Jovan Paču
Jovan Paču was a Serbian composer and pianist.
Biography
During his education in Subotica, he distinguished himself as a gifted pianist, and as early as 1863 he played at a public concert. In parallel with his study of medicine in Prague he studied privately with Bedřich Smetana.He has played in Vienna, Budapest, Kiev, Belgrade, Osijek, Kikinda, Pančevo, Vršac and many places in Serbia and Vojvodina. With the inevitable salon virtuosity he stood out with his brilliant technique, and at concerts, he often performed works by Serbian composers, his contemporaries, as well as his own compositions and arrangements of folk tunes. Although using a very simple compositional technique, these works - on folk themes or in the folk spirit - were so popular that the people accepted them as their own. Paču's concerts had a great patriotic significance, especially in Hungary, where Serbs fought for their national rights. His compositions reflect, in addition to the romantic patriotic expression, the Biedermeier salon style of a brilliantly virtuoso character.
Paču was a member of the Serbian Learned Society. He worked as a physician in Kikinda, Sombor, Novi Sad, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Kiev. He died in Zagreb in 1902, and was buried in Kikinda according to his will.