Birth of Kourken Alemshah (May 22, 1907)

Kourken Alemshah was a well-established, even if prematurely disappeared Armenian composer of the Diaspora in the first half of the past century.

He was born in Bardizag (now Bahcecik), an Armenian village near Izmit, in Western Turkey, on May 22, 1907. He studied at the Mekhitarist School in the neighborhood of Pera (now Beyoglu), in Constantinople, and graduated in 1918. Afterwards, he entered the Moorat-Raphael (Mourad-Raphaelian) School of the Mekhitarist Congregation in Venice, graduating in 1923. He had already shown his talent as a pianist at school, and he pursued musical studies at the Milan Conservatory. His professors saw in him an exceptional talent, unique inspiration, and the ability to mix Oriental music and popular motifs to European technique.

Alemshah graduated in 1930 and settled in Paris, where he taught at the Samuel-Moorat (Samuel Mouradian) school of the Mekhitarists in the suburb of Sevres, as well as in Italian high schools. Along his prolific labor as composer, he also organized the “Cilicia” choir, which became a well-known choir in the big Armenian community of France. In 1933, at the age of twenty-six, he was elected member of the Association of Musical Authors, Composers, and Editors of France. In the 1930s, he composed many works of European inspiration under the pseudonym of Jean Valdonne.

It was particularly impressive a concert of the “Cilicia” choir he directed in 1934 at Salle Gaveau, in Paris, with more than 1,000 people in the audience. Along works by Komitas, he premiered his “Oriental Nights,” composed in 1931 and the vocal-orchestral work “The Battle of Avarayr” (1934). In 1936, on the centennial of his alma mater, the Moorat-Raphael School, he took his choir to Venice and gave concerts both in the famed hall of the school and the St. Mark Square, presenting Komitas songs and his own songs on popular motifs. In 1937 his work “Armenian Wedding,” a combination of Alemshah’s music with popular songs, won the second prize at the international competition of People’s Music, with the participation of twenty nations.

He later conducted the choir “Alakiaz” from 1938-1939, and was appointed conductor of the Sipan Komitas choir from 1939 until his death. He conducted Armen Tigranian’s “Anoush” opera and the performances of the Divine Liturgy in a number of French cathedrals.



In the fall of 1947, Alemshah visited the United States for a series of presentations. In October he conducted a concert at Town Hall in New York City, devoted to Armenian orchestral and choral music. He passed away unexpectedly on December 14, 1947, in Detroit, from a heart attack, a day before his scheduled performance. His funeral was held in New York by the Armenian Catholic clergy, with the participation of the choir of St. Illuminator’s Cathedral. His body was sent to France and buried in Paris.

Some of his vocal scores were published in Paris in 1947. His songs, which are still part of musical programs, are characterized by rare emotional intensity.

Birth of Arpoun Dayan (January 6, 1912)

Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy is one of the jewels of world literature, and as such, it is not surprising that it attracted the attention of Armenian modern writers and translators. We owe its first complete translation to the efforts of an accomplished master of the language, Arpoun Dayan.

Arpoun Dayan was born on January 6, 1912, in Bardizag, near Ismit, in Turkey. He first studied at the elementary school of Makirkeuy, in Constantinople, and then at the Mekhitarist orphanage of Kadikeuy, where his uncle, Rev. Fr. Yesayi Dayetsi (Dayan), a congregation member and a scholar, was the principal.

The Dayan family moved to Italy in 1922, where another relative, Rev. Fr. Ghevont Dayan (1884-1968), a noted scholar of Armenian religious music, lived at the monastery of St. Lazzaro. Arpoun studied from 1923-1927 at the Mourad-Raphaelian College of the congregation, in Venice. After graduation, he moved to Milan.

A new period of his life would start in 1929, when he moved to Soviet Armenia at the age of seventeen. He studied at the one-year pedagogical courses of Yerevan in 1931, and at Yerevan State University from 1932-1933. Afterwards, he went to work for fourteen years as a copyeditor in the newspapers Sovetakan Hayastan, Grakan Tert, Banvorakan Yerevan, and in the literary monthly Sovetakan Grakanutiun, until 1948.

For the next two decades, Arpoun Dayan worked as a professional translator. At the age of thirty-five, in 1947, he published his first translated book, “Hell,” the first part of The Divine Comedy, which would be followed by the next two parts in 1952 and 1959. A full edition of Dante’s masterpiece would come out in 1969. Well-versed in Italian and French, he would also produce translations from Guy de Maupassant (1951, 1961), Honoré de Balzac (1956, 1964), Anatole France (1959), Prosper Merimée (1964), Francois Mauriac (1964), and the memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini (1974).

Dayan returned to editing as a member of the editorial board of the Academy of Sciences of Armenia from 1967-1970. He then entered the academic world, first at the Institute of Art of the Academy from 1973-1977 and then as a junior researcher at the Institute of Literature “Manuk Abeghian.” He published a revised edition of his translation of Dante in 1975 and his study The Poetic Art and the Translation Issues of Dante’s “The Divine Comedy” in 1982. His third revised edition of Dante came out at the beginning of 1983. Three months later, on April 6, this prolific translator passed away in Yerevan.