Multipart Music

Multipart singing is a common phenomena spread all over the Mediterranean countries. However, Mallorca and Balearic islands, Catalan-speaking country and a cross-road between Sardinia, Corsica, Catalonia, and Occitan-speaking regions of south of France, (all of them places where polyphonic chants have been widely described) appeared to be an strange black hole in this issue until now. For the first time, through this presentation, we show perhaps the last example of Mallorca's multipart singing, in the small village of Sant Joan, where a traditional Latin mass is still performed in Easter Sunday.

In several regions of Southern Italy there is still a rural tradition to recite the Passion in the local dialects. They are Balkan dialects which are mixed with the local Italian dialect, but its ritual recitation is usually called kalimera (“Good morning" in Greek). The present study compares five communities which perform the kalimera in a more or less liturgical context of the Holy Week: Spezzano albanese (Spixana), Acquaformosa (Firmoza), Lungro (Ungra), Firmo (Ferma), San Basile (Shën Vasili), Frascineto (Frasnita), and Civita (Çifti). The five communities use a corpus of texts which often follow a literary prototype created by Jul Variboba during the 18th century. Each village uses different melodies or strophic models usually a monophonic recitation by female singers, San Basile's recitation is even performed as a multipart song alternating between male and female singers.

Unfortunately, the Italoalbanian dialect called Arbëresh, registered as world heritage at the UN, is since 2007 on the red list of seriously endangered languages (like Italo-Greek dialects before), despite the fact that the number of active speakers is still is considerably higher. We do not know, if these traditions will be continued during the next decades, so we hope that our recordings might help for a later revival of a lost tradition. Concerning the texts, it seems that all of them are taken from Variboba, although some of them are Calabrian and Italian texts, but we would like to point out how the literary poems have been transformed and adapted to the local tradition. Concerning the melodic models, we would like to describe, what they have in common and what is unique for the tradition of one community.

В няколко региона на Южна Италия намираме традиция на епична рецитация на Пасиони (Страстите), изпълнявана на местни диалекти. Обикновено това са балкански диалекти, които се смесват с локалния италиански, но нейната ритуална рецитация обикновено се нарича калимера (kalimera), защото тя се пее през нощта или рано сутрин между Лазаровден и Цветница и включва официално приветствие към присъстващите. Има дори калимера на италиански диалекти, там където вече са загубени езиковите знания на така наречените малцинствени езици. Ние бихме искали да представим сравнително изследване на пет общини, които изпълняват калимера в повече или по-малко литургичен контекст по време на Страстната седмица: Акуаформоза (Фирмоза), Лунгро (Унгра), Фирмо (Ферма), Сан Базиле (Шън Васили), и Фрашинето (Фраснита). Петте общности използват повече или по-малко същите текстове, които са създадени от един свещеник на име Джул Варибоба през XVIII век, но всяко село използва различни мелодии или строфични модели. Рецитацията в Сан Базиле дори се осъществява като многогласно пеене между мъжки и женски певци, докато едногласната рецитация на другите села се извършва в различна степен неофициално от певици.

За съжаление, италианско-албанският диалект наречен "Arbëresh", регистриран като световно наследство в рамките на ООН, от 2007 е в червения списък на сериозно застрашените езици (като италианско-гръцките диалекти), въпреки факта, че броят на активните говорещите този диалект все още е значително висок. Ние не знаем, дали тези традиции ще бъдат продължени през следващите десетилетия, така че се надяваме нашите записи да могат да помогнат при по-късно възраждане на изгубена традиция. По отношение на текстовете, изглежда, че всичките са взети от Варибоба, въпреки че някои от тях са калабрийски и италиански текстове, но бихме искали да посочим как литературните стихове са трансформирани и адаптирани към местната традиция. Що се отнася до мелодичните модели, бихме искали да опишем това, което е общото между тях и това, което е уникално за традицията на една общност.

Remark: Unfortunately, the published version available under the link:
https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=542930
has graphics in deficient quality. Therefore we cannot authorise the published version!

Since Innocenzo De Gaudio's famous morphological study of Arbëresh polyphony (1993, the author called it "vjersh") ethnomusicologists have recognised a particular form of primitive polyphony as an unique part of the cultural heritage in Calabria.
The first audio recordings of this field have been done by anthropologists like Diego Carpitella. Other recordings had been made during the 1950s by Giuseppe Gangale and Eric Hamp. In the following decades, the material has been enriched by more recent fieldwork until today, not only by priests, but also by anthropologists and ethnomusicologists, who have grown up in these communities and who decided to correct and improve the earlier and current fieldwork of interested strangers.
The more or less improvised forms of polyphony have not been analysed according to the methodology, as Ignazio Macchiarella has developed it for this study group. I would like to use these occasion for 2 purposes:
(1) to discuss two local traditions which have not been studied thoroughly so far;
(2) to improve and to refine our understanding of the subject "multipart music," which brought us here together, also in a vocal sense which includes not only a multipart way of singing, but also a multipart way of singing several songs "together," which is not based on the concept of singing together, but apart.
As genre of canto popolare, both processions, Maundy Thursday at San Basile and Good Friday at San Benedetto Ullano, are more or less derived from the "Kalimera," the Passion told in the local Arbëresh or Griko dialect, which had been done during the night from Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday in Italian "Orthodox" communities, usually by singers reciting a popular version on the street.

Since the earliest recordings made by the linguists Giuseppe Gangale and Eric Hamp during the early 1950s, Arbëresh communities have been recognised by ethnomusicologists for a very particular form of improvised multipart singing, usually two-part, sometimes three-part songs which were perceived as a particular Balkan polyphony distinct from other ethnic minorities in Italy.

During the last decades within a complex process of oral transmission, often modulated by interactions of written transmission which was usually reduced to the text, a rather spontaneous way of improvisation became frozen, also under influence of field recordings which the singers either did themselves or by listening to officially published recordings, like the republication of Diego Carpitella’s recordings made of multipart songs of the Parco nazionale Pollino between Lucania and Calabria in 1954. The study is concerned about changing multipart competences as they have been documented between the 1950s and today.