Azernews.Az

By Sabina Idayatova

An Open Door Day will be held at the house-museum of the great composer Uzeyir Hajibayli on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of his death on November 23.

The museum staff will visit the grave of the Hajibayli at the Alley of Honor
early in the morning that day.

The memorial evening of the great composer at the house-museum will start at 15:00.

A discussion over Hajibayli`s irreplaceable contribution to the musical culture of Azerbaijan will be held, and his and other composers` works will be performed at the event.

Uzeyir Hajibeyli is a great Azerbaijani composer, conductor, scientist, publicist, playwright, teacher, translator, and social figure. He is recognized as the father of Azerbaijani classical music and opera. Hajibayli is the author of the national anthem of Azerbaijan Republic.

Hajibeyli received his early education in a religious school, where he perfected his Arabic and Persian. Later he studied at a two-year Russian-Azerbaijani school and familiarized himself with the heritage of the famous classic writers of the East and the West. Susha's rich musical tradition greatly influenced the musical education of Hajibeyli.

From 1899 to 1904 Hajibeyli studied at the Gori Pedagogical Seminary where he learned to play the violin, the violoncello and the brass instruments.

He wrote the Turkic-Russian and Russian-Turkic Dictionary of Political, Legal, Economic and Military Terms, and the textbook Arithmetic Problems in 1908.

Also in 1908, he wrote the first Azeri opera, named "Leyli And Majnun" based on the tragic love story.

In contrast to Sheikh Sanan, Hajibeyli`s operas Rustam and Sohrab (1910), Asli and Karam (1912), Shah Abbas and Khurshudbanu (1912), and Harun and Leyli (1915) were entirely based on Azeri folk music elements, primarily mugham.
In October 2006, the musical comedy Arshin Mal Alan ("The Cloth Peddler") by Hajibeyli, written in 1913, was performed on western stages for the first time.

One of Hajibeyli's greatest legacies was bringing forward the idea of establishing a professional music school. Hence the Baku Academy of Music (known then as the Azerbaijan State Conservatoire), was founded in 1920 and named after Hajibeyli after his death. The school has trained Azerbaijan's finest composers such as Gara Garayev, Fikrat Amirov, Jovdat Hajiyev, Soltan Hajibeyov, Tofig Guliyev, and Vagif Mustafazade. His statue "sits" in front of this grand building that is still devoted to the synthesizing of Eastern and Western musical traditions.