His mother died very early in his life so his father brought him to Zagreb where he was nurtured by his grandmother.

Later he changed his surname from Weiss to Bjelinski (derivation of the word bijeli, meaning 'white' in Croatian).

[2] During World War II he was sent to a concentration camp, but in 1943, with the help of a friend, he escaped and joined the Partisans on the island of Korčula.

Bjelinski never belonged expressly to the “national course” but he was far from indifferent to folk music (the influence of idiosyncratic Balkan rhythms and even of exotic South American dances mirroring the impressions of the composer's repeated stays in Brazil, with occasional inspirations by the particular features of jazz).

The fundamental features of this sensitive and easily recognisable musical speech are a light Mediterranean lyricism, a general facility of expression and a message that is always optimistic, all interwoven with occasional dramatically accumulated sounds.

Visible in his work are traces of Baroque music with its incessant kinetic motion and well-thought-out structures.