The concert REMEMBRANCE - Toronto, December 7, 2014 is commemorating the 100th anniversary of the death of the most prominent Serbian composer Stevan St. Mokranjac.
A renowned pedagogue and founding member of the first Serbian Music School (1899), Professor at the Faculty of Theology (1901)
Founder of the first String Quartet in Serbia (1899)
An outstanding conductor of The First Belgrade Singing Society (1887 – 1914)
A revered composer committed to choral music noted over 1000 sacred songs and composed majestic original sacred music in polyphonic style. His highest achievements in this field for mixed choirs, such as The Requiem and The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom reverberate today in Serbian Orthodox Churches and concert halls around the world.
Founder of ethnomusicology in Serbia, Mokranjac is one of the most prolific Serbian collectors of folk songs of his time who recorded and edited approximately 500 secular songs from different regions of the Balkan. He wrote the first significant ethnomusicological tonal analysis of Serbian folk melodies in the forward to the collection of Folk Songs and Dances from Levač.
It is based on this collection that Mokranjac composed fifteen choral suites made up of a total of eighty-two songs [composed from 1883 to 1913] to which he gave the name Rukoveti [Garlands].
Mokranjac took the beautiful word Rukovet from Serbian colloquial
speech, to suggest the idea of a bouquet (a literal translation of Rukovet) of wild flowers with their vivid colours and scents. He
gave this name to his 15 compositions consisting of equally rich
bouquets of beautiful and fresh folk songs. Thus, this word became
a musical term designating a collection, or rhapsody of folk songs,
arranged by a composer and linked together into harmonious
entity.
