In her interesting and very valuable oeuvre (consisting of 110 opus numbers), Ivana Lang paid particular attention to original folk’s music idioms, especially from Istria, knowing full well, like all major proponents of this line, that she would be unable to achieve a satisfactory effect with her artistic activity if she was not persistent in promoting and disseminating the art of the people. As with the greatest masters of this movement, in the music of Ivana Lang spurred by folk models, too, there is no question of it being simply a one-sided reproduction, of a quotation; instead, it is a development and a filtration and a stylisation of the original model. Not one of her works inspired by popular strains was a common and conventional folk music picture book, rather a monument to sound in which a creator of so-called serious music, liberally but with great professionalism, making responsible use of the simple ideas of the anonymous originators and first movers from the people, elevated the vernacular sounds to the level of refined art. Directing all her attention first of all to the sung word, the composer, after that, took to more complex matter, and that was the arrangement of vernacular instrumental dance music. The crown of these endeavours is her anthological achievement, the twelve-minute Symphonic Dance, op. 33, written in 1950, and 20 years later recorded by Radio Television Zagreb conducted by Josef Daniel. The piece was performed for the first time in a concert in Zagreb within the context of the Master Cycle of Croatian Radio Television on November 29, 2012, when the Symphony Orchestra of that institution was conducted by Nada Matošević. What is really involved is a simple rondo with a theme and with subthemes deriving from folk music, bound up in a tonal setting that is characterised by a multiple duality of operations. First of all, from a stylistic point of view, it is a kind of compromise between the Croatian southern and the Croatian northern, the Mediterranean and the inland, the Istrian-Dalmatian and the Slavonian original expression of the people, which occasionally recalls and arranges Baranović-esque phrases, and then at once looks for instrumental echoes of the vocal works of the Istrian composer Matetić Ronjgov. Duality then wells out of the very material of the main rondo motif, which has a significantly descending and ascending trajectory, and through its countless variants incessantly returns to its own origins, somehow at the same time concealing and camouflaging this, making witty use of an indestructible ingenuity of sequencing. The duality of the whole structure can be read in its expressive bipolarity, which is created by a convincing sense of drama present (enhanced by speciously monotonic and yet effective rhythmical ostinati, followed by sudden flare-ups and shrieks) and a poignant lyricism of expression (which gradually addresses a Dalmatian melodic songfulness of Italian origin that is gradually more and more worked up and with its every greater condensation, making ingenious use of chromatics, comes very close to the ardour of an unconcealed Puccini-esque sensuality). All this is carefully accompanied and built upon by a remarkable diversity and richness of melodic decorations, and also by an extremely well developed and logically carried through polyrhythmic setting. The attractive coda of the work cannot rein in the general and increasingly vigorous whirl and buoyancy of the dance facture, which hurtles irresistibly to its explosively brilliant ending.

Dubravko Detoni (c) Croatian Music Information Centre

Citation: Detoni, Dubravko „Ivana Lang: Symphonic Dance“. Introduction to the sheet music: Ivana Lang. Symphonic Dance for Orchestra Op 33, Croatian Music Information Centre, Zagreb 2013, pp X-XI.