Josif Marinković was a Serbian composer and choral director. Like his younger contemporary Stevan St. Mokranjac, he was devoted to mainly vocal genres—lied and choral. Marinković was a romanticist with a pronounced affinity for melodic expression. He invested exceptional attention to the text declamation, which represented a rather novel quality in Serbian music at the time.

Stevan Stojanović, known as Stevan Mokranjac was a Serbian composer and music educator. Born in Negotin in 1856, Mokranjac studied music in Belgrade, Munich, Rome and Leipzig while in his twenties. Later, he became the conductor of the Belgrade Choir Society and founder of the Serbian School of Music and the first Serbian string quartet, in which he played the cello. He left Belgrade at the beginning of World War I and moved to Skopje, where he died on 28 September 1914.