Mushegh Aghayan
Mushegh Aghayan (17 November 1883 – 11 September 1966) was an Armenian and Soviet composer, musicologist and music teacher. Born in Tbilisi, he was the son of the Armenian writer Ghazaros Aghayan. He was named Honored Art Worker of the Armenian SSR in 1939 and received the degree of Candidate of Art History in 1947.
From 1907 to 1911, Aghayan studied singing at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He taught singing at Princess Argutinskaya-Dolgorukova's boarding school and was the first music teacher of the composer Aram Khachaturian. In 1926 he entered the Moscow Conservatory to study choral singing, graduating in 1930; his teacher was the composer Alexander Alexandrov. From 1930, he pursued scholarly and teaching work in Armenia.
Aghayan chaired the board of the Union of Composers of the Armenian SSR from 1934 to 1939. Between 1948 and 1953, he was a senior research fellow in the music history and theory section of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR, where he organized a scholarly music study office. During the 1950s he published several ethnographic collections of folk songs in Armenian and Russian.
He was particularly known for his research into Armenian and Georgian folk music. He deciphered more than one hundred songs by Komitas from Armenian musical notation, archival sources and gramophone recordings. With the Armenian singer Shara Talyan, he published a collection of songs by Sayat-Nova. Aghayan also wrote choral works and romances. His editorial work included the second volume of Komitas: Ethnographic Collection (1950), a collection of folk songs recorded by Komitas; the two-volume Armenian Folk Songs and Dances by S. Melikyan (1949; second edition, 1953); and a 1959 collection of songs by Sheram.