140TH BIRTH ANNIVERSARY OF KOMITAS MARKED IN BERLIN

PanARMENIAN.Net
26.01.2010 12:33 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The140th birth anniversary of Komitas was marked
in Kaiser-Wilhelm Church in Berlin last week. The event started with
a service offered by Archimandrite Eghishe, the spiritual leader of
the Armenian community of Berlin.

"Such events are important for preservation of national identity. They
help the young generation know their culture," chairman of the Armenian
church and cultural community of Berlin Petros Tikichian said in his
opening remarks.

Community member Sona Aiber-Chukaszyan gave a report on Komitas’ life.

"It was a great evening, filled with the energy and spirit of Komitas,"
Father Eghishe told a PanARMENIAN.Net reporter.

The event was attended by art workers, historians, students and
representatives of the Armenian community of Berlin.

Komitas, (Soghomon Soghomonyan) was born on September 26, 1869
in Anatolia, Turkey, in the town of Koutina (Ketaia). His father,
Gevorg Soghomonyan was a shoemaker but he also composed songs and had
a beautiful voice. The composer’s mother – Tagui – was also singled
out for her vivid musical abilities; she was a carpet weaver. His
mother died when he was one, and ten years later his father also
died. His grandmother looked after him until 1881 when a prelate of
the local Armenian diocese went to Echmiadzin to be consecrated a
bishop. The catholicos Gevork IV ordered him to bring one orphaned
child to be educated at the Echmiadzin Seminary. Soghomon was chosen
among 20 candidates and entered the seminary (where he impressed the
catholicos with his singing talent) and finished it in 1893 when he
became a monk. According to church tradition, newly ordained priests
are given new names, and Soghomon was renamed Komitas (named after
a 7th century Armenian catholicos who was also a hymn writer). Two
years later he became a priest and obtained the title Vardapet,
meaning a priest or a church scholar.

He established and conducted the monastery choir till 1896 when he
went to Berlin, enrolled the Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm University
and studied music at the private conservatory of Prof. Richard
Schmidt. In 1899 he acquired the title doctor of musicology and
returned to Echmiadzin, where he took over conducting a polyphonic
male choir. He traveled extensively around the country, listening to
and recording details about Armenian folk songs and dances performed
in various villages. This way he collected and published some 3000
songs, many of them adapted to choir singing.

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 Gusan. On April 24, 1915, said to be the day when
the Armenian Genocide officially began, he was arrested and put to
train the next day together with 180 other Armenian notables and sent
to the city of Cankırı in northern Central Anatolia, at a distance
of some 300 miles. His good friend, Turkish nationalist poet Mehmet
Emin Yurdakul, the authoress Halide Edip, and the U.S. ambassador
Henry Morgenthau intervened with the government and, by special orders
fromTalat Pasha, Komitas was dispatched back to the capital alongside
eight other Armenians who had been deported. Armenian sources deny
rumors of earlier schizophrenia or venereal disease and stress that
he never fully recovered from these 15 days experience. As of autumn
1916, he was taken to a Turkish military hospital and he moved to
Paris in 1919 where he died in a psychiatric clinic Villejuif in 1935.

Next year his ashes were transferred to Yerevan and buried in the
Pantheon.

The Armenian community of Germany was founded by Armenian students,
who arrived in Leipzig in 1885 and formed a Union there. However, like
much of the Armenian Diaspora, most Armenians immigrated to Germany
after the Armenian Genocide of 1915 in the Ottoman Empire. Others
came later, fleeing conflicts in Iran, Azerbaijan and Lebanon. Another
influx was caused by nationalist persecution in Turkey.

The first Armenian organization was the Armenian Colony of Berlin,
established in 1923. By 1975, Armenian associations would be
established in Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and
Munich. In the 1980s, other associations were established in Bremen,
Braunschweig, Bielefeld, Duisburg, Neuwied, Bonn, Hanau, Eppingen,
Nuernberg, Kehl and elsewhere.

Presently, 40-42 thousands of Armenians are reported to live in
Germany.