Grigor Sjuni

Grigor Sjuni ( Armenian Գրիգոր Սյունի , Russian Григор Сюни , is the pseudonym of Grigor Mirsajan Armenian Գրիգոր Միրզայան , Russian Григор Мирзаян ; born September 10, ^jul. / 22. September  1876 ^greg. In Kedabek , Rajon gadabay district ; † 18 December 1939 in Philadelphia ), an Armenian - Russian composer .

Grigor Sjuni with his choir in Shuschi

Life

Sjuni came from a Melik family in the Armenian province of Sjunik . His father Howhannes Warandez was a singer and miniature painter . His grandfather Melik Howhannes Mirsabekjan was a well-known Ashug , while his grandmother Maschinka was Russian. The great-grandfather Melik Howhannes Mirsa was Aschug at the court of Fath Ali Shah . In 1878 the family moved to the then capital of Nagorno-Karabakh Shushi . In 1883 his father died after falling from his horse. In the same year Sjunis began attending school in the Armenian parish school, but one year later, like all Armenian parish schools, it was based on a ukase from Alexander III. has been closed.

Sjuni learned the Armenian musical notation system and his musical talent was soon noticed. At the age of fifteen he was admitted to the Geworkyan seminary in Echmiadzin . There he studied together with Komitas Vardapet , with whom he later worked closely. At the same time he took private lessons in Tbilisi from Makar Jekmaljan and began collecting folk melodies. After completing his seminar studies in 1895, he returned to Schuschi and founded a choir there .

Already in the fall of 1895 Sjuni went to Saint Petersburg to study at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory with Nikolai Andrejewitsch Rimski-Korsakow , Alexander Konstantinowitsch Glasunow and Anatoli Konstantinowitsch Lyadow . He created the musical drama Bab in Russian by Isabella Arkadyevna Grinewskajas stage work Bab , which the founders of religion Bab was dedicated. This musical drama brought him first prize in 1902, but it was then confiscated . In 1904 he left the conservatory.

From 1905 Sjuni taught at the Nerssissjan School in Tbilisi. He became a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation , for which he wrote marches and patriotic songs. In 1908 he went to Turkey for fear of government reprisals . He taught in Trebizond , Samsun and from 1910 at the Sanassarjan School in Erzurum . After the beginning of the First World War he fled with his family back to the Russian Empire in Tbilisi, where he directed the symphony orchestra. After the October Revolution , the Armenian government invited him to head the conservatory in Yerevan . However, it was not possible for him to travel to Yerevan through the intervening Azerbaijani region. After the occupation of Georgia by the Bolsheviks , as a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, he faced reprisals, so that he fled to Constantinople in 1922 . He left his archive to his friend and neighbor Howhannes Tumanjan , whose poems he had set to music. After the end of the Turkish war of liberation and the invasion of Constantinople by Turkish troops in 1923, Sjuni fled to the USA , where he led church choirs first in Boston and then in Philadelphia. He tried to return to Armenia and joined the Communist Party , but his closeness to the church and former membership in the Armenian Revolutionary Federation opposed his wish. During Stalin's Great Terror in 1937, he criticized Stalin.

Sjuni composed songs, choral works, operas as well as orchestral and chamber music works in accordance with the classical music tradition with influences from Armenian folk music .

Sjuni's grandson is the historian Ronald Grigor Suny .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} The Suni Project: Autobiography of Grikor Suni (accessed March 29, 2018).
2. ↑ OCLC WorldCat Identities: Syuni, Grigor 1876-1939 (accessed on 29 March 2018).