Page 313 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2026 Skladateljska društva nekoč in danes.../Composers’ Societies Past and Present...

The Slovene Composer Ivo Petrić and Društvo slovenskih skladateljev
a tireless performer of music composed by many of his colleagues as well as
himself. This clearly made him able to judge the technical requirements of
the music which was kept in the society’s library.
Even more significant was the fact that Petrić was the founder and di-
rector of the Slavko Osterc Ensemble which was formed in 1962 to perform
Osterc’s Nonet and works by Petrić and Ramovš. His conducting studies
with Danilo Švara helped him to perform new music including conduct-
ing the important performances of his then avant-garde Croquis sonores
as well as Enneafonia by Primož Ramovš which were played at the War-
saw Autumn Festival in 1963. As director of the Ensemble he was responsi-
ble for the commissioning, performance and later recording of large num-
bers of ensemble works composed by his contemporaries. The presence of
this ensemble helped to encourage the composition of many new works.
The performances of the works of his contemporaries (and himself) took
place in many places in Slovenia, neighbouring Croatia and a number of
other countries. 3
Perhaps most important of all, Ivo Petrić was a prolific compos-
4
er whose work stands high today, some years after his death. At first he
adopted a modernist tonal idiom owing something to the influence of Hin-
demith and Prokofiev. His move in the early 1960s to the freely coordinated
textural techniques used by some Polish composers, notably Krzystof Pen-
derecki, was a lead followed by some of his contemporaries, notably those of
the Pro musica viva group. His ability to show that these works can be very
effective was clearly demonstrated by his performances and recordings. As
the founder and director of the Slavko Osterc Ensemble he was responsible
for performances of large numbers of mostly Slovene works, for a number
of pioneering recordings of Slovene music when this was almost unheard

3 Ivo Petrić, “Jubilej ansambla Slavko Osterc,” Zvuk, nos. 83–4 (1973): 1, 39–42; An-
drej Rijavec, “Skladateljska skupina okrog ansambla »Slavko Osterc«/Die Kom-
ponistengruppe um das Ensemble »Slavko Osterc«,” in Slovenska glasba v preteklosti
in sedanjosti/Slowenische Musik in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, ed. Primož Kuret
(Ljubljana: Kres, 1992), 260–269. See the paper by Jernej Weiss in this volume: “The
Slavko Osterc Ensemble (1961–1981): The Principal Promoter of the Creativity of the
Society of Slovene Composers Abroad”.
4 Andrej Rijavec, Slovenska glasbena dela (Ljubljana: Državna založba Slovenije,
1979), 223–32; Matjaž Barbo, Pro musica viva (Ljubljana: Znanstveni inštitut Filozof-
ske fakultete, 2001), 140–48, 224–7; Leon Stefanija, O glasbeno novem: ob sloven-
ski instrumentalni glasbi zadnje četrtine 20. stoletja (Ljubljana: Študentska založba,
2001).

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