2. Part 1
• Soghomon Soghomonian, ordained and commonly
known as Komitas, was
an Armenian priest, musicologist, composer, arranger, si
nger, and choirmaster, who is considered the founder
ofArmenian national school of music. He is recognized as
one of the pioneers of ethnomusicology.
• Orphaned at a young age, Komitas was taken
to Etchmiadzin, Armenia's religious center, where he
received education at theGevorgian Seminary. Following
his ordination as vardapet in 1895, he studied music at
the Frederick William University in Berlin. He thereafter
"used his Western training to build a national
tradition".He collected and transcribed over 3,000 pieces
of Armenian folk music, more than half of which were
subsequently lost and only around 1,200 are now extant.
Besides Armenian folk songs, he also showed interest in
other cultures and in 1904 published the first-ever
collection of Kurdish folk songs.
3. Part 2
• His choir presented Armenian music in many European cities,
earning the praise of Claude Debussy, among others. Komitas
settled in Constantinople in 1910 to escape mistreatment by ultra-
conservative clergymen at Etchmiadzin and to introduce Armenian
folk music to wider audiences. He was widely embraced by
Armenian communities, while Arshag Chobanian called him the
"savior of Armenian music".
• During the Armenian Genocide—along with hundreds of other
Armenian intellectuals—Komitas was arrested and deported to
aprison camp in April 1915 by the Ottoman government. He was
soon released under unclear circumstances and experienced a
mental breakdown and developed a severe case of posttraumatic
stress disorder. The widespread hostile environment in
Constantinople and reports of mass-scale Armenian death marches
and massacres that reached him further worsened his fragile
mental state. He was first placed in a Turkish military-operated
hospital until 1919 and then transferred to psychiatric hospitals in
Paris, where he spent the last years of his life in agony. Komitas is
widely seen as a martyr of the genocide and has been depicted as
one of the main symbols of the Armenian Genocide in art.
4. Legacy, part 1
• In the 1950s, his manuscripts were also transferred from Paris to Yerevan.
• Badarak was first printed in 1933 in Paris and first recorded onto a digital
media in 1988 in Yerevan. In collecting and publishing so many folk songs,
he saved the cultural heritage of Western Armenia that otherwise would
have disappeared because of the genocide. His works have been published
in the Republic of Armenia in a thoroughly annotated edition by Robert
Atayan. Lately, nine songs on German poetry, written during his stay in
Berlin, have been excavated from the archives in Yerevan and interpreted
by soprano Hasmik Papian.
• The Yerevan State Musical Conservatory is named after Komitas. There
also exists a world-renowned string quartet named after Komitas.
• On 6 July 2008, on the occasion of Quebec City's 400th anniversary
celebration, a bronze bust of Komitas was unveiled near the Quebec
National Assembly in recognition of his great input to music in general and
to Armenian popular and liturgical music in particular. Previously, a Granite
and Bronze statue of Komitas was erected inDetroit in 1981 in honor of the
great composer and as a reminder of the tragedy of the Armenian
Genocide.
5. Legacy, part 2
• In September 2008, the CD Gomidas Songs, sung by Isabel
Bayrakdarian and accompanied by the Chamber Players of
the Armenian Philharmonic and pianist Serouj Kradjian, was
released on the Nonesuch label. This CD was nominated for
a Grammy Award in the Best Vocal Recording category. A
major North American tour by Ms. Bayrakdarian in October
2008 featured the music of Komitas, with concerts in
Toronto, San Francisco, Orange County, Los Angeles,
Vancouver, Boston and New York's Carnegie Hall. She was
accompanied by the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra
conducted by Anne Manson, and pianist Serouj Kradjian.
The Remembrance Tourwas dedicated to victims of all
genocides and sponsored by the International Institute for
Genocide and Human Rights Studies. Among the other
performers of his music are Evgeny Kissin and Grigory
Sokolov.
