Kristapor Kushnaryan "Armenian Mododic Music: The History and Theory" (in English)

This book has been the main textbook of monody in Soviet musical educational institutions for a long period and still has not lost its value. Kushnaryan analyses the musical features of over 300 folk and religious songs. The texts of the folk songs in the musical examples are quoted in Armenian. The interesting feature of the work is its classical approach. The development of music is placed firmly in the context of the progress of the other branches of art, such as literature, architecture and the minor arts. The book breaks new ground, with an eye both for the large issues and for the detail in the music discussed.

There are a very large number of recordings of religious monodies: merely one collection of hymns (Sharaknots) is a weighty tome consisting of a thousand folio pages. The recordings are in the Armenian notation.

There are a very large number of recordings of religious monodies: merely one collection of hymns (Sharaknots) is a weighty tome consisting of a thousand folio pages. The recordings are in the Armenian notation.

In the first part monodic music is considered as one of the phenomena of the history of Armenian culture. This part reviews the main stages of
development of monody. Here of course arise all the basic problems concerning its compositional side. The author’s intention is that the first part should serve as an introduction to the study of Armenian monodic music as a whole.

The second part is devoted to a special theoretical subject and deals with one of the basic problems of the theory of Armenian music, that of its modes.

The main riches of Armenian peasant song are concentrated in the ethnographic studies of Komitas and Spiridon Melik‘yan, those two indefatigable musical folklore researchers. These contain collections of songs of all the many  genres of the old peasant music: epic and ceremonial songs, working songs (mainly of the peasants in the fields), everyday and lyric songs, dancing songs, jocular and children’s songs.

The book may be acquired from BooksFromArmenia; http://booksfromarmenia.com/item.php?item_id=1287&cur=USD

or from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Armenian-Monodic-Music-history-theory/dp/9939850212/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462541663&sr=8-1&keywords=kushnaryan