KOMITAS HONORED IN BERLIN
By Muriel Mirak-Weissbach
Community | September 24, 2012 10:21 am
>From left, Archbishop Karekin Bekdjian, Primate of the Armenian Church
in Germany, Ambassador Armen Martirosyan, and Hasmik Poghosyan,
Armenian minister of culture, stand in front of the plaque
commemorating Komitas.
BERLIN – Every Armenian knows (or should know) Komitas Vardapet. He
was the great musicologist, musician and composer who literally
founded modern classical Armenian music and whose songs, dances and
liturgical works play a prominent role in our musical culture. But
perhaps fewer people know about the influence of Germany on his work.
On September 5 in Berlin, a gathering of scientists, politicians and
artists convened to honor Komitas, unveiling a bronze commemorative
plaque at the Humboldt University, which was the composer’s alma mater.
The ceremony was moderated by Prof. Armenuhi Drost-Abgarjan, the
leading Armenologist and director of the MESROB Center for Armenian
Studies at the Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg, who
introduced the speakers, beginning with Prof. Jan Hendrik Olbertz,
president of the Humboldt University. It was he who has led several
joint Armenian-German projects over the years during his tenure as
Minister of Culture of Sachsen-Anhalt, the state responsible for
cultural, scientific and educational relations with Armenia.
Representing the Republic of Armenia was Dr. Armen Martirosyan,
ambassador to Germany.
Among the guests who had traveled to Berlin from Yerevan for the event
was the Minister of Culture Hasmik Poghosyan, under whose patronage
the project was carried out, in collaboration with Martirosyan,
architect Karl van Suntum of the university and public relations
director Petra Schubert.
As Poghosyan explained, a special competition had been launched for
the design to artist Nara Mendelyan. When the plaque was ceremoniously
unveiled, Archbishop Karekin Bekdjian, Primate of the Armenian Church
in Germany, recited a prayer in Armenian and Manfred Richter, former
dean of the Berlin Cathedral, offered a prayer in German.
As Drost-Abgaryan noted, “two renowned specialists of Armenian
music and its links to oriental and European music had been invited
from Germany and Armenia” – Dr. Regina Randhofer, musicologist from
the Sachsen Academy of Sciences in Leipzig, and Prof. Mher Navoyan,
musicologist and historian from the Yerevan State Conservatory named
after Komitas. Randhofer, who specializes in the cultural history
of the Mediterranean and Near East, teaches and conducts research at
universities in Halle, Budapest and Jerusalem, among others. Navoyan,
who has published numerous works on medieval Armenian music, is
also the artistic director of the Geghard women’s ensemble from the
Geghard Cloister, which presented folk songs by Komitas during the
evening concert which concluded the festivities.
More than one speaker compared the significance of Komitas’s
contribution in music to the contribution of Mesrop
Mashtots, the founder of the Armenian alphabet, to language. Born in
1869, Komitas displayed unusual musical talent at an early age and in
1881 went to Echmiadzin, where he studied singing, choir directing
and composition at the spiritual academy, Geworgean Jemaran. At the
age of 24 he became a monk and
two years thereafter was ordained a priest. In this period he worked
closely with leading clergymen who were experts in Armenian music.
His years in Berlin, from 1896-1899, were to prove crucial. Supported
by a church scholarship, he entered the Humboldt University and also
studied piano and music theory privately. Thus he came
into contact with leading musicians and experts from the European
tradition, among them, Oskar Fleischer, Heinrich Bellermann and Max
Friedlander. In addition to lectures in music history, musicology,
medieval church music, instrumental music, musical criticism and
related disciplines, Komitas eagerly took part in folk music research.
The young musical genius had already developed a passion for Armenian
folk music and collected melodies far and wide. Fleischmann taught
him aspects of musical notation, which was to aid him in deciphering
the Armenian khazes (or neumes), an old sign system in which church
music and prayers from the ninth to 16th centuries were annotated
but which was no longer known.
Through his studies and contacts in Berlin, Komitas forged a symbiotic
relationship with the German and European musical tradition, learning
from his teachers and sharing his knowledge of Armenian music with
them. He became a member of the Berlin International Music Society
founded by Fleischer and, following his return to Echmiadzin in 1899,
traveled widely in search of old traditional melodies, while working on
the decipherment of the ancient notation. Komitas used his knowledge
of European music to rework these liturgical and folk compositions,
transforming monodic melodies into polyphonic form.
During his concert tours through Europe and the Ottoman Empire,
Komitas again came into contact with other leading composers,
like Ravel and Debussy. In 1910 he moved to Constantinople, where
he founded a choir and, in 1915, was among the hundreds of Armenian
intelligentsia who were brutally arrested and jailed. Though spared
a worse fate through the intervention of then-US Ambassador Henry
Morgenthau, Komitas suffered the psychological effects for the rest
of his life, which ended in Paris in 1935. In the following year,
his mortal remains were transported to Yerevan.
Although his published works include 14 volumes of songs and fold
music, much of his groundbreaking achievement has been lost through
the ravages of war and the Genocide. Navoyan estimates that among
those works lost are about 2,000 collected folk songs as well as
some original compositions and – most tragically – his work on
the decipherment of the neumes. The fruit of two decades’ work,
this major discovery would provide the key to reading thousands of
medieval musical manuscripts written in this notation.
Despite the massive loss, what has remained of Komitas is immense in
significance. By combining his extraordinary musical insight and talent
with his profound study of other musical cultures, especially through
his Berlin years, he succeeded in creating an utterly new music –
modern classical Armenian music – which is not only noteworthy as
a unique compositional method, but constitutes the foundation of a
national school of musical composition. Through comparative analyses
of Armenian music and that of other traditions – whether Eastern
or European – and his original compositions, Komitas demonstrated
that “the Armenians have an independent music.” In this sense, the
comparison with Mesrob is not at all exaggerated. It is indeed a happy
circumstance that leading personalities in the world of culture,
education and politics from Germany and the Republic of Armenia
have joined efforts to commemorate this brilliant individual and to
recognize his symbolic value in elevating German-Armenian relations.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
