The Fifth International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony ...

410
Svimon (Jiki) Jangulashvili
the “original” of the decorated hymn or the texture of the plain original (ex. 2 a, b). Quite often it is added with
the introduction of mode diversity (especially with the Karbelashvilis).
Each decorated hymn is a complicated variant of some plain model and a more complex variant of the
invariant common with the latter, it is also its intonational, polyphonic and harmonic transformation, a unique
polyphonic realization of the model, which is the paradigm of the creative capacity of Georgian chanting.
It should be noted that there is not a single chant in which, when constructing the musical texture, only
one form of the voice combination should be used. Chants are characterized by a mixed, improvised use of
polyphonic methods during multipart performing. Even in the simplest specimens at least two methods of
voice combination occur, and this is a must in cadences.
3. Interrelation between the verbal and musical text in decoration
A hymn is a singing performance of various types expressing gratitude, exaltation, supplication, narrating
a divine history or reciting some liturgical-poetic text. It is its function to set the poetic text, accepted by the
canons of the divine service, to music, to grant the listener a sacred feeling of spirituality, elevation and love
for God by means of the expressive power of art and its artistic-emotional influence.
In the plain and true mode chants, where the syllabic or the so-called “neumatic” singing prevails, the
interrelation between the word and the tune is based on the equality of both principles. Here poetic-verbal
and musical caesuras often coincide. Music and the word, poetic world and musical content develop in the
common dramatic direction.
At the same time, in the very hymns of the plain and true modes, quite often the poetic-verbal and musical
caesuras miss each other and just roughly coincide.
<strong>The</strong> cases, when the caesuras of the poetic and musical texts do not coincide, grow in number alongside
with the increase of the cases of decoration in the chants. Decoration also means rhythmic expanding of
the model that is to be decorated, it is when the multiplied musical caesuras in one case coincide with those
caesuras of the verbal text, which were distinctly or weakly expressed in the musical texture of the plain
models; in the second case the syntactic division of the poetic text “is never even taken into consideration”,
more than that, the words are often divided in the middle.
Specific types of the interrelation between the word and music occur in the last parts of the Eucharistic
canons, in communion anthems, in “Great Is polla” and in some variants of “Let us the cherubim mystically
representing”. In the hymns of this type the small verbal text is set to long, decorated musical material.
<strong>The</strong> increase of decoration, the greater activity and importance of the musical basis of the hymn very
often cause the verbal source to turn only into “the foundation of intoning”, and its “cause” (<strong>The</strong> expression
of this is the dissemination of verbal syllables on identical formulae in hymn variants). Drawn-out sound on
a word or its separate syllable (gamghereba) results in the domination of the musical basis of the hymn in the
psychological perception of the chanter or the listener. Such a feature is characteristic both of the Gregorian
and Greek traditions and early European polyphony, especially that of ars antique.
In such cases the hymn is not “only” the drawn – out singing (gamghereba) of the verbal text, in it
the expression and development of the musical idea per se, independent of the verbal text, becomes more
important. <strong>The</strong> hymn turns into the “wordless prayer and supplication”, “without uttering words”, “wordless
chanting”, to put it in other words into the musical idea, “self-sufficient” and independent of the words, a
special musical value that expresses something “that cannot be expressed” in words. <strong>The</strong> spiritual-artistic
world of the verbal text is extensively and boldly expressed in the decoration by means of the expressive
methods of music, a specific musical idea, thus creating a symbol and an image of Heaven.