Simon Gjoni was an Albania

Albania

Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...

n composer of many popular pieces for piano and orchestra.

Life

Gjoni was born on October 28, 1925 in the city of Shkodër

Shkodër

Shkodër , is a city located on Lake of Shkoder in northwestern Albania in the District of Shkodër, of which it is the capital. It is one of the oldest and most historic towns in Albania, as well as an important cultural and economic centre. Shkodër's estimated population is 90,000; if the...

, Albania

Albania

Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...

. He was educated in a rank and file urban family and graduated from the "Illyricum" High School of the city. Very soon he learned to play guitar, trombone, the piano and devoted himself with enthusiasm and passion to the art of music. In the years of his youth, he composed over 200 original songs, which were immediately sung in the city of Shkodër and were spread all over Albania, such as "Lule Bore

Lule Bore

Lule Bore is a song composed in 1946 by Albanian composer Simon Gjoni. Lule bore means Hortensia in English, but literally snowflower in Albanian.-History of the song:...

" (Hortensia), "Syte e tu si drite" (English: Your Eyes Like Light), "Weaving girl".

He completed his studies over the years 1952–1958 in the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague

Academy of Performing Arts in Prague

The Academy of Performing Arts in Prague is a university level school of music, dance, drama, film, TV and multi-media studies.- Faculties :*Film and TV School - FAMU*Music Faculty - HAMU*Theatre Faculty - DAMU-Notable alumni:...

 (Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...

). During the years 1956-1958 in the city of Prague, he conducted: Franz Schubert

Franz Schubert

Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...

's Rosamunda, Edvard Grieg

Edvard Grieg

Edvard Hagerup Grieg was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is best known for his Piano Concerto in A minor, for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt , and for his collection of piano miniatures Lyric Pieces.-Biography:Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born in...

's Peer Gynt

Peer Gynt

Peer Gynt is a five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen, loosely based on the fairy tale Per Gynt. It is the most widely performed Norwegian play. According to Klaus Van Den Berg, the "cinematic script blends poetry with social satire and realistic scenes with surreal ones"...

's, Jiří Antonín Benda's Pygmalion

Pygmalion (opera)

Pygmalion is a monodrama in one act by composer Georg Benda with a German libretto by Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter. The opera's first performance was at the Ekhof Theater, the court theatre in Gotha, on September 20, 1779. Pygmalion was the fourth of the five theatrical collaborations of Benda and...

, K. Dittersdorff "Concert symphony for violin and contrabass", and Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

's Les Preludes.

In 1958 he returned to Tirana

Tirana

Tirana is the capital and the largest city of Albania. Modern Tirana was founded as an Ottoman town in 1614 by Sulejman Bargjini, a local ruler from Mullet, although the area has been continuously inhabited since antiquity. Tirana became Albania's capital city in 1920 and has a population of over...

, where he started teaching at the Artistic Lyceum of Tirana and later in 1961 was among the first lecturers in Academy of Music and Arts of Albania

Academy of Music and Arts of Albania

Albanian University of Arts is the main institution that offers higher education in the arts in Albania.-Brief History:...

, where he prepared whole generations of musicians and artists, teaching the subjects of polyphony

Polyphony

In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....

, orchestration

Orchestration

Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting for orchestra music composed for another medium...

, conducting, intonation

Intonation

Intonation may refer to:*Intonation , the variation of tone used when speaking*Intonation , a musician's realization of pitch accuracy, or the pitch accuracy of a musical instrument*Intonation Music Festival, held in Chicago...

 and chamber music

Chamber music

Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...

. In 1958, while being a teacher, he also worked for the National Theatre of Opera and Ballet of Albania

National Theatre of Opera and Ballet of Albania

The National Theatre of Opera and Ballet of Albania or TKOB is a theatre in Tirana, Albania.-History:The National Opera and Ballet Theatre was founded on November 29, 1953...

, where he conducted many worldwide renowned works, which were interpreted for the first time in Albania. Such works were: Gaetano Donizetti

Gaetano Donizetti

Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti was an Italian composer from Bergamo, Lombardy. His best-known works are the operas L'elisir d'amore , Lucia di Lammermoor , and Don Pasquale , all in Italian, and the French operas La favorite and La fille du régiment...

's Don Pasquale

Don Pasquale

Don Pasquale is an opera buffa, or comic opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The librettist Giovanni Ruffini wrote the Italian language libretto after Angelo Anelli's libretto for Stefano Pavesi's Ser Marcantonio ....

, Ruggero Leoncavallo

Ruggero Leoncavallo

Ruggero Leoncavallo was an Italian opera composer. His two-act work Pagliacci remains one of the most popular works in the repertory, appearing as number 20 on the Operabase list of the most-performed operas worldwide.-Biography:...

's Pagliacci

Pagliacci

Pagliacci , sometimes incorrectly rendered with a definite article as I Pagliacci, is an opera consisting of a prologue and two acts written and composed by Ruggero Leoncavallo. It recounts the tragedy of a jealous husband in a commedia dell'arte troupe...

, Gioachino Rossini's Barber of Seville

The Barber of Seville

The Barber of Seville, or The Futile Precaution is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's comedy Le Barbier de Séville , which was originally an opéra comique, or a mixture of spoken play with music...

, Tish Daija's Pranvera (The Spring), and two ballets (by Sergei Vasilenko's Lola, and Alexander Krein

Alexander Krein

Alexander Krein was a Russian composer of Jewish heritage.-Background:The Krein family was steeped in the klezmer tradition; his father Abram was a noted violinist...

's Laurencia

Laurencia (ballet)

Laurencia is a ballet made by Vakhtang Chabukiani, based on Lope de Vega's Fuente Ovejuna to music by Alexander Crain. Created at a time when “choreodrama” was considered in the Soviet Union the only acceptable form of contemporary ballet, it harks back to a genuine drama, wherein movement was a...

). Under his care and passion, he recorded many works of the Albanian composers: such as Çesk Zadeja

Çesk Zadeja

Çesk Zadeja was an Albanian composer. A native of Shkodër, he studied in Moscow and did much to promote the arts in Tirana.He is also called "The Father of the Albanian Music".-Discography:...

, Pjetër Gaci, Nova

Nova

A nova is a cataclysmic nuclear explosion in a star caused by the accretion of hydrogen on to the surface of a white dwarf star, which ignites and starts nuclear fusion in a runaway manner...

, Tish Daija, Tonin Harapi

Tonin Harapi

Tonin Harapi was an Albanian composer and teacher. Born in Shkodra, Albania. He studied composition in Moscow, USSR. He was professor of composition at the Conservatory of Tirana; and the winner of many prizes and titles.-Discography:...

, Pjetër Dungu

Pjetër Dungu

Pjetër Dungu was an Albanian piano accompanist and composer-arranger of urban folk music. He is known in the history of the music of Albania as the first compiler of Albanian folk songs....

, Grimci, Kono

Kono

Kono is a village in Rivers State, Nigeria. It is situated on the coast in Khana Local Government Area, about 45 miles from Port Harcourt. The dialect spoken in Kono is Khana, and the people are Ogoni. Everton F.C. Footballer Joseph Yobo was born and grew up in Kono....

 etc., and the music of some Albanian movies. In 1967, he conducted in China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 works by Albanian composers. Gjoni was also one of the founders of the Symphonic Orchestra of the Albanian Radio-Television. He worked persistently and with discipline for the establishment and growth of that group.

Gjoni's activity as a composer has passed through all genres from the song, romance, cantata, suite, ballads, works for piano, clarinet, violin and major orchestral works such as: Symphonic dances, Symphonic poems, Symphonic Suite up to Symphony in Mib. Gjoni was a composer with a noble inspiration and pathos, whose music flows freely. Critic of music and musicologist George Leotsakos, in his letter dated 22 December 1991 characterized him as follows: "Simon Gjoni was an excellent composer, a predestined creator, with a profound aesthetic and musical culture, but above all with a marvelous human personality, with a golden heart in harmony with his refined culture."

Likewise, in the field of musical critique, he has left numerous theoretical works, related to the Albanian musical art and his work "The Instruments and the Art of Orchestration".

Composer Çesk Zadeja wrote the following on Gjoni on Drita

Drita (magazine)

Drita magazine is an Albanian literary magazine published by the Association of the Young Modern Artists of Albania . Drita was one of the first magazines in the Albanian language. It has been published for 127 years with some interruptions.-History: 1883-1922:Drita was one of the first magazines...

, an Albanian cultural periodical, dated 1 December 1991, right after Gjoni's death:

The name of Simon Gjoni will remain graven in the pentagram of the Albanian music. The highest assessment for each creator is then when his work (his message) has its repercussion in the profundity of the time, increasing its values along as the time passes by. These features are attributed to the talented artist, composer, conductor, lecturer and musicologist Simon Gjoni.

Discography

• Kenge, Albanian Piano Music, Vol. 1, Kirsten Johnson, piano, Guild GMCD 7257; includes Gjoni's Song of Bravery.
• Rapsodi, Albanian Piano Music, Vol. 2, Kirsten Johnson, piano, Guild GMCD 7300; includes Gjoni's Prelude in E minor and Toccata.