Kamarinskaya is based on two melodies. The first is a bridal song, "Izza gor" (From beyond the mountains). The second, the title song of the piece, is a naigrish, an instrumental dance to an ostinato melody repeated for as long as the dancers can keep up with it. Glinka uses the principle from folk song of allowing the musical structure to unfold around a thematic constant—or actually two constants, since he uses two folk songs.Brown, Tchaikovsky: The Final Years, 423-424. He varies the background material surrounding these songs more than the songs themselves—orchestral color (timbre), harmonization, counterpoint. This way, Glinka preserves the original character of the dance, complementing it with creative variations in the orchestral treatment.Maes, 28.
