Music and Time Annotation << Back On the Commonality and Differences Between Ensemble and Orchestral Music Making on Russian Folk Instruments M.I. Imkhanitskii, M.I. Sharabarin The article defi nes the fundamental elements of similarities and differences between ensembles and orchestras of Russian folk instruments, which up to our time is clearly insufficiently studied, it is proved that these differences do not depend on the number of members of the collective. The two main criteria for the emergence of an orchestra are the unison duplication of parts in at least one of the groups and the division of groups by orchestral functions. The article also defi nes the conditions under which the unison of certain instruments as ensemble groups can be transformed into orchestral ones, proves that the date of birth of the Russian folk orchestra is not March 20, 1888, but the 1890s, when, being still a balalaika orchestra, it increasingly entered the sphere of academic musical art and in it a full-fledged functionality of orchestral groups was formed. Keywords: Russian folk instruments orchestra, ensemble, score, collective essence of Russian folk-ensemble music-making, principles of ethnopedics. Pp. 19-23.