Slavenski, Josip (Štolcer).

[YUGOSLAV MODERNIST COMPOSER WITH LINKS TO ZENITISM] "Religiofonija" ["Religiophony"]. Complete series of lithographed pamphlets, likely self-printed for the premiere in 1934 (six parts in five fascicles).

[Belgrade: A[kad]. P[evačko]. D[ruštvo]. Obilić, May 1934]. Octavos (24 × 16 cm). Original staple-stitched lithographed self-wrappers; 11, 19, [4], 8, and 15 pp. of lithographed musical notation. One fascicle with second gathering partially detached from staples; some light oxidation to staples; else about very good. Item #55549

Apparently the first printed version of this choral-orchestral work, later reworked as "Symphony of the Orient", perhaps the most ambitious opus of the Croatian-born composer Josip Slavenski (1896–1955). The work was premiered in Belgrade in June 1934, and the present pamphlets appear to be a self-published version for the performers, which represents the form in which the work was first presented to the public. The final part, here entitled "Song to life" (Pesma životu), is dated May 1934 on the plate, making it likely that the composer was completing these partitions even as the Academic Choral Society Obilić and the Belgrade Philharmonic were already rehearsing. While Slavenski's earlier works were published by Schott in Mainz, the present work was apparently self-published in lithographed form.

The six parts are titled "Pagans", "Jews", "Buddhists", "Christians", "Muslims" and "Song to Life." Blending the musical idioms of these foreign musical traditions with his own harshly modernist language, Slavenski's opus caused a scandal upon its premiere to a conservative Serbian listenership and has rarely been performed since. It can be seen as a kind of universalist paean to a supra-confessional human brotherhood. The work went through numerous iterations and Slavenski's latest version, finished by 1937 and known as "Symphony of the Orient", even features a final, seventh section titled "Song to Labor", making clear the composer's leftist orientation. Slavenski is considered to be one of the only truly original Yugoslav composers of the interwar period and is sometimes compared to early Stravinsky or Bartók. It has also been asserted that Slavenski's aesthetic program was – albeit loosely – tied in its genesis to Zenitism, the avant-garde movement around Ljubomir Micić and Branko Ve Poljanski (he was close with the latter). Slavenski's work mirrored the anti-Western, pro-Eastern and pro-Balkan orientation of Zenit; his avant-garde orientation revealed itself through his exploration of the very nature of sound from the perspective of physics and acoustics. For a discussion of Slavenski's links to the movement , see Vesna Mikić, "Zenitism: A possible view on the avant-garde retreats of the solitary modernist poetics of Josip Slavenski" (New Sound, 2009).

As of September 2026, not traced via KVK, OCLC.

Price: €950.00

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