composer
Isidora Žebeljan (Belgrade, 1967-2020) was the most outstanding and internationally acclaimed Serbian composer. She drew international attention with her opera Zora D. which was commissioned by the Genesis Foundation from ...
related works
Genre:
Chamber music
Subgenre:
Piano Quartet (piano, violin, viola, cello)
Scoring:
vn vla vc pf
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Voice and instrument(s)
Scoring:
voice fl sax-a/ob acc/vla+vc pf cb
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Voice and instrument(s)
Scoring:
sopr-m cl pf vl
5 Chansons : voor zang, hobo en piano / Hans Lachman; Words by Charles Baudelaire
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Voice and instrument(s)
Scoring:
zang ob pf
composition
A Yawl on the Danube (Na Dunavu Šajka) : A scene for soprano, percussion, piano and string quartet / Isidora Žebeljan
Description:
A Yawl on the Danube (1991) was composed as a commission for the Danube FEST, which had its premiere in 1991 in Belgrade, with Aneta Ilić as a soloist. In this composition Isidora Žebeljan uses also the text from the collection of poems Serbian Urban Poetry of the 18th and early 19th Century. And more directly than in her earlier compositions, Isidora applies melodic features of the folk music of Serbs from Vojvodina in this piece. The composition begins with an allusion to a bell tolling, dispersed over the river surface, from which the melancholic melody of a voice arises resembling the folk music of Vojvodina - but it is heard as if coming from the water itself. The solo piano in the middle part seems to take the listeners to an utterly different sound region, with its restless and unstable river flow, where the joyfulness of untamed rhythms is dominant, assuming the form of the sound of a pianola that is ‘out of control’ and imitating a pop song created from a nursery rhyme. Eventually, the river vortex subsides, and the now distant song can be heard again, suddenly fading away to the sound of the bell, which still appears to be flowing down the river, as if bells are ringing in its depths.
Borislav Čičovački
A YAWL ON THE DANUBE
The cold Danube keeps flowing on,
while slender yawls keep sailing by.
Pretty Pera sails the front boat,
Lovely Kata the boat from the hind.
The good lass arrived at the churchyard,
Lovely Kata picked some boxwood.
Peacock feathers sail with Pera,
Unwed lads with lovely Kata.
Pretty Pera wreathes his lasses,
For each lad a matching garland,
But, for Pera lovely Kata, and no other.