Vasily Fyodorovich Trutovsky  Vasily Fyodorovich Trutovsky (Ukrainian: Василій Феодорович Трутовський; ) (c. 1740 – c. 1810) was a Ukrainian folk-song collector, gusli player, and composer, in the Russian Empire. He compiled and published the earliest printed collection of Russian folk-music. He was born near Belgorod, in Ivanovskaya Sloboda, where his father was assigned as a priest for the regimental settlement. In 1762 Trutovsky entered the Russian Imperial court as a singer and gusli player; he left the court some 30 years later. By 1792 Trutovsky was still active as a collector and composer, supported by various patrons from aristocratic families. He died around 1810 in Saint-Petersburg. Trutovsky's most important work is "Sobraniye russkikh prostïkh pesen s notami" ("Собрание русских простых песен с нотами", "Collection of simple Russian songs with scores"), a collection of 80 folk-songs with melodies. It was the earliest published collection of its kind: the first three volumes appeared between 1776 and 1779, and one more followed in 1795. Trutovsky drew the material from both his own studies and from manuscripts compiled by others; he also included some Ukrainian songs, music by Russian composers, his own arrangements of music by others, etc. At first, Trutovsky only included the melody and a bass line, but volume 4 and a reprint of volume 1 contained more harmonic filling done by him. The "Sobraine" proved to be an influential work: more than half of its contents was published in a later important collection by Johann Gottfried Pratsch, and some of the songs provided inspiration and models for composers such as Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and others. Only a few of Trutovsky's own compositions survived: "Kruzhka" ("Кружка", "A Cup"), a song for voice and piano (1777), and two sets of keyboard variations on folk-songs (1780): "Vo lesochke komarochkov" ("Во лесочке комарочков", "Lots of Gnats in Our Forest") and "Ty, detinushka, sirotinushka" ("Ты, детинушка, сиротинушка", "You, My Little Nowhere Child").