The Spirit of Armenia

Recordings since 1979

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G.I.GurdjieffTigran MansurianKomitas Vardapet

Kim Kashkashian Tigran HamasyanLevon EskenianYerevan State Chamber ChoirArmenian Chamber Choir

Anja LechnerVassilis TsabropoulosFrançois CouturierPatricia KopatchinskajaThe Hilliard EnsembleJan GarbarekKeith Jarrett

New Releases

K O M I T A ST H E G U R D J I E F F E N S E M B L EL E V O N E S K E N I A N ECM

T i g r a n H a m a sya n Lu y s i Lu s oYe r evan St ate Ch amb e r Ch o i rH ar u t y un To p ik yan E C M

Music by Komitas

Levon Eskenian director Emmanuel Hovhannisyan duduk, pku, zurna Armen Ayvazyan kamancha Avag Margaryan pogh, zurna Aram Nikoghosyan oud Davit Avagyan tar Mesrop Khalatyan dap, dhol Vladimir Papikyan santur, voice Meri Vardanyan kanon Norayr Gapoyan duduk, bass duduk Eduard Harutyunyan tmbuk, cymbal, kshots, burvar, bell

Release: October 2015ECM 2451 CD 473 2246

Armenian sacred music from the 5th to the 20th centuries arranged for piano and voices by Tigran Hamasyan

Tigran Hamasyan piano, prepared piano Yerevan State Chamber Choir Harutyun Topikyan conductor

Release: September 2015ECM 2447 CD 473 2383

It was at Manfred Eicher’s suggestion that we went on to prepare material for a recording concentrating on Komi-tas – indeed, for two recordings: one devoted to piano music and this one of arrangements for traditional instru-ments. Komitas had been an important reference for Thomas de Hartmann when preparing Gurdjieff’s music for solo piano, and Komitas’ writings and music had influenced our own ap-proach to Gurdjieff. So it was logical to develop the association further, par-ticularly as there is a history of Komi-tas and Gurdjieff related recordings at ECM, beginning with Keith Jarrett’s version of Gurdjieff’s Sacred Hymns and Tigran Mansurian’s approach to Komitas on Hayren.

Music, its forms and rituals, has the power to bring us close to distant civili-zations. Armenia offers a special case: a sacred culture that was preserved at its fullest flowering through the work of one man, the scholar-monk Soghomon Soghomonian (1869-1935), known un-der his religious name as Komitas, to which is sometimes appended the title Vardapet (archimandrite).

Komitas was many things: com-poser, priest, collector and arranger of folk songs, choir-master, singer, rigorous researcher into khaz, the neumatic system developed in Arme-nia between the ninth century and the fifteenth. His musical education took place at the seminary attached to Echmiadzin Cathedral, the Holy See of the Armenian Apostolic Church, and in Berlin, where his teachers included Richard Schmidt, the theorist Heinrich Bellermann, the prominent folklorist Max Friedlander and Oskar Fleischer, a specialist in European medieval mu-sic. Acquainted with western classical music as well as the Armenian tradi-tion, he also had a deep understand-ing of Middle Eastern and more distant Asian musical cultures, which helped him understand and define what was unique to Armenian music.

While living in Armenia he gathered thousands of folk songs, sacred songs and instrumental melodies, to notate which at speed he often used the Ar-menian system, though he also made arrangements for piano, solo voice or chorus in standard western notation. In his compositions he was able to combine Armenian modality with as-pects of the western classical tradition and thereby establish practical models and a theoretical basis for the develop-ment of a specifically Armenian classi-cal music.

This recording indicates the breadth of his achievement and something of his methods. His practice was to select the most interesting variants of tradi-tional melodies and rhythmic patterns while remaining true to the original style and spirit, which partly accounts for the unusual character of his piano writing in solo pieces and accompani-ments.

In an effort to go more deeply into the music and its interpretative poten-tial, as well as to recreate the sounds Komitas encountered, the pieces are here arranged for traditional Armenian instruments, without altering Komi-tas’s structures and details. Some of the instruments date back to antiquity, and it has been necessary to build rep-licas of those no longer in use.

Komitas preserved several dance mel-odies as piano pieces, and included in the manuscripts of his Yot Par (Seven Dances) and Msho shoror instructions for how to imitate the styles of tradi-

tional instruments on the piano. He would constantly revise these dances to make the conventional notation more closely fit what was particular in his source material.

Many of these dances and their music reach back to Armenia’s pagan time, long before the state adoption of Christianity in 301. Komitas wrote that: “The pagans had two major types of dances, sacred and secular, that have kept their original functions to the present day” – though he noted also that “religious traces still survive in folk or secular dances.”

‘Dance’, he further observed, ‘is perhaps one of the most significant manifestations of human existence. It expresses the particular traits of a nation, especially its customs and the level of its civilization. For through its manifold movements dance uncon-sciously exposes the workings of the spirit.’

Levon Eskenian

Further Releases

Luys i Luso (Light from Light) is for me a musical world in which Armenian sacred music tradition, contemporary classical composition and improvisa-tion come together. The repertoire on this album ranges from 5th cen-tury sharakans by Mesrop Mashtots to early 20th century music of Komitas, addressed through diverse composi-tional approaches and arrangements. For me it has been a challenge to ex-plore the mystery of Armenian sacred music and to create polyphonic ar-rangements for melodies by tradition monodic.

The arrangement of “Ankanim Arachi Qo”, the 5th century hymn by Mash-tots, takes a traditional approach: there is the drone, the monodic chant, and the piano creating harmonies around the drone.

In “Ov Zarmanali” the idea was to take a simple A/B form canto by Nerses Shnorhali (12c) and make it into a larger composition, almost like a con-certo for piano and voices, built upon Shnorhali’s melody.

In “Bazum en Qo gtutyunqd”, another “repentance hymn” by Mashtots, the arrangement for voices is polyphonic as opposed to “Ankanim Arachi Qo” where the words are sung as they would be in the liturgy. For the sec-ond part of this piece I have taken the words of the hymn and composed a melody in the same mode as the origi-nal melody, although the piano part revolves around a different subtonic, a fifth down from the tonic sung by the choir.

Most of the pieces on this album tell stories. “Surb Astvats” (Holy God), also known as “The Holy Trinity”, has three different verses traditionally sung in three different periods in the year: one verse refers to the Nativity, another to the Crucifixion, the last to the Resurrection. All three verses of this medieval hymn are combined in Luys i Luso to represent the story of Christ.

Another storytelling piece is “Patriar-chal Ode”. This ode by Komitas is de- dicated to the Mother See of Etchmi-adzin in the person of Mkrtich Khrim-ian (Catholicos of all Armenians). In this arrangement the ode illustrates the history of the Armenian church, the struggles and compassion of Fa-ther Khrimian, the world in which he lived, and our memory of him today.

In all these arrangements the piano parts are never written out. There are ideas for the structure of the piano parts but these are subject to change, bringing freedom and improvisation to notated classical composition and the sacred music tradition.

Tigran Hamasyan

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Music of Komitas and Tigran MansurianHayrenKim Kashkashian Robyn Schulkowsky Tigran Mansurian Released 2003 ECM New Series 1754 CD 461 8312

Tigran MansurianString Quartets Rosamunde Quartett Released 2005 ECM New Series 1905 CD 476 3052

Tigran MansurianArs Poetica Robert Mlkeyan Armenian Chamber Choir Released 2006 ECM New Series 1895 CD 476 3070

Tigran MansurianMonodia Kim Kashkashian Leonidas Kavakos Jan Garbarek The Hilliard Ensemble Christoph Poppen Münchener Kammerorchester Released 2004 ECM New Series 1850Ð51 2-CD set 472 7842

Tigran MansurianQuasi Parlando Patricia Kopatchinskaja Anja Lechner Amsterdam Sinfonietta Candida Thompson Released 2014 ECM New Series 2323 CD 481 0667

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Levon Eskenian Music of Georges I. Gurdjieff The Gurdjieff Folk Instrument Ensemble Released 2011 ECM 2236 CD 277 1913

Moderato Cantabile Anja Lechner François Couturier Released 2014 ECM New Series 2367 CD 481 0992

Chants, Hymns & Dances Anja Lechner Vassilis Tsabropoulos Released 2004 ECM New Series 1888 CD 981 9613

G. I. GurdjieffSacred Hymns Keith Jarrett Released 1980 ECM 1174 CD 829 1222

Kim Kashkashian Neharót Betty OliveroTigran Mansurian Eitan Steinberg Released 2009 ECM New Series 2065 CD 476 3281

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In 2016 ECM will release an album

by Lusine Grigoryan playing

Komitas: Piano Compositions

(Seven Songs, Msho Shoror,

Seven Dances, Pieces for Children,

Toghik), as well as Atmosphères,

Reflections on Armenian Folk

Songs featuring Tigran Hamasyan,

Arve Henriksen, Eivind Aarset ,

Jan Bang.

Front Cover: Dance in front of the Surb Karapet MonasteryPhoto: Bodil Biørn (1905)Back Cover: Fragment of the wall photographed by Vahan Stepanyan

Photograph of Armenian monastery of Surb Karapet (the Holy Precursor, St. John the Baptist) in 30 km northwest of Mush, in present-day eastern Turkey, before its destruction in 1915. Photo: Vartan A. Hampikian

Photo of Komitas by courtesy of The Charents Museum of Literature and Arts, YerevanMusician photos by Vahan Stepanyan, Garegin Aghabekyan, Peter Laenger, Petra Goldmann

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