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About
Marjan Mozetich (born 1948) is a Canadian composer. Mozetich has written music for theatre, film and dance, as well as many symphonic works, chamber music, and solo pieces. He has also written compulsory competition pieces for the 1992 Banff String Quartet Competition (Lament in the Trampled Garden) and the 1995 Montreal International Music Competition (L’esprit Chantant for violin and piano). Co-founder of Arraymusic in Toronto, Mozetich served as their artistic director from 1976 to 1978. After his work with Array, he worked for some time at the University of Toronto music library, and he then became a freelance composer. Mozetich moved to Howe Island, near Kingston, Ontario, and has taught composition at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario from 1991 to 2010. He has won several awards, including the first prize in the CAPAC (SOCAN)-Sir Ernest MacMillan Award. His major compositions include Fantasia... sul linguaggio perduto, and Postcards from the Sky.
Born in Gorizia, Italy to Slovenian parents, Mozetich moved to Hamilton, Ontario in 1952, where his father found work as a machinist. He started his musical training by studying piano, and later studied composition with Lothar Klein and John Weinzweig at the University of Toronto, from which he received an Associate of the Royal Conservatory of Toronto Diploma in 1971 and a Bachelor of Music degree in 1972 in composition and piano. With the help of the Canada Council he then continued his musical studies in composition privately in Rome, Siena and London with Luciano Berio, Franco Donatoni, and David Bedford.
Mozetich discovered classical music on CBC Radio. He was influenced to compose romantic music through listening to Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. He also first heard on the radio what was considered then as "super-modern pieces", which presented to him a totally different, almost science-fiction perspective. He then started improvising some of his own "super-modern pieces" rather than practising the classics. At this point he had not yet learned how to record his compositions.
After graduating from grade 13, Mozetich worked towards becoming a concert pianist, but gave this up after he failed his A.R.C.T. (He later received his A.R.C.T. performance diploma in 1971.) He attended the University of Waterloo studying psychology. About halfway through his courses, however, realizing that he was studying out of personal interest and not for practical reasons, he shifted again towards music, and studied with John Weinzweig and Lothar Klein at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music.