10th Isidor Bajic Piamo Memorial Catalogue

It happened a long time ago, on a cold night, I do not recall
precisely when, whether winter was drawing to a close, or if it was late
into fall. Under the sky’s black dome, there hung a secret or maybe that was just
how it appeared to me – I do not know! I was still very, very young, and had my own dreams,
my own aspirations. But it was on exactly such a night, following aimless wandering around the
well-known streets of Novi Sad, that I remember crossing the lantern-lit City Hall Square, walking
in the direction of the theatre. The large windows of a tavern named Jelisaveta were glaring. In
that smoke and sultriness, were many, many people whose lives went drifting by without a higher
purpose, people who have certainly passed by now, without leaving a single trace, people idling away
their futile hours. The sidewalk in front of the tavern was swarmed with walkers, and all around
me, I still remember vividly, was boiling the laughter and conversation of this smug crowd. I was,
however, pressing and prodding my way through these people, hastening to reach the passage way of
the Jelisaveta Hotel so I could get closer to the theatre building where the performance of a Hungarian
operetta was scheduled to be performed this night, an operetta whose music originated from the
feather of a Serbian composer. That composer was named Isidor Bajić, and the operetta, “Seven years
of hunger“. There, alone at the balcony, surrounded by people who could not have been thinking what
I was thinking then, and could not have been feeling what I was feeling then, I awaited expectantly
the appearance of Isidor Bajić at the conductor’s stand, excited, nervous. Because Isidor Bajić had
just completed his studies at the Academy of Music in Budapest with Professor Kössler, to all of us
who carried a love for music at the bottom of our souls, he served as an ideal. In him we saw a higher
being, for us he was the incarnation of a certain mystical beauty we longed for, but had not yet seen:
from his spritely smile, maybe slightly stylized, which I remember quite vividly, a magical current of
music that we adored murmured, which is why we adored him, Isidor Bajić, as well. That night, I
was supposed to see him at the helm of a major piece for the first time, and I did. His small stature
appeared from the orchestra space; he must have been excited, though I could not perceive so from the
balcony. I remember only the silhouette, outlined against the stand in front of him, and the overflow
of light at his face, and I still see him waving the baton through the air, holding in his hands the
numerous threads of the orchestra and the stage from which a colourful lie, the operetta, poured.
At the time, however, this was not a colorful lie to me. This was the work of the adored Isa,
and this signified – I admit – a peak, something I could not dare to approach, not even in
my dreams...
Miloje Milojević,
Isidor Bajić – on the occasion of the tenth anniversary
of Isidor Bajić’s death (1825)
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