CROATIAN MUSIC– BORIS PAPANDOPULO

Composer, conductor and pianist Boris Papandopulo (25th of February1906, Honnef on the Rhine, Germany – 16th of October 1991, Zagreb), one of the most significant Croatian composers, was born in a family of musicians, imbued with the artistic nerve by the grandmother, the great Croatian actress Marija Ružička de Strozzi; the artistic nerve had been further developed by the mother, the singer Maja Papandopulo-Pečić Strozzi and the uncle, director and actor Tito Strozzi. Papandopulo studied composition at the Music Academy in Zagreb in the class of Blagoje Bersa (he graduated in 1929), and continued with the study of composition at the New Vienna Conservatory with Dirk Fock (1925 1928). In the periods from 1928 to 1934 and from 1938 to 1946 he was conductor of the Croatian singing choir Kolo, from 1934 he was conductor of the orchestra of the Croatian Music Institute in Zagreb, in 1935 he moved to Split where he took the post of conductor of the Music Association Zvonimir and was also professor of music subjects at the Municipal Music School. After his return to Zagreb he was again conductor of the Kolo, the Zagreb opera (1940 – 1945; from 1943 to 1945 he was director of the opera) and the Radio Symphony Orchestra (1942 – 1945). He was also opera director in Rijeka for two periods (1946 – 1948 and 1953 – 1959). Furthermore, he was operatic conductor in Sarajevo (1948 – 1953), Zagreb (1959 – 1965) and Split (1968 – 1974). At the same time he was also permanent guest conductor of the Municipal Theatre Komedija in Zagreb and the Opera in Cairo. He received numerous important awards for his musical activities. In 1965 he was made regular member of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences (then still the Yugoslav Academy, JAZU). The huge opus of compositions of more than 400 works contains compositions for all music areas, from the soloist miniature and art song, lied, to great vocal-instrumental works of oratorio characteristics s as well as operas and ballets. There is almost no instrument that Papandopulo had not written a piece of music for, always with an impeccable masterful familiarity with the possibilities of that particular instrument, always combining unusual audio components. With his exceptionally autonomous spirit, huge musical talent and enviable working discipline, Papandopulo had always and in all circumstances shown the ability for his own, genuine approach to a work of music. This ability ensured the distance from the pressures of politization of art in the period between the two world wars, but also in the period that followed the Second World War; the same ability created for him the space for autonomous creative vigour at the moments of some avant-garde transformations that have whirled up the music world, not infrequently evicting those who wanted to save their right to being different. This is then the origin of the stylistic stability of this great opus within which the deviation is only a trace of creative inquisitiveness. However, what remains permanently pronounced are the basic features: characteristic, clearly formed themes, whether lapidary of rhythmically distinctive or, on the other hand, broadly developed and melodious, they move within the structure of interesting rhythmical patterns and perfect coloristically worked out tonal relations, producing a form, most frequently based on the concatenation, of independent fragments, sub-entities that function on their own and as parts of the composition as a whole. These structural foundations helped the composer’s imagination develop freely, when he was able to deal with selected material always in the way of music and not trying to add any other meaning to his music patterns. And, whatever makes sounds can be music. This is equally valid for the folklore music idiom, whose themes Papandopulo made use of, never treating them as exclusive features of the national, in the same way he thought of the whole of the traditional music heritage. However, this a priori musician’s attitude to one’s own work had the consequence of generating the effect that makes this work identifiable, in terms of affiliation to one’s own culture and one’s own people. With reason: the spiritual order is always superior to the selection of patterns and the methodology of their transformations. When Boris Papandopulo passed away in October of the year 1991, the eminent Croatian musicologist Dr Eva Sedak declared that it was the greatest Croatian composer of the 20th century who had died. All those who had, in the course of the century that has gone toiled for his creative work to remain in a prominent position in the reproduction practice, were aware of the fact that only by listening to a live performance can such a statement really show all the weight of its trustworthiness.