Harmony of Speech and Melody

On October 23 the students and teachers of the "Mkhitar Sebastatsi" Educomplex had an exceptionally exciting meeting in the Media Hall of the Mother School. The guest speaker was Lilit Bleyan, the well-known songwriter and singer. She spoke about language intonation, stress, tempo and rhythm and about how important it is to take them into account while composing music. Lilit stated that the well-known Armenian scholar Manuk Abeghyan was the first to investigate these prosodic features of the Armenian language. She had brought the copy of Manuk Abeghyan's book entitled "Տաղաչափություն-Prosody" published in 1932. As to Manuk Abeghyan, many Armenian poets and songwriters do not follow the rules of Armenian prosody. Lilit Bleyan read out some extracts from Manuk Abeghyan's book and then she gave some examples of songs in which the lyrics and melody violated the language rules of prosodic features, and on the contrary, she gave examples of real art when poets and composers create a harmony of speech and melody. Actually, Lilit tried to give a scientific explanation of a notion which is considered to be inexplicable: why is a song so pleasant to our ear, whereas another is not? In my opinion Lilit Bleyan succeeded in doing it.