Pianist Tigran Hamasyan on the sound culture of Armenia

Armenian music is multifaceted and extremely diverse. To truly understand how Armenian music has developed and how it has influenced artists from various modern musical styles, classical music, and contemporary academic music, one must explore its many genres and subgenres.

It all starts with folk music, which runs parallel to religious music, though each has distinct features. There are many theories about music's origins. Some suggest it reflects sounds heard by the foetus in the womb or vocalizations driven by emotion, as theorized by David Teie. Others believe music enhances communication with the divine or developed alongside language.

At some point, music became ceremonial, playing a transformative role in important rituals and events and deeply affecting both performers and listeners. Sacred or religious music emerged from rituals dedicated to worship, but secular songs also contained sacred elements. For instance, Armenian folk songs sung during bread-making involved giving thanks for the year’s harvest, and the entire process – from harvesting to bread-making – was highly ceremonial. Another notable genre is the lamentation or sorrow incantation, performed at funerals. This half-sung, half-recited ritual blends crying with singing, reflecting the spiritual side of folk music. After Armenia adopted Christianity, music became more clearly divided between Christian liturgical music and secular folk music, though both continued to influence one another. Many pre-Christian rituals and celebrations merged with Christian traditions.

One example is Vardavar, originally a pagan celebration honouring Astghik, the goddess of fertility, love, and beauty. It later merged with the Christian feast of the Transfiguration and is still celebrated with water-pouring and rose-giving. Similarly, the celebration of Tsaghkazard – now marking Christ’s entry into Jerusalem – once symbolized the Tree of Life. Before Christianity, this day involved decorating trees with eggs and fabric, along with rain-bringing rituals. Armenian music, like its festivals, transformed during the religious shift. Ethnomusicologists Komitas and Kushnaryan believed that after Armenia adopted Christianity the church drew from folk music to create Christian psalms and hymns. There may have been borrowing from pre-Christian religious chants as well, especially considering that many Christian monasteries were built on sites of pre-Christian temples.

A comparison of Armenian folk songs and sharakans (medieval hymns) reveals shared musical patterns. Similarly, Perotin’s Viderunt Omnes shares melodic and rhythmic similarities with secular troubadour music from 12th-century France. The key difference between Armenian folk songs and liturgical chants lies in text and rhythm. Folk songs have more complex rhythms, as their texts are less restrictive, while religious chants follow specific prose texts, limiting rhythmic freedom. While we can't fully know how medieval Armenian church music was performed, we can compare surviving folk and sacred music. Before the Industrial Revolution, folk music was a living, evolving tradition. However, as technological progress and global music genres spread, traditional folk music began to decline, becoming more of a fixed artefact rather than a living, improvisational form.

Religious music also changed over time. In medieval Armenia, it thrived, with complex notation systems that scholars today are still deciphering. Nerses Shnorhali, a prolific composer, noted that singers would sometimes improvise within a given mode. This improvisational approach has largely been lost, though it was preserved by the monks of the Mkhitarist order, who settled on the Venetian island of San Lazzaro. This isolation helped maintain an ancient form of Armenian liturgical singing, which is now preserved by ensembles like Aram Kerovpian’s Akn Ensemble.

Armenian traditional music includes many genres, such as agricultural songs, funeral laments, lullabies, and wedding dances. The gusans (minstrels) and vardsaks (female performers) were central figures in Armenian musical culture, performing as singers, dancers, poets, and storytellers. Among the oldest surviving genres are ploughing songs, shepherd songs, and grain-beating songs, each with distinct melodic and rhythmic characteristics.

Both Armenian folk and church music inspired many prominent composers from the 18th to the 21st centuries, including Kristapor Kara-Murza, Tigran Chukhajian, Komitas, Aram Khachaturyan, and Arno Babajanyan. Komitas, a composer and ethnomusicologist, made a significant impact by collecting and preserving Armenian folk music. His non-chordal, minimalist polyphonic approach, especially in his arrangement of the Holy Mass for four voices, was groundbreaking. The voices, each like a chant, form harmonies without external material, creating a uniquely Armenian sound. Arno Babajanyan’s Six Images is an example of a modern composer using folk melodies within 20th-century music concepts. Tigran Mansurian, another influential composer, incorporates medieval Armenian sacred music into his chamber and choral works, subtly evoking ancient monastic traditions.

If we look at the top tier of Armenian contemporary academic music composers whose works are truly inspiring, I will start with Vahram Sarkissian, whose compositions are influenced by medieval Armenian church and folk music. Vahram is also a talented vocalist with albums and EPs where he sings his compositions or arrangements of folk songs, incorporating loops and layering. His vocal music features many extended vocal techniques that he has developed over time.

Another prolific and remarkable composer is Aram Hovhannisyan, who is also a virtuoso flutist. Aram’s solo flute piece Nouraïl and his Synopsis for six instruments are outstanding. His ballet Sept, les anges de Sinjar, which he composed with another brilliant contemporary composer, Michel Petrossian, is a true gem of contemporary academic music. This work draws inspiration from Yezidi legends and myths. Michel Petrossian’s In the Wake of Ea for piano and orchestra, and Comme un feu dévorant... for tenor and cello, are also among my personal favourites.

These modern composers, like the gusans and vardsaks before them, create music that transcends time and genre, evoking a sense of eternity and spiritual depth, much like the ancient ploughing songs and sacred hymns. I always look out for music that has that sense of eternity in it, that special one thing that takes you on a spiritual journey out of the material reality makes you want to listen to it on repeat. Perhaps it’s music that is by nature closest to the sounds that the foetus can hear in the womb and closest to the sensation of the first moments of music’s birth.

Tigran Hamasyan's upcoming album, The Bird of a Thousand Voices, draws inspiration from an ancient Armenian legend, blending rich tradition with piano improvisation.