Journal ArticleOpen Access
Zakaryan, Anushavan, 2025
Fundamental Armenology, Issue 2(22) 2025, Arts (National Academy of Sciences of RA / All Armenian Foundation Financing Armenological Studies); ISSN 1829-4618
During the Genocide, Komitas suffered a mental collapse in exile and was hospitalized in Paris. Armenian intelligentsia figures took up his care, and the Russian composer of German origin Thomas Hartmann, together with the Tiflis-based 'Society after Komitas', provided material and public support. Arriving in Tiflis in February 1919, Hartmann published a substantial study of Komitas in Zakavkazskoe Slovo, among the first serious scholarly treatments of him, and delivered a lecture-concert that catalyzed a broader Tiflis effort to care for the composer and preserve his creative heritage. The Society was founded in May 1919, drawing in Armenian, Russian and Georgian composers, performers, writers and painters alongside Hovhannes Tumanyan.
Journal ArticleOpen Access
Mnatsakanyan, Yeva, 2025
Բանբեր Երևանի համալսարանի. Բանասիրություն / Bulletin of Yerevan University B: Philology, Vol. 16, No. 3(48), pp. 21–34 (Yerevan State University Press); DOI 10.46991/BYSU.B/2025.16.3.021
Treats Komitas: composer, musicologist, folklore collector, teacher, and founder of the Armenian school of composition, as a national symbol whose fate is read as the fate of the Armenian people. The article analyzes the worldview and psychological registers of his letters and the philosophy condensed in them, presenting the vardapet as both a son of his environment and a world-recognized musician with a dramatic inner life. Its aims are to use the letters as an instrument for revealing an inner world, to interpret their key messages from the standpoint of present-day artistic consciousness, and to trace intercultural communication through them. The author concludes that the letters do not fully unlock Komitas, but confirm that he purified, notated, and created 'the majestic homeland of our song.'
Journal ArticleOpen Access
Davidjants, Brigitta, 2015
Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, Vol. 62, pp. 175–200 (Estonian Literary Museum); DOI 10.7592/FEJF2015.62.davidjants
Examines how national identity was constructed within the early Armenian folklore movement. Davidjants notes that Armenian identity construction has drawn on Armenia's status as the first Christian state and on a well-integrated Western diaspora, both used to present Armenians as 'European', even though Armenia shares many cultural traits with its neighbours. Against that background she compares two approaches to transcribing Armenian folk tunes: those of Komitas and those of his contemporary, the folklorist Arshak Brutyan. Komitas leaned toward a Western way of thinking, standardising tunes according to the Western music system, while Brutyan sought transcription methods better fitted to Armenian musical culture. It is Komitas's approach that remains dominant in Armenian academic circles today.
Journal ArticleOpen Access
Vardumyan, A. D., 2015
Fundamental Armenology, No. 2, 2015 (National Academy of Sciences of RA, Yerevan); ISSN 1829-4618
A Matenadaran musicologist traces music therapy in Armenian medieval science: from the 5th-century philosopher Davit Anhaght through the 12th-century Cilician physician Mkhitar Heratsi, and shows how Komitas Vardapet became the first musicologist to study it, drawing on a medieval Ejmiatsin manuscript describing the healing influence of sacred music.
