Aram Khachaturian

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(b Tbilisi, 6 June 1903; d Moscow, 1 May 1978). Armenian composer. A bookbinder's son, he at first studied medicine and received his musical education comparatively late, studying the cello and composition under Myaskovsky at the Moscow Conservatory (1929-37). He came to wider notice in 1936 with his Piano Concerto and his Violin Concerto (1940), and was active from 1937 in the Union of Soviet Composers. Most of his best-known works, including the ballet Gayane, date from the 1940s. In common with other Soviet composers, he was subject to official criticism in 1948; but his colourful, nationally tinged idiom was far removed from modernistic excess. He concentrated on film music in the ensuing years, and took up conducting and teaching (at the Gnesin Institute and the Conservatory). His later works include ‘concert rhapsodies’ which re-interpret concerto form. His career represents the Soviet model of the linking of regional folklorism with the central Russian tradition; his Armenian heritage is clear in his melodies and his vitality, but in disciplined form. His greatest strengths lie in colourful orchestration and effective pictorialism.

works:
Ballets

• Gayane (1942)
• Spartak (1956)

Orchestral music

• Dance Suite (1933)
• 3 syms. (1935, 1943, 1947)
• Pf Conc. (1936)
• Vn Conc. (1940)
• Masquerade (1944)
• Vc Conc. (1946)
• Funeral Ode in Memory of Lenin (1949)
• The Battle for Stalingrad (1952)
• The Widow of Valencia (1953)
• Concert Waltz (1955)
• Concert-rhapsodies, vn, orch (1962), vc, orch (1963), pf, orch (1965)

Choral music

• Song of Stalin (1937)
• Ode of Joy (1956)

Chamber music

• Sonata, vn, pf (1932)
• Trio, cl, vn, pf (1932)
• Recitative and Fugue, str qt (1967)

Piano music

• Poem (1927)
• Album of Children's Pieces, 2 vols. (1946, 1964)
• Sonatina (1959)
• Sonata (1961)

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Soviet composer Aram Ilich Khachaturian (1903-1978) is best known for two works: "Piano Concerto" (1936) and the ballet "Gayane" (1942), which includes the popular and rhythmic "Sabre Dance". His compositions incorporate the folk tunes of his native Armenia and other parts of Russia.

Aram Khachaturian was born on June 6, 1903, in the Armenian community of Tiflis, Georgia, Russian Empire (later part of the U.S.S.R. and now Tbilisi in the Republic of Georgia). Music was not on his mind at the Tiflis Commercial School where he debated between a career in medicine or engineering. In 1920, however, Georgia became part of the new Soviet Union. The following year, Khachaturian, then 17, went to Moscow with his oldest brother, Suren, who was director of the Moscow Art Theater. Like his brother, Khachaturian Russianized name to Khachaturov, which he used for a period of 18 years. Influenced by his brother's work in Moscow, Khachaturian fell under the magic spell of the music world. Although he began to study biology at Moscow University, he took cello lessons as well at the Gnessin Music School.

Early Music Career

Khachaturian had hardly mastered the basics of musical composition when he completed his first work, The Dance for violin and piano (1926). By the following year, with the publication of Poem in C Sharp Minor, his extensive use of folk music from his native land was already evident. Said Gerald Abraham in Monthly Musical Record, "The Khachaturian of this period was in the position of an eager, intelligent child who has just been given the run of a toyshop … Like many other young musicians with fuller cultural backgrounds, Khachaturian discovered music through contemporary music, and only later developed a love of the classics."

Over the next several years, Khachaturian studied and also taught at the Moscow Conservatory. Influenced by contemporary Western music, particularly the works of Maurice Ravel, his compositions began to show the maturity, mastery, and rich stirring color that so dominated his music.

The Compositions

The first of Khachaturian's two best-known works, Piano Concerto (1936) was first performed in the United States at the Juilliard Graduate School of Music in New York City on March 15, 1942, followed by the first public performance, by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, that July. Said the music critic of the World-Telegram, "There is no piano concerto in the entire literature to equal this one in sheer energy, speed, and sheer drive…. It happens also to be pretty good music…."

Other works followed, most notably: Happiness, a ballet (1939); Violin Concerto in D Minor (1940), for which he won the Stalin Prize, Second Degree; Second Symphony (1943), written for the 25th anniversary of the Russian revolution; Masquerade (1944), a symphonic suite in the tradition of lavish classical Russian music; and Spartak, a ballet (1953). In addition, he composed violin and cello concerto and numerous minor works.

The second of Khachaturian's best-known works is Sabre Dance from his ballet Gayane (1942). This rhythmically stirring piece has received popular recognition since it was first performed. It is generally played in four-quarter rather than the three-quarter time in which it was written. First performed by the Leningrad Kirov Theatre of the Opera and Ballet, it is set on a collective Soviet farm just before World War II. He received his second Stalin Prize for this piece.

Criticism and Restoration

Khachaturian wrote numerous musical works, including marches, dances, chamber music, and film scores. During World War II, he was president of the Moscow Union of Composers and belonged to the Battle Song Staff, which wrote songs for the Russian army.

After the war, however, in 1948, Khachaturian, along with leading composers Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich, was accused by the Central Committee of the Russian Communist party of having "antidemocratic tendencies" in his music. He was censured by the critics even after he admitted to such charges in public. However, he was restored to favor later that yer when he was praised for his film biography of Lenin. In 1954, he was named People's Artist of the Soviet Union. Five years later, he was awarded the Lenin Prize in recognition of his work. Although the official criticism was later charged to excesses of the Stalin period, it moved Khachaturian closer to Soviet political thinking in the arts. He frequently appered in world forums in the role of champion of an apologist for the Soviet idea of creative orthodoxy. His later works were often criticized as repetitive and eclectic.

Khachaturian's wife, Nina, was also prominent in Soviet cultural life and wrote songs under the name of Nina Makarova. Khachaturian lived in Moscow until his death on May 1, 1978.

Further Reading

Gustav Schneerson, Aram Khachaturian, translated into English by Xenia Denko in 1959, was published by the Moscow Foreign Language Publishing House and reflects Soviet views; Gerald Abraham's, Eight Soviet Composers (1943), includes a chapter on Khachaturian.

Khachaturian, Aram Ilyich (b Tbilisi, 6 June 1903, d Moscow, 1 May 1978). Soviet composer. He wrote the ballet music for Happiness (chor. I. Arbatov, Yerevan, 1939) which was rewritten to become the score for Gayané (chor. Anisomova, Kirov Ballet, 1942) and for Spartacus (many productions, including Jacobson, Kirov Ballet, 1956, and Grigorovich, Bolshoi Ballet, 1968).

• Period: Modern (1910-1949)
• Country: Soviet Union
• Born: June 06, 1903 in Tiflis, Russia
• Died: May 01, 1978 in Moscow, Russia
• Genres: Ballet, Chamber Music, Concerto, Keyboard Music, Miscellaneous Music, Orchestral Music, Symphony

Biography

Although he was indicted (along with Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and a number of other prominent Soviet musicians) for "formalism," in the infamous Zhdanov decree of 1948, Aram Khachaturian was, for most of his long career, one of the Soviet musical establishment's most prized representatives. Born into an Armenian family, in Tbilisi, in 1903, Khachaturian's musical identity formed slowly, and, although a tuba player in his school band and a self-taught pianist, he wanted to be a biologist, and did not study music formally until entering Moscow's Gnesin Music Academy (as a cellist) in 1922. His considerable musical talents soon manifested themselves, and by 1925 he was studying composition privately with Gnesin himself. In 1929, Khachaturian joined Miaskovsky's composition class at the Moscow Conservatory. Khachaturian graduated in 1934, and before the completion, in 1937, of his postgraduate studies, the successful premieres of such works as the Symphony No. 2 in A Minor "With a Bell" (1935) and, especially, the Piano Concerto in D flat Major (1936) established Khachaturian as the leading Soviet composer of his generation. During the vicious government-sponsored attacks, in 1948, on the Soviet Composers' Union (in which Khachaturian, an active member since 1937, also held an administrative function) Khachaturian took a great deal of criticism. However, although he was officially censured for employing modernistic, politically incorrect musical techniques which fostered an "anti-people art," Khachaturian's music contained few, if any, of the objectionable traits found in the music of some of his more adventuresome colleagues. In retrospect, it was most likely Khachaturian's administrative role in the Union, perceived by the government as a bastion of politically incorrect music, and not his music as such, which earned him a place on the black list of 1948. Nevertheless, Khachaturian made a very full and humble apology for his artistic "errors" following the Zhdanov decree; his musical style, however, underwent no changes. Khachaturian joined the composition faculty of the Moscow Conservatory and the Gnesin Academy in 1950, and that same year he made his debut as a conductor. During the years until his death in 1978 Khachaturian made frequent European conducting appearances, and in January of 1968 he made a culturally significant trip to Washington, D.C., conducting the National Symphony Orchestra in a program of his own works. Khachaturian's characteristic musical style draws on the melodic and rhythmic vitality of Armenian folk music. Although not adverse to sharp dissonance, Khachaturian never strayed from a basically diatonic musical language. The Piano Concerto and the Violin Concerto in D Minor are truly Romantic works, virtuosic, clear, and unaffectedly expressive, remaining therefore popular and frequently performed composition. Of course, many neither of these works matches the popularity of the famous "Sabre Dance" from the ballet Gayane, which made Khachaturian a household name during World War II. His other works include film scores, songs, piano pieces, and chamber music. The degree of Khachaturian's success as a Soviet composer can be measured by his many honors, which include the 1941 Lenin Prize, for the Violin Concerto, the 1959 Stalin Prize, for the ballet Spartacus, and the title, awarded in 1954, of People's Artist. ~ Blair Johnston, All Music Guide

Discography

Khachaturian: Symphony No.2; Excerpts from Gayaneh Buy this CD

Boris Tchaikovsky: Aibolit - 66; Balzaminov's Marriage Buy this CD

Khachaturian: Spartacus; Gayaneh [Highlights]; Glazunov: Autumn Buy this CD

• Born: Jun 06, 1903 in Tiflis, Georgia, Russian Empire
• Died: May 01, 1978 in Moscow, Soviet Union
• Occupation: Actor
• Active: '40s-2000s
• Major Genres: Dance, Theater
• Career Highlights: Otello, Khachaturian, Jovita
• First Major Screen Credit: The Iron Curtain (1948)

Biography

This post-Romantic Russian composer of earthy, directly emotional scores has had his music excerpted in approximately 25 feature-length productions. The majority of these feature the music of Khachaturian's popular ballets Gayane (1942) and Spartak (Spartacus, 1954).

In the Coen Brothers film The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), after the original Mr. Hudsucker jumps out of the skyscraper window for unknown reasons, the character Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins) is hired from the mail room as the perfect imbecile to head Hudsucker Industries in order to drive down the price of stocks so that the chairmen of the board can buy up the remaining stock on the cheap. Barnes shows a drawing of a perfect circle on a pad of paper of his as yet unnamed invention, "You know, for kids." He demonstrates what will become the hula hoop at a board meeting which the board decides to manufacture thinking that this will be the ultimate dumb idea that will drive investors away. The energetic pulsing of the Sabre Dance from the ballet Gayane crescendos onto the soundtrack. Excerpts (arranged by Carter Burwell) from the original music are heard while the audience sees the plans sent by pneumatic tubes to the design department, while the advertising department tries to find names for the whatiz (the shazam, the hipster, the daddy-o, the hoopsucker, the hudswinger). The budget department figures the cost and adds a dollar. The proving facility blows up a test dummy but the hula loop it was wearing passes with flying colors. Millions are manufactured but don't sell until a shopowner discards a bunch which haven't sold into an alleyway. One escapes and rolls down the street nearly causing a wreck. It circles around a small kid and falls flat to the sidewalk. The kid stares at it, steps into the circle and begins rotating it around his waist and then each ankle. Older kids, just let out from school, see him do this, in slow motion, and, to the full melody of Khachaturian's original score, they rush into the previously seen store (where the price quickly rises from "free with any purchase" to "$3.99 each") and the novelty device becomes the monster success of the 1950s.

Seven other films excerpt music from the ballet Gayane which include the ever-popular Sabre Dance: Morto the Magician (2001) (uncredited music), Patriot Games (1992), Aliens (1986) (uncredited music), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Onkel Toms Hütte (Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1965), Billy Wilder's brilliant tragi-comedy One, Two, Three (1961), and Kontsert masterov iskusstov (Concert of Stars, 1952).

Khachaturian also composed patriotic cantatas, such as Pesnya Stalina (Song of Stalin, 1937), and served as deputy chairman and vice president of the organizing committee of the Union of Soviet Composers, so it was somewhat surprising when, in 1948, Khachaturian, along with Prokofiev and Shostakovich, was censured for modernist and "formalist" excesses. Khachaturian's music is rooted in his Armenian homeland, so it was probably guilt by association rather than his music that brought him trouble, although he was forced to publicly renounce his "cosmopolitan" tendencies. His ballet Spartacus expresses the struggle for political freedom with vivid, energetic lines and has been excerpted in many dramatic contexts, such as Caligula (1979), the television series The Onedin Line (1971), Mayerling (1968), and Spartakus (1977).

Khachaturian also composed original music for several films which were later arranged by him to be played in concert: Stalingradskaya bitva I, II (1949-1950) became the orchestral suite The Battle for Stalingrad (1952) and Tuaurnaya oda pamyati Vladimira Il'yicha Lenina (1949), based on a biopic of the revolutionary leader. ~ "Blue" Gene Tyranny, All Movie Guide

Spartacus (Bolshoi Ballet) Buy this Movie

Plisetskaya Dances Buy this Movie

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