Istanbul concert to commemorate Gomidas Vartabed on 140th birthday

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

VERCİHAN ZİFLİOĞLU

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Kütahya-born Armenian musician Gomidas Vartabed will be commemorated on his 140th birthday throughout Armenia, the diaspora and Turkey. Made possible thanks to a grant from the Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture Agency, Thursday’s free concert will present the Kusan 2010 Choir’s rendition of the great composer’s ‘Badarak’ (Divine Liturgy)

The Kusan 2010 Choir will perform a concert to commemorate a milestone in Armenian music, the birth of Gomidas Vartabed.

Groups in both Turkey and Armenia are preparing to hold a series of free concerts to mark the 140th birthday of Kütahya-born Gomidas Vartabed, who is widely recognized as the father of modern Armenian classical music.

“We want to commemorate Gomidas in the land where he was born,” said Istanbul University Radio and Television Department student Sayat Dağlıyan, 23, who helped form the Gomidas Platform.

The commemoratory “Gomidas Liturgical Music” concerts, which were made possible by a grant from the Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture Agency, will be held Thursday at 9 p.m. at the Surp Yerortutyum Armenian Church (Üç Horan Armenian Church) in Beyoğlu’s Balıkpazarı and on Nov. 26 at Istanbul Kültür University’s Akıngüç Oditorium free of charge.

The music will be performed by the Kusan 2010 Choir, the descendent of the original Kusan Choir that Vartabed formed himself over a century ago, and will be conducted by two Armenian maestros, including the conductor of Istanbul’s Lusavoriç Armenian Choir, Hagop Mamgonyan, and the conductor of the Karasunmangazs Armenian Choir, Edvin Galipoğlu.

Mamigonyan said the Kusan 2010 Choir would perform a capella and be composed only of men, as it was in the past.

Galipoğlu, meanwhile, said the choir members were made up of 30 amateurs from different age groups that were all educated in Istanbul’s Armenian choirs.

The choir will perform Vartabed’s polyphonic “Badarak” (Divine Liturgy), which the maestro composed for the Armenian Apostolic Church but was not completed until its notation by his student in 1933 in Paris.

The concert will be broadcast live online at www.gomidasplatform.org/live.

Turkish and Armenian youth together

One of the founding members of the Gomidas Platform, Sona Menteşe, said realizing the project was akin to making a dream come true.

“We learned that the 2010 Istanbul Agency invited an orchestra from Armenia for Gomidas’ birthday but the orchestra was unable to come. Later, we presented the project and it was accepted. We thank the agency on behalf of Istanbul’s Armenians,” Menteşe said.

At the end of last year Dağlıyan made a short film on Vartabed, titled “İncu/Neden.” With the other members of the platform, he has been organizing the “Blind Photographers Project” since the beginning of the year for the performance of Vartabed’s works.

There are also young Turkish people among the team members. “We experience the pleasure of doing something together,” Dağlıyan said. “In this way, we share the universal language of music and love like Gomidas showed us.”

Mamigonyan and Galipoğlu said they had accelerated their rehearsals since August.

Noting that there had been disagreements among Armenian choirs, Mamigonyan said: “Some did not believe us that we would be able to make it properly. But we, a handful people, wanted to give life to Vartabed again.”

Galipoğlu agreed with Mamigonyan and said the Armenian Patriarchate had provided great support to them.

Istanbul’s Armenians, who have closed themselves in the past because of their small numbers and a variety of other problems, have increasingly started to engage with the wider society. “It is true that we have opened to society in the cultural field. Some of our members are interested in politics, too,” said platform member Misak Hergel. “But the assassination of [Armenian-Turkish journalist] Hrant Dink discouraged us.”

Gomidas Vartabed

Ethnomusicologist, composer and maestro Gomidas Vartabed was born in the Aegean province of Kütahya, which is famous for its tiles, in the middle of the 1800s. Born Soğomon Soğomonyan, Vartabed (which means priest) was an orphan and was sent to the Armenian Apostolic Central Church in Armenia to receive a religious education.

Later, he studied music at Berlin University and organized important conferences there. He is especially known for researching Armenian, Anatolian and Transcaucasian music, as well as Turkish, Kurdish, Azeri and Iranian musical forms.

When he recorded Armenian religious music at the beginning of 1900s, he had problems with Etchmiadzin and the Turkish Armenian Patriarchate.

He was also one of 230 Armenian intellectuals who were arrested in Istanbul and deported on April 24, 1915. After witnessing the murder of a number of friends during the deportation, Vartabed lost his mental health. He died in 1935 in Paris.