We can't really know what music was like in ancient Russia, because musical notation as we know it did not exist. Many musical instruments have been excavated-percussive varieties include pottery rattles and whistles, harness bells, jingle amulets, tambourines and cow bells.(1) Also uncovered were Jew's harps, and a kind of panpipe call the sopel.(2) Numerous stringed instruments called gusli or psaltery have turned up in a variety of forms.(3)
As in the visual arts, there was a dichotomy between religious and secular music. Russian Church music followed the Byzantine tradition of using choruses and bells, eschewing all other instruments. It followed a polyphonic form, where a leader sang a melody and others echoed, embellished, and modulated it. Some records exist of Byzantine sacred music and reconstructions have been attempted. Religious music was sung in Church Slavonic. As it comes down to us via oral traditions-it consists of long hypnotic chants, mingling single voices and choruses, and continuing for hours.(4)
Rus' secular music is thought to have Eurasian roots. Percussion instruments and pipes were associated with festivals rooted in paganism. The Church condemned these instruments as demonic. A lineage is conjectured from pre-Christian ritual music to seasonal folk festivals. Echoes of this past may be found in collected old rural songs. Surviving secular music is characterized by a pentatonic scale, use of the Jew's harp and pipes, and 5/4, 7/4 rhythms.(5)
The gusli was a relatively sophisticated instrument of at least five and often more than ten strings. Carvings found at Novgorod show that it was held in the lap of a seated musician and played with both hands. It was used to accompany ballads and is mentioned in that context in The Song of Prince Igor. The Church looked with more sympathy on the gusli, since it was thought to resemble the harp of the Old Testament's King David. Traveling minstrels, called skomorokhi, were the bards of Novgorod. They sang, juggled, performed tricks with animals and rendered epics. We can only conjecture their theatrical performances, recitations of sagas, masking, and dramatic and humorous renderings of tales.(6)
(1) Society for Medieval Archaeology, p. 206.
(2) Thompson, p. 101.
(3) Society for Medieval Archaeology, p. 206.
(4) Lecture "Byzantine and Russian Music" by Nicolas
Schidlovsky,Metropolitan Museum, May 28, 1997.
(5) Vernadsky, Kievan Russia, p. 252.
(6) Society for Medieval Archaeology, p. 206.