The Temporal Structure of Estonian Runic Songs

Jaan Ross, Ilse Lehiste

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9783110170320
• eBook ISBN:
  9783110885996
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The Kalevala, or runic, songs is a tradition at least a few thousand years old. It was shared by Finns, Estonians and other speakers of smaller Baltic-Finnic languages inhabiting the eastern side of the Baltic Sea in North-Eastern Europe. This book offers a combined perspective of a musicologist and a linguist to the structure of the runic songs. Archival recordings of the songs originating mostly from the first half of the 20th century were used as source material for this study. The results reveal a complex interaction between three different processes participating in singing: speech prosody, metre, and musical rhythm.

Table of contents

• Preface
• Contents
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Estonian old folksongs: history, tradition, collections and availability
• 1. Recent historical background
• 2. Distribution of runic songs in time and space
• 3. Cultural–historical and territorial division of Estonia
• 4. The textual component in runic songs
• 5. A musical characterization of runic songs
• 6. Some peculiarities in the geographical distribution of Estonian folksongs
• 7. Classification of runic songs
• 8. The earliest printed references to runic songs
• 9. Collections and publications of Estonian runic melodies
• 10. Summary
• Chapter 3 Estonian prosody
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Segmental quantity
• 3. Syllabic quantity and the quantity of prosodic feet
• 3.1. Monosyllabic words
• 3.2. Q1 prosodic foot
• 3.3. Q2 prosodic foot
• 3.4. Q3 prosodic foot
• 4. Overlength
• 5. The structure of polysyllabic words and phonological phrases
• 5.1. Trisyllabic feet
• 5.2. Phonological phrases
• 6. Summary
• Chapter 4 The metrical structure of Estonian folksongs
• 1. Trochaic tetrametre and the quantity rules
• 2. Validity of the quantity rules
• Chapter 5 Estonian folksong as musical performance
• 1. General aspects of research on musical performance
• 2. Segmentation of runic song performance
• 3. Prescriptive and descriptive notation
• 4. Deviations of performed events from their regular values: is this approach applicable in the runic songs?
• 5. Friberg’s generative performance rules for timing and their relevance for the runic songs
• 6. Modelling of syllable durations in the runic songs
• 7. Covariance analysis
• 8. Summary
• Chapter 6 Realization of the prosodic structure of Estonian in sung folksongs
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Material and methods
• 3. Encoding of metre with temporal means
• 4. Changes in the temporal realization of word–initial disyllables
• 5. Differences between regular lines and broken lines
• 6. Differences between quantity oppositions manifested by vowels and consonants
• 7. Summary
• Chapter 7 Realization of prosodic structure inrecitation and laments
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Materials and method
• 3. Duration of metric feet
• 4. Intervocalic consonants
• 5. Summary of results
• 6. Trochaic verse in contemporary Estonian and Finnish poetry
• 7. Between speech and song
• Chapter 8 Conclusions
• Appendix Notations of Estonian folksongs and laments
• Notes
• References
• Index