Pietro Bianchini and the Mekhitarist Fathers: Some Observations

Abstract

In the present article we seek to explore the relationship of the Venetian composer, conductor and violinist Pietro Bianchini (1828-1905) with the Mekhitarist Fathers of San Lazzaro, Venice. To this end, we cite and discuss aspects of Bianchini’s writings, including his correspondence with Fr. Rap‘ayel T‘reanc‘ (1799-1858), which demonstrates the resistance encountered by Bianchini, as also the argumentation he employed in his endeavour to persuade the Fathers of the desirability to adopt for liturgical use his redacted transcriptions and arrangements. Bianchini’s writings are uncannily reminiscent of concepts and traditions associated with far earlier writers, as well as in some ways adumbrating the theological argumentation deployed several decades later by Makar Ekmalian in connection with his own harmonised version of the Divine Liturgy. We also present a manuscript kept at the Library of Congress, Washington, of Bianchini’s transcription and arrangement of the ode “Elect of God”, deployed during the Divine Liturgy when the celebrant is a bishop or of higher rank as the celebrant recites the Prayer to the Holy Spirit by St. Gregory of Narek. We consider this manuscript and the ode thereon from several different angles - including an exploration of the neumatically-notated antecedents of the ode, which we examine from a metrical point of view employing the hypothesis by the Constantinopolitan church musician, Elia Tntesean (1834-1881), developed in connection with the repertoire of canonical hymns, apportioning metrical values to syllables bearing particular neumes or none. Finally, we speculate on the possibility that Bianchini, who considered Armenian sacred music, when properly performed, to be “sublime” and “celestial”, and who returned to this ode several times in the course of his career, may have been inspired by one of its characteristic motifs when he came to compose his own Sinfonia in D minor in 1863.