Mihovil Logar

Once a prominent student of the so-called “Prague generation” of composers from Serbia, Logar is considered one of the most significant among those who actively contributed to the development of music professionalism in the country.

Among his most significant compositions are operas The Scandal in the St. Florian valley (1938) and A Would-be lady (1954), ballet The Little goldfish (1950), cantata The Blue tomb (1934), orchestral Rondo-Overture (1936) and Sinfonia Italiana (1964), suite The Coastland (1962), Concerto for violin in b-minor (1954) and Double concerto for clarinet and horn (1967), song cycles The Legend of Marko (1936) and Granada of the Samarkand (1963), five string quartets (1926–36), and piano music collections .

His grounding in classic forms, the continual presence of humor, his jolly spirit, and tendency for constant switches—from tonality to atonality, from thematic to athematism—and the absence of folk content in the majority of his works represent the most pronounced traits of Logar's entire oeuvre.

Logar wrote the libretto for the Scandal in the St. Florian Valley upon his reworked version of a satire entitled Pohujšanje v dolini Šentflorjanski by Ivan Cankar.

The plot unfolds in the St. Florian valley where the “patriots”—a female superintendent, the tax collector, notary, merchant, and a sexton—all comment on the “scandal” that occurred in their neighborhood.

One of the reviews following the Scandal's premiere featured a remark on sharp harmonies and balanced stylized vocal recitatives that occasionally develop into arioso forms.

During his work on Sterija's text, the composer's main goal was to preserve the witty atmosphere and linguistic structure of the original wording that carries a large comical share of the play.

Rondo-Overture, one of Logar's shorter orchestral works reflects the composer's tendency for humoristic qualities, and vivid and expressive treatment of musical content.