Russian and European chamber vocal music in amateur handwritten albums of the first half of the 19th century

Amateur handwritten music albums are an integral attribute of the Russian noble culture of the first half of the 19th century. This is a unique historical source, which to date hasn't been sufficiently studied. The author of the article carried out work in the manuscript department of the Russian State Library, the manuscript department of the Russian National Library, the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, the Russian National Museum of Music, the Scientific Library of the Moscow State Conservatory. The majority of the amateur music albums considered in the article previously did not attract the attention of the scientists and were first introduced into the scientific circulation. The research problem is the correlation of Russian and European vocal music in the home and salon repertoire of the first half of the 19th century. During this period, the home and salon repertoire of the Russian aristocracy included French, Russian, Italian and, rarely, Austro-German vocal compositions. The albums of the early 19th century are dominated by romances Irancaise. Among their authors are some well-known French opera composers, creators of parlor romances fashionable in Paris, foreign musicians who served in Russia, and Russian amateur noblemen. This is shown by the example of an album of an unidentified person, commenced in 1808 in Vienna, and an album from the Yaropolets manor owned by A.N. Goncharova. The analysis of the repertoire made it possible to conclude that at the beginning of the 19th century the French romances by the amateur composer S.S. Golitsyn were particularly popular. In the music albums dated 1830-1840s, Russian and French vocal music are equally represented. In the music album which belonged to Princess A.M. Meshcherskaya, commenced in mid-1840s, Russian romances prevail. The music pieces presented in the albums allow us to assess the popularity of the vocal music by A.A. Alyabyev, N.A. Titova, I.I. Genishta, F.A. Tolstoy, I.A. Rupin, N.E. Kubishta. French vocal lyrics are presented by the opuses of the young generation of composers including F. Mazini, L. Puget, E. Brugier, F. Bera and others. The vocal miniatures of Italian composers and the opuses of Russian amateurs in the Italian style are rare, but still found in most of the albums analyzed. Some of the amateur albums discovered and analysed included solely French and solely German music. In the course of the analysis, unknown romances by A.I. Ribopier, V.S. Golitsyn, Mikh.Yu. Vielgorsky, V.G. Castrioto-Skanderbek and other authors were discovered, which can be assessed in detail in future studies.

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