His Life

Khachaturian was born on 6 June 1903 in Tiflis, Goergia, Russia (now Tbilisi, Georgia).   He was a son of a poor Armenian family.  In his youth he was greatly interested in music he heard around him, not only that of Armenia, but also of Georgia and Azerbaijan.  Despite his interest, he did not study music or even learn to read it; and apart from listening, his sole experience of it was playing of simple bass parts on the tuba in his school band.  Gradually, he became convinced that he was cut out to be a musician, and eventually turned up in Moscow seeking admission to the Gnessin School of Music, even though he did not speak Russian and knew he would have to make up for lost time in his musical education.

How little Khachaturian knew about his chosen subject can be well illustrated.  When asked, he did not even know what type of music he wanted to study, but he decided to study cello, which he did for three years, after which he enrolled in a composition class.  He had finally found his niche, and had a composition published within a year, which gained him entrance into the Moscow Conservatory.  By the time he had completed his studies in 1933, he was thirty.

The composer's first large-scale work employing a full orchestra was his First Symphony (1934).  At that time this was highly praised, but later works have shown it to be somewhat immature.  Khachaturian's international reputation really began with his Piano Concerto (1937), and it was cemented by the Violin Concerto (1940), written for and frequently performed by David Oistrakh.

In 1948, along with Dmitry Shostakovich and Sergey Prokofiev, Khachaturian was accused by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of bourgeois tendencies in his music.  He admitted his guilt and was restored to prominence.  After Stalin's death in 1953, however, he publicly condemned the Central Committee's accusation.  He was named People's Artist of the Soviet Union in 1954 and was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1959. From 1951, Khachaturian served as a professor in both Gnesiny State Musical and Pedagogical Institute in Moscow and at the Moscow Conservatory.

Khachaturian died on 1 May 1978 in Moscow, Russia.

Key works