Description
As pogroms intensified in Central Asia (1890 ff.) and revolutionary fervor gripped Russia (1905), Armenians faced new waves of displacement, leading many to resettle in Western Europe. Paris soon emerged as a vibrant hub for an ever-growing Armenian diaspora, where writers and musicians, liberated from the constraints of empire, debated the terms of Armenian national identity. During this period, defining Armenian identity became increasingly urgent, as evidenced by the diverse ways exiled Armenian composers and ethnomusicologists evoked the concept of “home” through their musical and ethnographic works. From the 1890s to the 1910s, Armenian musicians in Paris and Armenia grappled with questions of authenticity. These debates juxtaposed Western European musical influences with Near Eastern approaches, with each side claiming cultural ties to the divided homeland. Exploring this critical tension, I analyze how Armenian folk and art music was represented in the Parisian press, including publications such as Le Figaro and the Société Internationale de Musique supplement. At the heart of these discussions was Komitas Vartabed (1869–1935), whose ethnographic fieldwork deeply influenced his compositions and writings, which helped define narratives of Armenian musical authenticity. Alongside Komitas, other lesser-known Armenian musicians educated in Paris contributed their findings to the city’s musical press, further complicating these discussions. Examining sources that have largely been excluded from Armenian Studies, this presentation shows differing versions of Armenia as represented in harmonized folksong volumes and journal articles by both Armenian and French musicologists from the fin-de-siècle. Ultimately, these musical and ethnographic sources display ambivalent and dialectical qualities that reflected fluctuations in Armenian social and cultural history during that time. I argue that these publications embody ambiguity, a significant feature of Armenian musical identity, and a crucial tension of Armenian cultural politics that defined much of the post-Genocide (1915) 20th century.
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