ARMENIAN CONDUCTOR LEADS ANKARA CHOIR IN PERFORMING GOMIDAS SCORE

Asbarez
eads-ankara-choir-in-performing-gomidas-score/
Feb 26th, 2010

ANKARA (Combined Sources)-The Ankara Radio Polyphonic Choir
has performed a composition by the famous Armenian composer and
ethnomusicologist, Gomidas Vartabed, the Turkish Hurriyet reported
on Thursday.

The piece, "Gali Yerg" (Harvest Wind), was performed in Armenian under
the direction of Istanbul-based Armenian conductor Hagop Mamigonyan.

The choir will sing it again at an Armenian church in Istanbul

Gomidas Vartabed (Soghomon Soghomonian) was an Armenian priest,
composer, ethnomusicologist and luminary of the Ottoman Empire and
is considered to be the founder of Armenian modern classical music.

Born in 1869 in Kutahya, he endured the Armenian Genocide and was
arrested on April 24, 1915 along with 100s of other leaders of the
Armenian community. Gomidas was the first non-European to be admitted
to the International Music Society and traveled through Europe and
the Middle East giving lectures and performances to raise awareness
of Armenian music. Gomidas Vartabed died in Paris France in 1935 in a
psychiatric hospital and his ashes were sent to Yerevan, where street
names and statues of him preserve his memory.

The choir, affiliated with the state-owned Turkish Radio and
Television Corporation (TRT), performed the work as part of a larger
40th anniversary celebration for TRT in which 40 Turkish and foreign
conductors were invited to lead the choir in separate concerts,
performing songs of their choosing.

"When I told them on the phone that I wanted to perform an Armenian
work, there was silence for a few seconds on the other end of the
line, but my request was accepted," Mamigonyan was quoted by Hurriyet
as saying.

The youngest of the 40 composers, Mamigonyan is the chief conductor
of the 40-person polyphonic Surp Lusavoric Armenian Choir in Istanbul,
which has been performing in Istanbul for 80 years.

Recordings of the concert will be available in the coming months. In
another historic first, the Ankara Radio Polyphonic Choir will also
perform the same composition in the Holy Trinity Armenian Church in
Istanbul’s Beyoglu district.

Mamigonyan said he had doubts until he started working with the
choir and was worried that the TRT administration would retreat at
the last minute. But he was eventually allowed to perform the piece,
achieving a first in modern Turkish history.

In previous years, performing Armenian songs had been banned on TRT
television channels and radio stations, despite the rich contributions
to Turkish music made by Armenians over the centuries.

"Unfortunately, many of the traditions and accomplishments by Armenians
and other ethnic groups in the Ottoman Empire have been trivialized
or obfuscated from collective Turkish historical memory," Antranig
Kzirian, a noted musician and oud composer told Asbarez on Friday.

Kzirian explained this phenomenon as part of a "parallel process"
perpetuated both by Turkey’s "reluctance to acknowledge that
non-Turkish cultures contributed greatly to Anatolian culture; and
externally," as well as by "the diasporan-Armenian community’s taboo
in discussing issues related to the Armenian Genocide."

"It remains regrettable that, within an artistic and cultural
framework, Armenian losses in the Genocide also indirectly resulted in
the collective amnesia of Armenian composers living during the Ottoman
Empire," he added. "This incalculable cultural cost has presented a
sadly incomplete tapestry of the rich mosaic and diversity of Armenian
artistic expression."

Composers and luminaries of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries
such as Baba Hampartsoum Limondjian, Udi Hrant Kenkulian and Kemani
Tatyos Ekserciyan and several other Armenian composers contributed
greatly to the Armenian nation’s achievements, Kzirian said.

"Limondjian’s creation of a notation system for classical music, for
example, was used in the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years and it
remains in use today in the Armenian Apostolic Church," he added.

Kzirian said he hoped that Armenian communities can "rediscover parts
of our great cultural and musical tradition." But this would only be
possible, he noted, through acknowledgement and a growing openness of
the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide in Turkey and abroad.