Dragoslav Ortakov
From Unearthing The Music
Prof. Dr. Dragoslav Ortakov (b. April 22nd, 1928 - d. December 8th, 2007) was a Macedonian musicologist and composer, considered the father of musicology and Byzantine music studies in Macedonia. He is part of the third generation of Macedonian post-war composers, and one of the founders of the Faculty of Music in Skopje, where he taught for many years.
He was born in Gevgelija. As the first musicologist and Byzantologist in Macedonia, he left a number of fundamental works, primarily from the history of Macedonian music and especially, Byzantine-Slavic music in Macedonia (such as "About music", "Musical art in Macedonia", "Ars Nova Macedonica" , "Mirrors of Byzantine-Slavic music in Macedonia", "De musicis", etc). He also wrote about 90 musicological articles, along with reviews and essays for other publications. His compositions include about 150 works from both instrumental and vocal music: the string quartet, the "Eptameroni" cycle for chamber ensemble, the music for piano and instrumental ensemble, the piano sonata, compositions for string ensembles and many other works. A special place in his opus belongs to the large number of church-musical works. In that segment of Ortakov's composing activity, his decipherments and harmonizations of church chants occupy a central place. He has won a number of awards and recognitions, of which the awards "St. Kliment Ohridski", "13 November", "Trajko Prokopiev", as well as awards and recognitions abroad, related to his musicological and compositional activity.
Text adapted from the Macedonian Wikipedia