Tigran Mansurjan

Agnus Dei

Composed in 2006 for the 15th Oleg Kagan Festival in Wildbad Kreuth, 'Agnus Dei' is one of Mansurjan's meditative works in which he aims at a synthesis of new techniques and old Armenian musical tradition which is fed equally by folk and church music. The quartet is based on three texts from the Latin mass (I Agnus Dei, II Qui tollis peccata mundi, III Miserere) as intellectual idea; its musical form is characterized by melodic restraint, rhythmic ostinato models and interval structures as well as by transparent, oscillating sound layers. 'The quiet tenderness of the sound waves reaching the ear rather feels like a mystic breeze that lightly grazes the skin.'