Marjan Mozetich

Marjan Mozetich (born 1948) is a Canadian composer who has written music for theatre, film and dance, as well as many symphonic works, chamber music, and solo pieces.

Born in Gorizia, Italy, to Slovenian parents, Mozetich moved to Hamilton, Ontario in 1952, where his father found work as a machinist.

He started his musical training by studying piano with Reginald Bedford, and later studied composition with Lothar Klein and John Weinzweig at the University of Toronto, from which he received an Associate of the Royal Conservatory of Toronto (A.R.C.T.) Diploma in 1971 and a Bachelor of Music degree in 1972 in composition and piano.

With the help of the Canada Council he then continued his musical studies in composition privately in Rome, Siena and London with Luciano Berio, Franco Donatoni, and David Bedford.

Mozetich discovered classical music on CBC Radio, which inspired him to compose romantic music through listening to Chopin, Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninoff.

He also first heard on the radio what were then considered "super-modern pieces", which presented him with a totally different, almost science-fiction perspective.

He then started improvising some of his own "super-modern pieces" rather than practicing the classics.

At this point, he had not yet learned how to record his compositions.

After graduating, Mozetich worked towards becoming a concert pianist, but gave up after he failed his A.R.C.T., which he would later receive in 1971.

He attended the University of Waterloo to study psychology, which he later abandoned to study music with John Weinzweig and Lothar Klein at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music.

Mozetich became active in the avant-garde music circles.

He co-founded Arraymusic with John Fodi, Clifford Ford, Gary Hayes, Michael Parker, Alex Pauk and Robert Bauer, and served as artistic director.

The group's first public concert was performed in 1972.

He received a fellowship from the Istituto musicale F. Canneti in 1974 to attend a seminar in Vicenza, Italy.

Mozetich developed a style of post-modern romantic music, which consists of a blend of the traditional, the popular, and the modern.

Many of his compositions have been recorded on the CBC-Musica Viva, Centredisc, BIS (Sweden), Cansona, and Chandos (England).

His works have been heard throughout Canada and abroad.

They have been performed, broadcast, and some have been included on Canadian Airline's ‘in flight’ music programs.

Some of his music has been used by contemporary dance companies, as well as in film.

Co-founder of Arraymusic in Toronto, Mozetich served as their artistic director from 1976 to 1978.

After his work with Array, he worked for some time at the University of Toronto music library, and then became a freelance composer.

It was composed for accordion, violin, viola, and cello, and was commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1980.

An example of this is his composition El Dorado (1981), a mixture of minimalistic Gatling gun rhythms, lyrical melodies, sensuous scoring, and late-romantic textbook harmonies.

Mozetich's music during this period used only three or four chords, often in a cycling progression reminiscent of pop music, but a little more warped or extended, using fullness of sound, melodies, and rhythms to lull the listener.

His compositions sometimes included dark passages as an emotional counterbalance.

Dance of the Blind is one example of this; Mozetich freely combines the elements of popular, classical and other aspects of music.

This piece, with the feel of a Parisian tavern jig, is one of Mozetich's own favourites.

It was premiered by the Canadian-Slovenian accordionist, Joseph Petric, and the Arraymusic Ensemble on January 16, 1981.

Since the 1990s, Mozetich's works have continued to demonstrate a taste for lyricism, romantic harmonies, and moto perpetuo rhythms.

His works that explore the spiritual have introspective and meditative qualities; these can be heard in his earlier pieces such as El Dorado.

These works include:

This period's concerted works include:

Works for solo instruments include:

Mozetich experimented with a return to tonality, combining traditional elements to create a form of ‘post-modernism’, or new age romanticism.

It was later recorded by CBC records in 1990.

Mozetich moved to Howe Island, near Kingston, Ontario, and taught composition at Queen's University in Kingston from 1991 to 2010.

He has won several awards, including the first prize in the CAPAC (SOCAN)-Sir Ernest MacMillan Award.

His major compositions include Fantasia... sul linguaggio perduto, and Postcards from the Sky.

He has written compulsory competition pieces for the 1992 Banff String Quartet Competition (Lament in the Trampled Garden) and the 1995 Montreal International Music Competition (L’esprit Chantant for violin and piano).

He was the honoured composer of postmodern music at the Gent Conservatory Music Festival in Belgium in 1995, at which, three concerts with live national broadcast featured his compositions.