Gagik Hovounts (1930-); ARM

Gagik Hovounts was born in 1930 in Erivan, Armenia, and studied violin and composition at the Yerevan Conservatory, where he has taught Music Theory since 1964. Hovounts has written music across a broad range of mediums: solo piano music, chamber music, choral works, and orchestra music - including several concertos, such as appear here at the Classical Archives. Changes in his aesthetic outlook in more recent years, however, moved him to repudiate many early works, and consequently to renumber his opus catalogue. Armenian national sources - both musically and thematically - play a substantive role in Hovount's output, and not only in those where the link is made explicit, such as his "Fatherland" for orchestra and chorus (2001).

In Hovount's aesthetic, theoretical systems do not control the organization of his materials, and as with many contemporary composers, the apprehension of the contemporary world through musical means is critical. Indeed, a principal aim of his music is to bring back the freshness and lend actuality to many elements of musical expressiveness that have long been known, and that themselves go back to nature - such as the tone row, some varieties of modality, symmetry in music, etc. Hovounts has had several works recorded and released by the Russian label Melodia. He has likewise published a theoretical tract on Harmony.