Does melodic accent shape the melody contour in Estonian folk songs?

Abstract

This paper tests the effect of Thomassen’s (1982) model of melodic accent in unaccompanied isochronous mono-phonic folk song style regilaul. According to Thomassen, the value of melodic accent depends on the shape of mel-ody contour. Regilaul songs are ancient Estonian folk songs that differ from Western folk song tradition. It was supposed that the singers ’ perception of melodically ac-cented points has shaped melody contours in oral tradition, Melodic accents were probably used to accentuate lexical stresses. Lexical stress on the word’s initial syllable is of central importance as a carrier of phonological informa-tion in Estonian. The coincidence of melodic accents with lexical stresses was examined for two types of verses: ordinary verses that have lexical stresses on metrically strong positions, and broken verses that have (one or more) lexical stress(es) on metrically weak position(s). It was assumed that lexical stresses, metric stresses and melodic accents are well syn-chronized in ordinary verses, but singers vary the melody contour in broken verses to increase melodic accent on metrically weak position(s) carrying lexically stress(ed) syllables. The value of melodic accents at lexically stressed syllables was computed for both types of verses in 27 typical melody contours from one South-Estonian district. It was con-cluded that in the melody contour of old Estonian folk songs melodic accents are synchronized with lexical stresses. This logical result also indicates that Thomas-sen’s model of melodic accents works quite well on Esto-nian old folk song regilaul.

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