Choir Singer with heart pillow © Bruno Seidl

Let's spread some love - it's Valentine's week!

How singing was the key to the love of your life

Choir Stories

Last week we asked the recipients of our "Choral Directions" newsletter to share their personal love stories with us. We hoped for some inspiration and love for us and everyone else out there, and actually received some touching stories, we would like to share with you in these days:

Music and Love
(by Anna Maria Kovenz-Vujic, synKope Publisher)

We did not meet at a concert or in a choir, but rather in 1974 in Budapest at the outdoor swimming pool Szécsenyi, yet our love had a lot to do with music.

My future husband from Belgrade told me right away in fluent Hungarian that he had received a scholarship from the Hungarian state as a musician at the "Franz List Academy of Music" and was therefore staying in Budapest.  As children, we grew up together with my brother with classical music and our mother denied us listening to music only as a "punishment". We used to listen to the best classical music records every day, so I was immediately enthusiastic about the new acquaintance.

We went for a walk the next day, and I whistled an aria from Mozart's opera "Don Giovanni" to Aleksandar, it was the famous aria of Zerlinetta, if I remember correctly.

I don't want to say that this fact was the reason for our subsequent marriage (after 3.5 years), but I impressed the young Serbian musician very much. We later attended together the conducting courses of Kurt Masur, Igor Markevitch and Sergiu Chelibidake (Aleksandar as an active participant, I only as a spectator), and as a young wife I sang in all the choirs conducted by my husband Aleksandar Vujic in Belgrade, and later in Sauerlach, Bavaria. I was present when he received two prizes in Zwickau (a first prize for a "Vaterunser" version for Women's Choirs, as well as a third prize for "Ehre sei Dir") at the international choir competition, and I was also present during many of his tours as a guest to INTERKULTUR's choir festivals.

My love of music made it possible to live with someone so dedicated to music: as a professor at the Belgrade University of Music, as an organizer of various concerts with his choir "Madrigal Choir of the Belgrade University of Music" and his chamber orchestra SINFONIETTA Belgrade, and above all as a composer, conductor and chamber music musician (pianist). He was the Artistic Director of the newly founded Serbian Choral Union from 2003 on, and a participant in the Choir Olympics in Busan (Gold Medal with "Juventus Cantat" and Gold Medal with the Madrigal Choir from Belgrade in Budapest 2009), a juror in various choral competitions organized by INTERKULTUR or AGEC, eg. 2003 at the Johannes Brahms Choir Festival & Competition in Wernigerode, 2004 and 2008 at the International Choir Competitions in Bremen, 2006 at the Choir Olympics in Xiamen (China), 2009 at the Choir Competition in Neerpelt, 2010 at the Choir Conductors Competition in St. Petersburg and at many other choir contests in Greece, Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Belgium, Greece and Austria...

Since he was fluent not only in Serbian but also in Hungarian, German and English, and could also communicate a little in Greek and Spanish, he was really invited abroad very often. His optimism, his good communication skills and his choral works in German, English, Latin, Serbian, Hungarian ("Our Father", "Ave Maria", "Had gad y", "Gloria"or "With You" made him a welcome guest at many choir events and numerous choirs have included his works on their recordings.

On September 6, 2017, Aleksandar S. Vujić passed away in Serbia, but left behind a large oeuvre of choral music and also instrumental music, thus entrusting me with the wonderful task of dealing with his musical legacy.

I have published 4 CDs of his music with SINFONIETTA in 2019, and at the moment work is in progress to write a monograph about him.... His "Vater unser" for Women's Choirs has been published in the diocese of Passau by the Allgemeiner Cäcilien-Verband Germany in 2020.

(I wrote this text to make all possible readers remember my husband.) 

 

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