17 Facts About Vasilije Mokranjac

Vasilije Mokranjac was a Serbian composer, professor of composition at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade and a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Vasilije Mokranjac was one of the most prominent Serbian composers in the second half of the 20th century.

Vasilije Mokranjac was born into one of the most prominent Serbian musical dynasties.

Vasilije Mokranjac's father, the cellist Jovan Mokranjac, was a nephew of the composer Stevan Stojanovic Mokranjac; his mother Jelena, of Czech origin, was a cellist.

However, Vasilije Mokranjac chose to study piano: from 1932 to 1942 he was studying privately with Alexei Butakov, and then he enrolled at the Belgrade Music Academy to study with Emil Hajek; he graduated in 1948.

Vasilije Mokranjac became an Associate Member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1967, and in 1976 he was elected a full member.

Vasilije Mokranjac was survived by his wife Olga and daughter Alexandra.

Furthermore, Vasilije Mokranjac's composition teacher Stanojlo Rajicic was a conservative, who insisted that his students should express themselves in traditional forms of absolute music.

However, Vasilije Mokranjac aimed to achieve a coherent whole on the realm of the entire cycle, and the individual movements have precisely defined roles in the dramaturgy of the work.

The central period of Vasilije Mokranjac's output is mostly devoted to orchestral works.

Simultaneously with the symphonies, Vasilije Mokranjac wrote some more modest orchestral works.

Since the early 1970s Vasilije Mokranjac has gradually transformed his style and achieved a synthesis of all compositional procedures that he had used in earlier decades with a new, refined, lyrical sound world, embroidered with elements of neo-impressionism and the New Simplicity.

Lyric Poem, Vasilije Mokranjac's best known orchestral piece, is quite similar to Intimacies and Echoes.

Besides, Vasilije Mokranjac employs self-referencing, by quoting a segment from his 1962 orchestral work Ouverture.

Vasilije Mokranjac enjoyed a reputation of being a tolerant and broad-minded professor, who did not force his students to write in any particular styles and was willing to support his students in their quest for novel means of artistic expression.

However, due to being supportive of his students, Vasilije Mokranjac got into a confrontation with his former professor Rajicic and other professors of composition who promoted a more conservative approach to teaching composition.

Vasilije Mokranjac was criticised for defending his students and allowing them to express their artistic goals freely.