Twentieth century songs of the Lietuvininkai ethnic group in the Šilutė region of Lithuania: the interaction between subject and context

Straipsnyje analizuojama Šilutės rajono savivaldybės teritorijoje XX a. užrašyta lietuvininkų dainuojamoji tautosaka – 140 dainų su melodijomis. Siekiama ištirti šilutiškių repertuaro ir melodikos kokybinius ir kiekybinius parametrus, juos palyginti su XIX a. užrašyta medžiaga ir įvardyti bei įvertinti įvykusius pokyčius ir jų priežastis. Tyrimas atskleidė, kad XX a. labai išaugo Šilutės apylinkėse užrašytos medžiagos kiekis, išryškėjo vietinis ir bendralietuviškas/bendraeuropinis sluoksniai, kurie, palyginti su XIX a. duomenimis, atrodo įvairesni ir labiau diferencijuoti.The author of this article analyzes the lyrical folklore of the Lithuanian Lietuvininkai ethnic subgroup recorded in what is now the Šilutė District. Šilutė, for long the district of Heidekrug in the periphery of the Konigsberg region of the former East Prussia, became an important center of cultural activity in the Lithuanian Region of Klaipėda (the former German city of Memel) due to change in the well-known historical and political situation. The research found significant growth in the volume of folkloric materials: about 4/5 of all fully-documented songs of the Lietuvininkai in the region around Šilutė were recorded in the 20th century. The range of the area where the melodies were found also expanded, although the major repository remained, as in the 19th century, the town of Rusnė and neighboring villages along the Curonian Lagoon. This abundance was not due to a revival of folk-song traditions. On the contrary, judging from the collecting of poetic texts from all periods, the natural tradition changed, diminished and at the end of the 20th century was broken altogether, or it was and is consciously maintained, albeit artificially (in the positive sense of the word). This happened in the Klaipėda Region earlier than in the rest of Lithuania because of external (historical, economic, demographic) and internal (changing attitudes of the Lietuvininkai themselves towards folk songs, granting priority to the singing of hymns) factors. The relative abundance of 20th century inscriptions of folklore from the Šilutė area is connected with the development of ethnology and folklore studies: these sub-disciplines became independent disciplines and the collection, archiving, study and publication of empirical materials acquired a different scope and set of methodologies. The features of the songs of the Lietuvininkai of the Šilutė Region in the 20th century reveal local and pan-Lithuanian / pan-European strata, but in comparison with material collected in the 19th century (but not with what is considered to be the true state of the folklore), they seem to be more varied and differentiated. The local strata retain more uniquely Lietuvininkai melodic features whose formation was significantly influenced by the multicultural environment, and especially German music. More than a third of the repertoire of the people of Šilutė was only written down in the 20th century, and mostly contains late examples of folklore genres. This is due in part to an increase in the number of melodies in the major key and melody simplification. The repertoire and especially melodies of the people of Šilutė incorporate an almost mandatory attitude of the Lietuvininkai intended to differentiate themselves from the Žemaitijans (or Samogitians, another Lithuanian ethnic subgroup): as in the 19th century, the songs recorded in the 20th century are much closer to the songs of the Suvalkijans, Dzūkai and even the Eastern Aukštaitijans, while melodies in the Žemaitijan style are rare. The corpus of folksongs from the Šilutė area in the 20th century does not reflect the diversity that existed in the area. Many of the German, Kuršiai, Latvian and Russian songs sung by the Lietuvininkai in the 20th century were not written down because of patriotic and political considerations as well as methodological attitudes among folklore researchers, and perhaps also simply because of the language barriers involved