FAMOUS CROATS, Milko Kelemen

Milko Kelemen (Podravska Slatina, 30 March 1924 – Stuttgart, 8 March 2018) the composer whose oeuvre today serves as a paradigm for the modernity of Croatian music in the second half of the 20th century. He was a doyen of Croatian musical creativity, the recipient of numerous recognitions and awards, both in Croatia and in Germany, which had been his second home since the early 1970s. He completed his primary and secondary education in Virovitica and in 1951, he studied composition under S. Šulek at the Academy of Music in Zagreb. He took additional studies in Paris, Freiburg and Munich. Since 1953, he was an assistant and later a lecturer at the Academy of Music in Zagreb. From 1968 to 1970 he was a Composer in Residence in Berlin. From 1969 to 1972, he taught at the Robert Schumann Conservatory in Düsseldorf. Since 1973, he was a professor of composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart. He was the founder and first president of the Music Biennale Zagreb, an international festival of contemporary music (1961). He also served as the honorary president from 1981 until his passing. He guest-conducted and taught as a visiting professor in numerous countries worldwide. In 1988, he was elected as a corresponding member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts (JAZU). In 1995, the Milko Kelemen Days were established in Slatina as an annual event. Kelemen’s numerous awards include the three City of Zagreb Awards (1955, 1957, 1960), the Beethoven Prize of the City of Bonn (1961), the Bernhard Sprengel Award in Hannover (1969), the Grosses Bundesverdienstkreuz for Cultural Achievements of the Federal Republic of Germany (1973), the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres of the Republic of France (1980) and the Vladimir Nazor Lifetime Achievement Award (1984). Kelemen writes in his book Svjetovi zvuka [Worlds of Sound]: “Energy in music should be understood as an applied rather than a pure concept, which manifests in various forms depending on the different assumptions of different types of musical expression. The law of conservation of energy is inherent in music.” Accustomed to the inspiring rendition of the law of energy in music in the works of this author, we sometimes identify the playful character of certain aspects of his manuscript with energy. Therefore, a part of Kelemen’s creativity that demonstrates the rigidity of notation often confuses with the tranquil seriousness of the notation and the utterly controlled, almost subdued energy of each of his compositions. Erika Krpan, musicologist and a member of the Croatian Composers’ Society