About the suite 'Reading the Poetry by Hasmik Sargsyan'

About the suite 'Reading the Poetry by Hasmik Sargsyan'
The suite's title reflects its history. The piece was inspired by reading a book of poetry by an armenian poet Hasmik Sargsyan (published in 2019). The music does not refer to any particular poems from this book. Rather, it follows the line of imagery and emotion of this poetry in general.

The suite consists of five movements, each with its own distinct temper, so it could well be perceived as a self-sufficient piece. Still, David Sakoyan insists that this suite is meant to be single composition, which fully makes sense only as a sequence of its components. Moreover, the movements are not supposed to be separated by silences longer than the rests a the end of the last measure of each.

The first four movements have a similar structure: they all have three components, where the first and the last reproduce the same theme, although the 'repeated' one can be fairly different from the initial both in terms of its orchestration and character.

An example of a drastic difference between the opening and the final can be found in the second movement of the Suite. The idea of this part, as David Sakoyan explains, is to show the ugliness. The ugliness here is represented by the main theme, which is introduced in the third measure by a flute, which soon is combined with an oboe.

The melody is intentionally clumsy and disharmonious. Its ugliness is further exposed and emphasized by the surrounding musical context (starting with the strings and a pipe organ), which, in contrast, represents the 'beautiful' harmony.

As the musical plot develops further, the theme is repeated on and on, always in this beautiful and harmonic environment. Gradually, because of this constant repetition in a beautiful context, the nature if the theme itself changes. By the end of this piece it loses its clumsiness and instead becomes beautiful, solemn and musically necessary.

This central movement of the five-part suite deviates from the main subject of this composition, which was inspired by the poems of Hasmik Sargsyan, and therefore is somewhat mischievous.

But there is more to it. This piece is also meant to make contrast to the general mindset of the modern academic music, Armenian in particular. David Sakoyan recalls that a while ago a composer from Leningrad compared the Armenian music with a wise old man who never smiles, which was a fair point. This piece is meant to be opposite to this image. Also, Sakoyan says that the modern academic music all over the world is too often slow and serious. He thinks that partially the reason is that composing vivid music is much more difficult than slow music. Thus, the third part is supposed to be a divergence from the predominant slowness and seriousness.

The central part of this movement is, in contrast, rather slow. The theme is developing with a rather catchy rhythmic pattern at the background:

The fifth movement is a double fugue, where two themes are introduced, developed and then joined together. Here is how the two themes sound in their main versions.

Theme 1:

Theme 2:

Finally, the two themes join together and sound in parallel like so:

Like all the other movements, the fifth is absolutely autonomous, it doesn't directly refer to any themes from the previous movements. Stil it is meant to generalize and conclude all the previous pieces.

This suite is a piece for chamber orchestra, which includes:

• 2 flutes
• an oboe
• a bassoon
• a pipe organ
• 2 violins
• a viola
• a cello