Babadzhanyan Arno Arutyunovich is a great Soviet composer who wrote not only academic music, but also pop songs, music for films. He is an excellent pianist and one of the most remarkable music teachers in the USSR.
Biography
All his life, the composer lived and worked in Moscow, but he was born in the capital of Armenia in January 1921 in a family of refugees from the western part of the republic, which today is the territory of Turkey. Arno had an older sister, adopted in the family, orphaned after the genocide, and her parents took her, since they did not have their children for a long time.
The father of the future famous musician played the flute superbly, but was self-taught. But the son's musical talent was noticed in kindergarten and advised parents to develop their child in this direction. Moreover, the person who went around preschool institutions in search of talents and saw the unusual gift of little Arno was Aram Khachaturian himself, a great master who created many classical ballets and suites.
By the first grade, Babajanyan was already studying at the Conservatory, in a group of gifted children, and at the age of 9 he wrote his first work - a small march. Arno performed and won the republican music competition at the age of 12, and his future was already clear.
After graduating from school, a gifted young man in 1938 moved to Moscow and entered Gnesinka, and for the last year. But the war interrupted Arno's studies, and he, together with all the inhabitants of the capital, built the defense of Moscow and pondered his future works. In 1943 he became a member of the Composers' Union.
Career
Having safely survived the Second World War, Babadzhanyan went to complete his education, first at the Yerevan and then at the Moscow Conservatory. By 1950, he began to write diverse music, and in 1955, his songs were heard in the films "Trail of Thunder" and "In Search of the Addressee".
Pop songs Babajanyan often wrote in collaboration with the leading figures of the music scene: Derbenev, Yevtushenko, Voznesensky. The composer's songs were performed by Anna German, Magomayev and other legendary Soviet pop artists.
After 1965, Babadzhanyan Arno Harutyunovich often returned to his homeland, to Armenia, which inspired him to new melodies imbued with tender romance and homesickness. The composer first wrote his famous song "Nocturne" as a piece for the piano, but then Robert Rozhdestvensky created love poems to the melody, and the song became popular among the people for many years.
In addition to songs, Arno composed chamber works for chorus, piano and string quartet, wrote ballets and orchestral works, civil songs. Babadzhanyan became a composer for 14 Soviet films and himself starred in four films, became a laureate of many awards. In memory of the brilliant composer, a monument has been erected in Yerevan, an airplane and an asteroid are named after him.
Personal life and death
The composer got married after the war, his son Ara was born in 1953. In order for the child to remember his roots, his father often took him to Armenia and instilled in him a love of creativity from early childhood. Arno died at the end of 1983 from leukemia. Teresa, the musician's wife, survived him by only seven years.
Ara Babajanyan today is an actor of Armenian cinema and the founder of the father's memory fund, which organizes festivals and charitable competitions of symphonic and pop music.
