The Fifth International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony ...

382
Ekaterine Oniani
opposite. It was this tune that became stronger since the fifth and the octave – perfect consonances, were chosen as
the constantly sounding interval; their root and peak reflect and duplicate each other – the canonical tune sounds
on different heights embracing the whole space (ex. 1). On the other hand, in this manner the monodic chanting
became polyphonic, therefore closer to the nation’s aesthetic norms. Thus polyphony was realized in monophony.
It should also be noted that in this polyphony unison is achieved on a more important, verbal level. In chanting as in
prayers the most important component of the prayer is the word, and in Georgian chanting all the words are uttered
in unison. Even in the most advanced voice leading, the most complicated voice twists, all three voices utter the
prayer words simultaneously exulting God “with one mouth and one heart” (ex. 2).
Today neither Greek nor Russian chanting is based on unison. <strong>The</strong> church has allowed polyphonic chanting
as well, since the canonical melody was never lost and all the other voices were adjusted to it. I.A. Gardner, a
researcher in Russian chanting of divine service, notes that the multipart performance of the canonical melody may
be assigned to the typicon chanting, because from the middle of the seventeenth century not a homophonic but a
two-part or three-part performance of the canonical tune came to be established in the Russian church… “here we
deal not with a free composition or artistic remaking of a canonical tune, but with its being accompanied” (Gardner,
1998: 118-119). In Greek chanting the drone (ison) also acquired a similar function to the accompaniment. An
analogous phenomenon occurred in Georgian chanting as well – the top voice (mtkmeli – reciter, speaker) was
backed by the middle voice and the bass part. In some sources both voices are called the bass part – high-pitched
and low-pitched bass, but as Iv. Javakhishvili writes, “originally the bass part was not so much the name of a definite
voice, as the word indicating an accompanying part, a combination of following voices in general” (Javakhishvili,
1990: 286). And if in the Russian and Greek churches chanting with accompanying voices is acknowledged as
canonical, in the same manner Georgian chanting must also be declared canonical.
<strong>The</strong> further evolution of Georgian chanting, like other local ecclesiastical traditions, followed the path of
chanting ornamentation. <strong>The</strong> stages of Georgian chant teaching: the parts to be learned, the plain mode, melismatic
chanting, as D. Shugliashvili puts it, also denote the stages of the evolution of chanting and on all the three stages
Georgian chanting maintains the principle of parallelism (Shugliashvili, 2001: 105). Though, it should be noted
that not only the fifth and octave occur as parallelism intervals, the third parallelism in the two upper voices plays
a major role as well, but in this case the same principle of parallelism is harmonically elaborated monophony, or
the simplest polyphony. It is also interesting to note that the polyphonic mentality of the Georgian gene would not
endure even such “polyphonized” monody for a long time. In spite of the obvious priority of parallel voice leading
there is not a single hymn that would be built in this form from beginning to an end. It is quite evident that the
subsequent evolution was targeted at getting freed from strict parallelism. A certain role was played by the process
of decoration as well, which means embellishing the main axis with auxiliary sounds, in its turn starting the process
of being followed by other aspects of polyphony, though the principle of the “monody” and of getting thicker, even
in such cases remain in force not only by means of parallelism but other aspects of voice bending (indirect, opposite
movements of voices) as well. In this connection the most interesting is the interrelation between the extreme
voices, when the bass part duplicates the basic sounds of the main tune by a fifth and eighth (ex. 3).
As has been mentioned above, the evolution of chanting followed the route of decoration. As it is usually
known in 12 th -13 th century Russia there was the virtuoso-melismatic style, the so-called kontakarion chanting, for
which a special two-line notation system was used. <strong>The</strong> primary source for Russian kontakarions is the Byzantine
psalticon – a collection of virtuoso-melismatic hymns meant for soloists. It means that in Byzantium, in still earlier
centuries, the virtuoso-melismatic style of chanting was so popular that special collections of such chants were
created. Beginning with the fourteenth century in Byzantium special virtuoso-calophonic chanting was established,