Aram Khachaturian The Music Pedagogue
Aram Khachaturian is an Armenian composer, conductor, pedagogue, People's Artist of the USSR (1945), academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1963), and representative of the Russian school of composers and Armenian classical music, which is recognized as a world classic.
He was born on June 6, 1903, in Tiflis (now Tbilisi, Georgia ). Some sources mention the suburb of Kojor near Tbilisi (now attached to the municipality of Gardaban, Georgia) as his birthplace.
Education
He spent his childhood and youth in tsarist Tiflis, the multicultural cultural capital of the Caucasus.
At the age of 10, he entered the trade technical school in Tiflis, where he played the trumpet in the brass band. Young Aram's love for music was insurmountable. He was constantly singing and improvising popular tunes, always feeling a lack of musical education.
Khachatryan learned musical notes at the age of 19, and his love for musical notes was so great that he named his dog Lya-Do using notes. He received his basic elementary education at Tiflis Commercial School, a school for beginning merchants, where he struggled between the careers of medicine and engineering.
In 1921, the eighteen-year-old Khachatryan moved to Moscow with his older brother, Suren, who worked as a stage director at the Moscow Art Theater. Inspired by his brother's work in Moscow, Khachatryan falls into the wonderful music world. He attended the Gnesin State Music College in 1922, simultaneously studying biology at Moscow University. At first, he studied cello with Sergey Bychkov and then with Andrey Borusiak. In 1925, Mikhail Gnesin founded a class of composers at the institute, which Khachatryan also joined. He also studies with Reinhold Gliere. During that time, he wrote his first work, "Dance," in 1926, and a poem in C sharp minor (1927). Even in the early works, Khachatryan had already widely used Armenian folk music.
Beginning of career
In 1929, Khachatryan was admitted to the Moscow Conservatory to study composition under the direction of Nikolai Myaskovsky and the notation department for the orchestra under the direction of Sergey Vasilenko. In 1933, he married composer Nina Makarova, who studied with Khachatryan in Myaskovsky's group. He graduated from the conservatory in 1934 and defended his thesis in 1936.
His first major work was the "Piano Concerto" (1936), with which he became famous outside the borders of the USSR. According to contemporaries, Khachatryan's style is characterized by colorful harmonies, soothing rhythms, virtuosity, improvisations, and emotional melodies.
He sees a lot of news and, at the same time, has an assumed opinion about the taste and artistic demands of Armenians. In 1942, at the height of the Second World War, he reworked the ballet "Gayane". It was performed for the first time in Perm, on the stage of the Kirov Ballet (today, the Mariinsky Theater Ballet Hall), at the same time that Leningrad was under siege. Khachatryan was very successful and received the State Prize of the Soviet Union.
In 1943, he wrote the second symphony to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution. Based on the play "Masquerade" by Mikhail Lermontov, he wrote a one-act piece of the same name, a symphonic suite in the traditions of Russian classical music. Both the Gayane ballet and the second symphony were successful and warmly received by Shostakovich. In 1944, Khachatryan wrote the anthem of the Armenian SSR.
Khachatryan was the most recognized Armenian composer of the 20th century, as well as the author of the first Armenian ballet, symphony, concert, and film music.
Following the traditions of Russian music, he widely used Armenian and Caucasian, Eastern and Western European, and Middle Eastern national music in his works.
Khachatryan's mature works include music written for dramatic performances. Among the best works of this genre are The Widow of Valencia (by Lope de Vega, 1940) and The Masquerade (by Lermontov, 1941). The symphonic suites written based on the music of those performances have taken on a concert life of their own and are often performed nowadays.
In 1950, Khachatryan began his conducting activity, and from 1950 on, he began teaching composition art at his alma mater. Later, he teaches at the Moscow Conservatory (since 1951). A number of his students became prominent and popular. During his years as a university professor, Khachatryan emphasized the role of folk music in the lives of his students and instilled in them the idea that composers should improve their national musical heritage.
In 1950, he began working on his third and last ballet, "Spartacus" (1950–1954), which was later considered his last internationally recognized work. He received the title of People's Artist of the Soviet Union in 1954. "Spartacus" ballet was remade in 1968.
On December 27, 1956, Khachatryan's famous "Spartak" was staged on the Kirov stage. Khachatryan's 70th birthday was officially celebrated in Moscow and Yerevan.
After the success of the ballet "Spartacus" in the 1950s, he devoted the remaining years of his life to writing music and more to teaching, travel, bureaucracy, and organizational work. He served as president of the Soviet Association for Friendship and Cultural Cooperation with Latin American States since 1958 and was a member of the Soviet Peace Committee since 1962. Khachatryan toured more than 30 countries with concerts including his compositions, including the countries of the Eastern Bloc [15], Italy (1950), Britain (1955, 1977), Latin America (1957) and the United States (1960, 1968). In 1968, he made a significant cultural trip to Washington, conducting the National Symphony Orchestra with a program of his compositions.
Khachatryan again continued to serve as the secretary of composers of the USSR from 1957 until his death. He was also a deputy in the Supreme Soviet of the 5th Convocation of the Soviet Union (1958–1962). In the last twenty years of his life, Khachatryan wrote three concert rhapsodies for violin (1961–1962), for cello (1963), for piano (1965), and solo sonatas for accompaniment of cello, violin, and viola (1970s). His later works were often criticized as repetitive and electric.
Khachatryan died in Moscow on May 1, 1978, on the threshold of his 75th birthday. He was buried on May 6 in Yerevan, in the "Pantheon named after Komitas", next to other great Armenians, Komitas, Isahakyan, and Saryan. He lived with his son Karen, daughter Nune, and nephew Karen Khachatryan, who is also a composer.
Awards and Titles
Soviet Union
Hero of Socialist Labor (1973)
Orders of Lenin (1939, 1963, 1973)
People's Artist of the USSR (1954), People's Artist of the Russian SSR (1947), Armenian SSR (1955), Georgian SSR (1963), and Azerbaijan SSR (1973)
Honored Art Worker of the Armenian SSR (1938), Russian SSR (1944), and Uzbek SSR (1967)
Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1945, 1966)
Order of the October Revolution (1971)
Lenin Prize (1959) for the ballet "Spartacus".
State Prize of the USSR (in 1941 for the violin concerto, in 1943 for the ballet Gayane, in 1946 for the second symphony, in 1950 for the film The Battle of Staligrad, in 1971 for the rhapsodies (violin and orchestra, piano and orchestra, cello and orchestra))
Honorary citizen of Gyumri (1964)
Other rewards:
Order of Science of the United Arab Republic (1961, "for outstanding musical achievements")
Medal of Pope John XXIII (1963)
Shah of Iran Medal (1965)
Honored Figure of Polish Culture (1972, "For his contribution to Polish culture")
Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (French) and Commander (1974)
Academic titles
Professor of Music: 1950
Honorary Member of Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Rome, Italy: 1960
Corresponding member of the Academy of Culture of the German Democratic Republic, 1961
Distinguished Professor at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música, Mexico, 1960
Full member (academician) of the Academy of Sciences of the SSR of Armenia, 1963
Doctor of Culture (Doctor of Culture) of the Academy of Sciences of the ASSR, 1965
