Dejan Despić’s Harmonic Lyre in Brankova lira for Mezzo-Soprano, Baritone, and String Quartet, Op. 150

Abstract

One of the most prolific composers of contemporary Serbian music, Dejan Despić, dedicated over sixty years to composing art songs for voice and various instruments or instrumental ensembles. This paper examines the song cycle for mezzo-soprano, baritone, and string quartet which Despić composed to the verses of the prominent Serbian Romantic poet Branko Radičević and published under the title Brankova lira (Branko’s Lyre). The focus of this paper will be on the harmonic language of these songs, particularly on the manifestations of various elements of traditional, Romantic harmony within the new context of late 20th-century music. Various forms of third relations between keys, the use of the Balkan minor scale, as well as standard and innovative moments in the application of secondary chords, which largely characterize the music of this cycle, will be discussed. In certain songs, the modal harmonic language represents the primary mode of vertical organization and significantly substitutes tonality as the main system of musical linguistics in the work. Furthermore, the role of harmony in interpreting the meaning of the poetic text of selected Radičević’s poems will be examined. The aim of this paper is to discover and present the potential of the tonal and harmonic rhetoric of the songs from Brankova lira, as well as to further expand the theoretical basis for a hermeneutic analysis of the relationship between music, particularly harmony, and the poetic text in compositions belonging to Serbian lyrical vocal music.