String Quartet, No. 1

Živko Ključe (1955), double bass player, ethnomusicologist and composer, graduated in double bass at the string section of the Music Academy of Sarajevo in the class of Josip Novosel and in composition in the class of Anđelka Bego-Šimunić and Ališer Sijarić. He put a lot of effort into preserving the music heritage of the Neretva valley, collecting and setting down old songs, both secular and ecclesiastical. Looking for a core musical idiom, Živko Ključe combines the experience of the musical heritage with contemporary musical resources, not tying himself as he does so to any strictly determined line of development in musical aesthetics. In his String Quartet No 1 contemporaneity is bound organically into the tonal fabric, and the past resounds in the high registers of a constant aroma and creative ingenuity with which he renews recognisable primary points of origin into new and highly original musical ideas, adroitly interpolating his own creative personality within the historical curve....