The "Secret" Meaning Behind the Bydło?

[Chuck(G)]

I don't think Moussorgsky actually meant that 'Bydlo" means an oxcart, just that he couldn't do much with a picture of cattle standing around, so he added the allusion.

I guess he wasn't quite up to Rodgers and Hammerstein:

All the cattle are standing like statues,
All the cattle are standing like statues,
They don't turn their heads as they see me ride by.
But a little brown mav'rick is winking her eye.

[tubatooter1940]

If you say Bydlo to anybody here in Alabama, they would likely assume that you bought something really really cheap.

[Chuck(G)]

Secondly, bydlo means ox.

Polsih for "ox" is "wół". "Było" means cattle or livestock collectively, not the single animal. In Russian, "ox" is "бык"; in Ukranian, it's "бик".

[Biggs]

[quote="Pop Korn"}
The young tenor peasant driving the cart is the honest, noble, hardworking peasant singing of his people's suffering. His is a lamentation with short heart-felt phrases and sighs, emotionally swelling with feeling. Those high G sharps should ring out - and hang full and golden in the air - not sound at all thin and strained - even sweet.[/quote]

I contend that the tuba is, instead, intended to mimic the lowing of the oxen as they struggle to pull the cart. Thus, I would expect a little straining or even growling.

[Chuck(G)]

I talked to a violinist who is FROM Poland and she told me its pronounce "BYDWO". SHe also told me that it only means ox and told me a word that sounds closely related that means a degrating word for someone. She told me that if you call someone Bydwo, that it is a degrading thing to be called the name. That's all I got.
Hope it helped.

My original comment on all of this was that "bydlo" (in whatever spelling you imagine it; (neither Hartmann nor Mussorgsky titled their stuff in Roman letters) does not mean an "oxcart". A statement of "Bylo in Polish means a cart drawn by oxen" or some such makes me suspect the rest of whatever scholarly pronoucements follow.

However, it seems that ol' Modest was trying to portray an oxcart as the following shows at the bottom of the movement in the piano part:



But I don't believe that it actually says that the word "means" an oxcart. That just doesn't make any sense at all. But then, it's "wiener sausage" and "hamburger sandwich", isn't it?

[Rick Denney]

However, it seems that ol' Modest was trying to portray an oxcart as the following shows at the bottom of the movement in the piano part:



But I don't believe that it actually says that the word "means" an oxcart. That just doesn't make any sense at all. But then, it's "wiener sausage" and "hamburger sandwich", isn't it?

Are you saying that you can read the Cyrillic text? If so, what does it say?

Rick "who spent two hours figuring out one Russian word, once" Denney

[Chuck(G)]

Are you saying that you can read the Cyrillic text? If so, what does it say?

Rick "who spent two hours figuring out one Russian word, once" Denney

Scroll up a few posts, Rick.