The Fifth International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony ...

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Daiva Račiūnaitė -Vyčinienė
progression of pitches performed on the daudytės
‘long wooden trumpets’). Incidentally the clucking
of chickens may have been evoked not only by
the “jumping” of the voices in wide intervals but
also by the diaphonic sounding of the different
texts (meaningful text and refrain). Audiences of
sutartinės singing find it almost impossible to discern
a coherent text.
Over time the sutartinės ceased to arouse aesthetic
pleasure on the part of listeners. People began poking
fun at these hymn singers. “When they got teased that
they were clucking like chickens, then they’d sing as
one,” explained E. Janavičienė (born in 1841). Stasys
Paliulis wrote that there had even been a special
parody created, when fun was made of the “clucking”
by the hymn singers. <strong>The</strong> women would engage in
a dialogue, as though they might be chickens, and
would “cluck” a song: “čia tavo, čia mano, sudėsim
abieju - bus tik mūsų dviejų ‘this yours, this mine, put
‘em both, ours both’” (Paliulis, 1984: 93) (ex. 15).
Lithuanian sutartinės tradition
5) Singing in a round
Aplinkui, Aplinkui giedoti ‘to sing (sutartinės ) in
a round’, ‘to sing around’ is when “one begins, the
next one quickly catches on and, from there, the third
one, and so it goes around as many times as singers
are performing” 18 .
Apskrita (adj., noun, sing.) is the exchangeable term
for the sutartinė trejinė (threesome), which is deri–
ved from the adjective, ‘rounded’. <strong>The</strong> ringing of the
music itself seems to run in an endless circle. This
has also probably had influence on the way the per–
formers arrange the unfolding of the song in a circular
fashion (fig. 5). It is possible that the appropriate way
for performing the sutartinės (when singers gather
in a circle) was conditioned by an open, as if neverending,
form of sutartinės (“one is collecting words
and is able to collect any amount of them”). <strong>The</strong>
beginning = the end in sutartinės music (this concept
Ainu tradition
Women sit around the lid of the chest, tap the lid with
their hands rhythmically and sing a song in a circular
canon (fig. 7) 19 .