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ARTUR SHAHNZARYAN KOMITAS

Artur Shahnazarian
Musicologist and Composer Soghomon Soghomonyan 1869-1935

Komitas was born in Anatolia, in the city of Kutina or ​Kütahya​, in 1869. His ancestors were from the Goghtan region, which is known from Khorenatsi as the birthplace of gusans, bards. It had been forbidden to speak Armenian where Komitas was born and because of this, his ancestors, his father and mother spoke Turkish. They didn’t know Armenian.

Komitas wasn’t even a year old when his mother, Taguhi, died. She gave birth to him at seventeen and died within a year, leaving him a maternal orphan. His father was a cobbler and it was he who raised him. His father and mother were vocally gifted and liked to sing. The melodies that they sang may have had Armenian roots, but they sang them in Turkish, because as I mentioned, they didn’t know Armenian. His paternal uncle also liked to sing. In short, he came from a family of singers. He was also exposed to Classical Armenian at the Armenian church which he attended. Though he couldn’t understand the language, he listened to the music and even learnt to sing the songs, because his father and uncle participated in the church liturgy and sang in it. He was subsequently sent to Bursa, his mother’s birthplace, to attend school. While at school, he received news of his father’s death. Orphaned, he was left in the care of his grandmother, Mariam, and his uncle’s wife.

And here something auspicious took place that would prove fateful for the Armenian people. At the behest of Catholicos Gevorg IV of Etchmiadzin, an orphan from the region was to be brought to study at the Seminary. The Catholicos had established a seminary that took in orphans from various places, so that they could get education and have a chance, as Tumanian had said, ‘’to become somebody’’.

Gevorgian Theological Seminary of the Mother See of Etchmiadzin

And so, out of twenty children, Komitas was chosen. I am certain that he was chosen for his voice because there was a need for vocally gifted children in Etchmiadzin. And so, they took him to Etchmiadzin. At the Seminary he learnt Armenian. Not only did he learn Classical, Eastern, and Western Armenian, but he also began to learn dialects: the dialects of Sassoun, Van, Lori, Shirak. As

his musical abilities became more evident, he began to transcribe folk songs. By the time of his graduation from the Seminary, this young man had transcribed such a large number of songs that this collection alone would become an exceptional treasure for the Armenian people. During his years at the Seminary, Komitas kept a notebook of his musical modes, church modes based on the Armenian scales, that even decades later would not be surpassed by other musicologists. So Komitas began to transcribe Armenian folk songs and pledged that through this work it would be his mission to revive, recover and deliver to the people the Armenian soul, its essence, its centuries-old culture, and I say culture because music encompasses all of it.

There was a movement at the time called ‘’To Know the Armenian People’’, originated and greatly influenced by a contemporary of Komitas, Garegin Srvandztiants. It is important to understand this movement in order to be able to understand Komitas. In the 1870s Garegin Srvandztyants recovered and transcribed the Armenian epic ‘’Daredevils of Sasooun’’, returning this treasure to the people. He traveled through the highlands, provinces and villages of Armenia, met the people who lived there, and wrote down their stories in a way that no one had done before. He informed the Armenian people about this treasure and declared that hidden in their mountains and valleys lived a nation of obscurity. He said that there was a need for individuals who could record and preserve this cultural heritage passed down through the millennia.

And so Komitas became the epitome of this movement, because Armenian culture had been preserved at its fullest in music. In other words, our old folklore had mostly disappeared, our ancient architecture from the pre-Christian era had been largely destroyed, wiped out. And we had preserved our culture in the language of music. And it is in this language of music, because of Komitas, that we retained millennia of our cultural heritage. As Komitas said, the roots of these songs are so old that they date back to the origins of the Armenian people and from there reach all the way to our own times.

Now, Komitas was able to save this heritage from oblivion by collecting these songs as a young man. His next task was to establish a discipline. He wrote scientific works and established a new tonal system that was entirely different from the European system. It was a system unique only to Armenian music. And he developed into a great musician, composer, and scholar.

It is said that Komitas saved our traditional folk music. What does that mean? In one word, it means our homeland. Our mountains, our highlands, our valleys, our fields, our sun are an extension of our bodies – this is homeland across time. And that nature, I am not saying the Armenian people, but that environment gave us those songs. There was an entire homeland expressed in those songs. They were work songs about how the peasant tills the land, songs about bread, about rocking the baby, milking the cow. They were ceremonial songs about the seven-day wedding, songs about our holy days,

children’s songs, songs of lamentation, grieving songs, the old songs of our epic David of Sassoun. And, of course, love songs because when we say homeland, love is at its very core. These are sacred songs, each one a piece of our homeland. Komitas collected and transcribed all of these genres, classifying them in the hundreds. And our essence, our soul, our language, our whole culture can be seen reflected in his work.

If we ask the question, what it is after all that Komitas represents for the Armenian people, the answer would be that Komitas ​is the Armenian people. Paruyr Sevak said that the three fundamental elements of Armenia were the homeland, Ararat, and Komitas. And by Komitas he meant not the man but the Armenian people – Komitas encompasses all.

Produced by AGBU
Armenian General Benevolent Union

SPECIAL THANKS

Music and images courtesy of AGBU
Komitas Museum-Institute

Landscape paintings by Martiros Saryan

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