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The Legacy Giya Kancheli Djansug Kakhidze Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra Symphonies 3/4/5 SYMPHONY NO.3 orous song outside. It is this combination of the wailing inside and the men‘s song out front that made that recording so unique. The ‚Third Symphony‘ (1973) represents Even though the recording was not very the first pinnacle of Kancheli‘s oeuvre. The good, it sounded like some outlandish mys- ‚Third‘ starts with a chant and returns to a tery rite.“, Kancheli remembers. chant, ‚according to its circuits‘. Chants per- The folk ritual inspired the core con- colate through it like rays of sun. According cept of this symphonic mystery celebrat- to a legend, pure souls can climb a sunray ing music, a contrapuntal unity of primal up to heaven. In this work, the chant is the entities. Petrifying sorrow and the majestic sole measure of all values and truths, it is language of the ritual. The smooth curve earth, water, firmament and spirit. In coun- of a solitary incantation, and firm clusters terpoint to the chant - ‚pure melody‘ - an- of chiseled brass chords. And yet another other, equally important element appears sound is there, a sound that cannot be, the - ‚pure rhythm‘. Born out of melody, it re- sound of several hundred fingers meander- bels against it until it is suffused with mel- ing along the necks of the strings, Ilke the ody again. Both these elements spring forth disembodied passage of time, or parched from a folk prototype or image-impulse: lumps of soil being tossed, handful after „Once I heard a rare recording of a funer- mournful handful, upon the lid of a coffin. al lament mode by some folklore students in The transcendent being of rhythm is like a Svanetia. The mourners were sitting around skewer impaling a string of image-entities a coffin, wailing. One of the mour ners was steeped in space and time. leading; the others were picking up, but a Scored in parallel from the start, the two little differently, slightly off key. Then she ‚planes‘ actively intertwine. The essence started again a little higher, sometimes fall- and meaning of this contrapuntal unity is ing just short of a full tone or a semitone. revealed in the initial motif, the epigraph. It was as if the chorus singers made her It is a very fortunate creative discovery. change the tune a little. At the same time, A folk prototype inspired the composer to a men‘s choir was singing a bumptious, vig- draw on Svanetian folk songs, but all he used from the folk recording were the in- from the multifarious integrity of Georgian itial five sounds of the funeral wail ‚zari‘, folk music, permeated as it is with the spirit a section of a descending scale. A similar of paganism which is still very much alive particle of solid tonal rock could have been in the mountains of Georgia. In Kanche- chipped successfully off of any other histor- li‘s ‚Third‘, the master‘s trademark buoyant ical or ethnic music style. The three subse- stroke, riotous colors and stark contours quent vocal phrases of the epigraph are just give way to omission points, the period, the as universally relevant. They enter and dwell exclamation mark, the dotted line, and the inside the nascent melodic outline. Their occasional dab of color against a conspic- intonation could have come from Georgian uously vacuous background. Everything folklore, Gregorian Chorales, a Baroque se- seems simple enough: the church gate is quence, and so on. What is it that imbues wide open; you can enter, look around, them with ‚Georgianness‘? Is it the pious- touch things ... Thanks to this labor of love, ness of, not quite ‚an allusion,‘ but rather the inestimable gift of the forefathers be- a sacred votive offering lovingly proffered comes more than mere ‚legacy‘. It becomes skyward? a part of our own world, our absolute pres- The voice of a folk singer instantaneously ent, the „here and now through which the strikes Kancheli‘s ‚Third‘ off the long list of future immerses itself into the past“ (James symphonies featuring vocal parts, placing Joyce). it in an entirely new aesthetic dimension. In Kancheli‘s music, like in Galaktion The loving contemplation of every sound, Tabidze‘s poetry, the moments of silence the savoring of its overtone spectrum, the are almost invariably impregnated with a perception of a sound as a slowly swelling, thunderstorm lying entreasured in the dew- then languidly descending drop of water are drops, while the deafening roar of a storm all typical for the Georgian folk song, which is fraught with the melody of unperturbed prizes the very texture of sound. silence. The ‚Third Symphony‘ is perfectly up-to- „Begotten by the past, the present begets date, yet it emanates some kind of archaic the future.“ This aphorism authored by the austerity that extrapolates Svanetian chants German philosopher Leibniz was used by 4 the poet Itya Chavchavadze as an epigraph for his poem ‚To a Georgian Mother‘. Every Georgian knows it by heart. The very hu- man need to look back on the past to find that shaft of light which binds the present with the future has found a truly traditional and, at the same time, a genuinely modern expression in Kancheli‘s ‚Third‘. Following this music through its circles of purgatory, we feel like actual participants, not merely spectators, of the mysterious rite played out since the very creation. We feel like a link in that rite whose withdrawal or spiritual inaction may plunge the world into a ca- tastrophe. While music sounds, there‘s always hope, wrote Giya Kancheli in his article on the Georgian composer Sulkhan Nasidze (1927 - 1996). 5 SYMPHONIES NO.4 & NO.5 Incidentally, in the ‚Fourth Symphony‘ it is not worth looking for a direct reflection The ‚Fourth Symphony‘ was completed in of Michelangelo‘s biography, his work, or 1975 and dedicated to the „memory of Mi- the inimitable colouring of Italy during the chelangelo“. This was Kanchelfs fiist experi- epoch of the Renaissance. Over a program, ence with working to order. More-over he which is easily translatable into the language was included in the „posse“ of composers, of concrete understanding, Kancheli prefers to whom the Culture Ministry of the USSR images which are encapsulating, multifacet- proposed writing a work an the 500th anni- ed, and which are capable of transforming versary of the great Italian‘s birthday (anoth- into their exact opposite. In the symphony er in that „posse“, by the way, was Shostak- to the memory of Michelangelo, there is un- ovich, whose music the Georgian composer doubtedly a sense of eternity, but likewise idolized). And Kancheli attested to a growing there is an indisputable sensual fullness of acknowledgement, regardless of the fierce immediate worry: the smile of the morning discussions surrounding every new sym- dew, the blinding sheen of the sun at its ze- phony. The ‚Fourth‘ turned out to be the first nith, the silence rolling deafly in the lapses. work which brought unconditional success, Here it is easy to catch the faint sound of the both at home (winning the State Prize in irresistible Italian Bel Canto (and even the 1976) and abroad. It was precisely because morning ‚prelude of bells‘ from the third act of the impression of this work‘s famous for- of ‚Tosca‘), but the intonations are no less eign premieres that the New York publishing distinctly Georgian. And the ‚common de- house Schirmer ordered the ‚Fifth‘; and the nominator‘ justifying the coupling of oppo- German conductor Kurt Masur (back then sites turns out to be the ruminations about the director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra the artist‘s fate, about the titan who was Leipzig) the ‚Sixth‘. Later the composer ad- granted almost unlimited power over mat- mitted that he probably would not have ter, from which he created out of pure will taken to work if at that time he had seen the a hundred new worlds, grains of sand in the original frescoes of the Sixtine Chapel („I flood of inexorable time, those fragile shells wouldn‘t have lifted a finger‘). burned up by a proud Spirit. In its own 6 way, Kancheli‘s ‚Fourth‘ continues the idea crest of the culmination the hitherto silent of Beethoven‘s ‚Fifth‘. Thankfully that un- orchestra starts up, proclaiming a single invited guest - Fate - does not break down solitary C. the door, forcing you to seize it around the The source and goal of motion is found throat, but rather is chosen consciously: in Georgian traditional multi-voice unison. Fate is the cross and the wreath. All imag- From it is born a highly complex entwining es of the work are born from a common of lines and acerbic chords; the voices at the source. Having played their role given them end of the choral section tighten in agree- in the human tragedy, they return to their ment with it; its ardency supports the male own circles. choir‘s ‚chain of breath‘, bringing to reason The common source is the distant (from the powerful basis for the soloists gliding the stage) ringing of a church bell. It is in the heavens. In his ‚Fourth Symphony‘ sound without predetermined pitch, but Kancheli brings unison up to the rank of a whose rich overtone spectrum affects the leitmotif and gives it an aptitude for met- almost untouchable border between music amorphosis. This powerful blow, shifting and silence. The first epigraph-theme comes the action from prehistoric mythical times from the wings. It is performed by two sec- to the linear time of tragedy, turns into a ond violins, which sound like some kind of prolonged stop: the unison wanes, like any relic of a traditional national instrument.

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