The Concept of Lithuanian folk song in Lithuanian folklore 1800-1940

ENThe aim of this article is to explore Lithuanian folk songs as a genre that represented actual Lithuanian culture in the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, and to show how a canonical conception of traditional folk song was formed through the influence of historical circumstances and a growing Lithuanian national consciousness. From the very beginning of the formation of Lithuanian folklore, Lithuanian songs were given special attention. Folklorists understood that out of all the forms of folk culture folk song was the most original genre. Folk song occupied an important local position that included language, customs, and sensibility. Because the traditions of Lithuanian literature were still undeveloped scholars who wished to propagate Lithuanian national culture, folklore, and especially folk songs became the most representative genre that reflected the Lithuanian's spiritual outlook on life. Our early collectors held the words of the 18th-century German humanist Johann Gottfried Herder dear. "Songs are the archive of a nation, the treasure of its science and religion, its theogony and cosmology, its parents' accomplishments and the events of its history, depicting the life of its home in joy and suffering at the wedding bed and the grave. [Extract, p. p. 86]