Neumes

The other evening Luarsab brought over a disc full of photocopies of 19th century Georgian handwriting. But there is something special about this writing: above and below the words are little lines and dots: musical notations for the master chanters who wrote these liturgical texts. Without formal notation, these lines and dots are the shorthand cue markers indicating how to chant the text! Amazing. But unbelievably, no one can really read these marks today, even though it was only two or three generations ago that chanters were still teaching music using these primitive neumatic markings. How could this knowledge have been lost so thoroughly and so quickly? Check out the history of the Soviet Union, RIP.

I'm very excited to be looking at these handwritings, trying to figure out what they represent. What was the key? To be honest, the key was a vast oral knowledge passed down through the ages by generations of conservative, preservationally minded liturgical chanters. These people already knew the Modes, so they had the melodic phrases of each mode in their minds. As each week brought a new mode into the chanted service, the chanters knew which melodies to sing their texts to. The only other item to know was how this particular text fit in with the melodic phrases.

The neumes simply marked up or down at the appropriate points in the text. But we don't know all of these melodic phrases, or all of their special modes, so we can't really understand what the chant melody consisted of simply from the shorthand markings of a past master chanter. You see the dilemna.

Furthermore, the neumes only indicate movement for the first voice, and we know that these were three voice chants. What were the other two voices doing and why don't we have neumes for those voices? Because we think master chanters automatically knew how to harmonize, as long as they knew the first voice line. Even the basses had to know the first voice chant line, so that they could successfully harmonize to it.

On top of that, each region had its own chant school with distinct harmonization rules. The differences between eastern and western Georgian chant are drastic at this level. However, the similarities in melody and modal melody phrases are remarkable. An order existed all around Georgia that was uniquely adapted to fit the musical culture of each region. Village choirs developed their own harmonic based loosely on a nearby chant school (run by monks) and influenced by the local folk music.

Now a vote, who says go to graduate school to spend lots of time in a classroom learning how to speak academic talk and write about these facinating topics? Who says spend the next seven years enjoying life, interacting with humans instead of books, singing, traveling, and being poor?

I'm having a major crisis in this debate, I welcome your responses! Love -j