Tntesean and the Music of the Armenian Hymnal

This monograph documents Haig Utidjian’s research of recent years on the formation of the extant melodies of the Armenian Hymnal on the basis of the corpus of writings and transcriptions of the nineteenth-century Constantinopolitan musician and musicologist Ełia Tntesean (1834–1881). It serves to position the study of the nineteenth-century transcriptions of the melodies of the Armenian Hymnal on a substantially new basis, analysing particularly the manner in which the mediaeval neumatic notation was exploited in redacting the melodies that came to be recorded in the Limončean notational system. Instances are identified where Tntesean appears to have departed from his own avowed theoretical principles, choosing to afford precedence to implicit aesthetic criteria, as well as reflecting the influence of the quasi-improvisatory procedures of the time. Attention is also drawn to the valuable information that may be drawn from apparent idiosyncrasies in the deployment of the Limončean notation. This study is a major advance towards a fuller understanding of the manner in which the extant melodies of the Armenian Hymnal came to be constituted, and is set to stimulate a new wave of research on the music of the Armenian Hymnal and the notational systems that were employed to record it. It is enhanced by comparisons with other versions of the Hymnal from the same period, the investigation of parallels with the neighbouring practice of Ottoman makams, as well as fieldwork involving the surviving remnants of the oral tradition. It is also the first to give Tntesean his due as the greatest Armenian musicologist of the modern era.

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