The music of the Armenian Hymnal: the Tntesean corpus

Abstract

Haig Utidjian - Abstract In this thesis we attempt to establish, in as concrete and tangible a manner as possible, the procedures used by Ełia Tntesean (1834-1881) in compiling and redacting his version of the melodies of the Armenian Hymnal, and to place his own endeavour in the context of other attempts to record the melodies of Armenian hymns using the Limōnčean system of musical notation in nineteenth-century Constantinople - at a time when the mediaeval neumatic notation had already become largely intractable. Our approach entails the juxtaposition of Tntesean's musicological articles and paedagogical publications with his transcriptions in Western notation and with his mature realisations of the hymnal melodies in the Limōnčean system, published posthumously in 1934 - treating these sources as a coherent corpus, of which the diverse components are allowed to shed light on each other. Comparison with other hymnals from the same period, the investigation of parallels with the neighbouring practice of Ottoman makams, fieldwork with surviving remnants of the oral tradition, and a critical examination of Tntesean's writings and transcriptions enable us to elucidate aspects of notation and performance practice, and to expose a subtle evolution in aesthetic. Furthermore, a detailed analysis of the Tntesean..