They
were brother and sister, and had very divergent ways. While Armen
(1879-1950) was a musician and became an artist emeritus of the
Republics of Armenia and Georgia, Armenuhi (1888-1962) was a poet and
became an expatriate with her husband Vartkes Aharonian, son of novelist
Avetis Aharonian and a literary critic and public figure himself
(people of certain age in the East Coast and particularly in New York
will probably recall the Aharonians as teachers, writers, and
lecturers).
Armen
Tigranian was born in Alexandropol (now Gumri) on December 26, 1879. He
played the flute from an early age and participated in the concerts of
the woodwind orchestra at his school. His family moved to Tiflis in 1894
when he was fifteen. Eight years later he graduated from the classes of
flute and musical theory of the School of Music; he had also taken
lessons of composition from Makar Ekmalian, the noted author of the
Armenian polyphonic mass. In the same year, 1902, he returned to
Alexandropol. He organized school and popular choirs; the latter toured
Tiflis, Baku, and Kars. He composed his first songs at this time with
lyrics from poets like Avetik Isahakian and Hovhannes Hovhannisian, as
well as arrangements of Armenian folkloric songs.
In 1908, at the age of 29, Tigranian started to write his first opera, Anush,
based on the celebrated poem by Hovhannes Tumanian, which laid the
ground for a new stylistic orientation in the Armenian music theater.
Fragments of the opera were presented in Tiflis in the same year. A
complete version of Anush was staged for the first time in
Alexandropol four years later. The opera was the first composed in
Eastern Armenian, and its Alexandropol performance was the first
presentation of an opera in Armenia. For the next thirty years, the
composer introduced some changes and additions, and revised the musical
arrangement of his work. The opera was particularly remarkable for the
scenes of popular feasts and ceremonies, as well as its lyrical songs,
duets, and choir songs. Some of the melodies composed by Tigranian
became very popular and continue to be popular to this day.
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| Tigranian commemorated on an Armenian stamp. |
The
composer moved back to Tiflis in 1913. He participated in the
activities of the Armenian Musical Society (1913-1921), taught at the
Hovnanian School and gave concerts. He wrote new works, such as music
for the drama Layla and Majnun (1918), the Oriental Dance for symphonic orchestra, and choral works, and made arrangements of folkloric songs.
Tigranian
continued his creative endeavors during the 1920s and 1930s, and
produced songs, cantatas, choral works, and piano works (Dance Song, Suite of Armenian Dances, Oriental Fantasy, Emerald of Shirak, Child Album, etcetera). Anush was staged for the first time at the Opera of Yerevan in 1935.
During
World War II, Tigranian started to work, among other pieces, on a new
opera, David Bek, based on Raffi’s homonymous novel. The subject, which
was the heroic resistance of the Armenians of Siunik against Persian and
Turkish invasion in the 1720s, was suited to fit patriotic feelings,
which were on the rise at the time in the Soviet Union. As in the case
of Anush, the new opera included many elements of village
music. He finished the opera in 1949, but it was premiered posthumously
in 1950 at the Opera of Yerevan.
Besides writing music for many plays, Tigranian translated the librettos of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto and George Bizet’s Carmen into Armenian.
Tigranian’s
house-museum is located in his birthplace, Gumri, while streets and
music schools in Gumri and Yerevan have been named after him. His statue
graces the Ring Park of Yerevan.
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| A scene from the opera Anush staged by the Gyumri Opera Company |
