Josip Štolcer Slavenski 

His work is characterised by a kind of syn­the­sis of late-roman­tic pattern and con­tem­po­rary artis­tic expres­­sion, explo­ring the folklore and stu­­dying elec­tro­nic music and acous­tic laws. The diver­sity of these stylistic elements determined Slavenski’s musical poe­tics as authen­tic, at that time, very modern and new. As such, it came to mis­under­stan­dings and often con­­tr­a­dic­­tory cri­­tics by many con­tem­po­ra­ries – con­ser­va­tives con­si­dered his music as “chaotic” and pro­gres­sives as “backward”.

Born in May 1896 into a modest baker family in the small town of Čakovec (today Croatia, at that time still part of Austria-Hungary), Slavenski developed his passion for music from an early age, supported by his mother.

After studying in Budapest at the renowned Zen Academia (1913–1916), where he was a master student of Bella Bartók, Slavenski graduated from the Prague Conservatory (1918–1921) and moved to a roaring Belgrade of the 1920s.

Then the capital of the newly formed state Yugo­slavia, vibrant with all colors of Balkan folklore and pic­tu­resque rem­nants of the East, Belgrade evoked unli­mited passion and thirst for crea­tion in Slaveski. One of his greatest works were created here, such as Balkanophonia, Sinfonia Orienta, Four Balkan Games, From Yugoslavia, Chaos аnd Songs of My Mother.

He went on to compose music for sound films of famous Prague and Berlin-based production companies and established contact with the renowned German publishing house Schott & Söhne. Slavenski was one of the first artists to research electronic music and to own a Trautonium, an early electronic devices that could produce music.

Performances around the globe followed, from Berlin, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Budapest and Vienna to Venice and New York.

In addition to music, he dedicated his time to science, especially astronomy, because he saw and searched a connection between cosmic currents and musical resonances, resulting in him developing the theory of Astroakustics.

It is Slavenski’s approach that makes him stand out as an artist: On one hand, Slavenski was very open to the social upheaval of European modernity, on the other hand, he was in love with the diversity and ancient folklore traditions and customs of the Balkan peoples. With this as a starting point, Slavenski created avant garde and unusual works which, at first, were met with misunderstanding and often contradictory assessments by a large number of contemporaries.

Slavenski spent a great part of his life at the sources of folk crea­tivity. Study­ing folklore in an unu­sual way in his time, Slavenski dis­co­vered the fur­thest and clea­nest sour­ces of folk music – hearing where it orginates from. However, Slavenski was not a folklore roman­tic; He was a man of the present, who did not just sample anything. While modern composers avoided folklore, he created con­tem­po­rary music out of it and out of his per­­so­­na­lity – an emi­nent re­pre­sen­ta­tive of a new concept of folklore. 

“...I do not care what they think about me and my work ... I, as a musi­cian, ‘confess the truth’! For me, the ‘pure octave’ is as impor­tant as my most hys­te­ri­cal ‘hyperdrive’. By illustrating the ‘Pagans’ or the ‘Buddhists’ or the ‘Mace­do­nians’, I act as some kind of a ‘medium’, giving that ‘Stimmung’ or that ‘sound truth.’ Thus, it is un­der­stan­dable that there’s con­fu­sion and con­tra­dic­tion for those who think that everything should be ‘classified’ into com­for­table patterns.”

Slavenski never directly quoted folklore melodies. It was just his source of inspiration adopted by fundamental characteristics of tunes and rhythms of folklore. Actually, it was about exploring the basic principles folklore and on which the music of “the people that civilisation did not corrupt” functions. It was beyond the use of folklore in a romantic way. Besides that, it was a folklore of various nations, not just about one “nation”.

With the end of the Second World War and the emergence of a socialist Yugoslavia, new ideologies were adopted with euphoria, which no longer fit into neither pre-war modernity nor the traditional Slavic approach. Works were created in the spirit of socialism, but Slavenski quickly withdrew himself from that scene and stopped composing entirely. He died on November 30, 1955 in his home in Belgrade.

Slavenski tried to find new forms of sounds in what he was surrounded by his earliest youth, in the folk song, in the sound of church bells or in the starry sky he watched during the breaks of night work at his father’s bakery in Čakovec.

“Looking at the stars sparked an in­de­scri­bable curi­osity in me about every­thing that is happe­ning, brin­ging up the eter­nal ques­tion of ‘why’. For me, it brought up  the spirit of know­ing the truth, under­stan­ding the natu­ral signs. In short – a great love for art and science.”