Marko Ruždjak (Zagreb, 9 July, 1946) graduated in clarinet (1968) and in composition (1972, under Milo Cipra) from the Academy of Music Zagreb. Later on he went to Paris to study with Ivo Malec and Pierre Schaeffer, and then to Cologne, where he was a student of Milko Kelemen at the Hochschule für Musik. “His music was performed with great success even while he was still a student and was marked at that early date with traits that have remained characteristic for it all the way. These traits are: the ‘readability’ of its microstructures, which include repetition as an essential element; the use of sound parameters measurable by the sense of hearing rather than by invented measuring systems; the careful use of details which are not necessarily treated as microcentres containing all the directing energies of the musical form as a whole. The musical order of Marko Ruždjak goes back to some perennial sources and seems to have grown out of his disciplined adherence to tradition” (Eva Sedak). There is not a single piece of Ruždjak that has not been performed; many of them were commissioned by the various ensembles and performed many times in numerous countries (e.g. Barabas XX commissioned by Ivan Goran Kovaèiæ Academic Choir, or Classical Garden commissioned by the Zagreb String Quartet). Some other important compositions include Trois Chansons de Geste for voice and orchestra, Diaphana for choir and orchestra, Canticum columnarum for wind orchestra (commissioned by the Zagreb Radio Television Symphony Orchestra), Ben misurato for wind quintet (commissioned by the Zagreb Wind Quintet), Madrigal – From Susan’s Diary for female choir, Ad marginem for orchestra (commissioned by the Zagreb Radio Television Symphony Orchestra), Versus for mezzo-soprano and clarinet (commisioned by the University of Nottingham), Three Flights Of Phoenix for mixed choir, Andantino for strings and harpsichord (commissioned by the Zagreb Soloists), Before The Snow for string quartet (commissioned by the Zagreb Quartet), Sunset for brass quintet etc. “Marko Ruždjak has been very prudent in the choice of rules limiting the space of his music and very fastidious with regard to the material he uses; he is trying to recapture the musical features rejected in recent times as too recognisable, the features which we were taught to read for centuries and have, therefore, in a manner of speaking, become tired of; Ruždjak, however, has not” (Sedak). Ruždjak also wrote incidental music for many plays, such as Captain Oliver by Radovan Ivšiæ, Shakespeare’s Richard III and Schweik In The Second World War by Bertold Brecht (Gavella Theatre, Zagreb), Duhi (Ghosts) by Drago Gervais (Ivan Zajc Theatre, Rijeka), Don Quixote by Mikhail Bulgakov (Ohrid Summer Festival), Anouilh’s Le Bal des Voleurs (Croatian National Theatre, Zagreb), etc. He got the Seven Secretaries SKOJ Youth Award twice (1971 and 1972) and in 1977 he was awarded the Josip Slavenski Award for the composition Madrigal – From Susan’s Diary. He also received Vladimir Nazor Annualy Award in 1988, Meðugorje Award in 1995. and twice Porin Award in 1996 and 1998. Since 1979 he has been teaching at the Academy of Music in Zagreb, since 1991 as a full professor in the Department of Composition and Theory of Music.
Web: http://www.mic.hr/MIC.786850:INDIVIDUALS:46751:15,ID