![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/gomidas-vartabed.jpg\")
<\/p>\nVERC\u0130HAN Z\u0130FL\u0130O\u011eLU<\/p>\n
ISTANBUL – H\u00fcrriyet Daily News<\/p>\n
K\u00fctahya-born Armenian musician Gomidas Vartabed will be commemorated on his 140th birthday throughout Armenia, the diaspora and Turkey. Made possible thanks to a grant from the Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture Agency, Thursday\u2019s free concert will present the Kusan 2010 Choir\u2019s rendition of the great composer\u2019s \u2018Badarak\u2019 (Divine Liturgy)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Kusen 2010 Choir will perform a concert to commemorate a milestone in Armenian music, the birth of Gomidas Vartabed.<\/p>\n
Groups in both Turkey and Armenia are preparing to hold a series of free concerts to mark the 140th birthday of K\u00fctahya-born Gomidas Vartabed, who is widely recognized as the father of modern Armenian classical music.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to commemorate Gomidas in the land where he was born,\u201d said Istanbul University Radio and Television Department student Sayat Da\u011fl\u0131yan, 23, who helped form the Gomidas Platform.<\/p>\n
The commemoratory \u201cGomidas Liturgical Music\u201d concerts, which were made possible by a grant from the Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture Agency, will be held Thursday at 9 p.m. at the Surp Yerortutyum Armenian Church (\u00dc\u00e7 Horan Armenian Church) in Beyo\u011flu\u2019s Bal\u0131kpazar\u0131 and on Nov. 26 at Istanbul K\u00fclt\u00fcr University\u2019s Ak\u0131ng\u00fc\u00e7 Oditorium free of charge.<\/p>\n
The music will be performed by the Kusan 2010 Choir, the descendent of the original Kusan Choir that Vartabed formed himself over a century ago, and will be conducted by two Armenian maestros, including the conductor of Istanbul\u2019s Lusavori\u00e7 Armenian Choir, Hagop Mamgonyan, and the conductor of the Karasunmangazs Armenian Choir, Edvin Galipo\u011flu.<\/p>\n
Mamigonyan said the Kusan 2010 Choir would perform a capella and be composed only of men, as it was in the past.<\/p>\n
Galipo\u011flu, meanwhile, said the choir members were made up of 30 amateurs from different age groups that were all educated in Istanbul\u2019s Armenian choirs.<\/p>\n
The choir will perform Vartabed\u2019s polyphonic \u201cBadarak\u201d (Divine Liturgy), which the maestro composed for the Armenian Apostolic Church but was not completed until its notation by his student in 1933 in Paris.<\/p>\n
The concert will be broadcast live online at www.gomidasplatform.org\/live.<\/p>\n
Turkish and Armenian youth together<\/p>\n
One of the founding members of the Gomidas Platform, Sona Mente\u015fe, said realizing the project was akin to making a dream come true.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe learned that the 2010 Istanbul Agency invited an orchestra from Armenia for Gomidas\u2019 birthday but the orchestra was unable to come. Later, we presented the project and it was accepted. We thank the agency on behalf of Istanbul\u2019s Armenians,\u201d Mente\u015fe said.<\/p>\n
At the end of last year Da\u011fl\u0131yan made a short film on Vartabed, titled \u201c\u0130ncu\/Neden.\u201d With the other members of the platform, he has been organizing the \u201cBlind Photographers Project\u201d since the beginning of the year for the performance of Vartabed\u2019s works.<\/p>\n
There are also young Turkish people among the team members. \u201cWe experience the pleasure of doing something together,\u201d Da\u011fl\u0131yan said. \u201cIn this way, we share the universal language of music and love like Gomidas showed us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mamigonyan and Galipo\u011flu said they had accelerated their rehearsals since August.<\/p>\n
Noting that there had been disagreements among Armenian choirs, Mamigonyan said: \u201cSome did not believe us that we would be able to make it properly. But we, a handful people, wanted to give life to Vartabed again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Galipo\u011flu agreed with Mamigonyan and said the Armenian Patriarchate had provided great support to them.<\/p>\n
Istanbul\u2019s Armenians, who have closed themselves in the past because of their small numbers and a variety of other problems, have increasingly started to engage with the wider society. \u201cIt is true that we have opened to society in the cultural field. Some of our members are interested in politics, too,\u201d said platform member Misak Hergel. \u201cBut the assassination of [Armenian-Turkish journalist] Hrant Dink discouraged us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gomidas Vartabed<\/p>\n
Ethnomusicologist, composer and maestro Gomidas Vartabed was born in the Aegean province of K\u00fctahya, which is famous for its tiles, in the middle of the 1800s. Born So\u011fomon So\u011fomonyan, Vartabed (which means priest) was an orphan and was sent to the Armenian Apostolic Central Church in Armenia to receive a religious education.<\/p>\n
Later, he studied music at Berlin University and organized important conferences there. He is especially known for researching Armenian, Anatolian and Transcaucasian music, as well as Turkish, Kurdish, Azeri and Iranian musical forms.<\/p>\n
When he recorded Armenian religious music at the beginning of 1900s, he had problems with Etchmiadzin and the Turkish Armenian Patriarchate.<\/p>\n
He was also one of 230 Armenian intellectuals who were arrested in Istanbul and deported on April 24, 1915. After witnessing the murder of a number of friends during the deportation, Vartabed lost his mental health. He died in 1935 in Paris.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
VERC\u0130HAN Z\u0130FL\u0130O\u011eLU ISTANBUL – H\u00fcrriyet Daily News K\u00fctahya-born Armenian musician Gomidas Vartabed will be commemorated on his 140th birthday throughout Armenia, the diaspora and Turkey. Made possible thanks to a grant from the Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture Agency, Thursday\u2019s free concert will present the Kusan 2010 Choir\u2019s rendition of the great composer\u2019s \u2018Badarak\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":25190,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2939],"tags":[4198],"class_list":["post-25188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cultureart","tag-vartabed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}