Soghomon Soghomonian was born in 1869 in Kütahya, an Armenian Christian enclave whose inhabitants suffered systematic oppression under the Ottoman yoke. Even those Armenians who could speak their ancestral tongue were forbidden to do so outside church. Soghomon’s father, a cobbler, sang and played the lute; his talented but melancholic mother – sixteen when she gave birth to him – wove carpets, composed songs, and wrote poetry. Soghomon was in his infancy when she died; his father turned to drink and also died prematurely. School friends remembered Soghomon as a waif wandering the streets; one recalled ‘a thin, malnourished, serious, kind little boy’ who in winter would come to school hungry, and frozen blue.

He had one great asset – a strikingly beautiful voice, spotted when he was eleven by an emissary charged with finding orphan singers for the choir at Etchmiadzin Abbey, which was then, as it still is, the spiritual centre of Armenian culture. There he quickly shone as a singer of both church music and Turkish folk songs; he became the seminary’s comedian, specialising in mimicking the songs and dances of different regions. And with a succession of brilliant teachers he began his lifetime quest to document the folk music which had permeated his childhood.

He went out into the fields, and listened to the songs of the pilgrims who came to Etchmiadzin; at that time the Armenian language encompassed dozens of dialects, with a corresponding number of musical styles. Despite having no knowledge of music theory he began harmonising these songs for a student choir; when he was seventeen he enlisted his fellow-students as co-researchers. He also embarked on a parallel quest to crack the code governing the khaz notation system of the early Armenian Church. Success in this would allow its canticles to be performed as they had been before their exposure to Persian, Turkish, and Kurdish influences: his goal was to distil the essence of the Armenian sacred tradition.

Like all victims of broken homes, he needed a support framework: he made Etchmiadzin his home, and took orders as a vartabed, celibate priest. It was traditional that ordinands should be given a new name, and the one he took, Komitas, was to honour Komitas Aghayetsi, a composer-priest of the seventh century.