about the composer…

Stevan St. Mokranjac he is a classic of Serbian music, the most prominent figure at the turn of the XIX and XX century, the protagonist of our national musical direction. He was born 9. January 1856. Negotin. After finishing high school in Belgrade, he enrolled under the influence of positivist ideas of Svetozar Marković at the natural and mathematical Department of the great school. However, there was a tendency towards music. As a high school student, he became a member of the Belgrade Singing Society. This society, seeing in him a potential successor Kornelije Stanković, enabled him in 1879. he went to music studios in Munich, where J. Reinberger. The year 1883. he lost his state scholarship because of an incident, and had to stop his studies, but resumed them in 1884-85. in Rome, with A. Parisotti, and in 1885-87. at the Leipzig Conservatory, by S. Jadason and K. Reineke.

    Since then, Mokranjac's many years and many-sided activity in Belgrade has begun. Since 1884. he was confirmed as the choir director of The Singing Society "Kornelije Stanković", and since 1887. by the end of his life he was a conductor of the Belgrade Singing Society, which under his leadership reached a high artistic level. With this society he made numerous concert performances and tours around Serbia, other South Slavic countries and foreign countries, finding himself in the role of a kind of cultural ambassador of Serbia (1893 – Dubrovnik, Cetinje; 1894 – Thessaloniki, Skopje, Budapest; 1895 – Constantinople, Sofia, Plovdiv; 1896 – Petrograd, Moscow, Kiev; 1899-Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, 1910 – Sarajevo, Split, Cetinje; 1911 – Trieste, Rijeka, Zagreb). He occasionally led other choirs (typographic Singing Society "Jakšić", Serbian-Jewish singing society).

    Urinalysis is a multifaceted activity. The year 1887-1900. he worked as a music teacher at the first Belgrade High School, and from 1901. in theology. Under the auspices of the Belgrade singing society, he founded in 1899, together with Stanislav Binički and Cvetko Manojlović, the Serbian music school in Belgrade (today "Mokranjac" school), the first Permanent music school in Serbia at the time, whose director and professor he was until the end of his life. With F. Melcher, St. Schramm and J. He founded the first string quartet in Serbia with his work in 1889/93. played a pioneering role in nurturing chamber music in our midst. During the founding of the Association of Serbian musicians (1907) he was elected president. Special recognition was given to him by his election as a corresponding member of the Serbian Royal Academy (today Sasa) in 1906. years. He's been sick since 1912. he gradually left his duties as choirmaster of the Belgrade Singing Society. He died on the night of the 29th. and 30. September 1914. in Skopje, where he took refuge with his family when the first World War broke out.

With slight exceptions (a few solo songs, music for a piece with singing Ivkova Slava, five fugues for string instruments from the time of his studies), the entire opus of Mokranjac belongs to the field of choral music. In his fifteen hands he created classical patterns of artistic stylization of folk Melos and definitely solidified the national direction in Serbian music. The hands belong and Primorsky napyevithen the cycles of Hungarian and Russian songs were created on the occasion of the tour of the Belgrade Singing Society in the respective countries, as well as several Turkish and Romanian songs. Less significant are his compositions on texts of art poetry. A special place belongs to the humorous choir skerce Kozar, one of his best achievements, which marks a higher degree of creative application of folklore motifs.

       Mokranjac devoted a large part of his creativity to Orthodox spiritual music, mostly based on traditional songs of the Serbian Church chant. Here, first of all, stands out monumental Liturgy  (Divine service St John Chrysostom), then Opelo, Akathist, two songs on Good Friday, three stations, praise God, St. Sava and other works, which by their qualities stand on an equal footing with his best compositions in the field of secular music.

Mokranjac's composing work is closely related to his melographic work: recordings of folk melodies from Kosovo (published only a minor part), collection Folk songs and dances with melodies from Levč, as well as two important collections of records of church chants: Octagon and Foreign penny. Prelude to Folk songs... from Levč and Octagon the first ethno-musicological studies in Serbia.

What is it that makes Mokranjac's works alive and fresh today, while many other Serbian composers of his time are almost forgotten? The reason is certainly not only in the fact that almost all of his oeuvre is based on folk (i.e., traditional spiritual) Melos, because there Mokranjac is not alone. In the middle of the nineteenth century, Kornelije Stanković proclaimed the romantic thesis that Serbian art music should be built on the foundations of Serbian folk music. Davorin Jenko, having brought to Serbia the spirit of the Slovene readership revival, tried to be related to the musical folklore of his new homeland. Josif Marinković-the only one who can be compared with Mokranjac in his compositional format, enriched this national style with artistic qualities. Mokranjac, however, penetrated deeper than all of them into the spirit of folk melody, emphasizing with his artistic stylization all those values that are hidden in the work of an anonymous folk creator. With a reliable feeling, he chose from the folklore Treasury what is most valuable in it and what best captures our region, the spirit and life of our people. This reflects the elements of the realistic approach, and it is certainly no coincidence that the beginning of Mokranjac's work coincides with the flourishing of realism in Serbian literature.

       Folk motifs are dressed in a blend of clean, rich and audible choral syllables and selected harmonies that perfectly correspond to the characteristics of folk melody, and frame them into rounded, polished musical-formal units. Thus, "processing" of folk melodies became equal to the original composer's creation, and over several decades Mokranjac was a model and starting point for all those Serbian composers who directed their aspirations towards national musical expression: from Stanislav Binički, Petar Krstić and Isidor Bajić, through Petar konjović, miloje milojević, Stevan hristić and Kosta manojlović, to Marko Tajčević, Milenko Živković or svetomir nastasijević. Such composers existed in later generations, and Mokranjac's influence did not surpass any of the composers of the national direction of other South Slavic peoples.