KOMITAS

Soghomon Soghomonian, known as Komitas

Komitas was the most important collector of Armenian folk songs, and his exact and detailed researches established Armenian musicology on a scientific basis. His own folk-based songs and choruses and his liturgical chants are still popular among Armenians, many of whom regard him as their foremost composer.
Little-known abroad, but treasured at home, Komitas was born in what is now Turkey and trained as a priest at the seminary of Etchmiadzin, the centre of the Armenian Church. He collected 3000 Armenian folk tunes, composed liturgical and instrumental music, much of it based on the music he collected.
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.