Stanislava Gajić

Stanislava Gajić (1980, Sremska Mitrovica) studied composition at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad under Profs. Miroslav Štatkić and Zoran Mulić. She received her master’s and doctoral degrees at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade, under the supervision of Prof. Isidora Žebeljan. As a student, she won scholarships from the Embassy of the Kingdom of Norway, Goethe Foundation, and the Endowment for Talents at the University of Novi Sad. She is an alumna of Fondacija Privrednik (Business Foundation), supported by the Karađorđević family. In 2007, she won the Vasilije Mokranjac award for Spin, a symphonic orchestra piece, and in 2010 she won the White Angel Medal from Fondacija Privrednik for her achievements, years of hard work, and pursuit of honesty, receiving, and giving. In 2014, her composition Odjeci Žutibora (Echoes of Goldpine Woods) won first award at the international competition Donne in Musica and at the same competition the following year her composition Koridon i Tirzis (Corydon and Thyrsis) won second prize. Works by Gajić have been performed across Serbia, as well as in Germany, Italy, Argentina, England, and the United States.

Pokajnička pesma (Penitential Song) from the cycle Putovanja i razgovori (Travels and Talks) describes the internal mental state of the unfortunate Orpheus who, having left his dear Eurydice in Hades, found himself alone and desperate. Working on this song, I was inspired by something that Stanislav Vinaver said in this quote: “Today we are entering a spirit of rearranging, a spirit of flowing, a dynamic of chaos, a revolution of the expressed… we are opening new rooms, where new wizards and dragons have been imprisoned, and upon freeing them, we throw them, too, into the general dance of mutual interaction… It is not enough to create a new world. A new world must move, change, live, exist and persist in its own authentic dynamic furies. Both the moving and the moved must be new. And only that justifies and makes a world”. I sought to produce this song as a specific type of movement, proceeding along the path from the “moved” to the “vanished”, from the love of Orpheus and Eurydice to eternal love.