The Impact of the Individual on Georgian Musical Tradition (original) (raw)
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Georgian Author’s folk Song of Soviet Epoch, as a Victim of “Authenticism”
Musicologist, 2019
Mass character and class reference of Soviet art quite easily echoed collective and national priorities of Georgian folk song. In addition, the authority of renowned singers and organizers of choirs was an important factor for preserving the originality in Georgian colonial cultural life, even before the establishment of Soviet Power. From the second half of the 19 th century these popular leaderschoir masters-created their own versions of folk songs, as well as composed new songs, most of which, despite clear stylistic individualism, are considered 'true folklore' by the lovers of authentic folklore today. However, the songs composed by well-known choirmasters in the second half of the 20 th century, are demonstratively rejected by the folklore elite, including official structures, for being 'nonfolklore' and 'low quality'. But, stable popularity of these songs in cities and villages, provides very strong evidence of their artistic and stylistic relevance. Thus, the policy of 'ignoring' could be attributed to the maximalist understanding of 'authentic' performance of folklore accompanying the national-independent movement in the 1980s, which introduced an important cultural phenomenon of 'revolutionary' protest in Georgian ethno-musical space. A similar tendency echoes the parallel realities of post-Soviet countries and today's fashionable 'taboo' of 'all things Soviet', regardless of the verbal thematic of the examples. In the inertia of these vicissitudes, currently the practice of creating a song with ethnic coloring is dissociated from 'authentic' folk author-performers. But when it comes to the skill level and traditional style, this suggests mostly inadequate results in a banished, but free space. The article discusses the boundaries and accessories of the concept of "folk song", its accordance with Georgian traditional musical style, and the problems related to this topic. Also presented is the classification scheme of Georgian musical styles based on contemporary data.
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The contemporary Georgian composer Nodar Mamisashvili, as the author of the musical system of three -phase composition, the man who calculated the formula of the Georgian church bell alloys and their acoustic features, and who took a great interest in various branches of science and their synthesis, occupies a special place in Georgian musical space on account of his originality and versatility. This paper deals with the transformation of the idea of passion in Nodar Mamisashvili’s choral composition Gancdani (“Passion”). I shall compare Mamisashvili’s work both with the European Passion and the Georgian analogue of the Passion, the so-called Shekhvetiliani (Holy Friday Hymn Book), though the paper is not targeted at a detailed discussion of the European and Georgian Passion per se. Nodar Mamisashvili’s musical system, three-phase composition, is an example of European rational thinking arising from Georgian national soil, which can be seen in different manifestations of the system:...
Musica Iagellonica, vol. 14. , 2023
The article deals with the problem of spiritual revival in post-Soviet Georgian music that is linked with the complex processes in Georgian society, culture, and art. All these are an echo of the Russian annexation and occupation, the civil war (unequivocally provoked by Russia), and the loss of territories, continued to this very day in the form of a “creeping occupation“ in the conditions of a hybrid war. As musical expression always reflects the contemporary political and social problems of a country and the inner, spiritual state of the nation, it is, therefore, an unmistakable witness to any historical and cultural processes.
MUSICAL IDENTITY IN NEW GEORGIAN MUSIC: NATELA SVANIDZE -EKA CHABASHVILI
2015
Musical identity is extremely important in contemporary global world, especially for multicultural countries such as Georgia. Social factors have crucial influence on the identity. One of such social mechanisms is music which is universal and at the same time socially differentiated in most cases. The subject of the study is the problem of detection/maintenance of the identity at different stages of new Georgian professional music, on the example of Natela Svanidze-a repressed artist and Eka Chabashvili-a young composer. Basing on the comparison of main stylistic features, composition techniques of these composers, the author tries to reveal features of national and European/non-European, individual and "all-Georgian" features in the works of these women-composers.
Georgian Musical Criticism of the Soviet and Post-Soviet Eras
Lietuvos muzikologija, t. 20, , 2019
This article examines the problem of music criticism in Georgia during the Soviet and post-Soviet eras. Criticism and music criticism, in particular, as an “art of discussion and analysis” became “destructive” and dangerous for totalitarian regimes. Authentic criticism was replaced by “quasi-criticism,” which was driven by the do’s and don’ts of the regime. Thus, the following issues are discussed in the article: how development of music criticism reflected the social-political changes in Georgia after occupation (since 1921) and to what extent musical processes have been influenced there. Consequently, attention is drawn to the decades from the 1920s to the 1950s and from the 1960s to the 1980s, and the situation is analyzed through the lens of Soviet aesthetics. In that regard, Grigory Orjonikidze’s works are identified as the most influential and mind-opening examples in the development of Georgian music criticism under Soviet rule. The reconsideration of music criticism became topical at the end of the last century (the late ‘90s, after the Soviet Union collapsed). In the postmodern reality, musical criticism had to rediscover its role, redesign its values, and regain its place through the perspective of both local and global realities. The following issues are discussed: the influence of the mass media; social media’s effects on the development of music criticism; and coexistence of “description-” as well as the “analysis-” based attitude towards the musical processes. Keywords: Georgian music criticism, “quasi criticism”, soviet and post-soviet aesthetics, products and information process, Grigory Orjonikidze.
Russian double annexation and the issue of religious consciousness in post‑soviet Georgian music
Aspekti ìstoričnogo muzikoznavstva, 2023
https://www.kharkiv.ua/aspekty/en/vypusk.php?vol=30&year=2023 Russian Double Annexation and the Issue of Religious Consciousness in post‑soviet Georgian Music The article is dedicated to the consequences of Russian double annexation in post-modern and post-avant-garde Georgian music. As a result of the research, it was determined that Russian annexation changed the natural path of development of Georgian music. It is a well-known fact that to establish a national composition school, first of all, it is necessary to rely on the roots of national professional music (which in any case originates from the church music of a particular nation) from a stylistic point of view. As Georgian Orthodox chanting was chased from the Georgian Сhurch, they were completely unknown to the first generation of Georgian composers. That is why the first Georgian composers were not honoured to be the founders of the national composition school, and this became a historical misfortune of the first Georgian patriotic artists. During the second annexation, due to the regime’s rejection of the Christian religion, Georgian composers were enabled to address the stylistic-intonational characteristics of Georgian chants. During the Soviet period, the regime banned music with religious content and the use of church genres, spiritual themes or church hymns in any genre of music. After the collapsing regime, the requirement to ban church genres or religious music was cancelled, and it turned out that composers were often interested in spiritual themes and intensively referred to the stylistic, intonation, and mode characteristics of Georgian chants. Compositions of Maka Virsaladze and Eka Chabashvili are clear examples of it.
TWO INDEPENDENCES OF GEORGIAN MUSIC (1918/21 -1991
GESJ: Musicology and Cultural Science. , 2021
Georgia gained and restored its independence twice in the past century (1918/1921 and from 1991 to this day). Over the century the two-way path from independence to independence was difficult and heterogeneous with intertwined causal connections in socio-political and cultural spheres. Freedom is like a litmus test, which reveals and catalyzes certain processes. The golden age of new Georgian music-the first republic of independent Georgia in 1918-1921-was preceded by a long period that prepared this rise in musical culture. At one glance, similar processes preceded musical culture of the second independence. First of all this was the path of reforms in different directions, including the sphere of education, music professionalization. Main reason for the not-so-insignificant success of the reforms was the consolidation of the political and public spectrum, active public participation in the process and a well-thought transformation of the inherited ugly system. In this context the paper discusses: what challenges did the musical culture of the Democratic Republic face? What was the path like it took before gaining independence? What were the features of the idea of Georgian nationalism? How did these two stages of Europeanization/globalization take place in the country, whose musical culture was based on a different type of professionalism before the 19th century? What does independence mean in music?
The Gurian Trio Song: Memory, Media, and Improvisation in a Georgian Folk Genre
This thesis explores a genre of Georgian traditional vocal music, the Gurian trio song, through a combination of ethnographic description, musical analysis of improvisational formulas, and close listening to early-twentieth-century recordings and their return to circulation in the embodied practice of present-day folk ensembles. Two prominent Gurian singers, Tristan Sikharulidze and Anzor Erkomaishvili, serve as touchstones for these strands of analysis, each representing approaches to transmitting the memory of their tradition that intertwine the oral and technologically mediated. After an introduction to Guria, a region of Georgia on the Black Sea coast, the first chapter reviews scholarly writing on Gurian music since the early twentieth century, and interrogates concepts of “polyphony” which influence research on Georgian music to this day. The second chapter draws on interviews with Tristan Sikharulidze and other Gurian singers to develop the idea of trio singing as a social activity with a moral dimension and complex processes of musical reference and intertextuality. Chapters Three and Four take a single Gurian trio song, “Me Rustveli,” and, based on comparative study of several recordings, propose a formulaic system of improvisation, while placing this practice within the context of Soviet-era attitudes toward improvisation. The final chapter explores the role of early-twentiethcentury recordings of Gurian music, and the way that idiosyncracies and accidents in the original recordings may have tangible effects on the way these songs are performed today. The outsize influence of Anzor Erkomaishvili as a performer, publisher, and all-around keeper of the archive, is augmented and colored by his familial connections to singers on the hundred-year-old records. A brief conclusion proposes areas for further research, particularly how to place musical, improvisatory practice within various models of cultural memory, including those built from the perspectives of textual, anthropological, or performance studies.
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This study examined the alternative aspects of the new folk music of the eastern mountain regions in Georgian musical culture. Today, such pop-folk music is popular among the younger generation in Georgia. In particular, the female folk music of the Tusheti region, popularized by Lela Tataraidze, is influential as a countercultural reaction to official polyphonic singing. Tusheti lies on the frontier of the North Caucasus, where the influence of the national culture of male polyphonic singing did not extend during the twentieth century. Therefore, women's musical activities, such playing the garmoni, have prospered among the Tushetian people. Tushetian folk music expresses the melancholy experienced by women living under patriarchy, while male polyphonic singing is characterized by masculinity and lucidity. Moreover, the formation of the Georgian Diaspora community during the post-Soviet period promoted the acceptance of folk music from marginal communities. Tushetian songs desc...