Aram Khachaturian
- Born: June 6, 1903, Tbilisi (Tiflis at the time), Georgia
- Died: May 1, 1978, Moscow, Russia
Suite No. 2 from Spartacus
- Composed: 1950-54. The three suite versions were extracted in 1955.
- Premiere: (complete ballet) December 26, 1956 in Leningrad
- Duration: approx. 21 minutes
Aram Khachaturian was born into an Armenian family at the turn of the 20th century and was the youngest of five children. Khachaturian’s father, Yeghia (Ilya), owned a bookbinding shop and was betrothed to his wife, Kumash, before they met (Kumash was 9 and Yeghia was 19 at the time of their betrothal, but they were not married until Kumash was 16).
Khachaturian grew up in the city of Tiflis (as it was called until the name changed to Tbilisi in 1936), which was the largest city in the Caucasus at the time and was home to a large Armenian population until the Russian Revolution in 1917. Armenia fell to the Soviets in 1920 and the country of Georgia became part of the Soviet Union in December 1922. In Khachaturian’s 1952 article, “My Idea of the Folk Element in Music,” he described the rich musical environment of Tiflis:
I grew up in an atmosphere rich in folk music: popular festivities, rites, joyous and sad events in the life of the people always accompanied by music, the vivid tunes of Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian songs and dances performed by folk bards [ashugs] and musicians — such were the impressions that became deeply engraved on my memory, that determined my musical thinking. They shaped my musical consciousness and lay at the foundations of my artistic personality.
In 1921, Khachaturian moved to Moscow to study biology at Moscow State University and enrolled at the Gnessin Institute to study cello. In 1925 at the Gnessin Institute, Mikhail Gnessin started a composition class that Khachaturian joined. In 1929, Khachaturian entered the Moscow Conservatory, where Khachaturian studied composition with Nikolai Myaskovsky and orchestration with Sergei Vasilenko. Khachaturian graduated from the Conservatory in 1934 and completed his postgraduate work in 1936. Khachaturian was a member of the Composers’ Union from 1932 to 1948, when the Soviet politician Andrei Zhdanov denounced formalism and Khachaturian, along with other “formalist” composers. Khachaturian was reinstated to the Composers’ Union in 1957 and was board secretary until his death in 1978.
Khachaturian wrote three ballets: Happiness (1939), Gayane (1942) and Spartacus. The latter became his final internationally acclaimed work; Khachaturian revised the score in 1968 for a production at the Bolshoi in Moscow, and he extracted three suite versions in 1955. Khachaturian received the Lenin Prize in 1954 for Spartacus.
Spartacus tells the story (with many considerable liberties from the historical record) of the Third Servile War (73-71 BCE), where the hero Spartacus (the captive king of Thrace) leads a slave uprising against the Romans. Spartacus and his wife, Phrygia, were the captives of the Roman consul Crassus. In Act 1 of the ballet, Phrygia is taken by Crassus to join his harem of concubines. Spartacus is sent to be a gladiator where he is forced to kill his close friend. The horror of that deed is the catalyst Spartacus needs to start the rebellion.
In Act II, the escaped captives disrupt Crassus' lavish entertainment of Roman patricians and rescue the enslaved women, including Spartacus’ wife, Phrygia. Spartacus and Phrygia rejoice in their escape in the “Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia.”
In Act III, Crassus’ army discovers Spartacus and they impale him with their spears. Spartacus’ friend recovers his body and Phrygia mourns the loss of her husband.
Of Spartacus, Khachaturian wrote:
“I wanted the score to express clearly the drama of the plot… I believe that the theme of Spartacus and the slave uprising in ancient Rome has great importance and appeal today. I thought of Spartacus as a monumental fresco describing the mighty avalanche of the antique rebellion of the slaves on behalf of human rights…. The era of Spartacus was an important one in the history of mankind. Today, when most of the world’s oppressed people are waging an intense struggle for national liberation and independence, the immortal image of Spartacus has acquired particular significance. When I composed the score of the ballet and tried to capture the atmosphere of ancient Rome in order to bring to life the images of the remote past, I never ceased to feel the spiritual affinity of Spartacus to our own time.”
—Tyler M. Secor