Komitas Vardapet (Soghomon Soghomonian) §

Born Soghomon Soghomonian in Kütahya in 1869 to a family of singers; orphaned young, sent to Etchmiadzin and ordained celibate priest in 1894 with the monastic name Komitas. Studied composition and musicology in Tbilisi and at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin (1896–99); established Armenian ethnomusicology by transcribing some 4,000 folk songs across Anatolia and the South Caucasus and developing a polyphonic choral idiom rooted in the modal scale of Armenian liturgical and rural music. Arrested in the 24 April 1915 Constantinople round-up and deported to Çankırı; released after about a month following intervention by Henry Morgenthau, the Catholicos and the German embassy. Suffered a complete and permanent psychological breakdown soon afterwards; institutionalised at Hôpital Villejuif near Paris from 1919 until his death on 22 October 1935. His remains were reinterred at the Pantheon of Yerevan in 1936 and his work formed the basis of the Soviet-era Armenian conservatory tradition.