Soghomon Soghomonian commonly known as Komitas, was born on 26 september, 1869 and died on 22 October 1935. He was an Armenian priest, musicologist, composer, arranger, singer, and choirmaster, who is considered the founder of the Armenian 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 the Gevorgian Seminary. Following his ordination as vardapet (celibate priest) in 1895, he studied music at the Frederick William University in Berlin.
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.During the Armenian genocide, in April 1915, along with 100 of other Armenian intellectuals, Komitas was arrested and deported to a prison camp by the Ottoman government. He was soon released under unclear circumstances and, having witnessed indiscriminate cruelty and relentless massacres of other Armenians by the Ottoman Turks, Komitas experienced a mental breakdown and developed a severe case of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 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.
On January 29, 2015, the opening of the Komitas Museum-Institute took place in the park named after Komitas in Yerevan. At the end of June of the same year, thanks to the “Renaissance” cultural and intellectual foundation, Komitas Vardapet’s plan was realized. A selection of 100 folk songs by Komitas published by the name “A thousand and one games”.
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