War songs

The main articles are:

• History of music in Russia
• Music in Russia in the XVIII century

In the treasury of Russian folk song genres, military songs (called soldier bowls, although this is not entirely true, because military songs also include naval, defense, recruitment and others) occupy a special place. In content, they are, for the most part, descriptive, with the accuracy of a military report telling about the most important moments of military events of campaigns, battles, sieges, attacks, assaults and victories. It is curious that sometimes the songs mention such details of what happened, about which there is not a word in official documents.

Another feature of Russian war songs is their vividly emotional, elevated tone of storytelling, reflecting the hot feeling of the narrator, for whom the event described seems to be personally experienced by them.

The melodic language of war songs is diverse and rich in the variant of tunes. It is based on songs of almost all genres: remote, drawn, robbery, labor, recruitment, wedding, as well as dance. Since the middle of the KhІKh century, the influence of urban song, everyday romance, dance genres (waltz, mazurka, polka, etc.) has been increasingly manifested in Russian soldier songs. This was facilitated by the work of representatives of the Russian composer school and numerous amateur authors. But the bulk of the new war songs were created in regiments, companies and platoons by ordinary Russian warriors, the names of most of whom did not reach us.

Sharp changes in the political and social life of Russia of the twentieth century could not but affect the cultural life of society, including musical life. Of all the song genres, it was the war song that had the most devastating impact. Being inextricably linked with the ideology of the Russian Empire, Russian war songs were dangerous for the "power of workers and peasants": due to the frequent mention in them of the title of Russian tsar, the names of Russian emperors and loyal military leaders; because of the chanting of the numerous victories of the "tsarist army" present in these songs. Pre-revolutionary military songs were locked up, old soldier songbooks were destroyed. However, they needed something similar to replace: after all, any power needs an army, the army needs ideological guidelines, which are most easily rooted in the minds of soldiers with the help of a song. Therefore, the creation of new soldier songs became an important task of the new government. And for this, at first I had to turn to... old Russian military songs. The method of "composing" new songs was simple: a new "ideologically impeccable" text was added to the popular chant. So a lot of Red Army songs appeared, "replicated" from the songs of the Russian army. And although then the production of the military-song repertoire was transferred, under the control of strict censorship, to professional poets and composers, it was this short period of "singing the old in a new way" that showed that the tradition of Russian oral folk song and poetic creativity continues to live contrary to any ideological evolution.

The awakening of interest in the musical culture of the past, as part of the revival of respect for Russian history, became a hallmark of the cultural life of Russia at the turn of the XXI- KhKhІ centuries.

Records

Conductor Igor Ushakov and his Valaam choir made a great contribution to the popularization of the military song. The series of their discs included:

• Generalissimo Prince Suvorov
• Russian historical songs
• We are cadets, we are children of Russia! (cadet songs)