Shushiki

Komitas Vardapet (Soghomon Soghomonian) was the founding figure of Armenian sacred and ethnographic music — a priest, musicologist and composer who collected over four thousand folk songs in the early twentieth century before being deported during the 1915 Armenian genocide. The Dances are one of his most-performed sets: short pieces transcribing Armenian instrumental folk material into a piano texture.

Shushiki is a slow lyrical dance in D minor with strong modal flavours (the Armenian kaghantos and shushtar modes show through the European-tonal frame). Technically the piece tests three things: a quiet but rhythmically alive left-hand drone or ostinato that holds the dance pulse, a long-breathed cantabile right-hand line with characteristic modal turns, and the kind of patient rubato that Armenian dances live on — a small lift at phrase ends, never a push.

Two pitfalls. First, students pull the modal turns into a tonal reading; trust the score, the slightly raised or lowered notes are the music's identity. Second, the rubato is taken too widely — Armenian dance rubato is small and constant, not large and occasional.

Listening: PD recordings of Komitas are now widely available on Musopen and IMSLP audio (his music came out of copyright decades ago). His own field recordings of Armenian folk material — partially on IMSLP audio — give the most authoritative reference for the modal touch.