At 22 years old Avet Terteryan, then a third year student at a musical school, moved to Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. It was the step of a man who understood his calling as a son of his nation. "Here, everything sounds differently from in Baku. The air, the mountains and the rivers - nature itself sings differently. The sun shines differently, its rays are different, the whole atmosphere is different." This could only have been said by a person who perceives the vibrations of the Earth, the Cosmos, and Music.

He is an interesting conversationalist, an attentive listener, the soul of the party, a builder and lover of musical instruments.

Silence is the main ingredient in his work. When he is composing music, consumed by his world of sounds and images, he prefers total solitude. The composer transcribes his works without a piano, usually in single bursts of effort. He carefully nurtures his ideas, as though transforming them into the language of sounds. Then he writes quickly, completing the final copy without any errors or rough drafts. "In the moment of creative immersion the music 'appears' somehow already done. I hear it from the first in its entirety - complete with opening, development, and conclusion."

Terteryan built his home in the harsh territory of the legendary lake Sevan. The earth there is rough, severe, rocky, and very few things can grow. The landscape is filled with monotone hills, boulders, rockslides, collapses and fissures. They are ascetic mountains, full of suffering. Nearer to the settlements are small, earthen temples and khachkari (stone cross monoliths) which seem to be sliding down the hills. Perhaps Terteryan heard Eternity itself in this stark and severe environment.

Terteryan stands out from his contemporaries and associates. Two qualities in particular differentiate his music from others: its authenticity (the deep linkages with the philosophy and meditation of the East) and its ability to topple the entire world continuum. Terteryan has not grown tired of repeating: "I have a sound which is all absorbed in itself. It comes from the deep sources of Eastern music and philosophy. Duduk performers have something called "dam", which is a long, drawn-out sound. Using this technique, a performer can play without interruption for days." "Dam" is this endless noise, familiar to musicians who play wind instruments and must breathe through the nose. "Dam" is a distant bell and its sound waves echoing and spreading over the land. And in the end, your attention and feelings are not concentrated on the "subject" of the composition, nor on the instruments or the form, or even the virtuoso playing - but on the Sound itself. It sparks and shines and opens up a new world.

This sound is like an atom: it is complex and yet simple, containing much in a tiny space. And this is exactly why the sounds in Avet Terteryan's symphonies represent Motifs and Themes. The central theme of his symphonies is Sound itself. Therefore Terteryan's symphonies truly are symphonies in the Greek sense - meaning "sound in harmony". This is true regardless of the fact that they completely lack recognized symphonic forms and the traditional development of themes.

In Terteryan's works, the role of Sound works in concert with Time. Time in this case means an extended sounding which presents his performers and listeners with the opportunity for particular concentration - it is in essence the soul of his music.

Each of Terteryan's symphonies is vastly different from the others, yet at the same time they are part of the composer's complete impression of the world. Each symphony, therefore, is one of the borders of an embodied Whole.

Terteryan's symphonies are unusual, even insolently unusual, but it would be impossible not to admit that they have opened up completely new roads for the symphony genre. They have significantly enriched the range of traditional symphonic images and the symphony's means of expression. The composer actually takes on the idea of the symphony itself. In their musical language the reception of the modern composer's letters are subordinate to the understanding of the sound itself, its timbres, rhythms, and heights... the form of the symphony is somehow improvised and is born in the process of music, but nonetheless it is monolithic, complete, inviolate.

Together with traditional instruments, Terteryan includes folk instruments in his symphonies. There is a duduk and a zurna in the Third symphony, and a kemancha in the Fifth.

Further on comes the zurna, ushering us through the rotation of life's events. You wind up in a frightening world, with bursting hysterical trombones. But by the end of the first part things are already calming down, and the very same C major side tone of the distant little bell opens up borderless expanses, elevates you to endless worlds. There is purity and truth in it. For me there is something secret in this.

There are wailing images in the second part, which resemble our tears. The same problem arises as in the Second symphony: nobody plays on the duduk like that! There is no music of this kind for these instruments, but, nonetheless, listeners accept it almost like folklore. When I invited the famous duduk player Dzivan Gasparyan, he didn't understand what I wanted from him and offered to play a song by Sayat Nov... 'No,' I told him, 'no, only these three notes - that's all that I need.' And the long pauses provide time to become conscious of the sound, they are time for worry. Reminiscent of the beginning of the symphony, once again the drums appear with natural forethought. I don't know how it appeared to me, but now, when I listen to the symphony over again like a member of the audience, it seems to me that here also is some kind of ritual symbol. You get the impression of someone throwing rocks, banging them off of the wooden top of a coffin.

The evil in Terteryan's work literally bubbles with emotions that seem almost anti-human, but which are all the same present in the human world. It is an outburst of primal instincts, a raving horde of fanatics.

The Fifth symphony comes from dull, dragged out life - the kind that burns with an intense inner existence. The symphony is constantly filled with side tones; it spreads and expands, breaks into pieces. The whole symphony is a constant alternation between raising dust and fading away, the coming and going of sound plasmas. In its rumbling you can hear something vital, something distantly familiar but long forgotten. Armenia is not China, but all the same think on the Tao, the way of all things. Think of movement in the unmoving, the Sky and the Earth. Known and the Unknown. Yin and Yang. "Something exists incorporeal, formless, and yet complete and perfect. How it is silent! How it lacks form! It stands as it is and does not change. It permeates everywhere, and nothing threatens it. One could call it the mother of all things. It needs a name, so I call it perfection. By perfection, I mean slipping away. By slipping away I mean growing distant. Growing distant means returning." (Lao-Tze)

Terteryan himself spoke very briefly on his Fifth symphony.

"In this symphony I used the natural sounds of the kemancha, which takes on the leading role. The kemancha tells a story about that special secrecy which I'd like to tell people about.