YEREVAN CENTER TO STUDY ALAN HOVHANNES´ LIFE AND WORK

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”