The deep well of history

Text: Stefan Franzen, 15.4.2024

Armenia’s history over the last hundred years has been chequered and bitter: from the genocide of 1915 through the long era of Soviet rule to the conflict with Azerbaijan and, most recently, the flight of the population from Nagorno-Karabakh, the country has repeatedly been subjected to the arbitrary despotism of other states. This contrasts with the erstwhile pride of what was once a major power, with territory stretching from the Mediterranean to the Caspian Sea in ancient times. To this day, thousands of years of musical culture bear witness to this, and Armenian music projects continue to draw from this deep well. Both the sacred and secular aspects of the Caucasus republic’s musical treasures are among the most fascinating in the world.

Which culture can claim to know what its music sounded like 1500 years ago? Studying it is like travelling back in time: Armenia declared Christianity an official religion in 301 AD, even before Rome did, and it has an unbroken tradition of church music from the founder of the liturgy Mesrop Mashtoz (circa 360-440) to 20th century figures, first and foremost the monk Komitas Vardapet (1869-1935). He was the father of modern Armenian music and was responsible for introducing polyphony to church music, but he also collected folk songs that have common roots with the country’s sacred music. They date back to pre-Christian times, when people still worshipped the sun god Vahagn.

»Our sacred music was not made by human hands,« enthuses jazz pianist Tigran Hamasyan, who lives in the USA. He is not the only one in his field to have fallen under the music’s spell. Keith Jarrett, violist Kim Kashkashian and the Hilliard Ensemble have also explored Armenian musical tradition. In his project »Luys i Luso«, Hamasyan explored Armenian liturgical music through fifteen centuries with a chamber choir. This introspection also continues in his solo playing. He draws inspiration from travels to his old homeland: »I look out of the window and see the biblical Mount Ararat with eternal snow on the summit. Electricity pylons and wires in the foreground cut up the picture, satellite dishes merge with houses old and modern. Ancient, God-given nature and our modern human achievements enter into a dialogue with one another.«

Spirituality in Armenia is not only linked to the church. Everyone there knows the name Georges Gurdjieff. The mystic of Greek-Armenian origin opened his »Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man« in Fontainebleau near Paris in 1922. He had previously »collected« music and dances while travelling through Armenia, and also Persia, Tibet, India, Greece and the Arab countries, without writing them down: he simply memorised them. He later sang the tunes from memory to his pupil and assistant, the Russian pianist Thomas de Hartmann, who transcribed them. Until recently, they could only be heard in this form in concert halls.

And this is where Levon Eskenian, the director of the Armenian Gurdjieff Ensemble, comes in. »The first time I heard the piano pieces by Gurdjieff and de Hartmann, I felt as if I had come home! I listened to music like that when I was a child,« he recalls. With meticulous research and great empathy, he restored the transcriptions for performance on traditional instruments – just as Gurdjieff might have originally heard them. The result is compelling:

Played on the long- and short-necked lutes saz, tar and oud, on the shawms duduk (Armenia’s national instrument) and zurna, the spiked violin kamanche, the keyed zither kanun, various flutes and a variety of percussion instruments, this music really does sound as if it comes from a different era: sublime, archaic and wistful. And Eskenian confirms this character: »There is something very melancholy about the Armenians, a typical state of contemplation.«

The secular music of the Armenian bards, the Ashuk, which has been passed down orally to this day, can be found alongside the sacred realm in Gurdjieff’s melodies. The sharakans, melismatic chants from the liturgy, and the taghs, odes that can be both religious and secular chants, date from pre-Christian times and were later Christianised. Eskenian is keen to emphasise that the Gurdjieff Ensemble does not play folk music. The reworkings of Gurdjieff’s collection for old instruments are performed by musicians who have a background in traditional music, but all have university degrees. The spring water of the old music has undergone an academic distilling process, so to speak, but it never sounds sterile.

Somewhere between these poles of secular and sacred tradition, classical music and jazz lie the Armenian-American composer, conductor and pianist John Hodian and his Naghash Ensemble. Hodian sees his involvement with Armenian music as his life’s work.

»For me, due to its tragic history, Armenian culture always has an eerie melancholy about it that is beautiful at the same time,« he says. Hodian grew up on the US East Coast; it was only later that he developed an intense bond with the country of his ancestors. »In America, when something is 200 years old people say: Wow, what a heritage! But in Armenia, traditions that go back to pre-Christian times are embedded in people’s consciousness.« It is precisely from this duality that his music draws its tension.

Hodian first became known in Germany through the Epiphany Project: he joined forces with singer Bet Williams to incorporate Armenian roots in a jazzy, folky context that also contained unmistakable elements of American folk music. After this he embarked on a large-scale project in which he combined his own music with texts by the poet-priest Mkrtitsch Naghash (1394-1470). The initial idea came to him during a visit to his ancestral homeland: In a temple near Yerevan, he heard a vocal quintet singing sacred music from the Middle Ages. When he later immersed himself in Naghash’s texts, the words were linked in his head with music from that era – and he began to write arrangements that eventually developed into the »Songs of Exile».

Hodian admits with a wink that he »stole« from the old vocal music to set the Naghash poems to music. As Igor Stravinsky put it, those who merely borrow remain weak and superficial; those who steal, on the other hand, can merge with the music and create something new. In 2010, Hodian put together an ensemble to bring the music in his imagination to life. Long, suite-like pieces were the result, characterised by the delightful combination of a female vocal trio with a three-piece instrumental section. Harutyun Chkolyan plays different versions of the duduk as well as the shvi flute with soulful devotion; Aram Nikogosyan and Tigran Hoyhannisyan play the oud and the dhol drum with virtuosity; and Hodian himself fills in the musical texture on the piano with thundering chords as well as repetitive and flowing figures. With his flowing grey hair and beard, he is physically a creative figure as well, giving powerful entries, directing the dynamics by almost seeming to »breathe« the pieces, recreating them again out of the moment.

And then there is the fabulous vocal section: soprano Hasmik Baghdasaryan sings bright, powerful high notes, while the less conspicuous Tatevik Movsesyan climbs confidently between the registers. Arpine Ter-Petrosyan is exceptional in every respect: it’s rare to hear an alto who can get her voice down to notes so low, they are almost masculine, but always sound full rather than laboured. Together, the three singers weave a web of polyphony as if from a single mould, with beguiling, dense melodies in the a cappella passages. A monastic, archaic sound mixes with the friction of the High Renaissance and a simplicity redolent of pop songs. Hodian has set the poems almost as a conversation, with the components of the verses playfully divided between the vocal parts. And it has a particularly beautiful effect when the rounded sound of the duduk merges imperceptibly with the alto register.

Central to the poetry of the priest Mkrtitsch Naghash and to the »Songs of Exile« is the figure of Gharib - a wanderer who has to live in a foreign land. This figure is also autobiographical: in Diyarbakır, Naghash incurred the wrath of the Muslim authorities by renovating his Christian monastery so magnificently that it outshone all the mosques. He was banished to the desert and died there. His legacy is fifteen long poems that thrive on an unsolvable tension: people's stupidity and greed contrasts with the euphoric expectation of life after death – and in between these, the reader is offered advice for a better earthly existence to prepare the soul for the hereafter.

You don’t have to understand the Armenian texts to enjoy listening to them, but the translation can support mental images, helping, for example, to better interpret a melancholy duduk introduction depicting failures in our earthly life. Or to understand the lonely wanderings of the exile in a soprano solo over the oud tremolo, and elsewhere to recognise the restlessness created by the Devil in the hammered accompanying figures. In the end, what remains is the impression of an almost ethereal, courtly music that is not distant, but always luminous and warm. A music that combines the spiritual horizon of ancient Armenian music with a contemporary pulse.

This article appeared in the Elbphilharmonie Magazine (2/24)
Translation: Clive Williams