Svetlana Savić (1971, Serbia) is a Full Professor of the Faculty of Music in Belgrade. From 2011 she is a lecturer at the Interdisciplinary studies at University of Art in Belgrade.

She won the Stevan Mokranjac prize for 2014 (for her piece Zarobljena /Trapped/, for female choir and electronics) and review Musica Clasica’s Composer of the Year 2016.

Svetlana Savic has collaborated with renowned Serbian and foreign performers, ensembles, and orchestras. Her compositions were commissioned for Belgrade Music Festival (BEMUS), International Review of Composers, Cello Fest and other festivals in Serbia, USA, Austria, Italy, Germany, France, Israel, Lithuania, Russia, Greece, Japan, South Africa…

Her major works include The Poor Sad Don Juan’s Daughter for soloists, women’s choir, and electronics, Quincunx for string orchestra, Sustineo for symphony orchestra, Songs about Stars for women’s choir and chamber orchestra, Sonnets for female vocal, violoncello, piano, and electronics and Beings Without Faces for soloists, mixed choir and string orchestra.

About the piece

Orfej u glavnom gradu (četiri snoviđenja) (Orpheus in the Capital City /Four Dreams/) is a poem by Saša Radojčić, professor of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, writer, poet, literary critic, doctor of philosophy: https://flu.bg.ac.rs/sasa-radojcic/

This is the first song I didn’t reshape to adapt to the music. After Orpheus, I didn’t change a single word in the songs I chose to compose – Orpheus changed me. The voice is alone with the sounds of the city, alone in a city on which a big bomb will fall. It will kill the poor, the hungry; it will kill hunger, shame and sin. Everyone runs away, but some also come back, look back, look for something or someone. Everywhere is fear, existence has been turned upside down; the path from pain to loss, what we are running away from, and there is no end to it. Some are still looking back and looking for…