Chronology of Church Choir Practice

Performing representative examples of Croatian church music, the Ivan Goran Kovačić Academic Choir has met with warm reactions from the audience at KotorArt Don Branko’s Music Days. In the Church of Our Lady in Prčanj, on Saturday July 16, the ensemble, under the leadership of conductor Luka Vukšić, presented works by Croatian composers, as well as chants from oral performance practice.

Church art, through which its various religious as well as purely aesthetic aspects can be read, is a result of the flow of civilization. In Croatian choral music, it occupies an important segment throughout a long historical period. In this regard, the Ivan Goran Kovačić Academic Choir presented to KotorArt a selection from the chronology of Croatian sacred choral music, from medieval church singing to contemporary compositions. The richness of Glagolitic chants, the tradition of Glagolitic singing among priests in the Croatian redaction of the Church Slavonic language (in Glagolitic), in which the influences of the Gregorian chorale, Byzantine church chants and local secular singing practices are met, was presented by the male members of the ensemble through two medieval chants – Lord, Have Mercy and Oh, My People. In addition, the Choir also performed the song The Voices are in Heaven, which was written in the middle of the 17th century in Pavlinski Zbornik, one of the most important monuments of baroque Croatian art.

Precise diction and intonation, carefully built vocal technique, sumptuous sound in the function of the aesthetics of a piece itself, are the characteristics of today’s singing skills of the Ivan Goran Kovačić Academic Choir, which has been taken care of by their conductor Luka Vukšić for almost two decades. It should be noted that this ensemble was founded in the post-war period, in 1948, and that it was one of the most respected Yugoslav choirs. Numerous conductors such as Mladen Jagušt, Lovro Županović, Adalbert Marković, and Vladimir Kranjčević, over time shaped both the repertoire and the sound of the ensemble. In addition to a cappella singing (without instrumental accompaniment), the Choir regularly performs with the Zagreb Philharmonic and the Croatian Radio-and-Television Symphony Orchestra, and has successfully collaborated with numerous symphony orchestras and philharmonics abroad.

When it comes to original music performed at KotorArt, the entire Choir presented the works of Ivan Lukačić, Ivan pl. Zajc, Franjo Dugan Sr., as well as composers of the 20th and 21st centuries: Rudolf Mac, Mato Lešćan, Jakov Gotovac, Blaženko Juračić and Boris Papandopoulo. The professionalism of the ensemble is recognized at different levels of interpretation and attitude towards the performance. The choir presented the renaissance sound atmosphere through Dugan’s The Prayer, the dramatic expression through Gotovac’s piece Terra tremuit, while with The World from Papandopoulo’s Croatian Mass they presented a whole series of interpretative requirements – from the polychoral style (cori spezzati), through a powerful fugato, to the spectrum of dynamic nuances and functionality of the music at the very register extremes.

Boris Marković