There is a very interesting concert coming up in Washington, DC, that is focusing on both reviving and preserving historic Georgian Orthodox Church choral tradition. I have copied the notes on this concert from the director below. It is important to note that, where "accidents of history" are mentioned, what is being referred to is the systematic demolition and rape of the surrounding cultures by the the government of the Soviet Union. In this way, a concert of this kind becomes even more of an important event, as it teaches the effects on culture by an oppressive government.
By Frederick Binkholder
We are ending this season of Chorale programs in a
very special way. This season, which I
have called Kindred Voices, has focused
on traditional music from cultures around the world, music not created
originally for concert performance, but sung by people in community as part of
their everyday lives. These final
concerts immerse us in music sung by Georgians for more than one thousand years
as part of their religious worship, in a setting from the turn of the last
century by Georgia’s most famous composer.
Because of the accidents of history, Paliashvili’s
setting has gone unperformed, in fact unknown even to knowledgeable
Georgians. The Chorale has the special
privilege of not only reclaiming and performing Paliashvili’s score, but of
recording this work for the first time in its original language. Our goal is to acquaint choruses and listeners
in America with the ethereal beauty of Paliashvili’s setting, and I hope maybe acquainting
even listeners in the Republic of Georgia as well.
I know many people who can remember vividly the
first time they heard music from the Republic of Georgia. For me it was at an international music
festival outside of Atlanta. Georgian harmony
can be alternatively bold and haunting, exotic and soul-stopping; the vocal
music of a people for whom singing is an integral and natural part of feasting,
celebrating, mourning, and worshiping, of everyday life. I know musicians whose
lives and careers were changed after hearing Georgian music, perhaps Tsmindao Ghmerto or Shen Khar Venakhi as sung by Rustavi Ensemble.
From the first time I heard the one recording that
exists of Paliashvili’s music, even though by a Russian choir singing in Church
Slavonic, I have felt drawn to perform this music. The period leading up to the Chorale’s first performances
in June 2010 was a fascinating introduction to the history of the piece, to
Paliashvili and Georgian music, and the history of Georgia. After the performances, it was difficult to
put it away, and I looked forward to the opportunity of working on it again.
I am deeply grateful to the Chorale for sponsoring
my trip to Georgia in the summer of 2012 as the possibility of recording the
piece became more and more likely. It
was a true investment by the Chorale in making these upcoming performances and
the recording as good as they can be. I
can’t describe the feeling of chanting during a Sunday service surrounded by
200 Georgians at one of Georgia’s oldest and most famous churches, or holding
an early manuscript of this piece in Paliashvili’s handwriting at his house
museum in Tbilisi, or discovering the neighborhood church where he worshipped
and sang as a choirboy in Kutaisi.
I am grateful to all of you in the Chorale for
joining in this special musical adventure. I’m proud of the role the Chorale is
playing in bringing this unique piece of musical history back to life.
Program Notes on
Paliashvili’s Georgian Sacred Chants on
the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom
The Capitol Hill Chorale, under the leadership of Artistic
Director Frederick Binkholder, is excited to reprise its American premier
performances of Zakaria Paliashvili’s Georgian
Sacred Chants on the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, prior to making the
first recording of the work in the original Georgian language immediately
following these performances.
Zakaria Paliashvili (1871-1933) is a figure of national pride
in Georgia, and is considered to be the father of Georgian classical music,
known particularly for two of his operas.
His themes form the basis for the country’s national anthem, the opera
house in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, is named for him, and he is buried on its
grounds. His portrait appears on one of
the bills of Georgian paper money.
He grew up the third of eighteen children in Kutaisi, a
small city in western Georgia, the son of amateur musicians active in the local
Georgian Catholic Church. Several of the
children were talented musically, and the family moved to Tbilisi where the
Zakaria and several of his siblings sang in the church choir and played organ.
In 1891, Paliashvili entered the Tbilisi Music School, which was led at the
time by the future famous Russian composer Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov. After graduating, Paliashvili spent 1900 to
1903 in Russia, studying at Moscow Conservatory, where Ippolitov-Ivanov was now
a professor. Paliashvili’s main teacher
was Sergei Taneyev, the teacher also of Paliashvili’s Russian contemporaries –
Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, and Gretchaninoff.
In 1903, Paliashvili returned to Tbilisi and began a career as
conductor, teacher, ethnomusicologist, composer, and organizer of musical
activities and institutions.
At the time of composition, Georgia had been part of the
Russian Empire for more than 100 years. The Russian policy of “Russification”
in place throughout the Empire had increasingly imperiled Georgian cultural
traditions, including particularly Georgian chant, a unique form of multi-part
liturgical singing in the Georgian Orthodox Church that had existed for more
than 1,000 years, predating the emergence of polyphony in Western European
music by several centuries. Facing this
threat, Georgians had begun transcribing chants on paper to preserve what had
previously been handed down orally by master chanters. Paliashvili’s Georgian Sacred Chants is a setting for
large mixed chorus of a set of transcribed chants that are used in the Liturgy
of St. John Chrysostom, the most common Eucharistic service used in the
Orthodox Church.
Since Paliashvili was not Orthodox, his choice of the
Orthodox service as one of his first published compositions is noteworthy. As a
proud Georgian, Paliashvili makes clear in a Forward that accompanies the
published score that these settings were intended as his contribution to the
preservation of this important aspect of Georgian musical culture. His nationalist intent is clear from the prominent
size of the word “Georgian” on the title page.
The piece is reported to have been performed once. Too western for Georgian traditionalists, and
too Georgian for the Russian Orthodox Church, by the time of the Russian
revolution the piece was clearly too religious for the Soviet period. However, while copies of transcribed chant
were aggressively suppressed and hidden away, Paliashvili’s settings (for
example, his setting of ‘Shen Khar Venakhi’) were known and sung privately,
often in reconstituted traditional 3-part settings, by those interested in
preserving traditional Georgian singing.
In the 1950’s and 1960’s, this included the founder of Rustavi, an
ensemble which subsequently played a major role in fostering an appreciation of
traditional Georgian music internationally.
Thus, Paliashvili’s Liturgy
may not have spread awareness of Georgian chant among his Georgian and Russian
contemporaries as he had intended, but it did indirectly serve that goal to
later generations.
At the same time, although individual sections of the work
are known, it has remained basically unknown as a single work. Experts in Georgian classical music at the
Tbilisi State Conservatory have said they were aware of the piece, but had
never heard it performed as one entity. Currently in Georgia, as interest in
performance of 3-part Georgian chant in traditional performance practice grows,
interest in 7-part settings of Georgian chant for mixed chorus is likely to
dim.
The Chorale first became aware of Paliashvili’s Liturgy in a recommendation from
Vladimir Morosan, head of the music publishing company Musica Russica in California , to Thea Austen, a soprano in the Chorale with
an interest in music from the former Soviet Union .
Preparation for the Chorale’s recording has included an
intense 5-year research project into Paliashvili and these settings of ancient
Georgian chant. In the summer of 2012,
the Chorale sponsored Fred Binkholder on a tour to Georgia accompanied by other
Chorale members, to visit Georgian monasteries throughout the country under the
guidance of John Graham, one of the leading experts on the preservation and
transcription of Georgian chant during the late Russian Empire. The group visited both Paliashvili’s birth
museum in Kutaisi, and Paliashvili’s house museum in Tbilisi, which houses a
manuscript of Paliashvili’s settings of the Ippolitov-Ivanov transcriptions,
which he wrote in preparation for this piece.
