Somehow I missed NPR : The ‘Sabre Dance’ Man:
It was one of the catchiest, most familiar — perhaps most maddening — tunes to come out of the 20th century. It was heard in cartoons. It heightened the drama of plate spinners doing their shtick on the Ed Sullivan Show. In celebration of the 100th anniversary of composer Aram Khachaturian’s birth, NPR’s Tom Huizenga profiles the man behind “Sabre Dance.”
What sometimes shocks me is how recently many of these “classical” works were composed:
The song was part of the Armenian composer’s Gayane ballet, which he completed in 1942.
Interesting history:
Khachaturian came of age as a composer during the Stalin regime. Though he wasn’t considered a party apparatchik, he was swept up in the fervor of the new socialist dream.“He did absolutely everything right, as far as the Soviet ideology is concerned,” says pianist Sahan Arzruni, who worked with, and has written about Khachaturian. “He used the folk material of all the republics, not only the Armenia folk material but the Ukrainian, Georgian, Azerbaijani, Turkmenistani… The primary dogma, as far as the Soviet ideology is concerned, is to make the art relevant to the people. Not art for the sake of art.”
Khachaturian churned out well-crafted, party-pleasing compositions such as the “Song of Stalin,” “Ode in Memory of Lenin” and a popular violin concerto. But in 1948, Khachaturian suddenly found himself on the wrong side of the Soviet art police — officially denounced, along with fellow composers Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev.
Khachaturian apologized and even agreed to be sent back to Armenia to be “reeducated.” In 1957, four years after Stalin died, Khachaturian was re-appointed to the Composer’s Union. But by then, “all his major works were behind him,” Huizenga says.
The primary dogma, as far as the Soviet ideology is concerned, is to make the art relevant to the people. Not art for the sake of art. Sounds more like network TV to me.