Folk music, it is needless to say, flourished many centuries before Glinka. Folk tunes are like wild flowers, and in all countries the composers have heard the “call of the wild” and tried to woo these flowers and bring them to their gardens. This is particularly true of Russia, which has an abundance of folk songs that are unsurpassed in beauty and emotional appeal; indeed, Rubinstein and another eminent composer, César Cui (kwee), claim absolute supremacy for their country in the matter of national melodies. The tremendous size of the Empire, including, as it does, one-sixth of all the land on this globe, gives scope for an unparalleled variety of local color in songs, suggesting the great difference in costumes and customs. Asiatic traits are mingled with the European. Many of the songs are sad, as is to be expected in a populace often subjected to barbarian invasions, as well as to domestic tyranny; but perhaps an equal number are merry, with a gaiety as extravagant as the melancholy of the songs that are in the minor mode. As a rule, Russian peasants seem to prefer singing in groups to solo singing. There are many singing games; some of the current songs are of gypsy origin; and we find in the collections of Russian folk music (the best of which have been made by Balakiref and Rimsky-Korsakov) an endless variety, devoted to love, flattery, grief, war, religion, etc. Eugenie Lineff’s “Peasant Songs of Great Russia” (transcribed from phonograms) gives interesting samples and descriptions. Lineff’s choir has been heard in America. [Illustration: SINGING AT AN OUTDOOR SHRINE] [Illustration: RUSSIAN PRIEST CHANTING] _Russian Choirs and Basses_ Church music is another branch of the divine art that flourished in Russia before the advent of the great composers. Five centuries ago the court at Moscow already had its church choir, and some of the Czars, including Ivan the Terrible, took a special interest in the musical service. Peter the Great had a private choir which he even took along on his travels. In 1840, the French composer, Adolphe Charles Adam, on a visit to St. Petersburg (now Petrograd) found that church music was superior to any other kind in Russia. The choir of the Imperial Chapel sang without a conductor and without instrumental support, yet “with a justness of intonation of which one can have no idea.” A specialty of this choir, which gave it a “sense of peculiar strangeness,” was the presence of bass voices that produced a marvelous effect by doubling the ordinary basses at the interval of an octave below them. These voices, Adam continues, “if heard separately, would be intolerably heavy; when they are heard in the mass the effect is admirable.” He was moved to tears by this choir, “stirred by such emotion as I had never felt before … the most tremendous orchestra in the world could never give rise to this curious sensation, which was entirely different from any that I had supposed it possible for music to convey.”