Polyphony, Heritage and Sustainability

This paper is framed by current trends and issues relating to heritage conservation and music revivals. I share insights arising from my own research into Georgian polyphony and my preliminary thoughts about how the developments and debates I have witnessed relate to broader concerns. Questions examined by my co-authors and I in The Oxford Handbook of Music Revival (2014) include: how the process of reviving a tradition leads to transformations, how tensions arise between preservation and innovation, and how authenticity is invoked and manipulated. In reflecting on such matters, I consider how and why the Georgian situation differs from the new directions taken by traditional polyphony in Corsica. I also discuss the implications of Titon’s proposal (in a special issue of the journal The World of Music on Music and Sustainability) that safeguarding efforts ‘should be guided by principles drawn from ecology, not economy’.