* 1915
Petar Stajič (1915) studied at the Belgrade Music School - present day "Mokranjac" School - composition with M.Milojevič and the piano with J. Radovanovič. Later on he became a piano teacher and a teacher of theoretical subjects at the same school. As a composer he started from radical positions of atonality and dodecaphony, and in his recent works he took to the objective, predominantly polyphonic, tonally freely centralized idiom of neo-classicism. Of his four symphonies the Second One is the program music Symphony of the year 1813 (inspired by the First Serbian Uprising), and the Third One is the vocal and instrumental Symphony of Stari Grad; the most significant is the bright and brisk Fourth Symphony for wind brass instruments and solo clarinet obbligato. In addition to the symphonic poems In the Night and The Suffering Country (both after short stories of Serbian literature), he has written a number of concertos (two for the piano, two for the cello, one for the flute, one for the trumpet), then three string quartets, seven piano sonatas, a large number of small piano pieces. In the field of vocal music he has written the oratorio Ulysses and the Pheacians, the cantata The Sutjeska River, the cycles Sunlit Songs (for voice and the piano) and The Lyrical Circle ( for female choir).The Concerto for Guitar and String orchestra (1964) was the first concerto of this kind ever composed for the classical guitar in Republic of Serbia.
