The region of Lithuanian sutartinės: on the problem of interaction between the musical culture and the soil and surface rock cover

Abstract

According to the classification of the sutartinės spreading region, proposed by Z. Slaviūnas in 1958 and 1969 (Fig. 2), as well as by D. Račiūnaitė-Vyčinienė in 2000 (Fig. 3) and M. Boiko in 2008 (Fig. 4), the most noticeable region (the so-called “first focus”) was chosen, where the usage of all kinds of vocal (Table 1) and instrumental (Table 2) polyphonic music is evident. The soil and surface rocks peculiarities in this region and in northern Lithuanian region are compared. The most characteristic feature of the sutartinės region is that a lot of various forms of vocal and instrumental music spread on a very small territory. We can notice a very close similarity in comparison of this region to the spreading of the features characteristic of the covering soil and surface rocks, i. e. there are a lot of varieties which coincide with the spreading of covering soil and the surface rock types. The most characteristic features of the vocal and instrumental polyphony spread in a certain and very active zone of this Karst region of Northern Lithuania (Fig. 7). According to M. Boiko (1987, 1992, 2008), traces of sutartinės are evident also in some places of Latvia. Places of these traces together with other ancient forms of vocal polyphony had been existing in Karst areas of this country and in Southern Estonia (Fig. 8). The most ancient relic types of polyphony, which more or less coincide with sutartinės, can be found also in other Karst regions of Europe, especially in the Balkans. The hypothesis has been proposed that the process of the formation and spreading of the Lithuanian sutartinės, most probably could have been related not only to the cultural history of mankind, but even to specific geological conditions and to the peculiarities of soil and surface rocks in this region. In this cases, the phenomenon of the Lithuanian ethnic music sutartinės could have spread to the neighbouring areas from such a very small and closed area (the “first focus“).