Sirvart Poladian Explained

Sirvart Poladian
Birth Name:	Sirvart Vartan Poladian
Birth Date:	June 16, 1902
Birth Place:	Maraş, Turkey
Death Date:	December 26, 1970 (age 68)
Death Place:	Schuyler, New York, U.S.
Other Names:	Sirvart Kachie
Occupation:	Ethnomusicologist, librarian

Sirvart Vartan Poladian (; 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.

Career

Poladian taught school after college, and taught piano classes for adults.^[5] She was Sidney Robertson Cowell's assistant on the Works Progress Administration's California Folk Music Project.^[6] She held grants from the American Council of Learned Societies^[7] and the American Association of University Women in the 1940s.^[8]

Poladian taught at Florida State University from 1946 to 1948,^[9] and was on the music staff at the New York Public Library from 1953 to 1968.^[10] 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. Her nephew Dicron Aram Berberian was a painter and aid worker.^[24]

Notes and 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 . Internet Archive.
3. News: 1923-10-24 . Draws Word Pictures of Turkish Atrocities; Pretty Little Armenian Girl Tells of Horrors of Three Massacres . 2024-03-19 . The Toronto Star . 18 . Newspapers.com.
4. Poladian, Sirvart. Handel as an opera composer. Cornell University, 1946.
5. News: 1940-01-15 . WPA Piano Course Open to Adults . 2024-03-19 . Oakland Tribune . 7 . Newspapers.com.
6. Book: Kerst, Catherine Hiebert . California Gold: Sidney Robertson and the WPA California Folk Music Project . 2024-04-02 . Univ of California Press . 25 . 978-0-520-39132-1 . en.
7. Web site: Sirvart Poladian . 2024-03-19 . ACLS.
8. News: 1944-04-20 . A. A. U. W. Party to Aid Fellowship . 2024-03-19 . The News Tribune . 6 . Newspapers.com.
9. News: Anderson . Lola . 1947-07-06 . Pre-Incan Whistling Jugs are Believed to be Ancient Musical Instruments . 2024-03-19 . Tallahassee Democrat . 15 . Newspapers.com.
10. Krader . Barbara A. . 1971 . Sirvart Poladian . Ethnomusicology . 15 . 2 . 249–251 . 850470 . 0014-1836.
11. Book: Bohlman, Philip V. . The Study of Folk Music in the Modern World . 38–39. 1988-06-22 . Indiana University Press . 978-0-253-11260-6 . en.
12. Book: Shelemay, Kay Kaufman . Ethnomusicology: History, Definitions, and Scope: A Core Collection of Scholarly Articles . 2013-10-28 . Routledge . 978-1-136-50972-8 . en.
13. Poladian . Sirvart . 1942 . The Problem of Melodic Variation in Folk Song . The Journal of American Folklore . 55 . 218 . 204–211 . 10.2307/535862 . 535862 . 0021-8715.
14. Book: Poladian, Sirvart . Armenian Folk Songs . 1942 . University of California Press . en.
15. Bayard . Samuel P. . 1943 . Review of Armenian Folk Songs . California Folklore Quarterly . 2 . 4 . 332–335 . 10.2307/1495509 . 1495509 . 1556-1283.
16. Poladian . Sirvart . March 1951 . Melodic Contour in Traditional Music . Journal of the International Folk Music Council . en . 3 . 30–35 . 10.2307/835769 . 835769 . 0950-7922.
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 . 10.2307/850444 . 850444 . 0014-1836.
24. News: July 19, 1987 . Dicron Aram Berberian . 2024-03-19 . The New York Times . 26 . en.