Musical and poetic features of the ossetian religious and mythological song "Uastyrdzhiyy zaræg"

The article deals with the facts of religious and mythological song dedicated to the Patron Saint of Men, Travellers and Warriors in the Ossetian pantheon. The relevance of the study is due to the lack of scientific research in this area of musical folklore studies. The aim of the work is to identify musical, poetic and typological features of the song Uastyrdzhiyy Zaræg. Archival and published sources, as well as personal field materials of the author of the article served as the material for the research. The main corpus of sources is concentrated in the North Ossetian Institute of Humanitarian and Social Studies Scientific Archive. The analysis also includes transcripts of the author's field recordings from 2007–2022 in Suburban districts of the Republic of North Ossetia. As a result of the work, we have revealed that all religious-mythological songs of Uastyrdzhiyy Zaræg are typologically homogeneous. They are characterised by: performance of the song by a soloist and a group of singers, without instrumental accompaniment; a single intonation and harmony nature, the general logic of which relies on the change of three harmonic functions, one main one – the thesis and two side antithesis; a wide composite sound order (from decima to duodecima) with the range of the melodic line not more than an octave; as well as not caesured verse of unordered syllabic composition – a tirade, with one or more phrasal accents; from two to four tirades of different length in a song stanza; marking the boundaries of tirades with exclamations (both single marked with longitude and twice repeated, with longitude on the second sound). The study suggests that the songs of Uastyrdzhiyy Zaræg are stable and intonationally recognisable, and their style has not undergone significant changes over time.

ossetian songs, Ossetian musical folklore, Ossetian ethnomusicology, folk beliefs, traditional culture, folk songs, religious and mythological songs, Ossetian culture, Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, Ossetians