TIGRAN MANSURIAN DIGS DEEP FOR HIS CRAFT
By Chris Pasles, Times Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times, CA
Calendar Live
April 20 2007
Perhaps Armenia’s top living composer, he says writing music is always
a struggle.
Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian may not be a household name. But
in his homeland, in Armenian diaspora communities and in Europe’s new
music circles, he is regarded as Armenia’s greatest living composer.
Recently, he’s been getting even wider notice.
The taste-making German label ECM has issued four CDs of his music
("Monodia" was nominated for a 2005 Grammy), and a fifth is planned.
Within the last month, New York has heard two U.S. premieres: "Con
Anima" for string sextet at Merkin Concert Hall and an Agnus Dei for
clarinet, violin, cello and piano at Carnegie Hall. And between tonight
and Wednesday night, the Glendale-based Lark Musical Society, which
sponsors the enterprising Dilijan Chamber Music Series, is presenting
"A Mansurian Triptych" – three concerts programmed to commemorate
the 92nd anniversary of the Armenian genocide.
Mansurian’s epic a cappella choral work, "Ars Poetica," will be
performed tonight at the downtown L.A. Colburn School’s Zipper Concert
Hall. Selections from his chamber music, including the Agnus Dei,
will be played Monday at Zipper. And on Wednesday, orchestral works,
including the U.S. premiere of his Violin Concerto No. 2, titled
"Four Serious Songs," and his Viola Concerto, " … and then I was
in time again … ," will be played at the Alex Theatre in Glendale.
What audiences will hear is "very strong emotional music," according
to Anja Lechner, cellist of the Munich, Germany-based Rosamunde String
Quartet, which has recorded three Mansurian works for ECM.
"That’s maybe why it goes directly to people’s hearts."
Mansurian himself believes that music has a spiritual purpose. "There
are two main roots to music," he said in an interview this week. "The
first one is the religious, Christian aspect, the issue of pain and
spirituality, the pain of Christ being crucified and the guilt that
comes from it and our relationship to God. The second one is our
instinctive search for Paradise Lost. That’s what makes music."
Because he shifted between Armenian and Russian, Mansurian was speaking
through several interpreters at the Lark Musical Society offices. A
gentle, elegant man with flowing white hair, he spoke in a light,
precise tenor, often animating his remarks with eloquently shaped
gestures that belied the struggle he said composing has always been
for him.
"Since childhood to now, my fingertips are bleeding from the conflict,"
he said. "It was always my personal fight or mission."
Born Jan. 27, 1939, to Armenian parents in Beirut, he moved with his
family to Soviet Armenia in 1947 and then in 1956 to the capital,
Yerevan, where they settled. He studied at the Yerevan Music Academy
and at the Komitas State Conservatory, where, after earning a
doctorate, he taught and later became rector.
He won two first prizes in the All-Union competition in Moscow in
1966 and 1968 and the Armenian State Prize in 1981.
Armenia is still his home, but his daughter, Nvart Sarkissian, lives
in Glendale, and because his wife, Nora Aharonian, died last year,
he plans to spend more time here.
His early works combined neoclassicism and Armenian folk traditions.
Subsequently, he adopted 12-tone and serial techniques. His more
recent works are a mix of all these influences.
"I have tried to find myself in the old Armenian music," he said. "I
have tried to find myself in Boulez’s serialism. When you go deep
in these traditions, you will find the things that are true to your
individual roots. Generally, I compose what’s been developing and
growing inside me for a long time."
In addition, he said, he has always been drawn to the written word.
"As a musician, the Armenian language was one of my first teachers,"
he said. "One’s childhood tongue and the first impressions of language
are very important for any musician."
"Four Hayrens," for example, is a setting of Armenian poems. "Ars
Poetica" consists of poems by Yeghishe Charents, a victim of Stalin’s
purges. The title of his Viola Concerto, " … and then I was in time
again … " is a line spoken by Quentin Compson, the doomed hero of
Faulkner’s "The Sound and the Fury."
"I have devoted 10 years of my life to Faulkner," he said, before
spontaneously reciting the opening of that novel in Russian.
"He’s difficult, but once you go into Faulkner, there is no higher
joy. If I were to choose the person who was most significant to me,
it would have been Quentin because of his incredible honesty."
Mansurian read the book first in Russian, but upon later reading an
Armenian translation, he said, he discovered that the Soviet version
had been heavily censored.
"Just like the Soviet state got involved in every other aspect of
life, it got involved in translations," he said. "That’s how things
were done."
Living under the Soviet system, he added, was "some sort of different
Faulknerian tale. It was another monumental feeling of loss."
For all his identification with his homeland, Mansurian said he prefers
to regard himself as a composer rather than an Armenian composer.
"To be truthful to myself, I have to rely on my genetic memory and my
way of praying and my whole being, which is of course very Armenian,"
he said. "But not in order to be called Armenian – just in order to
be true to myself."
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