Dragan Plamenac

Who is Dragan Plamenac?

Dragan Plamenac was Croatian Jewish composer and musicologist.

Plamenac was born as Karl Siebenschein in Zagreb on 8 February 1895. His father, Robert Siebenschein, and grandfather, Josip Siebenschein, were leaders of the Israelites Zagreb community. His father was also the president of Croatian Music Institute from 1919 to 1929.

Plamenac studied and finished law school at the University of Zagreb. In 1912 he studied composition in Vienna. In Prague, 1919, he studied composition and piano. Plamenac also studied musicology with Hugo Chaim Adler in Paris. He finished his complete works on Johannes Ockeghem motets and chanson.

In 1928 he began teaching musicology at the University of Zagreb as the private assistant professor. He was also the accompanist at the city opera in Berlin. In 1939 Plamenac went to the United States as the Yugoslav representative to the International Musicological Society Congress in New York. Plamenac decided to remain in New York due to frequent persecution of Jews in Europe and World War II. Plamenac was professor of music at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign from 1954 to 1963. He received an honorary doctorate in 1976. Plamenac was the first to indicate to the value of the works of Croatian renaissance and baroque periods, as he published them in modern editions. Plamenac died on 15 April 1983 in Ede, Netherlands.