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In this paper we investigate the process of the creation and embodiment of the concept of Serbian folk church chant throughout the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century among Serbian intellectuals and scholars. In order to indicate its main dimensions we focused on church music narratives of that time. Due to a detailed analysis of discussions and writings in periodicals as well as the published chant collections themselves, we were able to assess the dominant interpretations of the historical development of church singing in the Serbian Orthodox church. Looking closely at suppositions made about the origins and formation of church chants through the history of the Serbian church we could unveil their character e.g. whether they were the result of previously done research or were just a product of speculative thinking. In addition, we formed assumptions on the embeddedness of the concept of Serbian folk church chant in influential narratives on national identity and culture developed among the Serbian political and intellectual elite. The aim of our investigation was to show that the concept of Serbian folk church chant was not only determined by socio-political strivings in the Serbian state but that it was also a product of the wider political and cultural goals of the Serbian elite. Finally, we sought to suggest the important role played by 19th and early 20th century Serbian church music scholars in the process of imagining the Serbian nation. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177004: Identiteti srpske muzike od lokalnih do globalnih okvira: tradicije, promene, izazovi]

The gramophone record industry had developed in the Yugoslav region from the beginning of the 20th century. The paper is based on an analysis of the corpus of 78 rpm records of singing with gusle accompaniment, which were produced between 1908 and 1932. Available recordings highlight the issue of representing both the epic and the gusle playing tradition in this media format and its relationship with “unmediated” live gusle playing practice. Therefore the authors opted to analyze gramophone records as both a text in culture and an actor in tradition. After introductory theoretical and methodological remarks, the authors offer a brief description of the historical, political and socio-cultural context that emphasized epic singing with gusle accompaniment as a representative traditional genre in this area. For that reason it was noteworthy for both western and local production companies which made recordings in the Balkans (Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft mbH., Odeon Records, Marsh Laboratories, Inc., Edison Bell Penkala Ltd.). Analysis of the recordings is focused on examination of the way in which gusle players responded to different requirements of the new media (e.g. the insufficient capacity of a record itself compared to the usual duration of a performance; the reduction of a complex form of artistic communication to an oral, auditory message, while additional forms of non-verbal communication are excluded). Through discussion of the treatment of verbal and musical components of the recorded performances it has been shown that tradition was simultaneously exemplified and reshaped by this new medium. In addition to the guslars themselves, being already recognized artists in this traditional genre and the acoustic source (the voice accompanied by the gusle), the representative base of the epic tradition comprised traditional (poetic) texts, although modifications / innovations are recognizable at different levels of verbal content, as well as on the level of music interpretation. On these bases, it is possible to talk about the contribution of new media to the professionalization of guslars’ practice and the creation of “stars” among them on the one hand, and the progressive transformation of once-active audience members (in the sense of potentially exchangeable performer / listener positions) into passive buyers and consumers, on the other. It is noted that these, first gramophone records of guslars had a great role in and impact on the survival of the epic singing tradition, brokering its promotion in urban areas and among the “cultural elite”. Finally, in this way they contributed to the strengthening of this tradition in a historical period that brought disintegration of the system of traditional culture and “crisis” of the most of the current classic folklore genres. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177004: Identiteti srpske muzike od lokalnih do globalnih okvira: tradicije, promene, izazovi i br. 178011: Srpsko usmeno stvaralaštvo u interkulturnom kodu]

During 1935, 1936. and 1938, in Belgrade was published a monthly magazine The Southslavic Choral Union Herald [Vesnik Južnoslovenskog pevačkog saveza]. Three years represent 16 issues or 119 articles, or 216 pages. The first editor was Milenko Živković (1901-1964), a Serbian composer of the younger generation, the chief secretary of the Southslavic Choral Union. The magazine was conceived as a newsletter. Choral societies, members of the South Slavic Choral Association, were given the opportunity to stay informed about the work of the Union and the activities of choral societies throughout the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Therefore, Herald published numerous news, informative articles, speeches and obituaries. However, the Herald got physiognomy of a music magazine thanks to essays on the significant figures of Serbian music (Davorin Jenko, Stevan Mokranjac), texts about the problems of choral technique and interpretation, critical reviews of sheet music, and musical criticism. These texts were written by the leading Serbian musicians of the time: Milenko Živković, Branko Dragutinović, Petar Krstić, Mihailo Vukdragović, Miloje Milojević and Richard Schwartz. The Herald represented the ideology of integral Yugoslavism. The assassination of Yugoslav king Alexander Karadjordjević during his visit to Marseilles in 1934 strongly affected the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which has long been in the political crisis. However, the Herald and the Southslavic Choral Union have remained faithful to the ideology of Yugoslavism and to King Alexander as its symbol. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177004: Identiteti srpske muzike od lokalnih do globalnih okvira: tradicije, promene, izazovi]

Miodrag A. Vasiljević (1903-1963) was given a unique opportunity to span two great developmental stages in the history of Serbian ethnomusicology, occurring in the middle of the 20th century. The first of them was between the two World Wars, the stage in which Serbian musical folklore became Vasiljević’s life passion and in which he accomplished his early professional achievements. In the next stage, which started after World War II, he reached the zenith of his creation in slightly less than twenty years, setting new standards of the discipline, and providing fundamental directions for his successors, thereby immeasurably enlarging the corpus of collected material. Due all of these revolutionary innovations from the post-war period, Vasiljević is rightly considered to be not only the founder of modern Serbian ethnomusicology, but also the first person in Serbia worthy of being called an ethnomusicologist in the full sense of the word. Of the numerous results by which Vasiljević permanently indebted his people, the most pronounced does not belong to the category of pioneering endeavours, but is manifested in his melographic opus - an achievement which even today has not been surpassed in Serbia in terms of its span, scope and value. Such great productivity in recording resulted from the fact that Vasiljević had been devoted to melography from his childhood, and most intensely from 1932 to the end of his life. The exact number of examples which Vasiljević transcribed directly in the field before 1951 and those which he recorded on a tape-recorder after that time is still unknown, since many of them are still unavailable to the public, but it can be assumed that there are several thousand melodies in total. Among them are 3,198 which have already been published. That precious corpus of Vasiljević’s available material is contained in twelve collections (the largest number ever regarding any collector in Serbia so far), issued from 1950 to 2009. The first four collections offer comprehensive material from Kosmet, Sandžak, Macedonia and the region of Leskovac, and they were edited by Vasiljević himself during the last ten years of his life or so. Posthumous publications were devoted to Montenegro, Vojvodina, Resava and various parts of central Serbia, as well as to the repertoires of the famous singer Hamdija Šahinpašić (1914/16-2003) from Sandžak, and gypsy female singer Malika Jeminović Koštana (1872?-1945) from the vicinity of Vranje. Until now there have still not been any comprehensive studies on Vasiljević’s ethnomusicological activity, although there are valuable articles. In these, Vasiljević’s melographic contribution is usually emphasised much more than his scientific one, which is much more modest in its scope. Since the existing writings mostly deal with collections published during his life, this paper results from the intention to give a complete picture of the material, so all Vasiljević’s collections were critically considered according to the chronology of their publication. Each of the publications emerged to witness to both Vasiljević as a field worker and to some of the important stages of his own ethnomusicological development. The last part of the text focuses on the fact that a decline in production of ethnomusicological collection publications has been evident in Serbia over the last few decades. Nowadays, this negative trend is conditioned by two key reasons. One is the perfected and easily available technology of digital audio recording and the copying of sound recordings. The second is reflected in the general developmental orientation of the discipline. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177024: Muzička i igračka tradicija multietničke i multikulturalne Srbije]

This research focuses on the development of art music, music pedagogy and teaching solfège in Serbia in the long period stretching from the second half of the 19th century until the present day. In this article I present a chronology of the institutionalisation of the music education system in Serbia; then, I discuss the origins of the influence of Western European artistic-pedagogical practices on Serbian teaching, through the testimonies by Stevan Hristić, Berthold Hartmann, Miloje Milojević, Stanislav Vinaver, Milan Grol and others. I finish with the presentation of the most important Serbian music pedagogues and their achievements in the period before World War II (Stevan Stojanović Mokranjac, Isidor Bajić, Miloje Milojević, Miodrag Vasiljević) in parallel with the results and practices of the Western European and global music pedagogy. My goal is to observe Serbian approaches to music pedagogy in relation to the question of the possibilities, realistic or hypothetical, to use the educational principles which were in expansion in Europe at the end of the 19 th and beginning of the 20th centuries in Serbian music pedagogy. After examining the methods of teaching solfège in the period from the end of World War II until today, I conclude that Serbia has developed its own pedagogic style (even though it is based on the complementarity of several autochthonous and foreign methodical solutions), built upon and supperted by the experience and knowledge of Serbian and foreign attainments in music pedagogy.

Located at the southernmost part of Kosovo and Metohija, on the slopes of the Sharr Mountains, Gora represents a place once inhabited by the Serbian Orthodox population, who converted to Islam under the Turkish occupation of the Balkans. The faith conversion began in the 16th and ended in the 19th century, at which point there had still been some remains of Orthodox churches left on the territory of Gora. The acceptance of the new religion and other values passed on by the Ottoman Empire brought about changes in terms of identity, so, nowadays, inhabitants identify themselves as the Goranci/Gorani people. To this very day, their cultural matrix reflects a combination of musical creations which probably preceded the change of religion as well as those variations established by the Turkish domination. These phenomena can be tracked on the level of both their context and the musical text. The Gorani celebrate Christian holidays (Christmas and St George’s Day), and keep those holidays that are part of Islamic practice (Sunnah and Bayram). As an example of an older, traditional manner of musical expression, the two-part “aloud” (na glas) singing has a dominant second interval in a narrow tonal ambitus and a free metro-rhythmical organization. This form of singing is usually shaped into octosyllable and it is characterized by text improvisation which happens simultaneously with a certain action. Its interpretation is associated with St George’s Day, wedding, Sunnah, and other holidays. Songs that accompany the dance are sung in a heterophonic manner or in unison, accompanied by the tambourine (emic term: daire or def). Unlike the two-part “aloud” singing, performing the songs in unison with the tambourine and dance has wider tonal systems with a periodical case of an excessive second. However, the very emergence of numerous instruments such as the tambourine, kaval, tambura and zurla, shows a considerable Turkish-Eastern influence. This influence is especially noticeable in the Romani “musicking” using zurla, which typically involves a combination of traditional music of different nations, predominantly Turkish and Albanian. Turkish influence tied to instrumental music was conveyed to the vocal singing, particularly to singing songs together with using the tambourine while dancing, as well as to singing to the accompaniment of the tambura. Within these modes of musical performance, asymmetrical rhythms are used, along with the augmented second, which ethnomusicological literature often cites as an element of Oriental culture. By overviewing the Gorani musical practice and the “otherness” in diachrony, it is evident that what was known as otherness in the past now represents an integral part of the identity. The practices established before Islam, as well as those brought by this religion, are manifested in terms of context and text. It is obvious that the Gorani people have created their own musical uniqueness throughout the centuries of cultural turmoil. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177024]

Animated musical film, lying at the intersection of the two creative worlds and representing a dialogue between the musician and painter, is a living process of the visual interpretation of the artistic image of a musical work. A dialogue between the director of an animated film and the composer of a musical masterpiece can take place only if there is intonational (term used according to B. Asaf’ev’s writing) “equalization” of the artistic and validation determinants of merger-related, personal, emotional states. The author emphasizes that within the artistic image of an animated film, the inner essence of the “I” is made on the basis of the artist’s expression, the unity and consistency of color, sound, plastic solutions, coupled with deep philosophical generalizations, cultural, and value-semantic in their nature. The article provides examples of interpretations of classical music masterpieces in animated films by Russian and Polish filmmakers.

The Foundation of Ilija Milosavljević Kolarac (also known as Kolarac Foundation; in Serbian: Kolarčeva zadužbina) was established simultaneously with the development of the most important modern cultural institutions in Serbia in the 19th century. The quality and diversity of the program, the ability to recognize important topics in the current time, as well as preservation of the old and encouragement of new ideas in almost all domains of art and science have contributed to its unquestionable reputation throughout the region. However, there have been no significant academic attempts to approach its work analytically and, in particular, its audience. The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the work of Kolarac Foundation by presenting the origin and history of the institution, followed by an analysis of the program of all its activities in the first ten seasons of the new millennium. The central part of the paper is an analysis of its cultural activity in the given period. Finally, by using empirical data, the music audence of Great Hall (Velika Dvorana) of Kolarac Foundation is profiled through its basic socio-demographic characteristics and music practices. The music audience mainly consisted of women, highly educated professionals with a high material standard. The share of the oldest and those from 21 to 30 years old is the highest and, at the same time, equal. This audience is authentically fond of music, with no exceptions at all. Its members listen to music on everyday basis, and they were attending concerts in the year before the investigation. They find music to be an inevitable part of their lives, and cannot imagine emotional expression or making friendships without it. Finally, they sincerely like coming to Kolarac Foundation since they find it to be a place that has all the positive treats of a good cultural institution.

The musical oeuvre of Milan Mihajlović (b. 1945) enjoys a high reputation and position in contemporary Serbian music. This has been proven by the many awards he has received, countless performances of his compositions at home and abroad, and especially by the warm and approving reactions of the audience. The stylistic consistency in his oeuvre is a result of his creative use of Scriabin’s scale. The concept of this scale was first theoretically elaborated in an extensive study written by Mihajlović in 1980 and, since then the scale has been functioning as a crucial cohesive element in all Mihajlović’s compositions. The novelty in his oeuvre, composed during the 1990s, were intertextual references made by using citations from his own works and those of other composers (Monteverdi, Mozart, Stravinsky, Rachmaninov, Vasilije Mokranjac). The most characteristic features of his mature style are also recognizable in his recent works Melancholy (2014) and Rebellion (2015). The interval structure of Skriabin’s scale is projected along the horizontal (melodical) and vertical (harmonical) axes of the both works while the formal design resulted from shifts of tensions and relaxations. Developmental sections are based on variation and improvisation of the small number of different motifs (three basic ones in Melancholy, four in Rebellion) above the metrically moveable ostinato layers and the releases are marked by change of tempo, dynamic, meter and texture. The most significant and radical release is the one which marks the abrupt ending of Rebellion by the physical gesture of slamming down the keyboard lid. As the composition was written for the BUNT festival (Belgrade) it fits the festival’s idea of expressing resistance to the government’s neglect of academic musicians and institutions. In the wider sense, it becomes a sign of the resistance to the world we live in, and that is the world of lost ideals. Both works are composed for the wind instrument and the piano quartet and in the both cases the author’s voice, with its figures of sorrow and anger, is personified in singing, narrative lines of the wind instrument (the oboe in Melancholy and French horn in Rebellion respectively). These two compositions also demonstrate the specific concept of a circle that is intuitively searched for and ingeniously implemented. It is manifested by the cyclic concept of Scriabin’s scale and projected in all of the author’s compositional procedures as a vehicle for the expression of lament and resignation. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177019: Identiteti srpske muzike u svetskom kulturnom kontekstu]

In this article the author does not consider crisis a threat, but in a modern sense, an auto-motive drive of art. Therefore, crisis does not affect the art from the outside, it does not hit it as an illness or a storm, but it always produces itself, which is considered to be a condition for movement in art. First of all, the author analyzes the notion of representation and the four roots of the sufficient reason as a conservative and conserving element of art, to which he opposes crisis and its self-production as something that resists sclerotization of art forms. In music, the relation between the ossified, "naturalized" structure and that which decomposes that structure, manifests itself as the relation between harmony and disharmony. The moment when harmony shows a tendency towards naturality, understanding eternity and truth, an alarm is activated to show that music is being paralyzed and it needs a deconstructive intervention of disharmony, atonality and dissonance.

Although ethnochoreology and ethnomusicology as related academic disciplines have decades-long histories, reviewing and redefining their basic epistemological and methodological principles remained one of the main focuses of disciplinary discussion. Most ethnochoreologists and ethnomusicologist agrees that “field” work (in all its traditional and contemporary forms) remains an essential and constitutive quality of their research and disciplinary fields. The inherent interdisciplinary networking of ethnochoreology and ethnomusicology starts from the theoretical premise that the relationship between the kinetic and musical components of dance is not only unbreakable, but also interactive, and that complex and dynamic manifestations of dance performances represents an expressive medium through which a particular community constructs and represents itself. Since the importance of the individual experience of researchers has been ephasized during the last few decades, a comprehensive method of participant observation remains a central and unifying aspect of fieldwork, both in ethnochoreology and ethnomusicology. Based on field research of musical and dance practices of the village of Svinica (Sviniţa) in Romania, this paper reviews the application and combination of various methods of field research (observation, participation in the performance process, filming, interviews and writing field notes) as the primary tools for the acquisition and shaping of scientific knowledge about dance and music. Issues that will be discussed include the following questions: What are the advantages of personal kinetic/auditory experience during simultaneous perception of dance movement and dance music? How can different methods of field research be combined in order to improve cognitive processes? Are there border areas between ethnochoreological and ethnomusicological fieldwork? Does the variety of methods of field research represents a weakness of the interdisciplinary approach or its advantage? On which information recorded during the fieldwork does a researcher usually build his post-field ethnochoreological/ethnomusical narratives? Through discussion of all these issues, particular emphasis will therefore be placed on the consideration of processes of memorization (visual, auditory and kinetic) when applying the method of participation in the dance performance. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177024: Muzička i igračka tradicija multietničke i multikulturalne Srbije]

The monthly magazine Review of Music was published six times in Belgrade from January to June 1940. Each edition comprised thirty-two pages, half of which were devoted to a sheet-music supplement, popular compositions of the time for voice and piano. Review of Music published 222 articles and scores in total. The aim of the magazine was to popularise classical music, but it also encompassed jazz, films and film music, theatre, literature, fashion, and even sport. Review of Music was different from all other Serbian inter-war music magazines, not only because of its wide range of topics, but also because it published anonymous articles, probably taken from other sources, but it is not known from where. This study analyses the articles about classical music in Review of Music. In several short chapters the author presents the concept of the magazine, its genre structure, themes addressed, and the style of its music writers. Selected examples show that article authors tended to exploit elements of narrative (with an emphasis on impressive details), humour, and moral teaching. The authors also especially emphasized the neutral attitude of Review of Music towards contemporary music, although the magazine published different views of contemporary composers concerning the aesthetics of modern music. Review of Music started four months after Germany invaded Poland. However, in the journal references to social and political events are non-existant. The journal seems to have been interested only in culture and the arts. However, the author of this study presents examples in which the political circumstances of the time can be perceived. One of these examples is the visit of the Frankfurt Opera House to Belgrade in 1940. That extraordinary cultural event was attended by Prince Paul Karađorđević and Princess Olga, the Yugoslav Prime Minister, and almost all other government ministers. In this news, any authority on the political situation of the time could see that the Yugoslav government and the political elite took care of delicate relations with Germany at that time. This is the first study to analyse the concept and content of classical music in Review of Music. This magazine is certainly an interesting source, not only for the history of Serbian music periodicals, but also for cultural history.

The opus of contemporary Serbian composer Milorad Marinković (b. 1976), which encompasses works of choral, chamber, concertante and symphony music, leans towards classical forms of artistic music, Serbian folklore music, and Serbian Orthodox church chant. This paper deals with pieces composed for larger instrumental ensembles: Herojska uvertira (Heroic Overture) for symphony orchestra, Psalmodija (Psalmody) for symphony orchestra, Koncert za klavir i orkestar (Piano concerto) and Mala opera (Little Opera) for chamber ensemble (septet) with prominent soloist parts of flute and clarinet. Special attention is placed on different procedures used by Marinković to accomplish wholeness and integration of the musical tissue. This paper observes these pieces as examples of religious music, having in mind the composer’s own understanding of the notion. Among common characteristics of the observed works that justify this point of view are specific single movement forms and the prominent role of main thematic materials, a cyclic principle, and programmatic elements. References to Serbian church chant observed in Marinković’s instrumental works are also discussed, especially in parallel with the analogue procedures used by Ljubica Marić (1909- 2003), one of the composer’s role models. Although Marinković’s works for instrumental ensembles do not fall into the category of spiritual music in its narrow sense (as defined by the composer himself), in this paper they are nevertheless considered as “spiritual” in a broader sense, as an expression of the composer’s desire to spiritualize his entire artistic output.

Until the end of the twentieth century in Byzantine musicological science there were two diametrically opposite approaches to the interpretation of the Byzantine neum notation systems and post-Byzantine music heritage after the Fall of Constantinople. Western European scholars, ignoring the post-Byzantine Chant tradition and the last semeography reform from the early nineteenth century, looked at the problems of the musical past only from the perspective of the Middle Ages. Greek researchers have shared the belief that the condition of an adequate understanding of the mid-Byzantine notation, or the so-called old method, is the knowledge of analytical neum system and theory, the basics of which were set up by musicians from the end of the seventeenth and during the eighteenth century, and were finally shaped by Chrisantos, Gregory and Chourmouzios and officially accepted in the Greek church in 1814. The path to overcoming the issues relating to the development of neum notation, and finding an adequate manner of decoding it, led through the understanding of the phenomenon of "interpretation" and other tendencies that marked the post-Byzantine music practice. Two scientists -the Danish Jørgen Raasted, a follower of the Western European musicological methods established by founders of Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, and Greek theologist and musicologist Gregory Stathes - are specifically responsible for the reconciliation of the different methodological approaches. After numerous and often heated debates, the Danish scientist eventually largely accepted the views of his Greek counterpart. Moreover, he himself insisted, at the musicological conferences organized during the 1980s, on reviewing the controversial issues: the existence of chromatic intervals in the psalmody of the Middle-Ages, the problem of syllabic and melismatic interpretations of stenographic neum records, and so on. Concerning the above mentioned issues, the contemporary trends in Byzantine musicology are presented in the conclusion of the paper. It is worth noting that the most influential scholars nowadays follow “a middle path”, the distinction between the once exclusive Western option and the no less “hard” Greek traditional option. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177004: Identiteti srpske muzike od lokalnih do globalnih okvira: tradicije, promene, izazovi]

In 1844, Serbian patriarch Josif Rajačić served two central annual Liturgies, at the feasts of Pasha and Penticost, in the Greek church of Holy Trinity in Vienna; these were accompanied by the four-part choral music. The appearance of new music in several orthodox temples in Habsburg Monarchy (including this one) during the first half of the nineteenth century, became an additional problem in a long chain of troubles that had disturbed the ever imperiled relations between the local churches in Balkans, especially the Greek and Serbian Orthodox. The official epistle that was sent from the ecomenical throne to all sister orthodox churches, with the main request to halt this strange and untraditional musical practice, provoked reactions from Serbian spiritual leader, who actually blessed the introduction of polyphonic music, and the members of Greek parish at the church of St. George in Vienna, who were also involved with it. The correspondence between Vienna and Constantinople reflected two opposite perceptions. The first one could named “traditional” and the other one “enlightening”, because of the apologies for the musical reform based on the unequivocal ideology of Enlightenment. In this article the pro et contra arguments for the new music tendencies in Greek and Serbian orthodox churches are analyzed mainly from the viewpoint of the theological discourse, including the two phenomena that seriously endangered the very entity of Orthodox faith. The first phenomenon is the ethnophiletism which, from the Byzantine era to the modern age, was gradually dividing the unique and single body of Orthodox church into the so-called “national” churches, guided by their own, almost political interests, often at odds with the interests of other sister churches. The second phenomenon is the Westernization of the “Orthodox soul” that came as a sad result of countless efforts of orthodox theological leaders to defend the Orthodox independence from the aggressive Roman Catholic proselytism. “The Babylonian captivity of the Orthodox church”, as Georg Florovsky used to say, began when Orthodox theologians started to apply the Western theological methods and approaches in their safeguarding of the Orthodox faith and especially in ecclesiastical education. In this way the new cultural and social tendencies which gripped Europe after the movements of Reformation and Contra-Reformation were adopted without critical thinking among Orthodox nations, especially among the representatives of the Ortodox diaspora at the West. Observed from this extensive context, the four-part music in Orthodox churces in Austria shows one of many diverse requirements demanded from the people living in a foreign land, in an alien and often hostile environment, to assimilate its values, in this case related to the adoption of its musical practices. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. ON 177004: Identiteti srpske muzike od lokalnih do globalnih okvira: tradicija, promene, izazovi]

This article bases its arguments mainly on data found in secondary literature about the propriety of music in Arabic culture after the advent of Islam. One of the oldest sources in Arabic on the subject is Damm al-malāhī (The Condemnation of Instruments of Diversion). In it, the author, Ibn Abī al-Dunyā (823-894) condemned listening to music and musical instruments. Subsequently, many books addressed the question of whether music is illicit (ar. harām). Western scholars defined this corpus of literature as a kind of polemic about the permissibility of music and musical instruments in Islamic culture. Since there is no verse (ar. Áya) in the Qur’Án which explicitly forbids or allows music, and since, at the same time, the hadīt literature abounds with contradictory statements about the practice of the prophet Muhammad regarding listening to music and musical instruments, this question continues to resurface, either in the media or on web pages specifically devoted to the issue. This topic is also quite interesting in terms of the reflexions one can encounter in the Muslim areas of the ex-Yugoslav region. At the same time, the article touches upon the special place that the Qur’ān recitation (ar. tilāwat al-Qur’ān) and Islamic call to prayer (ar. adān) have in Muslim communities. We often find both of them in chapters on religious music, and can, for instance, hear Gorans from Kosovo say (colloquially) that one sings the call to prayer. Nevertheless, although both the Recitation and the call to prayer employ the system of maqāms found in secular forms of music, in religious Islamic circles they have never been defined as music, nor are they understood as such in Islamic public opinion. It has been said innumerable times that it is not the (listening to) music per se that is forbidden, but rather the circumstances surrounding music, sometimes associated with the consumption of alcohol or similar behaviour, which leads to transgression of Islamic ethical norms. And even though music - as suggested by Henry George Farmer-was to be found in the private, public, and religious life of the Arabs from pre-Islamic times to the present (Farmer 1967: 17), and even despite it not being forbidden in Islam, the status of the professional musician was never truly regarded as respectable.

In this paper I discuss special features in traditional ethnic music; it is about the functional, social-psychological and genre-structural generative factors of the artistic text’s formation within multitude of predictable concrete texts existing in reality. The integral formulae of any art work of traditional music in a small or big form are derived on the basis of the mathematic theory of multitude.

This study explores the relationship between the Yugoslav ideology as exhibited in Serbian music magazines published between the two world wars. These are the following journals: Music (1928-1929), Bulletin of the Music Society „Stanković” (1928-1934, 1938-1941; in January 1931 it was renamed The Musical Gazette), The Sound (1932-1936), Herald of the South Slavic Choral Union (1935-1936, 1938), Slavic music (1939-1941) and Review of Music (1940). I have excluded the magazine Musical Gazette (1922) from consideration because I have already discussed its ideological aspects in an earlier article (2009). Yugoslav topics in interwar music periodicals are addressed in an ecstatic tone by the music writers and editors (particularly immediately after the foundation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes); one also observes open dissent and criticism of undesirable, wasted tendencies. Signs of profound differences with respect to the fundamental aspect of Yugoslav ideology - i.e. on the question of the nature and degree of the unity of nations under the auspices of the ideology, appeared relatively early in these journals. I argue that three elements: open enthusiasm, criticism/polemic and fundamental differences, constituted a framework within which the Yugoslav ideology was expressed in the Serbian musical periodicals. The third aspect has proved to be crucial. One could observe two different and even opposing views on the Yugoslav ideology. While some musicians strongly advocated integral Yugoslavism, others wanted the preservation of distinctive national features within this ideology. This division is illustrated by the writings of Croatian composer and ethnomusicologist Božidar Širola and Serbian composer and music critic Milenko Živković. The division in question culminated in the case of the South Slavic Choral Union, which Croatian Choral Union refused to join. Hence, Serbian music periodicals provide an insight into the fundamental ideological and political problem of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177004: Identiteti srpske muzike od lokalnih do globalnih okvira: tradicije, promene, izazovi]

The pioneering efforts of Ljubica (1894-1974) and Danica (1898-1960) Janković consisted of their systematic research and collecting of traditional dance practice (folk dances), the methodological transcription, analysis and systematizing of dances, as well as the theoretical interpretations of numerous aspects of traditional dance. Their work resulted in the establishment of Serbian ethnochoreology in the first half of the twentieth century. As the extent of their activity in terms of transcribing musical material in the form of the accompaniment to folk dances has not yet been fully grasped by ethnomusicologists so far, the goal of this paper is to present the results and to stress the contributions of Danica and Ljubica Janković to the processes of the foundation and subsequent development of ethnomusicology in Serbia. These contributions are to be seen in eight public volumes of Folk Dances (1934-1964), whose methodological frame follows several important empirical and theoretical scientific approaches: firstly, analytical descriptive methodology of research, based on intense fieldwork (resulting in 800 transcribed dances and melodies from former Yugoslavia); secondly, excellent acquaintance with international trends in the field of ethno-musicology, as well as with concepts of research concerning Serbian folk culture; lastly, their inter-textual and interdisciplinary approach that essentially looks for correlates between dance, music and the context of performance. In this paper I shall elaborate in detail on the comments and significant interpretations of vocal and instrumental melodies that accompany folk dances made by the Janković sisters. These comments refer to stylistic and genre characteristics, melodic and metro-rhythmic attributes, the features of rural and urban melodies, the local characteristics of songs and instruments, changes in the diachronic flow, and to the characteristic relations of choreological and musical structural elements. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177024: Muzička i igračka tradicija multietničke i multikulturalne Srbije]

This article deals with Stevan Mokranjac’s fifthteen garlands (rukoveti), which are commonly regarded as the national project in Serbian art music that was accomplished through the producing of the tradition of the Serbian folk song. The garlands are examined by employing the concept of ethno-symbolism, theoretically associated with Anthony Smith. The elements of ethno-symbolism, and especially those aspects of this theory through which the articulation of a national identity activates connections with pre-modern myths, recollections and collective symbols, have proven useful in contextualization of folk material and its ethnological environment, with which the art work establishes intertextual connections. With his project Mokranjac created a rich network of ethno-symbols associated with the themes and motives of both rural and semi-urban communities that were characterized by their preservation of the model of patriarchal culture. Their strong attachment to ‘ethno-history’ as well as ‘symbolic geography’ produced various ‘ethno-scapes’, which established an increasingly symbiotic context of a ‘naturalized’ community and ‘historicized’ nature and territory. Mokranjac presented them as a representative sample in the process of legitimizing national consolidation and homogenization through the folk song. These aspects are observed in both textual and musical dimensions of Mokranjac’s garlands. The connection between his fieldwork and his compositions is also problematized. Mokranjac’s garlands are distinguished by their inclusiveness and a constant blending of older and newer ethno-historical elements, with an aim of constructing a unique tradition of national song, as an integral time-and-space image of the nation. Through this dimension of collectivism we can observe Mokranjac’s close connection to the patriarchal culture, as it remained an important ethno-symbolist element in both the politics and the poetics of his artistic project. At the same time, it provided a platform for free invention when it came to the more advanced stages of composition, when the patriarchal culture would be subjected to transfiguration by his individual creative imperatives. Mokranjac’s Garlands were the first works in Serbian music to emerge as results of an aesthetically rounded and ideologically grounded compositional project, which facilitated their canonization within the framework of Serbian art music. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. ON 177004: Identiteti srpske muzike od lokalnih do globalnih okvira: tradicije, promene, izazovi]

Today we often use term ‘authentic’ in relation to different appearances of Georgian folk music. Along with the unambiguous meaning ‘real’ this term also has other meanings: ‘ethnic’, ‘rural’, ‘old’, ‘function of usual environment’, ‘traditional-stylistic’, ‘authoritative’, or ‘reproductive’. In spite of some interconnections that arise from the term ‘authentic’ and its other meanings, the most relevant way to apply this popular term for performers and audiences of ‘real folklore’ is traditionality. This factor is manifested in the following contexts: a) performer (receiver and distributor of tradition, unobtrusively and orally), b) motivation/function (representative and spontaneous function, hereditary, utilitarian and aesthetic-daily motivation), c) repertoire (compliance of musical and verbal text’s sample with its social function, eluding canonized versions), d) expression (adequate articulation, performing regulation which is not determined by the stage, traditional instrument etc.). The problem of authenticity is more successfully regulated in traditional Georgian church music than in folk music. For the latter, in this regard the special difficulty is caused by identification of modern trends that contain folk motifs. The most popular among them is distinctive, with its stylistic reminiscent layer from the Eastern Georgian Mountains, which we refer as ‘para-folkore’. Notwithstanding the fact that Georgian folklore is not centrally authorized, modernization of folklore samples and also those manifestations of post-folklore that are further away from the traditional motifs attract a wide range of listeners. Essentially, the meaning of ‘authentic’ in the Georgian ethno-musical context is presented as performance of the traditional rural repertoire with traditional articulation. However, we think that it is convenient for the criteria of traditional, usual environment to be added to this perspective.

This paper contributes to the marking of the centenary of the death of two significant composers and conductors - Davorin Jenko (1835-1914) and Stevan St. Mokranjac (1856-1914). Although belonging to different generations, Jenko and Mokranjac were simultaneously active in Serbian culture over the course of almost four decades. This was a very dynamic and fruitful period, marked by historical and political unrests and by the intense processes of searching for Serbian national/ cultural identity. Divided into several fragments, the article identifies the points of intersection in their biographies, examining the delicate nature of their relationship in the context of the discourses of nationalism. Special attention is paid to the facts from the history of the Belgrade Singing Society and the National Theatre, but also to the manifestations by means of which a tradition of cultural remembrance of these two artists is maintained in Serbia in 2014. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. ON 177004: Identiteti srpske muzike od lokalnih do globalnih okvira: tradicije, promene, izazovi]

The Byzantine-musicological studies in Serbia during the last few decades have been at an unsatisfactory level. The fact that Serbian musicologists have not exhibited much interest in exploring this research area could be somewhat justified by the fact that its scope for new studies might seem limited. The efforts aimed towards reconstructing and ‘resounding’ the medieval liturgical melodies based on the anagogic sources (the primary sources - notated manuscripts are very deficient) seems, at first glance, discouraging, even futile. Nevertheless, the conditions for systematic research do exist, all the more because the current knowledge on music paleography, rhythmic and scale characteristics of Byzantine church chant has considerably changed the previous inquiry that had been limited to a few, although very precious musical pieces of only three known Serbian fifteenth-century composers - Ishaia, Nikola and Stefan. After a brief account on the topics and issues that have, until now, been in the scholarlyfocus, I draw attention to what has been done and what is currently underway in the research on Serbian medieval chant, while also indicating the areas that could be of greater interest for future explorations. I pay special critical attention to certain conclusions and methodological methods applied to the notated manuscripts that deal with liturgical music practice in medieval Serbia. According to some new findings in the field of Byzantine musicology, a new critical reading of available sources is necessary. Becoming acquainted with the earlier false approaches and conclusions made in haste and without particular evidence could be of significant help and serve as an important impulse for young researchers to get involved with explorations of Serbian music past. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177004: Identiteti srpske muzike od lokalnih do globalnih okvira: tradicije, promene, izazovi]

In this paper, parts of the memoir literary works from the second half of the nineteenth century are presented as important sources for the research of Serbian traditional church chant. The testimonies on church music from diaries, memoirs and autobiographical notes by famous Serbian writers, statesmen and politicians, namely Jovan Subotić, Jakov Ignjatović, Milan Savić, Milica Stojadinović Srpkinja, Todor Stefanović Vilovski, Vladimir Jovanović and Kosta Hristić, were analyzed. Those writings bring to light a time when church chant was appreciated as an important part of the spiritual, folk heritage and had an important role in everyday culture of Serbian people both in the Habsburg Monarchy and in the Principality and Kingdom of Serbia. The authors wrote about musical skills of chanters from clerical, church circles and about the practice of chanting among school teachers. They also described different kinds of musical performances of church chant among laymen and children. These sources testify to writers’ general and musical education and experiences, to their environment and its relation to the aesthetics of spiritual folk tradition. This paper also analyzes sources in the context of the history and theory of literature, having in mind the authors’ commentary techniques and narrative style. Those issues are discussed in relation to the poetics of romanticism, Biedermeier and realism in Serbian literature. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177004: Identiteti srpske muzike od lokalnih do globalnih okvira: tradicije, promene, izazovi]

The history of Salon Music can be traced through the tense, dynamic relation between the consumers of that kind of music (performers, listeners) and critics. In the early 1930s, and later even more, a designation “salon style” started to appear in the reviews of the Salon Music. By that fact alone, it was implied that compositions, which were published as Salon Music, or were defined as such in reviews, corresponded to specific musical norms, which, on the other hand, evolved merely from recipient’s needs. In foreign and domestic press from the period, there are many negative epithets referring to Salon Music: “empty, frivolous, coquette, false”. Nevertheless, aesthetic debates in music literature had no impact on Salon Music admirers. In this study, the focus of attention is on the reception of Serbian Salon Music of the nineteenth century within the context of the Central European cultural practice. Salon compositions were interpreted within the interactive relations among musical work-performers-audience-critics. The goal of musical work analysis was not to evaluate the artistic quality or non-quality of the Salon Music, in order to distinguish more or less successful music compositions. It is far more important to bear in mind that artistic quality with the Salon Music consumers of the time had no decisive role. Musical work analysis no longer seeks for aesthetical values in music facts, but for qualities and features that a piece of music must possess in order to fulfill its purpose and function. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. ON 177004: Identiteti srpske muzike od lokalnih do globalnih okvira: tradicije, promene, izazovi]

This paper considers particular ways of organizing musical material in songs connected with the culture of laughter, as well as the coordination and interaction of different artistic spheres in this group of traditional Belarus song forms. Our long standing, complex ethno-musicological research, constant documentations of our own field work, comparison of ritual songs’ stylistics with their respective cognitive methods, together with observations and generalizations made by the real exponents of traditional Belarus song have given us the possibility to hear and recognize this strict, logically-adjusted selection of forms of musical expressiveness among folk melodies.

It is commonly understood that a concept album is “a studio album where all musical or lyrical ideas contribute to a single overall theme or unified story” (Shuker 2002: 5). In this paper this term will be used to denote an album containing extra-musical themes and not simply collections of compositions defined only by genre or theme. In order for an album to belong to this category, it must have taken a thematic unity realized by the common content (thematically) of its compositions and common musical means. Although the beginnings of such creative trends can be traced from 1940, the 1960s and 1970s brought the most influential releases of this kind, especially The Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), which has had a great impact on many authors. As far as is known, the topic of concept albums in Yugoslavia has not yet been elaborated, so this article seems to be the first dedicated to this subject. It seems that in Yugoslavia there had been albums with elements of concept released before the appearance of the Kamen na kamen group album in 1973, entitled LP-60993 (Zagreb: Jugoton). The author of the album was Nikola Borota Radovan. After that, a double LP by the same ensemble and songwriter appeared in 1975 entitled OOUR/AVNOJ (RTV Ljubljana), with even more clearly expressed characteristics of concept. The aim of this article is to show that the thematic and conceptual elements of these editions are firmly connected to those of the concept album. These LPs were formed within the following thematic and contextual frames: 1) Borota`s general inclination towards folklore tradition(s) as a permanent source of inspiration, 2) models among the greatest popular music works that influenced his writing projects, primarily The Beatles’ concept albums, and 3) social, economic and political circumstances in Yugoslavia at the time when these albums appeared. Even if it is not strictly a concept album in the full sense, the album LP- 60993 might be regarded as the first album with elements of concept published by a Yugoslav author, according to all the criteria and analyzed results. The elements that show a clear connection to the concept are as follows: leading subject(s)/idea(s) that demand(s) the order of compositions, organization of musical elements and motives on macro- and micro-levels (to produce formal and thematic unity), elements of narrative and musical/sound symbols, including elements of musique concrète.

Since 1964, the Institute of Musicology of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts has been cherishing the official archive of the academician Ljubica Janković, ethnochoreologist, which originates from her service at the Ethnographic Museum in Belgrade (1939-1951). The legacy contains documentation about the activity of the Folk Dance Section of the Ethnographic Museum in Belgrade, and extensive data on folk dances in Yugoslavia from the first half of the twentieth century. This paper presents part of the archival documentation relating to the establishment and activity of the Folk Dance Section. It was the first state institution to collect primary and secondary research sources relating to folk dance structure and to the social context of a rural dance practice. Apart from that, it was the institution for education on folk dance preservation and staging. The focus of the paper is on the fundamental documents of ethnochoreological cultural and research policy in Serbia, manuscripts The Draft for Work at the Folk Dance Section of the Ethnographic Museum in Belgrade [Nacrt za rad u Otseku narodnih igara pri Etnografskom muzeju u Beogradu] (1939) and The Program for Work at the Department for Intangible Culture with the Sections: 1) Folk Dances and Folk Music; 2) Folk Literature; 3) Folk Art and Ornamentation; 4) Folk Customs and Religion; 5) Folk Medicine [Program rada u Odeljenju za duhovnu kulturu sa Otsecima: 1) za narodne igre i narodnu muziku; 2) za narodnu književnost; 3) za narodnu likovnu umetnost i ornamentiku; 4) za narodne običaje i veru; 5) za narodnu medicinu] (1946). The aim of this study is to contribute to the history of ethnochoreology in Serbia by introducing the ideas of Ljubica Janković concerning folk dance research and preservation strategies because of their importance for the interpretation of numerous ethnochoreological and ethnomusicological theoretical and analytical results, mostly achieved in cooperation with her sister, Danica Janković. In addition, we indicate the applicability of the first official ethnochoreological ideas for current folk dance research in Serbia. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177004: Identiteti srpske muzike od lokalnih do globalnih okvira: tradicije, promene, izazovi]

Sisters Ljubica (1894-1974) and Danica (1868-1960) Jankovic were very prominent figures in the cultural and scholarly life of Belgrade, Serbia (Yugoslavia in their time). Their work, primarily ethno-coreological, was considered to be very important by experts worldwide. After the death of Ljubica (the last member of this family) in 1976 and until the present, the sisters’ legacy (manuscripts, letters, fieldwork data etc.) is kept in the National library of Serbia. In addition to the materials left by the sisters, the legacy also contains manuscripts by other family members, some of whom were also prominent scholars, including their uncle, Prof. Tihomir R. Djordjevic (1868-1944), one of the founding fathers of Serbian ethnology. Unfortunately, the legacy is still not open to the public. This year, however, work on classifying this important archival material has begun, and, once completed in 2016, it will become available to the public at large. This paper briefly describes the project, and the legacy itself. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. ON177027]

The creative work of Nikola Borota - Radovan (musician, composer, lyricist, arranger and record producer, based in New Zealand - formerly from Yugoslavia) held a specific place in development of world music (poly)genre in his native homeland in the early 1970s. This study focuses on his creative principles, applied to works published between the years 1970 and 1975 (while the role of these works in social, cultural and political context of the time and place will be elaborated in another study, see Jovanović 2014). The platform established to present this unique musical approach authenticaly was called kamen na kamen (a studio and stage outfit that has included number of collaborations over many years). Based on the musical models and aethetics of the folk revival and created under influence of The Beatles’, in adition to many other popular music production directions of the era, Borota’s works reveal significant musical, performance and production qualities, innovative expression and musical solutions, that need to be percieved from the contemporary (ethno)musicological point of view. Despite the fact that many prominent creative Yugoslav musicians of the time also worked within a similar framework I would argue that Mr. Borota’s creative outcome was signifficantly different from other Yugoslav popular music creative efforts. This is particularly noticeable in the author’s unique treatment of South-European and other folklore motives, which is the main topic of this study. Folk (ethnic) idioms exploited by Mr. Borota in his compositions originate from the rural traditions of western Dinaric regions. This is especially true for the rhythmic formations of deaf or silent dance; for the semi-urban and urban tradition of the Balkans and the Mediterranean; Middle European traditions; traditions from non-European peoples; elements of Italian Renaissance; and international (mostly Anglo-American) musical models. Compositions are analysed partly in accordance with the principles presented by Philip Tagg (1982), and following the principles of the “Finnish method” in ethnomusicology. According to my best knowledge, there was no previous comparable (ethno) musicological ellaboration of folk revival, Beatlesque influences and early forrays into world music within Yugoslav popular music culture. I therefore consider this study to be the first contribution to the research in this subject. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177004: Identiteti srpske muzike od lokalnih do globalnih okvira: tradicije, promene, izazovi]

Within the theoretical and methodological framework based on the concept of the ideology of tradition, I analyze a wide and complex repertoire of attitudes toward female gusle players. Aside from the techniques of representation demonstrated in scientific discourses, I examine the status of female gusle players by assessing the material obtained during several years of field researches (the “male” perspective), and I also refer to the public (media) discourse, acknowledging the characteristics of media and popular culture. The “researcher’s voice” is also interpreted as part of a discourse on the ideology of tradition. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 178011: Srpsko usmeno stvaralaštvo u interkulturnom kodu]

In expert circles, attention has been drawn to the “1002nd Night Ball” created by the protagonists of Yugoslav and Serbian avant-garde, in particular on its dance and musical segments, moreover, the ballet “Le balai du valet” by Marko Ristić and Miloje Milojević, as well as the ensuing series of balls related to the Association of Friends of Art “Cvijeta Zuzorić”. On the other hand, it is an (almost) completely unknown fact that Rade Drainac’s original idea to throw a ball for the benefit of artists and writers that needed financial assistance because of difficult financial situation (later replaced with an initiative to raise funds to build an art pavilion “Cvijeta Zuzorić”) matched the idea of the Union of Russian artists in Paris to organize a ball with the aim of contributing to mutual aid. The ball in Paris, with the participation of the most prominent avant-garde artists, took place exactly one week after the Belgrade ball, which also suggests the possible connection / synchronization of these two artistic events. Having this in mind, I offer a brief analysis of the concept and scope of the aforementioned artistic events from the perspective of the intermedia and multimedia strategies. I demonstrate that the Belgrade spectacle was envisioned and performed far more ambitiously than the Parisian one, and the thoroughness of the interweaving of various arts ranks it among those works (including Parade by Cocteau, Picasso and Satie, Skating-Rink by Canudo, Leger, and Honegger, La creation du monde by Cendrars, Léger and Milhaud, with Russian and Swedish Ballet) that aimed to achieve a Gesamtkunstwerk, i.e. a total work of avant-garde art. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. ON 178008: Srpska književnost u evropskom kulturnom prostoru]

In this text, Rudolf Brucci’s opera Gilgamesh is viewed in the light of Ralph Locke’s “All the Music in the Full Context” Paradigm which promotes the approach that one should search for the exotic elements in musical works first in the discursive components (title, program, accompanying notes), visual representations (costume, scenery) and a “horizon of expectations” of a particular culture, and only then to observe exoticism as the aspect of a musical style. In the light of this Paradigm, “exoticism” of the opera Gilgamesh is detected at the level of the music material and compositional procedures, but not in the dramaturgical profiling of characters, narrative adaptation of the Sumerian epic, costumes and scenery. The plot, costumes and the scenery of the opera do not construct the Orient with either positive or negative projections attributed to it by the Western European Orientalist discourse, but portray Gilgamesh and Enkidu as ancient mythic protagonists on the margin of the (not-always) exoticist once/now binarism. The musical language of the opera, which abounds in the usage of oriental musical scales and citations, indicates that oriental/exotic was one of the author’s “target levels” when conceiving and composing Gilgamesh. Brucci, however, did not build the “ethnological model” in his opera, but gave oriental scales and “exotic” musical citations their meaning within the Western musical tradition, which is why his approach can be compared with the “veiled exoticism” of the French composers of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. In the light of the self/other binarism, reaching for the exotic in Gilgamesh can be presented as an auto-exotic creative behavior of Brucci as a composer who perceives his “minority identity” in a relation to an imaginary referential system of the Center. However, I am more inclined to see Brucci’s identificational intention in his advocacy of the Yugoslav NAM (Non-Aligned Movement) project, and his dealing with the “exotic” as part of his strategy to support cultural achievements of the Third World which predominantly participated in that project.

The Zvuk magazine, one of the best Serbian and Yugoslav music reviews, was published in Belgrade from 1932 to 1936. It was founded and edited by a pianist, music historian and music critic Stana Ribnikar (1908-1986). Her closest collaborators in the magazine were leftist musicians. Nevertheless, the editorial board was open for collaboration with writers who had different ideas on the relationship between art and society. This article deals with numerous essays on the nineteenth-century West European art music in the Zvuk magazine. Their topics are very diverse: some of the essays deal with individual composers, historical issues, various problems of writing music, and related subjects. Others tend to provide information and present art music in a popular manner. A significant feature of the Zvuk magazine was the parallel presence of essays written by Marxist musicians and those written by other music writers, who did not believe in the social function of art, even though these two groups of authors did not engage in polemics. Pavao Markovac, a musicologist from Zagreb, was very critical towards Richard Wagner`s views on art and society. The Belgrade musicologist Vojislav Vučković shared his point of view. In his essays on the historical significance of baroque music, Vučković opposed the idea of absolute autonomy of art. Both Markovac and Vučković believed that art and society were inseparable and they evaluated music accordingly. Other prominent Serbian music writers, such as Miloje Milojević, also voiced their opinions on the pages of the Zvuk magazine. Milojević published essays on Johannes Brahms and Richard Strauss. He was also in favour of evaluating music within the given social context, but he advocated the ideas of Hyppolyte Taine. Zvuk remains the only Serbian music magazine that published articles on ancient Greek music. Milos Djurić, a classical philologist, philosopher and literary translator, wrote on music in ancient Boeotia and Lesbos. This subject has remained untackled in Serbian musicology to this very day. In order to address the wider audience, the Zvuk magazine also featured contributions concerning the boundary areas between music and other disciplines. As many as three articles on Friedrich Nietzsche's attitude towards music were published by Yuri Arbatsky and Matija Bravničar. Notwithstanding its professional profi le, this magazine was also open for popular articles for wider intellectual audience. The essays on West European art music in the Zvuk magazine contributed to widening the scope of knowledge and public interest. The policy of the editorial board was to bring together writers of different ideological standpoints, by publishing their essays side by side. In this way, the public was presented with different ideas and beliefs, but also with professional information. It was clear that one-sidedness was not the policy of this magazine. On the contrary, the editors proved that it was possible for writers who thought differently to engage in a dialogue, even if they had no prior intention of doing so. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. br. 177004: Identiteti srpske muzike od lokalnih do globalnih okvira: tradicije, promene, izazovi]

My article deals with an unusual story on the roots of a song that has left a significant imprint on the twentieth century popular music all over the world. It is the song Misirlou, created somewhere on the territory of the Ottoman Empire, probably in Asia Minor. The author of this song is unknown. It was created in the so-called rebetiko musical style, typical of the Greeks from Asia Minor, who developed that style after the World War I. The first recordings of this song were made in the 1930s by Greek musicians Tethos Demetriades and Mihalis Patrinos. In no time, there was a true proliferation of different versions of this song, in almost every possible musical genre: jazz, latino, taksym, klezmer, makam, Serbian folk, hip hop, trash metal, pop and rock’n’roll. A number of these versions are mentioned in the article. The fact that this song is considered by many nations – Greeks, Turks, Arabs, Serbs, Jews, Americans – as their own, demonstrates its aptitude for incredible metamorphoses. What attracted me to this song was the story on how it was appropriated into Serbian folk music by the remarkable composer and singer Dragoljub Dragan Toković. The song was called Lela Vranjanka [Lela, the girl from Vranje] and became a standard in the so-called “Vranje folk music”, marvelously interpreted by the singer Staniša Stošić. I also compare various textual versions of Misirlou, in different languages, in order to show its parallel development in verse. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 178008: Srpska književnost u evropskom kulturnom prostoru]

Extremely complex picture of Šumadija region musical tradition(s) could be explained not only as the result of long-lasting encounters and overlapping of different inhabitants’ groups, but also by the fact that in this region even three dialects of Serbian language meet. Moreover, there is a basis for an assumption it is about cultural dialects in wider sense, comprising musical culture as well. Structural-typological analyses of wedding melodic models (glasovi) and identifying of their morphological dominants (term coined by V. Maciewskii) provided the basis for comparative insight in the elements of vocal tradition in the area in focus – on the first place within wedding genre, but within other genres as well. The cartography technique, applied in melogeographic researches (Goshovskii), provides insight in certain musical phenomena in their territorial dissemination, so that the regularities that could be in direct connection to dialectal features of traditional culture could be seen. The paper is about geographical and cultural space intersected by folklore dialectal borders, and thus it is also the region where the transitory areas between the consistent cultural spaces are placed. This situation has been explained and illustrated through the application of “fuzzy” concept. Musical material from this region and its elements geographic distribution shows it could be about the “fuzzy” border between two cultural and vocal dialects. This paper could be the basis for future research and analyses, including more data from this and surrounding regions, primarily in the East, South and Southeast, which would lead to the differentiating of the musical idiom that characterizes great part of central, Eastern, Southern and Southeastern Serbia. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177004: Identiteti srpske muzike od lokalnih do globalnih okvira: tradicije, promene, izazovi]

By focusing on the role of music within a certain political event - in this case, the students’ protests in Yugoslavia in June 1968 - I connect the sociology of music with the sociology of social movements as defined by American writers Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison. Moreover, I suggest further research based on the sociology of generations. I insist on the cultural basis of social movements, as argued by these Yale-educated sociologists. Contrary to the typically onesided or negative evaluation on the consequences of the 1968 protests on the further development of Yugoslav society, I discuss the importance of this crucial year on the history of Yugoslav rock music and the students’ lifestyle. I argue that the entertainment institutions in Yugoslavia, including rock’n’roll, pop and jazz music, as well as the amateur folklore societies, were crucial for the selfidentification of the protagonists of the 1960s student protests, and not only the students’ political choices. Music anticipated and accompanied the 1968 protests, and later helped in constructing the memories on these protests. Music is singled out as the object of study based on the analysis of a vast body of archival material and the participants’ testimonies, in which the music could be observed as the only constant parameter in the process of constructing collective memory to the 1960s in Yugoslavia and the 1968 events. I discuss music in the context of social movements for the sake of analyzing the multiplicity of music’s meanings for various social groups. Music is seen outside of institutional frameworks. Bearing in mind the lack of literature that deals comprehensively with the lifestyle of the youth at that time, including their musical preferences, I used various secondary sources. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177009: Modernizacija Zapadnog Balkana]

This study concerns the relationship between verbal and musical components of Serbian epic songs with rhythm seen as a morphological dominant. My aim is to enrich the musicological inquiry of this issue and provide a contribution that complements existing folkloristic and philological research outcomes. In terms of methodology, the study promotes the necessity of recording the performers’ recited versions of songs for the purposes of investigating the relationships between verbal and musical communication, as well as an interdisciplinary approach to these issues. Two paradigmatic examples are examined, each performed by the guslar representative of his respective period of guslar practice: Tanasije Vućić (1883-1937) and Boško Vujačić (b. 1947). The observed periods span less than one century, yielding an insignificant passage of time in terms of epic historicism, but nonetheless indicate significant differences between these two guslars’ sung and narrated rhythms. Compared to Vujačić, Vućić’s singing demonstrates a considerably smaller range of the absolute duration of the sung syllables (and therefore of an entire verse), and subsequently a much stricter syllabicity. Furthermore, Vućić’s singing reflects the ideal type of “isochronous pulse in duple meter” in a rather high degree, while Vujačić more consistently refers to narration, whereas the trochaic tendency is noticeable only at the initial part of the verse. The connections between these focused individual styles are discussed through the lens of guslars’ transition from amateur to professional capacity and the changed function of epics. Considering the consequences of the policy of invalid representation and experiencing epic song as poetry (void of musical component), and on the other hand, the effects of the strategy insistent on “citatory” (verbatim) treatment of poetic templates that leads to suppressing poetic creativity, I intend to draw attention of the responsible authorities in the areas of education, culture, and science. This is of particular importance in the context of ongoing endeavors towards preservation of singing with gusle as part of Serbian inherent cultural heritage. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177004: Identiteti srpske muzike od lokalnih do globalnih okvira: tradicije, promene, izazovi]

In the house of artistically gifted family Nastasijević where renowned Belgrade artists used to gather together during the twenties and thirties of the previous century, music was nothing but an excuse for regular meetings. The art of sound represented a backbone of one system of poetics in the shaping of which Nastasijević brothers as well as their close contemporaries and faithful friends truly found the common ground. Rethinking the music phenomenon brought them close to their otherwise remote relatives by thought - to Greek philosophers, but also to French and especially Russian symbolists whose opinions they shared. A pursue for, on one hand, an authentically native but, on the other, cosmopolitan spirit and universal values, marked the creative output of Momčilo, a writer and a pivot of Nastasijević family, but also the overall creative engagement of his brothers. They all shared common aesthetic standards, attempting to apply these in their respective artistic media as well as in synergy, in their joint ventures. In music dramas entitled Međuluško blago and Đurađ Branković, for which Momčilo wrote the script and Svetomir composed the music, the brothers tried to transform into deeds the Nastasijević-like convictions regarding music. The aim was to re-find and turn a native - homeland melody into sound. This melody represented a “golden ratio point” in which all arts meet; it is a kind of a spiritual totality embodying one form of spiritual existence which cannot be reached otherwise but from the “homeland soil”. They believed they would reach the archetype of national identity and, at the same time, of the universal being by harking at and perpetual crying for the forgotten sound of words. Momčilo’s poetic concept demanded necessary interventions in respect to the dramatic genre. In his essay Dramsko stvaralaštvo i pozorište kod nas, he unequivocally opposed to what he argued to be a decadent and artistically senseless Serbian stage, a place wherefrom an individual and the world he lives in are being superficially analyzed, a place that only serves for mass entertainment, propagation of political and social convictions, and which in its character is getting closer to movie industry. By discarding realistic procédé, the poet reached for a myth in Međuluško blago whereas in Đurađ Branković he turned to historical themes. In both of these he delved deep in the essence of drama. His poetic expression had therefore to become dense, more a premonition than a statement, so that it necessarily needed melody as an attribute. Music is a pivot of Međuluško blago, which Nastasijević brothers emphasized to be not an opera, or Wagnerian music drama, but a drama meant for being interpreted through singing and nothing but singing. The drama is a music one because the very storyline and the characters’ words were supposed to emanate music expression, and music was to drive the characters to a tragic conflict and actualize the antique fatum that permeated, resonated in and guided all creatures. The words and the melody were meant to be inseparable in Đurađ Branković music drama as well. To what extent their music works actualized what the “Nastasijević manifesto” theoretically proclaimed is to be left to be considered in some other topical study. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177004: Identiteti srpske muzike od lokalnih do globalnih okvira: tradicije, promene, izazovi]

This paper offers an ethnomusicological perspective on competitions of guslars (players of a single-stringed musical instrument gusle predominantly used to accompany the voice of a singer reciting epic poetry), here interpreted as a specific form of public music performance. First competitions were organized between World Wars (1924-1933), afterwards being established in 1971 and since then organized (with a short interruption) in Serbia, Montenegro and the Republic of Srpska. Apart from gusle players and the audience participating in this interaction, these competitions introduced into the focus the very organizers as well. The importance of collectivity as an idea interwoven into epic ethos has become a powerful means of manipulation used by authorities. Their interests have been put forward primarily through the poetic content of new songs. Ideology, though, is not only reflected in the competition repertoire. It is also felt in other forms of public gusle playing practice (such as performances with miscellaneous programme, concerts etc.). The sense of competitiveness, as a type of communicational situation, is far strongly felt in the music dimension. Limited in duration, the performance was reduced to only fragments of songs, which, on the other side, caused a change in gusle playing. The traditional style implied economizing with player’s energy and dramatization tailored to suit the context of long-lasting songs, whereas per-forming of fragments resulted in a more grandiose style aimed at making momentary impression: intensive, vigorous singing in the upper vocal register, using a wide range of expressive devices within short time etc. After studying the competition rules, key formal regulations, and the organization of competitions so far, I discerned that those epic poems have been dominantly regarded as poetry. One of crucial reasons for this is wider communicability of verbal to music discourse, but also more straightforward conveyance of ideological messages through words. Syncretism, which is quintessence of artistic expression in epic poetry, demands paying more attention to the musical component. This artistic expression has always been the domain of players‟ creativity, in contrast to the poetic component which is standardized, fixed, and which a contemporary gusle player is only presenting. The contribution of competition to the evolution of gusle playing practice, especially in regard to its role in the shaping of collective identity, demands reconceptualization of such cultural events in which guslars associations, state institutions and experts would also take part.

The very first music magazines started in Belgrade between World Wars were “Muzički glasnik” (issued monthly from January to December 1922) and “Muzika” (also issued monthly in the period January 1928 - March 1929). These magazines used to publish music essays, researches, debates, notes, news and other kind of articles. This paper brings an analysis of texts on West European music in these two journals. “Muzički glasnik” published only few articles on European music. Those were on bibliographical news concerning editions on musicology in England and on French music magazines. There was a report on the concert held in Leipzig in1922 in honour of late Arthur Nikisch. “Glasnik” also published an obituary to Camille Saint-Saëns containing, by contemporary standards, excessively complimentary evaluation of his music. West European music was far more present on the pages of “Muzika” magazine. The editorial board used to publish thematic issues dedicated to jubilees of great European composers (such as Franz Schubert, Ludwig van Beethoven). One issue was dedicated to English music and this magazine also wrote about Puccini. Essays on European music were translated from foreign languages and the authors of some were coming from Yugoslavia. “Muzika” magazine was addressing wide, educated audience, not only musicians. Therefore the texts giving biographical and psychological portraits of composers used to prevail over musicological analyses of their works. Serbian music community was not highly developed thus “Muzika” moderately used expert terminology. Essays, as dominant forms in Serbian musicography up to 1941, were often written in a literary manner. This is evident in “Muzika” as well. “Muzika” and “Muzički glasnik” adopted different aesthetics and ideology. The fact that the reception of West European music in “Glasnik” was minimal was not only due to the insufficient number of associates. The editorial board of “Glasnik” was more concerned with domestic music and problems of music institutions. Besides, the editors of this magazine were of opinion that the Serbian music should not solely look up to West European composers but even more to the Slav and domestic music exemplars. The editors of “Muzika” were, however, strongly adhering to West European tradition. They thought that only high culture and knowledge could bring the Serbian music to a serious level, both technique and art wise. The editors of this magazine did not desire our composers to be epigones of Western musicians, but wanted to provide domestic musicians and readers with information on European art. In this regard, “Muzika” used to have an enlightening mission in our country.

Hamlet is well-known as the most famous tragedy written by William Shakespeare. This dramatic work has, throughout the centuries, lead numerous writers, poets, literary-critics and philosophers to think about universal issues of life, human nature, love, loyalty and friendship. Hamlet has not just been the subject of discussion from the point of view of the theory of literature and human psychology and philosophy, it has also directly inspired the creation of many artistic works. One of those works which forms the main subject-matter of this paper is the almost unknown music for Hamlet by Enriko Josif. Enriko Josif was an extraordinary figure, a versatile artist and thinker, almost a kind of philosopher. In his opinion and in accordance with his inner feeling, art was a matter of divine creation first of all. He admired those artists who dealt with difficult issues of life in their works of art and William Shakespeare was to him one of the most prominent among them. In general terms, we have highlighted certain general points about Josif’s views on an artist’s life and work and have presented our notions about his piece. Specifically, we have tried to point out personal views that Josif held about Hamlet, as well as the most important features of Josif’s music, which are broadly in accordance with the literary, ethical, philosophical and theological critical tradition surrounding this masterpiece.

Octoechos is not merely a musical manual in everyday use during the service in Orthodox Church, but also a comprehensive anthology of church poetry. It contains poetical works of great Byzantine poets, such as John of Damascus, Joseph the Hymnographer, Andrew of Crete. The use of Octoechos during the service is strictly regulated by Typicon. After accepting the Orthodox rite, the Slavs were acquainted with Octoechos which has undoubtedly made a great impression on the attentive audiences present at the service. Octoechos has also influenced the work of medieval Serbian hymnographers all of whom were, as it is well known, pious men. The influence of the poetics typical of hymns of the Octoechos has already been present in the Akoluthia to St. Simeon written by St. Sava. In the hymnographical work of Theodosius this influence is even more present, especially in his Canons on the eight modes (echoi) that follow the pattern of the supplicatory canons of the Octoechos. Ephraim, who was the Serbian patriarch in two turns (1375-1379, 1389-1392), wrote his church hymns and prayers following those of the Octoechos. Ephraim composed his stichera dedicated to Christ and Theotokos following the regular change of tones of the Octoechos. The spirit of Octoechos has also marked the work of the last Serbian anonymous hymnographers who wrote Akoluthia to the Translation of the holy relics of Saint Apostle Luke to Serbia and the Paraklisis to St. Luke (mid 15th century).

Financial dependence of singing societies in the state of Serbia and Kingdom of Yugoslavia is particularly analyzed in the paper, with a view to pointing to problems which hindered the advancement of music culture in the civil society. As other similar institutions of civic type, choirs did not have at their disposal sufficient financial, social and symbolic capital independent of the state, so they did not possess the power to influence on the government authorities. Although the period between World Wars brought evident improvement in the state treatment of music institutions, it could not be interpreted as a fundamental shift. The treatment of the Yugoslav singing union (Južnoslovenski pevački savez), which fought for promotion of music culture in the Yugoslav society, is particularly indicative. This largest music organization in the country, fostering ideology of integral Yugoslavism, strived to contribute to ethnic and social cohesion of different regions through singing. In its plans for improving singing practice this organization exhibited a clear vision for activism in favor of the nation and state, but the state authorities did not know how or did not desire to make use of it. Certain information suggests indolent and at times negative, discouraging attitude of authorities towards different ways of improvement of music practice, both art and society wise, which opens a new horizon for future studies and for better comprehension of contemporary problems as well.