Some Aspects of Benjamin Ipavec's Lieder

Abstract

The main area of Benjamin Ipavec's creative activity was vocal music. It was especially the lieder in which he developed his creative dispositions and compositional knowledge. Using mostly texts of Slovene authors, he persued his determination to implant the result of the European romantic lied into Slovene music. Quite obvious is also his tendency to break through the traditionally narrow framework of his time in which music was above all a handy means for the awakening of national conscience and patrietic feelings. In this sense Slovene music owes a great deal to B. Ipavec for its qualitative growth during that period. The article deals with the composer's later lieder, written at a point when he had already formed his artistic credo and entered the last phase of romantic style. They rank among his best works and represent the peak of his artistic achievement characterized by marked melodic inventiveness and variegated harmonic structure based on altered chords, rich progressions and modulations. The composer always proceeded directly from the content and the general mood of the text interpreting it in a natural, unrestrained manner, which testifies his talent for this typically romantic musical form. Approaching the durchkomponiert treatment, Ipavec's form is clear and logical and reveals the composer's feeling for congruency between form and content.