11/10/1895, Split, Austria-Hungary — 16/10/1982, Zagreb, Jugoslavia
Croatian composer and conductor of classical music. His comic opera, Ero s onoga svijeta (Ero the Joker), Croatia's best-known opera, was first performed in Zagreb in 1935. He started as a law student in Zagreb, but switched to writing music in 1920. In Vienna, he studied in the class of Joseph Marx. Back home, in 1922 he worked with Masaryk's Philharmonia Society Kolo founded in Šibenik by Vice Iljadica in 1899. In 1923 he moved to Zagreb, where he kept working both as conductor and composer until his death. In his works, Gotovac represents the late national romanticism, with Croatian folklore being the main source of ideas and inspiration. Musically, he prefers homophonic textures and fairly simple harmonic structures in keeping with the folk idiom he admired.
