Death of Vahan Bedelian (April 3, 1990)
Vahan Bedelian was born in 1894 in Adana, and at the age of 15 he was a witness of the massacres in Adana that cost the lives of 20,000 to 30,000 Armenians. He fled to Cyprus with his family and studied at the Larnaka American Academy for 15 months, until things seemed to settle down and they returned to Adana in 1911. He continued his studies at St. Paul’s Academy until the genocide.
In 1915, the population of Adana was deported and the Bedelian family reached Aleppo. One of Vahan Bedelian’s friends, who by then was a good violin teacher, arranged a job for him as music and violin teacher at the Aleppo School of Art. With this job, he managed, after considerable difficulties, to obtain a permit from the chief of police to stay in Aleppo with the eleven members of his family.
They stayed there until the end of World War I and returned to Adana when French forces were stationed in Cilicia. Bedelian gave his first concert in 1920. When the French evacuated Cilicia in 1921, he went to Cyprus, where he devoted himself to music and teaching. In 1932 he replaced famous composer and conductor Parsegh Ganachian as music teacher at the Melkonian Educational Institute of Nicosia, where he taught for the next 35 years. He also taught at the Melikian School, as well as other local and music schools, and participated actively in the musical life of Cyprus, offering many concerts within and without the Armenian community. One of his students, maestro Sebouh Apkarian, became his successor at the Melkonian Institute. After his retirement, he continued teaching until the age of 93.
Bedelian was decorated on the enthronization of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, and in 1968 he received the title of Knight of Cilicia by His Holiness Catholicos Khoren I of the Great House of Cilicia. The Green National Conservatory of Nicosia celebrated the 50th anniversary of his musical activities in Cyprus in 1971, and his 90th birthday was officially celebrated by the Ministry of Education of the country in 1984. His solo and choral songs were published in a volume by the printing house of the Catholicosate in 1979.
Vahan Bedelian, prolific teacher and composer, passed away in Nicosia on April 3, 1990.