Alan Hovhaness Quotes

• This is not to say that the Scots are not fine people, but they were all sort of… well, my grandfather was a minister and sort of Protestant, and this was rather depressing to me.

  Alan Hovhaness

• There were periods when I sometimes made fires in a large, open fireplace that lasted about two weeks, which was how long it took to burn my compositions. So there has been an awful lot that I have destroyed.

  Alan Hovhaness

• There is nothing like practice.

  Alan Hovhaness

• No, no, I didn’t know him. He lost his mind around 1917 because of the tragedy of the Armenians.

  Alan Hovhaness

• My mother’s background was Scottish. She came from an old family, some of whom lived in upper New York State and some of whom had come over from Scotland.

  Alan Hovhaness

• It’s hard for me to think of others because I’m not particularly in sympathy with the music of this century.

  Alan Hovhaness

• I’ve always regarded nature as the clothing of God.

  Alan Hovhaness

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• I was much more interested in the orchestra than the piano, but I did become fairly proficient as a pianist and my teachers felt I had talent and wanted me to become a good concert pianist and earn my living that way.

  Alan Hovhaness

• I was born in Somerville, but I don’t remember very much about it because we moved from there to Arlington when I was five years old, and it was in Arlington that I spent most of my childhood.

  Alan Hovhaness

• I think that of my 21 symphonies, each has its own place.

  Alan Hovhaness

• I found a greater identity with my own emotions in the Armenian culture as I grew older, as well as from the beginning, although I didn’t know anything about it.

  Alan Hovhaness

• I did all kinds of things in order to earn a living.

  Alan Hovhaness

Alan Hovhaness (12)

Birth:	8th March, 1911
Death:	21st June, 2000
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Composer

About

Alan Hovhaness was an Armenian-American composer. He was one of the most prolific 20th-century composers, with his official catalog comprising 67 numbered symphonies and 434 opus numbers. He was born in Somerville, Massachusetts. Hovhaness was interested in music from a very early age, writing his first composition, a cantata in the early Italian style, at the age of four after being inspired by hearing a song of Franz Schubert. He composed two operas during his teenage years which were performed at Arlington High School, and composer Roger Sessions took an interest in his music during this time.

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