Vespers Tour

I met Luarsab and Malkhaz at the Patriarchate, in a freezing undecorated room with the grand title, Office for the Preservation of Georgian Sacred Chanting. In fact, there is an extremely out of tune piano, a small table with one computer on it, an old bureau with a few cups in it, and some boxes of cds and books in the other two corners. But as far as I’m concerned, great work is coming out of this room and I want to get involved. Today our gathering was to discuss a plan I have to publish a small book of chants aimed at western audiences. Malkhaz is the director of the prestigious Anchiskhati choir, Luarsab is an expert on old Georgian photography and chanters and speaks english, and together I think we’re going to come out with a good book.
Both of them also sit on the Sacred Music Commission which tries to evaluate and advise new church choirs around Georgia.

Luarsab had a big stack of directives from this Commission which he needed to drive around to various churches in Tbilisi, so I went along. It was Saturday afternoon, Matins-Vespers service time, so we were hoping to catch members of the choirs at each of the churches. This gave me the unprecedented opportunity to see a number of choirs, churches, and congregations all on the same day.

First we went to Anchiskhati, the oldest surviving church in Tbilisi, its foundations dating from the 6th century. Princes and Princesses attended church here, but one wouldn’t know it today. It feels Old! Very few windows, cold stone, dim frescoes... it is considered conservative, and has the honor of being at the heart of the sacred music revival. The choir stands near the front of the church on the left. Interestingly, and without directive, men and women naturally split sides, the women on the left, the men on the right, leaving a long aisle from the door at the back straight to the small icon in the front, where each person goes when they first enter the church. The place was packed and I couldn’t see Malkhaz or the other choir members, but we heard them chant the beginning of the service.

Next we drove to a similarly old church across the river where Kereselidze’s choir sang at the turn of the last century, when there was a brief revival of church chant before the Communists came. Luarsab and I have a plan to write a biography of Kereselidze because he has such an interesting story of dedication to the chants in the face of ignorance, violence, and apathy from the rest of society. At this church, the service hadn’t quite begun yet.

At the next church, there was a fresh grave outside. A young priest had died in a car accident. The church was so packed, there were people waiting outside. I couldn’t hear any chanting, and I didn’t know if the service had started or not. We dropped off our paper, and headed off in the Niva jeep.

We came to a rather large church, scaffolding on the outside and inside. It looked fairly new, but Luarsab said it was old. They were remodeling it because the Communists had converted the church into a bathhouse... What? Inside, we took a side door and climbed a narrow spiral stairwell to a balcony. There I was surprised to see a bunch of guys I knew; they were the other half of the Anchiskhati folk choir called Dzveli Kiloebi, the group I will be touring with in the United States next October-November (2005). These guys were really good. Only five sang at a time, three basses, one middle voice, one top voice. Others would take turns singing. Their director Mamuka sings bass, and for a careerhe is an architect. On our way to the next church, Luarsab pointed out a new chapel which Mamuka designed.

I was interested to see a bass being a director as this is unusual. Luarsab said throughout history there have been chanting experts who didn't have good voices, and even a few gifted souls who couldn't sing a note, but knew all the chants by heart.

I think it is unusual to sing in the balcony, this was the first time I had seen this, except at Sameba, the brand new cathedral.

Next we drove way out into the suburbs of Tbilisi, which seem kind of morbid to me. Imagine wide expansive fields with nothing growing in them, trash littered about and industrial waste objects in the foreground. Roads crisscross these areas. All around are massive concrete block buildings, each about eight stories high, maybe a hundred yards long, perfect gray rectangles. There are dozens of them, lined up. I think there must be about eighty to a hundred apartments in each one. I live in one actually, back in Tbilisi.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, churches were built near these places, and we went to about three of them in the space of half an hour. All of them were packed, mostly with young people. I would guess that a third of the people in each were teenage girls between the ages of fifteen and nineteen.

The first church had just finished their service, and people were walking out. The night was freezing, the stars visible but the moon shining down even brighter. I wandered in while Luarsab found someone to give his official paper to, and noticed all of the new frescoes in this church. New frescoes here seem mostly to have the same color schemes: a strong red-brown, bright blue, and tan-brown for flesh colors... there are other colors but I always have a strong impression of redbrowns and blues.

In one of the other churches still in service, it was so crowded, I could barely squeeze inside. I went in nontheless and was able to hear the choir which consisted of three women, and one teenage boy. Compared to the guys I have been singing with and the recordings I have been listening to, they were very amateur, I guess they have very recently begun singing.

Finally we headed back into Tbilisi and drove up to the massive, well lit, Sameba cathedral. The location is incredible, one can see nearly the whole city from this vantage point, even up many of the valleys where several districts are invisible from each other. Sameba is heated! And extremely well lit. Fake marble everywhere, but it gives the impression of being very opulent.

I headed for the back stairway and went up to the choir loft to meet my buddies in the Basiani Choir. At the top of the stairs I met Shergil and his friend from Sighnaghi! I had been calling Shergil but not getting through... his phone had been lost. We made a plan to go to Bodbe Monastery and Sighnaghi on Sunday.

When Luarsab came upstairs, the Basiani choir were just about to sing a chant which we both know. Director Simon invited us to sing so we hopped up on the benches and were able to join in with the choir. The vastness of the cathedral streched out below us, a rich yellow glow shining from wall to wall; a murmur of intoning priests and shuffling hundreds whispered a call for chant. We sang together, forty voices without notebooks, loving our singing and loving the words we breathed. What a treat after such a voyage.