The old Russian Gipsy romance Seven string guitar
You bosom friend of mine, guitar,
With seven strings irregular,
Ring for me louder than a nightingale,
Cuz moon is so spectacular.
At any time I`ll know your voice
In that key of D-minor
And that silver tune of yours
When strings are touched with fire.
Such, such, such more! (Hop!) That!
Do not disturb with a mournful song,
Excite with a cheerful melody,
Sing how handsome is my boy,
He is a gorgeous peony.*
His curls are darker than a night
Blue eyes are clear sapphires**
He only makes my life out of sight
Or else the world were tiresome.
Such, such, such more! (Hop!) That!
Forget it`s time to go away,
The sunrise colours are nearer,
Sing, guitar friend, all the way,
Do talk with me, my dear one.
Such, such, such more! (Hop!)
Sweetheart,
Do talk with me, my dear one. (Trans. By Andrew Alexandre OWIE)
Гитара семиструнная
Подруга верная моя,
Гитара семиструнная,
Звени мне звонче соловья,
Ведь ночь такая лунная.
Как тебя мне не узнать?
Ход твой в ре-миноре
И мелодию твою
В частом переборе.
Так, так, так, так, оп, це!
Печальной песней не тревожь,
Веселой подзадоривай,
Пой, что милый мой хорош,
Он - цветок лазоревой.
Он кудрями главы как ночь,
Глаза как звезды синия,
Что без него мне жить невмочь,
Весь мир бы стал пустынею.
Так, так, так, так, оп, це!
Забудь, что спать давно пора,
Гляди, алеет зарево,
Пой гитара до утра,
Со мною разговаривай.
Так, так, так, так!
Милая!
Со мною разговаривай!
Language and Literature Comments: * in the original text `a flower of blue-sky colour`. ** in the original text `eyes as blue as stars`
Both expressions are standard folk-lore formulas, so I replaced them with similar Gypsy folk-lore formulas, in the latter case I used the word `sapphires` since precious stones are typical Gypsy poetry`s metaphors, i.е. `бриллиант яхонтовый` `sapphire diamond` or `ruby diamond` as a metaphor of a boyfriend or as a form of address to male strangers in the street before making a proposal to tell fortunes: `You my ruby diamond, come here, wanna know what was, what is and what will be and what will comfort your heart and soul?`
Words лазоревой and синия reflects the manner of the old Russian pronunciation, especially in Russian Gypsies` speech. Now it is a stylization, of course. In modern Russian correspondingly синие and лазоревый.
Word `невмочь` means `can`t stand smth any longer`, more used variant is `невмоготу`.
`The seven string guitar` is an Old Russian Gypsy romance (love-song) that is a very familiar stranger in Russia. There are several versions of the text and several types of accompaniment and singing. The text and music and performing I`ve proposed here are the original versions of the romance, cause the singer of it, Stronghilla Irtlach, is one who had kept the old manner of performing the Russian Gypsy love-songs. She learned from the pre-Revolutionary Russian Gypsy stars and adopted their experience and practice.
This Gypsy Russian singer seemed to have been forgotten once and for all before in 1989 a famous collector from St. Petersburg (the then Leningrad) Vadim Dmitriyevich Liuboslavsky brought to the Soviet `Melody` Rrecording Company the old records of her voice made two decades earlier. She became a sensation! The managers all as one exclaimed they had never heard more perfect Russian Gypsy singing. Thus five years after the death of a singer there was issued a vinyl disk containing her songs from the private collection (vinyl disk «Мы долго шли рядом». Стронгилла Иртлач. Старинные романсы»). Alas, that time none had any idea of the singer herself in the USSR.
STRONGHILLA SHABBETAYEVNA IRTLACZ (IRTLACH) СТРОНГИЛЛА ШАББЕТАЕВНА ИРТЛАЧ was born on October 5, 1902 in St. Petersburg. She was not a Gipsy, she was a Russian Turk woman, her parents emigrated in Russia from Turkey. Her father was a highly-educated intellectual who had graduated from two Universities, first from Sorbonne, in Paris, after that from the St. Petersburg University. Her father was a manager of the tobacco processing plant in St. Petersburg. Her mother was a botanist. There were seven members and the nanny in the familiy where she had grown up. She was going to classical school of Countess Obolenskaya and attending the classes of Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. The WWI caught Stronghilla and her family in Istanbul where they were spending their summer vacations, they managed to escape from Turkey last moment, but they had to leave there the elder brother of Stronghilla who was infected with typhus. Since then she had never met him, she never visited Turkey.
After the Bolshevik revolt she went on going to state-owned high school while visiting many amateur drama circles. In 1922 her parents left for Turkey forever. Stroghilla strongly rejected the very idea of going to Turkey, she said she was a pure Russian woman and would like to share her fate with that of her native country. Her family could not understand it and after that they never were in touch. Besides, her family felt ashamed of her having become an actress. It wasn`t a good choice for the Oriental girl. But the girl was pefect Russian though she was more Jewish rather than Russian or Turkish by her appearance. (About this very time another great Russian actress Faina Ranevskaya (Fanny Feldman) stayed in Russia forever despite the decision of her family of the richest oil petroleum producers to emigrate abroad).
She entered the Ballet school, then returned to the Academy of Arts. In 1924 she joined a drama school and became a professional drama actress in 1928. In 1929 Ghilya, as she was called by friends, became a professional variety performer and often performed as an amateur singer of the Old Russian Gipsy Romances. She was also on the staff of one of the St.Petersburg`s leading and popular theatres where she served until 1963. As a leading actress she had played about 80 parts of the classical repertoire, from Shakespeare to Chekhov. She could not go on with her career of an outstanding performer of the Old Russian Romances because of the government`s ban on that genre that became an aim for the incessant post-war ideological campaigns against the so-called `petty bourgeois vestiges of the past` (there was such a newspaper term in Soviet time). Guitar as an allegedly petty bourgeois instrument had been under the government`s suspicion for a long time too.
An outstanding singer of the traditional gipsy romances Yelena Yegorovna Shishkina
In 1935 Stronghilla Irtlacz got acquainted with Yelena Yegorovna Shishkina, the famous keeper of the folk-lore traditions of the Russian Gipsy Romance. That Gipsy lady was illiterate, she could not read notes, but she knew her business very well. Besides, she was very proficient in the very rare specialty, she taught singers the specific Gipsy manner of performing Russian classical romances. She was almost the only heiress of the several generations of the professional Gipsy choirs`s soloists. Shishkina taught Stronghilla to sing and play the 7-string guitar in the old manner, in the way of the true Gipsies. The special attention was being paid to learning the sophisticated rhythm and phrasing of the Gipsy singing. Stronghilla Irtlacz knew from Shishkina many creative secrets of genuine Gypsy singing.
An important note! Strictly speaking, Gipsies had their own secret way of writing down the vocal parties and guitar accompaniments that Irtlacz widely used afterwards. Gipsies never praised their pupils, if something was wrong, they used to keep silence, but if they managed to achieve a good result, they would say something like that: `Today you sang as if from under the Gipsy cart!` (It often meant that a pupil had had a tremendous success!).
Stronghilla Irtlacz inherited the ancient and half-forgotten Gipsy repertory from Shishkina (including such Gipsy romances as «Рас-пошёл», «Акадяка», «Верная-манерная», «Ехали цыгане», «Ванёнок» and the Old Classical Russian romances such as «Гори, гори, моя звезда», «Ах, да не вечерняя да зоря», «Не уезжай, ты мой голубчик», «Я ехала домой»). Irtlacz`s traditional style of singing was a replica of the genuine manner of ethnic Gipsy singers, such as Varya Panina and Nastya Polyakova. Soon audience of Leningrad (that time it was an interim name of St. Peterburg) defined Stronghilla as `our own academic drama theatre`s gypsy`. After the prominent Russian artiste Alexandre Vertinsky, the idol of millions in Russia, had repatrated they often performed together, he performed his legendary repertory, then she went on the concerts with her own repertoire. The Gypsy guitarists who accompanied her refused to believe she was not a Gypsy. By the way, the Gipsy romances in the USSR of that time were euphemistically defined as `the songs of a certain genre.
The bosses of the Soviet music recording industry of the 30s took a strong interest in her manner and repertory that approximately made up two hundred of romances. Almost all of those records were lost or destroyed as harmful. The Soviet people were deprived of a rare opportunity to get to learn what made Pushkin, Tolstoy, Block, Kuprin and Yesenin, all the classical authors of Russia love the romances so much. The repertory of Stronghilla was declared to have been out of date. After retiring from the theatre in the 60s of the XXth century Irtlacz took a respectable position of a professor of the Insitute of theatre, music and cinema in Leningrad (St. Petersburg). She brought up several first-rate Russian actors and actresses. Sometimes there were her personal concerts where she usually sang about twenty of Gypsy romances, as well as folk songs in the Hungarian, Romanian and Bulgarian languages. (By the way, her family name Irtlacz sounds as a Hungarian family name very much). Of course, those personal concerts of hers were being carried out not for public at general, they were attended by small number of professionals and students.
In 1978 professor Irtlacz issued a book dedicated to the intonational and melodic patterns of Russian speech (С.Ш. Иртлач "Опыт интонационно-мелодического анализа русской речи"), the book was issued twice. Her numerous scholar works have not been out of date so far. She commanded excellent Russian. The contemporary linguists often tried to personally meet her to listen to the ideal and rich Russian language and to learn it from her. Her last concert took place in 1971. By that time she had a permanent accompanist Alexey Andreyevich Kuzmin, well-known in St. Peterburg as a `Steppe Gipsy`. Stronghilla Irtlacz died in 1983. Alas, none could remember where her grave was. People used to have got short memory. Yet owing to efforts of the enthusiastic fandom some records of her songs have been preserved and even available for downloading. If you don`t believe it go on the WWW page http://kkre-28.narod.ru/irtlach.htm . Are you ready for that?
SEVEN STRING GUITAR
This instrument appeared in the late XVIII-early XIX centuries. The inventor of the Seven String Guitar is considered to be Andrei Osipovich Sihra (I773-I850), a Russian nobleman of Czekh origin who wrote about one thousand opuses for the instrument. At present day seven string guitar is almost not used in Russia as a result of a general decline of Gypsy culture in Russia. The guitar of that type is ignored by composers on the whole, it is rarely taught in music schools under the pretext of limited repertory and bad prospects. Moreover, it has not disappeared so far owing to amateur performers exclusively.The same can be said about the six string guitar too.
Gipsy Folk Song `Mar, Dyandya`(`Танцуй, девушка!``Dance, girl!`) (Instrumental).
Spanish guitar music repertoire (Tarrega, Granados, Albenis, etc.) and musicians (superb ones, no doubt) are much more popular in Russia now. By the way, the interest to the acoustic guitars in Russia revived in the XXth century as a result of Segovia`s concerts in Russia. The Russian culture must be much grateful to him for his fruitful influence and support of the guitar music.
Andrés Torres Segovia (1893 - 1987)
The seven string guitar is also used in music of Brazil to where it was brought by the Russian Gypsy immigrants in the XIX century. In this respect the Russian and Brazil peoples are now a kind of music relatives. It was Gipsies who built that transatlantic cultural bridge. It is rather a symbolic fact that great Roman nations have something to do with revival of the Russian guitar music. The very word of `romance` came to Russia from Spain as well as methods of guerilla warfare that had come there from Spain in time of the Napoleonic wars. Personally I hope that sooner or later the Russian will come back to the old good seven strings. There are certain signs of it nowadays.
The musicians might find this performance to be not ideal one, but this is just a spontaneous improvisation competion between two seven string guitar performers.
What is the main difference between six string and seven string guitars?
According to a leading Russian guitar expert Anastasia Bardina (Moscow, 1998), the main difference between two types of guitars has nothing to do with their physical and mechanical structure, since both types of the guitar have similar design. They have different overtones, chords and playing technique. The seven string guitar can be tuned to the six strings` tuning. When musicians do it hiddenly in the concerts the general audience and even musicians almost never feel any difference between both modes of tuning and playing. This would be per se a slightly scandalous, but only specialists know that the seven string guitar produces the faint concurrent mediant sounds that are necessary only when playing the old Russian repertory. By the way, the six string guitar can also be tuned to be able to the certain extent to imitate the sound of the seven string guitar (for example, d1, h, g, d, G, D).
The tuning of the seven string guitar is a mixture of the thirds and fourths: d1, h, g, d, H, G, D. Thus the chord of open strings is six-four chord. The notes for seven string guitar are written in alt as in the case with the six string guitar. One of the variants of Gypsy tuning of the seven string guitar is D, G, B, d, g, b, d1
Vladimir Markushevich plays a variation set by S. Orekhov on a Russian 7-string guitar at Russian Guitar Festival (IARGUS 2007)
In Brazil people use the standard six strings tuning, the seventh string is mainly tuned to C, more seldom to H and A.
A lot of teach-yourselves are available for free downloading here: http://www.lute.ru/russianguitar/download.shtml. It`s rare editions issued in the early 60s in the USSR. They are all excellent, but in Russian only. There are also many books with musical notations for the 7-string guitar. The whole repertory library! Besides I`d like to attract your attention to the site http://www.7strings.ru/ which has got many descriptions in English (!). The main page is in Russian, but if you are not a Russian person, go further, you`ll see English text!
The list of Seven String Guitar`s tunings (tuning patterns) I have borrowed right from there:
BEADGBE - Standard tuning BEBEG#BE - Open E AEAEAC#E - Open A AEADGBE - Jazz tuning BEADF#BE - Lute tuning BEADGCF - Blues tuning (Fourths tuning) ADADGAD - Jimmy Page tuning. CDGCGCD - Rain Song tuning. ADADF#AD - Open D ADADGBE - Drop D Drop A BDGDGBD - Open G DGBDGBD - Russian CEGCGAE - C 6th BD#BD#F#BD# - Open B EAbCEAbCE - Major 3rds GDAEBGbA - modified "Robert Fripp New Standard Tuning"
Once I attended a party in Russia where gathered a mixed group of Americans, Germans and the Russian. A folk-song ensemble played Russian and Gypsy dance music, people would like to dance and danced but whatever they did the result was one - the Mamushka Dance (by the way, the word of `mamushka` was invented in Hollywood, there`s no such word in the Russian language. The same can be said about the dance itself. It`s a good stylization in the excellent, I would say, now classical American motion picture). Both foreigners and the Russian, failed to express themselves in dance. They didn`t know just several standard and simple dancing movements. After surfing Youtube recently, I managed to pick up an amusing video that, in my humble opinion, could help people in Russia and abroad learn a dozen of necessary steps. But I have to warn beforehand that the charming dancer in that video is not in a good state, he must have been suffering from the severe hang-over. Yet he manages to perform correctly and slowly all the typical movements of a Russian Gypsy dance that you can repeat after him easily and vary them afterwards. `Dancer must have been hitting the Smirnov before his performance!` was the one of the foreign comments! Not to the point, because if the man had really done it, he would have danced too briskly. I think he was simply predestined to be our dancing master. I liked also another comment: `They at least could have gotten some one that can dance!` But he could, he knows how, the problem is he couldn`t do it physically because the day before the dancing he must have hit `a liitle bit too much` Smirnov vodka! Are you ready for that? Here you are:
Gypsy dancer Gabriel Yakubov (Grisha) and musicians Sergey Ryabtsev (violin), Alex Siniavski (Gypsy guitar), Gennady Gutkin (bayan), Leonid Bruk (balalaika-contrabass), Lev Zabeginsky (balalaika), Mikhail Smirnov (guitar), Vasiliy Romani (Russian Gypsy 7-string guitar).
Of course, it is a dance for gentlemen, but what about sweet ladies and lovely girls? I`ve prepared for them a little bit more complicated dancing lesson:
This is an amateur dancer, a schoolgirl from the satellite town of Moscow where Russian astronautes live, so called Zvezdny Gorodok (Star City). What if she is a daughter of one of them?! Who knows! She danced (it was in 2009) in the yard of the local high school on April 12 when Russia celebrates Astronautics Day (that day Gagarin reached the outer space). But despite the space era the free Gypsy people live as they like and their children earn their living as street performers:
Bryansk Region, Western Russia, Market place of a small provincial city.
If we ever had had a time machine we coud have observed similar guys right in the same place but a century earlier. They would have played seven string guitars, and their fathers would have taken horses rather than they would have driven the `Toyotas`. The modern Russian gipsy campsites in the steppe areas near big and small Russian cities and towns are in the rings made up of the Japanese cars.
Last but not least. A clip from a Russian motion picture `The last Gypsy Campsite`(1935) (film director Evgeniy Schneider)
The principal heroine of the movie is a legendary Russian Gypsy actress Lyalya Chornaya (literally `Black Lyalya`) (1909—1982). Alongside with the Gipsies we can see the Russian actors of Stanislavsky school in the scene, including Lyalya`s second husband, the prominant Russian actor Mikhail Yanshin. The real name of Lyalya was Nadezhda Kiselyova. She was a daughter of a Russian nobleman and a Gypsy girl. By the way, `Mamushka` grasped some typical features of the Russian and Gipsy dancing culture, to receive an evidence that it is true it is enough to just compare the dancing scenes of both films.
