England
To feel the enjoyment of the informal group singing of the English, one needs to go to one of the famous “singing pubs” of England. “Traditional singing in harmony has been recorded extensively” (Gammon, 2000:327). Unfortunately, the singing styles that have been documented during the last 100 years bear obvious traces of the influence of European professional polyphony. Fortunately, historical sources provide very important information about the wide distribution of the tradition of polyphonic singing in medieval England and other countries of the British Isles. One of the earliest and certainly the most important information about polyphony in England (and in fact, in northern Europe) comes from Giraldus Cambrensis from around 1180-1200. He described in detail the part-singing traditions in northern England and Wales. Cambrensis believed the British islanders learned the part-singing tradition from the Danes and Norwegians. After this interesting bit of information (as there is no live tradition of vocal polyphony in contemporary Norway and Denmark) there is very little information before the 18th century.
Before going further let us listen to Cambrensis himself, as citing his famous passage became a common place in the books on music history, and would be shame not to have it in a book wholly dedicated to the vocal polyphony. Readers, who have read this passage many times, can omit it, but those who will be reading it for the first time, I would suggest to remember that we are listening to a highly educated thinker who is talking about the musical life in Wales and England at the end of the 12th century:
“As to their musical euphony, they do not sing uniformly as this is done elsewhere, but diversely with many rhythm and tunes, so that in a crowd of singers, such as is the custom among these people, you will hear as many different songs and differentiations of the voices as you see heads, and hear the organic melody coming together in one consonance with the smooth sweetness of B-flat.
“Moreover, in the northern part of Great Britain, that is across the Humber and on the border of Yorkshire, the English people who inhabit those parts employ the same kind of symphonious harmony in singing, but in only two parts: one murmuring below and the other in a like manner softly and pleasantly above. Both nations have acquired this peculiarity not by art by long usage, which has made it, as it were, natural. Moreover, it prevails in both countries and is now so deeply rooted there that nothing musical is performed simply, but only diversely among the former people and in two parts among the latter. And what is more remarkable, children scarcely beyond infancy, when their wails have barely turned into songs observe the same musical performance.

Information on polyphony in Sweden is mostly connected to polyphony in church music: “Some extant liturgical books used in Swedish religious institutions from 1300 to 1400 and containing music notations give evidence for polyphonic singing at the cathedral of Uppsala in 1298. King Gustav Vasa (reigned 1523 – 1560) eliminated papal control of Christianity in Sweden and introduced the Protestant faith. The reformation resulted in many handwritten hymnbooks that reflected local traditions; in 1697, the first official collection of hymns was published”. According to Ling, the tradition of folk choral singing (both in unison and polyphony) is still alive in Sweden. From the 1800s choral singing became widely popular and many major choral societies were established throughout Sweden. During this period “choral and solo vocal music dominated the local production and reception of music”.

Finding a live tradition of polyphonic singing in Iceland was one of the highlights of the study of European polyphony – both professional and folk. A live tradition of polyphony in Iceland was particularly important for musicologists studying medieval European polyphony, because of its clear connections to the earliest types of organum [Organum was the first type of European professional polyphony, that appeared at the end of the 9th – beginning of the 10th centuries]. Angel Hammerich published a pioneering article about the Icelandic two-part singing tradition twisongur, then Biarni Forstain published 42 examples of twisongur, and finally John Laif recorded on phonograph the examples of twisongur. Phonograph recordings proved the correctness of the transcriptions made by Forstain. The term twisongur literally means “two-singing”, and it is a traditional technique of the two-part performance of secular and sacred melodies. Hornbostel’s description of twisongur as “fifths organum with crossing parts” is quite accurate. Most of the time the parts move in parallel fifths in twisongur style, and at certain moment the parts shift places (the top part goes lower and the low part goes higher that the top part). Therefore the second part usually finishes with the note that the first part started at the beginning of the song. The leading genre of Icelandic traditional music, Rimur (epic songs), was also performed in twisongur style. Here are two typical examples of the earlier type of twisongur:
The tempo was usually very slow, and the sound of “empty” parallel fifths is very specific. Interestingly, in late medieval Europe parallel fifths were considered the biggest compositional mistake that a composer could make in composing polyphonic music. By the way, parallel fifths were considered a very serious mistake not only by Medieval European music theorists. I remember myself doing very much feared harmony tests at Tbilisi State Conservatory in the mid 1970s, and parallel fifths were still the most feared mistake for the students.

Another Baltic country, Latvia, could be considered the most polyphonic among the Baltic States. Although Latvian polyphonic traditions are not as internationally known and as dazzlingly unique as the Lithuanian canonic polytonal sutartines style, and although there is no such variety of polyphonic styles as in Lithuania, the Latvian tradition of polyphonic singing covers most of the ethnic territory of the Latvian state. The only region where no polyphonic recordings have been made is the Northeast part of the country. In the western part of Latvia the tradition of polyphonic singing is still well alive (as in the regions of Nica, Barta, Alsunga).
Interestingly, virtually the only type of polyphony recorded in the territory of Latvia (according to the works of Latvian ethnomusicologists) is drone polyphony. Written sources mention the tradition of drone polyphony in Latvia from the 16th and 17th centuries. The drone is mostly pedal, but there are instances of the rhythmic drone as well. There are different terms for the drone performer in Latvia: vilceja (“the one who drags”), duceja (“the one who gives a low, continuous droning sound”) and ruceja (“a grumbler, the one who murmurs”). The drone changes its pitch and moves always a major second up. The main melody is always sung by a solo performer, and the range of the main melody is very small (usually a third). The drone is always performed by a group of singers. Rhythmically Latvian drone polyphony is based on a simple duple metre (2/4). Two-part singing dominates:

Lithuania is the biggest out of all three Baltic countries and historically held a leading role in medieval Eastern Europe. Another interesting historical fact is that Lithuania was the last country in Europe to officially adopt Christianity in the 14th century.
Lithuania is particularly well known as a homeland of the unique polyphonic singing style known as sutartines. Although the term sutartines means “agreement”, or “cohesion”, sutartines is well known as the “kingdom of the dissonances”. To be more precise, we need to know that there are a few different styles of sutartines, based on different principles of polyphony (such as unison-heterophonic, canonic and drone types of sutartines). Among all these types of sutartines the most well-known and truly unique type is the so-called “secondal sutartines”. The most important feature of secondal sutartines is the abundance of secondal dissonances. More precisely, in this type of sutartines seconds sound almost constantly:
The technical means to achieve constant singing in seconds is very interesting. Singing in parallel seconds is always challenging for singers. So if you try to sing two parallel melodies with the distance of a major second between the parts all the time, you will soon find out how difficult this is to do.

Albanian polyphony was very late to come to the attention of European scholars. It was only during the 1950s that Ramadan Sokoli brought southern Albanian part-singing tradition to the attention of scholars. Soon scholars from the then- East Germany, with the help of Ramadan Sokoli, recorded and then published one of the best collections of post-war Europe (Stockmann et al., 1965). Soon it became clear that Albanian polyphony is one of the richest in the Balkans.
Albania is traditionally divided (by the river Shkumbin) into two roughly equal parts – North Albania and South Albania (called respectively Gegs and Tosks). Polyphony is found in both regions, although the distribution is unequal. In northern Albania polyphony is relatively rare, and is mostly found in the western part of northern Albania, among the high mountains. This region is known for the survival of older singing styles, with narrow-range melodies and strained styles of singing, common to most of the singing styles of the central Balkans (Sugarman, 2000:994). The population of this region is known as Malisori. Characterizing northern Albanian music and particularly polyphony, Jane Sugarman wrote: “Though most older styles of women’s singing are monophonic, women in Southwestern Kosova and western Macedonia also sing two-voiced polyphony. Against a narrow-ranged melody sung by a soloist, one or more women sing a lower vocal line that sometimes duplicates pitches of the melody and sometimes strikes a pitch a second or third below it. Men in the same districts in Kosova sing only in unison, but in western Macedonia men have their own polyphonic styles of singing, consisting of a melodic line sung against a drone” (Sugarman, 2000: 995).

Speaking about Macedonian music we should remember that the ethnic Macedonian territory is divided between several Balkan countries, and only Macedonians living in Yugoslavia have political unity (first within the Yugoslavian Federation and from 1991 as a fully independent country). As the singing traditions of ethnic Macedonians seem to be one of the most polyphonic in the Balkan region, we have already discussed the polyphonic traditions of Macedonians living in Romania and Bulgaria. According to T. Bicevski, different types of polyphony exist in Macedonian traditional songs. The most prominent is the Balkan traditional singing drone-type vocal polyphony (both pedal and rhythmic) with dissonant intervals. When the main melody has several (and often ornamented) pitches, the drone polyphony seems to be “in between” the pedal and rhythmic drone types. The drone can be on one pitch only, or can change (usually by a major second up, although it can move a third and a fourth as well).

These movements of the bass often cause the appearance of more seconds. Heterophony is another type of polyphony among Macedonians. According to Tim Rice: “polyphonic singing occurs in three zones. Female singers in the east employ a two-part melody-and-drone style similar to eastern Serbian and Southwestern Bulgarian styles… Male and female singers in the Northwest sing an accompanying part that moves in relation to the melody to emphasize the interval of a second. Macedonians from the areas around the town of Kostur (in Greek, Kastoria) near the Greek-Albanian border sing in two- and three-part styles resembling southern Albanian singing”. The melody range of polyphonic songs is narrow. Part of the polyphonic songs are non-metrical, and the other part (particularly those that accompany dances) has a precise metre. Together with the symmetrical simple metres (like 2/4) there are some of the well-known Balkan asymmetrical “limping” metres as well (like 7/8). The tradition of contemporary polyphony, based on the use of parallel thirds, is popular throughout Macedonia. On the other hand, major part of the tradition of the old drone singing with dissonant seconds disappeared between the 1950s and the 1980s. State politics, declaring the old traditions and traditional singing style old-fashioned and backward in the 1950s, played an important role in this process.

Polyphonic singing is an important feature of this country, which consists mainly of forest-covered mountains. A few regional styles are distinguished in Slovenia. As in most of the other Balkan people’s musical traditions, older and more contemporary styles of traditional polyphony are present here as well. The tradition of contemporary polyphonic singing is spread wider than the tradition of the older style. The reg rt singing with a drone. Tharing and is being replaced l of a second, with some thirds and fourths and unison cadences”. This style is an interesting combination of the earlier singing style (singing in seconds) combined with the later polyphonic style (singing in thirds and the cadences in fifths or unisons).

Most of the polyphonic songs are performed in two groups, as an antiphon, sometimes with an interesting overlapping of both groups in different harmonies as in the following example: Contemporary style polyphony is based on the European classical musical language and traditional European four-part arrangements. This style is taking over the older style of drone polyphony. According to Omerzel-Terlep there are several styles of contemporary polyphonic styles in Slovenia, ranging from two-part singing up to five-part singing. The most popular style of contemporary polyphony among young people is three-part singing with the main melody in the middle.

Older style polyphony (Czekanowska, 1983:148, #77) he reason for this long survival is well known for countries communities retaineda d on the local traditions of polyphony with narrow-interval scales. Ex. The tradition of a specific “shaking” (throat thrill) style is characteristic, for example, for the district of Sinj: “the initial singer ‘drives’ (goni) the opening syllabic recitation and ‘sing voj’ (voika – “holds a long note”), while the second voice ‘shakes’ (trese – ‘performs a glottal ornament’)” (Bezic, 1967-1968, cited from Forry, 2000:926). Another Croatian polyphonic style, widely distributed in other areas of the Balkans, is a more contemporary singing style “na bas”. In this style (which is believed to had been introduced to Croatia from Slovenia) the melody range is wider (often a sixth), the accompanying part often moves in parallel thirds with the main melody, and in the cadences goes a fourth down in a final sound of the fifths. Another element of polyphonic music in this region is the abundance of polyphonic aerophones (double flutes and ree ds). The music played on them is closely connected to the vocal singing style. Another interesting region is the Istrian Peninsula and a few islands (including the island K rk).