Songs (for voice and piano / for voice, piano and violoncello)

The Croatian cellist, composer and educator Juro Tkalčić is one of the major Croatian musicians born in the 1870s. Although in his time in international circles too he was renowned as a cello virtuoso, Croatian musicology has still not devoted to Tklačić the attention he certainly merits. His Songs for Voice and Piano have to date been completely unknown to the cultural and musical public in Croatia. According to information currently available, not a single one of them has ever been published and this is the first time they have been released in print. The publication covers all the known Tkalčić songs for solo voice, save for the song Ivanje for baritone and piano, which is lost. Although not large in terms of numbers, Tkalčić’s solo song oeuvre is interesting for several reasons, one of the more important is that the composer by choosing the verses of Paul Verlaine, the poem Pluie (Rain), which he set to music in 1906, was probably the first Croatian composer in the 20th century to have turned to the poetry of any French poet, and is without doubt the first to have set to music any poem by Verlaine, genius of French poetry of the second half of the 19th century. This is an important circumstance in the context of the reception of French art and culture at the beginning of the 20th century. The solo songs of Juro Tkalčić are without doubt, if a small, still an uncommonly interesting and valuable fragment in the mosaic of this genre in the history of Croatian music, Additional light will be cast on them only through further comparative study, and in particular through performance, winning for them a place in the historical perspective of the art of music. Their characteristics and value will assuredly make these songs a lasting part of the performance practice of Croatian and European concert platforms.