Arusyak Tamrazyan studied at Komitas State Conservatory of Yerevan at the Departments of Musicology (1998-2003) and Organ (2000-2005). Since 2005, she has been working as a senior researcher at the Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts ‟Matenadaran” at the Department of the Art History and Schools of Miniature Painting, as well as at the Department of Source Study. In 2016 she defended her PhD thesis titled The Perception of Music in Medieval Armenian Exegetic Tradition. She is the author of two monographs ‒ The Reconsideration of the Man’s Structural Theory in the Armenian Medieval Commentary Tradition (Yerevan, 2013), Commentary on “Who is this?” Ascribed to Grigor Narekatsi (Yerevan, 2019) and about two dozen articles. The scope of research includes the theory of Armenian medieval music, neume systems, manuscripts of manrusum and Ganjarans, medieval Armenian exegetic tradition, composition and publication of original texts. She has presented papers in a number of international conferences.

KOMITAS’S MANUSCRIPTOLOGICAL
AND NEUMOGICAL STUDIES REVISITED

Komitas Vardapet studied and described the 22 manuscripts of manrusum of Etchmiadzin, completed and classified the list of modes composed by Ghevond Alishan (1820-1901), which were accessed by all future researchers. However, his, as well as later researchers’ neumological inspirations were based on Šaraknoc‘ (Hymnary) as a more accessible and preliminary stage of coalescence of neume studies and eight-mode system. An attempt is made to summarize Komitas’s preparatory works for carrying neume studies, namely his unique ‟etymology” of the names of neumes in pure medieval style, his musical dictionary and its medieval sources, his attempts to study the fields defined by neume study (basically equivalent to the fields defined by medieval grammatical works), as well as to decipher musical neumes. The results of these works are examined in the context of present-day neume studies, in their main directions, while in the case of deciphering neumes the difference between Šaraknoc‘s and the complex neumological structure of melodies of the books of manrusum and ganjs is presented. Different attempts are combined to interpret some neumes in the modal system.