Post on 13-Jan-2016
Sarajevo
• The capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina
• City area 142 km² • Population 308,558
Sarajevo has attracted international attention several times throughout its history.
In 1914 it was the site of the assassination that sparked
World War I.
Seventy years later it became the host city of the
1984 Winter Olympics.
More recently, Sarajevo underwent the longest siege in modern military
history during the Bosnian war.
Today the city is recovering and adjusting to a post-war reality, as a
major center of culture and economic development in
Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Sarajevo art academy, on the bank of the Miljacka.
The National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Sarajevo.
Sarajevo was the first city in Europe to have a full-time (from dawn to dusk) operational electric tram line.
The headquarters of the Sarajevo newspaper Dnevni Avaz.
The building of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, central Sarajevo.
Ferhad-Begova, one of Sarajevo's 86 mosques.
• On May 27, 1992, one of the few bakeries that still had a supply of flour was making and distributing bread to the starving, war-shattered people. At 4 P.M. a long line reached into the street.
• Suddenly, a mortar shell fell directly into the middle of the line, killing 22 people and splattering flesh, blood, bone, and rubble.
• Before the war, Vedran Smailovic had been a cellist with Sarajevo Opera Orchestra, a distinguished career to which he longed to return.
• But when he saw the massacre outside his window, he was pushed past his capacity to endure any more.
• Such was his anguish that he resolved to do the thing he did best: make music. Public music, brave music, music on a battlefield.
Vedran Smailović playing the cello in the partially destroyed National Library in 1992.
• For each of the next 22 days, at 4 P.M., Smailovic put on his full, formal concert dress, took up his cello and walked out of his apartment into the midst of the battle raging around him.
• He played to the abandoned streets, destroyed trucks, and burning building, and to the terrified people who hid in the cellars while the bombs dropped and bullets flew.
During these 22 days, Vedran Smailovic played one of the most mournful and haunting pieces in the classical repertoire, “Adaigio in G minor” composed by Albinoni.
David Wilde
• An English composer, who was so moved by the story of this extraordinary man, wrote a composition for unaccompanied cello, “The Cellist of Sarajevo.”
David Wilde
• I first read about it (The cellist of Sarajevo). I sat in the train, deeply moved, I listened; and somewhere deep within me a cello began to play a circular melody like a lament without end….
The cellist of SarajevoPerformed by Yo-yo Ma
• The music began, stealing out into the quiet hall and creating a shadowy, empty universe.
• Slowly it grew into an agonized, screaming, and slashing furor, gripping us all before subsiding at last into a hollow death rattle and, finally, back to silence.
C:\Downloads\Chris de Burgh BORDERLINE.mpg
• Borderline Chris De Burgh I‘m standing in the station
• I‘m waiting for a train to take me to the border And my loved one far away
• I watched a bunch of soldiers • Heading for the war
• I could hardly even bear to see them go Rolling through the countryside
• Tears are in my eyes
• We're coming to the borderline I'm ready with my lies And in the early morning rain I see her there And I know I'll have to say goodbye again
• And it‘s breaking my heart I know what I must do I hear my country call me But I want to be with you
• I‘m taking my side
• One of us will lose Don‘t let go, I want to know
• That you will wait for me until the day There's no borderline, no borderline
• Walking past the border guards Reaching for her hand Showing no emotion
• I want to break into a run But these are only boys And I will never know How men can see the wisdom in a war