What is Komitas Vardapet?
[[File:The Soviet Union 1969 CPA 3799 stamp (Komitas and Rural Scene).jpg|thumb|Drawing of Komitas from a USSR stamp, 1969]] '''Soghomon Gevorki Soghomonyan''' - '''Komitas Vardepet''' (also ''Gomidas Vartabed'') ([[September 26 1869]] in [[Kütahya]], [[Ottoman Empire]] - [[October 22 1935]], [[Paris]], [[France]]), was an [[Armenian people|Armenian]] [[priest]], [[composer]], [[choir]] leader, [[singer]], [[ethnology|music ethnologist]], music teacher and [[musicologist]], known as the founder of modern Armenian [[european classical music|classical music]].<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.komitas.am/eng/brief.htm |title=Biography of Komitas |first= |last= |work=komitas.am |year=2004 |accessdate=6 February 2011}}</ref> He was born into a family whose members were deeply involved in music and were monolingual in [[Turkish language|Turkish]]. His mother died when he was one and ten years later his father died. In 1895 he became a priest and obtained the title '''Vardapet''' (or '''Vartabed'''), meaning a ''priest'' or a ''church scholar''. He established and conducted the monastery [[choir]] till [[1896]] when he went to [[Berlin]], to the [[Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm University]]. Here he studied music at the private conservatory of Prof. [[Richard Schmidt]]. In [[1899]] he acquired the title ''doctor of musicology'' and returned to [[Echmiadzin]]. He traveled extensively around the country, listening and recording details about Armenian folk songs and dances performed in various villages. This way he collected and published some 3000 songs, many of them adapted to choir singing. His major work is [[Badarak]] (Divine Liturgy), still used today as one of the two most popular musical settings of the Armenian Church liturgy. He was the first non-European to be admitted into the [[International Music Society]] of which he was a co-founder. On April 24, 1915, said to be the day when [[Armenian Genocide]] officially began, he was arrested. The next day he was put on a train with 180 other Armenian notables and sent t