A Review by Prof. Thomas J. Butler of the concert of the "Kir Stefan Srbin" Women’s Choir of Smederevo at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, November 24, 1999.
© 2000 The Herald of the St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Church of Boston
January 2000

On November 24, the day before Thanksgiving and one of the worst days of the year for any public event in the United States -- since people are either preparing for the holiday or travelling home to be with their families -- the "Kir Stefan Srbin" young women’s choir of Smederevo presented a concert at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Only a few days earlier, the "Kir Stefan Choir" had taken first prize in the International Choir Competition at Fort Lauderdale, Florida (November 18-19), where they were sponsored by a branch of the German group "Musica Mundi." The Serbian choristers, who stayed in the Ft.Lauderdale homes of "Florida’s Singing Sons Boys Choir", competed against choirs from North and South America and Europe. After their success in Florida, they traveled to New York City, where they presented two concerts on November 23d, one at the United Nations and the other at the Cathedral of Saint Sava. The next day, the young women, together with their director Milan Ilic, bused to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they were to close their East Coast tour with a performance at Harvard University.

Upon arrival in Cambridge, the singers were greeted at the City Hall by Mayor Francis Duehay and City Councillor Kathy Born. After reading a "Proclamation of Welcome", the Mayor gave Conductor Ilic a golden key to the city. In his remarks, Duehay said that the "Kir Stefan Choir" is surely "the best singing group that has come to Cambridge during the past century". That this was not extravagant praise, the Choir proved by responding to the Mayor’s request for "a song" with Stevan Mokranjac’s "Osma Rukovet." As they left City Hall, the 22 singers were each given an autographed pen as a memento.

At Harvard the audience gathered slowly, ("like a Serbian train leaving the station", mused one observer), while the choir members got dressed and were warming up in an adjacent room. Gradually the auditorium became full, so that in the end many visitors had to stand. The general mood was subdued -- there was not the usual excitement of an audience before a concert. Yet when the singers, whose average age was 18, came out onto the stage, dressed in their stately medieval costumes, they immediately impressed the audience by their seriousness and self- assurance. Their director seemed almost severe as he quietly commanded their attention. Children in the audience, responding to the general mood, did not make a sound. Nor did the audience greet each sublime song with wild clapping, as the choir went through the first part of their repertoir, which consisted entirely of sacred church music. People understood that it wasn’t appropriate to clap for sacred music, although at times they could not restrain themselves from light applause for pieces that were especially exquisite.

"Exquisite" is indeed the word for the "Kir Stefan Srbin" choir and its director, Milan Ilic, who led the singers and the audience through a full gamut of emotions, from the awe inspiring majesty of Stevan Mokranjac’s "Cherubic Hymn" to the soaring, delicate strains of Marko Tajcevic’s "Vospojte". Vojislav Ilic’s "Plac Beograda," with its insistent cry of "placi," brought some in the audience to tears.

The second part of the program -- traditional and contemporary music -- began with the "Gusle starostavne" of Dragoljub Sarkovic, a former choir director, who some thirty years ago brought Serbian choir on a victorious tour of England and the U.S. Sarkovic’s retrospective "Gusle" plumbs a range of emotions, ending with a lament for the broken instrument. This image reminded the listener of the dying out of the folk tradition, as well as of the decline of traditional Serbian society with its roots in the countryside. The song also derives some of its pathos from the composer’s recognition of man’s mortality. It was amazing how these young singers, handicapped by the heat and stuffiness in the Harvard auditorium, as well as by their own fatigue, were able to convey the deep feeling in this nostalgic song.

Mukline ("Silences") by Svetislav Bozic, a modern composer, evokes the theme of "Kosovo" and the women who waited for word from the battlefield. In the song, women ask about the fate of their loved ones, while the silences ("mukline") they encounter are devastating. The majesty and sweep of this composition, its versatile returns to the same theme, remind us that these "Kosovo" women are the mothers and sisters of Serbian history, who have borne in silence the sacrifice of their loved ones.

The mood of the concert lightened considerably, as the young women switched to a medly of "Lazarus" songs, traditionally sung in the village in springtime by groups of young women travelling from house to house. They remind their country listeners that just as Lazarus arose from the dead, so has spring left the grasp of winter. The composition by Dimitrije Golemovic recreated vividly -- under Milan Ilic’s skillful conducting -- the excitement of young girls who are passing from girlhood to womanhood.

The link between Serbian folk culture and modern music was highlighted by Stevan Mokranjac’s "Osma Rukovet" and "Kozar", as the composer blended the techniques of modern composition with the traditional melodies of Serbia. Of course, this is concert music, not village song, but it still retains the haunting tonalities of the countryside. Anyone who has ever heard other choirs sing Mokranjac has to marvel at the way Milan Ilic modulated the tonalities of these songs, treating certain moments with a delicacy that the composer himself could only have dreamed of.

Perhaps the most demanding piece of the evening was Jozef Karai’s "Night", which traces the inner state of a man who has lost his way in the "forest" and is subjected to all sorts of night sounds. Frighteningly beautiful, but extremely demanding technically, as it slides from stark crescendos to pulsating pianissimos, this was a piece which, as Milan Ilic explained to the audience beforehand, "very few choirs would ever try to sing."

After the concert, a retired singer in the audience, who once sang with the Harvard-Radcliffe Glee Club when they performed with the Boston Symphony under Serge Koussevitsky, exclaimed that what impressed her most was the young women’s professionalism, as well as Milan Ilic’s absolute control. She lauded the subtle colors and tonal variations -- especially, the delicate pianissimos -- and the exceptional range of their repertoire, for which she gave the Conductor maximum credit. She claimed that the young women of Smederevo’s "Kir Stefan" Choir were the best she had ever heard and that they were "certainly on a level with the Shaw Chorale", which is the group by which professional choirs in America are most often measured.

Professor Thomas J. Butler, Harvard University