Sheet music by Aram Khachaturian

Aram Il’yich Khachaturian was a Soviet Armenian composer and conductor. He is considered one of the leading Soviet composers.

Khachaturian’s works span a broad range of musical types, including ballets, symphonies, concertos, and film scores. Music critic Edward Greenfield expresses the opinion that Khachaturian "notably outshone other Soviet contemporaries in creating a sharply identifiable style, something which his successors have found impossible to emulate." He composed a great portion of his works in a ten-year span—between 1936 and 1946—preceding and following the Second World War. Despite his formal restoration after the 1948 denunciation, Khachaturian only succeeded in composing one internationally acclaimed work in the last 30 years of his life, the ballet Spartacus.