Ilja Zeljenka

Ilya Zeljenka ( born December 21, 1932 in Bratislava, † July 13, 2007 in Bratislava ) was a Slovak composer.

Life

Zeljenka took during school hours private lessons in piano, harmony and counterpoint. From 1951 to 1956 he studied with Ján Cikker at the Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in Bratislava. 1957 to 1961 he worked as a dramaturge for the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra and from 1961 to 1968 as a producer and lecturer at the Czechoslovak Radio in Bratislava. End of the 1960s, he took over the chairmanship of the Slovak Society of Composers, from which he was excluded in 1972 for political reasons and largely ignored in the sequence as a composer.

Beginning of the 1990s was Zeljenka President of the Slovak Music Union and Director of Melos Étos, an international festival of contemporary music in Bratislava. 1985 to 1996 he taught at the Academy for Music and Performing Arts Bratislava, where, among other things, Alexander Mihalič became his pupil.

Work

Stylistically, starting about Prokofiev, Bartók, Honegger and Stravinsky found in the 1960s serial input techniques in Zeljenkas extensive compositional activities. He also installed an electronic sounds and was the first Slovak composer, the electro- acoustic means in film music anwandte. As a result, he also experimented with quarter-tone music. From the 1970s, he also took up influences of folk music and neo-romanticism.

Zeljenka wrote two operas, choral works (including a " Slovak Passion" ), orchestral works ( including 9 symphonies and concertos ), piano and chamber music (including 14 string quartets, 25 piano sonatas ) and numerous film scores.