
Piano Trio No 5,6,7,
Publisher Desc.
Petros Shoujounian, an Armenian/Canadian composer has written Piano Trios
No 5,6,7, 2018, based on the folksong collection of the Armenian priest
Komitas, known as the founder of the Armenian national school of music and
one of the pioneers of ethnomusicology. Below are comments from the composer
about his inspiration in writing these Trios
My interest in the collected works of Komitas's ethnographical songs was
aroused when I was introduced to Bela Bartok's similar works followed by Alan
Hovhaness's huge creative world. Bartok completed his project having at his
disposal a large collection of ethnographic music, while Hovhannes studied
the wealth of Komitas's music with great interest. It is difficult to say to
what extent the Armenian underpinning of Hovhannes's works is nurtured by
Komitas's musical world, but his classical interpretation of the Armenian
ethnographical music created a huge interest in the listener. Needless to
say, there is also Aram Khachaturianis legacy, which at its core has the
ardent presence of the Armenian spirit, nurtured by Komitas's very
existence.
Komitas has left a collection of about 3,000 cleaned versions of the
ethnographic song and dance pieces, of which 1,700 have reached us and about
400 of which have been activated. I believe that in those beautiful musical
fragments reside the power to be revived, once we enrich them with colorful
musical instruments and unbounded polyphonic imagination.
This is the motivation behind my own work and these Piano Trios: to make
the essence of our ethnographic music accessible through Komitas.
Petros Shoujounian,
Composer
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