Sharakan to the Holy Cross "This day has Appeared"

Abstract

Armenian Catholicos and poet-musician Sahak III Dzoraporetsi (T'-8h centuries) played a significant role in the development of Armenian sacred songwriting. Almost all the sharakans of the canons dedicated to the holidays of Shoghakat, the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the Varag Cross, and the Discoveiy of the Holy Cross, as well as other sharakans dedicated to the Holy Church feasts, are attributed to him. These works are primarily known through N. Tashchyan's recordings, made in the 19'՝ centwy song-writing in Armenian notation and ceiiified by the Armenian Church. However, the musical components of these sharakans were also recorded by H. Cherchyan in the 19h century. This article is a comprehensive study of these sharakans, uncovering their melodic styles, modal and rhythmic-intonation structures and other peculiarities. The results of our research demonstrate that the two recordings are closely related. Of particular interest to us are the sharakans in cantilena type, in view of N. Tahmizyan's statements that some of Tashchyan's recordings were enriched with new omamentic intonation patterns. From this point of view, the sharakan at the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, "This day the sign of the Lord God appeared in great radiance" glorifying the life-giving Cross as the victorious sign of the Lord, is indicative. Our comparative analysis of two recordings of the musical component of Dzoraporetsi's sharakan showed that inherent in N. Tashchyan's sample the extremely rich ornamented melody, rhythmic freedom, independent of the verbal text much-sounding chants, several times greater in metric units than the identical constructions of Cherchyan's recording, really confirms the theoiy of further changes in the musical component of the Dzoraporetsi's sharakan. Thus, our research reveals the more ancient and authentic origins of the Cherchyan's recording. At the same time, based on the intonation structure we discovered in the melody of the sharakan, known in Armenian sacred songwriting, we believe that its entire musical component was revised by Cilician musicians in the 13h-14’h centuries. Over the course of time, the literary and musical components of Sahak Dzoraporetsi's sharakan experienced several transfonnations. In the first of them, anonymous authors adapted a slightly different - varied musical material of the sharakan to the original literary text, renaming it to a different genre - meghedi, performed during Holy Patarag (Liturgy). In a later period, having remade the literary text (taking out the first few words) and combining it with a new modified version of the musical component, unknown musicians gave life to another independent work - the meghedi of the Holy Cross "The Sign of the Lord God", the earliest recording of which is preserved in "Tagharan" (Taghbook) by H. Cherchyan. In this way Sahak Dzoraporetsi's sharakan "This day the sign of the Lord God appeared in great radiance", representing one of the most significant works of Armenian sacred songwriting, underwent several transfonnations by musicians of later eras and turned into a meghedi of the Holy Cross, which is one of the prominent examples of Armenian tagh art.