The educational role of Abai’s song heritage in G. Chumbalova’s research

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to show the historical significance as a scientist of the first Kazakh
pianist and one of the founders of the ethnomusicology of Kazakhstan, a researcher of the Abai song art
Gulzhauhar Shombalova, who made an invaluable contribution to the primary study of the musical heritage of
the great poet. G. Shombalova defended her PhD thesis at the Tchaikovsky Moscow Conservatory in 1955. The
core of the dissertation was devoted to the consideration of Russian and domestic archives among the works
of the first researchers of Kazakh music A. Levshin, Sh. Valikhanov, M. Gotovitsky, P. Tikhov, A. Eichhorn et al
. In addition, a separate chapter of the work is devoted to the analysis of Abai’s songs on his PhD thesis, which
has not yet been published anywhere. It is noteworthy that the scientist’s conclusions about the meaning of
Abai’s songs, the artistic value of the musical heritage have not lost their relevance so far. The article reflects
the established approach of the scientist to the ideas of musical Abai studies in modern musicology as a style
reformer. The manuscript of the dissertation brought from the Moscow archive by the daughter of the scientist
Saule Kulakhmetovna Khodzhikova, and part of the dissertation offered to me for research by the vice-rector of
the Kazakh National Conservatory.Kurmangazy Abdrakhmanom G. B., became the material for the study of the
article. Therefore, the content of one of the chapters of G. Shombalova’s dissertation for the first time becomes
the core of the analysis. The article concludes that many of the author’s scientific positions concerning the work
of Abai are still modern. The empirical approach was chosen as the research method, and the description of the
scientist’s ideas from the point of view of the modern approach to Abai studies allowed an objective assessment
of the contribution of the scientist G. Shombalova to musical Abai studies.