Editor’s note
In 1970s, Papandopulo finally got the welldeserved place in Croatian music circles. Orchestras, operas, colleagues musicians were just overwhelming him with commissions and requests to write something for them, and he readily responded to everyone’s appeals, sometimes with completely impossible deadlines.
In those years, the composer gathered – for a man approaching the end of his 7th decade of life – an unbelievable strength and concentration and left a great amount of exceptional compositions, from solo pieces to great theatre music and oratorio forms. In this abundance, there are also many compositions inspired by long gone times. Thus, Papandopulo wrote the Hommage a Bach, Hommage a Sorkočević and, finally, the Pintarichiana.
Such parodying of other composers was not new to Papandopulo; indeed, if we take a closer look at his stylistic procedures, we can see that he was constantly aware of music that surrounded him. Jazz, dodecaphony, traditional music, pop-music, Baroque, Classical, all these were the fields with which Papandopulo discussed lively through composing.
In a similar way, he noticed the already slightly forgotten Franciscan composer, Fortunat (Josip) Pintarić, who worked in Varaždin and Zagreb throughout the first half of the 19th century. It was Ladislav Šaban, a pianist also active as a musicologist, who drew Papandopulo’s attention to piano works in Pintarić’s opus. Pintarić died in 1867, and the 100th anniversary of his death was a good occasion to rescue his music from oblivion and present it to the public. The original melodic invention of this monk and Illyrian inspired Papandopulo to create a little suite for string orchestra. Every movement is built on some of the themes originally composed for the piano. On the other hand, in 1974, the Zagreb Soloists were celebrating their 20th anniversary, and asked Papandopulo to write something that was to be performed at the ceremonious concert. These two forces merged together in composer’s work on this humorous score, in which we can hardly distinguish where Pintarić ends and Papandopulo begins. Just like Erika Krpan, an excellent connoisseur of Papandopulo’s oeuvre and the guardian of his legacy, writes:
The piece belongs to that part of the composer’s opus in which he was building a composition based on music heritage, sometimes Croatian, and occasionally
also that of great European masters. Such impulse sometimes resulted in mere rearrangements, and sometimes a creation of authentic artistic value was made. he inspired loveliness of Pintarić’s melodies was the fundament for Papandopulo’s skilful play of parts and his impeccable feeling for form. The speed of writing had caused several tiny mistakes and inconsistencies which I have adjusted and corrected for this edition. I hope that this Apollonian music will keep brightening up the hearts of many admirers of Papandopulo’s music for a long time.
Cantus d.o.o., 2013.
Edition No: Can. 102-3469