During his studies at the Belgrade Music Academy and in accordance with the Department of Composition and Orchestration curriculum requirements, Maksimović composed works of a prevalent neoclassical provenance.
With an intention to present a gradual formation of a musical idea, Maksimović based this work on a B-A-C-H motive, progressively expanded to a twelve-tone collection.
The particular instrumental timbre, and a specific treatment of the women's choir often featuring voice movements at intervallic distances of seconds and abound in imprecisely notated whisper and parlando, served the composer for invoking the ‘sound of Japan.'
Among the main features of this work are: modal centricity and word painting as representative of madrigals, the linear notion of the melodic line, and focusing on the denotative dimension of the text, with occasional dissonances, cluster textures, and “frictions within the vertical (constellations)” (Veselinović-Hofman 1997, 63).
The Saint Prince Lazarus Passion completed in 1989 and conferred the October Award of Belgrade, represents the most comprehensive and most significant work of Maksimović, not only within the vocal-instrumental genre, but within his entire oeuvre.
At first, the scene represents a peaceful prosperity, happiness, and beauty (Ravanica Monastery), but it is shortly followed by ‘Forebodings' (a solar eclipse and the falling star) anticipating a number of calamities and disasters (earthquake, hunger, plague, and raids).
Realizing that the day of the ultimate combat has approached, Prince Lazar at first addresses God for help (‘Prayer'), then summons his noblemen, dukes, and other warriors, and through his solemn and inspiring patriotic ‘Sermon' invites them to a brave and proud death, to a conscious but dignified sacrifice into the heavenly kingdom in the name of a superior morality, humanity, and justice.
The combative and patriotic pledges follow one another, sublimed at the end by the shortest one (‘Let us die to live in eternity') delivered in fugato and representing the appeal and command for the strike.
In a somewhat longer speech that follows, (intended to provide relief from ‘the clashing of arms and the cries of horses and men') the Narrator takes us to the Prince's ‘Funeral.'
After hearing, seeing, and experiencing the entire story, our pilgrim (the Passion's sole witness) slowly departs while the singing of the funeral procession grows quieter.