About this Site

This site was prepared in honor of the 1600th anniversary of the invention of the Armenian alphabet.

It is a companion to the Sharakanneri Untrani, prepared, published and distributed free by the Arak-29 Charitable Foundation in conjunction with the Ararat Diocese of the Armenian Church in November 2004.

As in many cultures, propagation of the Christian faith was a key factor in the development of Armenian writing and letters. The foundation for Armenian sacred music was laid by the inventors of the Armenian alphabet, Sts. Sahak and Mesrop, and their circle of disciples, the Holy Translators.

Hymns are at the intersection of music, poetry, religious thought, and spirituality. As such, they are an important part of the cultural heritage of the Armenian people and a key to the nation’s soul. This site aims to make this heritage more easily accessible to a new generation, using the multimedia capacities of the internet.

This site features:

1.    A three-way index of some 75 common Armenian hymns, by Feast Day, Author, and Title

2.    The dynamic text of each hymn, in Armenian, Eastern Armenian transliteration, and English, with clickable word-by-word translations and grammatical parsing

3.    Biographies of the authors

4.    Annotations about each hymn, its history and when it is sung

5.    A three-way dictionary of all the words in the Sharakans, complete with a concordance of the hymn texts

6.    Printable, .pdf versions of the musical notation of each Sharakan, with the word-by-word translation and transliteration and integrated translation of the text in English.

7.    The Melody of each of the hymns in .wav format, playable from the site using Real Player or MSN media player.

8.    The Armenian Church Calendar (from 1980 to 2024) with the key feast days and an explanation of their origin and significance

Note that this site has been written in Unicode Armenian. Unicode Armenian fonts can be downloaded free from http://www.freenet.am .

This site was prepared by Arak-29 Charitable Foundation (www.arak29.am and Arlex International Ltd. www.arlex.am)

Project Coordinators: Tom Samuelian, Tigran Harutyunyan

Hymn Compilers and Editorial Staff for the Book Version: Khoren Balian, Fr. Mesrob Aramian, Thomas Samuelian, Tigran Harutyunyan

Programming: Davit Davtyan, Samvel Alexanyan, Arsen Andreasyan, Rafayel Hovsepyan

Musical Notation: Artur Manukyan, Varuzhan Magaryan, Vache Sharafian,

Melody Recordings: Vache Sarafian

Thanks to Tamar Hajian, Jason Demerjian, Armen Simonian, Robert Asadryan, Paul Maranian, Raffi Gulbenk, Aram Hajian and others who have contributed their efforts and time to this site.