for the project Meltin 'Choir of Cantabile [ www.cantabile.it ] I gave a seminar on Music Balkan .
A presentation that has been proposed as a powerful critique of the so-called Balkan music , on our way to (not) deal with that area, on the superficiality of our classifications. As I will try to give an account of the materials that I proposed at that time.
started a little 'sharply with the card referred to this important musician Serbian .
Ljubica Marić
One of the most interesting music Yugoslav / Serb twentieth century. Poet and visual artist as well as composer, studied in Belgrade and Prague, Alois Haba which then became deeply involved with the micro-tones.
His research, if I find a reference, it can come close to that of Olivier Messiaen : a timeless music and the mystery of time. Despite his deep knowledge of traditional Serbian music, Maric has never had a key to the interpretation or expression. It is pretty obvious, but not "philological" served the Byzantine model an inspiring backdrop to explore new dimensions of the mode.
Monodia octoicha for cello alone is the best example significant. It 'clear that behind us are listening to the Suites by JS Bach musical legacy Byzantine evident from the title that refers to Octoëchos .
This is an excellent interpretation of it Xenia Jankovic .
Its sung mixed choir and symphony orchestra chants of space - Pesme prostor of 1956 inspired by the extraordinary artistic tradition established by Bosnian funerary stelae such stick, on which I am preparing a book that never write.
A good selection of his sheet music is available for purchase online in www.sheetmusicplus.com/search?q=ljubica+ Maric
available through Amazon or CD Universe album:
a site of ' Serbian Academy of Sciences [in English and Serbian] Ljubica Marić on : www.ljubicamaric.com / index.php / en
The following are abstracts of two articles published in Muzikologija , an important musicological journal Serbian readable http://scindeks.nb.rs/journalDetails . aspx? issn = 1450-9814.
Of all the items are available in the abstracts and full papers in English and Serbian, sometimes in English.
Muzikologija , 2004, iss. 4, pp. 61-82
A composer’s inner biography: A sketch for the study of influences in Ljubica Marić’s oeuvre, Milin Melita,
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts - SASA, Institute of Musicology
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts - SASA, Institute of Musicology
Abstract
Attempting to investigate works of music through frank examination of possible influences is a delicate thing, sometimes maybe dangerous - as has been suggested by Jonathan Cross in his book, The Stravinsky Legacy . While the originality of a composer may appear to be threatened with such types of critique, for musicologists it is important to draw upon a deeper appreciation for how a composer searched for his/her own creative voice. The music of Ljubica Marić (1909-2003), one of the most important Serbian composers of the 20th century, has been chosen to demonstrate how composers need different influences during different phases of their maturation and how they deeply integrate them in order to create an individual utterance. Ljubica Marić first studied composition with Josip Slavenski at the Belgrade Music School (1925-29), and continued her studies with Josef Suk at the Master School of the Prague Conservatory (1929-32) where she obtained her diploma. Finally, she took Alois Hába ’s course in quarter-tone music at the same i nstitution from 1936 to 1937. The works she composed during the 1930’s were characterized by a radical will to break ties with traditional, mainly romantic music, so she chose to be influenced by the free atonal pre-dodecaphonic works of Arnold Schoenberg . Following World War II, she introduced some changes of expression that were more in keeping with links from the past. Her music became tonally stabilized, and thematic-motivational developments were rediscovered, resulting in an expression that became milder. But the changes need not necessarily be linked exclusively to the post-war climate of socialist realism. Rather, the previous style may have met up with some type of impasse - the sort that confounds or ultimately transforms an artist. For Ljubica Marić , however, it appears she was never truly satisfied with her first post-war works (1945-1950). What is certain is that she composed nothing during the several years that preceded her first masterpiece, the cantata The Songs of Space (1956). It is however worth examining whether or not they were really "dry years". It is certain that for Ljubica Marić , they were fresh discoveries of Serbian traditional singing, both folk and church, poetic and artistic treasures of the Middle Ages - but she also revived earlier experiences (from the pre-war decade) that she had rejected at the time, mainly the music of Stravinsky, Bartók and Slavenski. Although those influences can be detected in the score of The Songs of Space , the work has a strong individual imprint, an identity of its own. In the works that followed, The Passacaglia for orchestra and in several compositions belonging to the cycle Musica octoicha ( Octoicha 1, The Byzantine Concerto, Ostinato super thema octoicha, The Threshold of Dreams ) original traits of Ljubica Marić ’s poetics became even more pronounced. The last works that she produced (in the 1980’s and 1990’s) are all for instrumental soloists or chamber ensembles. They continue with, and refine the main characteristics of the earlier ones. Ljubica Marić ’s evolvement thus presents a search for originality of expression that was reached only after a process of selective assimilation and creative transformation of tradition had been fulfilled - but not until any " anxiety of influences " had been abandoned. It has been shown that Ljubica Marić , like other artists needed to be ready to be influenced, in order to absorb such influences in a creative way.
" Torzo per violino, violoncello and piano ", Pablo Schatzman - violin, Maja Bogdanovic - cello, Lidija Bizjak - piano, December 11, 2009, Paris
Muzikologij to , 2009, iss . 9, pp. 65-82
The light of the word in Milan Maric's music , Makević Vicky
Central Music School "Dr Vojislav Vuckovic , Belgrade
Abstract
Ljubica Maric's music provides manifold encouragements for consideration in the light of the Logos , according to the teaching exposed in the prologue of the Gospel by St.. John. It speaks of the essential inconceivability of time and life, which have their cause in God and His Logos. Seeing through and praising ' the logos of things ' guide all its aspects: the tone reveals itself as a vibration, as the energy of lasting and existing, as the beginning of every time and motion; the sonority of different instrumental media is freely expressed and mutually determined in co-action with specific musical and contextual moments; the rhythm evades every regularity and mechanicalness, by which both single duration's and the whole metro-rhythmic course gain a vivid expression. The entire shape of the work is also taken from the reality of psychological and historical time, from its unreductable dynamics, being always in a vivid connection with the space, origin and tradition. The respect for ' the truth of things ', the awe before the mystery of time and existence, which call upon the very principle of life in the divine Logos are obvious in everything. Designation of man as a being of light and reason created in the image of God to be the likeness of His being, is expressed in Ljubica Marić 's music by the measure of human pulse taken as the basic tempo of her entire opus. Ljubica Marić expressed her consciousness of the reason as a special gift to the man by extremely careful treatment of the words - its meanings, melodies, rhythms, which she always considered the very source of music. The relation between the word and the voice - its sonorous body - is shown in the cantata Songs of Space (1956) as a mystery of the encounter of the Logos and the matter. In relation to her earlier works, this one is a marked breakthrough of the composer's authentic 'voice', which will find its full identity only after receiving the divine Word, symbolized by the melodies of the Serbian Octoechos in the cycle Musica Octoicha (1958-1963). Thus, Ljubica Marić 's music has entered its 'New Testament' time and become a specific story of the Logos and His presence in the world and history. In the opaque and dramatic course of that related musical time, the melodics of chanting is experienced as the manifestation of the light, meaning, reason freedom, awe. These graceful effects bring into the work a certain beyond-time dynamics - inverse perspective of time - and, like a Byzantine church dome, they bear witness to the divine condescension. Ljubica Marić 's music is steeped in the mystery of the beginning and the end, which meet in eternity, in the One who is Alpha and Omega; in its one tone and in its entire course, it grasps the whole of time and existence - through the divine Word itself by which it has also been made.
