Creation : 15/05/1965, Zagreb, Croatia
The text of the Belgian poet Henri Michaux, in his roughness and corrosive violence, in his hardness, keeps all its purity without the music ever trying to illustrate or comment on it. The score of Milan Stibilj is conceived as a Passacaglia, on a rhythmic theme that explodes and disintegrates in the central part of the work. The “climax” is located on the fragment that gave its title to the work, “Épervier de ta faiblesse, domine”. From one end to the other, reign serious and disturbing sonorities, elemental smashes that very skillfully transpose the virile and tense atmosphere of Michaux’s poetry. Épervier was premiered at the Zagreb Biennale of Contemporary Music in 1965, where it was most successful. Milan Stibilj, born in 1929 in Ljubjana, studied psychology before working on various musical disciplines in Zagreb, the University of Utrecht and with his compatriot Milko Kelemen. After signing a symphony in 1961, Congruences for piano and orchestra in 1963, Impressions for flute, harp and strings the same year, he deliberately turned to the most advanced research of the young school. He then gave Assimilation for violin solo in 1965 (awarded in Belgrade the following year), Contemplation for oboe and orchestra, and, later, for the Zagreb Biennial, a Slovenian Requiem for tenor, choir and orchestra.