On Saturday, May 10, 2025, at 6 PM, as part of the Zagreb Music Spring festival, a thought-provoking and inspiring lecture was delivered by renowned musicologist Prof. Dalibor Davidović, PhD, under the title On the “Long Day” of Stjepan Šulek, Once Again.

Held in the foyer of the Small Hall of the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall, the event was one of several discursive formats within the festival dedicated to the legacy of composer Stjepan Šulek. The conversation following the lecture was moderated by musicologist Jelena Vuković.

Davidović’s point of departure was the seminal essay The Long Day of Stjepan Šulek by Eva Sedak, one of the most prominent Croatian musicologists of the 20th century. He explored how Sedak’s decades-long engagement with Šulek’s oeuvre evolved from youthful critical detachment, through an ever-deepening recognition of compositional depth, to an almost intimate understanding of the composer’s creative choices and historical significance.

At one point in the lecture, Davidović noted:
“Eva Sedak, in Šulek’s compositions, seemed to glimpse something of the new music idiom—she doesn’t hesitate to claim that the opening bars of his Piano Concerto contain an expressive gesture typical of Ligeti. Šulek, then, may be something quite different from the hardened conservative figure he is often taken to be…”

Further reflecting on Sedak’s perspective, Davidović remarked:
“Viewed from today’s standpoint, she reveals a kind of duality in Šulek’s position: on one hand, he casts a long shadow that still stretches across the Croatian music scene; on the other, he is more than the conventional image that has formed around him. This duality is captured in the very phrase ‘the long day of Šulek’—itself a kind of evocation, a polemical return to something familiar.”

Davidović revisited an earlier, sharp critique by Petar Selem, who once claimed:
“Šulek’s short day is over—he needed to reinvent himself or disappear. His death as a composer became evident in the mid-1960s…”

Two decades later, Eva Sedak responded to this notion by posing new questions about the length of Šulek’s day. Davidović asked:
“How did we move from the verdict of a ‘short day’—a compositional death in the 1960s—to the perception of a long day? Always new questions. But ultimately, the same question returns: is Šulek’s music still relevant?”

Davidović highlighted how Sedak gradually moved away from traditional critical models in favor of a deeper, almost existential closeness to the artistic work. In the spirit of Rainer Maria Rilke, she invites us to approach music not with cold analysis, but with openness and affection.

Following the lecture, an engaging discussion unfolded about Šulek’s place in Croatian music history and his relevance to contemporary listeners, readers, and critics. Jelena Vuković invited the audience to join in a conversation on the scholarly and artistic dialogue between Sedak and Šulek, raising broader questions: Is Šulek merely a composer of the past, or does his music continue to resonate today? Can we, liberated from ideological and aesthetic preconceptions, finally hear the music itself?

As a point of particular value, Davidović emphasized the significance of Šulek’s archival legacy—carefully preserved materials that reveal the man behind the myth, the composer behind the institution, and allow for a renewed and deeper reading of his work.

This lecture was part of a rich program curated by the Music Information Centre of the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall for the Zagreb Music Spring. The program also includes an exhibition, the publication and presentation of the Sixth Symphony score, and a closing-day discussion with Šulek’s former students Dubravko Detoni and Zoran Juranić, scheduled for Sunday, May 11, 2025, at 5:30 PM in the foyer of the Main Hall.