The Fifth International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony ...

464
NEW TENDENCIES IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY
GEORGIAN CHANTING TRADITION
BAIA ZHUZHUNADZE (GEORGIA)
<strong>The</strong> goal of the present paper is to analyze the published collections of Georgian hymns, namely the
liturgy rite published at the junction of the nineteenth-twentieth centuries. In my research I tried to determine
what influence these redactions had on the evolution of Georgian sacred music and what is the value of each
of these collections today.
I have chosen the following authors’ redactions: Benashvili, 1886; Benashvili (undated); Klenovsky,
1896; Ippolitov-Ivanov, 1899; Arakchiev, 1905; Paliashvili, 1909;
Historical processes, the country’s political and cultural orientation, have always been reflected in the
evolution of Georgian national musical thinking. <strong>The</strong> idea, firmly established in the philosophy of culture, is
quite correct in maintaining that separate cultures cannot be viewed as completely closed systems and there
is no such thing as a “sterile” culture, entirely protected from the influence of other cultures (Tsurtsumia,
2005: 212).
In a number of cases the influence of one culture on another is rather forceful, especially when it is
prompted by the cultural policy of the conquering country. Culture expresses a nation’s self-consciousness
as “a conscious subject” (Scheller). Obliterating its traditions from the nation’s memory means losing its
national self-consciousness. This is why conquering nations carried out cultural annexation alongside political
annexation.
In the nineteenth century Georgian Orthodox ecclesiastical chanting experienced strong pressure of
cultural annexation from Imperial Russia. It is clear that Georgia’s almost 200-year-long presence within the
borders of the Russian Empire greatly influenced its chanting tradition. It was these historical processes taking
place at the turn of the nineteenth-twentieth centuries that caused the formation of new chanting traditions
in Georgian sacred music, whose analogues can be observed in the history of Russian chanting in the period
covering the seventeenth-nineteenth centuries.
In the 1880s and 90s Europized specimens of Georgian hymns started to emerge. During these years
quite a few Georgian and Russian musicians tried to change Georgian three-part chants into four-parts. <strong>The</strong>ir
first attempts were failures and received harsh criticism from society. Of the publications of this period the
most noteworthy is Andria Benashvili’s collection Kartuli Khmebi (Georgian Voices). Kartuli Khmebi is one
of the first printed collections. It came out in 1886 (Melikishvili’s printing-house, Tbilisi). In the first part of
the collection the rite of St John the Chrysostom’s liturgy is printed, – so-called plain mode, the other half of
the collection includes folk songs.
We also have a manuscript version of Andria Benashvili’s collection. When comparing them, we can
see that it differs from the printed version by the unusual movements of the bass part which jumps by fourths
and fifths. Such movements match elements of functional European classical harmony, giving the Georgian
chant some European flavor.
In the manuscript collection there are adscripts put down before the equitenia for the female choir. In
Benashvili’s manuscript collection, apart from the Kartlian-Kakhetian mode chants of St John the Chry–