Uzeyir bey Abdulhuseyn bey oghlu Hajibeyov (; 18 September 188523 November 1948) was an Azerbaijani composer, musicologist, and teacher. He is recognized as the father of Azerbaijani classical music. He composed the music of the national anthem of Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (which was re-adopted after Azerbaijan regained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991). Hajibeyov also composed the anthem used by Azerbaijan during the Soviet period. He was the first composer of an opera in the Islamic world. He composed the first oriental opera Leyli and Majnun in 1908 and since then he is revered for adapting the written masterpiece to the theatre.
Early life
Uzeyir Hajibeyov was born in Aghjabadi, near Shusha of Azerbaijan, on 18 September 1885. His father, Abdulhuseyn bey Hajibeyli, was the secretary to Khurshidbanu Natavan for many years, and his mother, Shirin, grew up in the Natavan household.Abasova, L. V. et al. (eds.) (1992) Istoria azerbaijanskoi muziki, Maarif, Baku, pp. 85–86, in Russian Growing up, Hajibeyov was strongly influenced by Natavan's work.Naroditskaya, Inna (2000) "Azerbaijanian Female Musicians: Women's Voices Defying and Defining the Culture" Ethnomusicology 44(2): pp. 234–256, 242
Shusha, often dubbed as the cradle of Azerbaijani music and culture, had a reputation for its musical heritage. The town was also referred to as "the Music Conservatory of the Caucasus" because of its many talented musicians and singers. And the fact that Hajibeyov grew up in Shusha explains how at 22, in 1908, with very little formal musical education, he was capable of writing a full-length opera. Hajibeyov received his early education in a religious school (madrasah), where he perfected his Arabic and Persian. Later he studied at a two-year Russian-Azerbaijani school. Here, with the help of his favorite teacher Mirza Mehdi Hasanzadeh, he familiarized himself with the heritage of the famous classic writers of the East and the West. The richness of the musical performance tradition of Shusha greatly influenced the musical education of Hajibeyov. He would later reflect on his experiences: "The first musical education I got as a child in Shusha came from the best singers and saz-players. At that time I sang mughams and tasnifs. The singers liked my voice. They would make me sing and teach me at the same time." Uzeyir Hajibeyov's first teacher was his uncle Aghalar Aliverdibeyov, an excellent connoisseur of Azeri folk music. In 1897–1898, when Azerbaijani playwright Abdurrahim bey Hagverdiyev and singer Jabbar Garyaghdioglu staged the episode Majnun on Leyli's grave from Layla and Majnun, 13-year-old Uzeyir sang in the choir.Uzeyir Hajibeyov . AzWorld.org.
From 1899 to 1904 Hajibeyov studied at the Gori Pedagogical Seminary, later to be known as the Transcaucasian Teachers Seminary. There, along with general education, he also acquired music. In this school, Hajibeyov learned to play the violin, the cello and brass instruments. After his graduation from the Pedagogical Seminary, Hajibeyov was appointed a teacher to the village of Hadrut in Upper Karabakh. Having worked there for a year, Hajibeyov permanently settled in Baku, where he carried on his career in teaching mathematics, geography, history, Azerbaijani and Russian languages, and music. He wrote the Turkic-Russian and Russian-Turkic Dictionary of Political, Legal, Economic and Military Terms, Used in Press in 1907 and the textbook Arithmetic Problems in 1908, and had them published by the Orujov Brothers Publishing House in Baku.Biography of Uzeyir Hajibeyov at Uzeirbey.aznet.org
Hajibeyov was no stranger to the tragic chaos of war; he lived through the Revolutions of 1905 and 1917, the fall of the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan in 1920, and both World Wars. The political repercussions of these military conquests often manifested in other forms of chaos. For example, between 1920 and 1940, the alphabet systems for writing Azerbaijani were changed three times – from Arabic to Latin, and from Latin to Cyrillic"Alphabet Transitions: The Latin Script: A Chronology" Azerbaijan International, Vol. 5:2 (Summer 1997), pp. 22–24. – a process which greatly hindered and interrupted the educational and cultural process, and may well have been one of the factors influencing Hajibeyov to present his ideas verbally on the musical stage.
Merging traditional and Western styles
Throughout all the tumultuous change in Azerbaijan that took place between 1900 and 1940, one characteristic consistently reflects the character of Hajibeyov. He always searched for ways to merge and integrate the past with the present, rather than to discard either form. Rather curiously, even files at the Gori Pedagogical Seminary have shown his persistence in holding on to his own roots even under pressure. On 3 December 1900, when he was 15, it is noted that "the student, Uzeyir Hajibeyov, was rebuked because he was talking in his native language." Conversely, when Russian-influenced musicians tried to ban traditional Azerbaijani instruments like the tar, zurna and kamancha, Hajibeyov and his colleagues pushed to incorporate them into the Western orchestra, thereby, giving them an even higher status and ultimately a chance to survive. Hajibeyov had the opportunity to open music schools that combined various educational systems. In these schools, national cadres who could integrate into the world music culture were trained. The history and music theory of Azerbaijani music were researched, and education classes were written. Hajibeyov in the field of music education combined and created in Azerbaijan Western and East traditions.
Music In 1908, Hajibeyov wrote his first opera, Leyli and Majnun, based on the tragic love story"Leyli and Majnun – 90th Jubilee: The Opera that Shaped the Music of a Nation" Azerbaijan International, Vol. 5:4 (Winter 1997), p. 25. by the 15th century poet Fuzuli. This would be the first of 7 operas and 3 musical comedies that Hajibeyov would compose throughout his life. In Leyli and Majnun, the uniqueness of the traditional modal music of mugham was incorporated into a Western genre with the use of instruments indigenous to both traditions.
Hajibeyov's second opera, Sheikh Sanan, was written in 1909 in a form that was entirely opposite to the first. This time Hajibeyov employed a purely European style. Sheikh Sanan received raves as a musical composition, but the content was too progressive for the period. In this opera, Hajibeyov advocated that marriage should not be bound by nationality or religion – in essence, it was another form of integration. But this time, it backfired. The story line follows a religious sheikh on his way to Mecca who meets a very beautiful Georgian lady. To his horror, the lovely creature's father turns out to be a swineherd, caring for what, to him, was a forbidden animal. In the end, the sheikh denounces his religion to win the woman. It is said that when the opera was performed, many people were offended and walked out, leaving Hajibeyov with the realization that he had outpaced his generation too much this time. As a result, he made a drastic decision and burned the score. When asked by Ramazan Khalilov, his assistant, how he could do that, Hajibeyov replied: "I didn't destroy my opera. It's my own creation, so it's always in my head." Khalilov said that Hajibeyov went on to use this same magnificent music 27 years later to create Koroghlu, an opera that many acclaim to be his finest."Composer Uzeyir Hajibeyov: 110 Jubilee" Azerbaijan International, Vol. 3:3 (Autumn 1995), pp. 76ff."Why Uzeyir Hajibeyov wrote Koroghlu at the Height of Stalin's Repressions" by Betty Blair, Azerbaijan International, Vol. 14:2 (Summer 2006), p. 61.
In contrast to Sheikh Sanan, Hajibeyov's operas Rustam and Sohrab (1910), Asli and Karam (1912), Shah Abbas and Khurshid Banu (1912), and Harun and Leyli (1915) were entirely based on Azerbaijani folk music elements, primarily mugham.
In October 2006, the musical comedy Arshin Mal Alan (The Cloth Peddler) by Hajibeyov, written in 1914,"Some Observations about my Work Arshin Mal Alan" by Uzeyir Hajibeyov, hajibeyov.com was announced to be performed on western stages for the first time.
One of Hajibeyov'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 Hajibeyov 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 Eastern and Western musical traditions.
In 1931, Hajibeyov helped in establishing the Azeri Folk Instruments Orchestra affiliated with the Radio Committee. This orchestra performed European classical pieces, such as those by Mikhail Glinka, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, Georges Bizet and others. Hajibeyov thus was the first musician to adapt the note system to traditional Azerbaijani musical instruments.
In 1936, Hajibeyov assisted in the founding of the Azerbaijani State Choir within the Azerbaijan Philharmonic Society. One of the most serious problems he faced was the mono-voiced repertoire of Azerbaijani folk songs, which allowed harmonization to distort style of the song and, on occasion, even alter the melody line when it changed modes. Hajibeyov resolved this problem by using contrapuntal polyphony and unison-doubling rather than four-part singing in the problematic sections.
Hajibeyov devoted much energy to the idea of integrating woman's role and status into the male-dominated world. The concept of women's emancipation runs through many of his works, often in the form of comedy or satirization, as in the case when he makes fun of the process of selecting marriage partners, a process hindered by the fact that women were still wearing veils until the 1920s when the Soviet regime prohibited them.
Operas
Leyli and Majnun
The opera art was established art not only in Azerbaijan, but also in the entire Muslim East by means of Hacibeyov's opera "Leyli and Majnun" which premiered on 12 January 1908, at the theatre of Haji Zeynalabdin Taghiyev. Hajibeyov wrote with his brother Jeyhun Hajibeyli this libretto of the opera based on a poem of the same name written by Fuzuli. The first performance was made by actor and director Huseyn Arablinski. The band-master was the writer-dramatist Abdurrahim bey Hagverdiyev. Huseynqulu Sarabski was in the role of Majnun and Abdurrahim Farajov in the role of Leyli. In subsequent performances, Hajibeyov himself and his close friend and colleague, composer Muslim Magomayev, performed as band-master.
This role was acted for the first time by Huseyinqulu Sarablinski. Then, these people – Sidghi Ruhulla, Khanlar Hakhverdiev, Aliovsat Sadigov, Shirzad Huseynov, Gulagha Mammadov, Mais Salmanov, Gulu Asgerov, Bakir Hashimov, Ali Mehdiyev, Arif Babayev, Baba Mirzaev, Janali Akbarov, Safa Gahramanov, Alim Gasimov and Mansum Ibrahimov performed in a role of Majnun at the next performance.
Koroghlu Koroghlu opera premiered on 30 April 1937 at the Azerbaijan Opera and Ballet Theatre. This is the first classical opera that based on the motives of heroic epic in Azerbaijan. In this opera, Hajibeyov created arias, mass choral scenes, various ensembles, ballet numbers and recitatives.
In the next years of his life, he worked on Firuza opera.
Musical comedies
Husband and Wife The first musical comedy of Hajibeyov is Husband and Wife which consists of three scenes. This is the first example of Azerbaijani musical comedy. The first premiere of it was in 1910. H. Sarabski and A. Aghdamski performed in the roles of Marjan and Minnat. Hajibeyov wrote the sketch of the comedy himself.
If Not That One, Then This One