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New Sound 45, I/2015 Article received on 8th April 2015 collection and CD under the title of Piano Article accepted on 12th May 2015 Music and the textbook on Renaissance UDC: 781.42 (075.8) (049.32) Vocal Counterpoint constitute a pinnacle in Tošić’s work. In addition, these publica- Ivana Ilić* tions are a real feat in the rich publishing University of Arts in Belgrade activity of the Faculty of Music in Bel- Faculty of Music grade. Department of Music Theory The Piano Music collection encom- passes the entire piano oeuvre of Vladimir Tošić. It is no accident that the composer Vladimir Tošić: Vokalni kontrapunkt chose to present his oeuvre for this instru- renesanse [Renaissance Vocal ment. For, the piano occupies a special Counterpoint; Belgrade: Faculty of place in Tošić’s oeuvre for at least two rea- Music, 2014. 371 pp. sons. First, the composer has actively writ- ISBN 978-86-88619-52-3] ten music for this instrument since the very Музика за клавир [Piano Music; beginning of his career in the mid-1970s. Belgrade: Faculty of Music, 2014; 204 Due to its technical capabilities, the piano, pp. ISBN 979-0-802022-04-1] better than any other instrument, has al- Музика за клавир [Piano Music], CD lowed him to organize his works by means [Belgrade: Faculty of Music, 2014. of long repetitions and continual changes and thus realize his reductionist credo.1 ISBN 978-86-88619-53-0] Second, the piano performs the func- tion of a sort of “basic colour” in Tošić’s With his activities in Serbia’s musical prominently research-oriented composition. world, Vladimir Tošić has literally sought For, this instrument is practically an un- to implement the basic premise of the sub- avoidable “stop” in different instrumental ject to which he has dedicated almost all of and vocal-instrumental variants of a piece. his teaching career: “note against note”, Since the 1990s, this procedure has grown which lies in the basis of vocal counter- into a sort of stylistic trait in the composer’s point, has grown in Tošić’s work into a musical language. Specifically, Tošić has multipart polyphonic texture, combining arranged some of his pieces initially written and intertwining artistic creativity in music for the piano for other solo instruments and and multimedia and activities in teaching instrumental ensembles, and vice versa: he and theory. However, contrary to the postu- first wrote some of his most significant late of complementary contrapuntal lines works (Dual, Voxal, Altus) for other instru- and so closely adhering to his accumulated ments and then arranged them for the piano. artistic and professional experience, these Therefore, Vladimir Tošić’s piano music individual contrapuntal lines are simultane- also testifies to important features in his ously presented to the musical public of overall artistic orientation. Serbia, in a prominent and unique way. The 1 Cf. Vladimir Tošić, Музика за клавир, Bel- * Author contact information: [email protected] grade, Faculty of Music, 2014, I. 204 Reviews The Piano Music collection comprises listener to hear the author’s solo piano opus works written between 1982 and 2014. as a single piece. The building blocks of They are classified by media (solo piano, that “integral work” enter various mutual then two pianos or piano four-hands) and relations and thereby keep revealing the then presented in chronological order. richness of their variety. In the ordering of Therefore, the collection clearly presents the pieces featured on the CD one may note the transformation of Tošić’s compositional three dramaturgical and characteristic technique from modernist rigour and con- wholes that in macro-structural terms re- sistence in using a repetitive mode of work- flect the arc-shaped process represented in ing with material and the processuality of all of Tošić’s works. The endpoints of that musical flow to a post-minimalist “soft- process include Fisija, Medial 2, Varial, ness” in terms of the range of his means of and Medial 1 on one side, and Retida, Alu- expression, as well as the flexibility of de- dium, and Ostial on the other. The central velopmental musical procedures them- position is occupied by Dual – as a sort of selves. Solo works Fisija (Fission), Retida, scherzo culmination; Voxal – as its lyrical and Aludium, as well as Di/fuzija (Dif/fu- opposite; and Simetral – as the transition sion) and Ne/zavisnost (In/dependence) for toward the ceiling of that formal arc. two pianos from the 1980s and early 1990s, The demands that Vladimir Tošić’s present a highly profiled system of reduc- music sets before the performer are quite ing musical components and a total control specific and significantly different from of all the elements that inform the basis of those of the standard piano repertory. an arc-shaped musical process. The works Therefore, in his foreword to the collection, from the 1990s and 2000s (Varial, Dual, rather informative and concrete in theoreti- Ostial, and Voxal for solo piano and Dual, cal terms, the author took great pains to Trial, Altus, Motus, and Echo for two pia- explain how a potential performer should approach his works, not so much in techni- nos), some of which are Tošić’s most com- cal as in intellectual terms. The composer monly performed works, initiated a sort of demands complete objectivity in the treat- accelerando not only in terms of drama- ment of time, extremely regular pulsation, turgy, but also in terms of expanding the set total absence of agogics, absolute continu- of musical means used. Solo works Medial ity, no abrupt cuts, and playing the repeated 1, Medial 2, and Simetral, as well as the models without any changes from their ini- tree-movement work Medial 9 for two pia- tial appearance.2 In the pianist Vladimir nos took off from a new and much freer Cvijić, his collaborator for over 20 years, range of expression and compositional the composer found the right interpreter. technique toward a domain that opened up Not only does Cvijić fully realize the de- only during the last several years. mands described above, but also does it The Piano Music CD contains all of with a thoroughly conceived ease, clarity Vladimir Tošić’s solo piano pieces inter- of sound, sureness of tone, and intrinsic se- preted by the pianist Vladimir Cvijić. Un- renity, which help him to find a direct path like the sheet music collection’s chrono- to the listener. logical order, the CD conception follows a different logic that practically enables the 2 Ibid. 205 New Sound 45, I/2015 Vladimir Tošić’s Renaissance Vocal three aims, which precisely delimit the Counterpoint is the first university-level topic of the book and to a large extent de- textbook on vocal counterpoint in Serbia. termine its contents and conception. With this publication, the author has filled First, the author sought to enable the a void that had existed for many decades in reader to find in one place “all that is Serbian higher-education music-theory lit- needed for a practical and theoretical mas- erature on vocal counterpoint, practically tery of renaissance vocal counterpoint”.3 since the founding of the Music Academy The result of that intent is a rather large and in Belgrade in 1937. At the same time, he exhaustive book. The range of contrapuntal thereby provided a counterpoint to Vlasti- techniques and procedures discussed and mir Peričić’s monumental textbook Instru- interpreted in the book rests primarily on mentalni i vokalno-instrumentalni kontra- the oeuvre of Giovanni Pierluigi da Pal- punkt (Instrumental and Vocal-instrumental estrina (1525–1594), because the author Counterpoint, 1987). regards his work as the “model of a puri- The textbook by Vladimir Tošić is fied style in renaissance vocal polyphonic without precedent in its field, but it still did music”.4 Contrapuntal procedures used by not appear in a totally empty space. That other renaissance authors are discussed to a space was already populated by the high- much lesser extent. Every individual ele- school textbooks of Marko Tajčević (1958) ment of that spectrum is consistently dis- and Vlastimir Peričić (1979, 1991), cussed in terms of the mode and context of Peričić’s notes Counterpoint I–II (1973), its presence in Palestrina’s works. The fi- the translations of books by Otokar Sin nesse and precision that the author pursued (1949) and Bruno Cervenka (1981), as well in such places, explaining important factors as articles on specific issues in counter- in various contrapuntal procedures, bring a point, which have preoccupied – over the special and, in music-theory literature, last 15 years or so –Serbian music theorists quite rare quality in the treatment of the more than before. In his book, Tošić does topic. Thereby, Tošić provides his readers/ not cite all of these sources, but his text students with a broad basis for engaging in does more or less directly refer to that en- a practical and creative production of com- tire context. Tošić’s textbook stands out of pelling renaissance-style vocal textures, that context by its sheer extent, exhaustive- which the author considers an important ness, and analytical detail, with his peda- part of the process of teaching counter- gogical impulse finding the right balance. point. In his textbook, theoretical mastery Renaissance Vocal Counterpoint is a of renaissance vocal counterpoint is viewed result of Vladimir Tošić’s many years of as a finely nuanced understanding of the stylistic norm, taken as Palestrina’s indi- pedagogical practice. It was primarily writ- vidual style, as I already mentioned above. ten for the purposes of teaching counter- point at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade 3 Vladimir Tošić, Vokalni kontrapunkt rene- and is entirely compliant with the current sanse, Belgrade, Fakultet muzičke umetnosti, curriculum.