Aram Khachaturian

Background and early life (1903–1921) Aram Khachaturian was born on 6 June (24 May in Old Style) 1903 in the city of Tiflis (present-day Tbilisi, Georgia) into an Armenian family. Khachaturian himself said he was born in Kojori. His father, Yeghia (Ilya), was born in the village of Upper Aza near Ordubad in Nakhichevan (present-day Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, Azerbaijan) and moved to Tiflis at the age of 13; he owned a bookbinding shop by the age of 25. His mother, Kumash Sarkisovna, was from Lower Aza, also a village near Ordubad. Khachaturian's parents were betrothed before knowing each other, when Kumash was 9 and Yeghia was 19. They had five children, one daughter and four sons, of whom Aram was the youngest. From 1906 to 1922, Khachaturian lived at 93 Uznadze Street in Tbilisi. Khachaturian received primary education at the commercial school of Tiflis, a school for merchants. He considered a career either in medicine or engineering. Education (1922–1936) In 1921, the eighteen-year-old Khachaturian moved to Moscow to join his oldest brother, Suren, who had settled in Moscow earlier and was a stage director at the Moscow Art Theatre by the time of his arrival. and the Cello Concerto (1946)—are "often considered a kind of a grand cycle". He joined the Communist Party in 1943. "Throughout the early and mid-1940s, Khachaturian used that position to help shape Soviet music, always stressing technically masterful composition. In fact, in his memoirs, he reported pride about leading an institution that organized creative work in many musical genres and especially in all Soviet republics." The years preceding and following World War II were very productive for Khachaturian. In 1939 he made a six-month trip to his native Armenia "to make a thorough study of Armenian musical folklore and to collect folk-song and dance tunes" for his first ballet, Happiness. He developed the latter at the suggestion of Anastas Mikoyan, based on a libretto by Gevorg Hovhannisyan. As one author noted, Khachaturian's "communion with Armenia's national culture and musical practice proved for him, as he put it himself, 'a second conservatoire'. He learned a lot, saw and heard many things anew, and at the same time he had an insight into the tastes and artistic requirements of the Armenian people." In 1942, at the height of the Second World War, Khachaturian reworked Happiness into the ballet Gayane. It was first performed by the Kirov Ballet (today the Mariinsky Ballet) in Perm, while Leningrad was under siege. It was a great success and earned the composer his second Stalin Prize, this time first-class. He composed the Second Symphony (1943) on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution and incidental music to Masquerade (1944), "a symphonic suite in the tradition of lavish classical Russian music", on Mikhail Lermontov's play of the same title. During the course of the conference, the newly appointed head of the Union of Soviet Composers, Tikhon Khrennikov complained that Khachaturian's Symphonic Poem had its premier in a half empty hall and that "everyone thought that Khachaturian's Cello Concerto was rubbish". In response, Khachaturian who admitted that speaking at such an event made him nervous conceded that composers of more complex work might be guilty of ignoring popular taste, thinking that it would catch up with them in time. Zhdanov interrupted to say that such an attitude was "extreme individualism". Khachaturian and other leading composers were denounced by the Communist Party as followers of the alleged formalism It was the Symphonic Poem (1947), later titled the Third Symphony, that officially earned Khachaturian the wrath of the Party. By December 1948 (Zhdanov had died in August), he was restored to favor, receiving praise for his score for the film '''', a film biography of the Soviet leader. After completing Spartacus, since the late 1950s, Khachaturian focused less on composition, and more on conducting, teaching, bureaucracy and travel. He served as the President of the Soviet Association of Friendship and Cultural Cooperation with Latin American States from 1958 and was a member of the Soviet Peace Committee (since 1962). "He frequently appeared in world forums in the role of champion of an apologist for the Soviet idea of creative orthodoxy." Khachaturian toured with concerts of his own works in around 30 countries, including in all the Eastern Bloc states, Italy (1950), Britain (1955, 1977), Latin America (1957) and the United States (1960, 1968). His January 1968 visit to U.S. capital of Washington, D.C. was a significant one. He conducted the National Symphony Orchestra in a program of his own works. In a six-week tour he visited seven American cities. Khachaturian went on to serve again as Secretary of the Composers Union, starting in 1957 until his death. He was also a deputy in the fifth Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union (1958–62). In the last two decades of his life, Khachaturian wrote three concert rhapsodies—for violin (1961–62), cello (1963) and piano (1965)—and solo sonatas for unaccompanied cello, violin, and viola (1970s), which are considered to be his second and third instrumental trilogies. ==Music==

Khachaturian's works span a broad range of musical types, including ballets, symphonies, concertos, and film scores. Music critic Edward Greenfield expresses the opinion that Khachaturian "notably outshone other Soviet contemporaries in creating a sharply identifiable style, something which his successors have found impossible to emulate". issued a commemorative coin depicting Spartacus in 2001. Works Ballet Khachaturian is best known internationally for his ballet music. His second ballet, Gayane, was largely reworked from his first ballet, Happiness. Spartacus became his most acclaimed work in the post-Stalin period. These two compositions "remain his most successful compositions". and Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006). Joel Coen's The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) also prominently featured music from Spartacus and Gayane (the "Sabre Dance" included). Orchestral music Khachaturian wrote three symphonies: the First in 1934/5, the Second in 1943, and the Third in 1947. He also wrote three concertos: the Piano Concerto (1936), the Violin Concerto (1940), and the Cello Concerto (1946). He produced around 25 film scores. Soviet musicologist Boris Yarustovsky argued that the influence from American culture was heard in some of the words of Khachaturian. Armenian folk music (pictured), who in the early 20th century collected thousands of pieces of Armenian folk music. Khachaturian was particularly influenced by the folk-song collector, musicologist Komitas, and composers Alexander Spendiaryan and Romanos Melikian. Khachaturian acknowledged that Komitas "singlehandedly laid the foundations for Armenia's classical tradition". In a 1969 article about Komitas, Khachaturian called him his "greatest teacher". His plans to write an opera "on the destiny of the Armenian people, the tragic fate of Armenians scattered all over the world, their suffering and the struggle" never realized, and his "Armenian Rhapsody for mouth-organ and orchestra, intended for his close friend Larry Adler and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra" remained uncompleted. "Yet the intention, the spirit, was always there." Act II of Gayane "is filled with Kurdish dances". Russian classical music Khachaturian is cited by musicologists as a follower of Russian classical traditions. According to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, he "carried forward into the twentieth century the colorful, folk-inspired style of such nineteenth-century Russian composers as Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky". Like the members of The Five, especially Alexander Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov, whose works to some extent served him as a model, Khachaturian drew heavily upon "Eastern" and "Oriental" material in creating compositions in various classical genres and styles of European origin. But Khachaturian's cultural identity and rigorous musical training within the Soviet establishment allowed him to penetrate more deeply to the essence of Eastern and Caucasian music and to incorporate it more fully in his mature work, including the ballets. "Never dissociating himself from the traditions of Russian music, he came to be regarded in Moscow as a mouthpiece of the entire Soviet Orient, gathering up all the diverse traditions into a grand generalization", concludes Marina Frolova-Walker. ==Khachaturian's influence==

Khachaturian's notable students at the Gnessin Institute and the Moscow Conservatory included foreign composers, such as Aziz El-Shawan from Egypt, Modesta Bor from Venezuela, Jorge López Marín and Enrique Ubieta from Cuba, Stefan Remenkov from Bulgaria, and Anatol Vieru from Romania, and a number of Soviet composers: Tolib Shakhidi, Georgs Pelēcis, Mark Minkov, Alexey Rybnikov, Andrei Eshpai, Albert Markov, , Critic Levon Hakobian described Khachaturian as a "conservative and self-absorbed teacher". He inspired young Armenian composers Edvard Mirzoyan, and Konstantin Orbelyan, among others. Early compositions of Loris Tjeknavorian evoke the work of Khachaturian. Khachaturian also influenced composers of Azerbaijan (such as Kara Karayev) and Central Asia. Critic Louis Biancolli noted in 1947 that Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have "borrowed" Khachaturian "on occasion for special research in national music." Khachaturian was a close friend of the Bulgarian composer of Pancho Vladigerov and Khachaturian admired his music. Vladigerov's third piano concerto (1937), his most popular work, shows the influence of Khachaturian and Rachmaninoff. Eckhardt van den Hoogen called Vladigerov a sort of missing link between George Gershwin and Khachaturian. East Asia Harold C. Schonberg argued that Soviet-trained Chinese composers, such as Li Delun, were part of a "school of music strongly indebted" to socialist-realist composers like Khachaturian. He suggested that they "came back full of the approved Soviet ideology of Socialist Realism and, much worse, full of the technique of such composers as Khachaturian." Schonberg wrote that the Chinese ballet Red Detachment of Women (1964) incorporates elements of Russian academism and Oriental exoticism, resulting in a sound that is reminiscent of socialist-realist ballets like Khachaturian's Spartacus. Schonberg further suggested that Yellow River Piano Concerto (1970), created by Yin Chengzong and others under the guidance of Mao's wife Jiang Qing, The most popular piano concerto in China, The music of the Japanese composer Roh Ogura had the influence of Khachaturian in "its rhythms and scoring." So did the works of Yasushi Akutagawa. Donald Richie and Joseph Anderson noted in 1982 that composers of scores of "independently" produced Japanese films are "ordered to turn out music" that "strongly echo" Khachaturian and other Soviet composers. ==Personal life and personality==

In a 1957 letter, Khachaturian hinted at his feelings on balancing music and heritage: "Bury me in Yerevan,” he wrote, “but bring the orchestra from Moscow." Khachaturian was described as a "stocky bushy haired Armenian." In Testimony, attributed by Solomon Volkov to Shostakovich, the author wrote: "Meeting Khachaturian means, first of all, eating a good, filling meal, drinking with pleasure, and chatting about this and that. That's why, if I have the time, I never turn down a meeting with him." The German conductor Kurt Masur, who met him several times, said Khachaturian was "sometimes an uncomfortable person." He played tennis and watched football in the stadium, was an "avid theater-goer". He maintained a lifelong interest in cinema. Khachaturian married the composer Nina Makarova, a fellow student from Myaskovsky's class at the Moscow Conservatory, in 1933. He died in Moscow on 1 May 1978, after a long illness, in Yerevan on 6 May, next to other distinguished Armenians. Views on display at the House-Museum of Aram Khachaturian. Khachaturian was reportedly an atheist and remained enthusiastic about communism. Jeffrey Adams argues that he was a "loyal Communist ideologue" who was "devoted to making art relevant to the common worker." Khachaturian wrote: "the October Revolution fundamentally changed my whole life and, if I have really grown into a serious artist, then I am indebted only to the people and the Soviet Government." In 1973 he joined eleven Soviet composers in condemning the nuclear physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov after he met with Western correspondents. ==Recognition and reputation==

Khachaturian is generally considered one of the leading composers of the Soviet Union. Alongside Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev, he has been generally cited as one of the three greatest composers of the Soviet era. Ronald Crichton wrote on his death that, in his lifetime, Khachaturian "ranked as the third most celebrated Soviet composer after Shostakovich and Prokofiev." According to music historian Harlow Robinson, "his proletariat origins, non-Russian ethnic origins and Soviet training [made him] a powerful symbol within the Soviet musical establishment of the ideal of a multinational Soviet cultural identity, an identity which the composer enthusiastically embraced and exploited both at home and abroad". Unlike Prokofiev and Shostakovich, Khachaturian was "entirely a creation of the Soviet musical and dance establishment". Reputation The Age wrote that he was the "last survivor among such household names as Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Rachmaninov" and his death marked the "end of an era of the great Soviet composers." At the same time, his obituary argued that "on the whole Khachaturian was a writer of popular classics rather than intellectual music." Richard Taruskin argued in 1996 that Khachaturian has not been "certified as [a] great artist by the promoters of classical music." Taruskin opined in 2003 that during his lifetime Khachaturian was "more popular than Shostakovich and rivaled only by Prokofiev — but these days it’s different." He argued that musicians never "thought much of Khachaturian" as he was "always a composer for the crowds." of Khachaturian painted by Robert Nikoghosyan near the Yerevan Vernissage in July 2015 Josef Woodard, writing for the Los Angeles Times, suggests that Khachaturian has long been considered a "lighter-weight participant among 20th-century composers", while classic music broadcaster Norman Gilliland describes him as a "major" composer of the 20th century. Tim Ashley wrote in The Guardian in 2009 that Khachaturian's popularity fell in the West, because of his image as one of Soviet music's "yes-men". He argued, "Such a view is simplistic, given that he had a major brush with the authorities in 1948." In 2003 conductor Marin Alsop opined that Khachaturian is "very underperformed" and "somewhat underrated․" David Nice wrote in BBC Music Magazine that Khachaturian did best in dance and incidental music. Bernard Holland described Spartacus as "Socialist-Realism schlock", but argued that "Khachaturian writes inventive schlock—comfortably entertaining yet not without surprises." New York Times critic Harold C. Schonberg was often critical of Khachaturian. In 1968 he wrote that "Even at his best he was a minor figure, and his music these days has little to offer. Not because it is conventional, but because its materials and ideas are second-rate." Although describing him as an important and highly popular composer and a "man of pronounced gifts", Schonberg argued on his death in 1978 that Khachaturian "frankly composed popular music" and that after being exposed to his work it becomes evident that it is mostly "formula writing". While praising his work as exotic and colorful, he described Khachaturian as a "bureaucratic composer, turning out well-crafted pieces of no particular personality, and certainly nothing that would rock the boat". In 1968 New York Post music critic Harriett Johnson argued that while some may describe Khachaturian's style as "pop," she praised "the individuality of his melodies, infiltrated as they are with Oriental flavor of his Armenian heritage" and "the elemental surge of his rhythm which easily grows wild." Khachaturian is considered a national treasure, and is celebrated by the Armenian people "as a famous son who earned world-wide recognition". Khachaturian was the most renowned Armenian composer of the 20th century, and the most famous representative of Soviet Armenian culture. He has been described as "by far the most important Armenian composer", the "Armenian Tchaikovsky", and deemed a key figure in 20th-century Armenian culture. He remains the only Armenian composer to rise to international significance. Khachaturian is credited for bringing Armenian music worldwide recognition. Şahan Arzruni has described him as "the musical ambassador of Armenian culture". ==Posthumous honors and tribute==

banknote (1998–2004) Two younger Armenian composers dedicated pieces to Khachaturian's memory. Arno Babajanyan composed an elegy inspired by Sayat-Nova upon his death, while Edvard Mirzoyan composed Poem Epitaph In Memory of Aram Khachaturian, for string orchestra in 1988, on the 10th anniversary of his death. In 1998, the Central Bank of Armenia issued 50-dram banknotes depicting Khachaturian's portrait and the Yerevan Opera Theater on the obverse and an episode from the ballet Gayane and Mount Ararat on the reverse. It remained in use until 2004 when it was replaced by a coin. He is one of the two composers depicted on the Armenian currency (the other is Komitas, who is depicted on the 10,000 dram banknote since 2018). In 2013, UNESCO inscribed a collection of Khachaturian's handwritten notes and film music in the Memory of the World international register. Music schools are named after Khachaturian in Tbilisi, Moscow (established in 1967, named after him in 1996), Yerevan, and Watertown, Massachusetts, U.S. (run by the Hamazkayin). Streets in Yerevan, Tbilisi, and elsewhere are named after Khachaturian. The Aram Khachaturian International Competition has been held annually in Yerevan since 2003. Statues On 31 July 1999 a three-and-a-half meter high statue of Khachaturian in 19th-century realist style by Yuri Petrosyan was unveiled before the Khachaturian Hall of the Yerevan Opera Theater in attendance of President Robert Kocharyan, Speaker Karen Demirchyan and leading poet Silva Kaputikyan. On 30 April 2013, a bust of Khachaturian erected by sculptor Gevorg Gevorgyan was opened in the street named after him in Yerevan's Arabkir district by Yerevan Mayor Taron Margaryan on his 110th anniversary. A statue of Khachaturian by Georgy Frangulyan was unveiled in Moscow on 31 October 2006. Notable attendees included Armenian President Kocharyan, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov and Russia's First Lady Lyudmila Putina. Busts of Khachaturian by the Armenian sculptor Mikael Soghoyan were erected at the Moscow Conservatory in 2017 and in front of an arts school named after him in Nizhny Novgorod in August 2021. Films In 1977, a year before his death, Studio Ekran made a documentary on Khachaturian. In 1985, the Yerevan Studio produced another TV documentary on him. In 2003, an 83-minute-long documentary about Khachaturian with unique footage was directed by Peter Rosen and narrated by Eric Bogosian. The film won the Best Documentary at the 2003 Hollywood Film Festival. In 2004, TV Kultura, Russia's government-owned art channel, made a documentary on Khachaturian entitled Century of Aram Khachaturian (Век Арама Хачатуряна). ==Awards and honors==

Soviet Union • Order of the Science of Art of the United Arab Republic (1961, "for outstanding musical achievements") • Medal of Pope John XXIII (1963) • Medal of the Iranian Shah (1965) • Honored Art Worker of Polish People's Republic (1972, "for contribution to the Polish culture") • Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France) and title of Commandeur (1974) Honorary titles • Honorary Member of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Rome, Italy — 1960 • Corresponding Member of the Academy of Arts of the German Democratic Republic — 1961 • Honorary Professor of the Conservatorio Nacional de Música, Mexico City — 1960 ==References==