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Skomorokhi: The Russian Minstrel-Entertainers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Russell Zguta
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Extract

Numerous sources, both secular and ecclesiastical, attest to the widespread popularity in Kievan Rus' and Muscovite Russia of the professional minstrelentertainers known as skomorokhi. To the folklorist these curious jacks-of all- trades, reminiscent of the French jongleurs and German Spielmänner, have become identified primarily with the singing, composing, and eventual transmission to the peasants of the north of heroic tales and historical songs (byliny and istoricheskie pesni). To the sociocultural historian the skomorokhi represent both a preliminary or formative stage in the evolution of the Russian theater and an important chapter in the early history of secular music in Russia. But whether one views them through the eyes of the folklorist or the historian there is little doubt that these veselye liudi or veselye molodtsy, as they were sometimes referred to, played an important role in the social and cultural life of the Eastern Slavs from the eleventh through the seventeenth century.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , June 1972 , pp. 297 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1972

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References

1. The only book-length study of the skomorokhi is Famintsyn’s, A. S. Skomorokhi na Rusi (St. Petersburg, 1889).Google Scholar An excellent shorter treatment of the subject can be found in Findeizen’s, N. F. Ocherki po istorii muszyki v Rossii, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1928-29), 1: 145-70.Google Scholar A good discussion of the skomorokhi in English appears in Chadwick, H. M. and Chadwick, N. K., The Growth of Literature, vol. 2, pt. 1: Russian Oral Literature (Cambridge, 1936), pp. 261–69.Google Scholar

2. Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei (hereafter cited as PSRL), vol. 1: I. II. Lavrcntievskaia i troitskaia letopisi (St. Petersburg, 1846), p. 73.

The gusli is a stringed musical instrument, either oval or triangular in shape, and is best described as a horizontal harp. The gudok (a somewhat cruder and smaller version of the cello) and the gusli eventually became identified as the traditional instruments of the skomorokhi. In eleventh-century sources, however, the term gusli was frequently used to describe any stringed musical instrument. See A. S. Famintsyn, Gusli: Russkii narodnyi muzykal'nyi instrument (St. Petersburg, 1890), pp. 5-6.

3. Feodosii Pechersky, Sochineniia, in Uchenyia zapiski vtorago otdeleniia Imperatorskoi akademii nauk, bk. 2, no. 2, ed. I. I. Sreznevsky (St. Petersburg, 1856), p. 195.

4. Obolensky, K. M., ed., Letopisets Pereiaslavlia-Suzdal'skago (Moscow, 1851), p. 3.Google Scholar

5. A good bibliographic guide to the literature on the origins of the skomorokhi can be found in Vasmer's, Max Russisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, vol. 3 (Heidelberg, 1955), pp. 643–44.Google Scholar

6. Sobolevsky, A., “K voprosu drevnerusskikh skomorokhakh, A. I. Kirpichnikova,” Zhivaia starina, 3, no. 2 (1893): 255.Google Scholar

7. Sokolov, Iu. M., Russian Folklore (New York, 1950), p. 1950.Google Scholar

8. Stoglav, chap. 41, ques. 16.

9. In addition to the noun, the verb shpil'maniti and the adjective shpil'manskyi also occur in the same text. See Sreznevsky, I. I., Materialy dlia slovaria drevne-russkago iazyka po pis'nennym pamiatnikam, 3 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1893-1912; reprint, Graz, 1955-56), 3: 1598.Google Scholar

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11. A. Kh. Vostokov, Slovar' tserkovno-slavianskago iazyka, vol. 2, in Materialy dlia sravnitel'nago i ob"iasnitel'nago slovaria i grammatiki, vol. 6 (St. Petersburg, 1861), p. 576.

12. Nicoll, Allardyce, Masks, Mimes and Miracles (New York, 1963), p. 159, fig. 107.Google Scholar

13. Canon 51 singles out mimes and theaters for censure; canon 61 condemns bear tamers; canon 62 denounces the pagan festivals of Kalends, Bota, and Brumalia. See J. D. Mansi, ed., Sacrorum consiliorum nova et amplissima collectio, vol. 11 (Graz, 1960), pp. 967, 970-71Google Scholar. In the 1282 version of the Kormchaia kniga from Novgorod reference is made to the Trullan canons in the introduction to the section in which bear tamers and various pagan games are condemned. See Buslacv, F. I., ed., Istoricheskaia khrestomatiia tserkovno-slavianskago i drevne-russkago iazykov (Moscow, 1861), pp. 380–84.Google Scholar

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15. Ibid., plate 65, nos. 15, 23, and 16, 17, 24, 25, respectively.

16. Ibid., nos. 15, 16.

17. Ibid., nos. 17, 23, 24, 25.

18. Ibid., plate 68, nos. 19, 25.

19. Akty sobrannye v bibliotekakh i arkhivakh rossiiskoi imperii arkheograficheskoiu ekspeditsieiu Imperatorskoi akademii nauk, vol. 1: 1294-1598 (St. Petersburg, 1836), p. 62.

20. Ibid., pp. 117, 120-22, 139-41, 256-57, 267.

21. Ibid., pp. 153-54, 179-81, 206-7.

22. Stoglav, chap. 41, ques. 19.

23. Petukhov, V. I., “Svedeniia o skomorokhakh v pistsovykh, perepisnykh i tamozhennykh knigakh XVI-XVII vv.,” Trudy Moskovskogo istoriko-arkhivnogo institute, 16 (1961): 412.Google Scholar

24. Herberstein, Sigismund von, Rerum moscoviticarum commentarii (Antwerp 1557), p. 65b.Google Scholar

25. PSRL, vol. 30: Novgorodskaia vtoraia (arkhivskaia) letopis' (Moscow, 1965), p. 189.

26. Jenkinson, Anthony, Early Voyages and Travels to Russia and Persia, vol. 2, ed. E. D. Morgan and C. H. Coote (London, 1886), p. 358.Google Scholar

27. Horsey, Jerome, The Travels of Sir Jerome Horsey, Hakluyt Society Publications, no. 20 (London, 1856), p. 201.Google Scholar

28. Henning, Salomon, Lifflendische Chürlendische Chronica (Leipzig, 1594), p. 55, as cited in Carl Stief, Studies in the Russian Historical Song (Copenhagen, 1953), p. 228.Google Scholar

29. Kurbsky, A. M., Skazaniia kniazia Kurbskago, pt. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1833), p. 12.Google Scholar

30. Ibid., p. 120.

31. Findeizen, Ocherki, 1: 246.

32. Fletcher, Giles, Of the Russe Commonwealth (London, 1591), pp. 142–43.Google Scholar

33. Zabelin, I. E., Istoriia russkoi zhizni, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1912), p. 432.Google Scholar

34. Borisov, V. A., Opisanie goroda Shui i ego okrestnostei (Moscow, 1851), pp. 451–52.Google Scholar

35. Olearius, Adam, Vermehrte neue Beschreibung der Muscowitischen und Persischen Reyse (Schlesswig, 1656), p. 19.Google Scholar

36. Ibid., p. 194. An accompanying illustration (p. 193) shows the one-man puppet theater, a dancing bear with his trainer, and two musicians, one playing an oval gusli, the other a gudok. Clusters of children are shown thoroughly enjoying the spectacle.

37. Akty, vol. 3: 1613-1645, pp. 401-5.

38. Zabelin, Istoriia, 2: 441-44.

39. I. Beliaev, writing in the mid-nineteenth century, said that it was still possible to hear stories from many an elder about how the skomorokhi would come into a village or town in several bands. One group would entertain and keep the people occupied while another would loot their homes. See his “O skomorokhakh,” Vremennik Imperatorskago obshchestva istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh, 2 (1859): 83.

40. A full text of this gramota can be found in Ivanov’s, P. I. Opisanie gosudarstvennago arkhiva starykh del (Moscow, 1850), pp. 296-99.Google Scholar

41. Akty, vol. 4: 1645-1700, pp. 138-39. Some churchmen did not need an official ecclesiastical ban of the skomorokhi, but rather dealt with the veselye liudi on their own terms. The Archpriest Avvakum described his chance encounter in 1648 with some skomorokhi, whom he put to flight after destroying their musical instruments and setting their trained bears free. See Gudzy, N. K., ed., Zhitie protopopa Avvakuma (Moscow, 1934), p. 75.Google Scholar

42. At least one scholar maintains that he knew of a peasant from the province of Nizhny-Novgorod who earned a living as a practicing skomorokh as late as the mid-nineteenth century. He describes him as an itinerant bagpipe player who could also do a variety of bird calls. See Dal, V. I., Tolkovyi slovar' zhivago velikorusskago iazyka, vol. 4, 3rd ed. rev. (St. Petersburg and Moscow, 1909), p. 202.Google Scholar

43. Tatishchev, V. N., Istoriia rossiiskaia, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1768), pp. 44–45, n. 16.Google Scholar

44. Chadwick, Russian Oral Literature, p. 264.

45. Famintsyn, Skomorokhi, p. 2.

46. Gruzinsky, A. E., ed., Pesni sobrannyia P. N. Rybnikovym, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1909), no. 26, pp. 162-72.Google Scholar

47. Ibid., p. 167, 11. 191-94.

48. Ibid., pp. 168-69, 11. 225-38.

49. Miller, V. F., Ocherki russkoi narodnoi slovesnosti, vol. 1: Byliny (Moscow, 1897), p. 59 Google Scholar; Famintsyn, Skomorokhi, p. 4; Findeizen, Ocherki, 1: 110.

50. Miller, Ocherki, 1: 59.

51. “Terentii muzh Danil'evich,” in Pesni sobrannyia Rybnikovym, vol. 2, no. 156, pp. 382-85, and “Vavilo i skomorokhi,” in N. Andreev, P., ed., Byliny: Russkii geroicheskii epos (Leningrad, 1938), no. 33, pp. 436-41.Google Scholar

52. In one version of the bylina about Vasilii Buslaev reference is made to the hero’s joining up with a band of veselye molodtsy (i.e., skomorokhi). See Evgen'eva, A. P. and Putilov, B. N., eds., Drevnie rossiiskie stikhotvorcniia sobrannye Kirsheiu Danilovym (Moscow and Leningrad, 1958), pp. 59–67.Google Scholar

53. The bracelet figure is wearing a pointed cap and a loose-fitting ankle-length shirt (attire which differs radically from that worn by the much more flamboyant skomorokhi as depicted in the fourteenth-century Novgorod miniatures). He is playing a five-sided gusli with both hands while holding what appears to be a crude version of a bagpipe in his mouth. See Rybakov, B. A., Remceslo drevnei Rusi (Moscow, 1948), p. 269, illus. 61.Google Scholar

54. B. D. Grekov traces the Kievan heroic tradition as far back as the Antes. Unfortunately he does not cite his source for such a conclusion. See The Culture of Kiev Rus (Moscow, 1947), p. 79.

55. Suvorin, S., ed., Slovo o polku Igoreve (photocopy of 1800 ed.) (St. Petersburg, 1904), pp. 2–4, 37, 44.Google Scholar

56. Ibid., pp. 3-4.

57. PSRL, vol. 2 (St. Petersburg, 1843), p. 180.

58. Ibid., p. 187.

59. Letopis' po voskresenskomu spisku, in PSRL, vol. 7 (St. Petersburg, 1856), p. 151.

60. Ipatievskaia letopis', p. 155.

61. At least two nonheroic byliny have been attributed to the skomorokhi: “Terentii muzh Danil'evich” (often simply “Gost Terentii”) and “Vavilo i skomorokhi.” Both of these byliny are said to contain characteristically “skomorokh” lines, especially at the beginning. See also Chadwick, Russian Oral Literature, p. 264.

62. This particular variant of the bylina, commonly known in Rybnikov's collection as “Dobrynia v ot″ezde,” appears as “Dobrynia i Alesha” in A. F. Gil'ferding [Hilferding], Onezhskiia byliny zapisannyia Aleksandrom Fedorovichem Gil'ferdingom letom 1871 goda, vol. 3, 2nd ed. (St. Petersburg, 1900), no. 215, pp. 104-13.

63. Ibid., 11. 285-86.

64. For an analysis of the formulae used in byliny composition see P. M. Arant’s “Formulaic Style and the Russian Bylina,” Indiana Slavic Studies, 4 (1967): 7-51.

65. Luka Zhidiata, “Pouchenie Arkhiepiskopa Luki k bratii,” Russkiia dostopamiatnosti, 1 (1815): 9.

66. Kurbsky, Skazaniia, 1: 120; Ivanov, Opisanie, p. 297.