Davorin Jenko
Davorin Jenko was a Slovene and Serbian composer. He is sometimes considered the father of Slovenian national Romantic music. Among other songs, he composed the melody for the Serbian national anthem "Bože pravde", the former Slovenian national anthem "Naprej, zastava Slave", and the popular Serbian and Montenegrin song "Serbian Marseillaise".
Biography
Jenko was born in the Upper Carniolan village of Dvorje, [Cerklje na Gorenjskem|Dvorje], in what was then the Austrian Empire, and baptized Martinus Jenko. After graduating from high school in Trieste, he went to Vienna, where he studied law. During his Viennese stay, he founded the Slovene Choir Society in Vienna.In 1862, he moved to the town of Pančevo in southern Vojvodina, now in Serbia, but then in the Hungarian part of the Danube monarchy, where he worked as the choirmaster of the local Serbian Orthodox Church. He later moved on the other side of the border to Belgrade, where he worked as a composer in the Serbian National Theatre. In 1865 Jenko was elected member of the Serbian Learned Society and in 1887, he was named among the first four members of the Academy of Arts of the Royal [Serbian Academy of Sciences].
He lived in Serbia until 1897, when he moved to Ljubljana in his native Carniola. He died in Ljubljana, and was buried in the Žale cemetery in the Bežigrad district. In Belgrade, an international music competition is dedicated to Davorin Jenko.
Works
During his life, Jenko composed several pieces both in Slovene and Serbian. He wrote the first Serbian operetta and composed the music for the Serbian national anthem, based on the lyrics of Jovan Đorđević.Most of his Slovene pieces were composed during his stay in Vienna. In 1860, he composed the music for the patriotic song Naprej, zastava Slave for the lyrics written by his cousin Simon Jenko. He also composed several other Slovene patriotic poems, which later became a crucial part of the Slovenian national canon.