One of the most significant Serbian composers of the final decade of the 20th century, Vlastimir Trajkovic (1947-2017), came from a prominent musical family. Among it's members were Miloje Milojevic, the composer's grandfather and a pioneer of the Serbian Modernist movement in music, as well as his mother, Gordana Milojevic - Trajkovic, a pianist and composer. He completed his composition studies in the class of Vasilije Mokranjac at the Music Academy in Belgrade in 1971 and obtained his MA degree in 1977. He further refined his skills by studying abroad, with Witold Lutoslawski in Groznjan and with Olivier Messiaen in Paris. In addition to his career as a composer, Trajkovic also worked as a music writer, critic, and editor. Over nearly four decades, from 1975 to 2012, Trajkovic worked as a professor of composition at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade, where he also served as the head of the Composition Department for several years. In addition to a series of accolades he received for his outstanding work, Trajkovic became a member of the Serbian Academy of Science and Art in 2000. At the outset of his creative journey, Trajkovic, a polyglot with extensive erudition, distinguished himself as a composer who embraced an intellectual and critical approach to music and it's heritage. His distinctive style is firmly rooted in the amalgamation of impulses and influences he gleaned from a wide array of musical epochs. Trajkovic's opus, imbued with a postmodern sensibility, reflects both his receptivity to various stylis-tic idioms and his unwavering commitment to flexible, contemporary compositional solutions. Exhibiting a penchant for the sublime fusion of divergent musical elements, Trajkovic traversed through diverse genres, establishing creative dialogues with the legacy of baroque, avantgarde, minimalism, neoclassicism, jazz, and, most notably, impressionism. The sonic universe of impressionism reverberates throughout Trajkovic's entire body of work. His exploration of the musical legacy of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel in terms of references and outcomes led to a creative evolution in Trajkovic's compositions, resulting in exquisitely refined and cultivated aesthetic expressions that align stylistically with neo-impressionism.
