THE MUSIC OF ALAN HOVHANESS Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Musical Arts by Niccolo Davis Athens May, 2016 ii © 2016 Niccolo Davis Athens iii ABSTRACT The Music of Alan Hovhaness Niccolo Davis Athens, DMA Cornell University 2016 This dissertation is an attempt to redress the dearth of serious scholarship on the music of the American composer Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000). As Hovhaness’s catalogue is one of the largest of any 20 th -century composer, this dissertation sets out to provide as complete a picture as possible of his output without discussing all six-hundred-plus works. This involves giving a comprehensive account of the important elements of Hovhaness’s musical language, placing his work in the context of 20 th -century American concert music at large, and exploring the major issues surrounding his music and its reception, notably his engagement with various non- Western musical traditions and his resistance to the prevailing modernist trends of his time. An integrated biographical element runs throughout, intended to provide a foundation for the discussion of Hovhaness’s music. The first chapter of this dissertation is concerned with an examination of Hovhaness’s surviving juvenilia, after which it is divided according to the following style periods: early, Armenian, middle, “Eastern,” and late. An additional chapter dealing with Hovhaness’s experiences at Tanglewood in 1942 and what they reveal about his artistic values appears between the chapters on the music of the early and Armenian periods. Other pertinent issues surrounding Hovhaness’s work are discussed as they arise chronologically. iv BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Niccolo Davis Athens (b. 1988) was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. He began his musical life as a violist, and started studying composition privately with Timothy Kramer in 2004. In 2010 he received a Bachelor of Music in composition from The Juilliard School, where he studied primarily with Samuel Adler. Upon graduation, he was awarded Scholastic Distinction for “The Walls Between the Worlds Grow Thin,” an undergraduate thesis dealing with the music of Alan Hovhaness. In 2010 he began his studies in composition at Cornell University with Steven Stucky, Roberto Sierra, and Kevin Ernste. He received a Master’s of Music from Cornell in 2013. In 2014 he was awarded a Fulbright Student Award for his research project “Stylistic Trends in Contemporary Chinese Concert Music.” He spent the 2014-15 academic year in residence at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where he also studied composition with Ye Xiaogang. Niccolo has received two BMI Student Composer awards, in 2006 and in 2009, and in 2012 he received a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He currently lives and teaches music in Shanghai. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my doctoral committee, Professors Kevin Ernste, Judith Peraino, and Roger Moseley, for their support and guidance in the writing of this dissertation. I especially want to thank the late Steven Stucky for his consistent encouragement and the freedom he allowed me to pursue a project of this scope. I would also like to express my appreciation for the late Martin Berkofsky, whose generosity in sharing with a young high school student all manner of Alan Hovhaness-related paraphernalia was a boon to me as my interest in this music first began to develop. In addition, I want to extend my sincere gratitude to Hinako Fujihara Hovhaness, who fearlessly opened her home (and most importantly, her basement!) to a young researcher with a passion for her husband’s music. I hope that this work will live up to the trust she placed in me. Finally, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to Marco Shirodkar, not only for sharing so many valuable research materials from his personal collection, but also for the friendship he has shown me during our correspondence over the past decade. He has been a kindred spirit, and our ongoing dialogue on the subject of Alan Hovhaness and his work has been a consistent source of stimulation and encouragement. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iii Biographical Sketch ...................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ v Preface............................................................................................................................................ 1 Beginnings (1911-1934) ................................................................................................................ 5 Early Maturity (1935-1942) ......................................................................................................... 21 Turning Point (Summer 1942) ..................................................................................................... 40 The Armenian Period (1943-1950) .............................................................................................. 54 Establishment Recognition (1951-1959) ................................................................................... 110 Travels Abroad (1960-1967) ...................................................................................................... 150 Later Years (1968-2000) ............................................................................................................ 203 Works Cited ............................................................................................................................... 240 vii “The walls between the worlds grow thin, And brightness pierces through, Alleluia.” – Alan Hovhaness (from Avak the Healer , 1946) 1 PREFACE Participating in a composers’ symposium in 1959, Alan Hovhaness once remarked that, “so much music that pretends to be profound is only profound because of the words and endless analytical articles written about it. We have all experienced music that sounds both insignificant and dull, but about which tremendously impressive things are said. The most important thing to do about music is to listen to it, rather than to read all that is written about it.”1 Besides being a critique of “serious” music’s growing reliance on the academy for prestige in those days, this has also turned out to be an accurate description of how Hovhaness’s own music has been received so far. While recordings of his works have continued to proliferate in the years since his death in 2000, mainstream musical scholarship has for the most part taken Hovhaness at his word and ignored him. This dissertation is an attempt to redress the dearth of serious scholarship on the music of Alan Hovhaness. As Hovhaness’s catalogue is one of the largest of any 20 th -century composer, my goal in this dissertation is to provide as complete a picture as possible of his output without discussing all six-hundred-plus works. This will involve giving a comprehensive account of the important elements of Hovhaness’s musical language, placing his output in the context of 20 th -century American concert music at large, and exploring the major issues surrounding his music and its reception, notably his engagement with various non-Western musical traditions and his resistance to the prevailing modernist trends of his time. This dissertation is not intended to be a survey of Hovhaness’s best music. Some of his (in my estimation) finest works have been left unmentioned, as their inclusion would have led to 1 Cited in: Kelly, John Jerome. “The Musical Style of Alan Hovhaness.” University of Iowa, 1965, 4. 2 redundancy. Others pieces which I feel are weaker are discussed because they aid in the illustration of some salient point. I have also tried to avoid tedious “blow-by-blow” prose descriptions of this or that piece unless absolutely necessary, instead relying on isolated individual examples or diagrams wherever possible. This dissertation is also not intended to fill the as yet unmet need for a detailed Hovhaness biography. There is an integrated biographical element which runs throughout, but it is for the most part meant to provide a foundation for the discussion of the music and, in a few cases, to provide clarity on biographical issues about which there exists a good deal of conflicting information. The last serious attempt to take stock of Hovhaness’s output as a whole was Arnold Rosner’s 1972 dissertation, “An Analytical Survey of the Music of Alan Hovhaness,” in which each aspect of Hovhaness’s musical language is identified and described, followed by an in- depth analysis of a handful of important works. Aside from the fact that when Rosner wrote his dissertation in 1972 Hovhaness still had more than three decades of musical work ahead of him, Rosner lacked access to many important documents and unpublished works which provide indispensable insight into Hovhaness’s development. In addition, Rosner only made a limited attempt to contextualize Hovhaness’s work and discuss the various issues surrounding it. Nevertheless, he made many observations of great value, and his dissertation, which has up to the present remained the definitive academic work on Alan Hovhaness, will be referenced often in this one. Several other scholarly works from around