2. Alan Hovhaness was an Armenian-American
composer. He was one of the most prolific
20th-century composers, with his official
catalog comprising 67 numbered symphonies
and 434 opus numbers.
When he was five, his family moved from
Somerville to Arlington, Massachusetts.
Early life

3. Hovhaness was interested in music from a very early
age, writing his first composition, a cantata in the
early Italian style, at the age of four after being
inspired by hearing a song of Franz Schubert. His
family was concerned for his late-night hours spent
composing and possibly for his financial future as an
artist. He decided for a short time to pursue
astronomy, another of his early loves.The fascination
of astronomy remained with him through his entire
life and composing career, with many works titled
after various planets and stars.

4. Hovhaness parents soon supported
their son's precocious composing,
and set up his first piano lessons with
a neighborhood teacher. 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 1932, he
won the Conservatory's Samuel
Endicott prize for composition with
his Sunset Symphony.

5. 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.
In 1936, Hovhaness attended a performance in
Boston by the Indian dance troupe of Uday Shankar
(with orchestra led by Vishnudas Shirali), which
inspired his lifelong interest in the music of India.
During the 1930s (until 1939), he worked in Franklin
D. Roosevelt's Federal Music Project.

6. Destruction of early works
During the 1930s and 1940s, Hovhaness famously
destroyed many of his early works. He later claimed
that he had burned at least 1000 different pieces, a
process that took at least two weeks;elsewhere he
claimed to have destroyed around 500 scores
totalling as many as a thousand pages.

7. Musical career
Hovhaness became interested in
Armenian culture and music in 1940
as organist for the St. James
Armenian Apostolic Church in
Watertown, Massachusetts, remaining
in this position for about ten years.
In 1948 he joined the faculty of the
Boston Conservatory, teaching there
until 1951. His students there included
the jazz musicians Sam Rivers and
Gigi Gryce.

8. Relocation to New York
In 1951 Hovhaness moved to New York City, where he
became a full-time composer. Also that year (starting on
August 1), he worked for the Voice of America, first as a
script writer for the Armenian section, then as director of
music, composer and musical consultant for the Near East
and Transcaucasian sections.
He wrote the score for the Broadway play The Flowering
Peach by Clifford Odets in 1954, a ballet for Martha Graham
(Ardent Song, also in 1954), and two scores for NBC
documentaries on India and Southeast Asia (1955 and
1957). Also during the 1950s, he composed for productions
at The Living Theatre.
His biggest breakthrough to date came in 1955, when his
Symphony No. 2, Mysterious Mountain.

9. He then studied Japanese gagaku music. In recognition of
the musical styles he studied in Japan, he wrote Fantasy on
Japanese Woodprints, Op. 211 (1965), a concerto for
xylophone and orchestra.
In 1965, as part of a U.S. government-sponsored
delegation, he visited Russia as well as Soviet-controlled
Georgia and Armenia, the only time he visited his paternal
ancestral homeland. While there, he donated his
handwritten manuscripts of harmonized Armenian liturgical
music to the Yeghishe Charents State Museum of Arts and
Literature in Yerevan.
In the mid-1960s he spent several summers touring
Europe, living and working much of the time in Switzerland.

10. Films
Films about Alan Hovhaness
• 1984 – Alan Hovhaness. Directed by Jean Walkinshaw,
KCTS-TV, Seattle.
• 1986 – Whalesong. Directed by Barbara Willis Sweete,
Rhombus Media.
• 1990 – The Verdehr Trio: The Making of a Medium.
Program 1: Lake Samish Trio/Alan Hovhaness. Directed by
Lisa Lorraine Whiting.
Films with scores by Alan Hovhaness
• 1955 – Assignment: India. NBC-TV documentary.
• 1956 – Narcissus. Directed by Willard Maas.
• 1982 – Everest North Wall. Directed by Laszlo Pal.
• 1984 – Winds of Everest. Directed by Laszlo Pal.