People used to call him “The Godfather of Music”, and others like “Hero of passion and intelligence”.
This is Prenk Jakova, an outstanding Albanian composer. His creations, give a more precise structure to music, provoke a strong dizziness and desire of the passionate kind, when people listen to them even today, turning him into a radically valuable genius. Sartri, in a research work on the creation of values ​​from a capricious freedom, states: “The artist does not have the impression that he invents beauty, but that he seeks to approach it and never achieve it.”
His Divine creative art transcends any artistic explanation. Yet the creative imagination of a musician, like master Jakova, has its explanatory part, turning it into a rarity. He managed to find creative elements in the culture of reality that we lived, in his passions and in the needs of the environment where he researched, the motives of his activity. He adapted the soul to other values. Those of loneliness!

Prenk Jakova, with a series of manifestations of the intellect in his creations, questions today the experience and the truth of what we may not see. His deep music remains a treasure trove of the golden fund of Albanian culture and art.
Prenk Jakova was born in 1917 in Shkodra, he founded the first Albanian Opera.
He inherited this trait, artistic spirit from his grandfather. Although he did not know him, Prenka would grow up with musical stories about him. He died quite young, leaving behind a son and only one clarinet.
A clarinet that replaced Prenka’s grandfather. A clarinet that raised the nephew… He was there!
From the age of 7, his father encouraged him to participate in all artistic and various theatrical roles in Shkodra. While his brothers, like Prenka, would become photographers and musicians. He would be only 18 years old when he became the leader of the musical band in in the Liceum of Tirana.
He started this sacred path as he dreamed of his grandfather, as a clarinetist.
He would be appointed a teacher in 1936 in the village of Bërdicë in the Prefecture of Shkodra. But he would leave in 1939 as a teacher in Mirdita. There he would write the first songs in the accordion. While he was transferred for a year to Ulcinj, in 1942 he would find him in Rome, at the University of Santa Cecilia, where he graduated with honors in clarinet.
The work “Mrika” was the first opera in the history of Albanian musical art, which Prenk Jakova wrote in collaboration with librettist Llazar Siliqi and the well-known director from Shkodra Andrea Skanjeti, which was staged at the “Migjeni” theater in Shkodra.

Prenk Jakova’s second opera, “Gjergj Kastrioti-Skënderbeu”, was very well received by colleagues of art lovers, since his first performance in Tirana, but the mediocre official criticism with malicious intent tempted the composer, who was forced to recompose some parts of it. However, the work “Gjergj Kastrioti-Skënderbeu” was much more solid than “Mrika” which suffered the misfortune of the subject and theme of schematic art, where the revolutionary wind of the time of absurdity had to blow.

Prenk Jakova was a composer who successfully wrote romances, cantatas and songs. From a young age, Prenka participated in the artistic musical life of the city. Here he made his first art school. He became a teacher and went to teach in the schools of the villages of Shkodra and Mirdita, but he never stopped writing music.

Meanwhile, Prenka’s younger brother, during the Second World War, participated in the Albanian nationalist movement, and with the coming to power of the communists he was forced to live in the mountains. Because of the wanted brother, the communists arrest Prenk Jakova and keep him in prison for some time. While Prenka, who had exercised no activity other than his duty as a teacher, is soon released from prison, the fate of his brother would be exceedingly tragic. He is captured by the communists and shot mercilessly.

Prenk Jakova was a great artist, who despite the tragedy, and the pain he had, managed to survive and write by imposing himself on the monist regime with the force of his genius.

Prenka gave his country a great work from which he showed what music is, where it goes, and what is done with it. With him and the singers, showing harmony of melody, psychology and stage actions.
Prenka romances or cantatas are not forgotten. “Margjelo” this highlander is sung even in this modern time.Given his virtuosity and diverse musical works, Prenk Jakova is considered one of the greatest colossi of Albanian music of all time.
Prenk Jakova committed suicide on September 9, 1969.

/Klara Ruci/