Uzeyir Hajibeyli — the man who reconciled East and West in one score
Staged in Baku in 1908, “Leyli and Majnun” was the first opera in the Muslim East. Its author also wrote the theory of mugham.
Composers
Asaf Zeynally — a school compressed into 23 years
Uzeyir Hajibeyli's first composition student. His life was short, but Azerbaijani chamber music begins with him.
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- Əkrəm Babayev
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Asaf Zeynally was born in Derbent in 1909 and died in Baku in 1932, aged only 23. In that short span he founded something Azerbaijani music did not yet have: a professional chamber and art-song tradition.
The first student
Zeynally was among Uzeyir Hajibeyli's first composition students. His training marks the moment the national school began to reproduce itself — an Azerbaijani composer now formed in Azerbaijan.
Romance and miniature
The songs “My Country” and “Question and Answer” are the first professional examples of Azerbaijani vocal lyricism.
The “Children's Suite” and “Fragments” for piano remain teaching material for their handling of national modes in small forms.
The name
The Baku Music College, the country's principal secondary music school, is named after him.
His case remains the sharpest “what if” in the history of Azerbaijani music.
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