Aram Illich Khachaturian (1903 – 1978) born in Tiflis, Georgia, then part of Imperial Russia. He came from a modest background: his father was a poor Armenian bookbinder and Caucasus folk music was important in the composer’s childhood home.

His family enrolled him at the Tiflis Commercial Institute, where he learned to play a tenor horn in the school band, and soon he taught himself to play the piano.

In 1922, when he was nineteen years old, he left for Moscow to study biology at the University. In Moscow he began to take cello lessons, followed by lessons in composition. In 1929 he became a full-time student at the Moscow Conservatory, from which he graduated with highest honors at the age of thirty-two.

Khachaturian’s music is deeply rooted in the folklore of his native Armenia but he also draws from Georgian, Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish, Turkmenian, and Irano-Azerbaidzan melodies, without actually quoting folk songs. He retains, nevertheless, Western-European formal structures. The Sabre Dance from his ballet Gayne is probably his best-known work.