Lovro von Matačić

Lovro von Matačić (14 February 1899 – 4 January 1985) was a Croatian conductor and composer. Early life Lovro von Matačić was born in Sušak to a family that was granted a noble title in the early 17th century. Growing up, he was always surrounded by music and art: his father had a career as an opera singer, and his mother as an actress. After his parents’ divorce, the family moved to Vienna, where Lovro joined the Vienna Boys Choir of the Royal Court Chapel at the age of eight. The Choir's repertoire must have influenced his later affinities, but most of all through the music of Anton Bruckner. In the Piarists’ Gymnasium in Vienna he received training in piano, organ and music theory. His music education continued under distinguished teachers at the Vienna Hochschule für Musik, which he never attended formally, and from which he did not obtain any degrees. After Vienna Matačić proved his talent in practice when in 1916 he started volunteering as an accompanist at the Cologne Opera. When the war broke out, however, he volunteered for the army and also became an active revolutionary: in 1918 he joined the circle of left-oriented intellectuals in Vienna who recognized his artistic talent. He already had several works ready; he recited the poem Vigilia to his colleagues, and he was sixteen when the Tonkünstlerorchester of the Vienna Musikverein conducted by Bernhard Paumgartner premiered his Fantasy for the Orchestra. Not many of Matačić's compositions have been completely preserved, although he did include some of them in his programs after becoming a distinguished conductor – such as the Confrontation Symphony or the Konjuh planina Cantata. After the war, he made a living mostly by playing in cafés, writing reviews, and by short-term conducting engagements in Osijek, Zagreb and Novi Sad, where he served the required military service as a military musician.