The Georgian people, inhabiting a land the size of West Virginia wedged between Russia and Turkey, speak a group of languages related to no other outside the Caucasus Mountain region. Georgia is an island musically as well, exceptional in having an ancient, deep-rooted tradition of polyphony (music in several independent voices), while all the cultures that surround it, and all the cultures that have occupied or passed through it, are firmly monophonic. Georgian polyphony appears to be truly autonomous and original, and its rules of counterpoint and tuning derive from nowhere else. Three-part singing in Georgia was probably in full flower by the ninth century, substantially preceding the modern development of polyphony in Europe. The density and complexity of the polyphony you hear on our album is traditional--none of these songs is a setting of old material in a modern idiom.

a choir of three women singing for a wedding

Within Georgia, the most significant musical differences coincide with the ancient and long-enduring division of Georgia into eastern and western kingdoms. In the east, the many centuries of control by Persia are reflected in the assimilation of a Persian melismatic vocal style to essentially Georgian musical forms, while in the west the older native forms persist largely intact. But even within the traditional east and west, local regional identity, based on geographical and historical divisions, remains very strong, and the regional musical traditions are remarkably distinct for so small a country.

the State Ensemble backstage before a concert

Bolnisi Church, built 479 - 493 AD

Georgian liturgical music, on the other hand, has been documented since the Middle Ages. Georgia formally embraced Christianity in the fourth century, before the Roman Empire did. Between the fifth and eighth centuries, scholars in several Georgian monasteries--in Greece and Palestine as well as in Georgia--began composing music for the liturgy. Certainly by the twelfth century, and possibly as early as the eighth and ninth centuries, the Georgian liturgy was being sung in three-part polyphony. Those settings were written down and preserved. Some of the manuscripts still exist, but their musical notation (marks placed above and below the syllables of text) can no longer be understood.

We cannot be sure, therefore, how closely the settings now in use correspond to the most ancient manuscripts. But the liturgical music in its current form certainly predates the seventeenth century, when the chants were transcribed using a new (though still specifically Georgian) system of notation, which can still be deciphered. Yet mapping old Georgian note symbols onto European note names does not reveal how the original intervals and chords were tuned. The issue of how the liturgical music was tuned before the age of the piano presents a broad and fertile field for speculation, producing some of the most interesting and controversial musicology, as well as musical practice, now going on in Georgia.
 

Many of the intervals and chords you hear us sing on our album might be a little disconcerting on the first (or tenth) listening, and, if you're familiar with our first album, you may notice that we sound different now. Our model for Georgian singing, in vocal timbre as well as in tuning, has shifted from the highly polished but rather homogenized sound of the professional urban singing groups to a more region-specific, less European-influenced sound. Some of the professional ensembles in Georgia have themselves been moving in the same direction.

Georgika, a professional ensemble of young Georgians
who are also exploring traditional tuning

Neither those assumptions nor all of the conclusions we draw from them are universally shared. In spite of decades of musicological study, traditional Georgian tuning is a puzzle that has not yet given up all its answers. In our own search we have drawn inspiration from old recordings and from contemporary Georgian scholars; the tunings we use on our album seem to us consistent both with actual village practice and with an emerging theoretical model worked out by one of us (Stuart) and by a fellow Georgian music specialist, Guy Brewer.

Carl and Alan taping eminent Gurian singer  Vazha Gogoladze as he sings  one voice part of a trio at a time

You don't have to know the theory to enjoy the music, but here's a brief and incomplete sketch: In general, in music with true three-part polyphonic independence and a small melodic range, fifths will be more important than octaves. The fifth will replace the octave as the unit of structural stability and pitch equivalence, and the scale will repeat at the fifth instead of the octave. We can usefully speak of such music as being built around the "quintave" rather than the octave. In a scale based on the quintave, furthermore, the tendency will be to subdivide the fifth not into whole and half steps but into four intervals more nearly equal in size, blurring or erasing the sense of major and minor. Those intervals produce a lowered second, a near-neutral third, and a raised fourth--which, when projected by a fifth, results in a raised eighth degree, a wide octave. The effects of this tendency vary by region in proportion to the tradition of true three-part polyphony, but some form of quintave tuning is common to almost all Georgian music.

traditional tuning still thrives in Svaneti

Malkhaz Erkvanidze (with members of the Anchiskhati Choir) playing the chonguri

The chonguri is a long, four-stringed, fretless lute that can be plucked or strummed. The highest string is an unfingered half-length drone string. The chonguri in its present form emerged around the middle of the eighteenth century in Samegrelo; its use has long since spread to the rest of western Georgia. Like the other Georgian string instruments, the chonguri is chiefly used as support for vocal music, though some virtuoso solo pieces exist.

 

The panduri is a strummed three-stringed fretted lute from eastern Georgia. The characteristic flat-fifth tuning of the panduri is the result of frets that divide the octave into seven roughly equal steps, producing a low major second, a high minor third, and a high fourth, all of which are consistent with quintave scales, but also a low fifth, which is unique. The fifths can be, and often are, slightly improved at the expense of the unisons between strings.

members of the Rustavi Ensemble playing  a bass panduri and a panduri

 

Islam Pilpani playing the chunir

The chunir is a three-stringed fretless viol, skin-faced and open-backed, about the size of a banjo but bowed like a cello--except that the bridge is flat, so all three strings are always heard. Unlike the panduri and the chonguri, which are used throughout eastern and western Georgia respectively, the chunir belongs exclusively to the music of the northwestern mountains.