Original scientific paper
Traditional Funeral Chants of Klis
Mirko Jankov
Abstract
The paper deals with the funeral chants that are still practiced in the funeral services of the parish church of the Assumption in Klis. The emphasis is on the musical pieces making relicts from the traditional church singing practices of Glagolitic origins, whereas other songs, mostly by known authors, are stated to document the present day musical repertoire performed in the funeral mass and while carrying the deceased from the church to the grave. The pre-Council liturgy in Klis - same as in other parishes around Solin - practiced solemn funeral breviary, that was to disappear from live practices a few decades ago. Still, a part of this officium has been preserved in funeral practices, having become part of (a kind of introduction to) the eucharistic service for the diseased.
The singing heritages - both traditional and those by known artists - in Klis have been scientifically researched and studied on several occasions. Having in mind the volume and the quality of the repertoire nurtured here over the last 160 years (probably even more) by the (church) traditional singers, the conclusion occurs that Klis was in a position less favourable than some other, more or less similar, Dalmatian communities that have been ethnomusicologically better studied. Therefore, the basic intention of the paper is to fill the existing gaps opened in the topical matters, that is, scientific treatment of the existing funeral chants - psalms, antiphonies, recitations, sequences for the dead, chants for dead fraternity (or sorority) members and the Canticle of Zachary.
The transcriptions accompanying the paper are aimed to fixate the actual musical materials by notation. The intention of doing this, with all the ambiguities of notation (that, indeed, cannot carry all the parameters of a specific tonal image of traditional singing), was to enable practical, and certainly easier, learning of the chants by younger, that is, new choir members, those who in most cases do not attend (as it used to be the practice) performances made by older singers from their childhood.
In conversations with the traditional church singers (also members of their parish mixed choir) and their conductors becomes evident that, essentially, not much has been changed in the funeral ceremonies of Klis over the last several decades: analysis of a few older audio recordings (made in the mid 1970s) shows that possible changes have taken place in a natural course that - in »ideal circumstances« - continues ad infinitum. While studying the matters defined by the paper title, it is impossible to disregard influences of printed church manuals used over many years. If the Gregorian chants in the Kašić's Ritual »over more than two centuries (…), like very few other books, influenced the musical memory of the Croatian people« (Enio Stipčević), than this title should certainly be added Hrvatski bogoslužbenik (Croatian Liturgical Manual), a manual that, in spite of the latest liturgical reforms and official modifications of the ritual texts, still lives as an active substance of the traditional church singing, that is, as its textual pivot the linguistic material of which suggests the feeling of the melodic line. Its curve, however - from monophony to three or four voice structures - is based equally on modality and tonality. In the analytical language, the funeral chants of Klis are in a large majority of cases non-tempered and with no instrumental accompaniment, whereas by their musical characteristics they can be treated as a sort of »genuine copies« of ancient musical patterns. These patterns, however, origin from two mutually close sources: from the Gregorian thesaurus and from the mouth of the gifted traditional singers who to the objective corral melodies added sonority of parallelisms of the third that - depending on the length of the breath, that is, the sung phrase - move freely above the low voices.
In the case of the funeral chants of Klis, the aggregate of various circumstances constantly influencing them (the tempo and style of living, as well as the appearance and scope of church rituals) are perhaps shown in a particular way. Although retained, some traditional chants, or liturgical musical forms, have been moved from their older (at that time perfectly natural and logic) ritual context, this producing new quantitative and qualitative mutual relations. In other words, there has been created a particular, locally recognisable and specific system, made of three components: the old, the new and the newly interpreted ones, where, conditionally said, a sort of new ritual-musical dialectics has been established.
Keywords
Klis; traditional church singing; Glagolitic singing; funeral chants
Hrčak ID:
127081
URI
Publication date:
8.9.2014.
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