Rothschild's Violin and a Russian Tune

Based on Anton Chekhov's symbolic story Rothschild's Violin (Skripka Rotshilda, 1894), this article focuses on the generic, functional, ethnic, and expressive transformation of the Melody, which is one of the protagonists of the story, alongside the Violin itself. The tune, a lament, is picked up by Rothschild, a poor Jewish provincial flutist, from the dying Yakov Ivanov, a Russian coffin-maker and fiddler. It is a precious gift to the young man who, upon performing it, grows to be in high demand among the prominent town folk. The plot of Rothschild's Violin is entirely fictional, but its details are typical of a late nineteenth-century Russian province. Very typical too, and even universal for all cultures and times, is the phenomenon of a melody that changes its master, ethnic relationship, genre, and social function. This example is examined here from the perspective of my proposed construct, which defines a complex phenomenon of vernacularity in music, and presents a methodology