Zoran Hristić


Zoran Hristić was a Serbian composer. He had a freelance artist status for a long time. At the initiative of Dušan Radović in 1979, he was nominated an editor, director and founder of the Concert Studio B. from 1982 to 1989, he was the chief music editor of Radio Belgrade, and then moved on RTVB, later RTS where he was editor in chief of the editorial board of Music programme until 1995.
He was the artistic director of BEMUS and "Mokranjac days" festivals as well as a selector. He improved the Trumpet Festival in Guča.

Biography

Hristić was born and died in Belgrade. His musical education began at his early age. He played piano, and the first song he wrote was a Play for the piano. At age 15, he wrote Toccata for piano and won the student competition, after which he enrolled in composition classes at the Conservatory Giuseppe Verdi in Milan, with professor Niccolò Castiglioni. He continued to study at the Music Academy of Belgrade with Dr Stanojlo Rajičić, graduating in 1963. He received the prestigious Stevan Hristić Award for the best thesis Titles for the chorus and orchestra.
Hristić's work includes solo and chamber works, vocal and instrumental works, ballets, radiophonic works, music for theater, film and television. His compositions have been performed by prominent national and international performers.
"I have never accepted that it is important to write music just for oneself and I think one is deceived by the artist who says he does not care about communication and influence. Art means to influence".

Awards

Hristić belongs to a generation of composers who entered into Serbian musical constellation in the early 1970s. Other representatives of this generation are Petar Bergamo and Rajko Maksimović. This avant-garde five was characterized by an effort to achieve a new expression and not to stand side of the current trends, which successfully compensated and overcame the time lag of our musical avant-garde in comparison to analogous phenomena in European music. They connected avant-garde level of Serbian and European music on the basis of their specific relationship to the past. Hristić met with the European avant-garde in the late fifties, when his composition professor in Milan, Castiglioni acquainted him with contemporary Italian music and Schoenberg dodecaphony.
In Hristić thesis Titles for the chorus and symphony orchestra he, for the first time achieved the use of the elements of the Polish music school in the Serbian music. It’s not about the principles of Penderecki’s aleatoricism, although Hristić is strongly connected to Penderecki by the treatment of the twelve chromatic scales often distributed in clusters of "short" seconds, complete lack of thematic material, and particularly the use of instruments and choral that achieve the sound effects that are close to noise.
After the impact of the new Polish music, Hristić evolved towards distinctive tonal language, in which sporadic elements of serial structures were in service of creating almost bizarre tonal composing. His art has developed into a line that runs from the lower chamber of interest to the broad forms of intervention in the field of theatre, vocal and instrumental music.
Although close to a generation of Bergamo, Ozgijanu, Radovanović and Maksimović, Zoran Hristić’s style, in his own words, is closer to Croat composers Detoni, Kuljerić and Foretić while he recognizes the local influence only from Vladan Radovanović.

List of works

The student works

Hristić composed the music for all of Belgrade's theaters as well as theaters in Novi Sad, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Titograd, Skopje, Mostar, Rijeka, Banja Luka, Subotica Vrsac, Šabac, Zaječar, Niš, Leskovac and Kragujevac. First music for the theater he wrote in 1958 for performances in Red and Blue in rainbow and Little box that plays for Youth Theatre in Belgrade.
Significant achievements: