CIMM 13 12 2023 DIXIT DOMINUS AD ADAM - II
Ensemble USZ started to perform sacred music of Croatia almost at the beginning of its career but especially after we met dr. Marijan Grgić, musicologist and historian of art, one of our best experts for medieval sacred music and art from Dalmatia and the Croatian coast and the most meritorious person that in Zadar, in the monastery of the Benedictine sisters the Permanent exhibition of church art has been established.
The ideal place where we performed was always the church of St. Mark on Zagreb’s Upper Town, but also various Istrian and Dalmatian churches such as Euphrasiana in Poreč, Rab, St. Donat in Zadar, Trogir, Hvar, etc.
Starting from 1976 in France, we performed this repertoire regularly on all our foreign tours in Italy, Germany, Great Britain, Belgium, and the former Soviet Union.
Relatively shortly before Mira and me were to leave forever our homeland, in the fall of 1983, we recorded the program "Dixit Dominus ad Adam" (it got its name from one of the compositions from medieval Zadar which, like several others, was transcribed by the late Dr. Marijan Grgić) in the church of Holy Cross, an excellent example of contemporary sacred architecture with outstanding acoustics.
In addition to works of religious medieval music from Croatia (exclusively from Primorje and Dalmatia) in Latin and Croatian languages, the program included a Glagolitic “Vjeruju” (Credo or "I believe") and as instrumental interludes, traditional dances from Dalmatia performed on the Dalmatian Lyra-Lijerica and Istrian dances performed on Sopile (traditional shawms still played in Istria and on island of Krk) - a practice that we used very successfully from the already mentioned tour in France in 1976, onwards.
The combination of folk dances with religious music follows the idea of more significant festivities where one part of the people listens to the singing of the friars or sisters in the church and the other part, in front of the church, to the concert of folk musicians who arrived from the hinterland of coastal towns, just as it was recorded on several occasions in archival notes or reports of Croatian or foreign travellers.
This CIMM is dedicated to the memory of two of our dear colleagues (both excellent early music multi-instrumentalists and orchestral soloists) who are no longer with us; cellist Tibor Kuti (1945-2012) and oboist Mladen Požgaj (1945-2021). I thank them from the bottom of my heart for their long-term cooperation and wish them an eternal rest!