Biography

Djuro ZIVCOVIC

Work(s)

" Unceasing prayers "

Concerto for cello and orchestra

Octoechos

SÉLECTION 2014

WORLD PREMIERE


21/11/2013. Malmö, Sweden. By Hanna Dahlqvist, cello, Shiyeon Sung, conductor and Malmö Symphony Orchestra.


NOTICE


The piece originates in a short, beautiful book called “The way of a pilgrim” by an unknown Russian writer from the 19th century. The book describes a pilgrim’s journey across countryside that practices the repetitive Jesus-prayer. In fact, it is the pilgrim’s inner journey that begins when he heard the words of Paulus “to pray unceasingly”; he visits churches and monasteries to make able to understand how to pray without interruption. His travels lead him into a spiritual father who teaches him the prayer, and gives him a practical advice on how to recite the prayer ceaselessly, as a kind of mantra.


In my composition, I try to paint in tone a small part of the book’s detailed and fantastic spiritual development. I struggled very much to find the precise way to describe that inner journey musically.


All segments of the cello solos are ‘based’ on that story. The cello persistently keeps a strong discourse. The forte playing in the first movement ‘against’ the orchestra is like touching the other world in a deep concentration, and many repetitive phrases are the persistence in meditation.


My intention was to make a kind of super-natural sounds, a cloud of dreamy world by micropolyphony and heterophony, using many mutes for the brass and keeping the dynamics low. The main mechanism of the orchestra is to make the sound-body very transparent, and in some cases extrême distant. The three-part concerto should be understood as a compact composition without interruption, not as a classical concerto with the movement-division.
I was very much musically inspired by znamenny chant from Russian north, Syrian temple singing and finally – Johann Sebastian Bach.
Djuro Zivkovic