Pjetër Gaci

Gaci, Pjetër
(b Shkodra, 27 March 1931; d Tirana, 27 March 1995). Albanian composer and violinist. Jakova enabled him to study the violin at the Jordan Misja Art Lyceum, Tirana (1948–52).

He then studied at the Moscow Conservatory (1952–6) with Yampol'sky and others. On his return to Albania he led the orchestra at the Tirana Opera and taught the violin at the Jordan Misja Art Lyceum (1958–67). After serving as artistic director of the Tirana Circus, the ‘Estrada’ Revue Theatre and the Puppet Theatre, he moved in 1970 to Shkodra, where he received a full salary from the state in order to devote himself full-time to composition as a ‘free professional composer’.

Although he was one of the first Albanian composers to study in Moscow, Gaci did not remain in the forefront of musical life. Though he is known principally for his patriotic canatatas and songs, such as Për ty atdheu (‘For Thee, O Fatherland’, 1961) and Gryka e Kaçanikut (‘The Passage of Kaçaniku’, ?1980), his concert works, such as the Violin Concerto (1959), with its remote echoes of Dvořák and Khachaturian, and the spontaneous one-movement Concertino (1979), demonstrate an inexhaustible melodic inventiveness, enriched by his knowledge of Shkodran folksong. His operas, meanwhile, especially the masterly Toka jöne (‘Our Land’), demonstrate a keen sense of drama and stage timing, and of the qualities of the Albanian language.