Page 351 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2026 Skladateljska društva nekoč in danes.../Composers’ Societies Past and Present...

Summaries
Fatima Hadžić, Amra Bosnić
The Sarajevo Period of Dane Škerl’s Artistic Activity
Dane Škerl (Ljubljana, 1931–Bovec, 2002) was a Slovenian composer, con-
ductor and professor. He graduated in Composition in 1952 from the Acad-
emy of Music, University of Ljubljana in the class of Lucijan Marija Šk-
erjanc. Afterwards, Škerl headed for further specialisation to Austria and
Germany, where he was active as a conductor and music teacher. From 1960
to 1970, he worked at the Academy of Music in Sarajevo as a professor, af-
ter which he returned to Slovenia, where he worked as a professor of com-
position at the Academy of Music in Ljubljana until his retirement in 1995.
The paper strives to describe and contextualise the Škerl’s 10 years of ac-
tivity in the cultural life of Sarajevo, with special reference to his activi-
ty as a composer in terms of the compositional technique and stylistic ten-
dencies. Besides his pedagogical role, he was strongly involved in the social
and cultural life of Sarajevo as a collaborator with Radio Sarajevo (serving
as advisor, recording engineer, and conductor), a member of various juries,
forums, and associations, and artistic councils – particularly with the Op-
era and the Sarajevo Philharmonic. During this period, Škerl composed
over 20 works, mostly symphonic, concertante and vocal-instrumental.
The genre diversity of the Škerl’s opus is emphasised through directing the
focus of analytical attention to three compositions written in three differ-
ent points of time, showing the evolution of his compositional style: Pet
skladb [Five Pieces] for clarinet and string orchestra (1961), Symphony No.
2 (1963) and Bagatele [Bagatelles] for piano (1968), indicating the persistence
of the Neoclassical orientation as a firm stylistic ground based on an evi-
dent adherence to a particular harmonic centre and thematic way of shap-
ing the material, but also the emergence of expressionistic tendencies man-
ifested through serialism. Although Škerl remained faithful to the “middle
path” between the tendencies, it is important to consider the historical con-
text: since neither Bosnian-Herzegovinian composers nor those from the
other Yugoslav republics had strongly expressed contemporary, much less
avant-garde tendencies at the time, during the Sarajevo artistic period Škerl
demonstrated boldness by opening new perspectives in musical composi-
tion and contributing to the burgeoning trend of musical experimentation.
Keywords: Dane Škerl, Slovenian Composers, Music Culture in
Sarajevo, Neoclassical Style, Expressionism Tendencies

351