musicologist, PhD in Arts, researcher at the Shirak Center for Armenian Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of RA, Scientific Secretary of the Center. She graduated from the Komitas State Conservatory (1987). In 2005, she received her PhD. Harutyunyan has worked at the Kumayri Reserve-Museum in Gyumri and at Gyumri’s branch of the Komitas State Conservatory. Since 1997 she has been working at the Shirak Center for Armenian Studies. Harutyunyan is the author of the monograph entitled The V-XV Century Music in the Context of Armenian Historiography and about 50 articles.

KOMITAS: TEACHING WITH CHORAL SONGS

In Komitas’s multi-dimensional creative activity, there are important targets that he chose felicitously and overcame with great solutions. In this article, Komitas’s choral songs are under discussion, which were composed for teaching purposes for the younger generation of the Gevorkian Seminary in Etchmiatsin and the Nikoghosyan College in Costantinople. Due to their expressive and high aesthetic value these choral songs (about 100 pieces) have been of great demand in other education centers (in the schools of Aleksandrapol, Igdir) as well. One of the valued features was with the usage of absolutely correct methodic, the polyphonic treatment and the transformation of the traditional Armenian monodic melodies, as corresponding to the performance potential of the different age groups of the students. Komitas chose rural and urban famous folk songs, as well as ashugh songs for his arrangements with the purpose of creating new perceptions of these songs. Though these arrangements are among Komitas’s early works, his future composing priorities are evident in the latter.
Teaching was a fruitful experimental field for Komitas, in which the transformation of Armenian traditional melodic style can be traced.