The Guardian: for Armenians, music is memory

PanARMENIAN.Net - Sunday, April 24, is Easter Day, but for Armenians it is also Genocide Remembrance Day. This is when Armenians all over the world will gather to commemorate the anniversary of the 1915 genocide in which 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey were either slaughtered, or died on forced marches into exile, Michael Church of The Guardian writes in an article he titled “Komitas Vardapet, forgotten folk hero.”

“For Armenians, music is memory. And whenever they gather to honor their dead, the songs they sing are by the composer who speaks for the soul of their nation, Komitas Vardapet. He himself was a victim of the 1915 persecution, and though he survived physically, he was driven into madness by it. Outside Armenia he, too, has been swept under the carpet of history. Komitas's output was modest: 80 choral works and songs, arrangements of the Armenian mass, and some dances for piano. After his concert in Paris, Claude Debussy declared that on the basis of a single song, he deserved to be recognized as a great composer. Yet many classical musicians barely recognize his name,” the article says.

Church goes on to say, “I first became aware of Komitas's existence when recording the Armenian Chamber Choir in Yerevan in 2001. I was intrigued by the songs' vibrant strangeness: folk melodies so deftly arranged that the raw beauty of the originals