Aleksandër Peçi

Aleksandër Peçi
(b Tirana, 24 April 1951). Albanian composer. After early mandolin and guitar lessons (1961 5) in Shën Saranda, southern Albania, he studied theory, solfège.

harmony and the piano at the Jordan Misja Art Lyceum, Tirana (1965–9), and then composition (Zadeja) and orchestration (Ibrahimi) at the Tirana Conservatory (1969–74). After graduation he was musical director (1974–7) in Përmeti (where he was struck by the folk music of the region), composer-in-residence at the Tirana Revue Theatre (1977–9) and director of the State Ensemble of Popular Songs and Dances (1979–86). From 1986 he was salaried by the state to devote himself full time to composition. After the collapse of communism he was able to travel more widely: he participated in the 1992 Amsterdam International Composers' Workshop (with Yuasa, Ton de Leeuw and others) and took further courses in 1993 with Manneke in Amsterdam and with de Leeuw, Charpentier and Méfano in Paris. In 1993 he became president of the Albanian Association for New Music.

Peçi is one of the most successful products of the Albanian music education system set up in the 1960s. After the sober neoclassicism of the early ballet Kecat dhe ujku (‘The Kids and the Wolf’, 1979), he turned in the following decade to symphonic frescoes which echo his experiences of Albanian folklore. In works such as the Rhapsody no.4 (1987) and the Poema baladike (1989), he elaborates his thematic material in short motifs, thus producing dense textures in which drama and lyricism alternate poignantly. As he became better acquainted with contemporary musical trends after 1991, Peçi expanded his vocabulary, but without rejecting the past. Rather than yielding completely to the fascination of novel materials, he deployed contrasting elements to highly dramatic and atmospheric effect, often skilfully exploiting female voices (Dialogue liturgique, 1993). Alb-Postmortium 97, a response to the tragic Otranto Channel incident in which around 80 Albanians drowned attempting to emigrate to Italy in March, 1997, blends echoes of folk dirges and liturgical chant with taped sounds and a soaring coloratura soprano and ranks among the finest achievements of late 20th-century Albanian music.