Komitas Songs
For Duduk With Piano Accompaniment

Komitas

KOMITAS (Soghomon Soghomon Gevorg, 1869-1935) holds an exceptional place in the spiritual life of the Armenian people. He has worked extensively as a composer, musicologist, singer, conductor, educator. Komitas is the founder of the National Composition School. He is the one who discovered the unique and highly valuable peasant folk music of the Armenian people that has thousands of years of history.

Komitas was born in Kotahia, Turkey. When he was 12 years old, the orphaned youth clergyman Gevorg Derdzakyan took him to Echmiadzin and taught at the Gevorkian Seminary, where his brilliant musical abilities were demonstrated. Here, under the guidance of his teacher Sahak Amatuni, he not only studied the basics of church music and mastered Armenian notation, but also collected and wrote numerous folk songs, studied them, and made creative interpretations. After graduating from the seminary, he was appointed music teacher and head of the Cathedral Choir. In 1895 Soghomon received the Bishop’s Scientific Degree and the name Komitas in honor of VII century Catholicos Komitas Aghtetsi. In the fall of the same year, he studied in Tiflis under the mentorship of Makar Ekmalian and became a communicant of European music theory.