Sayat-Nova
Encyclopedia
Tbilisi
Tbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form T'pilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...
– died 22 September 1795, Haghpat
Haghpat
Haghpat is a village in the Northern Lori province of Armenia, close to the city of Alaverdi and the state border with Georgia.It is notable for Haghpat Monastery, a religious complex founded in the 10th century and included in the UNESCO World Heritage List along with monasteries in nearby Sanahin...
), was an Armenia
Armenia
Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
n poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
and ashik
Ashik
An Ashik is a mystic troubadour or traveling bard, in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, and Iran who sings and plays the saz, a form of lute. Ashiks' songs are semi-improvised around common bases....
who had compositions in a number of languages. His adopted name Sayat Nova meant "Master of Songs" in Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
.
Biography
Sayat-Nova's mother, Sara, was born in TbilisiTbilisi
Tbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form T'pilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...
, and his father, Karapet, either in Aleppo
Aleppo
Aleppo is the largest city in Syria and the capital of Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Syrian governorate. With an official population of 2,301,570 , expanding to over 2.5 million in the metropolitan area, it is also one of the largest cities in the Levant...
or Adana
Adana
Adana is a city in southern Turkey and a major agricultural and commercial center. The city is situated on the Seyhan River, 30 kilometres inland from the Mediterranean, in south-central Anatolia...
. He himself was born in Tbilisi. Sayat Nova was skilled in writing poetry, singing, and playing the kamancheh
Kamancheh
The kamānche or kamāncha is a Persian bowed string instrument related to the bowed rebab, the historical ancestor of the kamancheh and also to the bowed lira of the Byzantine Empire, ancestor of the European violin family. The strings are played with a variable-tension bow: the word "kamancheh"...
, Chonguri
Chonguri
The chonguri is a plucked string musical instrument from Georgia. It has 4 nylon strings.-Choghur:The choghur dates back to the 12th to 16th centuries, the period between the gopuz and the saz. In the Caucasus, Iran and Anatolia, and in Sufi traditions, darvishes and ashugs used an instrument...
, Tambur. He performed in the court of Erekle II of Georgia
Erekle II
Erekle II was a Georgian monarch of the Bagrationi Dynasty, reigning as the king of Kakheti from 1744 to 1762, and of Kartli and Kakheti from 1762 until 1798. In the contemporary Persian sources he is referred to as Erekli Khan, while Russians knew him as Irakli...
, where he also worked as a diplomat and, apparently, helped forge an alliance between Georgia
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
, Armenia
Armenia
Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
and Shirvan
Shirvan
Shirvan , also spelled as Shirwan, Shervan, Sherwan and Šervān, is a historical region in the eastern Caucasus, known by this name in both Islamic and modern times...
against the Persian Empire. He lost his position at the royal court when he fell in love with the king's daughter, and spent the rest of his life as an itinerant bard.
In 1759 he was ordained as a priest in the Armenian Apostolic Church
Armenian Apostolic Church
The Armenian Apostolic Church is the world's oldest National Church, is part of Oriental Orthodoxy, and is one of the most ancient Christian communities. Armenia was the first country to adopt Christianity as its official religion in 301 AD, in establishing this church...
. His wife Marmar died in 1768, leaving behind four children. He served in various locations including Tbilisi and Haghpat Monastery
Haghpat Monastery
Haghpat Monastery, also known as Haghpatavank , is a medieval Armenian monastery complex in Haghpat, Armenia....
. In 1795 he was killed in the monastery by the invading army of Agha Mohammed Khan, a Persian Knight, representing the Qajar tribe, an Azeri branch of the Oghuz Turks, for refusing to denounce Christianity and convert to Islam. He is buried at the Cathedral of Saint George, Tbilisi.
Legacy
About 220 songs have been attributed to Sayat-Nova, although he may have written thousands more. His compositions assume the form of traditional Armenian songsMusic of Armenia
Armenia is situated close to the Caucasus Mountains, and its music is a mix of indigenous folk music, perhaps best-represented by Djivan Gasparyan's well-known duduk music, as well as light pop, and extensive Christian music, due to Armenia's status as the oldest Christian nation in the...
. Most of his surviving songs are in Azerbaijani
Azerbaijani language
Azerbaijani or Azeri or Torki is a language belonging to the Turkic language family, spoken in southwestern Asia by the Azerbaijani people, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran...
, the lingua franca of the Caucasus at that time, but he also wrote in Armenian
Armenian language
The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...
, Georgian
Georgian language
Georgian is the native language of the Georgians and the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.Georgian is the primary language of about 4 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad...
and Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
. He wrote all his known poems using the Georgian alphabet
Georgian alphabet
The Georgian alphabet is the writing system used to write the Georgian language and other Kartvelian languages , and occasionally other languages of the Caucasus such as Ossetic and Abkhaz during the 1940s...
. A number of his songs are sung to this day.
In Armenia, Sayat Nova is considered a great poet who made a considerable contribution to the Armenian poetry of his century. Although he lived his entire life in a deeply religious society, his poems are mostly secular and full of romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
expressionism.
In popular culture
Sayat-Nova is considered by many to be the greatest ashikAshik
An Ashik is a mystic troubadour or traveling bard, in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, and Iran who sings and plays the saz, a form of lute. Ashiks' songs are semi-improvised around common bases....
(folk singer-songwriter) that ever lived in the Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
.
- Composer Alexander ArutiunianAlexander ArutiunianAlexander Grigorevich Arutiunian , also known as Arutunian, Arutyunyan, Arutjunjan or Harutiunian Alexander Grigorevich Arutiunian (Arm. Ալեքսանդր Գրիգորի Հարությունյան), also known as Arutunian, Arutyunyan, Arutjunjan or Harutiunian Alexander Grigorevich Arutiunian (Arm. Ալեքսանդր Գրիգորի...
wrote an opera called "Sayat Nova" about him. - The 1968 Armenian film Sayat NovaThe Color of PomegranatesThe Color of Pomegranates is a 1968 Armenian film directed by Sergei Parajanov.-Overview:The Color of Pomegranates is a biography of the Armenian ashug Sayat-Nova that attempts to reveal the poet's life visually and poetically rather than literally...
directed by Sergei Parajanov follows the poet's path from his childhood woolWoolWool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....
-dying days to his role as a courtier and finally his life as a monkMonkA monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, living either alone or with any number of monks, while always maintaining some degree of physical separation from those not sharing the same purpose...
. It was released in the United States under the title The Color of PomegranatesThe Color of PomegranatesThe Color of Pomegranates is a 1968 Armenian film directed by Sergei Parajanov.-Overview:The Color of Pomegranates is a biography of the Armenian ashug Sayat-Nova that attempts to reveal the poet's life visually and poetically rather than literally...
. It is not so much a biographyBiographyA biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
of Sayat Nova but a series of tableaux vivants of Armenian costume, embroidery and religious rituals interspersed with scenes and verses from the poet's life. - A book on his life and work by Charles DowsettCharles dowsettCharles James Frank Dowsett was the first Calouste Gulbenkian Professor of Armenian at the University of Oxford from 1965 to 1991...
was published in 1997 titled Sayat'-nova: An 18th-century Troubadour: a Biographical and Literary Study. - The first translations of the Armenian odes of Sayat Nova in European languages was in France by Elisabeth Mouradian and the French poet Serge VenturiniSerge VenturiniSerge Venturini is a French poet. Poet of devenir , several metamorphoses run through his poetry. From his poetics of human destiny, through post-human and transhuman poetics, he came to the transvisible thematic....
in 2006; the book was dedicated to Sergei Parajanov. - There is a street and a music school named after him in YerevanYerevanYerevan is the capital and largest city of Armenia and one of the world's oldest continuously-inhabited cities. Situated along the Hrazdan River, Yerevan is the administrative, cultural, and industrial center of the country...
, Armenia, as well as an Armenian-AmericanArmenian-AmericanArmenian Americans are citizens of the United States whose ancestry originates wholly or partly in Armenia. During the United States 2000 Census, 385,488 respondents indicated either full or partial Armenian ancestry...
dance ensemble in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, a pond located in Mont OrfordMont OrfordMount Orford is a mountain, ski resort and provincial park in the Eastern Townships region of the Canadian province of Quebec, Canada. It is a few minutes away from the town of Magog and one hour from Montreal....
, QuebecQuebecQuebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
, CanadaCanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. - There is a restaurant in Chicago, frequented by Brett "Bizzy B" Ze'monster, called Sayat-Nova.
External links
- Sayat-Nova Armenian Film
- Armenianmusicarch.com
- Love Song translated into English by Alice Stone Blackwell
- Classical Composers Database
- Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Sayat-Nova in QWIKI http://www.qwiki.com/q/#!/Sayat-Nova