Стеван Стојановић Мокрањац

Stevan Stojanović Mokranjac (1856 – 1914), was a prominent Serbian composer and music educator. Born in a town of Negotin in 1856, he studied music in Belgrade, Munich, Rome and Leipzig. He later became the conductor of the Belgrade Choir Society and also the founder of the Serbian School of Music. He later left Belgrade at the beginning of World War I and moved to Skopje, where he died in 1914.

His works combined the spirit of Serbian folk traditions with the rich harmonic language of Romanticism. His influence shaped generations of musicians and established a national identity within Serbian classical music.