Of Armenian and Scottish ancestry, the American composer Alan Hovhaness was a pupil of Frederick Converse at the New England Conservatory. He was amazingly prolific, with a body of instrumental music often inspired by Armenian sources and by his study of Japanese and Korean music, for which there was not always a contemporary audience.

Instrumental Music

Hovhaness wrote 67 symphonies and a wide variety of concertos and other orchestral works. He left an equally vast list of works for chamber ensembles of various kinds.

Vocal Music

Vocal music by Hovhaness includes accompanied and unaccompanied choral settings of predominantly religious texts, and a number of solo songs with texts of more varied provenance.