YEREVAN CENTER TO STUDY ALAN HOVHANNES’ LIFE AND WORK

Armenpress
Mar 21 2006

YEREVAN, MARCH 27, ARMENPRESS: A center will open this year at a
Yerevan-based Yeghishe Charents museum to study the life and work of
a prominent American Armenian composer Allan Hovhannes.

Henrik Bakhchinian, the director of the museum, said Allan Hovhannes
is little known in Armenia, though he is one of the most frequently
performed modern composers. He said materials for study and other
documents will be provided by Allan Hovhannes international center
in the USA.

Alan Hovhannes was born in 1911 to an Armenian father and a Scottish
mother, and was composing from an early age. His output of over 400
works, including around 67 symphonies is unsurpassed since Haydn’s
103 symphonies. Despite his current popularity, he was largely ignored
for the first half of his life, until Fritz Reiner recorded his second
symphony Mysterious Mountain with the Chicago Symphony in 1958.

“My purpose is to create music, not for snobs, but for all people ,
music which is beautiful and healing, to attempt what the old Chinese
painters called “spirit resonance” in melody and sound,” he used to
say. Alan Hovhannes died in June 2000.