Mark Morris’s Guide to Twentieth Century Composers

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AZERBAIJAN

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Azerbaijan has a tradition of colourful and flamboyant folk-music, studied and used in the Soviet period by a number of composers. The major nationalist Azerbaijan composer was Uzeir Gadzhibekov (1885-1948), who became director of the Baku Conservatory and who wrote seven Azerbaijan operas on nationalistic subjects. Fikret Dzhamil Amirov (born 1922) has written colourful music heavily influenced by Azerbaijani folk-music, including Kyurdi Ovshari and Shur for orchestra, both based on national modes (`mugama'), and the ballet Thousand and One Nights (1979). One of the most important Azerbaijani works was written by a Ukrainian, Glière's opera Shah-Senem (1925, revised 1934), which utilised Azerbaijani folk-songs following Glière's study of the music and mugama of the area, and which was designed to be sung in Azerbaijani. The most famous of musicians that Azerbaijan might claim is undoubtedly Mstislav Rostropovich (born in Baku in 1927), the finest cellist of the second half of the 20th century and a gifted conductor, who has consistently encouraged new music, and for whom many of the more recent cello works in this Guide have been written.

 

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