Soghomon (Gevorgi)
Soghomonyan was born into a family whose members were deeply involved in music
and were monolingual in Turkish. His mother died when he was one, and his
father died ten years later. His grandmother looked after him until 1881, when
a prelate of the local Armenian diocese went to Echmiadzin to be consecrated a
bishop. The catholicosGevork IV ordered him to bring one orphaned child to be
educated at the Echmiadzin Seminary. Soghomon was chosen among 20 candidates
and admitted into the seminary (where he impressed the catholicos with his
singing talent) and graduated in 1893, after which he became a monk. According
to church tradition, newly ordained priests are given new names, and Soghomon
was renamed Komitas (named after the seventh-century Armenian catholicos who
was also a hymn writer). Two years later, he became a priest and obtained the
title Vardapet (or Vartabed), meaning a "priest" or a "church
scholar."
He established and
conducted the monastery choir until 1896, when he went to Berlin, enrolled in
the Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm University and studied music at the private
conservatory of Prof. Richard Schmidt. In 1899, he acquired the title Doctor of
Musicology and returned to Echmiadzin, where he took over conducting a
polyphonic male choir. He traveled extensively around the country, listening to
and recording details about Armenian folk songs and dances performed in various
villages. This way, he collected and published some 3000 songs, many of them
adapted to choir singing.
His major work is
Badarak (Divine Liturgy), still used today as one of the two most popular
musical settings of the Armenian Church liturgy or mass. Today the best-known
version of Badarak is his favourite for a four-voiced male choir. The words
certainly are not original but are the text of the Armenian mass, which has
been used for centuries. Armenian Church music was traditionally monophonic,
but MakarYekmalian, Komitas, and several other musician/composers in the 19th
and 20th centuries arranged polyphonic versions of the pre-existing melodies.
Some composers (but not Komitas or Yekmalian) created completely original
musical settings of the liturgy as well.
He was the first
non-European to be admitted into the International Music Society, of which he
was a co-founder. He gave many lectures and performances throughout Europe,
Turkey and Egypt, thus presenting till then very little known Armenian music.
From 1910, he lived
and worked in Istanbul. There, he established a 300-member choir, Gusan. On
April 24, 1915, the day when the Armenian Genocide officially began, he was
arrested and put on a train. The next day together with 180 other Armenian
notables and sent to the city of Çankırı in northern Central Anatolia. By
special orders from Taliat Pasha, Komitas was dispatched (ուղարկվեց )back to the capital
alongside eight other Armenians who had been deported during which Komitas
suffered tremendously and was afflicted with traumatic neurosis.
“ In the autumn of 1916, he was
taken to a hospital in Constantinople, Hôspital de la paix, and then moved to
Paris in 1919, where he died in a psychiatric clinic in Villejuif in 1935. Next
year, his ashes were transferred to Yerevan and buried in the Pantheon that was
named after him.
The Yerevan State
Musical Conservatory is named after Komitas. There also exists a worldwide
renowned string quartet named after Komitas.
.
The following
landmarks were named after him:
The central square of
Ejmiatsin city is named after Komitas. Yerevan State Musical Conservatory is named
after KomitasVardapet
Yerevan State Musical
Conservatory is named after KomitasVardapet.
Komitas Avenue, the
main thoroughfare of Yerevan's Arabkir District, is named after
KomitasVardapet.
The writers' and
poets' pantheon in Yerevan is named after Komitas.
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