Komitas | 6 dances | Yet u Araj (Forward and back) #ArtsakhStrong

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This is the 5th dance of the cycle. The title is Yet u Araj, which means forward and back. It wasn't translated in the sheet music, that's why I left the title on armenian. This is another careless and peaceful dance, and I hope we also soon we will be back to these careless feeling, and will not have reasons to worry anymore. I know that it's important to stay strong, and look forward, but the lives of people who already died, will not be back.

On the photo are portrayed two beautiful and little bit shy Artsakhci girls. ^^ Photo by Suren Sarumyan.

And a little about Komitas:
Soghomon Soghomonian, most known as Komitas Vardapet (1869-1935) was an Armenian priest, musicologist, composer, arranger, singer, and choirmaster, who is considered the founder of the Armenian national school of music. He 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. He thereafter "used his Western training to build a national tradition". He 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. His choir presented Armenian music in many European cities, earning the praise of Claude Debussy, among others. Komitas settled in Constantinople in 1910 to escape mistreatment by ultra-conservative clergymen at Etchmiadzin and to introduce Armenian folk music to wider audiences.
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 under unclear circumstances and experienced a mental breakdown and developed a severe case of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 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 in agony.

#Komitas #Piano #Artsakh