Lilit Harutyunyan is a musicologist-medi­evalist, a researcher at the Komitas Mu­seum-Institute and at the Komitas State Conservatory in Yerevan, Head of the Bibliography, Recording and Digitization Department at the Music Library. Ha­rutyunyan received her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees from the Department of Musicology of the Komitas State Con­servatory. She undertook her postgrad­uate studies at the same conservatory under the supervision of Mher Navoyan. She defended her dissertation thesis on the Eight-Mode System in the Mekhitarist Chant of Armenian Sacred Music in 2018 at the Institute of Arts of the National Acad­emy of Sciences of RA. Harutyunyan’s re­search focuses on the study of Armenian folk and sacred music.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARMENIAN MEKHITARIST CHANT: TRANSCRIBED MATERIALS AND ORAL TRADITION

After centuries of being passed on by oral tradition, the Mekhitarist traditional chanting was transcribed by Fr. Ghevond Tayian in the middle of the XX century. With the seven volumes of this Šaraknocʽ (Hymnary), the greater part of canon­ic šarakans (Hymns) have reached us, as well as some newly composed šarakans, which are specific for the region. Never­theless, in practice we see that sacred music, even after being transcribed, con­tinues being passed on via oral tradition. In my presentation, I present a compar­ison of the Šaraknocʽ materials and the contemporary performances of spiritual music.