Baroque references in works of Vlastimir Trajkovic

Abstract

The article examines Baroque references in three Trajkovic?s compositions: Arion, Le nuove musiche per Chitarra ed Archi op. 8 (1979), Le retour des z?phyres ou ?Zefiro torna? op. 25 (2001) and solo song Renoveau from the cycle Cinq po?mes de St?phane Mallarm? op. 29, in its version for voice, flute and piano (2003), all these compositions being unified by the idea of modernity and novelty, metaphorically contained also in the idea of renewal of nature, which connects music of the moderns from the beginning of the 17th century and Trajkovic?s search for new paths in music, opposite to ?gothic? tangles of the Avant-garde. Complex and multi-layered, the references to the Baroque era in Trajkovic?s works reflect fundamentally generic, arche-textual relations. Compositions Arion and Zefiro torna are set upon explicit references to Italian origins of the Baroque epoch, in theoretical, as well as in the creative domain (to Caccini?s collection of madrigals - Le nuove musiche, 1601, and Monteverdi?s madrigal Zefiro torna, 1614, after Petrarch?s sonnet). Zefiro torna, with a primarily French title and subtitles of the ?scenes? given after antique mythological sources, indicates, again, a twofold generic relation: to the Italian madrigal tradition (including another Monteverdi?s madrigal with the same title composed after Rinuccini?s sonnet, from 1632) and the French tradition of opera/ballet, additionally mediated by references to the opuses of Debussy and Ravel. Multiple literary and musical trans-historical relations can be observed in the solo song Renouveau. However, from these compositions, implicit generic relations, far more than explicit para-textual references, with the whole corpus of themes, forms, texts, discourses as well as crucial poetic concepts of the 17th century music can be inferred.