Varduhi Abrahamyan / Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco / Gianluca Capuano RHAPSODY

 

RHAPSODY

 

Latvian Radio Choir / Sigvards Klava KOMITAS Divine Liturgy

DIVINE LITURGY

Varduhi Yeritsyan & Friends LETTERS FROM ARMENIA

A composer’s mother tongue is the first music he hears; it therefore determines the “genetic inheritance” of the musician’s sound world.  The link between a country’s music and its language seems, therefore, evident to me.  There is a clear relationship between the lyricism of Verdi’s music and the melodious character of Italian.  And does the acute sense of structure inherent to the Austro-German music of Beethoven, or Schoenberg, not reflect the language spoken by these two composers?  It is just as incontestable that Debussy’s chiaroscurist art is fundamentally linked to the ever-nuanced, veiled nature of the French language.

Armenian music is no exception to this rule.  It is as singular a construct as is Armenian, an orphaned Indo-European language born at the borders of Orient and Occident.  Like the national language, it is a synthesising language that unites opposing sources, Eastern and Western, folk and art.  If the melodic and even harmonic archetypes of Armenian music give a leading role to the augmented intervals and untempered scales characteristic of the Orient, the great Armenian musicians’ compositional art is thoroughly anchored in Occidental technique and know-how.

The founding father of Armenian art music was Komitas Vardapet.  Like Bartók, he was a great collector of folk melodies, which he first faithfully transcribed as he heard them, then arranged, harmonised and complexified them.  The folk song arrangements played on this recording, either by a solo piano or by small chamber groups, are therefore already at one step’s distance from the original folk model, which would be sung a cappella.  Several decades later, the other great figure of Armenian music, Aram Khachaturian, would use these folk-derived elements and add to them that great orchestral mastery so characteristic of many Soviet-trained composers.

Most of the folk songs set down by Komitas have touchingly simple texts that express nostalgia, or even melancholy.  Though humour and derision are important elements of Armenian culture, the ordeals the Armenian people have endured over the course of their lengthy history ensure that the expression of grief is a constant feature.

This recording is released in the centenary year of the 1915 genocide.  As this tragedy has never been recognised by those who perpetrated it, the Armenian people has never been able to engage in the necessary collective grieving process that must follow such a calamity.  On the contrary, the wait for an admission of responsibility from Armenia’s neighbor does nothing but revive national anger against an unacceptable case of historical revisionism.  But even in the darkest moments of its history, Armenia has always produced musicians and music.  The Armenians’ legendary optimism is an effective form of struggle against obscurantism.

The pieces in this recital may be animated, contemplative, tender, or solemn, but they are very rarely gloomy or woeful.  A sort of trust in the future characterises the “Armenian spirit”.  Music is synonymous with hope, it is a way of fighting against annihilation, a tool of resistance. As I contemplate my ancestors who vanished a century ago, I would like this recording to bear witness to the faith in justice that has never fled my native land.

Sergey & Lusine Khachatryan MY ARMENIA Dedicated to te 100th Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide

Like for every nation, the space in which the musical Armenian culture developed corresponds to the nation’s development itself. According to some scientists, Armenians’ attested origins are dated from the second millenary B.C. The history of musical Armenian culture can be divided in two big categories: traditional and artistic music. Until the middle of the 19th century, traditional Armenian music used to be monodic in its whole. This monadic Armenian music can also be divided in three other categories: popular traditional music, traditional professional music, known as the Gusans’ or Aschughens’ art (Armenian equivalent for troubadours), and at last the artistic professional Middle Ages music, spiritual music or religious vocal art in Armenia. In the middle of the 19th century appear the first musical artistic works from Armenian composers. In the second half of this century, bases and specificities of the artistic Armenian music start to become important, freed from the European influence and reinforced through Armenia’s wish to be independent. These problems touching the Armenian culture have been resolved by Komitas Vardapet, who made traditional and religious Armenian music the frame of the artistic Armenian music. Komitas Vardapet (1869 – 1935) is therefore considered the founder of the national Armenian composition school.
Komitas Vardapet (his religious name; his civil name was Soghomon Soghomonian) was a composer, musician, ethnologist, music specialist, pedagogue, choir leader, singer and poet. He was formed at the Georgian seminary of Edchmiatzin (the siege of the Armenian Church). He then studied from 1896 to 1900 in Berlin in the Richard Schneider conservatory and at the imperial Friedrich Wilhelm University (now Humboldt University). He is one of the founders of the Berlin branch of the Internationale musicology society. In Berlin, Paris, or Vienna, he played several times for concerts and scientific conferences. In 1915 starts the Armenian genocide and Komitas Vardapet is deported with a group of intellectual Armenians from Istanbul to the Syrian Desert. Through the intervention of foreign artists and intellectuals he escapes deportation; but right after, abominations he saw during the deportation and he felt with his whole body, started a very hard crisis for him. He dies in 1935 in Paris. (naïve)