Nieuwe Blik Terug: Armeense componisten

New Look Back

Musician, presenter, and documentary filmmaker Orville Breeveld has once again curated a series for the Kleine Zaal in which he shines a spotlight on composers and musicians who have unjustly remained underexposed. Nieuwe Blik Terug (New Look Back) tells a story about the power of music. Breeveld: 'Nieuwe Blik Terug tells stories about greats we do not know well, important composers, people who fought for freedom and wrote the most beautiful music. The history of these fellow human beings is close to my heart. These composers are historical figures who deserve all the attention, greats of music history; we should be proud of them. I want to tell their stories so that they remain on our radar.'

Armenian composers

In this edition of Nieuwe Blik Terug, Armenian composers take center stage, with Soghomon Gevorgi Soghomonian, better known as Komitas (1869–1935), as the shining centerpiece. This priest, composer, choir conductor, and ethnomusicologist avant la lettre dedicated his life to collecting and studying Armenian folk melodies, which he sought to elevate to art music. He did this long before the groundbreaking fieldwork of composers such as Bartók and Kodály. Komitas was born in Kudina, present-day Kütahya in Western Turkey, was orphaned at a young age, and grew up in the religious center of Ejmiadzin. In Tiflis and later in Berlin, Komitas developed into a composer who knew how to capture the cultural identity of his people in sound. He recorded more than three thousand melodies, only a fraction of which have survived. With his choir, he toured Europe to make the richness of Armenia audible, to the great admiration of contemporaries such as Claude Debussy.