who asked the first question? - International Research Center For ...

218• The drone is always at the bottom of the musical texture in East Georgia, whilein West Georgia the drone can be used in the middle of the polyphonic texture as well, orabove the main melody (as happens in magnificent four-part working songs);• In East Georgia the bass is always sung by the group of singers; in the mostintricate songs of West Georgia the bass is performed by an individual singer, and isoften the most melodically active part;• The metre is always precise in West Georgian songs, while in at least some EastGeorgian songs (particularly – the same “long” table songs from Kartli and Kakheti) thepolyphony develops without a precise metre, in so-called “rubato” (free metre);• A major part of the metered polyphonic songs in Georgia is based on the simpleduple (2/4, 4/4) and triple metres (¾, 6/8). East Georgia uses all these metres, whereasWest Georgia uses predominantly (and in some regions almost exclusively) only duplemetres;• East Georgian polyphonic songs are famous for their richly ornamentedmelismatic melodies. There are no ornamented melismatic melodies in West Georgianpolyphonic songs at all (apart from the region of Racha, which has an obvious influencefrom the East Georgian singing style);• Both East and West Georgia are the “kingdoms” of the dissonances, althoughsharp dissonant chords play a much more prominent role in West Georgian traditionaland ecclesiastic music;• East Georgia makes use of the scales of fourth and fifths diatonic, and in“Long” table songs there is an interesting mixture of these two scale systems, usedsimultaneously above and under the drone; Western Georgian polyphonic songs arebased almost exclusively on scales of the fifths diatonic;• The specific and very important melodic formula, the so-called “Melody of Iav-Nana” (Aslanishvili, 1954), is present only in East Georgia;• The yodel is present only in West Georgia;The differences between East and West Georgia are not exhausted by this list ofmusical elements. There are other important differences as well in musical instruments,traditional architecture, ethnography, everyday and ritual food, dress, etc. There is noneed to continue this list. Many countries of the world comprise regions with the wholeset of notable differences, so there is nothing particular in the existence of two regions inGeorgia with a set of differences between them. The reader should remember that I amlisting here only the differences between East and West Georgia. The list of the featurescommon to East and West Georgian vocal polyphony is much more impressive.Let us now briefly discuss the possible reasons for the existing differencesbetween the eastern and western Georgian polyphonic traditions. Of course, thepossibility of the inner, independent development of all above-mentioned differenceswithin the singing traditions of eastern and western Georgia can not be ruled out,although the possibility of a certain external influence on the singing traditions of one ofthese regions seems more plausible.N. Tsitsishvili specially studied the stylistic features of the East Georgian “long”table songsand using the specially designed seven style factor analyses came to theconclusion that there are certain commonalities “…between the singing style of theKartli-Kakhetian ‘long’ songs and the singing style of the rural Armenia, Azerbaijan,