Luka Sorkočević

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Luke Sorkocevich (Luka Sorkočević) (also Luca Sorgo) (January 13, 1734 - September 11, 1789) was a Croatian composer from the Republic of Dubrovnik.

Lukša Sorkocevic was born in Dubrovnik and received an extensive education. His music teacher was the Italian composer Giuseppe Valentini, who was maestro di cappella in Ragusa/Dubrovnik Cathedral in the 1750s, and completed it in Rome, where he studied Musical composition with Rinaldo di Capua Later on Sorkocevic fulfilled several posts in various branches of politics and society. During his relatively short stay in Vienna as ambassador to the imperial court he met several of the leading composers of his time, like Gluck and Haydn, and the famous poet Metastasio. The experience that he would later take advantage of from. With serious health problems he committed suicide by throwing himself from the third floor of his palace in Dubrovnik in 1789. He was equal to the best European pre-Classicial composers in the period he lived in. Luka married a Luccari (Lukarevic) and died in Dubrovnik.

The music of Sorkočević has been preserved, like other possessions of other members of his family, in the archives of the Franciscan covenant of Dubrovnik. Although he also wrote couple of vocal pieces, the most interesting of his works are his eight symphonies, his sonata for violin and his overture trio for flute. His music can be described as being half way between the Baroque period music and the Classical music.

These instrumental works belong to the transitional period between baroque and classicism. They can neither be associated with the empfindsamer Stil – of which the fact that they are exclusively written in major keys is an indication – nor with the modernism of the Mannheim school. Nevertheless, Sorkocevic’ music contains traces of both styles. The ‘largo’ of the Symphony no 7 shows the kind of expression which is associated with the Empfindsamkeit and the first movement of the Symphony no 1 contains the crescendi for which the Mannheim school was famous. The Sonata in A-major for piano was written in 1754.

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