Gara Garayev Gara Abulfaz oghlu Garayev (February 5, 1918May 13, 1982) was a prominent Soviet Azerbaijani composer. Garayev wrote nearly 110 musical pieces,Azad Sharifov"Remembering Gara Garayev: A Legend in His Own Time - 80th Jubilee" in Azerbaijan Inter ...

's Symphony No. 3 was composed in 1964. It was the last of the composer's three numbered symphonies and it marks a development from his two previous contributions to the genre, composed in the mid-1940s during his studies in the

Leningrad Conservatory The N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov Saint Petersburg State Conservatory () (formerly known as the Petrograd Conservatory and Leningrad Conservatory) is a school of music in Saint Petersburg, Russia. In 2004, the conservatory had around 275 faculty members ...

under

Dmitri Shostakovich Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his First Symphony in 1926 and thereafter was regarded as a major composer. Shostak ...

. It was one of the first serial symphonies composed in the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, fusing the

twelve-tone technique The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition. The technique is a means of ensuring that all 12 notes of the chromatic scale ...

with

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a Boundaries between the continents, transcontinental and landlocked country at the boundary of West Asia and Eastern Europe. It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by ...

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...

influences in the

ashug An ashik (; ) or ashugh (; ka, აშუღი) is traditionally a singer-poet and bard who accompanies his song—be it a dastan (traditional epic story, also known as '' hikaye'') or a shorter original composition—with a long-necked ...

tradition in the frame of a classical structure, attempting ''to find to new ways of artistic expression, new principles of form and construction, and, most notably, new means of expressive musical language'' and wanting to prove that ''strictly following the twelve-tone technique it is possible to write nationalistic music, and not simply nationalistic, but specifically ashug'' according to the composer.Booklet notes by Anastasia Belina to the Russian Philharmonic - Yablonsky Naxos release, 8.570720 The symphony is scored for a

chamber orchestra Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of Musical instrument, instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a Great chamber, palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music ...

and it lasts c. 25 minutes, consisting of four movements: # Allegro moderato # Allegro vivace # Andante # Allegro

Recordings

Moscow Chamber Orchestra The Moscow Chamber Orchestra (MCO) is a chamber orchestra run under the auspices of the Moscow Philharmonia, a state-run enterprise, formerly under the patronage of the Ministry of Culture (Soviet Union) and now, Ministry of Culture of Russian Fe ...

—

Rudolf Barshai Rudolf Borisovich Barshai (, September 28, 1924November 2, 2010) was a Soviet and Russian conductor and violist. Life Barshai was born on September 28, 1924, in Labinsk, Krasnodar Krai, Russian SFSR. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory unde ...

Melodiya Melodiya () is a Russian record label. It was the state-owned major record company of the Soviet Union. History Melodiya was established in 1964 as the "All-Union Gramophone Record Firm of the USSR Ministry of Culture Melodiya" in accordance wi ...

, 1966 * Leningrad Conservatory Chamber Orchestra — Yuri Aliev. Melodiya, 1978 * Russian Philharmonic —

Dmitry Yablonsky Dmitry Albertovich Yablonsky (; born 1962) is a Soviet-born American-israeli classical cellist and conductor, who was educated at the Juilliard School of Music and Yale University. Early life and education Yablonsky was born in Moscow into a mu ...

Naxos Naxos (; , ) is a Greek island belonging to the Cyclades island group. It is the largest island in the group. It was an important centre during the Bronze Age Cycladic Culture and in the Ancient Greek Archaic Period. The island is famous as ...

, 2008

References

{{portal bar, Classical music, Music Compositions by Gara Garayev 1964 compositions Garayev Twelve-tone compositions