtual dialogue – this is his girl, and also his true companion – the horse. A deeper dialogue can be seen in the combination of classical and folk arts. Adding professional academic means of musical expression to the song the composer enriches his piece with classical stylistic attributes. When he elaborates genre features of lament in the song, he turns the Ukrainian song into a kind of arioso in German language. Conclusions. L. van Beethoven’s arrangement was primarily intended for homemade music, but at the same time, it is imbued with features of classical style, and its elegy, intense sensory lyricism refer the researcher to the Romantic period, which turned out to be close to the consciousness of the Beethoven’s genius. However, the nature of the fi ndings remains open, because the theme «Beethoven and folklore» is the subject of further research. In addition, special attention should be paid to other arrangements of the song «Ikhav Kozak za Dunaj», created both by L. van Beethoven and his contemporaries.