Grikor Suni

Who was Grikor Suni?

Grikor Mirzaian Suni was an Armenian composer.

The music he wrote—choral works, songs, several operas, and orchestral and instrumental works—is European classical music, but suffused with the tradition of Armenian folk music and religious music, of which he was an avid collector and registrator.

Originating from a line of musicians, he studied music from 1891 to 1895 at the Gevorgian Academy in Echmiadzin, near Yerevan, with Soghomon Soghomonian, with whom he became friends and a long-time collaborator. Then he moved to St. Petersburg, where he studied music from 1895 to 1904 with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Glazunov and Anatoly Lyadov.

Ronald Grigor Suny, Emeritus Professor of political science at the University of Chicago, is a grandson of Grikor Mirzaian Suni.