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A corner dedicated to Armenian composer Komitas, who is considered the founder of the Armenian national school of music, has been created at Yeghishe Charents Museum-House In Yerevan. Prominent Armenian poet, writer and public activist Yeghishe Charents listened Komitas music that often made him cry like a child. Komitas and Charents were contemporaries, yet they never met each other. Charents saw Komitas for the first and last time when the renowned composer was in a coffin.

“Charents neither sang nor played on any instrument yet he was a great lover of music. His two women didn’t play either. Nevertheless, Charents bought a piano for his daughter to learn playing,” Anush Tasalyan, the chief recourse officer at the Charents Museum House told Panorama.am.

Tasalyan recalled evidences that for listening to Komitas music Charents used to visit writer Aksel Bakunts who studies at Gevorgyan lyceum and performed Komitas well. “He used to hold his head in the hands and cry like a child” one of the evidences described Charents when listening to Komitas.

Komitas died on October 21 in 1935 and his body was transferred to Armenia in May 1936.
Charents was under home arrest at the time and asked for a permission to attend the funeral ceremony. Ruben Zaryan described in his memoirs scenes from Charents’s visit e farewell to Komitas. The poet took a blue candle flower from one of wreaths with him. The wreath had been brought from residents of Kutina province where Komitas was born. The blue candle flower is still kept at the museum.

When Charents learnt about the death of Komitas, he whispered a poem in the composer’s memory. “Right after the funeral ceremony, Charents got home and completed a poem dedicated to Komitas which is now one of the most famous works of his,” the chief resource office at the Museum said.

Among the exhibits of the museum are Komitas music scores that had been printed by Charents.
“There were no possibilities to print the scores in Yerevan at the time, and Charents took them to Moscow and printed there,” Tasalyan informed.

To note, this year marks the 150th anniversary of Komitas with year-round events dedicated to the renowned musicologist and his music heritage.