Pupin, Kunc, Balokovic

On the low, grassy hills of Jugoslavia, shepherds have lounged for centuries, watching the smoke curl up from far-away villages and amusing themselves with strange, melancholy songs, gentle and careless as their flocks. To peasants who have often heard these songs, sounding far away and faint through a whole summer night or winding along the high paths in the twilight, they remain the most pervasive of all music. One such peasant is famed Michael Idvorsky Pupin, who long ago immigrated to the U. S. to become an electrical engineer and professor of mechanics (Columbia). He, with Croatian Violinist Zlatko Balokovic, last year offered a prize of 52,000 dinars (about $5,000) for a musical composition based on Jugoslavian themes and designed for the violin with orchestral accompaniment.

Last week the judges, Rubin Goldmark, U. S. composer, and Ernest Henry Schelling, U. S. pianist, awarded this prize to one Bozidar Kunc.. Composer Kunc had concocted a short concerto in two movements, the first in "a lovely, brave style," the second a dance which utilized folk melodies. Hitherto unheard of, Composer Kunc was discovered to be a native of Zagreb, capital of Croatia. His concerto will be heard publicly for the first time in October when Violinist Balokovic will play it in Berlin. Thereafter it will occupy a place on 66 programs with which Violinist Balokovic will tour European cities.