(A VIEW ON EUROPEAN POLYPHONY)

The question of the interrelation between monophony and polyphony exceeds the bounds of the problems of one musical culture and is of universal character. The discussion presented in the paper is targeted at 1) bringing forward the general philosophical and cultural-historical aspects of monopho-ny and polyphony, especially in their west European manifestation and 2) along with that our goal is to single out some questions in Georgian sacred music associated with the former. Within the limits of one paper it is impossible to give an exhaustive analysis of the above prob-lem, therefore the contentions suggested in this report may be used as subjects for further discussion. The thing is that west European polyphony is a musical projection of man’s individuality of a definite type. Polyphony, as such, is based on the simultaneous sounding of several different voices, which quite obviously is not an achievement of only European culture. In its wide meaning it is at-tested in many countries, ancient civilizations among them, and its new European variant is one of the possible manifestations of this principle of music and world outlook. But west European polyphony is such a prominent and powerful phenomenon that we musicologists are right in speaking of the specific features which differentiate the musical “West ” from the “East”. Whatever might have been the hypotheses about the provenance of European polyphony an