A monument to the composer was erected in 1931 in front of Jurij Flajšman’s birthplace, in the Beričevo district, which was complemented by a bust by sculptor Aleš Maher in 1974.
Jurij Flajšman
Jurij Flajšman (1818–1874) is one of the most prominent composers of music of the national awakening, artists who in the mid-nineteenth century set to music poems expressing national identity, and in doing so placed the greatest value on the works of the poet France Prešeren.
Flajšman was fourteen when he received his first organ lessons from his brother Andrej, an organist. Having completed his schooling (four grades of people’s school, two grades of “realka” – a school focusing on living languages and the natural sciences, and two grades of preparatory teaching school), he taught in Vrhnika and Ljubljana, where he formed a Reading Society Choir, and became a music teacher, choirmaster and editor, first of Slovenska gerlica and then its successor, Gerlica. Apart from the Reading Society Choir, he was also choirmaster of the Krakovski pevci choir (Krakovo Singers) from 1853.
Being a self-taught composer, lack of formal education in composition was the most probable reason that he primarily relied on classicistic approaches and early Romantic harmonisations, a tendency most prominently heard in his choral and vocal works with piano accompaniment. Some of his choral compositions that incorporate folk melodies have become part of Slovenian national folklore; the most prominent examples are En starček je živel, Kranjski fantje, Od železne ceste (There Lived an Old Man, Carniolan Lads, From the Iron Road) and, the best known, Luna sije (The Moon Is Shining) by Prešeren. His compositions were published in 1848 in the first volume of Slovenska Gerlica and the composer’s own publications, Mične slovenske zdravice (Compelling Slovenian Toasts, 3 volumes), Besedi (Words, 3 volumes) and a volume of Šolske pesmi (School Songs).
Although Flajšman’s composing idiom reflects the utilisation of simple stereotyped music solutions, which most suit the basic song form, his pieces were nevertheless featured at concerts of the Philharmonic Society in Ljubljana, performed at Reading Society events known as bésede, and often served as musical intermezzos between the acts of a play in Slovenian theatres.
Maia Juvanc
