Klaus Näumann studied music pedagogy at Dresden Music Academy (1993-1997; jazz, rock and pop music, as well as electric guitar music). In 1998-2002, he studied comparative musicology at the Free University of Berlin. In 2004, he defended his thesis entitled ‟Parang Music in Trinidad”. In 2015, he received his PhD from Cologne University defending his thesis entitled ‟Music of the German Community in Poland”. During 2011-2017, he worked at Essen Institute of Culturology, at the Institute of European Ethnology of Cologne University as a junior professor, and at the Free University of Berlin. Since 2017, K. Näumann is the Head of the Chair of Ethnomusicology at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. He carried out music collection and research work devoted to the music of Belarus, Germany, Jamaika, Poland, Trinidad / Tobago, Venezuela. The area of his scientific interests includes also progressive rock.

KOMITAS AS AN ETHNOMUSICOLOGIST:
AN ATTEMPT TO COMPARATIVE SCIENTIFIC AND HISTORICAL
CLASSIFICATION

Measuring musicologists who were engaged in their research decades, even hundreds of years ago according to the current standards of a particular discipline (in this case musical ethnology) is dangerous in itself, because accumulated technological capabilities, knowledge and experience, as well as (presumably) enhanced methods and ever-expanding and changing moral consciousness today is very different. Nevertheless, it is of utmost importance to reflect upon the goals that guided the musicologists of the past, the methods which they used, and what their outlook was based on, i.e. to what extent they followed or deliberately opposed Zeitgeist. In this paper, an attempt will be made to critically identify how accurate it would be to classify Armenian scientist and artist Komitas Vardapet (whose activities largely relate to musical ethnography and folk music) among the representatives of musical ethnography in the context of the history of this discipline, as well as to study more thoroughly the similarities and differences between Komitas and other figures of the same discipline.