Marko Tajčević was born in Osijek (today’s Croatia) on
the 29th of January 1900. His music education began
with violin studies at the Croatian Music Institution
(Hrvatski glazbeni zavod) at the time the First World
War broke out in Europe. In 1920 he went to Prague
for further music studies where he took composition
lessons with Vaclav Stepan. Prague, an important
cultural center, made a big impact on young Tajčević.
Unfortunately, because of his very poor financial
situation he had to leave Prague after a year. For a
short period of time, Vienna seemed like a good place
where Tajčević could continue his music studies. After
spending some time in Vienna, where he took lessons
with Joseph Marx and Max Springer, he went back to his
country to complete his studies.

In Zagreb together with three other composers (Z.
Grgoševic, J. Gotovac, and A. Novak) Tajčević prepared
a concert in the series “Naša pučka lirika” (Our
Folklore), which started in 1923. For this concert
each of the composers wrote new songs for voice and
piano based on folk music. Tajčević composed six songs
for this occasion and the performance of one of them
was so successful that the audience asked for encores
four times during that same evening. This was a
great accomplishment for young Tajčević.

During the period 1924-40, Tajčević worked in Zagreb
as a teacher. Teaching was Tajčević’s life career,
intermingled with composing, conducting, and writing
articles and music critiques. With other colleagues
from Zagreb, he helped form the Lisinski Music School.
Apart from teaching in school and composing, Tajčević
was also very active as a choral conductor. He led the
choirs “Balkan”, “Srpsko pevačko društvo”, and “Sloga”
before moving to Belgrade in 1940, where he continued
his conducting activity. His last concert as a choir
conductor was in 1945 with the Central Choir of
Belgrade, which had just been freed from the Germans.
Moving to Belgrade did not stop Tajčević in his
teaching career. In 1945 he became a professor of
theory and composition at the Belgrade Academy of
Music, later renamed Faculty of Music Arts (Fakultet
muzicke umetnosti). Tajčević also wrote music
critiques beginning in 1922 while he was still in
Zagreb, and he kept writing them until 1955. They were
published in magazines and newspapers such as Obzor,
Riječ, Pokret, Vijenac, Jutarnji list, Zvuk, and
Politika. After a considerably long and productive
life Marko Tajčević died and was buried in Belgrade in
1984.

Tajčević’s complete output totals fifty-four
compositions. It includes works for solo voice, choir,
chamber orchestra, strings, woodwinds, and piano. He
also published books on theory as well as on harmony.
His book Osnovna teorija muzike (The Elements of Music
Theory) has been extensively used in music schools in
the former Yugoslavia. Tajčević’s output is not large,
but it is well crafted. He liked to work slowly and
was aware of the responsibilities of signing the
completed work. The authentic style of Tajčević is
expressed through small forms — mostly miniatures, solo
songs, and similar short pieces. For many critics, he
was a “superb master of the miniature”. Once he
mentioned that he was amazed by the power and depth of
some miniatures such as Chopin’s Prelude in C minor,
Op. 28 No. 20, or Bach’s minuets. This type of piece
was probably an important inspiration for his own
compositions.

Piano works were the main compositional focus of
Tajčević before the Second World War. After the war he
began composing more often for strings, recalling his
first musical steps with violin as his instrument. He
wrote six works for strings, four of them titled
divertimentos for three violins or string orchestra.
Chaconne is his only piece for violin solo, and his
only work for a wind instrument is Prelidijum i igra
(Prelude and Dance) for flute solo. Vocal pieces (solo
and choir) occupied his creativity throughout his
life. He wrote songs for solo voice with piano and for
female, male, children’s, and mixed choruses. His last
piece is Zagorska rapsodija from 1979 for mixed choir.

Marko Tajčević was an important composer and musician
whose work is recognized not only in Yugoslavia, but
internationally as well. Articles about him have
appeared in dictionaries and encyclopedias such as the
New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians,
Enciclopedia Salvat de la Musica, and Die Musik in
Geschichte und Gegenwart. Some of his piano
pieces — Sedam balkanskih igara (Seven Balkan Dances),
Medjimurske (Songs from Mur Island), Srpske igre
(Serbian Dances), and Prva svita (The First
Suite) — were published in Yugoslavia (Prosveta, Frajt,
Hrvatski glazbeni zavod) as well as in Germany (Henle
Musikverlag, Schott, Hans Gerig Musikverlag), the
former Soviet Union (Musgiz), and the United States
(Rongwen Music, Inc., Warner Brothers, Broude
Brothers, Ltd.). Some famous pianists — such as
Rubinstein, Friedmann, Borovski, and Orlov — have
included Seven Balkan Dances in their repertoire.

(Contribution by Radmila Stojanovic-Kiriluk <ljgljg@yahoo.com>.)

Studied music with Blagoje Bersa, Franjo Dugan and Fran Lhotka in Zagreb, Václav Stepán in Prague and Joseph Marx in Vienna. Since 1929 he works as a music teacher, music critic and choir leader in Zagreb. He is one of the co-founders of the music school Lisinski. In 1940 he moved to Belgrado where he was a professor in music theory at the Music Academy from 1945-1966. He published a.o. General Musicology (Belgrado 1949, 3rd edition 1963) and Counterpoint (Belgrado 1958).

This information was found in Das Grosse Handbuch der Klaviermusik, Peter Hollfelder, ISBN 3-930656-49-3 (1996), Nikol Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Hamburg.