The beginnings of Armenian spiritual music can be traced back to the 5th century, when Armenian spiritual writing also began to develop, particularly canons and songs under the shared name Sharakan. The most renowned fathers of the Armenian church took part in the writing of that liturgical book, beginning with Saints Saak-Partyanin, Mersop and Movses Khorenatsi in the 5th century and ending with Vardan the Great and Ioann Yerzenkaisky in the 18th century.

The word sharakan means a book in which spiritual songs are collected, and it comes from the root word sher, which means song.

Canons and songs contained in the Sharakan were written in the ancient Armenian language – sometimes in prose, sometimes in verse. They are sung in church at specified times and days, in the accepted eight voices, which are defined in the words of the poems taken from the Old and New Testaments. To convey the sounds, there were special characters that did not specify the exact pitch or length of the note, instead merely indicating the direction of the voice, some modulations and the time to hold the sound. In a word, if you can put it this way, they didn't so much convey the motif of the song as remind you of it. That said, these characters, with all of their variety and difficulty to master, were not of overriding importance, since there existed another method, closer to the European system of notes, to convey the melody.

In the interests of preparing priests, the monastic clergy gathered youths from various regions who, among other things, were taught to sing and remember the songs and then sent back to their various home towns to spread the church songs as they were meant to be performed. It's not hard to value the role these monastic pupils played: you just have to remember the oppression of the Turks and other Muslims, when Armenian monasteries were being destroyed or annihilated and their influence on the people weakened. What's more, at a later time, archimandrites left from the Echmiadzin Monastery to collect donations, and they were supposed to keep an eye on the correctness of liturgies, as well as of church songs. That's the only way you can explain the uniformity in the renditions of these songs, which is noticeable among Armenians who are very far from one another, in development, lifestyle, language and different countries.

To the present day, spiritual music is something that binds together Armenians from around the world, making them a unified and self-conscious nationality and helping them not stray from the path of their forefathers, who – despite the terrible oppression of non-Christian peoples – were able to preserve and pass on the priceless heritage of Armenian Christian culture.

In that sense, music has served as a sort of way for Armenians to pass on the patristic traditions of the church, a certain religious course that wouldn't allow for anything to be lost from the church teachings – even in the hardest of times. Nowadays, there are very few people who don't know about the Armenian instrument the duduk. The sad sound of the ancient instrument of Armenian shepherds has gradually absorbed all of the sorrow of the Armenian soul. “Bemoan your sins,” the legend says. That's the true meaning of the sad sound of the duduk. “If you don't see and cry over your internal state of being, God will help you with external woes.” Indeed, the Evangelical truth holds firm: “We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God.” (Acts 14:22)