Sublime and precise: Mind sonorities of Vlastimir Peri i

Author discusses the course and results of the professional activity of Serbian composer and musicologist Vlastimir Peri i (1927-2000). At the beginning of his career Peri i was a promising young composer who won a prestigous Vercelli Competition Prize in 1950 for his String quartet. His style was characterized by post-romantic musical expression. He was convinced that a tonal system was the only acceptable base for making new music. In that sense, he came close to Paul Hindemith's approach to the world of new sonorities. The author explains Peri i 's position in the context of Serbian music of the second half of the 20th century. He was considered somewhat conservative because he never accepted avant-garde techniques and procedures. His imagination and concentration on compositional process made him competent in the technical realization of his rich musical ideas. On the other hand, he was a shy personality who had never been penetrating enough to promote his own works. Hence, during the last decades of his life (when he stopped composing) almost no one was conscious of the great value of his works. Peri i suddenly interrupted his compositional career in the mid 1960s and thereafter devoted himself to theoretical work. His books on counterpoint harmony, and Serbian composers, many articles on contemporary Serbian composers, as well as his major multilingual dictionary of musical terms which includes seven languages, were among the finest fruits of Serbian theoretical achievements in the field of music. Now is the moment to reexamine Peri i 's opus because his compositional achievements, as well as his theoretical studies, were of the highest quality. Peri i was a real part of the European music elite as a composer and musicologist, but he never received adequate professional recognition, especially in a broader European context.