Mammadagha Umudov

Mammadagha Mammadali oglu Umudov (; born May 27, 1949, Baku, Azerbaijan SSR) is an Azerbaijani musician and composer. Distinguished Artist of the Azerbaijan Republic (2007).
Biography.
At a young age in a small class at a local House of Culture in which he was enrolled and taken by his father. Upon turning himself 15 years old, Mammadagha entered Baku Special Musical School named after Asaf Zeynalli. After finishing Baku Special Musical School named after Asaf Zeynalli, he was enrolled in the Department of Music Performance, majoring in the tar, at Azerbaijan State Conservatory named after Uzeyir Hajibayov. An iconic move forward to becoming a composer was made in 1973, with Umudov’s admission to the 2nd year of studies at the Department of Composition at his alma mater, and started learning the fundamentals of composing music under the supervision of Jovdat Hajiyev.
It is his idiosyncratic style that always distinguished Umudov. The composer’s early works, including 12 preludes, piano trio, preludes for the piano and Sonatina, and string quartet, bore witness to how the young talent was gradually maturing, with the composition style, involving a wide variety of shades of the musical heritage of the Azerbaijani people that blended well with the 20th-century classical music. A wave of enthusiastic admiration was caused by the String Quartet that was highly acknowledged by the professional community as one of the best compositions performed during the Decade of Azerbaijani Art and Culture, in Moscow, in 1978.
Umudov’s creative work during his conservatory studies culminated in his capstone project – Symphony No. 1., brought to light in 1977. The second, post-graduate period of his artistic activity got ingrained in the memory of professional musicians with a series of elaborate musical compositions. Overture Ganjlik (1980) was a clear indication of the beginning of Umudov’s maturity as a composer, while Choreographic symphony (1983), Concerto for the Tar and Symphony Orchestra (1984) and the Piano trio (1987).
The Concerto, Umudov’s masterpiece, is dedicated to prominent tarist Ramiz Guliyev, who was the first to perform it lively, under the guidance of conductor Ramiz Malikaslanov, at the 6th Congress of the Union of Composers of Azerbaijan Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, in 1985.
In the 1990s, Umudov’s creative live went though a ‘reset’ stage: the composer had to examine himself and re-establish his sense of self-worth following a series of emotional, cultural, and other shocks he had to live through, including the Black January Tragedy, independence of Azerbaijan regained from the Soviet Union, Nagorno-Karabakh war, and a deep sociopolitical and a steep economic crisis in a newly independent country. Having preserved individual features identifying his musical traits, Umudov composed the Sonata for Solo Violin in 1992.
Symphony No. 3 for string orchestra Düşüncələr (reflections) came into being as the first monumental musical composition of Umudov in the 21st century. Later symphonic poem Gobustan (2012), the Concerto for Violin and Symphony Orchestra (2014), and the ballet suite (2014), added the flavor of scenic beauty to artistic programmes of momentous cultural events at the national level.
In 2014, he completed yet another major work, symphonic mugham Chahargah. Symphonic mugham, a genre of classical Azerbaijani music. The distinctive feature of Umudov’s Chahargah is the vocal and instrumental arrangement of mugham composition, as well as diverse orchestration. Solo parts performed by mugham masters, accompanied by the tar, balaban, and zurna, form the ‘coiled whole’ with recited lyric inclusions from Mugham poem.
Chahargah preceded several patriotic musical pieces — two marches To Victory and march Republic for choir and piano. The latter composition, dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic.
Personal life.
The compositional, pedagogic, and public activity of Umudov builds on strong family representation and support. He derived creational inspiration from four women, his spouse and three daughters. The elder daughter, Ulkar, made her contribution to the family name upon becoming the first female Azerbaijani International Arbiter, the highest title attained through FIDE. The youngest daughter, Nargiz, is a Woman Grandmaster and a silver medalist of the World Junior Chess Championship in 2006. She was a member of the Azerbaijan Women’s National Chess Team between 2006-2016.
Pedagogic activity.
Mammadagha Umudov embarked on his teaching career at Baku College of Librarianship in 1968. Nine years later, in 1977, he undertook an assignment at Baku Special Musical School named after Asaf Zeynalli that later gained recognition as an institution forging a bright constellation of national professional musicians. Meanwhile, from 1978 through 1988, Umudov professed music at Azerbaijan State Conservatory named after Uzeyir Hajibayov, a leading musical institution in the country. Having devoted 28 years to Baku Special Musical School and carved out a name for himself in teaching, he received an offer to teach at the Azerbaijan National Conservatory, where he has worked ever since and risen in his colleagues’ esteem.
The subject he is teaching – organology – constitutes an integral part of creating musical pieces. Furthermore, the professor is the author of the textbook Organology, while the manual Recommendations, also authored by Mammadagha Umudov, contains a concise account of Organology, thereby becoming a handbook for many music teachers.