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.
Author(s): Jaan Ross, Ilse Lehiste
Series: Phonology and Phonetics, 1
Publisher: Mouton de Gruyter
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 216
City: Berlin
Preface
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Estonian old folksongs: history, tradition, collections and availability
Chapter 3. Estonian Prosody
Chapter 4. The metrical structure of Estonian folksongs
Chapter 5. Estonian folksong as musical performance
Chapter 6. Realization of the prosodie structure of Estonian in sung folksongs
Chapter 7. Realization of prosodic structure in recitation and laments
Chapter 8. Conclusions
Appendix
Notes
References
Index
