The Fifth International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony ...

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POLYPHONIC FORMS IN 17 TH CENTURY
RUSSIAN LITURGICAL MUSIC
EKATERINE DIASAMIDZE (GEORGIA)
Russian church chant, with its origins in Byzantine tradition, occupies one of the most significant places in
the culture of the Christian East. <strong>The</strong> earliest monophonic examples of Russian chant vividly reflects the common
forms of Orthodox Christian chant in the tenth century, while at the same time revealing characteristic features of
Slav musical thinking. One of the great researchers of Russian ecclesiastic chant, Maxim V. Brazhnikov, notes,
“<strong>The</strong> most ancient Russian culture has come down to this day in the form of numerous written documents in which
musical notation is also present. <strong>The</strong>se manuscripts are monuments of ecclesiastic chant that have been integral
to the Christian divine service since the introduction of Christianity in Russia in the year 988” (M. Brazhnikov,
2002: 13). This paper presents two main ideas: to introduce the <strong>Symposium</strong> participants to scholarship on the early
forms of Russian liturgical polyphony, and to suggest that this type of chant has a rightful place in the Russian
Orthodox liturgical canon.
In the sixteenth century and in the following period, examples of multipart chant begin to emerge. Russian
scholars have associated these new forms with Russian folk polyphony. Concerning the three-voiced strochnoe
form, Anatoly Konotop writes that, “the style of folk singing traditions with that of strochnoe chant reveals a
close correlation between them. In addition, three-part singing (troestrochie) is the fulfillment of centuries of chant
developed by the peoples of the Eastern Christian region” (Konotop, 1996: 62).
<strong>The</strong> atheistic ideology of the Soviet State in Russia caused a great deal of damage to the Christian chant
traditions, which gradually sank into oblivion in place of concerts of ‘spiritual’ music. In the post-Soviet era, a
small revival of various forms of Russian chant is underway among a narrow circle of scholars, choir directors, and
chanters. <strong>The</strong> result of these efforts is the creation of a culture of church chanting as well as the emergence of a
renewed association between Russian traditional chant and Russian national identity. <strong>The</strong> importance of these forms
of traditional chant can be observed in the abundance of extant manuscripts, which are full of localized neumatic
musical notation (kryuki) representing both monophonic and polyphonic types of chant. <strong>The</strong> revival of Russian
chant takes its starting point from the study of manuscripts.
Many Georgian and Russian scholars agree on the importance of comparative study between Georgian and
Russian polyphonic chant forms. In 1991, researcher David Shugliashvili noted that,
Georgian chant, though shrouded in mystery, is an integral part of the Georgian Church and therefore by
association with the whole Orthodox world. Despite the autocephalic status of the Georgian Church, it was never
in isolation from the outer world and has always been connected with Byzantium and other centers of Christianity.
<strong>The</strong>se links are based on similar laws of ecclesiastical life and rules of the religious services, which were not
created separately but are shared between Georgia, Byzantium and other places. <strong>The</strong> canons were presented and
confirmed at world councils of church leaders and accepted by the whole Orthodox world. <strong>The</strong> singing of chants, as
an integral part of the divine service, obeys such rules.… With this discussion, it is possible to infer that within the
canonical rule of chanting, we may find the archetypal melodies that show us something about the general Orthodox
understanding and rule of canonical chant (Shughliashvili, 1991: 68).
In this passage, Shugliashvili suggests that the strict rules established and adhered to by the international