A Note on the Folksong “Chinar es”
Edited by Daniel W. Patterson
The song text, if written in the Roman alphabet, is:
Chinar es gerenal mi
Yar, yar, yar,
Mer trnen herenal mi
Yar, yar, yar
Yar ko Asdvadz g shires
Yar, yar, yar
Heroo es moranal mi
Yar, yar, yar
It has been translated as:
You are like a plane tree, don’t bend your head.
Dear, dear, dear.
Don’t stay away from our door.
Dear, dear, dear.
My love, for God’s sake,
Dear, dear, dear,
Don’t stay away from our door,
Dear, dear, dear.
Unexpectedly, this small traditional love song underscores the issue of the Armenian genocide. The collector who heard, notated, and published it about 1905, was Soghomon Soghomonian (1869-1935). His mother was a weaver, his father a cobbler, and both were musical. But his mother died before their child was one year old, and his father when he was eleven. The boy had inherited their musical gifts and survived by singing in the streets. Priests took him in and educated and ordained him, giving him the name Komitas, by which he became known.
Komitas proved so gifted that he was able to study music seriously in his native area and eventually in Berlin, where he became interested in folk music. Returning to Armenia he pioneered the collection, study, performance, and publication of Armenian folk and church-music traditions and also became a composer. His transcriptions of folk love songs was opposed by conservative clergymen, but he persisted. Komitas soon became the leading authority on the history of Armenian music, had a role in developing ethnomusicology as a field of study, and became known to composers and scholars in Europe. When the Armenian genocide began in full force in 1915 he was arrested and exiled to Anatolia and witnessed slaughter of fellow Armenians. Musicians interceded on his behalf and secured his release, but he was distraught to find his song manuscripts had been confiscated. These traumatic experiences led to his hospitalization in 1919 as mentally ill. He was transferred to a hospital in France and died there in 1935. He is said to have in his good years collected about 3,000 folk songs, of which half may survive.
A website called Virtual Museum of Komitas has posted a biography, bibliography, and discography. Oxford University Press’s Grove Music Online also carries a lengthy article on him under the title “Komitas Vardapet”. A third article accessible online is “Komitas, The Future Thinker: The Unknown Story of an Armenian Icon” by Arpine Haroyan. “Chinar es” and other music collected, arranged, or composed by Komitas can be found on YouTube.
