Music Keeps Composer’s World Intact

Like the rest of the audience who will be at the Symphony of the Canyons concert Saturday night, Ara Sevanian has never heard Symphony No. 8 in A Major, a composition on the second half of the program.

But he knows its every note.

Sevanian, 80, plucked out each one on his upright Baldwin piano in his Newhall apartment. He scratched the melodies down on paper, painstakingly orchestrated measure after measure, and transcribed them into a 306-page score. Saturday, his Eighth Symphony will get its world premiere from 66 musicians under the baton of Robert Lawson.

It isn’t the first time his compositions have had an orchestral reading. His “Symphonic Sketches” were played by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1972 under the direction of Soviet Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian, and later by the Van Nuys Civic Orchestra, now the San Fernando Valley Symphony Orchestra. His Symphony No. 3 was premiered by the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra about six years ago.

Unlike most of Sevanian’s compositions, which are inspired by Armenian folk melodies, his Symphonies Nos. 7 and 8 are influenced by the work of Beethoven--”the Bible of composers,” Sevanian said. Beethoven’s influences are audible in the four-movement Symphony No. 8, but Sevanian said he tried to maintain musical independence and give the piece Armenian character. He analogizes this way: “I put Beethoven’s mask on my face, but I sing my song.”

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The original of the two-volume score and his other compositions are housed at a monastery on San Lazzaro Island off the coast of Italy. Members of the Mekhitarian Order there are dedicated to the study and preservation of Armenian arts. But in Sevanian’s apartment are eight black binders, scrapbooks that chronicle his remarkable 80 years in family photos, concert programs, and newspaper clippings from Pravda.

He was born in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, where his father was a tailor--but also a lover of music. When Sevanian was about 4, his father bought a Kanon--a 72-string zither--but locked it away from the children. For months, Sevanian snuck into the room to play the Kanon without his parents’ notice. When his father finally brought the instrument out at a party, he was astounded to find out his young son could play.

“This was my toy. No bicycle, no nothing,” he said. “That was my pleasure. Hours and hours.”

At a conservatory in Yerevan, Sevanian became a Kanon virtuoso. At 23, he won a folk instrument competition in Moscow and played at the Bolshoi Theater. His performance was so well-received that he gave a command performance at the Kremlin for Joseph Stalin. “I was shaking, I was so excited. That name was so big. Every day you heard his name. Everywhere you saw his picture,” Sevanian said. “I remember it so well. When he smiled, his mustache goes up!”

The performance garnered Sevanian the honor of the Red Flag, entitling him to all sorts of special privileges in the Soviet Union. But it didn’t keep him from getting drafted the next year, in 1940, to fight the invading Germans. He was captured during fighting in the Ukraine. “And then,” said Sevanian, his face suddenly drawn, “began my suffering.”

He spent two years in a concentration camp, where men froze to death and starved to death, where German soldiers buried the almost-dead alongside the dead. When he lost consciousness, soldiers hauled Sevanian’s body away. He was saved only because an Armenian on burial detail told a German officer that he’d been a famous musician back in Armenia. The officer, himself a violinist, took Sevanian back to the camp and fed him from the guards’ kitchen until he regained his strength.

Before the end of the war, Sevanian was sent to Berlin to play music for the Germans. They gave him a new Kanon, had him lead a band, and gave him a salary. His music had helped him to survive, but the Soviets had a different view. To them he was a traitor. Returning to his homeland meant certain death. So he went to the Iranian consulate in Berlin and changed his citizenship and his name--he had been called Arshavir Fedjoolian--then went to the Stuttgart Conservatory to study composition with Georg von Albrecht.

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In 1948, knowing not a word of English, Sevanian moved to the United States. Here, however, his music was not going to support him and his family. He worked in a grocery store in San Francisco. He washed dishes at the officer’s club at the Presidio. Then, for 25 years, he cooked at his Van Nuys coffee shop, Ara’s Armenian Hamburgers.

He still played concerts, but only for charities. He still wrote music, but only at night after the coffee shop was closed. Since closing the shop in 1987, he has dedicated himself full time to music. He has composed 10 symphonies, 36 chamber music pieces, and dozens of songs for flute, violin, piano, and of course, the Kanon. Most of them have never been heard.

But Sevanian has hopes that they will be--and not just because a group of monks are making sure they last into the next century. “Because our master--Beethoven--said that music comes from the heart and goes to the heart.” Things from the mind, Sevanian said, are temporary. “But things from the heart--they last forever.”

DETAILS

* WHAT: Symphony of the Canyons.

* WHERE: College of the Canyons, 26455 Rockwell Canyon Road, Valencia.

* WHEN: Saturday at 8 p.m.

* HOW MUCH: $10.

* CALL: (805) 222-9222.