Book collection MF Komarova (1844-1913)
Ukrainian songs with sheet music: the third hundred / compiled [and preface] by Andriy Konoshchenko - Kyiv: Druk. Gyrich and Co. [1904]. 120, IV, [3] p. : sheet music: “To his dear brother E.H. Chykalenko and his family, the compiler dedicates.” - Bibliogr.: Vik Publishing House: pp. [1-3], 2-4 p.
Andrii Hrabenko (Konoschenko), a Ukrainian folklorist, musicologist, and amateur artist, played a major role in recording and studying Southern Ukrainian folklore.
Starting with the songs he heard from his mother and sister, Konoshchenko recorded more than 400 songs in the areas of the present-day Kirovohrad, Kherson, Odesa, and Poltava regions - historical, mercenary, laborer, recruitment, worker, household, lyrical and other.
300 of these were published in three Ukrainian Songs with Notes collections. The first two hundred were published in Odesa at the expense of E.I. Fesenko's printing house in 1900 and 1902, and the third hundred were published at the cost of the publishing house ‘Vik’ in Kyiv in 1904. Recording variants of Ukrainian songs already known at that time, the compiler of the collection hoped that these recordings would ‘give professional workers in the field of Ukrainian melody the opportunity to learn the laws of natural folk harmonization’.
Among the variants of folk songs recorded in the third hundred, already known, and new ones not published yet by that time, Konoshchenko included in the collection songs of a new cycle, probably composed in the last years of the nineteenth century. He did not hesitate to publish them because he was sure that ‘the Ukrainian melody is not dead forever, but is only transforming into new forms, and the folk genius adds new, interesting and attractive features to it.’
Konoshchenko presented the songs ‘Savradymka’ and ‘Ozhenyla synоchka’, which were included in the third hundred, in several versions, writing down all the ‘melismas and variations’ stanza by stanza, which gave the melodies individual features.