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A 2003 Exhibition about Croatian activities within the ISCM throughout the years

In December 1925 the Yugoslav section of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) was established in Zagreb, just three years after the organization had been founded in Salzburg. The central office of this international association, organized on the principle of national sections, was in London, and its principal task was to promote contemporary music and its performance via annual festivals held each year in a different city of a different member country, with works chosen by an international jury. Following a short interruption during World War II, the ISCM has continued its work to this day.

The Society for Contemporary Music, the Yugoslav section of the ISCM, was founded in Zagreb on the initiative of world-famous soprano Maja Strozzi-Pečić and her husband Bela Pečić, and under the aegis of the Croatian Institute of Music, whose secretary, Artur Schneider, was also the first secretary of the newly-founded society. The members of its first Executive Committee were Krešimir Baranović, Antun Dobronić, Umberto Fabbri, Anton Lajovic, Fran Lhotka, Kosta Manojlović, Miloje Milojević and Božidar Širola. The first five years of the society?s activity saw the performance of two Croatian compositions at ISCM festivals: Božidar Širola's oratorio Život i spomen svete braće Cirila i Metodija, apostola slavenskih (The Lives and Memory of the Slavic Apostles, the Holy Brothers Cyril and Methodius), performed in Frankfurt in 1927, and Krsto Odak?s five-voice Madrigal, performed in Geneva two years later. After 1930 the Society for Contemporary Music moved to Belgrade.

Eighty years after becoming part of the International Society for Contemporary Music?s activities, Zagreb  hosted its annual festival, the ISCM World Music Days, for the first time, as part of the 23rd Music Biennale Zagreb, trom 15 to 24 April 2005. To mark this occasion, the Croatian Institute of Music wanted to remind us of its initiative  started eight decades ago, by means of a concert, an exhibition and a special publication under the common (working) title of HGZ - ISCM - MBZ, thereby taking part in current musical activities in Croatia and the world.

Exhibition, special publication and concert

Croatian Institute of Music (HGZ) - International Society for Contemporary Music - Music Biennale Zagreb
Great Hall of the Croatian Institute of Music, 13 April 2005 at 8 p.m.

Exhibition opening and promotion of special publication


Concert program:

Dragan Plamenac : Trois poèmes de Charles Baudelaire (1914)
Arnold Schoenberg : Fünfzehn Gedichte aus Das Buch der hängenden Gärten von Stefan George, op. 15 (1909)

Performed by:
Martina Gojčeta-Silić, soprano
Eva Kirchmeyer, piano


Anton Webern : Fünf Sätze für Streichquartett, op. 5 (1909)
Josip Štolcer Slavenski : First String Quartet, op. 3 (1923)

Performed by:
Ivan Zovko, violin
Krunoslav Marić, violin
Anamarija Šir, viola
Tomislav Rožman, cello

 

 

in the photo: Arnold Schönberg, 1924