The fourth largest island in the Mediterranean with a population of 250,400 (1990 census), Corsica has suffered successive domination by foreign powers. From the 11th to the 18th century it was governed in turn by Pisa and Genoa. Excluding a brief interlude as the Anglo-Corsican Kingdom (1794–96), the island has belonged to France since 1768. The indigenous language, Corsican, is still spoken but given little official recognition. While external influences might be assumed, the isolation and inaccessibility of the mountainous interior, whose inhabitants have traditionally pursued a pastoral lifestyle, has favoured the preservation of numerous archaisms in musical structure, style, vocal technique and psycho-social dynamics.
19th- and early 20th-century song collections focus almost exclusively on texts, predominantly laments. Extensive collections of field recordings were made by Félix Quilici in 1948, 1949 and 1960–63; Wolfgang Laade in 1956, 1958 and 1973; and Markus Römer in 1974–5. These and other recordings are being reunited at the Phonothèque of the Musée de la Corse, Corte.
Evidence relating to instrumental music or older indigenous dance is meagre. Traditional instruments include the pifana (made from an animal horn), the cialambella (wooden reed instrument), the caramusa (bagpipes), the cetera (a type of cittern) and jew's harp, most of which were gradually displaced by the accordion, fiddle, mandolin and guitar in the 18th and 19th centuries. A variety of idiophones are used during Holy Week. Two dances of relatively ancient origin are attested: the caracollu, a women's funeral dance, and the moresca, depicting the struggle between Moors and Christians. The granitula, a spiral procession, is still performed by the confrèries on Good Friday. The instrumental music collected by Quilici and Laade consists almost exclusively of waltzes, polkas, mazurkas, scottishes and occasional quadrilles.
The oldest strata include: voceri (sing. voceru, laments for the dead extemporised by women); bandits' laments; laments for animals; lullabies; songs of departure; tribbiere (sing. tribbiera, threshing songs); mule-drivers' songs; chjam' è rispondi (‘call and response’, an improvised debate); the currente (song of circumstance, e.g. welcoming guests; this has a distinctive fiddle accompaniment) and the cuntrastu (an exchange between a young man and woman). More recent songs (serenades, satires, election songs with refrains and soldiers' songs) reveal Italian influence. The standard textual format for all indigenous genres is a stanza of three octosyllabic couplets with end rhymes. An exception is the bandit's lament, with eight lines of 5, 7, 5, 7, 8, 8, 8 and 8 syllables, respectively.
The oldest melodies are characterized by a narrow range, untempered intervals, a parlando style of delivery and, for men's songs, a tense voice producing a vibrant timbre suited to singing outdoors. The melody used for men's improvisations (u versu currente, ex.1) is declamatory in style with syllabic treatment of the text. A second melody type (which also forms the basis for the polyphonic paghjella) consists of a long drawn out line where sustained notes alternate with complex microtonal melismatic figures (rivucate). Both of these types are based on a pentachord and movement is largely by step with descending patterns predominating. A third type is bipartite, often using a conjunct pentachord and tetrachord, sometimes with contrasting timbres and tempos.
Part-singing, traditionally the domain of men and found mainly in the north, occurs in contexts of conviviality: gatherings of family and friends, the local bar, sheep-shearing parties (tundera) and the mountain fairs. Sung by three voices (secunda, bassu and terza), the most distinctive features of the paghjella (ex.2) include staggered entry of the voices, untempered intervals with the 3rd being particularly unstable, much use of melisma (which functions as an intrinsic component of the vocal line rather than a secondary ornamental feature) and a tierce de Picardie type ending.
Any textual couplet can be sung as paghjella, of which many villages have their own variant or versu. Within fixed structural parameters, allowance is also made for an element of individual improvisation: a paghjella is not ‘sung’ but ‘made’ (‘fà una paghjella’). The disjunction between musical and textual line is striking, with breaths being taken in the middle of words and words even being split across the main musical caesura. Spontaneity, close communication and a sense of complicity between the members of an équipe are considered vital to a successful performance. Singers form a horseshoe formation (a conca), often resting on one another's shoulders and typically sing with one hand to the ear. The ethereal fourth voice, composed of harmonics, which sometimes appears provides confirmation for the singers that they have achieved both spiritual and musical ‘harmony’.
Related types are the terzetti (whose textual format of 3 lines of nominally 11 syllables resembles that found in classical Tuscan poetry of the 14th century) and madrigale (usually love songs, but bearing no obvious relation to the Italian Renaissance madrigal).
Most villages traditionally had their own orally transmitted settings of the mass, sung by a fixed équipe of men often in three-part polyphony sharing many of the characteristics of the paghjella style. The best-known of those surviving intact are Sermanu and Rusiu: others have recently been revived or reconstructed and are sung for feast days and funerals. The canon also includes liturgical hymns, offices, processional songs and lodi, with a significant body of material relating to the Holy Week rituals of the confrèries. While the origins of this by no means homogeneous repertory remain uncertain, resonances can be found of the techniques of parallel organum and falsobordone.
The process of decline in the practice and status of traditional music during the 20th century was reversed in the 1970s (beginning of the riacquistu) with the advent of the nationalist movement and its ‘cultural militants’, who engaged in the collection of traditional material, re-dissemination via recordings and transmission via urban-based scole di cantu, as well as producing their own political chansons (cantu indiatu). The 1980s saw an increase in artistic activity and academic interest, leading in particular to an inflation in polyphonic production. The association E Voce di u Cumune (with the later collaboration of Annie Goffre) began work on the reconstruction and reinstatement of polyphonic masses in selected villages in the Balagne. Marcel Pérès has explored ways in which surviving polyphonic practices might assist in the interpretation of manuscript sources. While the old polyphonic songs continue to play a vital part in the statement of cultural identity for the many performing groups (predominantly male) now active, new musical idioms have evolved as singers have embraced the role of creative artists within the wider horizons of a world music context and the question of the relationship between tradition and creation has become a crucial one. While some have produced new a cappella pieces inspired by the traditional polyphonic language (e.g. A Filetta, Voce di Corsica, Mighele Raffaelli), others have experimented with cross-cultural fusions, most recently with electronic input (e.g. Les Nouvelles Polyphonies Corses).
CAROLINE BITHELL