Composer who fused Armenian folk melody with the Soviet symphony
“I wrote around 700 pages of the Gayane score in half a year, in a cold Perm hotel room with only a piano, stool, table and bed. Gayane is the only ballet on a Soviet theme that hasn't left the stage for a quarter of a century.”
Aram Khachaturian was a Soviet Armenian composer and conductor, ranked with Shostakovich and Prokofiev among the leading Soviet composers. Raised in multi-ethnic Tbilisi, he moved to Moscow at 19 and studied under Myaskovsky at the Moscow Conservatory. His Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto, and the 'Sabre Dance' from Gayane brought international fame; Spartacus won the Lenin Prize. Denounced as a formalist in 1948, he was rehabilitated and served as Secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers from 1957 until his death. His fusion of Armenian folk melody and Caucasian rhythms with the Russian classical tradition became a model of Soviet multinational cultural policy.
Career Timeline
- 1939Deputy Chairman, Organizing Committee of the Union of Soviet Composers
- 1943Joined the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
- 1944Composed the Anthem of the Armenian SSR
- 1950Professor, Gnessin Musical Pedagogical Institute
- 1951Professor, Moscow Conservatory
- 1954People's Artist of the USSR
- 1957Secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers
- 1958Deputy, Supreme Soviet of the USSR (5th convocation)