Historiography of the study of mytho-religious songs of Ossetians before the 1930s.

Abstract

The subject of the study is the historiography of the study of Ossetian song folklore. The object of the study is mytho-religious songs. The purpose of the article is to systematize information sources reflecting the history of the development of research interest in the song folklore of Ossetians, paying special attention to mytho-religious songs. With the help of source research methods, handwritten collections, music collections, notes of individual samples in music publications, descriptions of audio recordings, research works were identified. This article discusses issues related to the activities of various collectors of Ossetian musical folklore. The author traces the stages of the formation of scientific thought, and the development of collecting activities. The most significant works are highlighted, including samples of mytho-religious songs of Ossetians. The main conclusions of the study relate to observations on the activities deployed in the 1920s - 1930s and related to various collectors. The analyzed data indicate an undoubted interest in the Ossetian song tradition. Thanks to folklore and ethnographic expeditions of the 1920s, an impressive set of materials of Ossetian song folklore was collected, but it is worth noting the careless attitude of collectors to the poetic text. Quite often it is presented in a distorted version, in the volume of one stanza, and sometimes it is completely absent. The breakthrough in collecting detail was the appearance of the phonograph. Phonographic recordings made in the 1930s. they still make up the main body of materials on the folk musical culture of Ossetians. A special contribution of the author to the study of the topic is the systematization of information sources on mytho-religious songs, which determines the scientific novelty of this research work.