Krešimir Baranović (25 July 1894 – 17 September 1975) was a

Croatia Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herze ...

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and def ...

and conductor. He was director and conductor of the Zagreb Opera,

Belgrade Opera The National Theatre ( sr-cyr, Народно позориште, Narodno pozorište) is a theatre located in Belgrade, Serbia. Founded in the latter half of the 19th century, it is located on the Republic Square, at the corner of Vasina and Fr ...

and

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

at the Belgrade Music Academy. In the spirit of a kind of Slavic

expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

, also seen in the works of Janáček and some of the 19th century Russian masters, Baranović was better than any other Croatian composer of his time in overcoming the discrepancy between the national and the universal to be seen in Croatian

interwar In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period, also known as the interbellum (), lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days) – from the end of World War I (WWI) to the beginning of World War II ( ...

music.

Biography

From 1908 to 1912 Baranović was studying music in

Zagreb Zagreb ( ) is the capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Croatia#List of cities and towns, largest city of Croatia. It is in the Northern Croatia, north of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the ...

. He took private lessons from Dragutin (Carlo) Kaiser and then in the school of the Croatian Music Institute where he studied

horn Horn may refer to: Common uses * Horn (acoustic), a tapered sound guide ** Horn antenna ** Horn loudspeaker ** Vehicle horn ** Train horn *Horn (anatomy), a pointed, bony projection on the head of various animals * Horn (instrument), a family ...

with Fran Lhotka. After that, he went to the Music Academy in Vienna (1912–1914) and later that in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

(1921–1922). From 1915 to 1943 he was the conductor of the Croatian National Theatre Opera in Zagreb (and the director of it from 1929 to 1940); at that time it went through one of its finest periods. In the season 1927/28, he was also conductor for the

Anna Pavlova Anna Pavlovna Pavlova. (born Anna Matveyevna Pavlova; – 23 January 1931) was a Russian prima ballerina. She was a principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev, but is most recognized for creating ...

ballet troupe on her European tour, and was long-term conductor of the Lisinski Choir. After leaving Zagreb in the first years of the war he was imprisoned in the Stara Gradiška camp, and then for some time was conductor of the Bratislava Radio Orchestra (1943) as well as being the director of the Bratislava Opera (1945–1946). From 1946 to 1964 he was teacher of conducting and orchestration at the Music Academy in Belgrade, and from 1951 to 1961 director and conductor of the

Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra The Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra () is an orchestra located in Belgrade, Serbia. It is regularly considered one of the finest in the country. History Unlike most European countries and cities, Serbia and Belgrade were rather late in receivin ...

. From 1954, he was a fellow of the

Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts The Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (; , HAZU) is the national academy of Croatia. HAZU was founded under the patronage of the Croatian bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer under the name Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts (, JAZU) since its ...

in Zagreb. Member of Serbian Academy of Science and Arts since 1968.

Oeuvre

In the spirit of a kind of Slavic expressionism, also seen in the works of Janáček and some of the 19th century Russian masters, Baranović was better than any other Serbian composer of his time in overcoming the discrepancy between the national and the universal to be seen in Serbian and Croatian interwar music. In his valuable works the

ballet Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of ...

''Gingerbread Heart'' (1924), the song cycle ''From My Hills'' (to verses of Fran Galović, 1927) and in the comic opera ''Sheared-Mown'' (1932) he drew the authenticity of his idiom from the

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...

Hrvatsko zagorje Hrvatsko Zagorje (; Croatian Zagorje; ''zagorje'' is Croatian language, Croatian for 'backland' or 'behind the hills') is a cultural region in northern Croatia, traditionally separated from the country's capital Zagreb by the Medvednica mount ...

, the foundation of an artistic transformation of

Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ( – 6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and American citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of ...

an dimensions. A wonderful master of instrumentation, with a marked feeling for rhythmical structure and a special sense for humour, even of the coarsely grotesque (the ballet ''Imbrek with a Nose'', 1935), Baranović sidestepped the restorer's gesture of

neo-Classicism Neoclassicism, also spelled Neo-classicism, emerged as a Western cultural movement in the decorative arts, decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiq ...

, widening the ranges of inherited expressiveness, particularly in terms of harmony. While Baranović's works after 1943 – the orchestral poems ''From Solitude'' (to his own words, 1944) and ''Clouds'' (verses of Dobriša Cesarić, 1963) more thoroughly set free dissonant harmonic sets, his larger vocal and instrumental works of the 1960s and 1970s do nevertheless pay a tribute to the simplifications enjoined by the aesthetics of what was called engaged realism. As symphonic and particularly operatic conductor, Baranović much enriched reproductive practice. He was the first in Croatia to conduct a performance of Mussorgsky’s ''Boris Godunov'' in 1918 and

Shostakovich Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his Symphony No. 1 (Shostakovich), First Symphony in 1926 and thereafter was regarded ...

’s ''Katerina Izmailova'' in 1937, and was the first to put the most important ballets of

on the Zagreb stage, the first outside

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

to put on Smetana’s ''Libuše''. He paid a lot of attention to first performances of the most important music theatre works of Croatian composers.

Selected works

Stage works

Ballet

*''Gingerbread Heart'' (1924) *''Flowers of Little Ida'' (1925) *''Chinese Story'' (1955)

Opera

*''Bride of Cetingrad'' (1951), comic opera *''Sheared-Mown'' (1932), comic opera

Orchestra

*''From Solitude'' (to his own words, 1944), orchestral poem *''Clouds'' (words by Dobriša Cesarić, 1963), orchestral poem *''Concert Overture'' (1916) *''Symphonic Scherzo'' (1921) *''Poème balkanique'' (1926) *''Sinfonietta in E flat major'' (1939) *''Concerto for Horn and Orchestra'' (1973)

Vocal and orchestral works

*''From My Hills'' (to verses of Fran Galović, 1927) *''My City'' (words by Vinko Nikolić, 1941) *''Pan'' (words by

Miroslav Krleža Miroslav Krleža (; 7 July 1893 – 29 December 1981) was a Croatian writer who is widely considered to be the greatest Croatian writer of the 20th century. He wrote notable works in all the literary genres, including poetry ('' The Ballads o ...

, 1957) *''Forests, Forests'' (1967) *''At Sea'' (words by Gustav Krklec, 1974)