Search - Haissmavourk Choir :: The Music of Armenia, Volume 1: Sacred Choral Music

The Music of Armenia focuses much of its six volumes on the sacred and folk music traditions of the Eastern Armenians. It was recorded mostly within the modern republic. The only exception was the folk music of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, which was recorded inside that strife-torn area in Azerbaijan. The Music of Armenia, as substantial as it is, in fact began as a musical detour. The intrepid New Zealand composer, David Parsons, who has previously produced The Music of Cambodia and The Music of Vietnam was working on another project for Celestial Harmonies entitled, The Music of Islam, when Celestial Harmonies' president, Eckart Rahn, asked if he had heard the monastic choirs of Armenia. Parsons set off to investigate: once there, he says, "I was struck by the extremely high level of development in all the music I was hearing. For me, personally, this was the most outstanding traditional music I had heard."The recent explosion of interest in Gregorian Chant and in the mystical music of various, mostly Eastern European composers, suggests that there is something in modern Western life that has listeners searching for the ancient, or, perhaps timeless sounds, of sacred music. The sacred choral music heard on The Music of Armenia, Volume One: Sacred Choral Music certainly fits the bill.