Aram Khachaturian

Aram Ilyich Khachaturian (also spelled Khachatryan; Armenian: Aram Yeghiai Khachaturian) (1903–1978) was an Armenian Soviet composer, conductor, teacher, and major musical public figure. He is often described as one of the central pillars of Armenian and Soviet composition. His output includes three ballets, three symphonies, six concertos, a wide range of vocal, choral, instrumental and programmatic music, as well as music for theatre and more than twenty films; he also wrote the music for the State Anthem of the Armenian SSR (1944).

He was born on 24 May (6 June) 1903 in an Armenian family, according to different sources either in Kojori (now within the municipality of Tbilisi) or in Tiflis (Tbilisi) in the Tiflis Governorate. He was the fourth son of a bookbinder, Ilya (Yeghia) Khachaturian, and Kumash Sarkisovna. He studied in a private boarding school (1911–1913) and later in a commercial school (1913–1921). From childhood he loved music and played piano, bugle, and tuba in a school chapel choir, growing up amid the multilingual musical life of old Tiflis with Armenian, Azerbaijani, and Georgian songs and instrumental ensembles; his first music teacher was the composer Mushegh Agayan.

In 1921 he moved to Moscow, where his elder brother Suren Khachaturian worked as a theatre director. He entered preparatory courses at Moscow University and in 1922 became a student of the biology division of Moscow State University while simultaneously studying at the Gnesin musical technical school, focusing on cello and piano and taking composition lessons. In 1925 he began formal composition studies with Mikhail Gnesin and left university; he graduated from the Gnesin school in 1929. Around this time he heard a symphonic concert for the first time and was deeply impressed by Beethoven and Rachmaninoff; his early works include the "Dance" for violin and piano, "Song-Poem" for violin and piano (1929), a Suite for viola and piano (1929), a Piano Toccata (1932), and a trio for piano, violin, and clarinet (1932).

In 1929 Khachaturian entered the Moscow Conservatory, studying composition first with Gnesin and then with Nikolai Myaskovsky, and learning orchestration with Reinhold Glière and Sergey Vasilenko. He graduated with honors in 1934 and continued postgraduate study with Myaskovsky for two further years. Drawing on Russian-school traditions while maintaining a strong connection to folk intonations, he wrote the First Symphony (1934) and a sequence of concertos with orchestra for piano (1936), violin (1940), and cello (1946), later adding a triptych of concert-rhapsodies for the same instruments (violin, 1961; cello, 1963; piano, 1968). His Second Symphony (1944), known as the "Symphony with a Bell," became the most frequently performed of his symphonies; the Third Symphony (1947) was described as a "symphony-poem." His piano works include a Sonatina (1959), a Sonata (1961, in two published versions), and the Three Pieces (suite) for two pianos (1945); in his final years he composed solo sonatas for violin, viola, and cello.

He wrote his first Armenian ballet, "Happiness" (1939), but later reworked much of its music into "Gayane," composed during World War II while living in Perm. "Gayane" premiered on 9 December 1942 in Perm by the evacuated Kirov (Mariinsky) Theatre and received a Stalin Prize the following year; its "Sabre Dance" brought him worldwide fame. During the war he worked for All-Union Radio and composed patriotic songs and marches. In 1948 he was affected by the Politburo decree criticizing "formalism" in Soviet music, which named his work alongside that of Prokofiev and Shostakovich, and he was largely silent creatively for years afterward. His postwar masterpiece was the ballet "Spartacus," completed in 1954 and premiered in December 1956; it entered the international repertoire and was staged by leading choreographers including Leonid Yakobson, Igor Moiseyev, Yuri Grigorovich, and others.

Khachaturian also worked extensively in theatre and cinema, writing music for productions such as "Masquerade" (1941) and later for "Macbeth" (1955) and "King Lear" (1958), and composing scores for films including "Pepo," "Vladimir Ilyich Lenin," "The Russian Question," "Secret Mission," "They Have a Motherland," "Admiral Ushakov," "Giordano Bruno," "Othello," and "The Battle of Stalingrad." Many prominent performers interpreted his music, among them David Oistrakh, Mstislav Rostropovich, Van Cliburn, and others. From 1950 he frequently appeared as a conductor, touring widely in the USSR and abroad and conducting his works in cities such as Washington, New York, Paris, and Tokyo.

As a teacher, he taught composition from 1950 at the Gnesin Institute (now the Gnesin Russian Academy of Music) and from 1951 at the Moscow Conservatory, where he became a professor; his students included Andrei Eshpai, Mikael Tariverdiev, Alexei Rybnikov, and many others, and musicologists also speak of a broader "Khachaturian school" in Armenian composition. He held important cultural-administrative roles, including leadership positions within the Union of Soviet Composers, and he authored articles on musical life later gathered in collections. He received major Soviet honors and prizes, including Hero of Socialist Labor (1973), People’s Artist of the USSR (1954), the Lenin Prize (1959), multiple Stalin Prizes, and state prizes, as well as international distinctions.

Khachaturian died on 1 May 1978 in Moscow and was buried in the Komitas Pantheon in Yerevan. His family included his brother Suren Khachaturian, a theatre figure; his nephew Karen Khachaturian (1920–2011), a composer and teacher; and his second wife, the composer Nina Makarova (1908–1976). An international competition bearing his name has been held in Yerevan annually since 2003, focusing on piano, violin, and cello.

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