Djuro Živković, (1975, Serbia); since 2000 he has been living in Stockholm, Sweden. His early interest in folklore, the Orthodox Church tradition and Byzantine music has led him to develop a variety of compositional techniques such as polyrhythmic, improvisation, special harmony based scales, microtones, layer-polyphony and heterophony. His “harmonic field” technique has been a topic of academic research at the University of Music in Graz (Austria). His music is regularly commissioned and performed across the world by leading musicians and orchestras, such as Klangforum Wien, the New York Philharmonic, and Concertgebouw Amsterdam, as well as festivals such as Warsaw Autumn, Zagreb Biennale, Musikprotokoll ORF, Nordic Music Days etc.

He has received many international grants and prizes for his work. Such include the Grawemeyer Award 2014 (USA), the Mokranjac-Award 2012 (SER) , Pre-Art Prize 2005 (CH) and the Swedish Grammy Award-Grammis (SE) 2009.

Psalm XIII was composed during three days in late May 2014 as the final part of “Patterns of intuition”, an arts-based research project hosted by the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz and funded by the Austrian Science Fund. It was premiered by Klangforum Wien, and then orchestrated for (symphonic) string orchestra.

The composition is built on a single melody line, a chant – as a singer in church, synagogue or mosque; and a single pedal tone called ison, a kind of repetitive sound that should be played as a mantra-background, imitating church bells, sitar or nasal singing.

My intention was to develop music out of this simple genome and to find an entirely new creation – echoes that come from the heart’s humility and compassion.