CROATIAN MUSIC MBZ - STJEPAN SULEK DAYS IN ZAGREB

The Croatian composer, violinist and conductor Stjepan Šulek (Zagreb, August 6, 1914 – Zagreb, January 16, 1986) marked the Croatian music culture of the 20th century by his many-sided production. He was raised in a family where music was constantly played. Šulek started very early with his study of the piano and the violin. After having completed his secondary education and the secondary music school, Šulek went on to study at the Music Academy in Zagreb where he graduated from his study of the violin in the class of Professor Vaclav Huml in 1936. For a short time he also attended classes of composition in the class of Blagoje Bersa, but he later developed in this area as a self-taught composer. He started performing as a chamber musician and concert violinist of the highest-ranked musicality since 1933, playing actively in various chamber groups; for some years (1958 -1962) he was leading the Chamber Orchestra of the Zagreb Radio-television as their conductor, and used to perform with them from time to time, usually interpreting his own works. Since 1940 Šulek started with the teaching of the violin, and from 1947 to the time he retired in 1975 he was professor of composition at the Music Academy in Zagreb. He received a number of awards and prizes and was made member of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1954. The most significant area of Šulek’s many-sided music activity was composition. Clinging to the tradition of Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinsky in his young years, Šulek introduced elements of musical folklore into his compositions. Later on he developed his own style by enhancing the classical-romantic tradition and the heritage of baroque polyphony. The central place in his opus belongs to instrumental music that he formed on the principles of clear architectonics and a superior degree of mastery of instrumentation. The eight symphonies that have been composed between 1944 and 1981 are characterized by a wide range of expressiveness and a wealth of sound expression. In his four Classical Concertos, within the three-movement disposition Šulek imaginatively expanded the baroque and classical models. Ten soloist concertos (3 for the piano and orchestra and one each for the violoncello, violin, bassoon, viola, clarinet, horn and organ and orchestra) are Šulek’s monumental contribution to our concerto music literature; in each of these concertos Šulek has built up soloists’ passages upon the particular features of technical and expressive possibilities of the instruments playing in the concerto. Šulek’s instrumental opus has been rounded up by numerous chamber piano pieces (three sonatas and the like) as well as other soloist music pieces. In the area of operatic production, Šulek has twice taken up patterns of Shakespeare’s dramatic opus. He wrote his own librettos for his operas Coriolanus (1957) and The Tempest (1969). The three acts of the opera Coriolanus have been developed on the pattern of a three-movement symphony where the symphonization of the orchestral style has been carried out, while the vocal passages emerge from the expressive explanation of the text. Two comprehensive orchestral interludes of the opera are often performed in concert versions. Šulek named his full-evening ballet De veritate (1977) a “symphonic-choreographic tractate”. Šulek’s vocal production encompasses the cantata The Last Adam for the bass, mixed choir and orchestra written to the verses of Silvije Strahimir Kranjčević (1964), two solo song cycles (Dead Poet’s Poem to the verses of Dobriša Cesarić, 1970, and Fear based on the poetry of Đuro Sudeta, 1975) and the distinctive Baška Tablet for the mixed choir a cappella (1980). At the end of his life and creative span Šulek composed a cycle of five string quartets My Childhood (1985), dedicated to his parents and sisters, a kind of homage to the music tradition that he kept drawing from. As professor of composition at the Music Academy in Zagreb, Šulek educated numerous composers, the most talented of whom developed into autonomous creative personalities; among them are Milko Kelemen, Stanko Horvat, Krešimir Šipuš, Pavle Dešpalj, Dubravko Detoni, Igor Kuljerić and Davorin Kempf. The significance of Stjepan Šulek in the history of Croatian music is many-fold: as a reproductive artist he consistently maintained a high level of interpretation, as a pedagogue he supported fundamental professional foundations in the education of young composers, and by the technical level and power of his artistic expression as a composer he built an autonomous segment into the Croatian music of the past century. From the present-day perspective, the label of traditionalism so often mentioned in the context of Šulek’s music loses its negative critical undertone. At the time of ideological pressures after World War Two, Šulek’s opus with its superior professionalism stood for the autonomy of art, and at the time of the later, necessary “opening” to the new sound he continued being greatly imposing by his steadfast adherence to the composers’ ideals and his own artistic “.