Komitas was born Soghomon Soghomonyan (Solomon Solomonson) in Kütahya in 1869. His family was fond of music and was monolingual in Turkish. When Soghomon was a year old his mother died and when he was ten years old his father died. His grandmother looked after him until he was 12 when a Bishop of the local Armenian diocese went to Echmiadzin to be consecrated an Archbishop. The Catholicos of All Armenians Gevork IV ordered him to bring one orphaned child to be educated at the Gevorgian Seminary at Ejmiatsin. Soghomon was chosen among 20 orphans and was 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 7th-century Armenian Catholicos who was also a hymn writer). In 1895 Komitas was elevated in rank to Archimandrite and obtained the title Vardapet (or Vartabed), meaning a "doctor of the church" or "divine scholar". Komitas established and conducted the Ejmiatsin Choir until 1896, when he travelled to Berlin, enrolled at Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm University and studied music at the private conservatory of Professor Richard Schmidt. In 1899, he acquired the title Doctor of Musicology and returned to Ejmiatsin, where he took over conducting a polyphonic male choir. Komitas traveled extensively around the countryside, listening to and recording details about Armenian folk songs and dances performed in various villages. This way, he collected and published some 3,000 songs, many of them adapted to choir singing. Komitas' major work is the Patarag (the Divine Liturgy), still used today as one of the two most popular musical settings of the Armenian Church Divine Liturgy, which he started composing in 1892 but never completely finished due to the upcoming World War I. For the basis of the work, he took chants sung by the eldest priests and upgraded it with typical ("cleaned" of foreign influences) Armenian music elements from his collected material. Today the best-known version of Patarag is his favorite for a 4-voiced male choir. It must be understood that the Komitas Patarag was not an original composition per se, but rather an arrangement of the pre-existing melodies in use by Armenian priests for the singing of the Divine Liturgy. The words certainly are not original but are the text of the Armenian Divine Liturgy, which has been used for more than a millennium Armenian Church music was traditionally monophonic, but Makar Yekmalian, Komitas, and several other musician/composers in the 19th and 20th centuries arranged polyphonic versions of the pre-existing melodies. 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 named Gusan. He was one the Armenian community leaders of Istanbul that was arrested on April 24, 1915 and sent on a train to a prison in Çankırı. It was due to the efforts of Mehmet Emin Yurdakul, Halide Edip Adıvar, and Henry Morgenthau (the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire) that Mehmet Talât Paşa had Komitas along with 8 other Armenians leaders (among hundreds) sent back to Istanbul. Another Armenian notable Grigoris Balakian was on the same train as Komitas and he later wrote about Komitas's sufferings in his memoirs, "Armenian Golgotha": "The more we moved away from civilization, the more agitated were our souls and the more our minds were racked with fear. We thought we saw bandits behind every boulder; the hammocks or cradles hanging from every tree seemed like gallows ropes. The expert on Armenian songs, the peerless archimandrite Father Komitas, who was in our carriage, seemed mentally unstable. He thought the trees were bandits on the attack and continually hid his head under the hem of my overcoat, like a fearful partridge. He begged me to say a blessing for him ["The Savior"] in the hope that it would calm him." In the autumn of 1916, Komitas was taken to a hospital in Istanbul, Hôpital de la paix, and then moved to Paris in 1919, where he died in a psychiatric clinic in Villejuif, Paris in 1935. In 1936 Komitas' ashes were transferred to Yerevan and buried in the Pantheon that was to be named after him. In the 1950s his manuscripts were transferred from Paris to 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. The Yerevan State Conservatory of Music (est. 1921) was renamed the Yerevan Komitas State Conservatory in 1946 after Komitas. There also exists a worldwide renowned string quartet named after Komitas, the Komitas Quartet (est. 1924). In Detroit in 1981 a granite and bronze statue of Komitas was erected in honor of the great composer and as a reminder of the tragedy of the Armenian Genocide. On July 6, 2008, on the occasion of Quebec City's 400th anniversary celebration, a bronze bust of Komitas was unveiled near the Quebec National Assembly (provincial legislature, Auteuil street) in recognition of his great input to music in general and to Armenian popular and liturgical music in particular. In addition to all of this, the Central Square of the City of Ejmiatsin is named Komitas Square. The square is home to a statue of Komitas. The arterial road of Yerevan's Arabkir District also bears his name, Komitas Avenue. The street is home to a statue of Komitas. The pantheon of Armenian artists (writers, poets, painters, actors, directors, composers, playwrights, novelists, architects, etc) is also named in his honor, the Komitas Pantheon. In 2014 the Komitas Museum-Institue (a non-profit organization) will be established to reintroduce, analyze, and repopularize the work of Father Komitas. The structure will have a museum, a research center, a concert hall, a music studio, a library, and a publishing house. One would think Komitas so far removed from the various centers of early recording that the very idea of being able to listen to this great man's legendary voice could be construed as being both absurd and somewhat impertinent, akin to someone saying they'd found records of Adolph Wölfli interpreting his compositions. However, Komitas did record his voice for the Gramophone Company, either in Gymuri or in Ejmiatsin - the sources aren't clear - in 1908. In 1912, Komitas made another 20 sides as pianist for Orfeón, accompanying Armenian singer Armenak Shah Muradian, a vocalist who was a member of the Opèra de Paris and a student of Komitas.
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Komitas was born Soghomon Soghomonyan (Solomon Solomonson) in Kütahya in 1869. His family was fond of music and was monolingual in Turkish. When Soghomon was a year old his mother died and when he was ten years old his father died. His grandmother looked after him until he was 12 when a Bishop of the local Armenian diocese went to Echmiadzin to be consecrated an Archbishop. The Catholicos of All Armenians Gevork IV ordered him to bring one orphaned child to be educated at the Gevorgian Seminary at Ejmiatsin. Soghomon was chosen among 20 orphans and was 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 7th-century Armenian Catholicos who was also a hymn writer). In 1895 Komitas was elevated in rank to Archimandrite and obtained the title Vardapet (or Vartabed), meaning a "doctor of the church" or "divine scholar".
Komitas established and conducted the Ejmiatsin Choir until 1896, when he travelled to Berlin, enrolled at Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm University and studied music at the private conservatory of Professor Richard Schmidt. In 1899, he acquired the title Doctor of Musicology and returned to Ejmiatsin, where he took over conducting a polyphonic male choir. Komitas traveled extensively around the countryside, listening to and recording details about Armenian folk songs and dances performed in various villages. This way, he collected and published some 3,000 songs, many of them adapted to choir singing.
Komitas' major work is the Patarag (the Divine Liturgy), still used today as one of the two most popular musical settings of the Armenian Church Divine Liturgy, which he started composing in 1892 but never completely finished due to the upcoming World War I. For the basis of the work, he took chants sung by the eldest priests and upgraded it with typical ("cleaned" of foreign influences) Armenian music elements from his collected material. Today the best-known version of Patarag is his favorite for a 4-voiced male choir. It must be understood that the Komitas Patarag was not an original composition per se, but rather an arrangement of the pre-existing melodies in use by Armenian priests for the singing of the Divine Liturgy. The words certainly are not original but are the text of the Armenian Divine Liturgy, which has been used for more than a millennium Armenian Church music was traditionally monophonic, but Makar Yekmalian, Komitas, and several other musician/composers in the 19th and 20th centuries arranged polyphonic versions of the pre-existing melodies.
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 named Gusan.
He was one the Armenian community leaders of Istanbul that was arrested on April 24, 1915 and sent on a train to a prison in Çankırı. It was due to the efforts of Mehmet Emin Yurdakul, Halide Edip Adıvar, and Henry Morgenthau (the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire) that Mehmet Talât Paşa had Komitas along with 8 other Armenians leaders (among hundreds) sent back to Istanbul. Another Armenian notable Grigoris Balakian was on the same train as Komitas and he later wrote about Komitas's sufferings in his memoirs, "Armenian Golgotha":
"The more we moved away from civilization, the more agitated were our souls and the more our minds were racked with fear. We thought we saw bandits behind every boulder; the hammocks or cradles hanging from every tree seemed like gallows ropes. The expert on Armenian songs, the peerless archimandrite Father Komitas, who was in our carriage, seemed mentally unstable. He thought the trees were bandits on the attack and continually hid his head under the hem of my overcoat, like a fearful partridge. He begged me to say a blessing for him ["The Savior"] in the hope that it would calm him."
In the autumn of 1916, Komitas was taken to a hospital in Istanbul, Hôpital de la paix, and then moved to Paris in 1919, where he died in a psychiatric clinic in Villejuif, Paris in 1935. In 1936 Komitas' ashes were transferred to Yerevan and buried in the Pantheon that was to be named after him.
In the 1950s his manuscripts were transferred from Paris to 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.
The Yerevan State Conservatory of Music (est. 1921) was renamed the Yerevan Komitas State Conservatory in 1946 after Komitas. There also exists a worldwide renowned string quartet named after Komitas, the Komitas Quartet (est. 1924).
In Detroit in 1981 a granite and bronze statue of Komitas was erected in honor of the great composer and as a reminder of the tragedy of the Armenian Genocide.
On July 6, 2008, on the occasion of Quebec City's 400th anniversary celebration, a bronze bust of Komitas was unveiled near the Quebec National Assembly (provincial legislature, Auteuil street) in recognition of his great input to music in general and to Armenian popular and liturgical music in particular.
In addition to all of this, the Central Square of the City of Ejmiatsin is named Komitas Square. The square is home to a statue of Komitas. The arterial road of Yerevan's Arabkir District also bears his name, Komitas Avenue. The street is home to a statue of Komitas. The pantheon of Armenian artists (writers, poets, painters, actors, directors, composers, playwrights, novelists, architects, etc) is also named in his honor, the Komitas Pantheon. In 2014 the Komitas Museum-Institue (a non-profit organization) will be established to reintroduce, analyze, and repopularize the work of Father Komitas. The structure will have a museum, a research center, a concert hall, a music studio, a library, and a publishing house.
One would think Komitas so far removed from the various centers of early recording that the very idea of being able to listen to this great man's legendary voice could be construed as being both absurd and somewhat impertinent, akin to someone saying they'd found records of Adolph Wölfli interpreting his compositions. However, Komitas did record his voice for the Gramophone Company, either in Gymuri or in Ejmiatsin - the sources aren't clear - in 1908. In 1912, Komitas made another 20 sides as pianist for Orfeón, accompanying Armenian singer Armenak Shah Muradian, a vocalist who was a member of the Opèra de Paris and a student of Komitas.