Ella von Schultz-Adajewski (1846–1926): The Creative Fate of a Musician and Studies of the Musical Folklore of European Peoples

Abstract

The article is devoted to Ella von Schultz-Adajewski, who left a convincing mark in the Russian and European musical culture of the second half of the 19th — early 21st centuries. The talented musician, born in Russia, continued her creative life in Italy and Germany. Her natural talents and brilliant education (she studied with leading professors of the St Petersburg Conservatory: A. Dreyshok, N. I. Zaremba, A. S. Famintsyn, I. K. Voyachek) allowed her to maximize her professional potential as a pianist, composer, and music researcher. The author of original works in various genres that are attractive to modern performers, Ella von Schultz-Adajewski combined the role of a practicing musician with deep, original theoretical works in the field of comparative musicology. Actually, she became one of the discoverers of this method, which formed the basis of the science of ethnomusicology. The bright artistic and scientific heritage has not yet received a decent assessment in Russian musicology. Meanwhile, in the history of world culture, Ella von Schultz was destined to become the discoverer of the musical folklore of the Friulian Christians, whose folk culture was also the subject of serious scientific interests of outstanding philologists, linguists of St. Petersburg University: I. I. Sreznevsky, I. Baudouin de Courtenay. The works of the musician and wordsmiths laid the foundation of knowledge about the culture of the Slavs, who have been living in Northern Italy for centuries. In the articles devoted to the folklore of various European peoples, the author seeks to find a deep “matrix” reflecting the genetic features of the culture of a particular ethnic group. Innovative for its time are the idea of Ella von Schultz about the inseparable connection of musical folklore and the context of its existence, methods of musical analysis using synoptic tables. The article publishes archival materials for the first time, provides information reflecting the period of Ella von Schultz’s studies at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, her contacts with Russian musicians after her departure abroad. For the first time, unknown scientific articles are also characterized, in which folklore samples are considered from the standpoint of “ethnological documents”.