Arno Babajanyan: Reclaiming His True Legacy in a 25-Volume Collection

ArmInfo. To commemorate the 105th anniversary of the birth of the outstanding Soviet Armenian composer Arno Babajanyan, the Arno Babajanyan Memorial Foundation and the DIALOG public organization have launched a major scientific publishing project to create and publish the first complete collection of the maestro's works in 25 volumes.

The groundwork for a fundamental scientific reinterpretation of the legacy of the "last melodist" of the 20th century was laid on March 20, 2024, in Moscow, when the heads of the two organizations, Ara Babajanyan and Yuri Navoyan, signed a Memorandum of Cooperation to collaborate on the publication of Arno Babajanyan's collected works.

Recently, as part of the "Book Diplomacy" program, the Moscow publishing house "Knizhny Mir" published the first volume of Arno Babajanyan's first series of collected works, "Published Piano Works."

In a joint message to readers, Ara Babajanyan and Yuri Navoyan state that although Arno Babajanyan was one of the most frequently published Soviet composers during his lifetime, the majority of his creative legacy remains in manuscript form.

The heads of the two public organizations report that the collected works they initiated not only aim to summarize the composer's creative legacy in the most complete and scientifically verified form, but also represent the first multi-volume edition of his works.

It is also noted that this edition, for the first time, presents the texts of Babajanyan's works using a critical comparison of existing sources. The selection includes manuscripts (completed autographs, authorized copies, and in some cases also drafts, sketches, and fragments), printed editions, and audio recordings. Preference has been given to the more reliable authorized Soviet publications. The prefaces provide general historiographic information about the published works (or genres): a significant portion of these are entering scholarly circulation for the first time.