Uzeyir Hajibeyov
Uzeyir Hajibeyov was an Azerbaijani, Soviet composer, film composer, conductor, musicologist, publicist, playwright and teacher. He was born on 18 September 1885 in Aghjabadi and grew up in Shusha, a major center of Azerbaijani culture. As a child, he studied mugham singing and Azerbaijani folk instruments, and at thirteen sang in a production of an episode from the Layla and Majnun story.
From 1899 to 1904 he studied at the teachers’ seminary in Gori, where he learned violin, cello and wind instruments. He then taught in schools in Hadrut and Baku, and worked as a translator and newspaper editor. Seeking further musical training, he studied in Moscow and at the St. Petersburg Conservatory.
In 1908 Hajibeyov’s Layla and Majnun was staged in Baku. Drawing on the poem by Fuzuli, the opera combined Azerbaijani folk and mugham traditions with elements of European classical music. It established the mugham-opera form and is described in the article as the first Azerbaijani opera and the first opera in the Islamic world.
Hajibeyov wrote seven operas and three operettas. His operas include Sheikh Sanan, Rustam and Zohrab, Shah Abbas and Khurshid Banu, Asli and Kerem, and Koroglu, composed between 1932 and 1936 and first staged in 1937. Koroglu is widely regarded as a major work in his output. His operettas include Husband and Wife, If Not That One, Then This One, and The Cloth Peddler (Arshin Mal Alan), which became especially popular and was adapted for film.
His work also included the mugham-inspired romances Without You and Beloved One, songs, orchestral and choral pieces, and music for the 1945 film adaptation of The Cloth Peddler. He received the title People's Artist of the USSR in 1938 and second-degree State Prizes in 1941 and 1946.
Hajibeyov helped shape Azerbaijani music education and musical institutions. He led a music school established on his initiative, served as rector of the Azerbaijan Conservatory, organized an orchestra of folk instruments and helped establish a state choir. His 1945 study, The Foundations of Azerbaijani Folk Music, set out his ideas on the country’s musical modes and traditions. Among the composers and musicians he taught were Kara Karayev, Fikret Amirov, Niyazi, Tofig Guliyev and Shafiqa Akhundova.
Hajibeyov died in Baku on 23 November 1948. He is remembered as a founder of Azerbaijani professional musical culture and of its opera tradition.