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World-famous Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian celebrates his 84th birthday anniversary today, January 27.

Mansurian was born in Beirut in 1939 and was educated in Yerevan, Armenia, where his family settled in 1956. He studied first at the Romanos Melikian Music School under Armenian composer Edvard Baghdasaryan and later at the Yerevan Komitas State Conservatory. He served as the director of the Komitas Conservatory from 1992 to 1995.

Mansurian’s musical style is characterized mainly by the organic synthesis of ancient Armenian musical traditions and contemporary European composition methods. His oeuvre includes orchestral works, seven concertos for strings and orchestra, sonatas for cello and piano, three string quartets, madrigals, chamber music and works for solo instruments. His Monodia album was nominated for the 2005 Grammy Award for “Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with Orchestra)” and “Best Classical Contemporary Composition”.

He also composed several film scores between 1968 and 1980. In 2017, Tigran Mansurian released an album entitled Requiem, a collection of eight pieces dedicated to memory of the Armenian Genocide victims. Mansurian's film music is melody, lyricism and greatly contributes to the completion of the film's artistic description.

According to the maestro, “music is a relationship of two things: sound and silence. Which one is richer, more saturated? Which is more meaningful? I think silence is rich. When I cross the line between not writing music and writing it, my feeling is that I’ve committed a crime, I’ve lost so much time.  When I don’t compose, I am tormented by a feeling of uselessness. Music is not an occupation for me, not a means of self-expression. Music makes my life… I am prepared to be obstinate to assert the truth I know”.

“Each piece of work we have not done is an expression of lack of love for the homeland, our people, and their history. Our history gave us the ability to value humans,” Tigran Mansurian said.

The renowned composer’s works were performed at concert halls of London, Paris, Rome, Milan, Berlin, Vienna, Moscow, New York, Los Angeles and other cities.