Who was Jovanka Stojković: "The first Serbian female pianist"

She was a student of the celebrated Franz Liszt, who called her the best pianist of the 19th century.

Poets Laza Kostić, August Šenoa and Jovan Subotić wrote verses in her honor.

"Jovanka Stojković appeared like a meteor in the Serbian musical sky in the spring of 1872."

"She is significant for the history of Serbian music as one of the heralds of musical professionalism," Aleksandar Vasić, a professor at the Musicological Institute of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU), tells BBC Serbian.

The first professional pianist of Serbian origin performed in cities across Europe - from Belgrade to Rome and Paris to Moscow, and in concerts she performed some of the most famous works of European piano music.

Researchers, such as Vasić, have also determined that she composed music, although her original works have not been preserved. She also did opera singing..

A street in the Novi Sad neighborhood of Sajlovo and an alley in the Belgrade neighborhood of Borča bear her name.

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Who was Jovanka Stojković?

A Serbian woman from Timisoara, a city in the south of present-day Romania.

In the 19th century, talented female musicians finally entered the world of classical music, which had long been dominated by men, such as Clare Schuman (1819-96) and Arabella Godar (1836-1922).

At that time, pianist Jovanka Stojković of Serbian origin appeared on the European scene, whose biography is shrouded in mystery to this day.

"Historical data about her is not unified," says Vojna Olivera Nešić, composer and president of the "Women in Music" association.

With the exception of a few academic works, she has not yet received the space she deserves in existing publications dealing with female musicians, Nešić estimates.

Until 2006, the exact date of her birth was not even known.

However, Stevan Bugarski, a researcher of Serbian cultural heritage in Romania, found Jovanka Stojković's birth certificate and published it in Timisoara proceedings at the beginning of the 2000s.

She was born on March 5, 1852, in the then Austro-Hungarian Monarchy as Iren Joana Ludovika Stojković, according to her birth certificate.

He is a child from the extramarital union of the Orthodox nobleman Petar Stojković and the merchant's daughter Joanna Buhler, a Roman Catholic.

Almost nothing is known about her childhood, except that she lived in Prague and Vienna until she was eighteen.

She first studied piano with Czech virtuoso and composer Aleksandar Drašok, and then with Franz Liszt, one of the best pianists of all time and a leading representative of European Romanticism.

At the time she lived and worked, photography was still in its infancy, and cinematography was only conceived three years after her death.

"That's why there are no recordings of her concerts, so we can only study her based on texts that appeared in the press of the time," explains Vasić.

Stojković was first mentioned in newspapers in March 1872, thanks to Branko Mušicki, a literary translator and critic.

"In the very poor Serbian artistic heritage, a flower is budding, whose fragrance will almost outshine all others and friends."

"This is Jovanka Stojković, a young and beautiful Serbian woman from Timisoara...", read the text published in the Novi Sad newspaper "Pozorište".

That year, they listened to her "with delight" on tour in cities throughout Austria-Hungary, Vasić writes in the research.

She added that she only experienced an attempt at "political sabotage" in Sombor, where some Hungarians returned tickets after learning about her nationality.

After this tour, she went to Milan to study solo singing.

In the years that followed, she performed in Belgrade as a chamber musician, solo singer, and composer.

Lost compositions

There are no preserved compositions, but the media of the time wrote that she performed her works at concerts.

"According to newspaper reviews and articles, we can assume that she wrote virtuoso salon music for solo piano, which was particularly celebrated by Franz Liszt," says Vasić.

She held her last concert in Serbia on April 15, 1881.

"Then she also performed two of her compositions, marked as transcriptions from Serbian melodies," says Vasić.

More than a decade later, in March 1892, an obituary was published in the Novi Sad newspaper "Stražilovo".

Stojković died on March 14 or 16, 1892, in Paris, where she spent the last two years of her life.

Underexplored, but not forgotten

The character and work of the pianist, who lived for only 40 years, have still not been sufficiently researched, says Professor Vasić.

The answers may be hidden in foreign archives, in the countries and cities where she gave concerts.

"That would be a large, demanding, responsible and historically important project, which Jovanka Stojković and Serbia deserve," says Vojna Olivera Nešić.

Since her name was discovered, Stojković has been included in all overviews of the history of Serbian music.

Also mentioned in Groove Music Online (Grove Music Online), one of the world's leading music encyclopedias.

Slobodan Turlakov (1929-2018), a former music historian, writer, and professor at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade, did a lot to ensure that Jovanka Stojković would not be forgotten.

In Belgrade, in the late 1980s, Vasić says, he also organized a festival that bore her name.

Turlakov invited Academician Dejan Despić (1930 - 2024), a famous composer and music theorist, to compose a work for the festival that would have the status of a mandatory composition for all performers.

Thus, in 1987, Despić's "Honorary Jovanka Stojković" was created.

"It was a kind of imagined reconstruction of Jovanka's compositions," explains Vasić.

Along with the festival and the music, Turlakov is his major work. Chronicle of musical life in Belgrade 1840 - 1941. dedicated, among other things, to the work of Jovanka Stojković.

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