Boston Globe, MA
May 6 2007

Taking note of Mansurian

Armenian composer gains acclaim for strong and emotional works

By Chris Pasles, Los Angeles Times | May 6, 2007

LOS ANGELES — 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 tastemaking German label ECM has issued four CDs of his music
("Monodia" was nominated for a 2005 Grammy), and a fifth is planned.
Recently, 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 last month the
Glendale-based Lark Musical Society presented three concerts to
commemorate the 92nd anniversary of the Armenian genocide.

Highlights included his epic a cappella choral work, "Ars Poetica,"
and the US premiere of his Violin Concerto No. 2, titled "Four
Serious Songs," and his Viola Concerto, ". . . and then I was in time
again . . ."

Mansurian specializes in "very strong, emotional music," said Anja
Lechner, cellist of the Munich-based Rosamunde String Quartet, which
has recorded three Mansurian works for ECM. "That’s maybe why it goes
directly to people’s hearts."

Mansurian believes that music has a spiritual purpose. "There are two
main roots to music," he said recently. "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 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, Lebanon, 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 in Southern California.

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. "

In addition, he said, he always has been drawn to the written word.
"As a musician, the Armenian language was one of my first teachers,"
he said.

"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.

"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
preferred 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."