“David of Sassoun” the epic in Armenian compositional art.

Abstract

There are very few musical versions of Armenian national epic David of Sassoun. Nevertheless, various historical, theoretical and literary sources stated that Komitas, the founder of the Armenian professional music, dreamed of creating an opera based on the epic. Unfortunately, to this day no documents or a rough draft have been found, confirming Komitas's plans of writing the opera. Chronologically, the first musical resort to the epic was associated with the name of Shahan Reteos Berberian. The lyrical drama "David of Sassoun" (libretto by Hakob Oshakan) was written during the 1935-1940 in Jerusalem. The first serious attempt of musical and dramatic embodiment of the epic was written in the Soviet era by Haro Stepanyan in 1939 (libretto by Derenik Demirchyan). One particular example of the musical embodiment of the lyrical line of the epic was "Khandut" ballet (1945). The music for the ballet performance was compiled by Gevorg Budaghyan, conductor, who adapted some fragments from Alexander Spendiaryan works, both popular and unknown. The two most significant, due to their artistic values, musical versions of the epic that are known to this day, were created almost simultaneously, in 1976-1977- Alexander Adjemian's Fifth Symphony for a symphony orchestra, organ and four-part choir entitled "David of Sassoun", and Edgar Hovhannisian's opera-ballet "David of Sassoun". The study reviews the stylistic features of the mentioned works, as well as their artistic value within the chronological context of the Armenian professional music.