The word thallus is a botanical term for the body of organisms that lack differentiated plant organs – roots, stems and leaves. These are organisms like fungi and moss, or lichens which are, actually, what I had in mind when I named my composition.
 
More specifically, the title Thallus refers to the lichens that we can find on high altitudes – those multi-coloured and kaleidoscopic lichens living on bare rocks of mountain landscapes, which are the most apparent chroniclers of the life and the time that seem to occur within animistic worlds of mountains and hills in a different, distinctive and concealed way.
 
Thallus, the catalogue of oronyms for symphony orchestra is a piece of music about all those associations that are evoked by the thought about distant and inaccessible mountain ranges. It is music that sings about the kind of quiet excitement caused by images of fantastic galleries of limestone and dolomite formations. It is music that leads to the kind of elation caused by mere reference to the existing and still non-existent oronyms – the names of mountain ranges and their peaks: Minin bogaz, Bandijerna, Midžor, Babin zub, Prokletije, Komovi… Names like these radiate poetics stemming from pagan spirituality and superstition, and they tell a story about ancient comprehension of the world, in which it was not uncommon to believe that “thy sky is held above the ground by mountain tops”.
 
Draško Adžić

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