The Art Department of the State Library of the State Cultural Centre of Turkmenistan organized an event dedicated to the 145th anniversary of the birth of People's Artist of Turkmenistan, musicologist and ethnographer V.A. Uspensky.
Viktor Aleksandrovich Uspensky is recognized as one of the founders of collecting and studying traditional music of Central Asia. In the twenties of the last century, he conducted three musical and ethnographic expeditions to various parts of Turkmenistan, during which he met with famous bagshy, collected various information about the musical art of the Turkmen people, and set more than 350 Turkmen folk songs and instrumental melodies to notes.
The main part of them was included in the monograph «Turkmen Music», which V.A. Uspensky published in collaboration with V. Belyayev. This work, which has since become a reference book for students of music schools and conservatories, introduced the world to the wealth of Turkmen musical folklore.
The creative and scientific works of the ethnomusicologist V.A. Uspensky were duly appreciated and immortalized by the states for whose benefit he worked. He was awarded the titles of People's Artist of the Turkmen and Uzbek SSRs, and the Republican Specialized Music School in Tashkent and a street in Ashgabat were named after him.
The participants of the event were greatly impressed by the fragments with the image of V.A. Uspensky from the film «Secrets of Mukam», filmed by director Alty Garlyyev in 1973, as well as stories about him by the librarians of the department. As noted, the famous book by V.A. Uspensky and V. Belyayev «Turkmen Music» was republished decades later in Ashgabat in a colourful two-volume edition.
