Soghomon Soghomonian, known as Komitas (was born on 26 September, 1869, died on 22 October of 1935) was an Armenian priest, musicologist, composer, arranger, singer, and choirmaster. He is considered to be the founder of the Armenian national school of music. Komitas is recognized as one of the pioneers of ethnomusicology.
Orphaned at a young age, Komitas was taken to Etchmiadzin, Armenia's religious center, where he received education at the Gevorgian Seminary. Following his ordination as vardapet (celibate priest) in 1895, he studied music at the Frederick William University in Berlin. Then he used his western training to build a national tradition: collected and transcribed over 3,000 pieces of Armenian folk music, more than half of which were subsequently lost and only around 1,200 are now extant.
Komitas was widely embraced by Armenian communities. Arshag Chobanian called him the "savior of Armenian music".
During the Armenian Genocide along with hundreds of other Armenian intellectuals Komitas was arrested and deported to a prison camp in April 1915 by the Ottoman government. He was soon released experiencing a mental breakdown and developed a severe case of posttraumatic stress disorder. The widespread hostile environment in Constantinople and reports of mass-scale Armenian death marches and massacres that reached him further worsened his fragile mental state.
He was first placed in a Turkish military-operated hospital until 1919 and then transferred to psychiatric hospitals in Paris, where he spent the last years of his life. Komitas is widely seen as a martyr of the genocide and has been depicted as one of the main symbols of the Armenian Genocide in art.
