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SEPT 26 MARKS 144TH BIRTH ANNIVERSARY OF KOMITAS (VIDEO)
September 26, 2013 - 11:12 AMT
PanARMENIAN.Net - September 26 marks the 144th birth anniversary of
Armenian priest, composer, choir leader, singer, music ethnologist
and teacher Komitas Vardapet (by Western Armenian transliteration
also Gomidas Vartabed).
Komitas was born in 1869, in Kutahya, Ottoman Empire, 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 Etchmiadzin to be
consecrated a bishop. Catholicos Gevork IV ordered him to bring one
orphaned child to be educated at the Etchmiadzin 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 Etchmiadzin, 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.
Komitas 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 official date when
the Armenian Genocide began, he was arrested and put on a train the
next day together with 180 other Armenian notables and sent to the
city of Cankırı in northern Central Anatolia, at a distance of some
300 miles.
In the autumn of 1916, he was taken to a hospital in Constantinople,
Hôpital 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.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umU3k30lK_g
http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/news/170477/
September 26, 2013 - 11:12 AMT
PanARMENIAN.Net - September 26 marks the 144th birth anniversary of
Armenian priest, composer, choir leader, singer, music ethnologist
and teacher Komitas Vardapet (by Western Armenian transliteration
also Gomidas Vartabed).
Komitas was born in 1869, in Kutahya, Ottoman Empire, 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 Etchmiadzin to be
consecrated a bishop. Catholicos Gevork IV ordered him to bring one
orphaned child to be educated at the Etchmiadzin 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 Etchmiadzin, 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.
Komitas 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 official date when
the Armenian Genocide began, he was arrested and put on a train the
next day together with 180 other Armenian notables and sent to the
city of Cankırı in northern Central Anatolia, at a distance of some
300 miles.
In the autumn of 1916, he was taken to a hospital in Constantinople,
Hôpital 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.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umU3k30lK_g
http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/news/170477/