The evolution of Armenian liturgical music

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to briefly outline the evolution of Armenian music, from Antiquity to the nineteenth century. The troubled history of the Armenian people defines to a great extent the way the arts have developed, and also the way that vast and rich culture that characterizes the Armenian people, spread throughout the world, has formed. Starting from the earliest roots of music, our study follows the path of the different secular and liturgical genres, which developed in close correlation over the centuries. The paper presents the local traditions and the influences of the peoples with whom the Armenian people came in contact, the reciprocal receptive attitude, the cultural interpenetration that contributed to the development of the musical art. At the same time, we discuss some fragments / texts from the first songs that were preserved from the ancient times, as well as the troubadours of the Armenian Middle Age; we mention the most famous scholars and composers and to the founding of the first universities and present in a concise manner the first attempts of an Armenian music notation system. The paper - as mentioned before - presents only briefly this vast and very interesting topic, and the in-depth study of the problem is to be carried out in the continuation of the doctoral studies.