Tsvetan Radoslavov

Never primarily a composer, Tsvetan Radoslavov wrote a single song and it became the national anthem of Bulgaria. Born in Svishtov in 1863, he studied in Vienna and then in Leipzig, took a doctorate in philosophy in the circle around Wilhelm Wundt, and spent his working life teaching languages, psychology, ethics and logic at the Third Boys' High School in Sofia. In 1885, aged twenty-two and travelling home by ship to volunteer in the Serbo-Bulgarian War, he wrote Gorda Stara Planina, whose verses move from the Balkan range to the Danube, the Thracian plain and Pirin. Dobri Hristov arranged it in 1905. It circulated for the better part of eighty years as a song people simply knew before being adopted officially, under the title Mila Rodino, in 1964 — its authority resting on clarity and a plain language of belonging rather than on technique. Radoslavov also translated opera librettos, wrote for the theatre, reviewed productions at the National Theatre and helped bring the state music school in Sofia into being. He died in Sofia in 1931. He graduated in philosophy in Leipzig, studied in Vienna and Prague and defended a doctoral dissertation, taught in the gymnasiums of Gabrovo, Ruse and Sofia after his return, took part in the work of the Slavyanska Beseda community centre and the Salza i Smyah theatre company and was a member of the board of the Bulgarian Opera Society; he was born in Svishtov on 19 April 1863 and died on 28 October 1931. He had come to Leipzig by way of the Aprilov High School in Gabrovo and years of history and Slavonic studies in Vienna, defending his dissertation in 1897, and he taught in Gabrovo between 1888 and 1893. The melody is thought to draw on a horo known around Svishtov, and the song was printed as early as 1895 in a school music book by Karel Mahan.