The Transcription and Transmission of Georgian Liturgical Chant

John A. Graham is a musicologist specializing in Georgian sacred music, and this is his 2015 Princeton University doctoral dissertation, described by its reading committee as the first extensive English-language study of the polyphonic chant traditions of the Republic of Georgia, investigating the nineteenth century transcription campaign that used European musical notation to help preserve an oral tradition in crisis. Its strength is that Graham combines rigorous academic musicological training with direct, sustained immersion in Georgian musical practice, language and culture, a combination the reading committee itself noted as unusual. Its limit is that as a doctoral dissertation on a specialist topic it is aimed at readers with some background in liturgical musicology, so a general reader needs a more introductory source alongside it.