Gomidas Vartabed, Armenian musician, composer-arranger, folk song collector (over 3,000 folk songs, primarily Armenian), musicologist singer, and teacher, lived during the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. He was a pioneer, whose selfless devotion and perseverance was directed toward the attainment of a place of recognition in the musical world for Armenian music, which had its beginnings in Pagan times. Gomidas strived to preserve the Armenian heritage by collecting, refining and finally employing the folk song as the basis of his compositions. His compositional output, though small, is decidedly rich in its artistic subtleties. It includes over ninety unaccompanied choral works, several large-scale works as "By the Waters of Babylon" based on the Davidian Psalm (German text) for soprano and tenor solo, mixed chorus and organ, twenty-eight works for solo voice with piano accompaniment (mostly based on folk songs), and seven songs transcribed for solo piano.
It is significant that Gomidas was highly regarded for his skillful writing by well-known European musicians such as Egon Wellesz (1885-1974) who wrote as follows: “I am amazed at his exceptional talents. Knowing well these folk songs, he has harmonized them correctly and with rare taste. All the songs, which I have heard either myself from Gomidas or have studied, prove, first of all that Gomidas Vartabed is a singular figure as a polyphonist.”
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