THE SOFIA PROJECT
Part 1: The Hidden Music of Sofia Ganeshian
The Sofia Project will be updated periodically as more information about the life and music of Sofia Ganeshian comes to light. The Sharakan label plans to release a second recording of Sofia’s music in 2024.
Eva Lindal and Virg Dzurinko after a performance at Bollnäs folkhögskola, Sweden; May 21, 2019.
In 2012, by sheer chance, Eva stumbled across two hand-written music scores for violin and piano hidden in an old violin case. Signed “Sofia G. 1935,” the manuscripts included some unusual graphic symbols interspersed among conventional notation. The violin case also contained a leather identification tag that read “Sofia Ganeshian, Locarno, Svizzera.”
We were obviously intrigued by this radical and original music written by a completely unknown composer. And a woman! We became detectives. We returned to the shop in Locarno where the old violin had been purchased.
There we found a box of notebooks, ephemera, and additional scores written in the same hand. We followed these clues wherever they led us — civic archives, ships’ manifests, newspapers, internet ancestry sites. Our research, which is far from complete, has allowed us to construct the basic timeline of Sofia’s life and work.
Sofia Ganeshian was born in Yerevan, Armenia, in 1899. Her father was a schoolteacher and an amateur folk musician, and her mother was a seamstress. In 1914, with trouble looming on the horizon, Sofia’s parents sent her to stay with relatives in Switzerland, planning to join her there later. This would never happen because of the dramatic events hitting Europe and the Armenian people.
Fantasma, partial score
Sofia, circa 1928; photographer unknown
Performing Yerevan at Khimaira;
May 19, 2019, Stockholm
Sofia lived with her aunt and uncle in Locarno until the late 1920s, at which point she moved to Italy for a number of years. She had learned to play the violin in Yerevan, and entries in her early notebooks mention both piano and violin lessons in Locarno. She apparently continued her musical education in Milano, studying composition sporadically. The manuscripts we discovered are sprinkled with her own eccentric symbols — arrows, curves, jagged lines, black squares, circles. Almost every score contains some instruction for optional improvisation.
She returned to Locarno in the 1930s, living in the house her aunt and uncle had willed to her, and remained there until sometime around 1946. After she left Switzerland, she did some traveling, eventually making her way to the Greek island of Corfu, where she remained for the rest of her life. Records show that Sofia died on Corfu in 1987.
There is still so much that remains a mystery. She was not a faithful diarist, especially as she got older. Her notebook entries are sparse and there are years when she wrote nothing at all. In one notebook, she lists composers — Ravel, Bartok, Varese, Dallapiccola, Nadia Boulanger among them — but her opinions about them are few and far between.
The fragments of music she jotted down here and there appear to be just notes to herself. Among the few extended entries are references to her work on a collection of pieces based on The Odyssey.
There is no indication anywhere that Sofia ever tried to connect with the larger musical world. Was she content to compose music for its own sake? Was her music ever performed? Was anyone in the world even aware that she was an avant-garde composer? We don’t know! For now, we are left with the music — the best way to tell her story.
THE SOFIA PROJECT
Part 2: Hotel at the End of the World
I have studied the science of departure / In the nights’ sorrows with hair unbound. Who can know, when the word farewell is spoken / What kind of separation is at hand?
— Osip Mandelstam, from Tristia
Sofia Ganeshian was — and remains — a mysterious figure in the world of 20th century avant-garde composition. After discovering a trove of her handwritten and eccentrically notated scores, we decided to record as much of her music as possible. We released the first CD, The Hidden Music of Sofia G., in 2021. Since then, we have worked through more of Sofia’s manuscripts, and the result is this second recording.
Sofia’s musical life spanned many turbulent years in Europe. Born in Armenia in 1899 to a Greek mother and Armenian father, she spent her late childhood and early adulthood in Locarno, Switzerland. After the Second World War, she travelled throughout Europe and eventually found her way to the Greek island of Corfu, where she remained until her death in 1987. Based on Sofia’s notes and diary entries, the music on this CD was composed from 1950 onward, after she settled in Greece.
Sofia's unconventional approach to notation and, in many cases, her lack of specific instrumental designations, could be seen as frustrating. But as we deciphered her graphic symbols and sometimes-cryptic notes, we realized that she approached composition with a freedom that set her apart from her contemporaries. For example, on one page in her rather sparse diaries, she wrote: “Interesting experiment — composition for oboe, cello, and viola; performed another time by harpsichord, double bass, and baritone saxophone.”
Tracks 1 through 4 are excerpts from a score Sofia wrote with a ballet in mind.Invocazione morphs quickly from a kind of chant into a whirl of sound, followed by the extended introspection of Atlante del Tempo. Below the score for the brief Frammento, Sofia wrote out several lines from poet Osip Mandelstam’s Tristia. Frammento is repeated, with Mandelstam’s words sung in English, on La Scienza della Partenza. Sofia titled her imagined ballet I Viaggiatori.
The title of Track 5, Pietri del Drago, refers to numerous mysteriously carved stone monoliths scattered throughout the Armenian Highlands. Their purpose remains unknown, and while they have never been dated accurately, many of them appear to be thousands of years old.
Track 9 is named for Khosrovidukht, one of the earliest known female musicians and composers. She was an 8th-century Armenian princess whose father and brother were both murdered. Khosrovidukht herself was abducted by invaders and taken tothe impregnable fortress of Ani-Kamakh where, it is believed, she spent 20 years in isolation. The violence that informed her life is at odds with the liturgical music attributed to her.
Tracks 7 and 12 are both sarakans, or “hymns.” Sofia composed many sarakans over the years, some of which differ from each other only slightly. We have chosen two that were written 22 years apart. The microtonality that distinguishes the great majority of Sofia’s compositions is evident in the later-dated piece (Track 7).
As far as can be determined, Sofia had no desire, or perhaps no opportunity, to hear her music performed. Nevertheless, like so many women in the arts and sciences throughout history — some only recently acknowledged, some still unknown — she did what she had to do. And she did it on her own terms.