Komitas (1869 – 1935), the founder of the Armenian national composition school made
a contribution to the culture of his nation that cannot be overestimated. His whole life
was devoted to study, revival and arrangement of pieces of Armenian popular music art
thus laying a foundation for the national professional music. He was not just a composer
but a music historian and theoretician, student of folklore, singer, choir leader, teacher
and public figure. He proved to be a true innovator in all these areas.
Patarag (Liturgy) is the peak of Komitas’s artistic life, the greatest achievement of polyphonic
arrangement of Armenian sacred music. The creation of Patarag was preceded
with a huge body of work done by Komitas in terms of collecting, studying and selecting
melodies. Komitas craved for writing a national liturgy. Arranging the church melodies,
he wanted to restore their originality uniqueness and simplicity, to free them from all
those extraneous features that emerged through the centuries, and to make the structure
of the melodies more specific whenever it was possible.
