a musicologist-medievalist, PhD in Arts, researcher at the Institute of Arts of the National Academy of Sciences of RA and at the Komitas Museum-Institute. Amiraghyan has graduated from the Department of Musicology of Komitas State Conservatory in Yerevan and undertook her post-graduate studies at the Institute of Arts of the National Academy of Sciences of RA. She defended her dissertation thesis on Eight-Mode System in the Armenian Chant of New Julfa or the Indian-Armenian Chant in 2012 at the Institute of Arts. She is the author of a number of articles, as well as radio programs on music, an active participant of conferences. The scope of her musicological interests includes issues related to the history and theory of the Armenian sacred music and comparative medievalism.

KOMITAS’S METHODOLOGY FOR THE ANALYSIS OF MODE

The study of the eight-mode (Arm. Utdzayn) system basing the Armenian sacred music is one of the principal fields of the musicological activity of  Komitas. The latter’s methodology for the investigation of the eight-mode system, certain points of which are close to the main terms applied in the Armenian music theory of the XIX century (Yeghia Tntesyan, Nikoghayos Tashchyan), includes several substantially new approaches that keep their scientific topicality up to date. The mentioned approaches are present both in the application of new principles for the theoretic description of the mode and in the specification and reconsideration of the theoretic definitions of the main functions of the mode. The present paper is devoted to the examination of the main principles of Komitas’s method for the study of the eight-mode system, the application of which allows a more comprehensive and welldefined theoretical description of the mode.