Songs

Only a few works from the diverse and extensive oeuvre of Antun Dobronić (1878 – 1955) have endured on the concert stage. Among them are Carnevale / Carnival, of 1913 and the orchestral suite Jelšonski tonci / Jelsa Dances. A still harder fate was known by his solo songs, although they were performed during the composer’s lifetime with great success by well-regarded artists, such as the prima donna Maja Strozzi-Pečić, a coloratura soprano with a worldwide reputation. Occasionally Tomislav Neralić is heard on the radio interpreting parts of his cycle called Hajduk / Haiduk; the rest has been forgotten. Nor have musicologists referred to Dobronić’s songs; this publication then is a chance for them to be valued the way they should and come to life on the concert stage once again. The youthful solo songs of Antun Dobronić were written in the atmosphere of musical modernism. During the war years, the composer’s style developed; in his theoretical texts he was to define it as a synthesis of music of the people and elite European art music. The elements of traditional music that Dobronić included into his songs are not incompatible with the aesthetics of modernism. However, the composer put an expressionist charge into the folk music stylisation of modernism, thus enriching the Croatian art song of the 20th century with a series of fine works.