History of Music: From the Source to Interpretation (Based on Materials from Russian Scholarly Periodicals of the Last Three Years)
Abstract
The present article reviews Russian scholarly periodicals using various types of historical primary sources, such as archival documents, autographs, musical manuscripts, letters, diaries and memoirs, as the material for research. Approximately two hundred articles from more than two dozen Russian scholarly journals were examined. The examined journals belong to higher education institutions (conservatories and academies), research institutes and independent publishing houses. The article identifies the main publication groups formed according to two interrelated parameters including the type of primary sources and the purpose set out in a particular publication. The focus is on (1) archival documents as a basis for changing the characteristics and assessments of significant historical phenomena; (2) filling of gaps in knowledge about the musical culture of the past; (3) clarification and elucidation of the biographies of composers, performing musicians, critics, and publishers; (4) history of the musical composition of works and creative process of their authors, including in connection with the preparation of scholarly academic publications. An analysis of numerous articles has led to the conclusion that attention to primary sources has become widespread in Russian musicology due to both freer access to archives and library collections today and development of new approaches to understanding the reliability of scholarly research and to criteria for the scholarly foundation of contemporary academic publications of musical works.
Keywords: scholarly periodicals, musicology, document, primary source in scholarly research, egodocument
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.56620/RM.2026.1.020-032
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