Antun Dobronic

Antun Dobronic, Croatian composer, teacher, writer. Born in 1878 in Jelsa, island of Hvar, died in 1955 in Zagreb. In 1905 he graduated as music teacher and in 1912 from the Master Class in composition and conducting at the Prague Conservatory. After several years as teacher, in 1922 he was appointed a professor of Zagreb Conservatory of Music. Throughout life Dobronic collected, studied and edited folk songs. He published hundreds of critiques, polemic articles, reviews and theoretical studies. Dobronic was one of creators and was the most consistent champion of the national style in Croatian music. He composed several hundred works, mostly based on folk music: ten cycles of songs for solo, fifteen cycles of chorale music, suites and rhapsodies, two masses, one motet, fifty piano compositions (in sixteen cycles) seventeen suites for instruments solo (violin, violoncello, wind and brass instruments, harp) twenty compositions for strings and chamber orchestra, nine symphonies and four symphonic suites, twenty compositions for the choir and orchestra, fourteen operas, six ballets and stage music for the Croatian Renaissance comedies. The volume and significance of his opus earned Dobronic the place among the most significant Croatian composers of the twentieth century.