Bio of Komitas Vardapet

KOMITAS Vardapet (1869- 1935)

Komitas, the Armenian composer and ethnomusicologist, was born Soghomon Soghomonian in 1869. Orphaned at an early age, he was sent in 1881 to Etchmiadzin, the spiritual center of the Armenian Apostolic Church, to study at the Gevorkian Seminary where he mastered the art of Armenian liturgical singing and conducted research on Armenian folk and sacred music. At the conclusion of his religious education in 1895, he was ordained Vartapet (celibate priest) and adopted the name of Komitas, in memory of the noted 7th century Armenian hymn writer. Between 1893-1896 he founded and tutored the seminary choir and published a volume of Armenian folk songs. In 1896, he traveled to Berlin where, on the advice of Joseph Joachim, he enrolled in the private conservatory of Richard Schmidt and studied aesthetics at the Friedhelm Wilhelm University. He was one of the first musicologists to join the International Musical Society. In 1896, he was awarded a doctorate degree in musicology. He later returned to Etchmiadzin as a choir director, and Instructor of music at the Seminary. Komitas returned to Etchmiadzin in 1899 and spent eleven years in fieldwork throughout the Ottoman Empire, collecting and transcribing Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish dance tunes. Wrote down 2400 folk songs in Armenian, Arabic, Kurdish, and Persian, investigating the Armenian khaz (neumatic) notation system. His main contribution was to rediscover Armenian folk music. He made the public aware of the existence of true Armenian melodies. In addition to the folk music, Komitas arranged the entire music of the Divine Liturgy Patarag) of the Armenian Church, for male voices. During this period he lectured extensively on Armenian music in Europe. Komitas performed concerts in Paris, Geneva, Bern, Constantinople, Venice, and Alexandria. In 1910, he moved from Etchmiadzin to Constantinople, one of the largest centers of Armenian cultural life. For the next five years, he dedicated his energies and knowledge to the training and conducting of the 300-member Gusan Armenian mixed choir in Constantinople. He also performed as a soloist, and between 1912-1913 he recorded a series of 78rpm phonograph records in Paris. After the April 24, 1915 massacres of the Armenian people by the Turks, he succumbed to mental and physical anguish and never fully recovered. The revered holy man died in Paris on October 22, 1935 in a mental hospital. One year after his death his ashes were transferred to Yerevan and interred in the Yerevan Panthenon. In the 1950's his manuscripts were transported from Paris to Yerevan where they were being studied and published Komitas Vartapet is considered one of the immortals of the Armenian Church and is remembered in the minds and hearts of all Armenians.

/Excerpted from Professor Leon Janikyan’s article (Northwestern University)./

. “The Armenian people found and recognized its soul, its spiritual nature” in Komitas’ songs. Komitas Vardapet is a beginning having no end. He will live through the Armenian people, and they must live through him, now and forever”. /Vazgen I, the Catholicos of all Armenians./