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About the Cycle - C o m m e n t a r i e s

OPTIONES  (1994)  conjure up certainty and uncertainty, possibility and impossibility, probability and improbability, which is all offered by the world of our time (first performance: Bourges, Cathedral, 20th November 1994, J. Magdić, organ).

WAR  PICTURE  POSTCARDS  OF  SARAJEVO (1993),  a suite in ten movements, conjure up the fate of the war-stricken sights of the city and various events in the city itself (first performance: Sarajevo, Cathedral, 18th June 1994, J. Magdić, organ). Recorded on CD SONY SK 66619.

- City Hall, i.e. National and University Library, used to be one of the most beautiful buildings in the city, built in the Moorish style. It has been completely burnt down and destroyed.

- Baščaršija used to be the liveliest centre of the old town, characterized by oriental influence and traditional crafts. Nowadays it appears to be sombre and sad.

- Ghazi Husrev-Bey's Mosque  is the most famous and monumental city mosque, built back in 1531. It has been resisting the blows of war with difficulty, yet with pride.

- Cathedral, erected in neo-gothic style in 1889, relentlessly evokes motives of the Gregorian chant Dies irae.

- National  Museum, founded in 1888 with botanical gardens and a necropolis of special sarcophagi called stečci, has been brutally devastated.

- Blood  Donor's  Street, just along the front-line, evokes the horrible children's play and the near-by first-aid hospital with constant grenades, snipers, artillery bursts and fires.

 - Dobrinja  represents  the newest town district, surrounded by the aggressor almost  on all sides. It symbolizes superhuman resistence.

- Tower  is literally the aggressor's prison beside the airport; there are incarcerated

there all those - Bosnians and other - who did not let themselves be subjugated.

-  Eternel  Fire  inspires courage, hope and faith.

-  UNPROFOR - Quodlibet  with split-up motives from folk songs represents a quodlibet indeed, i. e. the naivety of the UNPROFOR  that always declares: "We don't know who is shooting!?"

INTRA  VITAM  MORTEMQUE  (1994) represents a subconscious vision of the condition in which the inhabitants of the occupied city seem to be living in a huge waiting-room under the open sky. It reflects upon the condition literally between life and death. Harsh rustic motives frantically resist the forces of darkness and transform themselves into a sublime vision in the end (first performance: Sarajevo, Cathedral, 18th June 1994, J. Magdić, organ).

SPITEFUL  PRELUDE  WITH  A  GRENADE  SPLINTER (1992)  depicts the brutality of war, as well as fierce resistence, reflected in the hard  oustic folk music (first performance: Sarajevo, Church of the Queen of the Rosary, 20th August 1992, J. Magdić, organ). Recorded on the above-mentioned  CD.

TER  QUATERNI  SUNT  MODI (1994).  According to music theory, there are nine intervals: "Ter terni sunt modi" (H. Contractus), but this composition deals with multiple meanings of its widened title - on the one hand, it consists of the so-called simple intervals brought successively through  segments in various techniques, and on the other hand, it brings a dodecaphonic series that is integrated in the conclusive fughetta (first performance: Sarajevo, Cathedral, 18th June 1994, J. Magdić, organ).

CLUSTERING  (1994) is a composition with constant application of clusters, that either lie in the extreme positions, or progress deductively or inductively evoking a clear assocation with current events (first performance: Besancon, Cathedral, 27th October 1994, J. Magdić, organ).

LA  RONDE (1994)  abounds in numerous simultaneous and consecutive motives of folk songs and dances, and sporadically those from the Gregorian chant too, that emerge in gloomy, playful, melancholy or enraptured moods (first performance: Besancon, Cathedral, 27th October 1994, J. Magdić, organ).

STORM   was  composed in August 1995, immediately upon the brillant victory against the aggressor. The composer interweaves in it contemporary compositional procedures with appropiate musical motives and fragments of authentic, furious expression (first performance: Ogulin, Church of the Holy Cross, 3rd September 1995, J. Magdić, organ).

RESURRECTION  VARIATIONS.  A music theme Jesus resurrected indeed out of Croatian and Latin collection of melodies CITHARA  OCTOCHORDA  from 1701, was used for RESURRECTION  VARIATIONS.  Three contrastive variations, the final one in the form of fughetta, follow the solemn theme. This tonal composition was written in March 1994, and first performed at the Easter Concert in Sarajevo Cathedral on April the 3rd 1994 (J. Magdić, organ).  

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