Parenting & Family Quote by Alan Hovhaness

The line reads like a shrug, but it’s doing careful identity-management. Hovhaness plants a flag in Somerville, then immediately lowers it: birthplace matters only as a technicality. The real claim is about formation. By stressing what he “doesn’t remember,” he frames memory as the criterion for authenticity, implying that origin without experience is just paperwork. Then he redirects to Arlington, not with romance but with a practical composer’s logic: the place that shaped his daily rhythms, habits, and early listening is the one that counts.

It also quietly signals assimilation and self-curation. Hovhaness, an Armenian-American composer who later became known for blending Western classical forms with Armenian, Indian, and other influences, is often read through the lens of heritage and “where he’s from.” This anecdote sidesteps any overdetermined narrative of roots. He offers a New England suburban upbringing as his baseline, almost neutralizing the mythology of the exotic or the immigrant “other” before anyone else can impose it.

The sentence’s plainness is part of its strategy. No evocative street corners, no nostalgic texture, just administrative clarity. That restraint hints at a broader artistic posture: let the work carry the mystique, not the biography. In an era when composers were increasingly packaged through personal backstory, Hovhaness chooses a modest, almost anti-mythic self-portrait. The subtext is: if you want to understand me, don’t fetishize the pin on the map; look at the years that actually made a person.