The Voice of Armenia
Who is Armenia’s greatest composer? Many would say Aram Khachaturian – for what other Armenian composer has the rest of the world even heard of? Yet ask the same question of any Armenian, and you will probably hear the name Komitas.
He, too, was an Armenian composer, albeit of a different stamp. His output was very modest – 80 choral works and songs, arrangements of the Armenian Mass, a few dances for piano – yet he is universally regarded by Armenians as the founding father of their classical tradition. As the flamboyant Khachaturian put it, with uncharacteristic humility: ‘Komitas’s music is of such stylistic purity, its language so sublime, that it is impossible to pass it by, impossible not to feel its closeness or refuse its influence.’
All Armenian musicians perform Komitas’s folk-song arrangements or make their own arrangements of the songs he collected. When Armenians around the world gather on 24 April, Armenian Genocide Memorial Day, to commemorate the 1.5 million of their countrymen slaughtered by Turks in
