A SHORT AGE OF GENIUS

Scholars have long discovered that the more feeble a star is, the brighter it shines, but it burns out more quickly too, and flares up with the blinding flash of a "supernova" before it dies. 

Asaf Zeynalli can quite rightly be dubbed a "supernova" of Azerbaijan. The virtuoso pianist, pedagogue, composer and public figure only lived 23 years. This is less than Russia's Mikhail Lermontov and England's Percy Shelley.

A pioneering composer

The young genius Asaf turned out to be a real trail-blazer, for he was precisely the one to found the Azerbaijani romances' genre.  The short musical "Syansiz" by Uzeyir Hacibayov, which many refer to as the first national romance, did in actual fact have somewhat different sound dynamics, and Uzeyir bay [term of respect when addressing or speaking about a respected man] referred to the genre he had founded as "musical ghazals" [rhyming couplets].

Asaf's romances "Motherland", "Question", "The veil" and "Seyran" were very popular with the public. His contemporaries, among them Uzeyir Hacibayov, noted the free- and bold-thinking mind of the young genius. Asaf tested himself in many ways, and he was precisely the one to pioneer music for children. His "Children's Suite" laid the foundation for national children's music.

Asaf Zeynalli was the first in something else as well. In 1926 when the Azerbaijan State Conservatory opened by the efforts of Uzeyir Hacibayov and largely Muslim Magomayev Snr, Zeynalli was one of the first students and found himself in Hacibayov's class. 

This did moreover happen thanks to Hacibayov, as has become clear recently. The fact is that at the end of the 1920s the musical technical college and the newly created conservatory were merged. Contemporary musicologist Seyla Heydarova discovered that the young man had caught the eye of Hacibayov right from the start. According to the archive materials found, Hacibayov used his personal influence to transfer Zeynalli from the cello faculty (where he was studying at the technical college) to his own composition department. Besides this, the initial accounts' instructions found point to the fact that Zeynalli was among the few especially promising students, who were completely exempted from paying for their tuition. 

The teacher made Zeynalli work hard, but the student himself was aiming high. It is difficult to believe that by the time he was 23 years old, he had composed numerous violin and piano miniatures, several symphonies (many of which were, alas, never finished) and there was one other very important thing. As a person who was not just talented, but extremely hard-working, 

Zeynalli simultaneously arranged some 50 folk songs in all for standard music sheets. He created a suitable arrangement for many of them, so that Azerbaijani music could be reproduced beyond the bounds of the republic. This was to help to make it more popular.  

A pedagogue and educator

It is amazing that in those years of study and working on music and academic adaptations of folk music Asaf Zeynalli managed to prove himself as a pedagogue as well. It may be said that he was born and worked at a good time, in the 1920s and 1930s, the period  when Azerbaijani culture was coming into being, or to be more precise the European aspect of it. Theatres, technical colleges and institutes were opening throughout the republic at that time, and there was a huge shortage of professional staff.

Therefore talented people were eagerly employed in top jobs, irrespective of their young age and lack of official certificates and titles. This is what happened to Zeynalli and Caffar   Cabbarli.  The former was 20 years old and the latter 30, but together they managed the Turkic Labour Theatre. In those years, this meant a mixture of working directly on the productions and teaching work (most of the actors and musicians were workers who were amateur performers). Nevertheless, the young geniuses managed to work together productively. The dramatic productions "Sevil" and "Return" particularly stand out among the numerous other works.

Everything mentioned above happened in the short period from 1928 through 1932. Asaf was studying in Hacibayov's faculty, he worked in the theatre and also on his own music and folk music too and managed to teach right there in the conservatory as well. What is noteworthy is that Qara Qarayev and Tofiq Quliyev were among the young pedagogue's students. In spite of all the things listed above, it seemed to Asaf that he was wasting time. "I'm not spending enough time on my music and I am busy doing lots of other things," he wrote to his friend Alakpar Dasdamirov.

In a hurry to live

The talented and hard-working composer was in a hurry to live, possibly having some kind of presentiment.

He did not manage to build a personal life for himself, although he tried very hard and later really regretted that. While Asaf was working in Leningrad [now St. Petersburg], he was walking along by the river Neva, when he met his first and only love. He later remembered her as a girl of indescribable beauty. The love was mutual, but the trouble was that both his and her parents opposed the marriage. In the Soviet Union, which proclaimed the fraternity of peoples and the dominance of secular law over religious law, religion and nationality turned out to be an impediment to the happiness of the young people.

From that time till the end of his short life the composer's favourite song was "Sari galin" ["Blond bride"], which at least in his understanding of it refers to the love of two hearts belonging to different peoples. It was precisely Asaf Zeynalli who was responsible for the arrangement of this folk song which is popular today (he arranged it for European instruments). The reason for that was his unfilled personal happiness.  

He travelled around a lot, giving lectures, worked a great deal and therefore evidently suffered frequently from over-exhaustion. In the autumn of 1932, he was reading lectures in the republic's districts, when he went down with some kind of infection which seriously damaged his health. There was often a shortage of medicines, even the simplest ones, in the Soviet Union, and therefore, in spite of the doctors' efforts, they were not able to save the young genius.