CROATIAN MUSIC - IGOR KULJERIĆ

IGOR KULJERIĆ (1938 – 2006) The Croatian composer and conductor Igor Kuljerić (Šibenik, February 1, 1938 – Zagreb, April 20, 2006) graduated from the Music Academy in Zagreb in the class of Stjepan Šulek (1965). He continued with his enhancement in conducting with Igor Markevich in Monte Carlo (1968) and continued his studies in composition in the Studio of Musical Phonology of the RAI in Milan (1975-1976). In the period from 1960 to 1967 he was rehearser and assistant to conductors in the Opera of the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb. Afterwards he became member of the Zagreb Soloists where he played the harpsichord and worked as assistant to Antonio Janigro (1966 – 1968). From 1968 to 2005 he was conductor of the Symphony Orchestra and Choir of the Croatian Radio&Television. He performed various duties and engagements: he was director of the Zagreb Music Biennale (1980 – 1983), artistic director of the Concert Hall “Vatroslav Lisinski”, music director of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival (1984/85), and he was also conductor in the Opera of the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb (1984 – 2003) and the Opera director (1992 – 1994). He was also president of the Croatian Composers Society (1980/81) and the “Lovro and Lilly Matačić” Foundation. He won significant placements in the UNESCO competitions. Kuljerić went on many guest tours in all the bigger countries of Europe as well as in the USA and Russia. Since 2004 he was elected regular member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He was also winner of a range of awards and acknowledgements among which the following should be emphasized: the City of Zagreb Award (1972, 1986), the Vjesnik Prize “Josip Štolcer Slavenski” (1973, 1986, 1998), the INA Award (1977), the UNESCO Award (Paris, 1982), the “Vladimir Nazor” Award (1986), the Award of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (2002) and he was also conferred the Order of the Croatian Danica with the figure of Marko Marulić for merits in the field of culture. Starting his developmental course as composer at the time when the musical avant-garde in Croatia began bearing the first fruits and experience, after the early phase that was still under the influence of his academic education, Igor Kuljerić composed works that proved to be valuable evidence of this important period in the Croatian music from the middle of the past century. Very soon, though, his investigative passion for the perpetually new features of the sound took him away from these aesthetic models and guided him to the new perceptional horizons and techniques. “Nowadays my avant-garde experience makes it possible for me to perceive all the diversity of the space to which the sound and musical thought can be directed, it enables my inquisitiveness even for things that are basically alien to my understanding of art and my creative charge” Kuljerić said in an interview at the beginning of the this century. This inquisitiveness, this passion for phenomena that give forth sounds, the thought that everything can become the source of sound and set the composer in motion to produce an artistic act, all this took Kuljerić away from the dependence on any specific style that could be traced and recognized as unique in the course of his creative lifetime. Each of his developmental phases was new and different from the preceding one, filled with imagination and traces of the investigative charge. It is this diversity and ability to shape from the luxuriously diverse the artistically valuable, content-wise and well-rounded whole that creates the veritable splendour of Igor Kuljerić’s musical penmanship. Continuously new and interesting, Kuljerić is one of the most important composer personalities of the 20th century. Let us finally list the most important of his compositions: the operas Richard III (1987) and Animal Farm (2002/3), Choral Prelude (1979/80), Risuono di gavotta (1986) and Bel kamen kampanela [White Stones of the Bell-towers] (2005) for orchestra, Solo-tutti for piano and orchestra (1972), Concerto for marimba and strings (2001), Ballads of Petrica Kerempuh for vocal-instrumental groups and a narrator (1973), Croatian Glagolitic Requiem (1996), and the Croatian Mass for soli, choir and orchestra (2004), Collection of Songs for voices and instruments (1983), Quam pulchra es... (Omaggio a Lukačić) for choir (1973, More [Sea] for women’s choir a cappella (1978), Moments for Vlado for piano (1968), Les échos, for chamber ensemble (1975), Song for string quartet (1981), Waltz (D9-G9) for instrumental ensemble (1989)...