Nigoghos Tashjian is not a familiar name when we speak of Armenian religious music, but we owe to him the use of modern notation to transcribe the ancient hymns and songs. In this way, those pieces were rescued from becoming undecipherable for modern musicians and musicologists.
Tashjian was born in Constantinople on June 17, 1841. He studied at the Nersesian School of Haskeuy, where he was a student of Kapriel Yeranian (author of the music for the song “Guiliguia”).
In the 1860s Tashjian was involved in the publication of several music journals. First, he published a semi-annual journal called Nvak osmanian (“Ottoman Melody”), with his brother Hagopig Tashjian, and then he joined his teacher Yeranian to publish another periodical, Knar Arevelian (“Oriental Lyre”). In 1863 Tashjian, Vartan Papazian, and composer Tigran Chuhajian (the author of the first Armenian opera, “Arshag II”) published together yet another music journal, Osmanian yerazhshdutiun (“Ottoman Music”). All three journals were printed in lithography (from a stone plate, hence the name) and included Armenian and Turkish songs.
Tashjian printed interesting articles in the Armenian press of Constantinople, and in 1871 he was invited to Holy Echmiadzin to teach music at the Kevorkian Seminary, where future composer Makar Yekmalian was his student. Three years later, he published his Textbook of Armenian Ecclesiastic Notation , where he first explained the notation system of his predecessor Hampartzum Limonjian, and he later presented the nature and a brief history of Armenian music.
His most important service to Armenian music would be, as we said, the use of modern notation to transcribe religious songs and hymns, trying to maintain the authentic meaning of the ancient Armenian khaz (neumes). By the second half of the nineteenth century, the key to the khaz was lost and there was nobody left to sing them accurately. This is why various authors, like Limonjian and Tashjian, tried to “translate” them into modern notation. Tashjian published four books of transcribed songs in Holy Echmiadzin: Songbook of the Divine Liturgy (1874); Songbook of Armenian Liturgical Hymns (1875); Songs with Notation of the Book of Hours of the Armenian Holy Church (1877), and Excerpts of Blessings with Notation (1882).
In 1879 he returned to Constantinople, where he taught music at various schools and was the choirmaster at the Armenian Cathedral of Constantinople. He was also the author of various patriotic songs, which Yekmalian and Gomidas Vartabed later arranged for polyphonic version.
Tashjian passed away in Constantinople on September 9, 1885, at the age of forty-four, but his legacy would outlive him and become a stepping stone for his successors in the field of Armenian religious music.
