Soorp Patarag is Komitas Vardapet's notated and harmonized setting of the chants sung during the Divine Liturgy, or Patarag, of the Armenian Apostolic Church, one of two settings still in liturgical use today. Rather than composing new melodic material, Komitas worked chiefly from the traditional Patarag chants as earlier transcribed by N. Tashchian and published in Etchmiatsin in 1874 and 1878, supplementing that written record with his own transcriptions of chant lines that had survived only in oral tradition and were at risk of being lost. His completed arrangement, titled Polyphonic Sacred Liturgy for Men's Chorus, was published in Paris in 1933 with the support of the Komitas Committee, work carried out while Komitas himself, hospitalized in Paris since 1919 after trauma from the Armenian Genocide, could no longer see it through the press personally.
Facts
Subject Matter
Religious Subject MatterKomitas approached the Patarag not as a composer inventing new liturgical music but as an ethnomusicologist preserving it, treating the written transcriptions and the surviving oral chant equally as source material to be notated and harmonized rather than replaced, work of a piece with his wider career collecting and arranging Armenian folk and sacred song before the Genocide ended his active working life. 1 Documented Liturgical UseOne of two settings of the Patarag, the Divine Liturgy, still sung in Armenian Apostolic Church worship today, distinct from the church's older Sharakan hymn corpus and from the Yekmalyan setting also in use. 1 Scholarly ReceptionIt remains one of two Patarag settings in active use in the Armenian Apostolic Church today, alongside Makar Yekmalyan's earlier polyphonic setting, a durability commentators credit to Komitas's own standing as the central figure in modern Armenian musicology rather than to the setting displacing all rivals. 1 Production
Release YearThe year of publication in Paris; the underlying chants themselves are traditional and were only notated, not composed, by Komitas, drawing on transcriptions published in 1874 and 1878 as well as his own recovery of orally surviving material. Primary Artist / ComposerKomitas Vardapet (1869 to 1935), building on earlier transcriptions by N. Tashchian; published with the support of the Komitas Committee 1 Place of OriginPublished in Paris, France, from source chant material rooted in Etchmiadzin, Armenia 1 Learn More
A Preserver Rather Than a Composer
Komitas Vardapet is remembered as one of the central figures in modern Armenian music, but the role he played in producing the Soorp Patarag setting was not, chiefly, that of a composer inventing new melody. The Divine Liturgy chants of the Armenian Apostolic Church already existed as a living oral and written tradition before he began his own work on them. An earlier scholar, N. Tashchian, had already transcribed and published versions of the Patarag chants in Etchmiatsin in 1874 and 1878, and Komitas built directly on that written foundation.
What Komitas added was recovery as much as arrangement. Alongside the Tashchian material, he sought out and transcribed chant lines that survived only in oral performance, melodies that existed nowhere in notated form and risked disappearing if no one wrote them down before the singers who carried them were gone. Harmonizing that combined material for men's chorus, he treated the Patarag the way an ethnomusicologist treats a folk tradition under threat, as something to be documented and preserved rather than something needing a composer's original invention. That same instinct ran through his wider career collecting Armenian folk and sacred song more broadly, work that made him the central figure Armenian musicology still credits him as today.
Published While Its Own Composer Could No Longer Read It
By the time Soorp Patarag reached print in Paris in 1933, Komitas Vardapet had not been able to work as a musician for well over a decade. He was arrested and deported in April 1915, in the opening roundup of the Armenian Genocide, and although he was released within months through international intervention, the trauma of what he witnessed left him unable to continue composing or performing. He was hospitalized in Paris from 1919 until his death in 1935, never recovering his working capacity across those final sixteen years of his life.
His completed arrangement of the Patarag chants reached publication anyway, prepared for the press with the support of the Komitas Committee, a body of colleagues and admirers who saw the work through to print on his behalf during the same years he could no longer see it through himself. That circumstance gives the 1933 publication date a weight beyond ordinary bibliographic fact. The book that carries Komitas's name as its arranger, and that is still sung today as one of two settings of the Armenian Divine Liturgy in active use, was finished by others acting in trust for a man who, by the time it appeared, had already lost the ability to hear it published in his own right.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Paris, Cities This source names Paris directly: "for Men's Chorus, was published in Paris in 1933 with the support of the Komitas Committee, work carried out while Komitas himself, hospitalized in Paris since 1919 after trauma from the Armenian..."
Belongs to Tradition
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