CROATIA
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Croatia has had a lively compositional history
in the 20th century, even if few of its composers are known
elsewhere. Classical Croatian music dates back to Vatroslav
Lisinski (1819-1854), but the major figure of the 19th and
early 20th centuries was the very prolific Ivan Zajc (1832-1914,
and also known as Giovanni von Zaytz), best known for his
operas in a grand Romantic style, often with Croatian subjects:
the most famous is Nikola Šubiç Zrinjski op.430 (1876),
describing the defence of Siget against the Turks by the hero
in 1566, a tuneful, and colourful work under the stylistic
wing of Verdi. Opera predominated at the turn of the century,
mainly because of the success and standards of the Zagreb
Opera, founded in 1870. Modern Croatian opera began with Ogani
(Fire, 1911) by Blagoje Bersa (1873-1934), using a
continuous style with leitmotifs influenced by Wagner, married
to the influence of Puccini, which has claims to be
the first 20th-century opera dealing with factory workers
and the proletariat. Of the many subsequent Croatian operas,
the best known is probably the comic Ero s onoga svijeta
(Ero the Joker, 1935) by Jakov Gotovac (1895-1982),
who conducted the Zagreb Opera from 1923 to 1958.
Croatian composition in other genres, such
as chamber music and symphonies, dates from the end of the
First World War, and that generation of composers can be divided
between those using Croatian and other local folk-music and
those more influenced by new styles elsewhere in Europe. Among
the former were Antun Dobronić (1879-1955), Gotovac,
Krešimir Baranović (1894-1975), best known for his folk-ballet
Licitarsko srce (Gingerbread Heart, 1924) but
who pioneered Croatian symphonic music, and Ivan Brkanović
(born 1906), whose output includes five symphonies. The more
cosmopolitan composers include Stjepan Šulek (born 1914),
whose neo-classical works include six symphonies, three Classical
Concertos, and the opera Coriolanus (1957), based
on Shakespeare's play, which contains an interlude constructed
as a triple fugue based on the themes of the three main characters.
Boris Papandopulo (born 1906) also adopted a neo-classical
style with abstract forms, notably in the Sinfonietta
(1939), but has also written operas, including Rona
(1955), whose main characters are beggars, and ballet, including
Qo + H3 + H2 = He4 + n
+ Q (1965) which is the formula of the first stage of
a nuclear explosion.
That broad division continued after the establishment
of communist Yugoslavia, for Yugoslavia was one of the few
communist states allowing a freedom of musical style, influence,
and expression, and the Zagreb Biennial, founded in 1971,
has become an important forum for modern European works. The
communist themes have been most overt in the choral music
(including, for example, the later choral works of Papandopulo)
and in opera. The two most important composers of modern Croatian
music have been Ivo Malec (born 1975), who settled
in Paris in 1959 but has maintained close contact with his
home country, and Milko Kelemen (born 1924), one of the founders
of the Biennial, who moved to Germany in 1970. Kelemen started
in a neo-classical style, but after studying in Paris he introduced
serial and avant-garde techniques to Croatia; the Tri plesa
(Three Dances, 1956) for viola and strings attempts
to merge folk-music and 12-tone technique. His Concerto
Improvisations (1955) for strings, which uses continuous
variations, was once widely heard, while Equilibrium
(1961) for two orchestras explored unusual colours and stereophonic
effects, with stone and metal objects in addition to conventional
instruments. Sub Rosa (1965), in which Kelemen went
beyond the serial techniques he had been using, was originally
for a small instrumental group, but was extended by the appearance
(in mid-performance) of an enlarged orchestra, with amplification
effects. Among his vocal works, the cantata Les Mots
(The Words, 1956) is based on Sartre, in which television
is used both to transmit the stage but also to add commentary
of its own, while the opera Novi stanar (The New
Tenant, 1964) is to a theatre-of-the-absurd libretto by
Ionesco. His music needs to be more widely disseminated.
The Yugoslav Music Centre (SOKOJ) was carrying
information on Croatian composers (see under Yugoslavia);
the current position is unclear.
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MALEC
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MALEC Ivo (originally Maleć)
born March 30th 1925 at Zagreb
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Malec is, with Milko Kelemen (born 1924), the
Croatian composer best known outside the country, and the
one who most comprehensively embraced the avant-garde, studying
in Paris, settling there permanently in 1959 (while maintaining
close contacts with the then Yugoslavia), and 1960 becoming
a member of the Groupe de Recherche Musicales of French Radio
(O.R.T.F.).
Starting with Mavena (1957), many of
his early works were electronic, and often musique concrète.
Among these is the Dahovi II (Breaths II, 1961),
an effective score combining electronics with musique concrète
reworkings of actual instruments, set against the breathing
effects of the title, and with spatial qualities creating
a varied sense of distance; it has a story-telling vividness.
He then combined electronics with conventional forces in a
number of works, notably the short Tutti (1962) for
orchestra and tape, and in Cantate pour elle (1960)
for soprano, harp and tape. Colour has played an important
role in Malec's non-electronic works. Each of the five movements
of the ballet Makete (Models, 1956) for seventeen
solo instruments is associated with a different colour. Mouvements
en couleur (1959) for the unusual combination of woodwind,
brass, percussion, and nine cellos, explores gradually changing
instrumental colours, interrupted by harsher ideas. Miniatures
for Lewis Carroll (1964) for chamber orchestra is a tribute
to the author of `Alice in Wonderland', with material transformations
analogous to those in Alice's world. Cantata pour elle
(1966) for soprano, harp and magnetic tape combines three
layers: tape transformation of pre-recorded harp sounds, the
live harp, and the solo voice, using extended techniques in
all three and with the vocal line concentrating on emotional
sounds rather than words. The generally ecstatic tone is enlivened
by the effect of discrete use of sound `objects' in the electronic
transformation, with an imaginative and delicate slow section.
Oral (1966-1967) uses the combination
of reciter and orchestra, popular in the 19th century, but
unusual in contemporary music. It is based on sections and
fragments drawn by the composer from André Breton's Nadja,
creating a Kafkaesque verbal montage of idea and surrealist
incident. The presence of the reciter combines the rhythmic
and declamatory effects of sound-poetry with an orchestration
whose sounds are drawn from Malec's earlier electronic experience.
The resultant synthesis is reinforced by the close match of
the orchestra to verbal incident or mood, and the work has
more than mere curiosity value. In the pulsating Arco
11 (1975) for eleven solo strings Malec applied his experience
of electronic sonorities and effects to a string group, drawing
from them an impressive range of sounds that nonetheless remain
firmly within the string tradition. It opens with the energy
and drive of a Minimalist piece, and shifts into an ethereal
slow section of overlapping sonorities (layering harmonic
effects) and gentle slides that emerge and die away, often
with considerable beauty; the following frenetic section of
fragmented string layers is gradually but not conclusively
resolved as the instruments are reduced to thinner and thinner
textures. This powerful, ultimately enigmatic piece is highly
recommended. A similar extension of sonorities occurs in Ottava
Bassa (1983-1984) for double-bass and large orchestra,
extending the expressive range of the solo instrument with
a number of extended techniques, set against largely dark-hued
massed effects from the orchestra.
Malec has been a professor at the Paris Conservatoire
since 1972.
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works include:
- Examples, Miniatures pour Lewis
Carol, Mouvements en couleur, Pokreti u boji,
Sigma and Strukturen for orch.; Tutti
for orch. and tape; Arco-11 and Arco-22 for
strings; Lumina for 12 instruments and tape
- Ottava Bassa for double-bass and orch.;
Sequences for vibraphone and strings
- Echos for ten instruments; Miniatures
pour Lewis Carol, Noyaux-minute and Tri steća
for chamber forces
- piano sonata; Dialog for piano
- Cantata pour elle for soprano, harp
and tape; Oral for reciter and orch.; other works for
voice including Dodecameron, Victor Hugo un contre
nous and Vox, Vocis, f.
- ballets Apprendre à marcher and Makete
(Models); dance play Prije doručka (Before
Breakfast)
- electronic Carillon choral, Dohavani
I et II, Luminétudes, Mavena, Recitativo,
Reflets, Spot, Structures, Triola
ou Symphoniie pour moi-même and Week-End
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recommended works:
Arco II (1975) for eleven solo strings
Cantata pour elle (1966) for soprano,
harp and magnetic tape
electronic Dohovi II (1961)
Oral (1966-1967) for reciter and orchestra
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