Aram Khachaturian

Background and early life (1903–21)

Aram Khachaturian was born on 6 June (24 May in Old Style)^[14] 1903 in the city of Tiflis (present-day Tbilisi, Georgia) into an Armenian family.^[15][16] Some sources indicate Kojori, a village near Tiflis, as his birthplace.^[17][18][19] Khachaturian himself said he was born in Kojori.^[C] 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 5 children, one daughter and four sons, of whom Aram was the youngest.^[21] Khachaturian received primary education at the commercial school of Tiflis, a school for merchants.^[22] He considered a career either in medicine or engineering.^[23]

In the 19th and early 20th centuries and throughout the early Soviet period, Tiflis (known as Tbilisi after 1936) was the largest city and the administrative center of the Caucasus. In Tiflis, which has historically been multicultural, Khachaturian was exposed to various cultures.^[24] The city had a large Armenian population and was a major Armenian cultural center until the Russian Revolution and the following years. In a 1952 article "My Idea of the Folk Element in Music", Khachaturian described the city environment and its influence on his career:

I grew up in an atmosphere rich in folk music: popular festivities, rites, joyous and sad events in the life of the people always accompanied by music, the vivid tunes of Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian songs and dances performed by folk bards [ashugs] and musicians — such were the impressions that became deeply engraved on my memory, that determined my musical thinking. They shaped my musical consciousness and lay at the foundations of my artistic personality... Whatever the changes and improvements that took place in my musical taste in later years, their original substance, formed in early childhood in close communion with the people, has always remained the natural soil nourishing all my work.^[25]

In 1917, the Bolsheviks rose to power in Russia in the October Revolution. After over two years of fragile independence, Armenia fell to Soviet rule in late 1920. Georgia was also Sovietized by the spring of 1921. Both countries formally became part of the Soviet Union in December 1922.^[26]

Education (1922–36)

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.^[22][21] He enrolled at the Gnessin Musical Institute in 1922, simultaneously studying biology at Moscow State University.^[23][27] He initially studied the cello under Sergei Bychkov and later under Andrey Borysyak.^[28][16] In 1925, Mikhail Gnessin started a composition class at the institute, which Khachaturian joined.^[29][22] In this period, he wrote his first works: the Dance Suite for violin and piano (1926) and the Poem in C Sharp Minor (1927).^[23][27] Beginning with his earliest works, Khachaturian extensively used Armenian folk music in his compositions.

In 1929, Khachaturian entered the Moscow Conservatory to study composition under Nikolai Myaskovsky and orchestration under Sergei Vasilenko.^[30] He finished the conservatory in 1934 and went on to complete his graduate work in 1936.^[22]

Early career (1936–48)

His Armenian-influenced First Symphony, which Khachaturian composed as a graduation work from the Moscow Conservatory in 1935, "drew the attention of prominent conductors and was soon performed by the best Soviet orchestras"^[24] and was admired by Shostakovich.^[25] He began an active creative career upon completing his graduate studies at the conservatory in 1936.^[27] He wrote his first major work, the Piano Concerto, that year.^[23] It proved to be a success, establishing him as a respected composer in the Soviet Union.^[16] It was "played and acclaimed far beyond the borders of the Soviet Union",^[7] and "established his name abroad".^[24]

His Piano Concerto, along with the two later concertos—the Violin Concerto (1940), for which he won a Stalin Prize, second class^[23][24][31] and the Cello Concerto (1946)—are "often considered a kind of a grand cycle".^[16] The Violin Concerto "gained international recognition"^[7] and became part of the international repertory.^[24] It was first performed by David Oistrakh.^[24]

Khachaturian held important posts at the Composers' Union, becoming deputy chairman of the Moscow branch in 1937. He subsequently served as the Deputy Chairman of the Organizing Committee (Orgkom) of the Union between 1939 and 1948.^[18][32] He joined the Communist Party in 1943.^[22] "Throughout the early and mid-1940s, Khachaturian used that position to help shape Soviet music, always stressing but 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."^[33]

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 which he completed in the same year. "His 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."^[34] In 1942, at the height of the Second World War, he reworked it into the ballet Gayane.^[35] It was first performed by the Kirov Ballet (today known as Mariinsky Ballet) in Perm, while Leningrad was under siege. It was a great success that earned Khachaturian his second Stalin Prize, this time first-class.^[36][27] Khachaturian returned the prize money to the state with a request to use it for building a tank for the Red Army.^[37]

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.^[23] Both the ballet Gayane and the Second Symphony were "successful and were warmly praised by Shostakovich".^[16] In 1944, Khachaturian composed the largely symbolic Anthem of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic.^[11]

Denunciation and restoration (1948)

Khachaturian in 1964

In mid-December 1947, the Department for Agitation and Propaganda (better known as Agitprop) submitted to Andrei Zhdanov, the secretary of the Communist Party's Central Committee, a document on the "shortcomings" in the development of Soviet music. On 10–13 January 1948, a conference was held at the Kremlin in the presence of seventy musicians, composers, conductors and others who were confronted by Zhdanov:^[38]

We will consider that if these comrades Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Myaskovsky, Khachaturian, Kabalevsky and Shebalin namely who are the principal and leading figures of the formalist direction in music. And that direction is fundamentally incorrect.

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".^[39] Khachaturian and other leading composers were denounced by the Communist Party as followers of the alleged formalism^[16] (i.e. "[a type of] music that was considered too advanced or difficult for the masses to enjoy")^[7] and their music was dubbed "anti-people".^[40] It was the Symphonic Poem (1947), later titled the Third Symphony, that officially earned Khachaturian the wrath of the Party.^[38][41] Ironically, he wrote the work as a tribute to the 30th anniversary of the October Revolution.^[42] He stated: "I wanted to write the kind of composition in which the public would feel my unwritten program without an announcement. I wanted this work to express the Soviet people's joy and pride in their great and mighty country."^[43]

Musicologist Blair Johnston believes that his "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 [of Soviet Composers], 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."^[44] In March 1948,^[45] Khachaturian "made a very full and humble apology for his artistic 'errors' following the Zhdanov decree; his musical style, however, underwent no changes".^[44] He was sent to Armenia as a "punishment",^[16] and continued to be censured.^[45] Edward Rothstein argued that Khachaturian suffered less than Shostakovich and Prokofiev, "perhaps because of his folkloric and simple musical style."^[46]

By December 1948 he was restored to favor, receiving praise for his score for the film Vladimir Ilyich Lenin [ru], a film biography of the Soviet leader.^[23][45]

Later life (1950–78)

In 1950, Khachaturian began conducting^[44] and started teaching composition at his alma maters—the Gnessin Institute (since 1950), and later at the Moscow Conservatory (since 1951).^[18] During his career as a university professor, Khachaturian emphasized the role of folk music to his students and instilled the idea that composers should master their nations' folk music heritage.^[18]

In 1950, he began working on his third and last ballet, Spartacus (1950–54), which later proved to be his last internationally acclaimed work.^[16] He revised Spartacus in 1968.^[16] He was named People's Artist of the Soviet Union in 1954.^[23] Under Georgy Malenkov's brief rule, in 1954, Khachaturian became a mouthpiece, along with Ilya Ehrenburg, to "assure Soviet intellectuals that the ideological controls imposed by the draconic Zhdanov decrees of 1946–48 would be at least temporarily lifted."^[47]

After completing Spartacus, since the late 1950s, Khachaturian focused less on composition, and more on conducting, teaching, bureaucracy and travel.^[25] He served as the President of the Soviet Association of Friendship and Cultural Cooperation with Latin American States from 1958^[14] and was a member of the Soviet Peace Committee (since 1962).^[18] "He frequently appeared in world forums in the role of champion of an apologist for the Soviet idea of creative orthodoxy."^[23] Khachaturian toured with concerts of his own works in around 30 countries, including in all the Eastern Bloc states,^[11] Italy (1950), Britain (1955, 1977), Latin America (1957) and the United States (1960, 1968).^[7][25][8] 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.^[44]

Khachaturian went on to serve again as Secretary of the Composers Union, starting in 1957 until his death.^[14][18] He was also a deputy in the fifth Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union (1958–62).^[48] In the last two decades of his life, Khachaturian wrote three concert rhapsodies—for violin (1961–62), cello (1963) and piano (1965)^[42]—and solo sonatas for unaccompanied cello, violin, and viola (1970s), which are considered to be his second and third instrumental trilogies.^[16]

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Armenians

Armenians

Armenians are an ethnic group native to the Armenian highlands of Western Asia. Armenians constitute the main population of Armenia and the de facto independent Artsakh. There is a wide-ranging diaspora of around five million people of full or partial Armenian ancestry living outside modern Armenia. The largest Armenian populations today exist in Russia, the United States, France, Georgia, Iran, Germany, Ukraine, Lebanon, Brazil, and Syria. With the exceptions of Iran and the former Soviet states, the present-day Armenian diaspora was formed mainly as a result of the Armenian genocide.

Kojori

Kojori

Kojori is a small town (daba) in Georgia, some 20 kilometers southwest of the nation's capital of Tbilisi. It is a so-called "climate resort" and home to several [ holiday homes]of the Tbilisite families.

Aza, Azerbaijan

Aza, Azerbaijan

Aza is a village and municipality in the Ordubad District of Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan. It is located in the left side of the Ordubad-Nakhchivan highway, 17 km in the south-east from the district center, on the right bank of the Gilanchay River. Its population is busy with gardening, vegetable-growing, farming, animal husbandry. There are secondary school, club and a medical center in the village. It has a population of 442.

Azadkənd, Nakhchivan

Azadkənd, Nakhchivan

Azadkənd is a village and municipality in the Ordubad District of Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan. It is located in the left side of the Ordubad-Nakhchivan highway, 20 km in the south-west from the district center, on the right bank of the Gilanchay River. Its population is busy with gardening, vegetable-growing, farming, vine-growing, poultry farming and animal husbandry. There are secondary school, club, hospital and kindergarten in the village. It has a population of 1,054.

Caucasus

Caucasus

The Caucasus or Caucasia, is a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range, have historically been considered as a natural barrier between Eastern Europe and Western Asia.

Armenians in Tbilisi

Armenians in Tbilisi

The Armenians have historically been one of the main ethnic groups in the city of Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. Armenians are the largest ethnic minority in Tbilisi at 4.8% of the population. Armenians migrated to the Georgian lands in the Middle Ages, during the Muslim rule of Armenia. They formed the single largest group of city's population in the 19th century. Official Georgian statistics of 2014 put the number of Armenians in Tbilisi at 53,409 people.

Ashik

Ashik

An ashik or ashugh is traditionally a singer-poet and bard who accompanies his song—be it a dastan or a shorter original composition—with a long-necked lute in Turkic and non-Turkic cultures of South Caucasus. In Azerbaijan, the modern ashik is a professional musician who usually serves an apprenticeship, masters playing the bağlama, and builds up a varied but individual repertoire of Turkic folk songs.

Moscow Art Theatre

Moscow Art Theatre

The Moscow Art Theatre was a theatre company in Moscow. It was founded in 1898 by the seminal Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski, together with the playwright and director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. It was conceived as a venue for naturalistic theatre, in contrast to the melodramas that were Russia's dominant form of theatre at the time. The theatre, the first to regularly put on shows implementing Stanislavski's system, proved hugely influential in the acting world and in the development of modern American theatre and drama.

Gnessin State Musical College

Gnessin State Musical College

The Gnessin State Musical College and Gnesins Russian Academy of Music is a prominent music school in Moscow, Russia.

Moscow State University

Moscow State University

M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University is a public research university in Moscow, Russia, and the most prestigious university in the country.

Mikhail Gnessin

Mikhail Gnessin

Mikhail Fabianovich Gnessin was a Russian Jewish composer and teacher. Gnessin's works The Maccabeans and The Youth of Abraham earned him the nickname the "Jewish Glinka".

Moscow Conservatory

Moscow Conservatory

The Moscow Conservatory, also officially Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory is a musical educational institution located in Moscow, Russia. It grants undergraduate and graduate degrees in musical performance and musical research. The conservatory offers various degrees including Bachelor of Music Performance, Master of Music and PhD in research.

"Sabre Dance"

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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".^[25] He composed a great portion of his works in a ten-year span between 1936 and 1946, preceding and following the Second World War.^[49] Despite his formal restoration after the 1948 denunciation, Khachaturian only succeeded in composing one internationally acclaimed work in the last 30 years of his life, the ballet Spartacus.^[24]

According to James Bakst, what made Khachaturian unique among Soviet composers is "the blending of national Armenian vocal and instrumental intonations with contemporary orchestral techniques".^[50] Khachaturian's music is characterized by an active rhythmic development, which reaches either a mere repetition of the basic formula (ostinato) or "a game of emphasis within this formula".^[51]

The Central Bank of Russia issued a commemorative coin depicting Spartacus in 2001.

Works

Ballet

Khachaturian is best known internationally for his ballet music.^[D] His second ballet, Gayane, was largely reworked from his first ballet, Happiness.^[41][54] Anna Kisselgoff called it "one of the staples of the Soviet and Eastern European ballet repertory."^[55] Spartacus became his most acclaimed work in the post-Stalin period. These two compositions "remain his most successful compositions".^[56] According to Jonathan McCollum and Andy Nercessian, his music for these two ballets "can safely be included among the best known pieces of classical music throughout the world, a fact that is vitalized by perception that these are perhaps the only works through that the world really knows Armenian music".^[57]

Spartacus was popularized when the "Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia" was used as the theme for a popular BBC drama series The Onedin Line during the 1970s.^[42] The climax of Spartacus was also used in films such as Caligula (1979)^[58] and Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006).^[59] Joel Coen's The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) also prominently featured music from Spartacus and Gayane (the "Sabre Dance" included).^[59] Gayane's "Adagio" was used, among other films, in Stanley Kubrick's futuristic film 2001: A Space Odyssey.^[60]

Orchestral music

Khachaturian wrote three symphonies: the First in 1934/5, the Second in 1943, and the Third in 1947.^[16][61] He also wrote three concertos: the Piano Concerto (1936), the Violin Concerto (1940), and the Cello Concerto (1946).^[16]

Other compositions

Khachaturian wrote incidental music for several plays, including Macbeth (1934, 1955), The Widow from Valencia (1940), Masquerade (1941), King Lear (1958).^[16]

Khachaturian was the first Soviet composer to write music for sound films.^[62] He produced around 25 film scores.^[42][61] Among them is Pepo (1935), the first Armenian sound film.^[56] In 1950 he was awarded the Stalin Prize for the score of The Battle of Stalingrad (1949).^[11]

Influences

Musicologist Marina Frolova-Walker describes Khachaturian as the only internationally renowned Soviet composer "who emerged from the nationalist project".^[64] James Bakst interpreted Khachaturian's views as follows: "Music is a language created by the people. The people create intonational music forms which reveal at once his national elements of an art work."^[65]

Composer Tigran Mansurian suggested that Khachaturian's music incorporates American characteristics and called the United States his "second homeland" in terms of musical influences, especially due to the sense of optimism in his works and lifestyle.^[66] Soviet musicologist Boris Yarustovsky argued that the influence from American culture was heard in some of the words of Khachaturian.^[67]

Armenian folk music

Khachaturian used the "raw material" made available by Komitas (pictured), who in the early 20th century collected thousands of pieces of Armenian folk music.^[68]

Khachaturian is widely known for his use of folk songs of various ethnic groups in his compositions, most notably those of Armenians.^[E] Rosenberg argued that despite not having been born in Armenia, Khachaturian was "essentially an Armenian composer whose music exhibits his Armenian roots".^[53] "[M]any of his compositions evoke an Armenian melodic line. However, his works markedly differed from the conventional orchestrations of folk themes", writes Rouben Paul Adalian. He suggests that Khachaturian's works carry "the vibrant rhythms and stirring pace of Caucasian dance music", but at the same time are "original compositions that reworked that cultural material through new instrumentation and according to European musical canons, resulting in a sound unique to the composer".^[56] Richard Taruskin argued that "Khachaturian's 'Armenian' style was largely adapted from Gnesin's all-purpose Orientalist idiom."^[69]

Khachaturian was particularly influenced by the folk-song collector, musicologist Komitas,^[68] and composers Alexander Spendiaryan and Romanos Melikian.^[F] Khachaturian acknowledged that Komitas "singlehandedly laid the foundations for Armenia's classical tradition".^[71] In a 1969 article about Komitas, Khachaturian called him his "greatest teacher".^[72]

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."^[25] Khachaturian emphasized his Armenian origin, stating:^[24]

No matter how I may waver between various musical languages, I remain an Armenian, but a European Armenian, not an Asian Armenian. Together with other [Armenian composers], we will make all of Europe and the whole world listen to our music. And when they hear our music, people are certain to say, 'Tell us about that people, and show us the country that produces such art.'

Other folk music

During his university years, Khachaturian transcribed Armenian, Russian, Hungarian, Turkish and other folk songs.^[14] In his mature works, Khachaturian used elements from folk songs of Caucasian (including, but not limited to Georgians), Eastern European (Ukrainians, Poles) and Middle Eastern (Turks, Kurds) peoples.^[G] His first ballet, Happiness, incorporates a Ukrainian gopak, Georgian, Armenian and Russian dances and a Lezginka, an energetic dance of many Caucasian peoples.^[73] The Masquerade Suite includes a Mazurka, a Polish folk dance music.^[74] The ballet Gayane, like its predecessor, features a Lezginka.^[74] Act II of Gayane "is filled with Kurdish dances".^[75]

Russian classical music

Khachaturian is cited by musicologists as a follower of Russian classical traditions.^[H] 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".^[76] 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.^[77] "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.^[64]

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List of compositions by Aram Khachaturian

List of compositions by Aram Khachaturian

This is a list of compositions by Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian.

Edward Greenfield

Edward Greenfield

Edward Harry Greenfield OBE was an English music critic and broadcaster.

Ostinato

Ostinato

In music, an ostinato is a motif or phrase that persistently repeats in the same musical voice, frequently in the same pitch. Well-known ostinato-based pieces include both classical compositions, such as Ravel's Boléro and the Carol of the Bells, and popular songs such as Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder's "I Feel Love" (1977), Henry Mancini's theme from Peter Gunn (1959), The Who's "Baba O'Riley" (1971), and The Verve's "Bitter Sweet Symphony" (1997).

Central Bank of Russia

Central Bank of Russia

The Central Bank of the Russian Federation, doing business as the Bank of Russia, is the central bank of the Russian Federation. The bank was established on July 13, 1990. The predecessor of the bank can be traced back to the State Bank of the Russian Empire founded in 1860.

Gayane (ballet)

Gayane (ballet)

Gayane is a four-act ballet with music by Aram Khachaturian. Originally composed in or before 1939, when it was first produced as Happiness. Revised in 1941–42 to a libretto by Konstantin Derzhavin and with choreography by Nina Aleksandrovna Anisimova, the score was revised in 1952 and in 1957, with a new plot. The stage design was by Nathan Altman (scenery) and Tatyana Bruni (costumes).

Anna Kisselgoff

Anna Kisselgoff

Anna Kisselgoff is a dance critic and cultural news reporter for The New York Times. She began at the Times as a dance critic and cultural news reporter in 1968, and became its Chief Dance Critic in 1977, a role she held until 2005. She left the Times as an employee at the end of 2006, but still contributes to the paper.

BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is the national broadcaster of the United Kingdom, based at Broadcasting House in London, England. It is the world's oldest national broadcaster, and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees, employing over 22,000 staff in total, of whom approximately 19,000 are in public-sector broadcasting.

Caligula (film)

Caligula (film)

Caligula is a 1979 erotic historical drama film focusing on the rise and fall of the Roman Emperor Caligula. The film stars Malcolm McDowell in the title role, alongside Teresa Ann Savoy, Helen Mirren, Peter O'Toole, John Steiner and John Gielgud. Producer Bob Guccione, the founder of Penthouse magazine, intended to produce an erotic feature film narrative with high production values and name actors.

Ice Age: The Meltdown

Ice Age: The Meltdown

Ice Age: The Meltdown is a 2006 American computer-animated adventure comedy film produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It is the sequel to Ice Age (2002) and the second installment in the Ice Age film series. The film was directed by Carlos Saldanha. Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, and Chris Wedge reprise their roles from the first Ice Age film, with newcomers Seann William Scott, Josh Peck, and Queen Latifah joining the cast. In the film, Manny, Sid, and Diego attempt to escape an impending flood, during which Manny finds love.

Coen brothers

Coen brothers

Joel Daniel Coen and Ethan Jesse Coen, collectively known as the Coen brothers, are American filmmakers. Their films span many genres and styles, which they frequently subvert or parody. Their most acclaimed works include Raising Arizona (1987), Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), Fargo (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), No Country for Old Men (2007), True Grit (2010), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018). Many of their films are distinctly American, often examining the culture of the American South and American West in both modern and historical contexts.

2001: A Space Odyssey (film)

2001: A Space Odyssey (film)

2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The screenplay was written by Kubrick and science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, and was inspired by Clarke's 1951 short story "The Sentinel" and other short stories by Clarke. Clarke also published a novelisation of the film, in part written concurrently with the screenplay, after the film's release. The film stars Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, and Douglas Rain, and follows a voyage by astronauts, scientists and the sentient supercomputer HAL to Jupiter to investigate an alien monolith.

Cello Concerto (Khachaturian)

Cello Concerto (Khachaturian)

Aram Khachaturian wrote his Cello Concerto in E minor in 1946 for Sviatoslav Knushevitsky. It was the last of the three concertos he wrote for the individual members of a renowned Soviet piano trio that performed together from 1941 until 1963. The others were: the Piano Concerto for Lev Oborin (1936); and the Violin Concerto for David Oistrakh (1940).

Khachaturian's notable students at the Gnessin Institute and the Moscow Conservatory included foreign composers, such as Aziz El-Shawan from Egypt,^[78][79] Modesta Bor from Venezuela,^[80] and Anatol Vieru from Romania,^[11] and a number of Soviet composers: Tolib Shakhidi,^[81] Georgs Pelēcis,^[82] Mark Minkov,^[83] Alexey Rybnikov,^[84] Andrei Eshpai,^[11] Albert Markov,^[85] Nodar Gabunia [ru],^[17] Edgar Hovhannisyan,^[17] Mikael Tariverdiev,^[11] Eduard Khagagortyan [ru].^[86]

He inspired young Armenian composers^[24] and had a great influence on the development of Armenian music.^[87] Khachaturian's influence can be traced on chamber and symphonic music traditions of Armenia, including on Arno Babajanian,^[88][89] Edvard Mirzoyan, and Konstantin Orbelyan, among others.^[90]

Khachaturian also had an influence on composers of Azerbaijan, Central Asia^[87] and East Asia. The music of the Japanese composer Roh Ogura had the influence of Khachaturian in "its rhythms and scoring."^[91] Harold C. Schonberg argued that Soviet-trained Chinese composers, such as Li Delun, were part of a "school of music strongly indebted to such Socialist-Realistic composers as Aram Khachaturian."^[92] Schonberg opined that the Chinese ballet Red Detachment of Women "sounds like Russian academism with a touch of Oriental exoticism. It is close to the kind of thing that Aram Khachaturian was writing in such socialist‐real[ist] ballets as Spartacus."^[93]

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Gnessin State Musical College

Gnessin State Musical College

The Gnessin State Musical College and Gnesins Russian Academy of Music is a prominent music school in Moscow, Russia.

Aziz El-Shawan

Aziz El-Shawan

Aziz El-Shawan was one of the most prominent Egyptian composers of the twentieth century. He completed his primary and secondary education at the St. Joseph – La Salle College in Khoronfish, Cairo where he also received a Higher Diploma in Commercial Studies. He studied the violin privately with the German Joseph von Aubervon, a student of Jan Kubelick, and joined the school's choir and band where he played the clarinet and French horn. His violin teacher obtained a scholarship for him to study at the Berlin Conservatory, however, his father objected to his interest in pursuing a musical career. An accident disabled one of the fingers of his left hand, obliging him to give up his dream of being a virtuoso violinist. He then studied piano, theory, harmony, composition and orchestration with the Italian Menato and the Russian Orlovitsky who were part of a community of European musicians and music teachers who lived and worked in cosmopolitan Cairo.

Anatol Vieru

Anatol Vieru

Anatol Vieru was a Romanian-Jewish music theoretician, pedagogue, and composer. A pupil of Aram Khachaturian, he composed seven symphonies, eight string quartets, concertos, and chamber music. He also wrote three operas: Iona (1976), Praznicul Calicilor (1981), and Telegrame, Tema si Variatiuni (1983). He was awarded the Herder Prize in 1986.

Georgs Pelēcis

Georgs Pelēcis

Georgs Pelēcis is a Latvian composer and musicologist. He is currently a professor at the Latvian Academy of Music.

Alexey Rybnikov

Alexey Rybnikov

Alexey Lvovich Rybnikov is a modern Russian composer.

Andrei Eshpai

Andrei Eshpai

Andrei Yakovlevich Eshpai was an ethnic Mari composer. He was awarded the title of People's Artist of the USSR in 1981.

Albert Markov

Albert Markov

Albert Markov, is a Russian American violinist, composer, conductor, and pedagogue. He is the only concert violinist of the 20th and 21st century who composed major music works which are published, performed and recorded commercially on Sunrise label and published by G. Schirmer. During the time of the Soviet Union he was known as a prominent Soviet classical music artist. Albert Markov began his career as a concert violinist in Russia before immigrating to the United States in 1975.

Edgar Hovhannisyan

Edgar Hovhannisyan

Edgar Hovhannisyan, Hovhannisian or Oganesian was an Armenian composer, Professor of Composition at the Yerevan State Conservatory, People's Artist of the USSR (1986).

Chamber music

Chamber music

Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers, with one performer to a part. However, by convention, it usually does not include solo instrument performances.

Arno Babajanian

Arno Babajanian

Arno Harutyunovich Babajanian was a Soviet and Armenian composer and pianist. He was made a People's Artist of the USSR in 1971.

Edvard Mirzoyan

Edvard Mirzoyan

Edvard Mik'aeli Mirzoyan was an Armenian composer.

Harold C. Schonberg

Harold C. Schonberg

Harold Charles Schonberg was an American music critic and author. He is best known for his contributions in The New York Times, where he was chief music critic from 1960 to 1980. In 1971, he became the first music critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. An influential critic, he is particularly well known for his encouragement of Romantic piano music and criticism of conductor Leonard Bernstein. He also wrote a number of books on music, and one on chess.

In 1933 Khachaturian married the composer Nina Makarova, a fellow student from Myaskovsky's class at the Moscow Conservatory.^[52][94] Charlotte Curtis described her as "a bulky Russian woman with naturally pink cheeks, black hair" who is "widely known as one of the Soviet Union's most popular women composers."^[94] Makarova said of their differences: "He is Armenian — temperamental, strong and a bit Oriental. I am Russian and lyric."^[94] They had two children, a daughter, Nune, and a son, Karen. Nune became a pianist, while Karen—an art critic.^[21] His nephew, Karen Khachaturian, was also a composer.^[16]

Khachaturian's tombstone at the Komitas Pantheon in Yerevan

In early October 1965, Khachaturian was briefly admitted into a hospital in Geneva after a heart attack.^[95][96] He died in Moscow on 1 May 1978, after a long illness,^[8] just short of his 75th birthday.^[42] He was buried at the Komitas Pantheon^[97] in Yerevan on 6 May, next to other distinguished Armenians.^[11]

In 1968 New York Post music critic Harriett Johnson characterized Khachaturian as "sturdy, stocky and youthful."^[98] In Testimony, attributed by Solomon Volkov to Dmitri 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."^[99] Shostakovich described his outlook as "a basically optimistic, life-asserting view of our reality."^[100] While the German conductor Kurt Masur, who met him several times, said Khachaturian was "sometimes an uncomfortable person."^[101]

Views

Aram Khachaturian's credentials for the Supreme Soviet on display at the House-Museum of Aram Khachaturian.

Khachaturian was an atheist.^[102] When asked about his visit to the Vatican, Khachaturian has been quoted as having said: "I'm an atheist, but I'm a son of the [Armenian] people who were the first to officially adopt Christianity and thus visiting the Vatican was my duty."^[103][104]

Khachaturian always remained enthusiastic about communism.^[105] Jeffrey Adams argues that he was a "loyal Communist ideologue" who was "devoted to making art relevant to the common worker."^[106] He 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. To this people is dedicated my entire conscious life, as is all my creative work."^[45]

Khachaturian denied any censorship of his music in the Soviet Union and when asked about 1948 purges, he said: "Well, they thought my music was too loud, I did write for 15 trumpets and even Stokowski decided against our doing that music when he found out the instrumentation. But I wouldn't change it. The composer must stick to his conception."^[98]

In January 1971, Khachaturian, along with Shostakovich, Igor Moiseyev, Maya Plisetskaya called on President Richard Nixon to free Angela Davis.^[107] In 1973 he joined eleven Soviet composers in condemning the nuclear physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov after he met with Western correspondents.^[108]

Discover more about Personal life and personality related topics

Charlotte Curtis

Charlotte Curtis

Charlotte Murray Curtis was an American journalist, columnist and editor at The New York Times.

Karen Khachaturian

Karen Khachaturian

Karen Surenovich Khachaturian was a Soviet and Russian composer of Armenian ethnicity and the nephew of composer Aram Khachaturian.

Geneva

Geneva

Geneva is the second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Situated in the south west of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the capital of the Republic and Canton of Geneva.

Komitas Pantheon

Komitas Pantheon

Komitas Park and Pantheon is located in Yerevan's Shengavit District, on the right side of the main Arshakunyats Avenue, in Armenia. It was formed in 1936 after the demolition of the "Mler" cemetery and its historic chapel.

New York Post

New York Post

The New York Post is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The Post also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com.

Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his First Symphony in 1926 and was regarded throughout his life as a major composer.

Kurt Masur

Kurt Masur

Kurt Masur was a German conductor. Called "one of the last old-style maestros", he directed many of the principal orchestras of his era. He had a long career as the Kapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and also served as music director of the New York Philharmonic. He left many recordings of classical music played by major orchestras. Masur is also remembered for his actions to support peaceful demonstrations in the 1989 anti-government demonstrations in Leipzig; the protests were part of the events leading up to the fall of the Berlin wall.

House-Museum of Aram Khachaturian

House-Museum of Aram Khachaturian

The Aram Khachaturian Museum was established in 1978 in Yerevan, Armenia, just after the composer's death. The first permanent exposition was opened on January 23rd 1984 on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the outstanding composer.

Communism

Communism

Communism is a left-wing to far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products to everyone in the society. Communist society also involves the absence of private property, social classes, money, and the state. Communists often seek a voluntary state of self-governance but disagree on the means to this end. This reflects a distinction between a more libertarian approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers' self-management, and a more vanguardist or Communist party-driven approach through the development of a constitutional socialist state followed by the withering away of the state. As one of the main ideologies on the political spectrum, communism is placed on the left-wing alongside socialism, and communist parties and movements have been described as radical left or far left.

Leopold Stokowski

Leopold Stokowski

Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British conductor. One of the leading conductors of the early and mid-20th century, he is best known for his long association with the Philadelphia Orchestra and his appearance in the Disney film Fantasia with that orchestra. He was especially noted for his free-hand conducting style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from the orchestras he directed.

Igor Moiseyev

Igor Moiseyev

Igor Alexandrovich Moiseyev was a Soviet choreographer. Moiseyev was widely acclaimed as the greatest 20th-century choreographer of character dance, a dance style similar to folk dance but with more professionalism and theatrics.

Maya Plisetskaya

Maya Plisetskaya

Maya Mikhailovna Plisetskaya was a Soviet and Russian ballet dancer, choreographer, ballet director, and actress. In post-Soviet times, she held both Lithuanian and Spanish citizenship. She danced during the Soviet era at the Bolshoi Theatre under the directorships of Leonid Lavrovsky, then of Yury Grigorovich; later she moved into direct confrontation with him. In 1960, when famed Russian ballerina Galina Ulanova retired, Plisetskaya became prima ballerina assoluta of the company.

From left to right: Khachaturian depicted on Soviet (1983), Russian (2003) and Armenian (2003) postage stamps

Khachaturian is generally considered one of the leading composers of the Soviet Union.^[6] Alongside Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev, he has been generally cited as one of the three greatest composers of the Soviet era.^[113] The music critic Ronald Crichton wrote on his death that, in his lifetime, Khachaturian "ranked as the third most celebrated Soviet composer after Shostakovich and Prokofiev."^[25]

According to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, "his works do not enjoy the international reputation that those of" Shostakovich and Prokofiev do.^[54] With these two and Dmitry Kabalevsky, Khachaturian "was one of the few Soviet composers to have become known to the wider international public".^[114] 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".^[115]

Reputation in the West

Josef Woodard, writing for the Los Angeles Times, suggests that Khachaturian has long been considered a "lighter-weight participant among 20th-century composers",^[116] while classic music broadcaster Norman Gilliland describes him as a "major" composer of the 20th century.^[117] Richard Taruskin argued in 1996 that Khachaturian has not been "certified as [a] great artist by the promoters of classical music."^[118] 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."^[119] 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".^[120]

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."^[98] She described him as an "immense musician who believes in the peasant heart and who has said so unabashedly in his music."^[98] 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."^[121] In 2003 conductor Marin Alsop opined that Khachaturian is "very underperformed" and "somewhat underrated․"^[9]

In Armenia

A mural of Khachaturian painted by Robert Nikoghosyan near the Yerevan Vernissage in July 2015^[122]

Khachaturian was the most renowned Armenian composer of the 20th century,^[123] and the most famous representative of Soviet Armenian culture.^[124] He has been described as "by far the most important Armenian composer",^[57] the "Armenian Tchaikovsky",^[125] and deemed a key figure in 20th-century Armenian culture.^[126] He remains the only Armenian composer to rise to international significance.^[I] Khachaturian is credited for bringing Armenian music worldwide recognition.^[14] Şahan Arzruni has described him as "the musical ambassador of Armenian culture".^[127]

One of the "modern icons of Armenian pride",^[128] Khachaturian is considered a national treasure,^[13] and is celebrated by the Armenian people "as a famous son who earned world-wide recognition".^[129]

Discover more about Recognition and reputation related topics

Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his First Symphony in 1926 and was regarded throughout his life as a major composer.

Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor who later worked in the Soviet Union. As the creator of acknowledged masterpieces across numerous music genres, he is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. His works include such widely heard pieces as the March from The Love for Three Oranges, the suite Lieutenant Kijé, the ballet Romeo and Juliet—from which "Dance of the Knights" is taken—and Peter and the Wolf. Of the established forms and genres in which he worked, he created—excluding juvenilia—seven completed operas, seven symphonies, eight ballets, five piano concertos, two violin concertos, a cello concerto, a symphony-concerto for cello and orchestra, and nine completed piano sonatas.

Ronald Crichton

Ronald Crichton

Ronald Crichton was a music critic for the Financial Times in the 1960s and 1970s. He was a scion of the Earls of Erne. In his Times obituary he was described as "one of the last of the school of those cultured mandarins who were able to write and talk about all matters concerning the arts."

Los Angeles Philharmonic

Los Angeles Philharmonic

The Los Angeles Philharmonic, commonly referred to as the LA Phil, is an American orchestra based in Los Angeles, California. It has a regular season of concerts from October through June at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and a summer season at the Hollywood Bowl from July through September. Gustavo Dudamel is the current Music Director, Esa-Pekka Salonen is Conductor Laureate, Zubin Mehta is Conductor Emeritus, and Susanna Mälkki is Principal Guest Conductor. John Adams is the orchestra's current Composer-in-Residence.

Dmitry Kabalevsky

Dmitry Kabalevsky

Dmitry Borisovich Kabalevsky was a Soviet composer, conductor, pianist and pedagogue of Russian gentry descent.

Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times, abbreviated as LA Times, is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the Los Angeles suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States. The publication has won more than 40 Pulitzer Prizes. It is owned by Patrick Soon-Shiong and published by the Times Mirror Company. The newspaper's coverage has evolved more recently away from U.S. and international headlines and toward emphasizing California and especially Southern California stories.

Norman Gilliland

Norman Gilliland

Norman Gilliland has been a producer on Wisconsin Public Radio since 1984, where he hosts classical music broadcasts, produces the interview program University of the Air, and reads for Chapter A Day. He holds degrees in English and Broadcasting from the University of Florida and attended graduate school in English at Duke University, where he developed an interest in broadcasting. He is also an active author with four published books, the historical novel Sand Mansions and its stand-alone sequel Midnight Catch, Downeast Ledge (2013), plus two nonfiction books about classical music--Grace Notes for a Year and Scores to Settle. He has produced an audio drama based upon Dick Ringler's modern English translation of the Old English narrative Beowulf titled Beowulf: The Complete Story—A Drama (ISBN 0-9715093-2-8). He was one of a handful of experts interviewed in the Academy Award-winning short documentary A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin.

Richard Taruskin

Richard Taruskin

Richard Filler Taruskin was an American musicologist and music critic who was among the leading and most prominent music historians of his generation. The breadth of his scrutiny into source material as well as musical analysis that combines sociological, cultural, and political perspectives, has incited much discussion, debate and controversy. He regularly wrote music criticism for newspapers including The New York Times. He researched a wide variety of areas, but a central topic was the Russian music of the 18th century to present day. Other subjects he engaged with include the theory of performance, 15th-century music, 20th-century classical music, nationalism in music, the theory of modernism, and analysis. He is best known for his monumental survey of Western classical music, the six-volume Oxford History of Western Music. He received several awards, including the first Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society in 1978, and the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy in 2017.

Harold C. Schonberg

Harold C. Schonberg

Harold Charles Schonberg was an American music critic and author. He is best known for his contributions in The New York Times, where he was chief music critic from 1960 to 1980. In 1971, he became the first music critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. An influential critic, he is particularly well known for his encouragement of Romantic piano music and criticism of conductor Leonard Bernstein. He also wrote a number of books on music, and one on chess.

New York Post

New York Post

The New York Post is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The Post also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com.

Marin Alsop

Marin Alsop

Marin Alsop is an American conductor, the first woman to win the Koussevitzky Prize for conducting and the first conductor to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. She is music director laureate of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and chief conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Ravinia Festival. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008 and to the American Philosophical Society in 2020.

Mural

Mural

A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage.

Khachaturian appeared on the 50-dram banknote (1998–2004)^[130]

The philharmonic hall of the Yerevan Opera Theater has been officially called the Aram Khachaturian Grand Concert Hall since 1978.^[11] The House-Museum of Aram Khachaturian in Yerevan was inaugurated in 1982.^[131]

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.^[130] 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, the UNESCO inscribed a collection of Khachaturian's handwritten notes and film music in the Memory of the World Register.^[132][133]

Music schools are named after Khachaturian in Tbilisi,^[134] Moscow (established in 1967, named after him in 1996),^[135] Yerevan,^[48] Martuni, Nagorno-Karabakh,^[136] and Watertown, Massachusetts, U.S. (run by the Hamazkayin).^[137] Streets in Yerevan,^[138] Tbilisi,^[139] Khachaturian Street (Moscow) [ru], Nur-Sultan (Kazakhstan)^[140] and Simferopol (Crimea)^[141] are named after Khachaturian.

In 1993 the festival of symphonic music Aram Khachaturian-93 was held in Yerevan.^[48] The Aram Khachaturian International Competition (Արամ Խաչատրյանի անվան միջազգային մրցույթ) is held annually in Yerevan since 2003.^[142]

Statues

Khachaturian's statue near the Yerevan Opera Theater

On 31 July 1999 a three-and-a-half meter high statue of Khachaturian in 19th-century realist style^[143] 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.^[144] 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.^[145]

A statue of Khachaturian by Georgiy 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.^[146] Busts of Khachaturian by the Armenian sculptor Mikael Soghoyan were erected at the Moscow Conservatory in 2017^[147] and in front of an arts school named after him in Nizhny Novgorod in August 2021.^[148]

Films

In 1977, a year before his death, Studio Ekran made a documentary on Khachaturian.^[20] In 1983, the Yerevan Studio produced another TV documentary on him.^[149] In 2003, an 83-minute-long documentary about Khachaturian with unique footage was directed by Peter Rosen and narrated by Eric Bogosian.^[150][151] The film won the Best Documentary at the 2003 Hollywood Film Festival.^[152] In 2004, TV Kultura, Russia's government-owned art channel, made a documentary on Khachaturian entitled Century of Aram Khachaturian (Век Арама Хачатуряна).^[153]

Discover more about Posthumous honors and tribute related topics

Armenian dram

Armenian dram

The dram is the currency of Armenia, and is also used in the neighboring unrecognized Republic of Artsakh. It was historically subdivided into 100 luma. The Central Bank of Armenia is responsible for issuance and circulation of dram banknotes and coins, as well as implementing the monetary policy of Armenia.

House-Museum of Aram Khachaturian

House-Museum of Aram Khachaturian

The Aram Khachaturian Museum was established in 1978 in Yerevan, Armenia, just after the composer's death. The first permanent exposition was opened on January 23rd 1984 on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the outstanding composer.

Central Bank of Armenia

Central Bank of Armenia

The Central Bank of Armenia is the central bank of Armenia with its headquarters in Yerevan. The CBA is an independent institution responsible for issuing all banknotes and coins in the country, overseeing and regulating the banking sector and keeping the government's currency reserves. The CBA is also the sole owner of the Armenian Mint.

Mount Ararat

Mount Ararat

Mount Ararat is a snow-capped and dormant compound volcano in the extreme east of Turkey. It consists of two major volcanic cones: Greater Ararat and Little Ararat. Greater Ararat is the highest peak in Turkey and the Armenian Highland with an elevation of 5,137 m (16,854 ft); Little Ararat's elevation is 3,896 m (12,782 ft). The Ararat massif is about 35 km (22 mi) wide at ground base. The first recorded efforts to reach Ararat's summit were made in the Middle Ages, and Friedrich Parrot, Khachatur Abovian, and four others made the first recorded ascent in 1829.

Komitas

Komitas

Soghomon Soghomonian, ordained and commonly known as Komitas, was an Armenian priest, musicologist, composer, arranger, singer, and choirmaster, who is considered the founder of the Armenian national school of music. He is recognized as one of the pioneers of ethnomusicology.

Watertown, Massachusetts

Watertown, Massachusetts

Watertown is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, part of Greater Boston. The population was 35,329 in the 2020 census. Its neighborhoods include Bemis, Coolidge Square, East Watertown, Watertown Square, and the West End.

Hamazkayin

Hamazkayin

Hamazkayin, short for Hamazkayin Armenian Educational and Cultural Society, is a major cultural organization of the Armenian Diaspora, with a presence in every significant Armenian community worldwide. In addition to organizing cultural events in local Armenian communities, the Hamazkayin runs three schools; publishes books through its printing press; maintains bookstores; publishes a monthly literary magazine, Pakin, organizes the Hamazkayin Forum and has established H-Pem of their Hamapem establishment. Hamazkayin enjoys the support of a wide segment of the Armenian community and encourages active participation to the events sponsored by the community. Hamazkayin sponsors and organizes many cultural events; such as concerts by renowned artists, scientific seminars, film festivals, literary lectures and book reviews. In the United States, the Hamazkayin Armenian Educational and Cultural Society was established as a non profit organization in 1970.

Simferopol

Simferopol

Simferopol is the second-largest city in the Crimean Peninsula. The city, along with the rest of Crimea, is internationally recognised as part of Ukraine, and is considered the capital of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. However, it is under the de facto control of Russia, which annexed Crimea in 2014 and regards Simferopol as the capital of the Republic of Crimea. Simferopol is an important political, economic and transport hub of the peninsula, and serves as the administrative centre of both Simferopol Municipality and the surrounding Simferopol District.

Realism (arts)

Realism (arts)

Realism in the arts is generally the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding speculative and supernatural elements. The term is often used interchangeably with naturalism, although these terms are not synonymous. Naturalism, as an idea relating to visual representation in Western art, seeks to depict objects with the least possible amount of distortion and is tied to the development of linear perspective and illusionism in Renaissance Europe. Realism, while predicated upon naturalistic representation and a departure from the idealization of earlier academic art, often refers to a specific art historical movement that originated in France in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1848. With artists like Gustave Courbet capitalizing on the mundane, ugly or sordid, realism was motivated by the renewed interest in the common man and the rise of leftist politics. The Realist painters rejected Romanticism, which had come to dominate French literature and art, with roots in the late 18th century.

Robert Kocharyan

Robert Kocharyan

Robert Sedraki Kocharyan is an Armenian politician. He served as the President of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic from 1994 to 1997 and Prime Minister of Nagorno-Karabakh from 1992 to 1994. He served as the second President of Armenia between 1998 and 2008 and as Prime Minister of Armenia from 1997 to 1998.

Karen Demirchyan

Karen Demirchyan

Karen Serobi Demirchyan was a Soviet and Armenian politician. He served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia from 1974 to 1988. Soon after his reemergence into active politics in independent Armenia in the late 1990s, he became President of the National Assembly in 1999 until his assassination with other politicians in parliament in the Armenian parliament shooting.

Silva Kaputikyan

Silva Kaputikyan

Silva Kaputikyan was an Armenian poet and political activist. One of the best-known Armenian writers of the twentieth century, she is recognized as "the leading poetess of Armenia" and "the grand lady of twentieth century Armenian poetry". Although a member of the Communist Party, she was a noted advocate of Armenian national causes.

Soviet Union^[70][154]

• Hero of Socialist Labour (1973)
• Order of Lenin (1939, 1963, 1973)
• People's Artist of the USSR (1954), Russian SFSR (1947), Armenian SSR (1955), Georgian SSR (1963), Azerbaijan SSR (1973)
• Honored Art Worker of the Armenian SSR (1938), Russian SFSR (1944), Uzbek SSR (1967)
• Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1945, 1966)
• Order of the October Revolution (1971)
• Lenin Prize (1959) for the ballet Spartacus
• Stalin Prize (1941 for Violin Concerto, 1943 for ballet Gayane, 1946 for the Second Symphony, 1950 for the film The Battle of Stalingrad
• USSR State Prize (1971 for the Triad of Concerto-Rhapsodies: for violin and orchestra; for cello and orchestra; for piano and orchestra)

Other states^[154]

• 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)

Academic titles^[18]

• Professor of Music — 1950
• 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 — 1960
• Full Member (Academician) of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR — 1963
• Doctor of Arts (Доктор искусствоведения), Academy of Sciences of the USSR — 1965^[14]

Discover more about Awards and honors related topics

Hero of Socialist Labour

Hero of Socialist Labour

The Hero of Socialist Labour was an honorific title in the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries from 1938 to 1991. It represented the highest degree of distinction in the USSR and was awarded for exceptional achievements in Soviet industry and culture. It provided a similar status to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, which was awarded for heroic deeds, but differed in that it was not awarded to foreign citizens.

Order of Lenin

Order of Lenin

The Order of Lenin, was an award named after Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the October Revolution. It was established by the Central Executive Committee on April 6, 1930. The order was the highest civilian decoration bestowed by the Soviet Union. The order was awarded to:Civilians for outstanding services rendered to the State Members of the armed forces for exemplary service Those who promoted friendship and cooperation between people and in strengthening peace Those with meritorious services to the Soviet state and society

People's Artist of the USSR

People's Artist of the USSR

People's Artist of the USSR, also sometimes translated as National Artist of the USSR, was an honorary title granted to artists of the Soviet Union.

People's Artist of the RSFSR

People's Artist of the RSFSR

People's Artist of the RSFSR was an honorary title granted to Soviet Union artists, including theatre and film directors, choreographers, music performers, and orchestra conductors, who had outstanding achievements in the arts, and who lived in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). This title was one rank below Honored Artist of the RSFSR and one above People's Artist of the USSR.

People's Artist of the Armenian SSR

People's Artist of the Armenian SSR

People's Artist of the Armenian SSR, is an honorary title awarded to citizens of the Armenian SSR in the Soviet Union. It is awarded for outstanding performance in the performing arts, whose merits are exceptional in the sphere of the development of the performing arts.

Order of the Red Banner of Labour

Order of the Red Banner of Labour

The Order of the Red Banner of Labour was an order of the Soviet Union established to honour great deeds and services to the Soviet state and society in the fields of production, science, culture, literature, the arts, education, sports, health, social and other spheres of labour activities. It is the labour counterpart of the military Order of the Red Banner. A few institutions and factories, being the pride of Soviet Union, also received the order. The Order of the Red Banner of Labour was the third-highest civil award in the Soviet Union, after the Order of Lenin and the Order of the October Revolution.

Order of the October Revolution

Order of the October Revolution

The Order of the October Revolution was instituted on October 31, 1967, in time for the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution. It was conferred upon individuals or groups for services furthering communism or the state, or in enhancing the defenses of the Soviet Union, military and civil. It is the second-highest Soviet order, after the Order of Lenin.

Lenin Prize

Lenin Prize

The Lenin Prize was one of the most prestigious awards of the Soviet Union for accomplishments relating to science, literature, arts, architecture, and technology. It was originally created on June 23, 1925 and awarded until 1934. During the period from 1935 to 1956, the Lenin Prize was not awarded, being replaced largely by the Stalin Prize. On August 15, 1956, it was reestablished, and continued to be awarded on every even-numbered year until 1990. The award ceremony was April 22, Vladimir Lenin's birthday.

Ordre des Arts et des Lettres

Ordre des Arts et des Lettres

The Ordre des Arts et des Lettres is an order of France established on 2 May 1957 by the Minister of Culture. Its supplementary status to the Ordre national du Mérite was confirmed by President Charles de Gaulle in 1963. Its purpose is the recognition of significant contributions to the arts, literature, or the propagation of these fields.

Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia

Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia

The Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia is one of the oldest musical institutions in the world, founded by the papal bull Ratione congruit, issued by Sixtus V in 1585, which invoked two saints prominent in Western musical history: Gregory the Great, for whom the Gregorian chant is named, and Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music. Since 2005 it has been headquartered at the Renzo Piano designed Parco della Musica in Rome.

Academy of Arts, Berlin

Academy of Arts, Berlin

The Academy of Arts is a state arts institution in Berlin, Germany. The task of the Academy is to promote art, as well as to advise and support the states of Germany.

Conservatorio Nacional de Música (Mexico)

Conservatorio Nacional de Música (Mexico)

The Conservatorio Nacional de Música is a music conservatory located in the Polanco neighborhood of Mexico City, Federal District, Mexico.