DEATH OF HOVHANNES MIRZA-VANANDETSI

Hovhannes Mirza-Vanandetsi was one of the exponents of Armenian classicism in the nineteenth century.

Mirza-Vanandetsi, whose actual name was Amirzade Mirzayan, was born in Van in 1772. He became an orphan at the age of four and was placed in the care of the brotherhood of the monastery of the island of Gduts, where he grew up and received his early education. He was a gifted student and became and deacon. At the age of twenty, he moved to Constantinople to further his education. He studied at the Tbradun School, under the sponsorship of the Armenian Patriarchate, where he studied grammar, rhetoric, and logic. He graduated in 1798 and the following year he was appointed teacher at the recently opened Mesrobian School of Smyrna, where he taught until 1816. He was ordained a married priest in 1817 and remained in Smyrna for the rest of his life. He passed away on February 3, 1841, after a long illness.

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BIRTH OF MHER AMAGHIAN

Mher [Meher] Abeghian was a well-known in Soviet Armenian painting in the 1940s-1980s period.

He was born on January 26, 1909, in the city of Vagharshapat. He was the son of Manuk Abeghian, a renowned Armenian Studies scholar of the twentieth century. He received his professional education at the Yerevan Industrial and Technical School of Fine Arts (1922-1927), the Higher State Art and Technical Institute of Moscow (Vkhutein, 1927-1930), and the Institute of Proletarian Fine Art of Leningrad (nowadays St. Petersburg, 1930-1931).

Abeghian returned to Armenia and was a lecturer at the Panos Terlemezian Art College (1939-1945) and later at the Yerevan State Art and Theatre Institute (1954-1959). He was the president of the Board of the Union of Artists of Armenia in 1939-1945 and 1967-1968.

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DEATH OF BEDROS TOURIAN

It has been said that Armenian literature had two great foes whose names started with the letter թ (t): tuberculosis (թոքախտ, tokakhd) and Turks (թուրքեր). Five famous poets were among the victims of the terrible illness, related to poverty and malnourishment. One of them was Bedros Tourian, the great name of Armenian romanticism.

Tourian was born in Scutari, a suburb of Constantinople, on May 20, 1851 (Julian calendar, equivalent to June 1 in the Gregorian calendar). His father, Abraham Zmbayan, was a struggling blacksmith in a poverty stricken family, named after his profession (Turkish zımba “chisel”), from which his son derived the Armenian translation Tourian (Armenian դուր[tour]“chisel”).

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BIRTH OF ARNO BABAJANIAN

Arno Babajanian was one of the most important composers of Soviet Armenia, but also was very well-known in the Soviet Union, especially as a brilliant pianist.

He was born in Yerevan on January 22, 1921. His childhood friend, composer Alexander Harutiunian, recalled that at the age of five or six, the future musician attempted to play the old piano of the kindergarten. Babajanian himself used to tell about his first meeting with Aram Khachatourian: “When I was a kindergartener, a man once visited us and asked us to sing to get to know who had music ear among us. I was singing and kicking the floor at the same time. Listening to me, that man said that I should be engaged in music. In the future, I would learn that he was Aram Khachatourian.”

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BIRTH OF MANYA GHAZARYAN

Manya Ghazaryan, a prolific art historian, was born on January 20, 1924, in Tbilisi (Georgia). She graduated from the Institute of Art and Theater of Yerevan (now Academy of Fine Arts) in 1948. She worked at the National Gallery of Art of Armenia between 1953 and 1959, and afterwards became a researcher at the Institute of Art of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1983 she earned the title of Emeritus Worker of Art of Armenia, and in 1996 she defended her dissertation of Ph.D. in Art.

Manya Ghazaryan’s studies were devoted to plastic arts in the Middle Ages, and the modern and contemporary periods. She authored the following books in Armenian: Vardges Sureniants (1960), Armenian Plastic Arts…

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BIRTH OF HRATCH ZARTARIAN

Hrach Zartarian was one of the important yet lesser-known names of French Armenian literature in the past century.

He was born in Kharpert on January 15, 1897. He was the elder son of Rupen Zartarian (1874–1915), the talented writer and journalist who was among the first intellectual victims of the Armenian Genocide. He went from place to place in his childhood, following his father’s steps as teacher, activist, and editor, from Kharpert to Smyrna, Manisa, Plovdiv (Bulgaria), and Constantinople. He received his education at the famed Sanasarian School of Karin (Erzerum), where he was a boarding student for three years. After the school was moved to Sepastia (Sivas), Hrach Zartarian returned to Constantinople and studied at Getronagan School.

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BIRTH OF CHARLES DOWSETT

Charles Dowsett was the first person to hold a position in Armenian studies at a British university. His linguistic versatility and wide-ranging scholarship earned him an international reputation.

He was born on January 2, 1924, in London. He was educated at Barnbury Central School, and in April 1940 moved to Dame Alice Owen’s School. He went in 1942 to St. Catherine’s in Oxford for one year before military service (1943-1947), where he met Friedel Lapuner from Eastern Germany, whom he married in 1949. In 1947 he went to Peterhouse in Cambridge to read Modern and Medieval Languages and later turned to Comparative Philology.

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DEATH OF OSIP MANDELSTAM

Osip Mandelstam, one of the foremost Russian poets of the early twentieth century, was also celebrated for his memoirs and his cycle of poems dedicated to Armenia after his trip in 1930.
Mandelstam was born on January 14, 1891, in Warsaw to a wealthy Polish-Jewish family. His father was able to purchase the right to move his family to Saint Petersburg, where only a handful of Jews were allowed to live. In 1900, Mandelstam entered the prestigious Tenishev School. His first poems were published in 1907 in the school’s almanac.

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BIRTH OF ARSEN DERDERIAN

Arsen Derderian [Terteryan, Soviet spelling] was a prolific literary scholar who dominated the field of Armenian literature in Soviet Armenia until the mid-twentieth century.

He was born on December 22, 1882, in the village of Shosh, near Shushi (Artsakh). He studied at the Seminary of Shushi (1892-1902) and then graduated from the Gevorgian Lyceum of Holy Echmiadzin in 1905. He taught for two years at the Seminary of Shushi and in 1907-1909 he studied at the Psycho-Neurological Institute of St. Petersburg. Afterwards, he shifted to literature and taught history and theory of literature at the Diocesan School of Yerevan in 1909-1920.

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BIRTH OF HOVHANNESS BADALIAN

Badalian was born on December 15, 1924, in the village of Shavarin, near Hamadan (Iran). His parents were from the Armenian village of Gardabad near Urmia and had become refugees when the Ottoman army invaded northwestern Iran during World War I.

He attended the Armenian school in Baghdad, and in 1936 he returned to Iran, and started singing in composer Nicol Galanderian’s choir in Tehran. In the Iranian capital, he studied and performed with Hambardzum Grigorian. During the repatriation of post-World War II, Badalian left Iran and settled in Soviet Armenia to study music. He attended the Romanos Melikian Music College in Yerevan. In 1949 he joined the Tatoul Altunian Folk Dance and Song Ensemble (1949-1954) as soloist and in 1954 he went to the Folk Music Instruments Ensemble of the Public Radio, where he would perform as a soloist until the end of his life. He also taught at Gomidas State Conservatory (1982-2001).

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