Interaction of voice and instrument in Lithuanian multipart music: insider and outsider viewpoints

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LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Lietuvių liaudies muzika; Instrumentinė muzika; Vokalinė muzika; Sutartinės. Keywords: Lithuanian folk music; Instrumental music; Vocal music; Multipart songs.

ENLithuanian multipart music is well known first and foremost for the vocal repertoire called by a common name sutartinės. Long years of the existence of sutartinės have proved that these songs’ tradition is similar to 40 different ways of performance recorded at the beginning of the 20th century. Despite the fact that, according to tradition, women sing and men play this music on instruments, vocal sutartinės are undoubtedly associated with pieces of multipart instrumental music. They were performed by skudučiai ‘multipart whistles’, daudytės ‘long wooden trumpets’, lumzdeliai ‘wooden pipes (flutes)’ and played on five stringed kanklės ‘zither’. The interaction between voice and instrument in the tradition of Lithuanian multipart music is demonstrated by folk terminology ; the tonal-intonation structure of sutartinės (trumpets intonations ; the interval of the second — consonance, etc.) ; superficial similarity of the vocal and instrumental sounds of sutartinės ; research into sutartinės (ethnic-musical, comparative, ethnic-linguistic, psycho-acoustic and others). There is a conspicuous relationship between vocal and instrumental performance of sutartinės in general or playing on particular musical instruments, such as : skudučiai (skudučiuoti v inf., is derived from the noun skudutis ‘whistle’) — the sutartinės” have to be sung in a skudučiai sounding voice” ; “that isn’t the sound of skudučiai,’ people would say when we wouldn’t come together“.) ; ragai ‘wooden horns’, daudytės ‘long wooden trumpets’, lumzdeliai (lumždinė — the name of the counterpoint sutartinė by two lumždžiai ‘wooden pipes (flutes)’, or by two daudytės, or by two singers (dvejinė ‘twosome’). [From the publication]