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I am...
...always confessing.
Tigran Mansurian - Confessing With Music
Music was taught to me by my mother,
how to sing from top to bottom, from C to C.
That was my beginning, as I began learning.
In our house music was highly respected.
If there was music playing in the house,
everyone had to, I mean everyone, all six of us,
mother, father, and their four children,
had to immediately be silent,
because there was music playing.
In our house, we would sing frequently, all of us.
We would sing in the morning,
sometimes even in bed.
We would all sing, especially since we lived in one room.
I also remember the lullaby my mother would sing to me,
that was my first song,
and it still remains in me.
That song, for me...
Is the greatest happiness.
The greatest harmony.
The greatest...
Gift from God.
If this world is a gift from God itself,
then in music this lullaby is the same kind of gift for me.
Sometimes, when I am writing music, it happens to appear,
some small part, from my mother's lullaby.
Con Anima - I was surprised how correctly I titled that piece.
I was almost finished with the piece,
when the title suddenly came to me.
"With Spirit"
Our music, and European classical music,
are the two foundations that I feed off,
one has to help the other,
and that is where I am, in between them.
I attempt to illuminate our music with the European tradition.
Europe acknowledged the existence of our music,
and music from the East in general, respecting its riches.
Riches which the East has always had,
but did not understand what it had.
In the last four hunded years European music
has gone through a tremendously dynamic growth,
music from the East has not gone through such a process.
Living in this tense musical environment,
these two schools, two layers: Eastern and Western.
and in general the strain it puts on you as a whole,
makes your life kind of...
Interesting.
I, for example,
wrote a piece for Kim,
that is based on a song by Narekatsi - Havik.
Kim Kashkashian - Havik
And so what could Narekatsi hear?
He lived in a monastery...
What were his sounds there?
What were the sounds around Narekatsi?
It was the ringing of the church bells,
the soft breeze of the air, on the shore of Lake Van.
I made a record of his song,
and through his singing told Kim to play it.
Now Kim is playing the way Komitas sings this song.
I've been through all of them,
Stravinsky and Debussy and Bartok...
Schoenberg, Webern, and then I've had Boulez in me also,
but in all of them there has always been, more or less,
the presence of Komitas.
Chinar Es - Komitas
piano and voice - Tigran Mansurian
How can you listen to a piece of music,
where you connect with it in a such a way,
that you are one with that music,
you are living that music!
Testament - Rosamunde Quartet
When writing music,
you have to allow certain things to come naturally,
sometimes you have to help it come,
or sometimes come up with it on your own.
For example when I say ars poetica - the art of poetry,
it means...
A life lived as poetry.
One set of poems is one whole life.
How does it begin?
"At night, everyone sick and deranged, I dreamt of the sun..."
At night...
everyone
sick
and deranged...
Ars Poetica - poems by Yeghishe Charents
At night
At night
At night
I...
dreamt of the sun....
of
the
sun
What an amazing song.
Davit Marqareh - poem by Nahapet Kuchak
Four Hayren
The language that I speak is a system of sounds.
I believe that the language one speaks,
the language which has brought one up genetically,
that language is also the foundation of one's music.
I didn't know anything about the text at the time.
I decided on the text in Germany.
Shnorhali's prayer book was always in my pocket.
It was a small book.
I kept it in my pocket for a number of years,
and then one day I thought, is this it?
This is what I'm supposed to write?
And that's the reason it has been in my pocket for so long?
For one week I thought about it, going back and forth,
so it wouldn't be insincere,
because so what if it's in my pocket?
Maybe that doesn't mean anything,
and it should remain in my pocket,
but it turned out that no, it had to be written.
Confessing With Faith
poem by Nerses Shnorhali
You know...
I've been under constant pressure these last years.
At this point, I kind of...
I'm afraid of losing my creative energy,
because there is so much tension in working,
you have to be able to control all that right?
You have to be clear minded.
For that you need time to work on your own self,
sometimes not do anything...
To replenish.
Madrigal #2
poem by Razmik Davoyan
The nature of sounds, the nature of sounds in movement,
when entering inside of you,
brings with it a kind of feeling, of being one with reality,
it becomes the same as reality.
It's strange, you can't really explain it with words.
Things start to happen,
where the sounds themselves are no longer important,
they become fragments of life being lived.
These last for a very short time,
and you're not there anymore.
I have a very hard time judging my own work.
I only know at that moment that is all I could have done,
that is all I could have brought into focus,
and that work founds its life,
but is it good or not, beautiful or not, I don't know...
Four Serious Songs
Violin Concerto #2
My music comes from monodia, I am a monodist.
Monodia means one sound.
My foundation, the foundation of our national,
and spiritual music, is monodia.
A composer is not someone who can write music,
but someone who can't not write music.
In my music...
In the nature of its expression...
Confessing has a very important place.
To confess...
I don't know why I always have to confess,
I don't know where this need comes from.
I don't know, I have a hard time...no, no....
I don't know where it...
I...
Once in the past, when I was very young,
some students asked me what makes me write music.
What feeling makes me write the most?
I told them, the feeling of guilt.
It really is like that.
The guilt of not working.
That guilt makes you sit down and work,
but it's not only that.
In general...
I don't know where it comes from...
To speak in a way as though you are confessing.
I don't know why it's like that.
Perhaps our spiritual music?
No, this isn't a question of music.
This is my own personal question.
When I write music, it is simply like that, like a confession,
it has a confessional nuance in it.
That is why I really love literature,
which has that confessional nuance in it,
and when I read Faulkner, for example,
I see a totally confessing writer in that man.
The exposition is mostly a confession to begin with,
that tone of his, it is a confessional tone.
There are those who whip out words, whip out sounds.
There are those for whom music is like a woman,
who they drag by the hair.
Music is their female slave.
There are also people like that.
I just want to say that it is different...
I am...
...always confessing.
Viola Concerto
a film by - Hayk Hambartsum
Con Anima - live performance
Havik - ECM "Hayren" - viola Kim Kashkashian - percussion Robyn Schulowsky
Chinar Es - ECM "Hayren" - Komitas - piano and voice Tigran Mansurian
Testament - ECM "String Quartets" - Rosamunde String Quartet
Ars Poetica - ECM "Ars Poetica" - Armenian Chamber Choir - Conductor Robert Mlkeyan
Ars Poetica - live rehearsal - Lark Geghart Choir - conductor Vatsche Barsoumian
Davit Marqareh - live performance - voice Hasmik Papyan - piano Tigran Mansurian
Confessing With Faith - ECM "Monodia" - The Hilliard Ensemble - viola Kim Kashkashian
Madrigal #2 - rehearsal - voice Shoushik Barsoumian - flute Pamela Martchev - piano Sarkis Baltaian - cello Armen Ksajikian
Four Serious Songs - Violin Concerto #2 - rehearsal - violin Movses Pogossian - conductor Vatsche Barsoumian
Alto Concerto - ECM «Monodia» - Kim Kashkashian - Munich Orchestre de Chambre - Chef d'Orchestre Christopher Poppen
Special Thanks - Tigran Mansurian
Special Thanks - Nvart Mansurian
Special Thanks - Vatsche Barsoumian