Sirvart Poladian

Sirvart Poladian
Sirvart Poladian, from a 1923 newspaper
Born	Sirvart Vartan Poladian June 16, 1902 Maraş, Turkey
Died	December 26, 1970 (age 68) Schuyler, New York, U.S.
Other names	Sirvart Kachie
Occupation(s)	Ethnomusicologist, librarian

Sirvart Vartan Poladian (Armenian: Սիրվարդ Վարդան Փոլադյան; June 16, 1902 – December 26, 1970) was an Armenian-American ethnomusicologist and librarian.

Early life and education

Poladian was born in Maraş, Turkey, the daughter of Vartan Poladian and Leah Sarkissian.[1] Her father was a physician.[2] She escaped to Canada, where she gave public talks, explaining to audiences that "I have been through three massacres."[3]

Poladian moved to California, and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1935, and earned a master's degree there in 1937. From 1940 to 1942, she was a doctoral student at Columbia University, and she completed a Ph.D. in musicology at Cornell University in 1946, with a dissertation titled "Handel as an Opera Composer".[4] In 1956 she also earned a degree in library science from Columbia.[5]

Career

Poladian taught school after college, and taught piano classes for adults.[6] She was Sidney Robertson Cowell's assistant on the Works Progress Administration's California Folk Music Project.[7] She held grants from the American Council of Learned Societies[8] and the American Association of University Women in the 1940s.[9]

Poladian taught at Florida State University from 1946 to 1948,[10] and was on the music staff at the New York Public Library from 1953 to 1968.[5] She worked on classification approaches for folk music.[11][12]

Publications

• "The Problem of Melodic Variation in Folk Song" (1942)[13]
• Armenian Folk Songs (1942)[14][15]
• "Melodic Contour in Traditional Music" (1951)[16]
• "Rev. John Tofts and Three-part Psalmody in America" (1951)[17]
• "Armenian sacred music and notation" (1960)[18]
• Sir Arthur Sullivan: an index to the texts of his vocal works (1961)
• "Traditional Music of Bolivia and Ecuador" (1962)[19]
• "Music of the Americas: Folk Music of Chile" (1962)[20]
• "Miriam Karpilow Whaples: Exoticism in dramatic music" (1965)[21]
• "Komitas Vartabed, Musician-Priest" (1971)[22]
• "Komitas Vardapet and His Contribution to Ethnomusicology" (1972)[23]

Personal life

Poladian became a United States citizen in 1929, and married John Kachie in 1949. She died in 1970, at the age of 68, in Schuyler, New York.[5] Her nephew Dicron Aram Berberian was a painter and aid worker.[24]

References

1. Birth date and parents' names given on a Brazilian tourist card dated August 30, 1963.
2. Berberian, Raffi Robert (May–July 2002). "Arminé D. Berberian (obituary)". AMAA News: 21 – via Internet Archive.
3. "Draws Word Pictures of Turkish Atrocities; Pretty Little Armenian Girl Tells of Horrors of Three Massacres". The Toronto Star. 1923-10-24. p. 18. Retrieved 2024-03-19 – via Newspapers.com.
4. Poladian, Sirvart. Handel as an opera composer. Cornell University, 1946.
5. Krader, Barbara A. (1971). "Sirvart Poladian". Ethnomusicology. 15 (2): 249–251. ISSN 0014-1836. JSTOR 850470.
6. "WPA Piano Course Open to Adults". Oakland Tribune. 1940-01-15. p. 7. Retrieved 2024-03-19 – via Newspapers.com.
7. Kerst, Catherine Hiebert (2024-04-02). California Gold: Sidney Robertson and the WPA California Folk Music Project. Univ of California Press. p. 25. ISBN 978-0-520-39132-1.
8. "Sirvart Poladian". ACLS. Retrieved 2024-03-19.
9. "A. A. U. W. Party to Aid Fellowship". The News Tribune. 1944-04-20. p. 6. Retrieved 2024-03-19 – via Newspapers.com.
10. Anderson, Lola (1947-07-06). "Pre-Incan Whistling Jugs are Believed to be Ancient Musical Instruments". Tallahassee Democrat. p. 15. Retrieved 2024-03-19 – via Newspapers.com.
11. Bohlman, Philip V. (1988-06-22). The Study of Folk Music in the Modern World. Indiana University Press. pp. 38–39. ISBN 978-0-253-11260-6.
12. Shelemay, Kay Kaufman (2013-10-28). Ethnomusicology: History, Definitions, and Scope: A Core Collection of Scholarly Articles. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-136-50972-8.
13. Poladian, Sirvart (1942). "The Problem of Melodic Variation in Folk Song". The Journal of American Folklore. 55 (218): 204–211. doi:10.2307/535862. ISSN 0021-8715. JSTOR 535862.
14. Poladian, Sirvart (1942). Armenian Folk Songs. University of California Press.
15. Bayard, Samuel P. (1943). "Review of Armenian Folk Songs". California Folklore Quarterly. 2 (4): 332–335. doi:10.2307/1495509. ISSN 1556-1283. JSTOR 1495509.
16. Poladian, Sirvart (March 1951). "Melodic Contour in Traditional Music". Journal of the International Folk Music Council. 3: 30–35. doi:10.2307/835769. ISSN 0950-7922. JSTOR 835769.
17. Poladian, Sirvart. "Rev. John Tufts and Three-Part Psalmody in America." Jour. of the Amer. Musicol. Soc. IV (Fall 1951): 276-277.
18. Poladian, Sirvart. "Armenian sacred music and notation." Ararat (Spring 1960) (1960): 22-31.
19. Poladian, Sirvart. "Traditional Music of Bolivia and Ecuador" Music Journal 20, no. 7 (1962): 64.
20. Poladian, S., 1962. "Music of the Americas: Folk Music of Chile" Music Journal 20(6), p.78.
21. Poladian, Sirvart. "Miriam Karpilow Whaples: Exoticism in dramatic music." Current Musicology 1 (1965): 114-117.
22. Poladian, S., 1971. "Komitas Vartabed, Musician-Priest" Music Journal 29(1), p.36.
23. Poladian, Sirvart (1972). "Komitas Vardapet and His Contribution to Ethnomusicology". Ethnomusicology. 16 (1): 82–97. doi:10.2307/850444. ISSN 0014-1836. JSTOR 850444.
24. "Dicron Aram Berberian". The New York Times. July 19, 1987. p. 26. Retrieved 2024-03-19.