Who listens to another’s heartbeat,
has a sense of rhythm.
Dora Pejačević
Dignified, quiet, withdrawn; full of determination, strength, and desire to work. Her days pass in absorbing the most wonderful impressions, given by the centuries-old Slavonian forest, the golden ripe wheat, and the blue of the rippling flax: the marble Pan among the birch and pine leaves, and the spectrally colored droplets of the waterfall. In her, a precious feeling of beauty develops, the original source of every art.
This beautiful picture introduces us to the magical world of nature in which Dora Pejačević, the first known Croatian composer, grew up and found inspiration for her musical creation.
She was born into the Croatian noble Pejačević family in 1885. Her upbringing from an early age was directed towards musical improvement, so she began playing both piano and violin at a very young age.
She was sent to Dresden and later Munich by her parents, where she continued her education with renowned violin and composition teachers, but she never had continuous formal training, so she is considered mostly self-taught.
However, these cities opened their concert halls and theaters to her, integrating her into artistic circles, and it was there that her works were first professionally performed.
A total of 57 opuses are preserved, from number 2 to number 58, with the 1st opus not recorded. These were created during about twenty active years of work.
The entire opus can be divided into two characteristic groups: strict classical forms of chamber, solo, and orchestral music that follow the major musical influences of that time, and on the other hand, compositions for piano, violin, and piano, as well as solo songs that are lyrical expressions reflecting her intimate being, daydreaming, and eternal search for new paths.
During World War I, most of her only symphony was created, and performances of her works became part of the cultural life of those cities.
included openness towards people regardless of their social belonging, criticism of her own social class, and a constant emphasis on the importance of work and rejecting a superficial and comfortable lifestyle.
In a letter to her friend Rosa Lumbe-Mladota in 1920, she says: “I don’t understand how one can live without work… But it is true that I don’t align myself with members of my own class; in everything, I seek content and value, and neither form, tradition, nor pedigree can blind me…”
In her creative process, work was like breathing for her. She diligently refined manuscripts and wrote musical scores by hand. It was as if life had destined her for a task to which she dedicated all her time, strength, and attention, modestly and unobtrusively, much like nature, which was her eternal inspiration.
The composer who fascinated her throughout her life was Richard Wagner, so she referred to herself as a “Wagnerian,” and elements of Wagner’s harmony can be found in her love lyrics. visible in the first part of her mature creativity.
Blumenleben (Life of Flowers), op. 19
The piano cycle of miniatures Life of Flowers, op. 19, is a series of eight programmatic compositions in which the composer depicts the emotions that eight types of flowers evoke in us: violets, primroses, daisies, forget-me-nots, roses, red carnations, lilies, and chrysanthemums. The order of the flowers is not random, but is connected to the blooming process from spring to autumn; at the same time, it can also symbolize the course of life: from violets, which are heralds of spring and new life, to roses, which are associated with maturity, full bloom, and fragrance, all the way to chrysanthemums, which symbolize the transience of life.
She later replaced the romantic music of her youth with new musical expressions that corresponded to the time in which she lived – the turbulent war years and the revolutionary changes of the 1920s, which are reflected in her music through impressionistic and expressionistic elements and harmonies.
During the First World War, events that she herself participated in as a nurse leave indelible marks on her work, she withdraws into her own world and seeks new paths of composition. The result of these efforts are cycles of solo songs and songs for voice and orchestra, based on the verses of Karl Kraus, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Friedrich Nietzsche, which bring a different creative aesthetic, imbued with symbolism of death, loneliness, and the senselessness of war. These are the first examples of Nietzsche’s poetry composed here.
Her music, guided by philosophical and literary impulses on the one hand and her own world of emotions and experience of nature on the other hand, conveyed a wide range of expressiveness: elegiac tone, drama, solemn seriousness, or playful dance-like qualities.
She wrote about her creative process: “In reality, I am only physically here, everything I feel as life and experience within me floats above what is present and visible, and in some deep and beautiful infinity, I see in the mirror of my feelings the driving force in the form of beloved beings and their movements.” Thousands of memories emerge like water lilies on the smooth surface of a lake. In this infinity, feelings follow along with thoughts and there I contemplate my best self, because everything that is good and great grows out of love. Drifting away into that most invisible world of innermost being, I become completely my own self, and that self, which then feels too filled with itself in that heavenly remote seclusion, seeks expression, seeks relief from that high mental pressure, which is in itself a kind of enthusiasm – and that liberation is achieved when a composition is created!
As Koraljka Kos, the author of a book about Dora Pejačević, says: “…her hypersensitive nature, like a seismograph, reacted to the most delicate stimuli. Nature, literature, emotional states, all create a special creative tension that is released in the creation of a work.”
Dora Pejačević lived in music and for music, in it she found beauty, nobility, and simplicity of life, as well as the possibility of fulfilling deep aspirations and ideals.
Although forgotten for decades, in the last twenty years her works have become increasingly part of Croatian music life. The significance she brought to Croatian music of that time has been rediscovered or finally recognized: she was the composer of the first modern symphony, a bearer of European harmonic thought in Croatian music, and one of the boldest in the development of chamber and concert music.
Two Nocturnes (Dva nocturna), op. 50
The piano compositions Two Nocturnes, composed in 1919 and 1920, represent the highest expression of her impressionistic creativity. She composed them to her own verses, of which the first one evokes the atmosphere of a night over the dark depths of a lake, the sound of fir trees and a weeping willow, the anticipation of autumn. Meanwhile, the second one portrays a May night bathed in moonlight, the scent of flowers, and the song of nightingales, the atmosphere of spring. Two sides of her being.
The dark depth of the lake rests
Under the moonlight, the surface trembles quietly
The fir trees rustle, the willow bends –
The heart, touched by autumn, silently holds its breath.
Through the leaves and branches, the moonshine no weaving,
Like a bride, the white birch
Through jasmine and lilac announces love
Dreamily warbling nightingale…