Komitas in Yerevan, 1901

Komitas (Soghomon Soghomonyan) in Yerevan, a photograph from 1901. He wears a vardapet's hood, with a large cross hanging on a chain on his chest.

Komitas was an Armenian priest and composer, devoted to musical ethnography and the founder of the Armenian national school of composition. He was born in Kutina (Kütahya) and lost his parents early. He studied at the seminary in Etchmiadzin (Vagharshapat), then in Tiflis (Tbilisi) under Makar Yekmalyan, and, with the support of Alexander Mantashyants, at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. He collected 3,000 to 5,000 folk songs, of which only 1,200 have survived. Claude Debussy said: “Even if Komitas had written only the song Antuni, it would be enough to recognise him as a great composer.”

On 24 April 1915 Komitas was arrested together with other Armenian intellectuals. Through the intervention of the US Ambassador Henry Morgenthau and Turkish friends he was saved, but only physically. He spent the last years of his life in a psychiatric hospital in Paris, where he died.