Hamparsum Limonciyan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There are very few or no other articles that link to this one.
Please help introduce links in articles on related topics. After links have been created, remove this message.
This article has been tagged since September 2006.

Hamparsum Limonciyan (1768-1839) was a composer of Armenian church music and Turkish classical music. He was chief musician of the Armenian Apostolic Church in Istanbul, then known as Constantinople. (The name Համբարձում, pronounced Hampartsum in Western Armenian or Hambardzum in Eastern Armenian, means "Ascension".)

Upon request from Ottoman Sultan Selim III, he created a musical notation system, also called Hamparsum. This uses symbols derived from an older notation called խազ khaz used by the Armenian Church. Pitch is indicated by one of forty-five symbols. There are fourteen notes per octave over a range of three octaves and a minor second; a tilde is used in place of a sharp and also to raise or lower a note an octave. All twelve notes of the Western chromatic scale are represented, but in the case of F-sharp (fa diyez in Turkish) and B-natural (si), two enharmonic symbols are used for each, because Middle Eastern music uses microtonal intervals called commas. Above each note is written another symbol, marking its duration. Other symbols are used for rests, repeats and phrases.