Lev Kulakovsky was a Ukrainian-Russian Soviet musicologist, folklorist, teacher, and author of textbooks. He was born in Volochysk on November 12, 1897 (October 31, Old Style), and died in Moscow on October 24, 1989.
In 1916 he entered the biology department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at Kyiv University, graduating in 1922. He then studied at the Kyiv Theater Technical School and, from 1924 to 1927, at the research and theory department of the Lysenko Kyiv Music and Drama Institute under Aleksandr Alshvang. From 1925 to 1930 he taught at Kyiv’s Fifth Music Vocational School and, from 1926 to 1929, at the institute’s music education faculty. In 1930 he became a research fellow at the State Academy of Art Studies.
Kulakovsky wrote books on music education and compiled the collection Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian Songs (1937). His publications addressed musical folklore, teaching, rhythm and mode, and musical aesthetics. From 1938 to 1956 he took part in musical folklore expeditions to several regions of Russia. For many years he studied the rhythm and musical structure of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.
His books include Theoretical Foundations of Music Education (1930), The Structure of the Strophic Song (1939), On Russian Folk Polyphony (1951), Music as an Art (1960), and The Tale of Igor’s Campaign: An Attempt to Reconstruct the Model of Ancient Melody (1977). He also wrote guides to music literacy and to collecting and notating folk songs.