The Intercultural Institute of Comparative Music Studies has dedicated the “in viva voce” cycle, now in its ninth edition, to a very special seminar: an experiment in contextualising the study of living polyphonic music. In fact the
seminar wishes to bring together experts with various backgrounds (musicologists, historians, and film analysts) with artists and singers to exchange views and explore the role of polyphony’s collective, poetic and moral experience in
the work of a master of contemporary cinema, the Georgian Otar Iosseliani.
Georgia, in fact, and the whole region of the Caucasus have often been considered the legendary cradle of polyphony. What is certain is that Georgian polyphonic music is particularly fluent, exuberant and attractive. It seems to
be singularly effective in inducing and channelling multiple relations, as highlighted by its role in convivial actions. In all Iosseliani’s films group singing – either with separate voices or in unison – is an unfolding creative activity emerging as a leitmotif, linking the artist and the world of his feelings, memories, and homeland.
Polyphony is a kind of necessary trace left by the characters’ interpersonal relations, and is equally necessary in binding together the narrative of the events. The modes and forms which this underground polyphonic process assumes in Iosseliani’s cinema will be described and discussed by: Maurizio Agamennone, Fabrizio Borin, Giovanni
Giuriati, Giovanni Morelli, Rossella Ragazzi, Giorgio Zorcù and the singers in the vocal group Mze Shina.