Alan Hovhaness
"[3] After his mother's death (on October 3, 1930), the composer began to use the surname "Hovaness" in honor of his paternal grandfather,[citation needed] and changed it to "Hovhaness" around 1944.
[4] However, Hovhaness' daughter Jean Nandi has written in her book Unconventional Wisdom,[5] "My father's name at the time of my birth was 'Hovaness', pronounced with accent on the first syllable.
He was born as Alan Vaness Chakmakjian (Armenian: Ալան Յարութիւն Չաքմաքճեան)[6] in Somerville, Massachusetts, to Haroutioun Hovanes Chakmakjian (an Armenian chemistry professor at Tufts College who had been born in Adana, Turkey) and Madeleine Scott (an American of Scottish descent who had graduated from Wellesley College).
Following his graduation from high school in 1929, he studied with Leo Rich Lewis at Tufts and then under Frederick Converse at the New England Conservatory of Music.
In July 1934, Hovhaness traveled with his first wife, Martha Mott Davis, to Finland to meet Jean Sibelius, whose music he had greatly admired since childhood.
[9] In an interview with Richard Howard, he stated that the decision was based primarily on Sessions' criticism of his works of that period, and that he wanted to make a new start in composition.
[10] Apparently angered and distraught by this experience, he left Tanglewood early, abandoning his scholarship and again destroying a number of his works in the aftermath of that major disappointment.
Beginning in the mid-1940s, Hovhaness and two artist friends, Hyman Bloom and Hermon di Giovanno, met frequently to discuss spiritual and musical matters.
During this period, Hovhaness learned to play the sitar, studying with amateur Indian musicians living in the Boston area.
[16] The technique, essentially similar to the 1960s ad libitum aleatory of Lutoslawski, involves instruments repeating phrases in uncoordinated fashion, producing a complex "cloud" or "carpet" of sounds.
[16] In the mid-1940s, Hovhaness' prestige in New York City was helped considerably by members of the immigrant Armenian community who sponsored several high-profile concerts of his music.
This organization, the Friends of Armenian Music Committee, was led by Hovhaness's friends Dr. Elizabeth A. Gregory, the Armenian American piano/violin duo Maro Ajemian and Anahid Ajemian, and later by Anahid's husband, pioneering record producer and subsequent Columbia Records executive George Avakian.
"[20] From 1959 through 1963 Hovhaness conducted a series of research trips to India, Hawaii, Japan, and South Korea, investigating the ancient traditional musics of these nations, and eventually integrating elements of these into his own compositions.
While in Madras, he learned to play the veena and composed a work for Carnatic orchestra entitled Nagooran, inspired by a visit to the dargah at Nagore.
While there, he donated his handwritten manuscripts of harmonized Armenian liturgical music to the Yeghishe Charents State Museum of Arts and Literature in Yerevan.
It's of no use.Hovhaness was inducted into the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1951), and received honorary DMus degrees from the University of Rochester (1958), Bates College (1959) and the Boston Conservatory (1987).
In 1973, he composed his third and final ballet score for Martha Graham: Myth of a Voyage, and over the next twenty years (between 1973 and 1992) he produced no fewer than 37 new symphonies.
[citation needed] Significant archives of Hovhaness materials, comprising scores, sound recordings, photographs and correspondence are located at several academic centers, including Harvard University, the University of Washington, the Library of Congress (Washington DC), the Armenian Cultural Foundation (Arlington, Massachusetts), and Yerevan’s State Museum of Arts and Literature in Armenia.
