Uzeyir Hajibeyov

Uzeyir bey Abdulhuseyn bey oghlu Hajibeyov (18 September 1885 – 23 November 1948) was an Azerbaijani composer, conductor, musicologist, playwright and teacher, recognised as the father of Azerbaijani classical music. His Leyli and Majnun, staged in 1908, was the first opera in the Islamic world; he composed the music of Azerbaijan's national anthem, founded the Baku conservatoire in 1920, and left the opera Koroghlu (1937) and the operetta Arshin Mal Alan (1913). ^{1 2}

His birth day is split in the sources: the English, Arabic and Azerbaijani-lead reading is 18 September 1885, but the Azerbaijani article reports that the Great Soviet Encyclopedia gives 17 September, and that his metrical certificate, issued by the Transcaucasian Muslim Spiritual Administration, records 7 Dhu al-Hijja 1302 — 5 September Old Style, 17 September New Style. This record follows 18 September, with the split stated. ^{2 1}

He was born at Aghjabadi, near Shusha. His father, Abdulhuseyn bey Hajibeyli, was for many years secretary to the poet Khurshidbanu Natavan, and his mother Shirin grew up in Natavan's household; the English article says he was strongly influenced by her work. He received his early education in a madrasa, where he worked on his Arabic and Persian, then at a two-year Russian-Azerbaijani school. His first music teacher was his uncle Aghalar Aliverdibeyov, and as a boy in Shusha he sang mughams and tasnifs and learned from the town's singers and saz players; at thirteen he sang in the choir of a staged episode of Layla and Majnun. ¹

From 1899 to 1904 he studied at the Gori Pedagogical Seminary, where he learned the violin, cello and brass instruments. He then taught for a year at Hadrut in Upper Karabakh before settling permanently in Baku, where he taught mathematics, geography, history, Azerbaijani and Russian languages and music, and published a Turkic-Russian and Russian-Turkic dictionary of political, legal, economic and military terms (1907) and a textbook of arithmetic problems (1908). ¹

In 1908, at twenty-two and with very little formal musical education, he composed Leyli and Majnun, the first opera in the Islamic world, premiered in Baku. The English article says his lifelong characteristic was the search for ways to merge and integrate Azerbaijani traditional music with Western classical forms. His operetta Arshin Mal Alan followed in 1913, and his opera Koroghlu in 1937. He composed the music of the national anthem of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, re-adopted when Azerbaijan regained independence in 1991, and also the anthem used in the Soviet period. ^{1 2}

In 1920 he founded the conservatoire at Baku that grew into the Azerbaijan State Conservatoire, today's Baku Academy of Music. He was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1938 and received Stalin Prizes in 1941 and 1946, and in 1945 he published his theoretical work Principles of Azerbaijani Folk Music. ^{1 2}

He died at Baku on 23 November 1948, of diabetes, and was buried in the Alley of Honour. ¹

The Azerbaijani article describes his metrical certificate as issued by the Transcaucasian Muslim Spiritual Administration "of the Shia madhhab". That phrase names the madhhab of the registering administration — the body that kept the birth registers for the Muslims of the Caucasus — and neither that article nor any other consulted source calls Hajibeyov himself Shia or names any school for him. His faith is therefore recorded as unknown in his data card, with the certificate detail stated here so the reader can judge. ^{2 3}

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