I am happy my youth is neither oppressed before my maturity, nor vice versa: Tigran Mansurian

YEREVAN, JANUARY 27, ARMENPRESS: The modern Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian is 75. He still continues his activities full of energy, tearing and genius… Mansurian celebrates his jubilee in Los Angeles, surrounded with his son, daughter, four grandchildren and relatives. The musicians and music lovers of Los Angeles are also in the jubilee atmosphere – the memorable year is marked with four Mansurian’s concerts taking place there – on January 12, 26, 27 and in April. The composer will perform a great concert for his Yerevan fans at the Aram Khachaturian Concert Hall to be held with the initiative of the Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra Eduard Topchyan. Jubilee concerts will be held also in Germany, South Korea, Moldova, Great Britain, Switzerland and other countries... Mansurian’s name entered the international arena long ago and he and his talent are highly valued in the motherland.

… One day the repatriated young man, having no initial professional education, entered frightened the mysterious and catching door of the music, got established in this magic world, step by step reaching new horizons and now as well he is moving forward with his look at the next height. His art is one of the enduring values ​​of our nation. The cultural news chief editor of Armenpress Hovhannes Aivazyan had a talk with Tigran Mansurian about the difficulties Mansurian had in self-determination, about the confusion and the soul debt, joy and creative searches of the artist. Hovhannes Aivazyan - How did you enter the music world? Did it happen when you entered the musical college of Leninakan or when you wrote your first work? Maybe when you touched the piano keys of the worker’s club in Artik for the first time? Tigran Mansurian - All the melodies of my childhood are with me. It is the sunny street in Beirut and I am passing under the open windows. From each window I hear one melody, and I am passing from one song to the “territory” of another one… that is great… Again in Beirut: it is raining, I am looking out through the streams running down on the window and there is a part of a French song in my ear with a word “per-du!” (lost)… This one word is so exciting. I have gone with it. It is raining and “per-du!” … It is raining and far away… These music episodes-images are still with me.

Hovhannes Aivazyan - What the first self-determination steps in the music world were like? Were they difficult? And when they were? Which work was it?

Tigran Mansurian – Dear Hovhannes, to answer this question I must believe that I have already self-determined and now I am going to tell you the story about it. I have passed quite a difficult way and at present as well it has not become easier.

Recently I saw the small music dictionary at my friend’s house, connected with which I have rich memories. I asked him to present the book to me. Now it is at my place. This dictionary is the fifth I have had. The first one appeared in my hands when I was a schoolboy. The book was always with me, at all the moments of the day. When I had a free time, I opened it and read it for long and I leant and learnt. Thus the book perfectly wore out in my pocket and it was not possible to keep it in the hands. I had to purchase the second copy of the same book. This as well passed the same way of getting worn out. Desperate I got the third one… The same happened with it. When I had the fourth copy, I was entering the Leninakan Kara Murza Musical College. After purchasing the fifth copy of this book, I got to know that its author was the great Komitas expert Robert Atayan, the late professor, whose student I was meant to be one day.

I have come to these days having rummaged all the books and the partituras of the classics. It is needless to say that along with them I rummaged myself as well, isn’t it? I hope that again I will get books and partituras to rummage. You say “self-determination”, I would rather say “self-rummaging”.

Hovhannes Aivazyan – The entrance of new directions to Armenia, established in the modern European music in the second half of the previous century, is connected with your name. Avant-garde, dodecaphonism, neoclassicism, Webernism… There were no such terms in the Conservatory. Debussy, Schoenberg, Boulez... The works of these composers did not sound at the Yerevan concert halls. And you have brought Avant-garde to Armenia. How did you do that?

Tigran Mansurian – One day back in the student years I felt that composing music is not carried out that way. The way from concept to implementation cannot be so short and easy. One day I lost my belief towards all the works I wrote and the praises connected with them. Everybody praised me mercifully, everybody. I knew those musicians and music experts and I knew about the preferences and beliefs in the music of many of them. They often were extremely different from each other. This kind of universal appreciation insulted me. And one day I rebelled against the easy composing and appreciation. I chose a more serious resistance way of writing music. Thus I found many of the young composers living in different cities of the Soviet Union and composing an “anti-Soviet” music. I visited Kiev, Moscow, Tallinn, Leningrad (Sankt Petersburg)… I got close to Andrey Volkonsky, Edison Denisov, Alfred Schnittke, Arvo Pärt and Valentin Silvestrov and many others. Among the performing musicians there were also individuals devoted to the modern music – Alexei Lyubimov, Natalia Gutman, Oleg Kagan, Mark Pekarsky… They became my close friends. Thus, I entered a new era of interests and values. And that modern music mastering period was the richest and the most difficult in my life.

Hovhannes Aivazyan – Then time came, when you gave up these western innovations. You returned to your roots and the national base. When was it? Which works served the start of that period?

-Tigran Mansurian – In music I never went far from my roots. Recently my hand fell on the Russian book of Andrey Volkonsky, “Partitura of Life”. In the book Volkonsky remembers, when in the end of 60s he heard my piano sonata. I should say that the work was written with the radical constructive-structuralist techniques of those times of the modern music. Volkonsky reminds that when he heard that music, he found with astonishment all the Armenianness in it. He got astonished also at the fact that it was possible to write a music having a national description with that technique. When I read these words of Volkonsky, I got very happy. So, really I never went far from my Armenian roots.

Hovhannes Aivazyan – The specialists consider your music to be the result of merge of the Armenian and the European cultural traditions. A music, which brings together the two edges. A bridge, which connects the East and the West. Could you present it with an example, in a more accessible way? That kind of a sample from your works.

Tigran Mansurian – I do say that this intersection is present in my works. For example, after the abovementioned sonata, I wrote my series “Four Hayrens” (1967). This work can be a perfect example for what you said. It is worth mentioning at that time some of my friends made me a sharp rebuke concerning the work saying that I wrote “compromise music” by their opinion. Maybe they were right… In the western music I gave a place for the peculiarities of the East, and vice versa, in the music of the East – for the musical constructive experience of the West. It is possible that it can be considered to be a “compromise”, if we want to use that word much. But we can also name it the result of the merge and intersection of the East-West music traditions.

Hovhannes Aivazyan – When did you realize that you occupy a stable and quite an important position in the Armenian music? Which years do you consider the start of your creative maturity? What works did you compose at that time and where did you perform them?

Tigran Mansurian – Could you repeat the question?

Hovhannes Aivazyan – When did you realize that you occupy a stable and important place in the Armenian music?

Tigran Mansurian – My friend, I do not ever think of such things. I do not want to speak about this issue. I would rather say that I am just a man that works. What could I say about the market values of my music, about its short or long life, about the continuity of its existence after me? Should I make any forecasts? I will repeat – I am just a man that works. Whatever I answer to your question, the answer will be only conditional.

… If you want, “Four Hayrens” can be considered a good start of maturity. That work first sounded in the end of the 60s. It sounded also in Warsaw in the framework of the Warsaw Autumn Music Festival. In Poland this work was heard by the world famous Cathy Berberian, who was one of the greatest masters of the modern vocal art. Her enthusiastic greeting towards my “Four Hayrens” reached me with one of her photos, on which she put her signature. It is worth mentioning as well that this work was sung also by the great Gohar Gasparyan. Her singing was so beautiful and impressive... When listening to her, I was telling myself: “They say, she makes my soul tremble”.

Hovhannes Aivazyan – About twenty years ago the trio Tigran Mansurian-Martun Israelyan-Ashot Zohrabyan was often talked about to be a unique group in the modern Armenian music. You are also connected with close friendly ties. What is the peculiarity of your music? What do you think, whatinnovations have you brought to the nowadays music?

Tigran Mansurian – I highly value the music by Martun Israelyan and Ashot Zohrabyan. I am certain that they provided for the deepness and quality of the demanded international standards of the development of the modern Armenian music. We passed a long way together. Our friendship is my wealth.

Hovhannes Aivazyan – Could you name the best five works, the most lasting three works and one masterpiece of Tigran Mansurian?

Tigran Mansurian – When a work, composed years ago, returns to me, I try to examine it again. It happens that at that moment (only at that moment) I see the values of the work more clearly. To say more than this, to try to find the most successful works of mine and value them is a hopeless and unnecessary work. Look, Thomas Stearns Eliot says in one of his literary articles: “every new-born significant literary work fully rearranges the literary values of the past”. I think such a phenomenon takes place in the creative life of the composer. You see, it is impossible to stop the live working process and give final values to several works.

I do not think that I would be able to answer your question some day, as I will continue my work. With the help of God.

Hovhannes Aivazyan – You got the State Award of the Republic of Armenia in 2013 (this is the third state award you get) for your last work “Requiem”, which you were composing for more than ten years. To write that song was one of your best wishes. Do you consider it to be one of you best works? Are you satisfied? You used to say that you have a soul debt before the victims of the Armenian Genocide, among which there are your ancestors as well. Is your conscience calm now?

Tigran Mansurian – Please, first let us omit the word “last” used by you in the connection with the “Requiem”. I do not like considering one of my works the “last”. Certainly that work got to its final maturity and formation in ten years. In fact, I badly needed to write a requiem in the memory of the victims of the Genocide of 1915, especially based on the Latin canonical text. Look, this year the “Requiem” will sound in Germany, South Korea and the United States of America. It means that the work passed the exam. I am happy that last year it was awarded with the Armenia’s State Prize and I am deeply grateful for the highest evaluation… I hope that my late parents are pleased that the “Requiem” was composed.

Hovhannes Aivazyan – Whom do you consider being your teacher(s)?

Tigran Mansurian – They are so many. I studied from so many people. I gave so much time to some of them and a very little time to the others… Some of them are still with me and to the others I had to say goodbye. They are in the East or in the West… They are either among the newly born composers or deep in the past. It is worth mentioning that sometimes these “teachers” would hardly reconcile with the friendship with each other. This way, whether they want it or not, they “became friends”.

Hovhannes Aivazyan – Following your life for about 35 years, I have been always astonished by your insatiable love towards reading. I can say confidently that you are the person, who has read the most. Armenian and world literature, music professional books, documents, biographical narrations about famous artists... You absorb everything. At the same time you are fond of the cinema. Sometimes you seem not to omit any of the world novelties. And another field as well: all the exhibitions in Yerevan. Your intellectual creative roots are hidden in all this… Coming out to the first positions in music once, you remain among the leaders for fifty years. The today’s audience is interested in the works you wrote half a century ago. You have had several concerts during the last years, the concert programs of which included also works written with a difference of half a century. How do you feel about this fact?

Tigran Mansurian – I am grateful for your favorable evaluations and characterizations given to me. I am also pleased when in the program of the concert the works, written both back in my youth and during the recent years, meet. I am happy that my youth is neither oppressed before my maturity, nor vice versa.

Two days ago I sent the preliminary version of the notes of the “Four Hayrens” to my publishing house in Germany. During the recent years Kim Kashkashyan and I have been playing the alt-piano version of this work. It was written in 1967 for piano and vocals (we talked about it during one of the previous questions). The works of my youth years live their own life. This way the arrangements of the previously written works add to the same songs. And this is, certainly, is one of the expressions of the viability of the work.

Hovhannes Aivazyan – There are so many high evaluations about your music talent sounded by the music experts of Armenia and different countries of the world. Here is one of them: “The inspirational music of Mansurian reflects the way of life and sustainable culture of the 20th century of the Armenian people. He is one of the composers, who have never spared even a note. His world of sound is mysterious. He knows where the most impressive and beautiful sounds of the musical instrument are hidden. Having heard the music by Mansurian only once, it is impossible to forget it”, - Los Angeles Times wrote. Certainly, any musician will be pleased to hear such opinion about himself from an authoritative reporter of such a solid newspaper. In general what was the most desirable and the most impressive rating for you?

Tigran Mansurian – When I was a student in the Musical College I happened to leave for Moscow (I do not remember, was it a conference or a plenary session of the Union of Soviet Composers) with quite a respectful group of Armenian composers by train. It happened so that I was in the same compartment with my teacher Eduard Baghdasaryan. At a moment our greatest authorities – Babajanyan, Saryan, Mirzoyan and others – gathered in our compartment. They were talking. I was lying on my bed on the second “floor” with my eyes shut, above the place, where Eduard Baghdasaryan was sitting. I was following to the talk of the great. One of the composers asked my teacher: “Who is the most promising from your students?” In the silence unexpectedly I saw the thumb of my teacher in front of my half-shut eyes showing my way… So, I was his the best… This was the most impressive evaluation of my life.

Hovhannes Aivazyan – You not only compose a very deep and beautiful music, but also write a lot. Your pen is prolific. You write always – on the holidays, on the jubilees, when being ill. I sometimes think have you ever rested? And I do not remember such thing. You are a music devotee. At the age of 75 you work with the same youthful vigor. You do not get tired. You have not lost the interest towards life and you have preserved the feature of surprising, the sense of humor, the directness and sincerity, the freshness of perception of the surrounding world. And these features are the key preconditions for working. I wish you health and long years of productive creative activity on behalf of the thousands Armenpress readers.

Tigran Mansurian - I am deeply grateful.

Yerevan-Los Angeles

Tigran Mansurian was born in Beirut in 1939. In 1947 his family moved to Armenia, finally settling in the capital Yerevan in 1956. Mansurian studied at the Yerevan Music Academy and completed his PhD at the Komitas State Conservatory where he later taught contemporary music analysis. In a short time he became one of Armenia's leading composers, establishing strong creative relationships with international performers and composers such as Valentin Silvestrov, Arvo Pärt, Alfred Schnittke, Sofia Gubaidulina, André Volkonsky and Edison Denisov as well as Kim Kashkashian, Jan Garbarek, and the Hilliard Ensemble. Mansurian was the director of the Komitas Conservatory in the 1990s. He has recently retired as an administrator and teacher, and concentrates exclusively on composition. Mansurian's musical style is characterized mainly by the organic synthesis of ancient Armenian musical traditions and contemporary European composition methods. His oeuvre comprises orchestral works, seven concerti for strings and orchestra, sonatas for cello and piano, three string quartets, madrigals, chamber music and works for solo instruments.