EVERY GENRE PROJECT - May 18 - Polyphonic Chant
Genre of the Day - Polyphonic Chant
Album of the Day - Le mystère des voix bulgares by Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares (1975)
May 18, 2024
Every musical genre at its core begs a simple question. What if one instrument, rhythm, or type of melody was emphasized more? What if we sang in this language about these topics? Today’s genre might ask one of the most plain questions on the surface—What if two different melodies sang against one another? Nonetheless, the musical effort at hand at creating these compositions is simultaneously quite complex. Today, we celebrate the mystique of polyphonic chanting.
No, these tunes are not the anthems of people in polycules—although with all the music coming out of Portland these days, I’m sure that’ll soon be a genre of its own. (Sorry to all my Portlandia people. Being the poster child of the renewed polyamory craze and psilocybin is a lot to bear indeed. I’ll take a swipe at a different city next.) Polyphonic chanting, based on its relatively straightforward musical premise, arose organically in many societies from Sub-Saharan Africa to Europe and Oceania in ancient times. Polyphonic singing has been an important musical facet of the Ainu cultures of northern Japan, Tonga and Tahiti, all throughout Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, the Pygmy cultures of Central Africa, the Q’ero tribe of highland Peru, and several other pockets across the world.
It’s ‘poly’ in comparison to monophonic singing, which is—you guessed it—one person singing one melody, or homophonic singing—multiple voices singing the same melody. The oldest written notation of polyphonic chanting, which originated the strain we’ll be examining today, came about in Europe in the 900s CE as most other music in Europe at the time did: as a result of religious compositions.
Monophonic singing characterized the vocal style of well-known traditions like Gregorian chants. However, knowledge of and fascination with polyphonic singing among choral arrangers gradually disseminated throughout Europe. In Bulgaria, that musical movement came in swinging in the 1800s as musical scholars and composers who’d studied abroad in the musical centers of Russia brought this newfangled sound back to their local churches. The sound of composed polyphonic singing was revolutionary in the country, though there were some pockets with folk polyphony. Within a decade, polyphonic compositions came to displace monophonic singing in churches and schools and become a sort of national identification, the sound of a people emerging after agitation against the ruling Ottomans successfully translated into independent principality status in 1878.
In a strange stroke of coincidence, our genre two days ago also painted a portrait of how emerging cultural globalism in the ‘80s led to a particular fascination with niche, foreign genres. Madonna pops up again as a fan of Bulgarian polyphonic singing of all things, although George Harrison was its biggest proponent. Their treasured album in this case was by ideal genre representatives, the state-approved and unceremoniously-titled Bulgarian State Television Female Choir. Polyphonic singing endured the tornado-like political shifts in the Bulgarian national landscape from the end of Ottoman rule to later-stage communism as in today’s 1975 set.
Composed of several female vocalists handpicked from around the country for their stunning clarity of voices, the album features folk arrangements by a small legion of Bulgarian composers who built a veritable vocal wall of sound for these voices snaking with and around each other. “Kalimankou Denkou (The Evening Gathering)” oscillates from gentle, billowing vocals to a frenzy as a soloist melismatically cries to the evening stars. “Bre Yvance (Dancing Song)” manages to squeeze unusual, winding violin breakdowns with commanding, quick chants in just a minute and a half. Melodies and mood shift at breakneck speed in “Erghan Diado (Song of Schopsko)” with a clamor of shouts bookending a three minute odyssey. Not much instrumental accompaniment is needed for singing that already features multiple melodic lines and such richness, but when it appears, it’s often subtle and faintly-sketched, with flute, deep strings, and even a mandolin popping in as nothing more than side characters here and there. It’s one of the most unique pieces of music I’ve ever heard; above all, it asserts the beauty of singing with a mode that embraces an abundance of its possibilities. For the simply arresting harmonies at the midpoint of “Sableyalo mi Agontze (The Bleating Lamb)”, it’s a journey worth treading.