Stefan Dragostinov

Irregular metres, microtonal inflection and the antiphonal textures of village singing are working material rather than local colour in Stefan Dragostinov's scores. Born in Sofia in 1948, he studied composition with Alexander Raychev and piano with Bogomil Starshenov at the Bulgarian State Conservatoire from 1967 to 1970 and continued in composition with Boris Arapov at the Leningrad Conservatoire from 1970 to 1972, and has spent the decades since treating Bulgarian oral tradition as a living system rather than a quarry for quotations. In 1994 he founded the female vocal ensemble Dragostin Folk National and wrote its repertoire himself, which gave the ideas a permanent instrument. The catalogue runs across orchestral, chamber, choral, vocal and stage music — the Peace Symphony, the long-running Sonic Icons of Bulgaria, concertos for piano and for bass clarinet, sonatas for violin, viola, cello, double bass, clarinet and horn. He questions his players closely about their instruments before writing and treats them as co-authors of the result; the Concerto Grande for trombone and orchestra, finished in his seventy-fifth year, was first heard in November 2023. He has taught composition, orchestration, harmony and contemporary technique. His Second Symphony served as the Leningrad diploma work in 1972. First prizes followed abroad - Gaudeamus in 1978, Stockhausen in 1980, the Honegger Grand Prix in 1982, Simón Bolívar in 1984, Fernando Pessoa in 1986 - and the Peace Symphony, commissioned by Rotary International, was first heard in Maracaibo on 21 February 1985 under Eduardo Rán. Until 1994 he directed the Philip Kutev National Folklore Ensemble, recording its first three albums in Japan in 1988, and has pursued an Anthology of Bulgarian Folklore for two decades. In 2007 a Korean world music committee gave him the title of World Master, and he opened his composition class at New Bulgarian University.