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 "Emptameron" 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.
At the Electronic Music Studio of Radio Belgrade, Dragoslav Ortakov created his electronic work “Eleorp” (1976) using the EMS Synthi 100 synthesizer, which is considered as the first electro-acoustic composition in North Macedonia. In this work he combines traditional compositional logic with procedures of synthesis of sound on the EMS Synthi 100. He co-authored this piece with Paul Pignon.
He has won a number of awards and recognitions, of which the awards "St. Clement Ohridski", "November 13th", "Trajko Prokopiev", as well as a few of the international prizes and recognitions for his work as a musicologist and a composer. He died in 2007, in Skopje.
Text adapted from the Macedonian Wikipedia