Gayane

• Gayane is a ballet, partially based on an earlier ballet by Khachaturian, called Happiness, which he had composed in the 1930s.¹
• Khachaturian wrote Gayane in 1942, using material from Happiness, plus Armenian, Caucasian and Russian folk music styles. ²
• Khachaturian had extracted three concert suites from Gayane by 1943.³
• Story: Gayane and her family work on a kolkhoz (a collective farm). Her abusive alcoholic husband is a threat to the farm’s success and to their child, and Gayane must stand up to him for the good of both. ⁴

ENCO Cut # 44346, 49559: “Gayane’s Adagio”

• Fun fact: this movement appeared in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).⁵

ENCO Cut # 44342: “Lullaby”

1. Svetlana Sarkisyan, “Khachaturian, Aram,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed October 31, 2019,  https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000014956.
2. Ibid.
3. Christine Lee Gengaro, Listening to Stanley Kubrick: The Music in His Films(United Kingdom: Scarecrow Press, 2013), 96.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.