Legendary composer with fascinating heritage

By Azernews

By Laman Ismayilova

World music is inconceivable without the works of Azerbaijani composers. Azerbaijan, a great country with a talented people and its cultural heritage, gave the birth to many notable art figures.

Emin Sabitoglu was one of those geniuses who enriched national music. The outstanding composer created fascinating music on the basis of national and cultural traditions.

Sabitoglu was the author of one symphony, three symphonic poems, three cantatas, a string quartet, and poems for violin and piano, over 600 songs, nine musical comedies.

In addition, the composer created a large number of musical works for theatrical productions in a variety of genres.

It’s hard to imagine Azerbaijani cinema or theater without the music of the famous composer. The generation of the 1970’s and 1980’s remembers Sabitoglu well and loves his songs written for more than twenty films and documentaries, many of which can be considered as modern word ‘cult’.

A talented, multi-faceted composer for many years fruitfully cooperated with leading film directors. His works have become the musical basis for more than twenty fictional and so many documentaries, which largely influenced their popularity with the audience.

Besides that, Sabitoglu wrote songs for many films, including "Tahmina", "The Last night of the year ", "Dede Korkut"," The first love of Baladadash” and so on.

He died in 2000, at the age of 63. The composer worked in Istanbul for the last six years of his life as a professor at the Turkish National Conservatory. As his wife, famous singer Khadija Abbasova recalls, after moving to Istanbul the composer missed Baku.

“We had a room that we called Baku, where there were all things related to our native city, there were clocks that ticked through Baku time. In recent years, we were about to return home, as the contract was over, but his death outpaced.”