The Fifth International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony ...

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GERALD FLORIAN MESSNER (AUSTRALIA)
SIGNIFICANT ASPECTS OF CARINTHIAN MULTI-PART SINGING.
PART OF THE DIVERSE POLYPHONIC VOCAL TRADITION IN THE
SOUTH EASTERN ALPINE ADRIATIC REGION
A remarkable variety of unique and very persistent musical traditions still exist in the Alpine Adriatic
Region. In some remote areas astonishingly archaic forms have been maintained and are being performed up
to this very day. An omnipresent vocal polyphonic tradition plays a dominant role despite major acculturations
of various kinds. This beautiful region is today shared mainly by Austria, Slovenia, Italy/South Tyrol and
Switzerland. Due to the frequent shifts of empires and governments with their particular national power
agendas, the various peoples of this region were frequently forced to undergo major changes in political
and cultural identification. However, its shared ancient cultural substratum is still alive and can easily be
recognised. For hundreds of years the ‘Alpine Adria Region’ was an ethno-cultural melting pot and is today
sometimes, jokingly, referred to as the United States of the Alps. In Antiquity the pre-historic settlers gradually
embraced the Celtic culture with a strong Etruscan input, especially in the southern regions and, finally, they
were all further acculturated by the Roman latecomers. All this left a distinctive mark in the cultural matrix of
the settlers of this wide-spread region which the later arrivals e.g. some Southern Slavonic and Germanic clans
integrated into their own ethnic cultural weave, which can still be readily identified.
A unique and ancient polyphonic musical culture, a signifier of the region, still displays some interesting
structures such as drone part-singing as well as two, three, four and five part vocal features. In general females
and males sang separately and had different repertoires according to the functional character of certain
customary as well as recreational songs. But, nowadays, singing in a mixed choral formation has also become
quite prevalent.
Today, I wish to zoom in on one regional zone, which is Southern Carinthia, the bilingual part of the state
of Carinthia in today’s Federal Republic of Austria where I was born and raised. Here the dominant culture of
late Antiquity was clearly Romano-Celtic. This is obvious and documented by the archaeological findings of
urban centres such as e. g. the Celto-Roman oppidum on the Magdalensberg (St. Magdalen’s mountain) which
is still in excavation, the Roman towns Virunum on the Zollfeld (Slov. Gosposvetsko polje) near Klagenfurt
(Lat.: Queremoniae vadus, Slov. Celovec) and Juenna on the base of Hemmaberg (St. Hemma’s mointain)
with its Celtic relics and excavations of a large Arian-Christian pilgrimage centre from around 400 AD. All
this is solidly supported by archaeological and ethnographic findings. Many names of rivers, landmarks,
settlements, mountains and customs in the region, now known as Carinthia, can still be traced back to Celtic
deities. Later in the 5 th and 6 th century several other people moved into this area amongst whom were the
militant and aggressive central Asian Avars and the more peaceful Slavs. <strong>The</strong> Slavonic clans who settled here,
arrived around 550 AD. <strong>The</strong>y were Slovenes (Slovenci, but also other names have been considered). Fleeing
from the Avars they were ultimately rescued and supported by the Bavarians.
If we investigate the vernaculars spoken here today, we can find words and roots of words that can be
traced back to an archaic Slavonic and Bavarian, as well to an older Celtic linguistic substratum.
<strong>The</strong> preferred musical style in Carinthia is vocal polyphonic music. Three major categories of songs can