Edvard Mirzoyan

He is considered one member of the group called "Armenia's Mighty Handful", a reference to the 19th century collective known as the "Mighty Handful." He is also considered an integral part to the "Armenian School" of music composition alongside the composers Arno Babajanian and Alexander Arutiunian.

Edvard Mirzoyan died on October 5 of 2012, and is buried at the Komitas Pantheon which is located in the city center of Yerevan.

In the late 1950s, he was elected president of the Armenian Composers’ Union, a position he held until 1991. He also served as the president of the Peace Foundation of Armenia. While president of the Composers' Union, Mirzoyan drove the development and construction of the Composers’ Union Resort in Dilijan, which now bears his name. The resort went on to be one of the most well-known cultural hubs of the Soviet Union.

In 1948, Mirzoyan would begin professorship at Yerevan Conservatory (a.k.a. Komitas State Conservatory of Yerevan), and would become the department head of composition in 1965. In 1952, he would also begin teaching at the R. O. Melikyan Musical College (now the Yerevan State Musical College after Romanos Melikyan).

Mirzoyan first enrolled in music at the Yerevan Music School named after A. Spendiarov. He would later graduate from the Komitas State Conservatory in 1941 having studied under the Armenian composers Sargis Barkhudaryan and Vardges Talyan (the symphonic poem “Loretsi Sako” forming his graduate thesis work). He would soon be conscripted into the Red Army in 1942, and it is here where he would compose many patriotic and war-related songs.

Edvard Mik'aeli Mirzoyan (Armenian: Էդվարդ Միքայելի Միրզոյան; May 12, 1921 – October 5, 2012) was an Armenian composer.