Komitas Vardapet (1869–1935), an Armenian celibate priest and pioneering ethnomusicologist, collected and transcribed over 3,000 Armenian folk songs and sacred hymns, establishing the scientific foundation of Armenian classical music. Arrested and deported during the 1915 Armenian Genocide, he survived but was left psychologically shattered; he spent his final sixteen years in a Paris psychiatric institution, never composing again. He is considered the father of modern Armenian music.
517Notable Armenians
