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CPriCKA
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RETHINKING MUSICAL MODERNISM
MY3HHKH MOAEPHH3AM - HOBA TYMAHEftA

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on 20. jyHa 2008, Ha ocHOBy pe(J)epaTa aKaaeMHKa Hejana ffecnuha
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MY3HKOJIOUIKH HHCTHTYT CAHY

SERBIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AND ARTS
ACADEMIC CONFERENCES
Volume CXXII
DEPARTMENT OF FINE ARTS AND MUSIC
Book 6
RETHINKING MUSICAL
MODERNISM
PROCEEDINGS OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE HELD

FROM OCTOBER 1 1 TO 13, 2007
Accepted at the II meeting of the Department of Fine Arts and Music

of 20 June 2008, on the basis of the reviews presented by Academicians
Dejan Despic and Dimitrije Stefanovic
Editors
Academician DEJAN DESPIC
MELITA MILIN, PhD
BELGRADE 2008
INSTITUTE OF MUSICOLOGY
H3aajy Published by
CpncKa amdeMuja naym u Serbian Academy ofSciences
yMemnocmu and Arts
H and
My3UKonoiuKU UHcmumym Institute ofMusicology
CAHY ofSASA
IlpeBOaHOUH H jieKTOpH
3a eHrjiecKH je3HK Translators into English
Charles Robertson, Charles Robertson,
Mean JmKoeuh, Ivan Jankovic,
Esther Polenezer, Esther Polenezer,
Becna Maduh-)KueojuHoeuh Vesna Dadic-Zivojinovic
TeXHHHKH ypeaHHK Prepared for print by

fopan Jarbuh Goran Janjic
JJtttajH KopHua Cover design

Tlemap Munuh Petar Minic
Tupaac Number of copies

500 500
IllTaMna Printed by
KpajHHarpa(J), Eeorpaa Krajinagraf, Belgrade
CONTENTS/CA/JPHCAJ
Foreword 9
Veodm nanoMene 10
Academician Dejan Despic, Introductory Address 11

AicaaeMHK êjaH .ZJecnnh, Yeodna pen na naymoM CKyny 12
Dr Danica Petrovic, Director of the Institute of Musicology,

Introductory Greetings 13
Jlp âHHua IleTpOBHh, zmpeKTop My3HKOjiouiKor HHCTHTyTa,
TJo3dpaena pen na naynHOM CKyny 14
* * *
1 . Jim Samson, Either /Or 15

UhM CaMCOH, Mjiu / wiu
2. Vlastimir Trajkovic, Thinking the Rethinking (ofthe Notion of)

Modernity (in Music) 27
BjiacTHMHp TpajKOBHh, O npoMuuvbciiby (nojMa) Modepnumema
(y My3uuu)
3. Helmut Loos, From the Ideal to the Real. A Paradigm Shift 41

XejiMyr JIoc, Od udeannoz do peannoz. TIpoMena napaduzMe
4. Jonathan Cross, Paradise Lost: Neoclassicism and the Melancholia

ofModernism 55
UoHaTaH Kpoc, HeoKJiacuuu3aM u Menanxonuja Modepnu3Ma
5. Max Paddison, Centres and Margins: Shifting Grounds
in the Conceptualization ofModernism 65
MaKC HaaHCOH, Ilenmpu u Mapzune: necuzypno mne
3a KOHuenmya/iu3auujy Modepnu3Ma
6. Katarina Tomasevic, Musical Modernism at the 'Periphery '?

Serbian Music in the First Halfofthe Twentieth Century 83
KaTapHHa ToMameBHh, My3mm ModepnmaM Ha „nepu<pepuju"?
CpncKa Mysma y npeoj nonoeunu XX eeKa
7. Biljana Milanovic, Orientalism, Balkanism and Modernism

in Serbian Music ofthe First Halfofthe Twentieth Century 103
BHjtaHa MHjiaHOBHh, OpujeHmajiu3aM, 6ajiKaHU3aM
u ModepHU3aM y cpncmj My3uuu npee nojioeune XX eeKa
8. NadeZda Mosusova, Modernism in Serbian / Yugoslav Music

between Two World Wars 1 15
Haêama MocycOBa, ModepnmaM y cpncKoj u jyzoaioeeHCKoj
My3uuu u3Met)y dea ceemcKa pama
9. Melita Milin, Musical Modernism in the 'Agrarian Countries ofSouth-Eastern

Europe ': The Changed Function ofFolk Music in the Twentieth Century ....121
MejiHTa Mhjihh, My3UHKU ModepHU3a\ty „AzpapnuM 3eMji>aMa
jyeoucmoHHe Eepone": npoMena (pyHKuuje (pojiKiiopa y XX eercy
10. Laszlo Vikarius, A novarum rerum cupidus in Search of Tradition:

Bela Bartok 's Attitude towards Modernism 131
JIacjio BHKapHjyui, Novarum rerum cupidus y nompa3u 3a mpaduuujoM:
odnoc Bene EapmoKa npeMa Modepnu3My
1 1 . Jarmila Gabrielova, Vitezslav Novak 's Boufe [The Storm] op. 42:
A Central Work in Czech Musical Modernism 155
JapMHjia TaGpHjejiOBa, Bypa on. 42 Buhecnaea HoeaKa: uenmpajiHO
dejio neuiKoz Niy3UHKOz Modepnu3Ma
12. Katy Romanou, Total Capitalism versus Total Serialism 179

Kera PoMaHy, Tomannu KanumajimoM npomue momanHoz cepujanu3Ma
13. Vesna Mikic, Aspects of (Moderate) Modernism in the Serbian Music

ofthe 1950s 187
BecHa MhkhIi, Budoeu (yMepenoe) ModepHU3Ma y cpncKoj My3uuu
nedecemux zoduna XX eeKa
14. Ivana Medic, Moderated Modernism in Russian Music after 1953 195
HBaHa MeaHh, YMepenu Modepnu3aM y pycKoj Myrnuu
noaie 1953. zodune
15. Maria Kostakeva, Problems of Terminology and Verbal Mediation

ofNew Music 205
MapHja KocTaKeBa, Upo6neMU mepMunonozuje u eep6ajma
juedujauuja noee MysuKe
16. Mirjana Veselinovic-Hofman, Revisiting the Serbian Musical

Avant-garde: Aspects ofthe Change ofReception and ofKeeping
History 'Under Control' 211
MHpjaHa BecejiHHOBHh-Xo4>MaH, TloHoeo y cpncxoj My3uv>coj
aeanzapdu: acnexmu npoMene peuenuuje u „ KoHmpona ucmopuje "
17. Leon Stefanija, Calibrating Modernisms: theldea(l)s ofMusical

Autonomy in Slovenian Contemporary Music 219
JleoH CTe4>aHHja, Kanu6pupan>e ModepnusaMa: udeje / udeanu
My3UHKe aymoHOMuje y caepeMenoj cjioeenaHKoj My3uuu
1 8. Hartmut Krones, Sprachkompositionen in der Musik

des 20. Jahrhunderts, insbesondere am Beispiel Osterreich 231
XapTMyr KpoHec, ToeopHe KOMno3uuuje y My3uuu XXeena,
na npuMepuMa U3 Aycmpuje
1 9. Jelena Jankovic, Structure - Meaning and Implementation

ofthe Term in Theoretical and 'Musical ' Structuralism 247
JejieHa JaHKOBHh, Cmpyxmypa - 3naneH>a u ynompe6e mepMuna y
meopujcKOM u „My3UHKOM " cmpyKmypanu3My
20. Alastair Williams, Modernism in Germany after 1968:

Kagel, Rihm and Lachenmann 265
AjiecTep BmiHjaMC, Modepnu3aM y HeManKoj noaie 1968. zodune:
Kazen, PuM u JlaxeHMan
21 . Dragana Jeremic-Molnar and Aleksandar Molnar, Echoes ofModernism

in Rock Music ofthe Late Sixties and Early Seventies. The Influence
ofKarlheinz Stockhausen on Early Works ofthe German Group 'Can ' ... 27 1
.ZJparaHa JepeMHh-MojiHap h AneKcamiap Mormap, Odjeuu Modepne
y poK My3uuu Kochux uie3decemux u panux cedaMdecemux zoduna
XXeexa. ymuuaj UImoKxay3eHa na pam padoee neMaHKe zpyne „ Can "
22. Marija Masnikosa, Radical (Modernist) Minimalism between
Neo-Avant-Garde and Postmodernism 283
MapHja MacHHKOca, PaduKannu (ModepHucmumcu)
MUHUMOJIU30M U3\iet)y neoaeamapde u My3UHKoe nocmModepHU3Ma
23. Gorica Pilipovic, The Tradition ofOpera and the New Music Stage
Works by Young Serbian Composers 291
TopHua nmiHnOBHh, Tpaduuuja onepe u noea My3UHKO-cuencKa
ocmeapetba jmadux cpncKux KOMno3umopa
24. Roksanda Pejovic, Mihailo Vukdragovic and his Attitude toward

the Contemporary Tendencies in Music (1920-1980) 299
PoKcanaa IlejOBHh, Muxawio Byadpaeoeuh u neeoe odnoc npejua
caepejueHoj My3uuu (1920-1980)
* * *
Notes on Contributors 31 1
Aymopu
Index ofNames 315

FOREWORD
The articles collected in this volume were presented at the conference Rethinking
Musical Modernism that took place in Belgrade from 1 1-13 October 2007 and was or
ganised by the Institute of Musicology and the Department of Fine Arts and Music of
the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. The working language of the conference
was English which explains the publication of the contributions in that language (with
one justifiable exemption).
As the title of the conference indicates, the main aim of the organisers was to
stimulate novel investigation of musical Modernism. The papers were thus focused on
discussions of the ideas, characteristics, and meanings of the diverse and often contra
dictory tendencies that existed in that period. The thematic scope of the papers was
wide: from new approaches to musical Modernism using the categories of nostalgia and
appropriation, and novel observations on the relationship between centres and periph
eries, to questioning of the ties between Modernism and politics, the problems of termi
nology, and analysis of important aspects of the modernist achievements on the interna
tional and Serbian modernist scene.
The contributors did not - and could not - pursue the aim of reaching firm con
clusions, definitions, and classifications. They instead offered rich and complex exami
nations of this exciting musical epoch turned toward the future and progress, seen from
the perspective of the disillusioned twenty-first century, necessarily leaving vast space
for new rethinking.
Melita Milin
YBO/JHE HAIIOMEHE
36opHHK KojH je npea HHTaouHMa caap*H paac-Be npeTxoaHo npeaCTaBjbeHe Ha

Me^yHapoaHOM HayHHOM cKyny Afy3unicu ModepHU3cm - noea myManena KojH je y op-
raHH3auHjH MyjHKOjioniKor HHCTHTyra CAHY h Oaeji>eH>a jihkobhc h My3HHKe yMeT-
HOcth CAHY o^pHcaH y Beorpaay on 11. no 13. oKTo6pa 2007. ro^HHe. Hhh>chhuoM
â je paijHH je3HK cKyna 6ho eHrjiecKH, o6jaum>aBa ce o6jaBji>HBaH>e TeKCTOBa Ha toM
je3HKy (C jCUHHM OnpaBâHHM H3y3eTKOM).
Ufljb cKyna 6ho je aa ce noacTaKHy h npHKaacy HOBa canneaaBaH>a cTBapana-
uiTBa My3HHKor MoaepHH3Ma, cnoaceHor noKpeTa HHje je .aejiOBaH>e o6ejie5KHno pa3Boj
My3HKe cKopo uenor XX BeKa, a npBeHCTBeHo na ce Ha cbok HaHHH npoTyMaHe ecTe-
THHKe ûneMe h pacnpaBe o KapaKTepHCTHKaMa, CMHCjiy h 3HaHeH>y pa3HOBpcHHx h He-
cto KOHTpa^HKTopHHx CTpeMjbeH>a y oboM pa3ô6jby. TeMaTCKH cneKTap npHKa3aHHx
paaOBa 6ho je H3y3eTHO uinpoK: KpeTao ce ojx npeHcnHTHBaH>a My3HHKor MoaepHH3Ma
noMofiy KaTeropHja HocTanrHje h npHCBajaH>a, npeKo canieflaBaH>a oaHOca ueHTapa h
nepH4»epHje, ao pa3MaTpaH>a cjio>KeHHx Be3a H3MeI}y MoaepHH3Ma h hojihthkc Kao
uito cMo h oHeKHBajiH, na>KH>a je 6Hjia yciviepeHa He caMo Ha 3HaHajHe jihhhocth h no-
jaBe y MeljyHapoaHHM My3HHKHM ToKOBHMa, Beh h Ha OHe y cpncKoj My3HUH.
AyropH paaoBH roicy ce6H nocraBHjiH unit - hhth cy to MorjiH - m noHyae HBp-
CTe 3aKji>yHKe, fle(J>HHHuHje, icnacH(j)HKauHje. YMeCTo Tora, ohh cy /johcjih BHuiecnojHa
h HHOBaTHBHa pa3MaTpaH>a OBe y36y^jbHBe yMeTHHHKe enoxe oKpeHyre 6yayhHocTH h
nporpecy, H3 nepcneKTHBe XXI BeKa kcJh je ocTao 6e3 MHOrhx Hjiy3Hja, hcMhHObHo
oCTaBjbajyhH mnpoK npocTop 3a HOBa TyMaHeH>a.
MejiHxa Mhjihh
Academician Dejan Despic
President of the Programme Committee
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS AT THE CONFERENCE

1RETHINKING MUSICAL MODERNISM1
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 1 1 October 2007.
Dear colleagues, honoured guests!

As secretary of the Department of visual and musical arts in the building under
whose roof we are finding ourselves now, I have been assigned the great honour and
pleasure of greeting you at the beginning of our conference, and to wish you successful
and fruitful work.
The theme that has gathered us this time is very wide, is expanding, and has
many meanings. It is therefore challenging and stimulating. Its many meanings already
begin to manifest themselves when its basic concepts are defined and differentiated,
which might lead to new interpretations. By that I mean the concepts: modern music,
new music, and contemporary music. As we know, the first and the third concept
could coincide in colloquial use , but in fact they need not. As to the first and second
concept, our biggest Encyclopaedia of Music (of the Institute for Lexicography) seems
to equate them, since the entry on "Modern music" directs us to the entry "New music",
where a detailed article by our distinguished specialist Vlastimir Pericid is given. Stay
ing in the circle of our colleagues and contemporaries, a statement by the composer
Rajko Maksimovic also comes to my mind: "In the times of the militant avant-garde it
was thought that only new music can be good music. I however think that only good
music can really be new music!" This turn is not just wittilly playing with words and
concepts, but also the possible attitude of a musical creator - and I must say, it is very
close to me personally! At any rate, it introduces into the discussion a related concept
that cannot be bypassed and that has also many meanings: the very relative concept of
avant-garde music. Because, as we know, avant-garde features marked the works of
some indisputably talented composers of the past such as Guillaume de Machault, Phil
ippe de Vitry, Monteverdi, and also those of the other great and greatest of them such as
Bach, Beethoven, Debussy, and Stravinski. The list could be very long! The list of all
those who contributed to musical art always making progress, develops and is con
stantly new - if it is good. So: be it modern, or new, or contemporary, or avant-garde -
you are about to enter into that complicated matter - which is also a kind of labyrinth -
of close but also sufficiently different concepts during this first session. We shall see at
the end of the conference how many new interpretations and views will be introduced,
and indeed they can be expected even when it seems that everything has been said and
observed about a certain problem. Music is - fortunately - an infinitely large space and
thereby it deserves and challenges us to deal with it, everyone his/her way! Having that
in mind, I wish you, dear colleagues, to find right exits from the labyrinth that is in front
of you!
And you even don't have Ariadne's help. . .
AxaaeMHK êjaH êcnnh
npeaceaHHK OprammuHOHor oa6opa
YBO/JHA PEH HA HAYHHOM CKYFiy

„My3HHKH MO£EPHH3AM - HOBA TYMAHEH>A'
y CpncKoj aKaaeMHjH HayKa h yMeTHOCTH, 11. oKTo6pa 2007.
IToiuTOBaHe KOjiere h yBaaceHH rocra!

Kao ceKpeTapy OaejBeika jihkobhc h My3HHKe yMeTHOcra y KyhH noa HnjHM ce
kpoboM Hajia3HMo, npnnajia Mh je BejiHKa HaCT h 3aaOBOjbCTBo aa Bac no3apaBHM Ha
noHency OBora Hamer HayHHor CKyna h aa BaM noacejiHM ycneuiaH h roioaaH pan.
TeMa Koja Hac je oboM npnrwKOM OKynnna BeoMa je innpoKa h CBeo6yxBaTHa,
MHoro3HaHHa h - ynpaBO 3aTO - H3a3OBHa h noacranajHa. H>eHa MHoro3HaHHOCT noHH-
H>e Beh oa noTpe6e aa ce ae(j>HHHiny h ^H(J)epeHuHpajy HeKH ocHObhh nojMOBH, aa 6h
ce OHâ y oKBHpy h>hx Morna noKpeHyra h eBefrryanHa HOBa TyMaHeH>a. npH toM Mh-
cjihM Ha nojMOBe: MoaepHa My3HKa - HOBa My3HKa - caBpeMeHa iuy3Hica. Jep, Kao urro
3HaMO, npBH h TpehH nojaM KOjioKBHjajiHo Mory 6hth noayaapHH, anH pearao yonurre
He Mopajy. IJIto ce naK raHe npBor h apyror nojMa, Haina HajBeha My3HHKa eHuHicno-
neanja (JIeKCHKorpa(j)CKor 3aBoaa) Kao aa hx H3jeaHaHaBa, jep oapeaHHny ,Modepna
My3HKa" ynyhyje Ha oapeaHHny ,Jioea My3HKa", rae oneaH onceacaH tckct Haiuer Beo-
Ma ueaeHor CTpyHH>aKa BjiaCTHMHpa riepHHHha. OcTajyhH y Kpyry HauiHX KOjiera h
caBpeMeHHKa, nana Mh Ha yM h jeaaH HCKa3 KOMno3HTOpa PajKa MaKCHMOBHha, kcjh
OTnpHjiHKe rnacH: „y BpeMe MHjiHTaHTHe aBaHrapae CMaTpano ce aa caMO noea My3HKa
MO>Ke 6hth do6pa My3HKa. Ja naK CMaipaM aa je caMO do6pa My3HKa 3aHCTa noea My-
3HKa!" OBaj o6pT HHje caMo 3roaHa Hrpa peHHMa h nojMOBHMa, Beh h MoryhaH CTaB
jeaHor My3HHKor cTBapaona - MopaM pehH, h Mchh jihhho Bpno 6jiH3aK! KaKo roa 6h-
jio, oh yBoaH y onTHuaj joui jeaaH cpoaaH a He3ao6nna3aH h Taicohe, ca CBoje cTpaHe,
BHuie3HaHaH h Bpno penaTHBaH nojaM: aBaHrapaHe My3Hice. Jep cy, Kao urro 3HaMo, 3a
BpeMe y KojeM cy cTBapanH, 6hjih npaBH aBaHrapaHCTH join h rnjoM ae Mamo, h <£h-
nnn ae Bhtph, na MonreBepaH h apyra HecnopHH b&uhkh h HajBehw, Kao Bax, Eero-
BeH, ê6HCH, CTpaBHHcKH h - cnncaK 6h Morao 6hth join Bpno ayr! CnncaK cbhx
ohhx Kojn cy hhhhjih aa My3HHKa yMeTHocT Hae yBeK Hanpea, aa ce pa3BHja, aa cTajiHo
6yae HOBa - aKo je ao6pa. /Iaiaie: MoaepHa, hjih HOBa, hjih caBpeMeHa, hjih aBaHrapaHa
My3HKa - y Taj npenjier - h CBojeBpcTaH jiaBHpHHT - 6jthckhx a h aOBojbHO pa3jiHHH-
thx nojMOBa h npocTopa npeacTojH BaM aa 3aheTe y oboM HaiueM cycpeTy. OcTaje aa
ce BHan kojihko he Taj 3ana3aK aoHeTH (h) HObhx TyMaHeifca h BHheH>a, Koja cy Moryh-
Ha h Kaa HaM ce mhhh aa je o HeHeMy CBe Beh peHeHo h carjieaaHo. Jep My3HKa je, Ha
cpehy, HecanieaHB npocTop - HHMe h 3acjiyacyje h H3a3HBa Hac aa ce H>oMe 6aBHMO,
CBaKO Ha CBoj HaHHH! y to HMe, apare KOjiere, hcchhM BaM aa H3 jiaBHpHHTa Kojn je
npefl BaMa HaheTe npaBe H3jia3e.
H 6e3 ApnjaaHHHe noMohH...
Danica Petrovic
Director of the Institute of Musicology
INTRODUCTORY GREETINGS AT THE CONFERENCE

'RETHINKING MUSICAL MODERNISM'
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 1 1 October 2007.
Dear Colleagues,
It is my greatest pleasure to be able to greet you at the beginning of this impor
tant musicological conference, held at our extended home institution - the Serbian
Academy of Sciences and Arts, and at our specific research institution - the Institute of
Musicology, whose members have organised this meeting. I am glad to see here no only
our old acquaintances and colleagues, but also the new participants from both home and
abroad.
As a rule in work as in life old and new, known and unknown, seen and unseen
entwine. These are the questions addressed also by the topic of this conference - mo
dernism - the truth at a certain epoch and its interpretation today. The everlasting topic
of all those who work in culture or art. Is there a composer who did not rely on what
already existed and was inherited, or who did not look forward, looking for a way to
make his art approachable to his contemporaries and the future generations? Critics,
while listening to the mixed reactions to the new music, try to evaluate it as objectively
as possible and to place it within its epoch. On the other hand musicologists and music
analysts study the development of both the composers and their work with the advanta
ges and at the same time disadvantages of a time distance. They attempt to see the mu
sic and its impact through a period of time, thus discovering the efficacy or complete
lack of power or certain attitudes, practices and stylistic trends.
The same processes were at work at the time of Ioannis Koukouzelis (the grea
test Byzantine composer in the fourteenth century) and Guillaume Dufay (the greatest
Netherlands composer in the fifteenth century). Today, due to the time distance, our
perception of the time when this music was created, its interpretation and performance
as well as the reception among its contemporaries is not only less precise but
significantly more complicated.
I believe that this conference will provide answers to certain questions regarding
the music modernism in the twentieth century, and will certainly show a range of di
lemmas, both in the main centres of the European culture and along the periphery,
especially where the historical and cultural developments were atypical. I hope a whole
range of new questions will emerge, which would grasp the attention of the new gene
rations and help us also to understand better the tendencies in the contemporary music.
I wish you all a purposeful and successful meeting, and a very pleasant stay in
Belgrade, the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and its Institute of Musicology.
JXamma neipOBHh
flHpeicrop My3HKOjiouiKor HHCTHTyra CAHy
n03^PABHA PEH HA HAYHHOM CKYIly

„MY3HHKH MO£EPHH3AM - HOBA TYMAHEBA"
y CpncKoj aKaaeMHjn HayKa h yMeTHOCTH, 1 1 . oicro6pa 2007.
FIoiuTOBaHe Konere,
BeoMa ce paayjeM ujto Mh je npyaceHa npmiHKa aa Bac no3apaBHM Ha noHency
paaa OBor 3HaHajHor My3HKOjiouiKor HayHHor cicyna, KojH ce oapwaBa y Hauioj uiHpoj
KyhH - CpncKoj aKaaeMHjH HayKa h yMeTHOCTH, h Hauioj HenocpeaHoj HCTpaacHBaHKoj
HHCTHTyuHjH, HHjH Cy CapaflHHUH H OpraHH3OBajIH OBaj CyCpeT - y My3HKOjIOIIIKOM
HHCTHTyr CAHY. /Iparo Mh je urro OBae bjwhM Haiue CTape 3HaHue h capaaHHKe, ajin
H HOBe yHeCHHKe, KaKO H3 3eMjI>e, TaKO H H3 HHOCTpaHCTBa.
y >KHBOTy h paay yseic ce no npaBHjiy npennHhy CTapo h hobo, no3HaTO h Heno-
3Haro, bh^HO h HeBHrjeHO. To cy nHTaH>a Koja HaMehe h TeMa OBor cKyna - MoaepHH-
3aM - HCTHHa y oapeheHOM HcrropHjcKOM BpeMeHy, h H>erOBo TyMaHen>e name. To je
BeHHTa TeMa cbhx ohhx KojH ce 6aBe KyjnypoM, yMeTHonihy, CTBapajiauiTBOM. HMa jih
KOMno3HTopa KojH ce Hnje ocjiaH>ao Ha Beh nocTojehe, HacjierjeHO, h KojH HHje nieaao
y 6yayhHOCT, TpaacehH HaHnH KaKO aa CBoja yMeTHHmca Ka3HBaH>a npeHece caBpeMeHH-
uHMa, anH h 6yayriHM reHepaimjaMa. OcayuiKyjyhH HecHrypHe TparOBe peuenimje Ho-
bhx aena, My3HHKH KpHTHHapn noicyujaBajy m hx kouhko je TO Moryhe oojckthbho
Bpe^Hyjy h yTeMejbe y aaTOM BpeMeHy. My3HKOjio3H h aHanHTHHapH, y3 npeaHOCTH,
anH h 6apHjepe HCTOpHjcice aHCTaHue, aHajiH3Hpajy npeheHH nyr h ayrapa h h>hxobhx
aejia. CaraeaaBajy CTBapajiauiTBO y H>erOBOM yMeTHHHKOM Tpajaay h aejiOBaH>y Kpo3
BpeMe, OTKpHBajyhn acnoTBOpHOCT hjih noTnyHy HeMoh oapeheHHX CTaBOBa, nocTyna-
Ka h cthjickhx ycMepeaa.
Bhjio je TaKo y BpeMeHy JOBaHa KyKy3ejba h THjoM ,HH(}>aja y cpeaH>eM BeKy, Ta-
ko je h aaHac, caMO ce aHcraHue nOBehaBajy npeMa npomjiHM enoxaMa, na ce TaKo
ycjio3KH>aBa Haiua Be3a ca BpeMeHOM HaCTaHKa aeaa, h>hxobhM TyMaHeH>eM, HaHHHOM
H3BorjeH>a h yBunoM y H>HXOBy peuenuHjy y npouuiOM h y HaiueM BpeMeHy.
BepyjeM aa he OBaj CKyn oarOBopHTH Ha nojeaHHa nHTaaa Kaaa je y nHTaay
m)/3uhKu ModepHU3cm y XX Beicy, cBaKaKo he yKa3aTH Ha hh3 auneMa, Kaico y ueHTpn-
Ma eBponcKe KyjiType, TaKo h Ha nepn(j)epHjH Koa Mannx Hapoaa, noce6Ho ohhx HHjH
cy tokobh HCTopHjcKor h KyjiTypHor pa3Boja HMann CBoj cneun(j)HHaH nyT. OHeKyjeM
aa he ce otbophth h hh3 HObhx nHTaH>a Koja he oKyrmpaTH 6yayhe HCTpaacHBaHe, a
Mowaa h noMohH aa 6ojbe pa3yMeMo tokobc caBpeMeHor My3HHKor cTBapanauiTBa.
)KeaHM cbhM yHecHHUHMa cKyna caapacajaH h ycnemaH paa, ajiH h npnjaTaH
GopaBaK y HaraeM rpaay, y CpncKoj aKaaeMHjH HayKa h yMeTHOCTH h H>eHOM My3HKO-
jIOUIKOM HHCTHTyry.
EITHER /OR
JIM SAMSON
1 . 1 WILL begin with a little story rather than a grand narrative. Actually,
it is quite a big story. It is just not much reported, and it certainly does not make
the music history books. It concerns the transfer of music all the way from the
western rim of Europe to its eastern rim. In 1492, following an expulsion edict
by the Catholic Monarchs, the Jews left Spain, and a bit later they left Portugal
too. Some went to the Protestant North, some to the Mahgreb, some to Italy.
But the majority came to the European territories of the Ottoman empire, in a
word to the Balkans: first to the major ports (Valona, Salonika, Istanbul), then
over the following half century to the inland cities (Monastir, Skopje, Sarajevo,
Belgrade). They were known of course as Sephardim (literally, Spanish Jews),
and they came in such numbers that they assimilated existing Jewish communi
ties and preserved many aspects of their Spanish culture (including their lan
guage: dialects of Judeo-Spanish or Ladino that are of great interest to romani-
cists as they preserve elements of old Castilian that have disappeared from
modern Spanish); there was in short something of a 'transplanted Sepharad'
here in the Balkans, as Iberian cultural forms entered the Ottoman ecumene.1
They brought their music too, and as it happens I have done some work on it;
there is a surprising amount of data that helps us to reconstruct its history. But I
do not really want to talk about that in detail here. Instead I want to use the story
to explore some larger questions about modernism, which is after all our theme.
Now what, you may reasonably ask, has this Sephardic story to do with
modernism? I will try to answer that question in three ways. First, I will say
something about how modernity impacted on the Sephardim. Second, I will
suggest that modernism, understood as a cultural and intellectual response to
modernity, influences how we might tell their story. And third, with inevitable
circularity, I will argue that these modes of telling can in turn help us under
stand a few things about modernism. It is all premised on the idea that little sto-
1 E. Benbassa and A. Rodrigue, The Jews ofthe Balkans (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), xvii.
16 Jim Samson
ries can speak into grand narratives in several ways; they can instantiate them;
light them up; critique them; deconstruct them. By focusing on marginalia, we
can sometimes see around the edges of familiar, canonised portraits of music,
musicians, and music-making.
So, first my Sephardic story. I will be rather specific here, and confine the
discussion to Sarajevo, one of the main centres of Sephardic Jewry in the Bal
kans. The Sephardim were established there by the 1560s. They came mainly
from Salonika, and before that from Aragon and Catalonia rather than Andalu
sia; there was also a small component of Portuguese. Much of our knowledge of
their life under Ottoman rule comes from references by both Turkish and Euro
pean travellers (Evliya Celebi is indispensable, as he is for anything to do with
the Ottoman Balkans),2 but there is also factual data in the Archives of the Jew
ish Sephardic Community, as recorded by Moric Levy,3 as well as the qadi re
cords of the local Muslim court, and for a limited period the temettuat registers
in Istanbul.4 As to their music, well we might describe a spectrum, taking us
from synagogal cantillation, where continuity with Hispanic origins was most
apparent, to newly composed piyyutim, influenced more by Middle Eastern mu
sic, and from there to paraliturgical repertories, including coplas, and finally to
what interests me most: secular Judeo-Spanish repertories, including romances
and canciones, generally performed by women.
Now, the poetic forms and some of the texts of these Sephardic songs can
often be traced directly to Hispanic origins, no doubt because for the texts,
though not for the music, there emerged a stabilising written tradition: roman-
ceros and cancioneros. There is actually a substantial body of romanicist schol
arship on these texts.5 And that scholarship in turn helped to shape the
musicological agenda, particularly in the work of Judith Etzion and Susana
Weich-Shahak.6 The general thrust of their work was to bolster the idea of a
* Celebi was a seventeenth-century courtier and 'professional' traveller, whose monumen

tal Seyahatname [Book of Travels] is an indispensable source of information on Ottoman life and
culture, and on what R. Dankoff calls the 'Ottoman mentality'; see Dankoffs An Ottoman Men
tality: The World ofEvliya Celebi (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004).
3 M. Levi, Die Sephardim in Bosnien (Sarajevo, 1911).
4 More detailed accounts of Jewish life in Sarajevo can be found in H. Pass Freidenreich,
The Jews of Yugoslavia: A Questfor Community (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of
America, 1979).
5 See S. G. Armistead and J. H. Silverman, The Judeo-Spanish Chapbooks of Yakob Abra
ham Yond (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), Judeo-Spanish Ballads from Bosnia
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971). Judeo-Spanish Ballads from New York
Collected by Mair Jose Benardete (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1981), and Judeo-
Spanish Balladsfrom Oral Tradition, Vol. I, Epic Ballads, with musical transcriptions and studies
by I. J. Katz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).
6 See J. Etzion and S. Weich-Shahak, 'The Spanish and the Sephardic Romances: Musical
Links', Ethnomusicology, 32/2 (1988), 173-209. Arguments for the Spanish roots of the music
EITHER / OR 17
transplanted Sepharad by demonstrating Hispanic survivals in the music as well

as the texts. But actually there was quite a bit of wishful thinking in all that. It
has now been convincingly shown that Sephardic repertories in the main sur
rendered to Ottoman forms and genres at a fairly early stage, borrowing well-
known Greek or Turkish melodies, including Sufi Ilahije, and using the instru
ments, the makamlar and performance styles characteristic of Ottoman music
generally.7 There is hard evidence of this from earlier periods, and it is con
firmed by the earliest recordings as well as by ethnographic work, including
interviews with some of the older Sarajevan singers, notably Jagoda Flory.
Modernity impacted on the world of the Sephardim with the switch to a
Habsburg administration in 1878, one of many collisions of Ottoman and Habs-
burg dynasties in the Balkans. With the Habsburgs came on the one hand new
infrastructures and new programmes of education; on the other hand new kinds
of bureaucratic control, crippling license systems, censorship.8 But something
else came with the Habsburgs, and that was a growing awareness of what An
thony Smith calls ethnies, with their constitutive cultures.9 For the Sephardim,
the contact with modernity inaugurated a process of self-reflection that culmi
nated in agendas of what we might call Sephardic nationalism, though it is per
haps not quite the right term. The necessary foil for this process was not so
much the Habsburg administrators themselves as the Ashkenazi Jews who ac
companied them and who established their own community in Sarajevo. The
Sephardim defined themselves against the Ashkenazim, who had a different
lifestyle and a different political agenda, in the main Zionist. In any event, with
the change of administration the Sephardim got themselves organised, estab
lishing formal structures of identity, through which they might articulate a new
sense of self and history, and also a new sense of self-division, as some of their
published novellas indicate. I do not want to suggest here that pre-modern so
cieties were somehow free of internal contradictions. The issue is whether or
not these were given cultural articulation. So, structures of Sephardic identity
were instituted. The charitable foundation La Benevolencia was founded; then
the Judeo-Spanish magazine La Alborado; then the Sephardic nationalist maga
zine Jewish Life, set up in opposition to the Zionist Jewish Conscience, and in
due course Benjamin Pinto's consciously synthesising Jewish Voice. And it was
in this climate that there appeared the kind of identity-defining collections of
are also made by A. Galante, in Turcs et Juifs: Etude historique, politique (Istanbul: Haim, Rozio,
etcie, 1932).
7 See I. Katz, Judeo-Spanish Traditional Balladsfrom Jerusalem: An Ethnomusicological
Study, 2 vols. (Brooklyn: The Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1972).
8 For an insight into the effects of this bureaucracy on music, see R. P. Pennanen, 'Con
trolling Sound and Music: Aspects of Musical Life in Sarajevo under Austro-Hungarian Rule', in
T. Karaca and S. Kazic (eds.), 4h International Symposium "Music in Society" (Sarajevo: Academy of
Music in Sarajevo, 2005), 114-125.
9 A. Smith, The Ethnic Origins ofNations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986).
18 Jim Samson
oral culture that were common in nationalist movements at the time, by the ro-
manicists Fernandez and Pidal, for example, but above all by the ethnologist
Manrique de Lara.10 La Benevolencia also supported the tamburitza society La
Gloria, who made some of the earliest recordings we have of Sephardic music
in Sarajevo in 1907. They were made by Felix Hampe, as part of a truly historic
tour, and copies are extant.1
In all of this we see some of the characteristic transforming functions of
modernity, and thus some of the ways in which this little story speaks into the
grand narrative. One such function is the firming up of borders, in what might
be called modernity's categorical quest. There was a novella published in Jew
ish Voice that illustrates this.12 It's called Friday afternoon, and it just depicts
two old Sephardi women sitting on a step discussing those mysterious Ashke-
nazim with their unfamiliar ways. It's about identity, telling us about the self
and the other, about how we draw borders between communities but also be
tween generations. It tells us too that modernity doesn't just create borders; it
transmutes difference into alterity. Now in his book The Fetishism of Moderni
ties, Bernard Yack translates this from the little story to the grand narrative.13
He reminds us that the ideology of the modern reduced particular human states
to notionally integrated wholes, even when it seemed to be arguing just the op
posite, so that identities are created through mechanisms of contrast or opposi
tion rather than of interrelation. Thus it was modernist thought stemming from
the enlightenment, and including ideas of nationhood, that created the so-called
'minorities'—religious and linguistic—that we discuss so glibly nowadays. It's
hard to unpick this process: something is assigned; something experienced; but
maybe experienced only because it's assigned. And there are I think similar so
cial technologies at work with centres and peripheries. Wherever I am is inevi
tably the centre. Yet others may disagree. And I may be persuaded by the
others. The tension generated by the co-existence of these two states—we are
simultaneously centred and decentred—can result in highly defensive self-
representations; we may be sidelined by the grand narrative but at the same time
we mimick it. Thus do people become victims of ideology. I should perhaps just
10 A. Pulido Fernandez, Los Israelitas espaholes y el Idioma Castellano (Madrid, 1904)

and Espaholes sin patriay la raza sefardi (Madrid, 1905).
10 R. Menendez Pidal, Catdlogo del romancero judio-espahol (Madrid, 1906); S. G. Ar-
mistead (ed.), EI Romancero judeo-espahol en el Archivo Menendez Pidal, 3 vols. (Madrid: Cat-
edra-seminario Menendez Pidal, 1978).
1 1 See R. P. Pennanen, 'A Forgotten Treasure-Trove—The First Gramophone Recordings
Ever Made in Sarajevo', in I. Cavlovic (ed.), 3rd International Symposium "Music in Society"
(Sarajevo: Academy of Music in Sarajevo, 2003), 172-7.
See M. Nezirovid, Jevrejsko-spanjolska knjizevnost (Sarajevo: Institut za knjizevnost,
1992), 56.
13 B. Yack, The Fetishism of Modernities: Epochal Self-Consciousness in Contemporary
Social and Political Thought (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997).
EITHER / OR 19
add here, without elaborating, that for thinkers such as Levinas a philosophy of
the centre lies right at the heart of a European mind set, so that peripheries can't
really avoid adopting a language of the centre.
The Sephardim's response to modernity, I suggest, was not to reclaim
their culture, but rather to promote as a culture what had previously been self-
defined. That actually is quite a good description of how Enlightenment thought
spawned both cultural modernism and a nationalist ideology. Daniele Conversi
speaks of the 'modern re-enactment of a pre-modern idea'.14 And that in turn
invokes what Svetlana Boym sees as another by-product of modernism, the
nostalgia that follows innovation (and also trauma). Nostalgia was a palpable
part of Sephardic self-definition in response to modernity. 'In Sephardic homes,
like mine', says Jagoda Flory, 'as much as we remember the terrible things of
the Inquisition, we still have a deep feeling for Spain. We love the language.
We love the food. We love everything'.15 But note that, as Boym argues in her
excellent book The Future of Nostalgia, nostalgia is almost always a second
generation phenomenon.16 And it was indeed among the second generation of
Sephardic collectors that we encounter what has been described as a longing to
reconnect. I mentioned briefly the first generation, notably Manrique de Lara.
The key figure of the second generation was Alberto Hemsi, who collected in
the Balkans in the 20s and 30s, and who also made arrangements of Sephardic
melodies for voice and piano.17 Now in these arrangements the traditional melo
dies are contextualised in a highly specific, Spanish-influenced manner (the ac
companiments sound pretty much like Granados or Alb&iiz). I will play two
recordings of the beginning of the Sephardic song Tres Hermenicas, a song that
was actually published in Jewish Voice, though it appears in many places. 18 The
first recording was made by an immigrant to Israel: you'll hear the oriental in
struments and vocal style, and the untempered Hijaz tetrachord; this music has
clearly been absorbed by the Middle East.19 In the second recording you'll hear
Hemsi 's cleaned-up, harmonised, Spanish-sounding arrangement of the same
song: the key to this translation in some ways is the sub-dominant.20 Here
14 D. Conversi, 'Mapping the Field: Theories of Nationalism and the Ethnosymbolic Ap

proach', in A. S. Leoussi and S. Grosby (eds.), Nationalism and Ethnosymbolism: History, Cul
ture and Ethnicity in the Formation of Nations (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007),
15-30.
15 See the interview on www.nea.gov/honors/heritage02/Jagoda2.html
16 S. Boym, The Future ofNostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001).
17 See A. Hemsi, Cancionero sefardi, ed. and with intro by E. Seroussi in collaboration
with P. Dias-Mas, J. M. Pedrosa and E. Romero (Jerusalem: Jewish Music Research Centre,
1995).
18 S. G. Armistead and J. H. Silverman, Judeo-Spanish Ballads from Bosnia (Philadel
phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971).
19 From the CD Cantares y Romances Tradicionales Sefardies de Oriente, Vol. 2, directed
by S. Weich-Shahak, Saga, KPD - 1 0.906.
20 From the CD A. Hemsi Coplas Sefardies, Fondation du Judaisme Francais.
20 Jim Samson
nostalgia has become a cultural project, something Svetlana Boym argues is a

key symptom of the modern age.
2. Now I want to use those two examples as a way into the second part of
my talk, which concerns how modernism has influenced how we tell, or might
tell, the story of Sephardic music. The key to this, I suggest, is what I might call
the 'either-or' mentality characteristic of the modernist citadel. Ethnomusicolo-
gists initially told this story as a narrative of displacement, and in doing so they
implicitly favoured one of two possible philosophies of place. Both of these
philosophies have a lengthy pedigree and both have, I suggest, a much wider
resonance in Balkan studies. 1 At the root of displacement narratives lies the
rather basic assumption that everyone has a proper place; we may not be there,
but we should be, so we define our identity by constructing our proper place in
our present place, which means constructing the past in the present; music is
good at that, and it is basically what you heard in the second example. But actu
ally, as I hinted earlier, one could equally tell the Sephardic story as an accul
turation narrative, which is what you heard in the first example. Underpinning
that narrative is the contrary assumption that we are creatures of the places we
inhabit today, shaped more by our present than our imagined past. There's an
Arab proverb that puts it nicely: 'People resemble their times more than they
resemble their fathers'.22 This can involve a kind of strategic amnesia. Defining
our identities, in this narrative, might involve silencing certain historical voices, or
deciding not to hear them. The key point is that for the Sephardim both narratives
were in play. The ethnomusicologists—modernist story-tellers—made a choice.
Modernist story-telling also influences how we conceptualise the past.
Heiddeger reminds us (in The Concept of Time) that historical references can
really only function within discourses, and that we therefore need to start at the
discourse level rather than with the references themselves; we need, in other
words, to understand the nature of the discourse before we 'do' history. Now I
want to suggest that the modern science of history, and that includes cultural
history, produced a modernist discourse that effectively freezes the present, so
that the present takes on something like an autonomy character rather than a
dependency character. A line is drawn between past and present (though quite
where the past ends and the present begins is something of a question here)/
21 See J. M. Smith, A. Light and D. Roberts, introduction: Philosophies and Geographies

of Place', in Andrew Light and Jonathan M. Smith (eds.), Philosophies of Place (Lanham:
Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), 1-19.
22 Quoted in L. Boia, Romania: Borderland ofEurope, trans. J. C. Brown (London: Reak-
tion Books, 2001), 47.
23 M. Heidegger, The Concept of Time, trans W. McNeill (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992; orig.
edn. 1924).
24 See M. de Certeau, L "Ecriture del'Histoire (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1975).
EITHER / OR 21
This then enables an autonomous present to appropriate the past, rather than to
assimilate it, because assimilation will not produce history. From this self-ab
sorbed present, synonymous with the modern, historical references then become
points in a picture, and one has the illusion that this picture is rather stable. For
cultural histories, it tends to be configured as so-called traditions with which the
modern can negotiate, even if that means using the traditions against them
selves. The comforts of classification are very seductive here, and very dear to
the historian.
When I was thinking about this talk I amused myself by imagining
something rather improbable: a history of Sephardic music by Carl Dahlhaus, a
modernist historian if ever there was one. How would Dahlhaus have drawn the
picture, I asked myself. Well my guess is that he would have created a structure,
and he would have defined that structure by way of a kairos—a point of perfec
tion—that reveals it retrospectively. He might, for instance, have represented
the kairos as the point of maximum integration between two separate musical
cultures, Iberian and Ottoman, allowing him to understand the essential
dynamic of the history in the terms of a transitional state.25 Understood in this
way, the Sephardic story might then serve as a paradigm for other meeting-
points of styles and traditions in Balkan music history. Indeed it might even
exemplify one of the most common understandings of so-called Balkanism,
raising familiar questions about the status of 'betwixt and between', of 'in-
betweeness'. I am using language from Maria Todorova.26
But we might, of course, tell the Sephardic story in very different ways.
We might, for instance, draw on the literary critic Derek Attridge, or (perhaps at
a greater distance) the philosopher Alain Badiou, by allowing for the new di
rections, the alternative visions, even the explosive transformative innovations
that become possible through human agency in direct response to what both
these writers call 'events', with their accompanying 'evental sites'.27 Music his
tory here would not be about structures, but about agencies, about actions occur
ring within a practice, and often diverging from the ethos of the practice, just as,
on another level, the interests of practices may diverge from those of the insti
tutions that house them, something most of us know only too well.28 If we were
On transitional states, see N. Schwartz-Salant and M. Stein (eds.), Liminality and

Transitional Phenomena (Wilmette, 111., Chiron Publications, 1993). This is part of a wider lite
rature whose orientation is psycho-analytical, but whose findings create interesting resonances for
cultural history.
26 M. Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
1997).
27 D. Attridge, The Singularity ofLiterature (London: Routledge, 2004); A. Badiou, L 'Etre
et I 'evenement (Paris: Seuil, 1988).
28 For a discussion of the practice as a category, see A. Maclntyre, After Virtue: A Study in
Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981). I have argued elsewhere
(The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music) that music histories seldom address the
22 Jim Samson
to read Sephardic music history in terms of events and agencies in this way, we
would have no difficulty in singling out the key transformative events, even to
the point of identifying an origin and a telos. Again it is tempting to transfer
such ideas to the larger Balkan canvas. For example, recent political history in
this region might be understood as an event series that has been directly inter
ventionist in music history, impinging on the beliefs, options and actions of mu
sicians, and transforming their understanding of their practice. You could actu
ally take that further if you want to follow Badiou. For him, events are prerequi
sites for subjectivity. You can't really have a subject without them.
It might be tempting to describe these two approaches as modernist and
postmodernist respectively. But in any case what is interesting is that it is quite
hard to see how we can find an accommodation between them. We seem to be
forced to choose between what are on the face of it two very different ways of
punctuating history. The kairos and the event (the point of perfection and the
transformative moment) are after all very differently 'placed' in any given his
torical sequence. At this point, enter Jacques Derrida. Derrida warns us against
just this kind of reductionism, against the excesses of either/or. His reading of the
complex hinterland to 'events' in Spectres of Marx29 offers us some possibility
of an accommodation between our two approaches. It achieves this by embed
ding events within mini-histories—the hidden and intertwining backgrounds to
events—and by viewing them as simultaneously reactive and proactive. This is
an approach that is very sympathetic to the ambiguities of little stories, which
have a way of constantly wandering away from simple characterizations such as
the origin and the telos. What Derrida signals, and I'll come back to it at the end
of this talk, is that contraries, unlike contradictories, do not exhaust the range of
possibilities.
One further thought on telling the Sephardic story. It seems worth asking
why, with a handful of exceptions, ethnomusicologists ignored Sephardic re
pertories for so long. I want to remind you that in the formative stages of ethno-
musicology, or 'comparative musicology' as it was then known, this discipline
was just as much a product of modernity as historical musicology. The case is
familiar enough in general terms; basically it's about how an elitist, Enlighten
ment-engendered Modernist ideology attributed privileged status to uncontami-
nated, supposedly 'natural' societies, and from a perspective that betrays all too
clearly the European origins of the discipline (let's leave aside the further mod
ernist impulses first to sanitise and then to classicise this music). That's the fa
miliar case, and the darker side of such notions of cultural purity are of course
familiar to us. But I want to emphasise something more particular; and that is
relationship between practices (which have their own setting, history, tradition, values, ideals and
ethos) and institutions, which are usually structured in terms of power and status.
29 See J. Derrida, Specters ofMarx: The State ofthe Debt, the Work ofMourning, and the
New International, trans. P. Kamuf (New York and London: Routledge, 1994).
EITHER / OR 23
again the either/or mentality that forced repertories either side of a line demar
cating progress and degeneracy. (Daniel Pick provides a context for this in his
book Faces ofdegeneration)?0
Thus, on one side of the line we find two unlikely allies: modernist art
music and rural 'folk' music. Both were 'authentic', in the sense that they were
respectively innocent of, or wary of, the debasements of mercantile art. On the
other side of the line we have urban popular music, which was deemed to be
tainted and degenerate, hybrid in a negative way. These repertories were
thought to lack authenticity by a Modernist generation, and this profoundly in
fluenced the ethnomusicological agenda, which for long enough remained
nervous of cultural hybridity. Moreover, to the extent that urban popular music
in the Balkans was shaped by Ottoman traditions, it faced an additional layer of
prejudice from native scholars. For Greece in particular, oriental hybrids were
the worst kind of all. There were hard political reasons for this judgement in the
1930s of course, but there were also ancient tropes informing it. So how did this
leave Sephardic repertories? Within a modernist discourse, they were quite sim
ply located on the wrong side of the line.
3. I want to come finally to just a very few reflections on modernism it

self, generated by the Sephardic story and ways of telling it. It will already be
clear that I have been using the term modernity here in the way many historians
do, referring to political, social and intellectual transformations that took place
mainly in the seventeenth century, including transformations of the idea of the
past; it is in this sense that it has been recently argued by John Butt that the
whole orientation of what we have come to call western Classical music,
something marked by its exceptionalism, is a product of modernity.31 I have
been using the term modernism, on the other hand, to refer not just to cultural
praxes that responded to modernity, but to the cultural climate that enabled
those praxes, and to ways of interpreting them. Modernism, in other words, is
an ideology of the modern, and if you force me to put dates on it I think I would
track it back to the 1 850s or thereabouts. I suppose I have been circling around
the term rather than confronting it. And here I seize eagerly one of the most
generous gifts ever handed to scholars: Walter Bryce Gallie's 'essentially con
tested concept' [ECC].32 The beauty of this is that it immediately relieves us of
any obligation to define the concept. Here is how Gallie describes ECCs. They
are 'concepts the proper use of which inevitably involves endless disputes about
D. Pick, Faces ofDegeneration: A European Disorder, c. 1848 - c. J918 (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1989).
31 Unpublished lecture, Classical Music and the Subject of Modernity, sponsored by The
British Academy.
32 W. B. Gallie, 'Essentially Contested Concepts', Proceedings ofthe Aristotelian Society,
Vol. 56(1956), 167-198.
24 Jim Samson
their proper uses on the part of their users'. He continues: 'these disputes cannot
be settled by appeal to empirical evidence, linguistic usage, or the canons of
logic alone'. I am proposing modernism as a prime candidate for this status as
an ECC. The fact that everyone, including us, is rethinking it these days sort of
makes the case. On the other hand, an ECC is not a permissive society, and I
suspect that the danger of all this rethinking, whose main thrust seems to be to
favour multiple parallel modernisms, is that we just might lose touch with cer
tain essentials.
I've really been trying to signal one of those essentials in this talk. I
called it an either/or mentality. If we project it from the little story to the grand
narrative, then I would say it comes into sharpest focus, musically speaking, in
the Weimar debates of the 1 850s. From that point onwards the rhetoric tended
to separate repertories out into mutually exclusive categories that we might la
bel classical, modernist and commercial. The category 'modernist music', then,
was almost inevitably profiled through its oppositional relations to the other two
categories. To some extent this remains the case even today, whether we focus
on use value, in the manner of Roger Chartier, or on musical styles, as Leon
Botstein does, for example, in his New Grove article on Modernism.33 But the
either/or mentality was to become yet more ruthless in the early twentieth cen
tury, through the dismissal of those notionally conservative repertories that were
coeval with modernist ones. And actually I suggest that if we really do decide to
rethink modernism, we can only do so by rethinking conservatism as well. That
may indeed be the more urgent task just now.
It was also in the nature of an early twentieth-century either/or mentality
that definite views were advanced about value and authenticity. Interestingly,
ideas of authenticity seem to cross some of the borders separating parallel mod
ernisms, and I suspect they may add up to another of those essentials I spoke
about earlier. Such ideas were probably articulated most forcibly by Schoen-
berg, who, as you certainly know, argued that art should be constructed ac
cording to certain principles rather than others and in close agreement with the
materials of which it is made (understanding materials here as an historical
category). For Schoenberg you really had to get all that right. And you had to
know that the road would be a hard one. Yes, there must be the incipient vision
that he saw as a precondition for an authentic creation, but there must also be
the labour necessary to realise it, given that composers, like the rest of us, have
been 'driven out of paradise' (his phrase, and modernist to the core).34 And
R. Chartier, Cultural History: Between Practices and Representations, trans. L. G.

Cochrane (Ithaca and New York: Cornell University Press, 1988); L. Botstein, 'Modernism', The
New Grove Dictionary ofMusic and Musicians, 2nd edn. (London: Macmillan, 2001).
34 See M. Breivik, '"Driven Out of Paradise": Schoenberg on Creation and Construction',
in S. R. Havsteen, N. H. Petersen. H. W. Schwab and E. 0strem (eds.), Creations: Medieval Ritu
als, the Arts, and the Concept ofCreation (Copenhagen: Brepols, 2007), 165-182.
EITHER / OR 25
while it is probably true to say that Schoenberg's commitments and his refusals
came to seem rather sterile and self-congratulatory in the end, I personally
doubt if this justifies the presumption of the term 'postmodern'. And here is the
dilemma, I suppose. To reject the either/or of modernism is to introduce another
either/or. About this, just one last thought, and then I am done.
Today, you can download Judeo-Spanish or Ladino ballads from the
internet in pseudo-medieval garb; blended with flamenco, or in the guise of
contemporary popular music; you can find it marketed as a species of Balkan
folk music, or as a variety of Mediterranean song: and note by the way the dif
ferent connotative values of the terms Balkan and Mediterranean, the latter an
altogether sunnier affair. The point here of course is that Sephardic song is in
revival; it has achieved a kind of afterlife. It is now part of 'world music', with a
relatively free exchange of idioms across the several different Sephardic tradi
tions, and between those traditions and more international popular music styles.
The suggestion is that these songs now belong to a single global culture; that
what lies beyond borders is just more of the same, if indeed the borders exist at
all. It becomes in a quite literal sense impossible to locate Sephardic song.
At this point I want to put in a final word for modernism, or at least to
caution against facile dismissals of the constraints it seems to impose. Or rather
I want Susan Sontag to do it for me. We might counter Bernard Yack's critique
of modernism with Sontag's apologia, in one of the last essays she wrote before
she died in 2004. 35 For Sontag, whose work seemed to swivel constantly be
tween aestheticism and ethics, the modern is not just 'a very radical idea'; it is
'one that continues to evolve'. She offers us a passionate defence of borders and
singularities in that last essay. A world without borders, she seems to say, is a
world without culture. What Sontag does, in a way, is to reject the illiberalism
of the postmodern. In effect, she makes an ethical case for a soft version of what
I have been calling the 'either/or mentality' of modernism, and it is the more
striking because it comes from someone who was alive to, and wrote exten
sively about, the diminishing returns of elite culture. I say a 'soft version' be
cause although she hangs on to contraries, she relinquishes contradictories.
Sontag doesn't even use the term modernism. But then, like Hamlet, she is well
aware that the world offers us far stranger and more unexpected combinations
than are dreamt of in either modernist or postmodernist philosophies.
S. Sontag, 'Pay Attention to the World', The Guardian, Saturday 17 March, 2007.
26 Jim Samson
IJiva CoMcon
HJ1H / HJ1H
Pe3hMe
y paay ce HcrpaHcyje MoaepHH3aM y My3HUH noMohy aHcKypca KaKO

HCTopHje TaKo h reorpa(J)Hje, a c noce6HHM TOKHurreM Ha BajiKaHy.
CKopauiH>e peBH3Hje Hauier pa3yMeBaH>a MoaepHH3Ma nocTaBjbajy ce
yHyrap aHjajieKTHKe „£orat)aja" (TpaHC(J)opMaTHBHor MOMeHTa, npoHejia flej-
ctbcHOcth) h mupoca (TaHKe caBpmeHCTBa, npoHejba CTpyicrype). Ty ce jaB-
jbajy aBa cynpoTCTaB^>eHa MOaejia flHHaMHKe KyjiTypHe HCTopHje kcjh ce hc-
nHTyjy y KOHTeKCTy Haeja Ba^Hjya, JJajixayca h JXepnne. Y KOHTeKCTy npBor
Monejia no3HBaM ce Ha KaTeropHjy HocTajirHje (CBeniaHa Bojiw) Kojy CMaTpaM
nocjie^HUOM MoaepHHcnrace HHOBaUHje h noce6HO peaKimjoM Ha HHTepBeH-
imjy h TpayMy. Y KOHTeKCTy apyror Monejia no3HBaM ce Ha KaTeropHjy npn-
CBajaH>a, anponpHjauHje (Po»ce LUapTHje). Moja Te3a je ml, HcupTaBajyhH sm-
HHjy H3Mel)y npouijiocra h caaauiH>ocTH, Mh CTBapaMO ayroHOMHy caâumocT
Koja Hajnpe 6npa, a 3aTHM npHCBaja (a He tojihko acHMwmpa) CBojy npouuiocT.
HcnHTyjy ce HeKe HMnjiHKaUHje OBor CTaBa Ha HcropHj'cKy My3HKOjio™jy.
KaTeropHje HOCTajiraje h anponpHjauHje, HCTpaaceHe y OKBHpy hctoph-
je, noTOM ce HcnHTyjy y h>hxobhM ozmocHMa npewia yrpatjeHOCTH y oapet)eHH
npocTop h H3MeLureHOCTH, ueHTpHMa h nepHêpHjaMa, yp6aHHM h pypajiHHM
eKOjiorHjaMa. H3HOch ce TBpflH>a m je MoaepHH3aM npoH3Beo HeoHeKHBaHo ca-
Be3HHuiTBo H3Mel)y aBaHrapflHe h pypanHe „HapoaHe" My3HKe, Ha paHyH xh6-
pHaHHjnx H^HOMa yp6aHe nonyjiapHe My3HKe. 06e BpcTe 6Hjie cy „ayTeHTHH-
He", y tom CMHCjiy m je npBa 6Hjia HeflyacHa, a apyra onpe3Ha, y oaHocy Ha
MepKaHTHjiHa yHHaceH>a. IIpeaMeT HCHHTHBaH>a cy h HMiuiHKaimje CBera Tora
Ha My3HKOjiorHjy, ^HCUHnjiHHy Koja je (y cbojhM paHHM cTa^HjyMHMa) KyjiTyp-
Hy xnGpHaHOCT CMaTpajia ay6oKO npo6jieMaTHHHOM.
EajncaH HyaH Haeajmy jia6opaTopHjy 3a npoyHaBaH>e cnoMeHyrHX Hêja.
OBa TepHTopHja je aeo EBpone, ajiH je onwcaHa H3 H>eHe KyjiType, TaKo na je
noêjia m ce cameaaBa 6hjio Kao TaMHa (opHjeHTajiHa) crpaHa eBponcKe CBe-
cth, 6hjio Kao npa3HHHa y h>cHOM cpuy; apyrHM peHHMa, Tpe6ajio je jxa npH-
xBara aTpH6yTe HH(J>epHOpHOCTH hjih 3aocTajiocra m 6h a4»HpMHcajia eBpon-
CKy UHBHjiH3aUHjy. TaKBa CHTyauHja no3HBa Ha npoyHaBaH>e eBponcKHX npoje-
KaTa MoaepHOCTH noMohy 6ajiKaHCKHX ajrrepHTeTa. Ajih obo Moace h %a ce npe-
oKpeHe. He npH3Haje ce yBeK cTaB aa ce MOflepHH3aM MOace peBnnHpara caMo
aKO Ce TO yHHHH H Ca KOH3epBaTHBH3MOM.
THINKING THE RETHINKING (OF THE NOTION OF)
MODERNITY (IN MUSIC)
VLASTIMIR TRAJKOVIC
0aXaaoa! OaXaaaa!
Xenophon, Anabasis, IV, 8
L 'acquisition des connaissances fait approcher

de la verite quand il s 'agit de la connaissance
de ce qu 'on aime et en aucun autre cas.
Simone Weil, L enracinement, Gallimard, 1949
Arti musices.
Prolem sine matre creatam.

Ovidius, Metamorphoses, II, 553
Rem tene, verba sequentur.

Cato
SCIENTIFIC theories are revocable, whereas stylistic categories are subject

to sporadic reinterpretations. However, revocability and subjection to reinter-
pretations should not be considered mutually exclusive. Einstein's general the
ory of relativity (1915) did call into question the hypothetical existence of aether
as a medium once believed to be necessary to support the propagation of elec
tromagnetic radiation, yet it also offered a reinterpretation of the system of
Newtonian mechanics, having limited the scope of its validity. When facing the
notion of modernity, one is primarily called on to treat its meaning critically.
Does the notion of modernity belong to stylistic categories and hence to aes
thetics, or to history, or to both of them? Should aesthetics still be considered a
domain of philosophy, or has it become a scientific discipline? The notion of
modernity has never been defined in a satisfactory way from an aesthetic
standpoint. It refers to a loose concept based on an arbitrary consensus about
what would be modern and what would not. Generally, 'modern' would be any
movement or climate of ideas, especially in the arts, literature or architecture,
that supports change, the retirement of the old or traditional, and the forward
march of the avant-garde. Yet, the questions ( 1 ) of what the nature of a would-
be change is, (2) of what should be 'stigmatized' as 'old and traditional' and (3)
in which direction the forward march of the avant-garde should go, remain
unclear and answers are subject to individual predilections. It is more fitting to
speak of a concept of modernity than of a notion of modernity, though even a
28 Vlastimir Trajkovic
concept should not be considered a 'text', itself treatable as subject to Gada-

mer's 'reader response theory'. According to Gadamer, the meaning of a text is
never a function purely of facts about the author and his original public (here,
mutatis mutandis, one should think primarily about the concept of modernity,
such as originated once in history), but is equally a function of the historical si
tuation of the interpreter (here, mutatis mutandis, one should think primarily
about the concept of modernity, such as conceived nowadays).
Observing modernity from a historical standpoint does not help either.
Not that one should necessarily consent to Popper's opinion on historicism
(Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, 1957). According to Popper, histori
cism is any belief in the necessity of historical processes, or belief that such
processes are governed by laws, and are immune to human choice and agency.
Still, an approval of historical 'delimitations' would not, itself, point out to a
'fallacy' of historicism. So, according to Arnold Toynbee (A Study of History,
1934—1954), Western Civilization entered its modern phase with the Renais
sance and eventually the post-modern around the 1880s.1 The term 'post
modern' itself was coined by Toynbee.
From the aesthetic standpoint, the notion of modernism is universally at
tributed to adherence to the ideas and ideals of the Enlightenment, whereas
modernistic art forms and the modernistic ideology reached their full momen
tum only from around the 1880s. The contrary movement of post-modernism
began taking form only around the 1970s. However, it is legitimate to follow
the mentioned delimitations of art history. First, this is because discrepancies
between Toynbee's 'stylistic' distributions of western history in general and the
consensually established analogous counterparts of art history and musicology
present, largely, a 'terminological misunderstanding'. Second, because a layman
and a professional, a common concertgoer like a learned musicologist, agree,
even tacitly, that the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first two de
cades of the twentieth embody such a demarcation line, such a 'watershed', that
what preceded them belongs to 'traditional art' (and the ideology of art), while
what follows is a 'product of modernism'. Traditional art might be judged as
naive or 'second hand', it might even, considering some of its specimens, be
held as boring, sentimental, academic, kitsch or academic-kitsch, but there was
never any doubt about its ability to produce, if only sporadically, an oeuvre of
High Art. Nevertheless, the products of the modernism of after the 1880s are
still felt to be controversial.2 Much of what will follow might take into account
1 Be that a coincidence or not, for many a Marxian-Leninist, the 1880s would also be
historically important: in the 1 880s global capitalism allegedly entered its terminal, imperialistic
phase.
2 It may be hard to believe that modernity still appears controversial. Today's post-
modernistic ideological frenzy leaves the door open for the theoretical speculations of many aca
demic dilettanti. They rationalize their lack of sophistication and of straightforwardness, which
THINKING THE RETHINKING.. 29
the visual arts, architecture, literature and even contemporary trans-media and
multi-media art, possibly also contemporary ideology—which does not neces
sarily imply only contemporary artistic ideology—but the author will limit his
discourse only to musical strata and developments. He ventured to take part in
the present conference because he feels that its topic reflects what is desperately
needed today: a reinterpretation of beliefs (or dogmas), of 'facts' (and conven
tional interpretations of those facts)—a reinterpretation (and even a disturbing)
of historical paradigms related to past necessities which were nothing but dis
guised contingencies. Such a reinterpretation does not try to disavow historical
reality. The subject of a reinterpretation would rather be the research on the na
ture of a would-be change at the time of modernistic upheaval and the research
on what should, from today's perspective, be regarded as 'old and traditional'.
* * *
Studies on musical modernity often begin with the 1865 Introduction to

the First Act of Wagner's Tristan and Isolda? For the first 23 bars the basic A
Major tonic triad refuses to appear. The long absence supposedly implies a fla
grant modernistic crisis of tonality. Why, a sort of tonality indeed underwent a
crisis. Based on the subdominant and dominant harmonic functions' flux of ten
sions pivoting towards the basic tonic triad focus, classical tonality, a histori
cal subset of the power set of Western Civilization's tonal systems, domi
nated the music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In Wagner's music,
the scarcity of cadences closing with basic tonal triads is compensated by an
inauguration of secondary tonal centres, with their respective secondary turns of
are necessary for an understanding of and, in particular, for responding emotionally to the genuine
spirit of modernity. As the result of the mass production of a 'radically-chic-international-crowd'
of neophytes, a rationalization is only to be expected. The new dogmatism postulates the claim
that modernity itself has never been modern enough. As if only Marcel Duchamp was matching
the standards. Since even the 'light' but undoubtedly professional Satie was too much of an
accomplished composer, a plausible level of musical modernity was supposedly attained only by
John Cage. So, is it not a paradox that a conventional veneration of academic 'icons', such as
Schoenberg, Webern and Adorno. remained undisturbed? On the other hand, much of genuine
modernism is described as insufficiently, i.e. 'only moderately' modern. The phenomenon is not
characteristic only of the neophyte, 'recently liberated' post-communist countries. In this sense,
let us remember, among other possible paradigms, an absurd lament on the 'sad state' of French
music between the two wars: Jean-Yves Bosseur, La musique francaise dans Ventre-deux
guerres, [in French], 'Musicology', Belgrade, 2001, pp. 1 190-128.
3 Adequate or not, the paradigm makes sense. Wagner was a highly original and innova
tive composer. In his time, he was also a modern composer. Many outstanding academics, not
only music scholars, focused their research on the beginnings of modernity in the mid- 1800s. For
instance. Nikolaus Pevsner does so in his Sources of Modern Architecture and Design. Musical
scholars often epitomize the arrival of modernity by a single piece of music (Wagner's said Intro
duction to the First Act of Tristan and Isolda). Pevsner inaugurates the modern times of architec
ture and design by pointing to the London Crystal Palace—built in 1851.
cadences, now introduced by new chromatic relationships between secondary

leading notes and the chords of their temporary resolutions. An almost constant
process of cadences did not necessarily have to call into question the inherent
possibilities of a further, still tonal, development of the newly hyper-chromatic
classical tonality. Nevertheless, De Falla was right (Manuel de Falla, Introduc
tion a la musica nueva, Revista Musical Hispanoamericana, Madrid, 1916) in
writing that of all post-Wagnerian Austro-German composers, not one, not even
Richard Strauss or Schoenberg could boast of a single modernistic innovation
of any significant magnitude or relevance as regards the achievements of the
late master.4 As for post-Wagnerian innovations, the present writer believes that
they should be sought in the late musical ceuvre of Scriabin (a Russian), and
also—although the proposition might be somewhat far fetched—in the musical
settings of Messiaen (a Frenchman).
It is understandable that Schoenberg's a-tonality and, a fortiori, the
Schoenberg-and-Webern dodecaphonic-serial technique, led so many scholars
to see in the endeavours of the two composers the very embodiment of a truly
modernistic revolution. Indeed, the arguments relevant to judgements about the
would-be modernistic status of a reform should have been sought deep within
the stratum of the structural habitus of music. Yet, the crucial dilemma of
Schoenberg, the Tonalisch oder Atonalisch question, posed explicitly in his fu-
gato (!?) Drei Chorsatiren, was a false dilemma. Not only because the techni
cal means to achieve the proclaimed goal (to establish an organized atonal set
ting by a dodecaphonic, eventually a serial 'method of composing') failed to
serve the proclaimed purpose. Does one really hold that the essence of tonality
would be a preponderance of a particular tone pitch, so that banishing a given
pitch to appear earlier than all the remaining ones, a ban on octave doublings or
the prohibition of reiterative appearances of a single pitch would render the
system a-tonal?! Indeed, lex falso quodlibet:' bizarre and fruitless remedies
were the consequence of the futility of posing a question which had already
been answered. The historical crisis of tonality had been solved around 1900.
Modern musical times began in Paris, the rotten classical tonality having been
succeeded not by traditionalist and 'devoted' disciples of Germany's 'three-
great-B's', but by Debussy's system of genuinely novel hybrid modality, a
4 As if to confirm De Falla's observations, Strauss (in Furtwangler's words) explained, in

1945, what he owed to Wagner. The citation (in French, since, to the best of the author's knowl
edge, the book has not been translated into English) is from Ernest Ansermet's Les Fondements
de la musique dans la conscience humaine (Editions de la Baconniere, 1961, Neuchatel, Switzer
land, Vol. One, p. 442 n.): "La guerre terminee . . . [Furtwangler] lui exprima sa surprise de le
trouver dans un etat de parfaite serenite : « Je savais depuis longtemps, lui dxt en substance
Strauss, que ce regime et cette guerre detruiraient I 'Allemagne : mais I 'Allemagne avait pour
mission sur la terre de reveler aux hommes la musique, et apres Wagner, cette mission etait ac-
complie. — Comment ! s'exclama Furtwangler... et vous ? — Oh ! moi, je ne suis qu'un epi
gone, » lui dit Strauss.'
system capable of organizing the totality of a new and systematic morpho

logical dynamism. It is perhaps understandable that the full scope of Debussy's
modernistic revolution was never perceived according to its true nature. Even
today, it is 'felt' more than comprehended. The 'modal revival' of the end of the
nineteenth century, in France and elsewhere, was nothing but a symptom of a
general dissatisfaction with the then actual tonal system. It left its traces in the
works of Faure and even (early) Debussy (a phenomenon which produced the
'fable' of his supposedly 'diatonic' preferences), but the usage did not challenge
theories concerning the nature of traditional plainsong 'Greek' modes. Those
theories, however, were to be challenged. The modal setting of the sixteenth-
century musical production, of the works of Josquin des Pr&s, of Lasso or Pa-
lestrina, does not correspond to the theoreticians' paradigms. A modal unity
with one initialis (which is logical), but also with one and only one finalis, such
as implied by the nineteenth-century pedagogical exercises of writing counter
point lines 'on a given cantus firmus\ is taken to duly represent the abstract es
sence of the structural settings of the said production. Why, it does not. The de
vices of musica ficta, which is 'chromatically' altered sub(semi)tonia modi and
the usage of 'Picardy thirds', do not bring a 'chromatic' flavour to an otherwise
diatonic setting. A 'quasi-turn-of-a-cadence' focusing on any degree of the do-
decachordon set of pitches happens every now and then, but the modal flavour
of the thus reached one-and-the-same pitch foci also changes every now and
then, due to the preceding, chromatically alterable position of the virtually thir
teenth or fourteenth members of the set, that is, due to the preceding b-rotun-
dum or b-quadratum binomial chromatic position of the 'double alteration'. A
'false relation' is about to happen every now and then, and when it does happen,
as in Gesualdo's works, the habitus of the Ancient Greeks' chromatic genus
becomes projected into a two-dimensional musical space. Let us expand the b-
rotundum-and-b-quadratum binomial chromatic bifurcation to other relevant
members of the virtual preset in which a dodecachordon set of pitches will
come into existence, and we shall face a projection of the Ancient Greeks'
chromatic genus into the fully three-dimensional chromatic musical space of
Debussy's hybrid modality; a projection of the ancient enharmonic genus being
expected to occur only with bi- and poly-modality, the systems to be found al
ready in Debussy, but also in early Stravinsky, in Prokofiev, in late Ravel, late
De Falla and in the music of The Six. Debussy's Tonsatz is tonal. There should
be no confusion about that: tonality is a power set of all sorts of modalities, but
not only of them, classical functional tonality being, on the same footing, also a
member of the set, not ofsome other 'antithetic ' set? Yet, Debussy's tonality is
5 At the very end of the nineteenth century, the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries' ma
jor-minor functional tonality was 'pressed out on a higher dialectical level' (i.e. 'aufgehoben', to
put it in Hegelian terms) by Debussy's novel hybrid modality—prepared to some extent already
by Mussorgsky. The actualization of 'harmonic functions', which occurred implicitly in the six
'non-functional' or—better to say—at the beginning of the twentieth century

tonal harmony became non-functional again: the modal musical language of the
sixteenth century had also been non-functional. In Debussy's music there is no
differentiation between fundamental notes and those simply appearing in the
bass line. Relationships between two subsequent chords depend again on how
many (if any) common pitches they have, while consonances are 'emancipated'
up to an acoustic maximum of the uppermost harmonics. There is clear voicing
and a general aspect of the setting is melodic rather than harmonic. Thematic
teenth and a good deal of the seventeenth century and came into existence altogether explicitly at
the end of the seventeenth and in the eighteenth and nineteenth, did not become lost for good.
Technically, there was nothing inherently incongruent between the incidence of 'harmonic func
tions' acting as a morphologically activating principle and the new modal system established
around 1900 (albeit perhaps yes from a stylistic point of view). The twentieth-century hybrid
modality was not just a simple repetition of the old sixteenth-century modality. The chain of ac
tions and reactions points to a unity within a system. The system itself might legitimately be
named simply tonal, notwithstanding the 'modal-to-tonal' versus '"functionally tonal"-to-tonal'
nuances. So, tonality, as stressed above, is a power set of all sorts of modalities, including also
classical functional tonality. It would not be possible to assert, from a logical or from a historical
point of view, that the genus proximum of a system ofmodality would be the system of classical
functional tonality—a system comprehended just like that: as a unique system 'positioned at the
top'. Antithetic to the above defined power set would be only an atonality power set, but the sys
tematic antithesis would be nevertheless logically invalid due to the lack of positive content
which would serve as a point of departure. Yet, the system of modality (or modalities) and the
system of classical functional tonality themselves cannot be placed in an antithetic position. To
nal—generally speaking tonal, i.e. tonal in the above postulated sense—would be any system
according to which all kinds ofpitch relationships existing within the set system ofpitches would
be subject to unintentionally established rules, regardless of whether the rules are established
consciously or subconsciously. The status of 'non-intentionality ' and that of 'acting consciously '
should not be considered mutually exclusive. Relevant pitches, among which the mentioned rela
tionships have been 'lawfully ' established, are themselves necessarily more restricted in number
than the set ofall pitches belonging to the system. This restriction happens in one way, as regards
music 'hors-temps ' (to put it in the terms ofXenakis), which is almost 'an sich ', regardless ofa
given piece of music or a given musical process, and it happens in another way, which is 'en
temps ', in a given time of a given section of a given piece of music (or of a given musical proc
ess). One can explain this perhaps more clearly by observing the classical tonal setting paradigm,
notwithstanding whether one is dealing with functional tonality, or 'non-functional' (modal) to
nality: the first, the 'hors-temps ' case would refer to acoustical consonances judged as appropri
ate to figure as basic 'harmonic ' material fit to build metrically stable chords with, whereas the
second, the 'en temps ' case would refer to 'harmoniefremde Tone '. If the relevant pitches, which
are the sum of all kinds of pitches featuring within the set system of pitches, were not subject to
the thus established rules, no morphologically constituent dynamism of the relationships among
those pitches would be possible. Equally so, a tonal centre is not necessarily either a master or a
companion of tonal music, although, admittedly, it is most often discernible. Music has been to
nal, from the dawn of mankind, be that the music of people or that of a temple or of a princely
palace. // has always and everywhere been so. Pitches narrower than those a semitone apart may
belong to a tonal system. They do not necessarily imply a-tonality. Finally, mentioning 'the dawn
of mankind' means exactly what it means: tonal music is primarily a bio-anthropological phe
nomenon, and only secondarily—a sociological one.
work is often present, yet, for an academic observer it is obscured by the fact
that Debussy's form is synthetic and not analytic. That is, the development
sections are often there (cf. La Mer, Jeux, Images pour orchestre), but the
'vaulted', 'definite', 'self-sufficient' phrases (not at all over-restricted in their
length) come as the result of a previous work with motives (minute, as motives
normally are!), so that musical form becomes a process of synthesis, progres
sing 'from something chaotic and unstable' to something 'stable and substan
tial'—a process diametrically opposite to that of the 'analytic form', a classicist
achievement of the First Vienna School, an achievement about which a Schoen-
berg and a Webern, the supposedly modernist protagonists of the Second Vi
enna School, felt nothing was to be regarded as obsolete. Debussy was reticent
in his explanations, yet, having named some of his last works as 'sonatas', he
was explicit. Here is what those titles should mean: 'I, Claude Debussy, "musi-
cien francais",6 have produced a complex, coherent and systematically elabo
rated instrumental form, a worthy pendant to the ancient and discarded form of
the sonata. Hence I name it thus, "sonata". Sapienti satV Out of place indeed is
any talk about any neo-classical features in those entirely novel forms, such
as the sonatas one of which contains a 'Pastorale', an ''Interlude"' and a ''Fi
nal' for its movements, while another contents itself with a ''Prologue"' and a
''Serenade et Finale'.
In 1963 Donald Mitchell published The Language of Modern Music,
which to a large extent dealt with the 'musical modernism versus musical
neo-classicism' controversy. The book presented a worthy reply to Adorno's
outrageously racist invective against Stravinsky.7 Mitchell did his best to
6 Debussy himself signed as 'musicien francais' the three sonatas which, out of six
planned, he managed to produce by the end of his life.
7 Were it not for branding Elgar, Britten and Sibelius, the first two of whom certainly be
longed to the Germanic cultural background and the third almost ('the trumped-up glory sur
rounding Elgar . . . and the fame ofSibelius', 'the triumphant meagerness ofBenjamin Britten')
(Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophy ofModern Music, English translation by Anne G. Mitchell and
Wesley V. Blomster, The Seabury Press, New York, 1973, p. 7), it would be mostly against the
composers of Slav or Latin origin that Adorno launched his venomous 'boutades'. Thus
Tchaikovsky is 'the ever popular Tchaikovsky,' who 'portrays despondency with hit tunes' (ibid.,
p. 12); Shostakovich is 'unjustly reprimanded as a cultural Bolshevist by the authorities of his
home country' (ibid., p. 14); there is something 'savage . . .', 'animal . . .' or 'bestial . . .' to be
associated with Gaugin ('the affinity is unmistakable between Sacre and the reproach of a
Gaugin-like character') and Ravel's Paris was ominously distorted and depraved: 'it further re
veals its undisguisedjoy at the vulgar splendor of it all. Such joy, to be sure, was easily compre
hended in the Paris of Ravel's Valses Nobles et Sentimentales' (in the German original 'an der
wiisten Pracht', literally 'at the dissolute luxury',—note by V. T.); (ibid., p. 148). Possibly this
refers only to some over-heated emotional predilections. Yet, outrageously racist indeed is
Adorno's endless invective against supposedly psycho-pathological traits both of Stravinsky's
music and of his personality—a personality that represented the most outstanding western-cos
mopolitan composer, denying 'in a wrong way' his Russian roots. This invective emanates some
'socially prophylactic zeal on public hygiene' which seems to belong rather to 'Deutsche
show that Stravinsky (compared to Schoenberg) was also a 'modernist'.

However, he expressed his disillusionment with the legacy of both compos-
Bewegung' eugenics than to a discourse on the arts. It is amazing how respected, even today,
Adorno's biased theories are: his Philosophy is one of the most frequently quoted books of mod
ern musicology. Why?
Firstly, common opinion rarely affiliates leftist ideas with cultural racism. Yet, the fol
lowers of Marx have seldom been free of a racist contempt for this or that nation. Lenin despised
his native Russian nation and people no less than Karl Marx had done regarding Russia. Any
radical ideology, apt to act on an 'improvement' of human nature, is even involuntarily racist:
equally so today's 'Ium/?en'-liberalism and consumer multiculturalism, at this point still different
from their alleged ancestor, Mill's classical liberalism.
Secondly, Adorno's Philosophy is a well-written book. It emanates an original and au
thoritative standpoint and its topic is of the greatest interest. The processes of deductions are ac
complished in a logically impeccable way and simply inspire respect. (Those processes always
are awe-inspiring and apparently all-convincing.) However, a process of constant deduction is not
scientific. In the beginning there must be something arbitrary. From Boehm-Bawerk's criticism of
the Hegelian Karl Marx (say, from his History and Critique ofInterest Theories or his Karl Marx
and the Close ofHis System) it is implied that readers who have no problem absorbing the first
fifty pages of The Capital would not need any argumentation for the rest of it. So, one who re
mains unperturbed by Hegelian-Marxian Adorno in the first sentence of his Philosophy, borrowed
from Walter Benjamin, a sentence full of logically impossible notional equalizations and implica
tions, will probably be attracted to the subsequent content without resistance. Namely: 'The his
tory ofphilosophy viewed as the science oforigins [Die philosophische Geschichte als die Wies-
senschaft vom Ursprung] is the process [ist die Form] which, from opposing extremes, andfrom
the apparent excesses ofdevelopment, permits the emergence ofthe configuration ofan idea as a
totality characterized by the possibility of a meaningful juxtaposition ofsuch antitheses inherent
in these opposing extremes' (ibid. p. 3).
At the beginning of the twentieth century, a misalignment between possible ways of
thinking musical modernity was nevertheless genuine and—for the time—understandable. It re
flected the discrepancies regarding the fact that the same artistic phenomena were considered by
some people as simply invalid—conceptually, 'artistically' and even ethically invalid and, simul
taneously, by some other, as 'worthy and modern'. Let the opinions on one and the same phe
nomenon be confronted. Adorno comments on the songs of Mussorgsky: 7f was noted long ago
that the lyricism ofMussorgsky is distinguishedfrom the German Lied by the absence ofany po
etic subject: he views each poem as does the opera composer the aria, notfrom the perspective of
the unity ofdirect compositional expression, but rather in a manner which distances and objecti
fies every possible factor of expression. The artist does not emerge with the lyric subject. In es
sentially pre-bourgeois Russia the category of the subject was not quite so firmly fitted together
. . . not one ofthe brothers Karamazov is a "character"' (Adorno, p. 144 n.). Debussy views the
songs of Mussorgsky in a completely different light: 'Nobody has spoken to that which is best in
us with such tenderness and depth; he [Mussorgsky] is quite unique, and will be renownedfor an
art that suffers from no stultifying rules or artificialities. Never before has such a refined sensi
bility expressed itself with such simple means . . . ' (The Nursery, Poem and Music by M. Mus
sorgsky, La Revue blanche, 15 April 1901, in Debussy on Music, Alfred A. Knoff, New York
1977, p. 20.). Now, here is how Adorno and Debussy felt about the same section from Stravin
sky's Petrushka, which is, about the scene of the Magic Trick. Adorno writes: ' There is already a
counterpart in Petrouchka . . . the Showman who commands the marionettes to life. He is a char
latan. . . . His principle of domination—the musical principle of authenticity—emerged out of
play—from deception and suggestion. It is as though contrived authenticity recognized its own
untruth in such an origin' (Adorno, p. 160 n.). Unabashed by fictitious and pre-modern oppositions
ers. Stravinsky did not renounce his inclination to recycle the past: his serial
phase was just a new volte-face, the serial technique having also delivered itself
to a historical style, ready for a neo-classicist treatment. The shortcomings of
the Schoenberg-and-Webern parochial ideology, which blinded both authors
and their dogmatic followers to so many novel endeavours, led Mitchell to
between the so called absolute and the so called programmatic music, Debussy comments on the
same scene: 7 do not know many things of greater worth than the section you call "Tour de
passe-passe ". . . . There is in it a kind of sonorous magic, a mysterious transformation of me
chanical souls which become human by a spell ofwhich, until now, you seem to be the unique inventor.
Finally there is an orchestral infallibility that I havefound only in Parsifal. You will understand what I
mean, of course.' (Debussy's letter to Stravinsky of April 1912, quoted in Edward Lockspeiser's
Debussy, His Life and Mind, Cambridge University Press, 1978, Vol. Two, p. 180.)
Apart from Debussy's highly indicative appraisal of Wagner's Parsifal, it should be noted
that, if anything was to be regarded as modern at the beginning of the twentieth century, it would
have been the abandonment of sentimental romantic Einfiihlung, subjective empathy, and, on the
other hand, the affirmation of a 'let the story speak for itself attitude. It is obvious how passe the
ideas of Adorno, the Schoenberg's alter ego were. It is legitimate to compare the ideas and opin
ions of Debussy the composer, and Adorno the philosopher. Their vocations are not necessarily to
be put in an antagonistic position as regards how they felt about one and the same topic—their
respective French and German nationalities either. Indeed opposite are the ways of Debussy's
epagoge, the inductive method of developing even his synthetic musical form, and Adorno's 'als
ob' method of constant deduction. Anyhow, as regards thinking modernity, the Schoenberg / De
bussy controversy was, and still is, the real one—and also, the most relevant one.
8 Mitchell mentioned in passing that a 'third way' of musical modernity might have been
based on folk idioms. He briefly discussed the ways of Bartok and of Vaughan-Williams. Had he
paid attention not to particular musical idioms of this or that nation, but to the general hybrid
modal stratum common to many European national musical genii, he would have naturally come
across the roots of the internationally relevant modernity of Debussy, the composer whose music
managed to achieve being an incarnation of profoundly French properties perhaps never to such
extent as when paying homage to the musical souls of Spain (Iberia), of Scotland (Gigues) and of
Italy—the latter country being present in his Rondes de printemps at least as much as the volatile
skyscape of his native Ile-de-France. Schoenberg dismissed as futile any influence of a national
folk idiom on the would-be modernistic musical language of his days. Yet, he should have re
membered that the magnificent music of Johann Sebastian Bach's Italian Concerto, his French
Suites and the English suites did not lose its German character (or its 'International Baroque'
character—the distinction is of little importance now) nor became stylistically obsolete due to its
celebrating local vernaculars not only as regards technicalities but also with respect to inner
spiritual substance. Despite theoreticians addicted to the pseudo-liberal ideology of today, a 'na
tional' style in music is neither the exclusive property of the nineteenth-century Romanticism, nor
itself an impediment to a possibly modernistic endeavour. Often it enables its protagonists to have
an understanding and hence adequate appreciation within the diversity of other stylistic ap
proaches, themselves also possibly 'local' in character. 'Dear Stravinsky, you are a great artist.
Be with all your strength a great Russian artist', wrote the undeniably French Debussy to Stra
vinsky (Lockspeiser, Vol. Two, p. 185). The 'obvious' lack of folk music ingredients does not
render an idiom necessarily less 'national': the great Austro-German music of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries is not 'international' rather than 'national'. Yet, the lineage to its folk music
roots is not commensurably apparent. The great music of Scriabin or Prokofiev reveals probably
best the inner being of the Russian soul, the former composer never and the latter hardly ever
appealing to their native land's folk music resources.
consider Schoenberg also as a sort of neo-classicist. Neo-classicists take special

interest in 'commenting the past in their own way'. Not so the new generation
of great modern composers who came in the time of Mitchell's book and
immediately after: Xenakis, Takemitsu, Lutoslawski, Ligeti and Glass. Their
way of 'rethinking musical modernism' implies that, if there were any place for
a controversy regarding the matter, it would be a Schoenberg / Debussy rather
than a Schoenberg / Stravinsky controversy. Also there is no doubt about
which side they would take. The same is true of the great jazzmen, Bill Evans
and Miles Davis, of great jazz-rock musicians to come, Herbie Hancock, Chick
Corea and Keith Jarrett—or of Jobim.9 Writing about cante jondo and of the
Listing prominent jazzmen should not appear unexpected. It is not possible to over-esti
mate the revolutionary character of the appearance of jazz on the stage of the twentieth-century's
great music. In its beginnings jazz was the folk music idiom of African Americans. Since the
second half of the twentieth century it has become, through its pop and rock derivatives, a 'folk
music' idiom sui generis of the global and westernized technological society of mass production.
With its poor quality, due to its over-commercial character, today's 'pop and rock' could often be
disputed both from the aesthetic and from the socio-political points of view. The standpoint from
which Adorno observed the 'Schlager'-pop music of his days is also perhaps comprehensible.
Yet, he made no allowance for the jazz vernacular. At the time jazz was still a pure, vital and
fascinating folk idiom of its own. It is no wonder that Debussy, the modernist, took jazz as he
knew it seriously, paying homage to the idiom in his music. Doing so, he did not manifest any
need for a conceptualistic 'deconstruction' or for treating the idiom as emblematic of any socio
logical or other extra-musical ideas. Just like any sound and natural musical language, jazz did not
need an idealistic apology for its existence. Needless to say, the same applies to the presence of
jazz in the musical oeuvre of Ravel, of Gershwin, of Milhaud, of Hindemith and of Honegger. Yet,
for the supposedly modernistic protagonists of the Second Vienna School, e.g. for Alban Berg in
his opera Lulu, 'jazzy' stylistic traits (or rather—sort of 'jazzy' traits) were good enough only to
portray the social 'alienation' of morally degraded humanity—say, to describe the lurid charm of
a prostitute and generally a 'brothel atmosphere'. Ridiculing composers for taking jazz seriously,
Adorno pointed to the 'primitive' essence ofjazz (which he obviously placed on the same footing
with the pop music as he knew it). He thought that jazzmen were fifty years late in discovering
the harmonies of Debussy. Such an observation reveals a phenomenal misjudgement. First, De
bussy's harmonies, like any other composer's harmonies, cannot be excluded from the general
discourse appropriate to the musical language of their author. Secondly, they do not represent a
certain 'historically attained' level of complexity, which, in principle, might be 'conquered',
'better ever than never', or should be 'historically' surpassed and hence abandoned. There are no
harmonies to be forgotten in music. Historical 'progress'—Hegelian or any other—does not exist
in this way. There is no 'historical fatigue' of this or that 'material', due to its 'historical' over-use
(the 'fatigue' which is one of Adorno's pivotal themes)—at least not of a 'material' being reduced
to its 'atomic particles', for example a chord, any sort. A C-E-G chord, say, is never one and the
same when used subsequently by Palestrina, by Handel, by Mozart, by Debussy, by Poulenc, by
Messiaen or by Glass. Once one is aware that the English and, say, the Chinese both comprehend
the phoneme 'n', one does not hurry to expel it from the system of the English language (or from
the Chinese, if that is the preference), imagining that it must have lost its function: possessing the
same phoneme, or not, does not render the English and the Chinese the same language, nor would
the mere fact of possessing a common phoneme, or not, help an English speaker understand Chi
nese and vice versa. The major-minor functional tonality is not the only kind of tonality, either in
the light of possible historical or of logical precedence. So, when Berg places a C-E-G chord, in
modernistic achievements of Debussy, De Falla (( 1 ) the article mentioned above,

(2) the article on Stravinsky, published in La Tribuna, Madrid, also in 1916,
and (3) the article El 'Cante Jondo', Granada, June 1922)10 hinted, first, that
what Debussy's musical language brought as fresh and imposing, had been sub
stantially, if perhaps subconsciously, based on a common poly-modal stratum of
the folk music of many European nations, including that of Andalusia's Spain,
and, secondly, that this very music of Andalusia, due to its Mediterranean,
pre-Roman and Roman-Byzantine heritage, was, together with much of Eu
ropean music of the same origin, a living example of how natural and spon
taneously organized original Ancient Greek modes and genera had been—not
only the diatonic genus, but also the chromatic and the enharmonic. For the
present writer, a modern composer from the Balkans, constantly nonplussed by
fantastic ideas about the nature ofthe folk music ofhis native part of the world,
it was something of a relief to read the words of the author of the famous 7/8
Andante tranquillo section of El Amor Brujo. Let the point be exemplified by a
paradigm. Bearing in mind that folk music of the Balkans is, like cantejondo, a
direct continuation of the Ancient Greeks' modes and genera through its
Byzantine (and pre-Byzantine) heritage, one can hardly understand what led
Wellesz, a most outstanding authority on Byzantine music but also—a fact
which is perhaps of some interest—a Viennese pupil of Schoenberg, to dismiss
as 'almost entirely nonsensical' the discussion, reported by Byzantine scholar
Nicolas Mesarites, on the relationships between the intervals diatessaron (3:4)
and diapente (2:3) and respectively the meters epitritos (3+4) and hemiolos
(2+5), "the feet common in the Ancient Greeks' music and characteristic not
only of the folk music of Andalusia or of the Basque region12 but also of the
an otherwise a-tonal context, as something turned cheap and trivial and hence fit to symbolize
'money', in the way he does in his operas Wozzeck and Lulu, he is wrong—there is little sense in
his metaphor. Extra-musical metaphors are nearly always superfluous and ineffective. A musical
reification of spiritual strata, even when audibly discernable and hence transparent, is something
akin to mediaeval scholastic realism. ' The world of ideas'" has nothing to do with music. Even
Scriabin is more a sensuous 'physicist' than a metaphysician. When Ravel recreates jeux d'eau
musically, he evokes neitheT an idea of 'freshness' nor a symbol or a metaphor of anything. He
achieves an objective musical counterpart of somebody's (beneficent) physical experience when
diving in a cool lake on a hot day. If an 'atmosphere' envelopes the scene, as it does, this is be
cause the sensation's musical counterpart is objective, not 'subjective'—'subjective' in the way
Adorno thinks the reason for a musical setting emanating a 'Stimmung' must be. The capability
of recreating reality by purely musical means reveals the greatness, sublimity and profoundness of
Ravel's art. Pure music 's ability to achieve such a goal is truly miraculous.
10 See Manuel de Falla, Escritos sobre miisica y musicos, Introduccion y notas: Federico
Sopeha, Espasa-Calpe, S. A., Madrid, 1988.
1 1 Egon Wellesz, A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography, Oxford University
Press, 1971, p. 63.
12 One should only remember the 3+2+3 8/8 meter of Ravel's Trio and its Basque origin.
'Ravel, comme Verlaine, a nourri une predilection constante pour I 'Impair « plus vague et plus
soluble dans Vair »... Influence de la metrique grecque retrouvee ? [Sic!—V. T.] Influence de
Balkans.13 On the other hand, ideas about the tonal systems of the ancient Greek
and Byzantine music that are similar to those of De Falla are to be found in a
brilliant analysis by Iannis Xenakis Vers une metamusique (La Nef, No. 29,
Paris, 1967).14 Xenakis criticizes Wellesz regarding several items. So, for in
stance: 'Le dechiffrement des anciennes notations les a tellement absorbes, sem-
ble-t-il [i.e. les specialistes] qu 'Us en ont negligee la tradition actuelle de
I 'Eglise Byzantine et leur afait exprimer des choses incorrectes. En page 70 [of
his History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography] Egon Wellesz reprend, lui
aussi, le mythe des echelles antiques descendentes. ' (Xenakis, Musique. Archi
tecture., p. 55 n.)
* * *
Out of many stylistic paradigms intrinsically referring to musical poetics

of their own and characterizing the artistic attitudes in recent epochs, it is not
necessarily the most promising syndrome that wins the evolutionary process for
the subsequent future. Like Bachelard before him, Thomas Samuel Kuhn
pointed out (in The Structure ofScientific Revolutions, 1962) that the history of
science is not a smooth progressive accumulation of data and successful theory,
but the outcome of ruptures, false starts, and imaginative constraints that them
selves reflect many different variables. Something similar happens with the
evaluation process of past artistic strata and developments. Yet, a Hegelian
historical optimism is nothing but a lazy sophism.15 Schoenberg declared that,
with his twelve-note technique of composing, he would ensure the supremacy
of (Austro)-German music for the next hundred years.16 It might be that he
certaines daises basques, comme le zortzico a 5/8 ?' (Vladimir Jank&evitch, Ravel, [in French],
Editions du Seuil, Paris 1975, p. 97.)
13 The controversy was illuminated, among many others, in The Time and the Arts by Dra-
gutin Gostuski (Vreme umetnosti [in Serbian], Prosveta, Belgrade, 1968, pp. 204-5). It is an un
happy incidence for universal science that this original and fascinating Contribution to the Foun
dation ofa General Morphology [Prilog zasnivanju jedne opste nauke o oblicima], in fact a phi
losophy of Western Civilization's arts which deals in particular with thinking modernity, has still
not been translated into an international language of today—say into English.
14 See in Iannis Xenakis, Musique. Architecture., [in French], Casterman, S. A., Tournai,
1971, pp. 38-70.
15 Hegelian self-satisfaction with the state of strata and developments leads to a sort of
fatalism and the consequent paralysis of action. Failing to revoke the Hegelian ways of conceiv
ing reality meant missing the true task of the twentieth-century modernism. This failure led to a
post-modernist frame of mind which licenced the retreat to an aesthetic, ironic, detached, and
playful attitude to one's own beliefs and to the march of events. This retreat is socially irresponsi
ble and in its upshot highly conservative.
16 7 have made a discovery which will ensure the supremacy of German music for the
next hundred years. ' (Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt, Schoenberg, His Life, World and Work,
translated from the German by Humphrey Searle, Schirmer Books, New York, 1977, p. 277.)
guessed right. On the other hand, Debussy thought that his music would be un
derstood only in the hundred years to come.17 This hundredth year is coming
soon. If such an actualization of the French master's ways occurs, it would cer
tainly not imply that everybody would have to write 'French music'.
The point of this essay was not to manifest any approval or disapproval
concerning the phenomena of cultural history of the last hundred years. Those
phenomena have their roots in socio-cultural and socio-political circumstances.
Due to the tragic experience of the two World Wars, the Cold War and the pre
sent, no less tragic experience of the post-Cold War's enforced optimism of a
'happy merry-go-round', those circumstances brought first a sense of malaise,
then one of dismay and finally one of disorientation both to the 'winners' and to
the 'losers'. If not looking for regeneration through a futile belief in general
progress, at least we can take our chances through our capacity for choice.
Note: The author deemed it appropriate to quote in the introductory

section from siMon blackburn's second edition of the oxford dictionary of
Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2005) (1) the definition of what is 'mo
dern', (2) the description of GadaMer's 'reader response theory' and (3) Pop
per's DEFINING OF 'HISTORICISM'. IN THE CONCLUDING SECTION HE QUOTED (1) A
DESCRIPTION OF THE 'POST-MODERNIST FRAME OF MIND' AND (2) KUHN'S DESCRIPTION
OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE. THE DEFINITION OF '/ETHER' IN THE INTRODUCTORY SEC
TION is from Oxford Dictionary of Science (Oxford University Press, 2003).
BnacmuMup TpajKoeuh
O nPOMHLLDLAH>y (IIOJMA) MO/JEPHHTETA

(Y My3HU,H)
Pe3hMe
HayHHe Teopme cy onOBprjbHBe jxok. cy cthjickc KaTeropHje nonnoKHe

nOBpeMeHHM HObhM TyMaHeH>HMa. Oryaa pacnpaBa o OKOjiHOCTHMa yonea ko-
jnx je aaHac nojaM My3HHKor MOaepHHTeTa noce6HO noajioacaH peHHrepnpeTa-
unjH. OBaj nojaM HHKajja HHje 6ho aeqbHHHcaH Ha 3aaOBOjbaBajyhH Hanoi. Oh
ynyhyje npe Ha jia6aBy 3aMHcao 3acHOBaHy Ha npoH3BOjtHOM KOHcensycy, Hero
Ha nojaBy ocMOTpHBy ca TeopHjcKor CTaHOBHurra. IlocTaBjteHa je xHnoTe3a no
Kojoj, oa MHO™x cthjickhx napaaHrMH uito h ca\ie no ce6n yKa3yjy Ha con-
1 'J'ecris des choses qui ne seront comprises que par les petits-enfants du vingtieme
siecle.' (Jean Barraque, Debussy [in French], Editions du Seuil, Collection « Solftges », Paris,
1967, p. 123.)
40 Vlastimir Trajkovič
CTBeHe My3HHKe noeTHKe, (a oflpa>KaBajy pa3HOBpcHe yMeTHHHKe ckjioHOcth

HOBHjHX BpeMeHa) — y 6jiH>Koj 6y;iyhHOCTH He no6el)yje Hy*HO, y npouecy
eBOjiyuHje, CHHapoM kojm HajBHiue o6ehaBa. My3HHKa 3aBeurraH>a JJ,e6ncnja h
IUeH6epra ÔBOae ce y Hcnacy HHTepecOBaH>a. noce6He ecTeTHKe h yBnH y
ycTpojcTBO My3HKe CBojcTBeHH aejiHMa ^BojHue KOMno3HTopa CMaTpajy ce Ka-
paKTepHCTHhHHM 3a aBa ocHOBHa cynpoTCTaBjbeHa h, o6jeKTHBHO, y CTaH>e pH-
BajiHTeTa nocTaBjbeHa npHCTyna My3HUH — a ou.eH>eHa, Ha H3BecTaH HaHHH,
Kpo3 aejiaTHOCT HacTynajytiHX reHepauHja KOMno3HTopa, aKO He CBeo6yxBaT-
HO, a oHO HMnjiHKOBaHO. To jecT, ca hhcto HCTopHjcKor CTaHOBHuiTa, npeflH-
jieKUHje obhx reHepaUHja KOMno3HTopa Mory 6hth HumHKaTHBHe 3a CTaTyc hh-
TpHHCHHHe, MoryhHO MoaepHHCTHHKe pejieBaHTHOCTH aBajy noMeHyrax npH-
CTyna My3HuH. H OaBHiue no3HaTH cnop lllendepz / CmpaeuncKu 3aMeH>eH je
HHflHKaTHBHHjHM cnopoM, ohhM Ulen6epz / JJečucu. rioKyuiaHO je na ce oaro-
BopH (1) Ha to m jih 6h eBajiyauHja npouijiocra 6Hjia yonurre jierHTHMHa h (2)
Ha to m jih 6h ce HHTaBO nHTaH>e HOBor TyMaHeH>a HCTopHjcKor TOKa My3HKe
Morjio CTaBHTH y KOHTeKCT HaHejiHe jierHTHMHocra peHHTepnpeTauHje onurre-
HCTopHjcKor ToKa, h to, HapoHHTO, He caMO y o^Hocy Ha npnpo/xy cao6pa3Ho-
cth o6ajy ynopeflHHX TOKOBa HCTopHjcKHX npeceKa h npoueca, TOKa onurre-
HCTopHjcKor h TOKa My3HHKO-HCTopHjcKor, Beh, hcto TaKO, y oaHOcy Ha npo-
uec eBajiyauHje, HeH36e*HO HMnjiHKOBaH nocTaBjbaH>eM noMeHyror nHTaH>a y
KOHTeKCT nocTyjinpaHe TeopHjcKe jierHTHMHOCTH.
FROM THE IDEAL TO THE REAL.
A PARADIGM SHIFT.
HELMUT LOOS
ON official occasions German speakers relish to characterise their fellow

citizens as, 'the nation of poets and thinkers', however, sometimes German
critics pose the question, whether this is still the case.1 An indication of continu
ous intellectual productivity can be seen in the contribution of the arts to mod
ernism. This contribution gives proof of creativity and documents, positing pro
gress, intellectual leadership and international production. The discussion con
cerning this issue is highly visible, the positive connotation of the expression
'poets and thinkers' is commanding. The call of a war speech made in 1917
was, 'from a nation of poets and thinkers to a nation of deeds'2. Today every
potential doubt about the correctness of the ideal postulation is rejected and the
accordance is intensified. But the origin of this dictum is far less pleasant. Jo-
hann Karl August Musaus wrote, in 1782 in the preamble to his 'folk tales':
'What would our enthusiastic nation of thinkers, poets, hovers and seers be
without the lucky influence of fantasy?'3 This addresses a more remote and
meditative trait, that can be watched critically. For German idealism this prox
imity to the irrational (fairy tale) is not strange.
Associated with this context, the context of 'musical idealism', is the
term 'Geisteswissenschaften' (today - humanities or arts) that originated in the
middle of the 19th century and which is, characteristically, a translation of the
Sind wir noch das Volk der Dichter und Denker? 14 Antworten, hrsg. von G. Kalow,
Reinbek, Hamburg, 1964. - H. Wollschläger, In diesen geistfernen Zeiten. Konzertante Noten zur
Lage der Dichter und Denkerfur deren Volk, Zürich 1986. - Sind wir noch das Volk der Dichter
und Denker? Mit Beiträgen von W. Frühwald u.a., Heidelberg, 2004 (Studium Generale, Ru-
precht-Karls-Universität 2002/2003).
2 T. Volbehr, Vom Volk der Dichter und Denker zum Volk der Tat. Eine Kriegsrede,
gehalten in Magdeburg am 10. April 1917, Magdeburg, 1917.
3 G. Buchmann, Gefiigelte Worte. Der Zitatenschatz des deutschen Volkes, 35. Frankfurt
a. M.-Berlin 1986, 85.
42 Helmut Loos
term 'moral sciences' (John Stuart Mill). As is generally known this expression
was used by Wilhelm Dilthey, who created a self-contained group of separate
social sciences besides natural sciences. During this time musicology evolved
again into a profession at the university. The basis for that was provided both by
the enhanced social prestige of music as the highest of the arts, since Schopen
hauer at the latest, and the self-concept of the state as a nation of culture. At
least in Germany literature and music were considered as coequal. Besides phi
losophy it was especially poetry that paved the way for the romantic view of
music and allowed the valorisation of music. Music as an 'apparentness' is only
one of the keywords that we should underline. With its religious main feature
the romantic view of music became accepted in the nineteenth century. This
view achieved an almost undisputed monopoly position and stayed in command
in some partitions of cultural life, in spite of realism, the New Sobriety or the
Bauhaus. Ultimately it was the basis for the new musicology in Germany,
which turned to the 'land of faith' taking it for granted. With this expression of
Heinrich Wackenroder entitled Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht the 'land of music' in
his description of the model of romantic musical thinking, which is a model of
two worlds4. Musicology as a scientific field based on the romantic view of mu
sic felt constrained to the masterminds, who supposedly created art works, that
will endure eternally and who advised the scientific world to conserve and to
interpret the legacy. With philological meticulousness, as in biblical scholar
ship, complete editions of the great composers were finished. Especially for the
compositions of absolute music, a fervour was shown that could be compared
with religious worship.
The art work in an emphatic meaning that complied with this concept up
to the modernism created an emphatic science of art. This science of art com
missioned all its force to the great idea and did not accept discerning views. The
romantic view of music with its strict separation between art as an ideal second
world and the real world let everything seem secondary or even irrelevant, that
is outside the spirit of the great composers, and that is not part of the inner
structure of huge art works and their associations with musical history. To de
fine those art works in an emphatic meaning and furthermore the choice, that is
to justify the standard canon rationally - this is a serious problem for science.
The claim, that the enlightened bourgeois society wanted to settle was based on
a world-view that differs from the early religions because of a scientifically
proven, unquestionable and high-order legitimation. It turned out that this
thinking had narrow confines; particularly, the character of the aesthetic experi
ence (beauty is sensed!) is quite near to the religious experience. As a result this
dilemma caused, consciously or unconsciously, the creation of a religion of art
4 H. H. Eggebrecht, Musik im Abendland. Prozesse und Stationen vom Mittelalter bis zur
Gegenwari, Mttnchen, 1991, 592f.
FROM THE IDEAL TO THE REAL.. 43
that shows astounding analogies to the traditional churches. To give an exam

ple: the canon of relevant art works in musicology is comparable to the structure
of decisions in the Catholic Church, more precisely with the dogmatism given
by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Without challenging the im
portance of this institution inside the denomination, the dubiety becomes appar
ent, to attribute such a function to science.
How difficult it is to fit a world-view with scientific correctness, was
shown by the collapse of Marxism. That this is the same case for an obligatory
scientific view of music, doesn't make sense to everybody and is continuously
discussed. Anyway it can be held: Analogical to the public discussion of higher
prestige, idealism compared to realism, in musicology the research with an
aesthetic or historical philosophic direction, has a much higher prestige than
meticulous analyses of music or complex research of music culture. The unbro
ken carrier of the musical thinking of Theodor W. Adorno, who depended on
empiricism but at the same time was suspicious of this empiricism, allocates the
above-mentioned issue.
In return, maybe it's the time to create equipoise: a 'realistic view of his
tory'. Its function could be, to accentuate the world of living of the past way
beyond the history of ideas. That means to focus everyday life with music. It
goes without saying that this cannot be mentioned in its entirety with all kinds
of music. Hence I will concentrate on studies, which are closely connected with
the history of the 'Tonkunst' - musical art, the starting point of my thoughts. In
the following research on the repertoire concerning symphonic concert per
formances is in the focus of the discussion. This research could make a contri
bution to a 'realistic view of history'. In doing so, aspects of history and mod
ernism flow together.
* * *
'Which pieces of music are being played by German orchestras this sea
son?', 'Which pieces did they play in the past?' or 'What did they play decades
or centuries ago?' - these questions cannot be answered exhaustively by the
musicology. They are questions that should not be questioned, because they
evoke abashment. Anyhow, broad works of reference are available, which out
line musical territory in Germany, Austria or Switzerland, for example the
'Musik-Almanach'5 for German music culture, edited since 1986. Effortlessly
you can gain a survey of musical institutions: in Germany there are 150 orches
tras for concert and theater performances and radio orchestras. But the begin
ning of embarrassment is the beginning of detailed research on the programs of
5 The Musik-Almanach, published by Deutscher Musikrat, has appeared every second year
since 1986.
44 Helmut Loos
the time.6 We do not know the parts of the 'musical daylife', that really lived at
this time, because the statistics are missing. Consequently it is not easy to define
the level of modernity in the present programs of music for the orchestra. At the
best you bank on certain points of reference: for instance a paper by Gunther
Engelman from 1 990 concerning concert statistics entitled 'Are German orchestras
turning to stone?'7 This article appeared in the periodical 'Das Orchester', which is
the common organizational structure of the German Orchestra association. In
1994, research by Frauke M. Hess followed, concerning the contemporary music in
German symphonic concerts in the 1980s, but the result is similar as above -
statistics are rare.8
Still—and this is where we touch again this delicate matter—those who
view the subject from close up and from afar, agree in principle in their opinion
on the current concert situation. It is a popular opinion, mirroring experiences,
that what is played in the concert series of the orchestras can be likened to the
contents of museums dedicated to the classical and the romantic epochs as the
main subject, whilst early and modern music play a rather puny role on the
fringes, which is just balanced by the existence of subculture scenes, which each
have their own concert series, festivals and ensembles. There is no questioning
the accuracy of the understatement. Still, it is not to be confused with a scien
tific evaluation, on which the 'realistic view of history', that was mentioned
earlier, could be based. In order to avoid clinging to the absolute, there is a need
to complement the concrete, i.e. a branch of intensive research, into the history
of program and repertoire.9 The research lacks a general idea of a whole - the
insight into the historical process of change in the concert institution from the
perspective of the performed works. This situation has a tradition. It is some
thing to refer back to.
A noteworthy exception to this, at least in the German-speaking area
(Germany, Austria, Switzerland) is the theatre (Sprechtheater, opera, ballet, op
eretta, musical, etc.) of which the repertoire has been documented almost com-
It could be mentioned in passing that in the period 1981-2001 a Konzert-Almanach was

published that had 22 editions and was intended mainly for music managers; see: Konzert-Alma
nach [...]. Terms, programs, seats, and prices of classical concerts in F.R.Germany and in
neighbouring countries, Kflnigswinter [Bonn] 1981 [published once a year: 1st edition 1981/82
( 1 98 1 ), 22nd edition 2002/03 (2002)] .
7 G. Engelmann, '"Versteinern" die deutschen Orchester? Eine Dokumentation zu dieser
Frage', in: Das Orchester, 38, 1990, 1022-1031.
8 F. M. Hess, Zeitgendssische Musik im bundesdeutschen Sinfoniekonzert der achtziger
Jahre. Eine kulturdsthetische und musikanalytische Bestandsaufnahme (Diss. 1993), Essen 1994.
(= Musikwissenschaft/Musikpädagogik in der Blauen Eule 19).
9 The term repertoire is understood in the modern sense, as it refers here to the statisti
cally measured scope of performed works. So, it is not viewed as just a stock of written or pub
lished musical works, for instance in the context of Hofkapellmusik, about whose performances
and their frequency in later times almost nothing is known. See: W. Braun, '"Repertoire": unspe-
zifisches Schlusselwort', in: Musica 37, 1983, 125-129.
pletely since 1896/97. 10 This is actually more an achievement of stage associa

tions and dramatists than of musicology, which neglected the systematic ap
praisal of the repertoire as of 1896/97 as well as continuative analyses of the
programs (with the appropriate historiographical conclusions), without ever de
nying the importance of this research in earnest. 1 1
It would be unfair to turn the declaration of apparent shortcomings into
an accusation, judging musicology harshly. Similar to the way the preconditions
under which the romantic view on arts, the concepts of Kunstreligion or 'musi
cal idealism' became popular can be made plausible, it should be possible to
explore the reasons, why it is that a realistic image of history and presence is
such a long time coming. The hypothesis suggests itself, that the unstoppable
Höhenflug of Kunstreligion per se commanded that we put up with a quantum
of loss of reality, to guarantee a better chance of survival.
Maybe this notion goes too far! One has to take into account, how im
portant it was for the musical trade press, to include news with a minimum of
ground level, particularly the city- reports from large medium and small cities at
home an aboard. Until today these reports of correspondence have proven to be
a very important and an indispensable pool in which to evaluate the continued
existence of local concert institutions, to get to know their inner organisation
and to get information about the repertoire of the performed works.
Admittedly, musical journalism of the nineteenth century showed little
interest in exploring the musical topography of the country closely or systemati-
Basic sources for this theme include: Neuer Theater-Almanach, Deutsches Bühnen-
Jahrbuch (1889ff), and above all Deutscher Bühnen-Spielplan [1896/97 (1. Jg.)-1943/44 (48.
Jg.)] as well as the lists of performed works on the theatrical stages of GDR and FRG; here could
be mentioned a selection of studies on the subject: S. Schott, Die Opernaufführungen der
deutschen Bühnen und des Gr. Hof- und Nationaltheaters in Mannheim im Jahrzehnt 1901-191 1.
Ein Beitrag zur Theaterstatistik, Mannheim, 1913; E. Schott, Zur Soziologie der Bühne. Die Oper
im Jahrzehnte 1901/02-1910/11, ms. Diss. Heidelberg 1921; Henrich, Bert[h]a, Gestaltung und
Besuch der Lustbarkeiten der Stadt Karlsruhe im Kriege. Ein Beitrag zur Theater- und Konzert
statistik, ms. Diss. Heidelberg 1920; W. Poensgen, Der deutsche Bühnen-Spielplan im Weltkriege,
Berlin, 1934; Die vormals Königlichen, jetzt Preußischen Staatstheater zu Berlin. Statistischer
Rückblick auf die künstlerische Tätigkeit und die Personalverhältnisse während der Zeit vom 1.
Januar 1886 bis 31. Dezember 1935. Nach den amtlichen Quellen zusammengestellt von Georg
Droescher, Berlin, 1936; F.-P. Köhler, Die Struktur der Spielpläne deutschsprachiger Opernbüh
nen von 1896 bis 1966, Koblenz 1968; D. Hadamczik, J. Schmidt, W. Schulze-Reimpell, Was
spielten die Theater? Bilanz der Spielpläne in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1945-1975, Re
magen-Rolandseck, 1978; Vergleichende Theaterstatistik 1949/50-1984/85. Theater und Kul
turorchester in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik,
Österreich und der Schweiz, hrsg. vom Deutschen Bühnenverein u.a., Köln, 1987.
1 1 So, for the last century and longer, it has been spoken widely of the museum-character
(Musealisierung) or historicality (Historisierung) of opera and concert - though not always ex
pressed strongly - which is seen as a result of the repertoire politics (M. Loeser, 'Mit dem
Konzertrepertoire ist es wie mit der Bildergalerie Aspekte des Museumsgedankens in der
Pariser Musikkultur des 19. Jahrhunderts', in: Die Musikforschung 58, 2005, 3-10).
46 Helmut Loos
cally. Posterity finds itself confronted with an overflowing ocean of local news
coverage, which is appreciated and exploited even though it is easy to get lost. It
was not until the second half of the nineteenth century, that this lack of orienta
tion came into greater awareness. It's no coincidence, that the music-scholar
(Musikgelehrte) Friedrich Chrysander, who is regarded as the 'founder of mod
ern methodical study of sources'12 in musicology, was the first to publish a so-
ciographical stock-taking, keen on accuracy, of the musical life of his time. In
1867 he published the results of a survey taken in 1 10 cities under the title 'Ver-
such einer Statistik der Gesangvereine und Concertinstitute Deutschlands und
der Schweiz' ('An attempt at statistics for the choral societies and concert in
stitutes in Germany and Switzerland'): a catalogue ('statistics') of correspon
dent activities, sorted by city, the results of which surprisingly remain to be
commented upon.13 Following this approach, widely expanded stock-takings
were released in later times, in particular sundry 'musical calendars' (1 879-
1943). 14 Finally the 'Jahrbuch der deutschen Musikorganisation' (the 'Yearbook
of the German musical organisation'),15 which was edited 1931 under the aegis
of Leo Kestenberg also belongs to this chain of publications.16 This yearbook is
a monumental work, researched at the greatest operating expense, which
broached the issue of the economic side of musical organisation for the first
time. All the stock-takings since Chrysander have in common that they strived
to make the institutional and organisational level of musical life lucid, and leave
aside transcendent questions, about programme or repertoire for example.
It has been noted, that the musical trade press, particularly the so-called
'allgemeinen Musikzeitschriften' (general musical journals) had the role of pre
cursor in matters of publishing and reviewing of programs. Ever since the first
third of the nineteenth century one comes, at times, across substantial pro
gramme-statistics, dedicated to greater time-frames and to a single concert in
stitution, like the Hamburger Philharmonische Gesellschaft, the Kolner Gür-
zenichkonzerte, or the Leipziger Gewandhauskonzerte. Given their rarity, the
printing of such statistics seems coincidental, as if it sprung up by a whim of
nature. Always the restriction to local matters strikes the attention, a limitation
which was overcome by Chrysander and his 'Versuch einer Statistik der Ge-
12 MGG, 1st ed., Vol. 2, Art. Karl Franz Friedrich Chrysander, Kassel/Basel, 1952, 1415.
13 F. Chrysander (ed.), 'Versuch einer Statistik der Gesangvereine und Concertinstitute
Deutschlands und der Schweiz', in Jahrbucher fur musikalische Wissenschaft, 2. Vol., Leipzig,
1867, 337-374.
14 Allgemeiner deutscher Musiker-Kalender [later: Max Hesse's deutscher Musiker-Kalen-
der (1886-1922), Ver einigter Musiker-Kalender Hesse-Stern (1923-1927), Hesses Musiker-Kal
ender (1928-1941), Deutscher Musiker-Kalender (1942-1943)], 1. Jg. (1879) - 65. Jg. (1943).
15 Jahrbuch der deutschen Musikorganisation, Berlin-Schöneberg, 1931.
16 See: R. Thielecke, Die soziale Lage der Berufsmusiker und die Entstehung, Entwick-
lung und Bedeutung ihrer Organisationen, ms. Diss. Frankfurt a.M. 1921; J. MOller, Deutsche
Kulturstatistik (Einschl. der Verwaltungsstatistik). Ein Grundrissfur Studium und Praxis, Jena, 1928.
sangvereine und Concertinstitute Deutschlands und der Schweiz' with pleasant

effect. Even as we have to do without extensive concert-statistics for the nine
teenth century, it is still known how they were longed for by contemporaries.
Excellent evidence is provided in an article by Wilhelm Kienzl, 'Mahnrufe'
(exhortations) of 1885, from which we may quote extensively:
'It would be a very thankworthy and interesting undertaking of music-
theorists to extend the in so many scientific (particularly historic) fields impor
tant use of statistics to the subject of music-performance. Certainly this would
have to happen on a large scale, so as to take actual scientific advantage from it.
All concert programs of all years of all the reasonably important cities would
have to be collected and statistically excerpted, to gain a general view over the
high and low tides of the musical likings of different peoples and even the art-
historical swaying of whole nations and humanity in general. Because this task is
too great for one, first for its immense extensiveness and also for the soul-de
stroying uniformity of the collecting, there should be, in each of the cities, one
collector, who compiles a yearly concert-revue. The same should, above all,
contain an alphabetical register of composers with indications to the number of
their works publicly performed in that season (no matter if symphony or song),
to show to what extent certain composers are unduly cultivated or neglected in a
city, and further to show, if the proverb 'nemo propheta in patria' proves true
with native composers, etc.
Furthermore the proportion of performed vocal and instrumental works
should be stated and under these main categories again the care of possible com
bination within.
How great a perspective this gives for future musical research! This
proposition should be earnestly considered.'17
There is a twofold request in this exhortation. Kienzl pleads for self-as
certainment in the reality of musical life and expects to gain—partly as a side
effect—a collection of information for future music-research. As one can guess,
his exhortation had for the time being no success.
It was not until the early twentieth century that Kienzl's desiderata came
partially or preliminarily true. For example Concert-programmes of Viennese
music-institutions were elaborately disclosed in the 'Musikbuch aus Osterreich'
(Austrian music book),18 a Handbook for music-organisation, which was published
from 1904 to 1913. The 'Konzertprogramme der Gegenwart' (concert-programmes
of the present), that were released as a periodical in 7 volumes from 1910 to 1919
took it one step further, and were rather intent on independence." At this point there
is not much to be gained from enumerating further tesserae which could be useful to
17 W. Kienzl, 'Mahnrufe. Musikalische Vorschlage', in: Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik 42,
1885,Vol. 81, Tl. 2, 469-471, here: 470.
18 Musikbuch aus Osterreich. Ein Jahrbuch der Musikpfiege in Osterreich und den bedeu-
tendsten Stddten des Auslandes (1, 1904 - 10, 1913).
19 Konzertprogramme der Gegenwart (1, 1910/1 1 - 7, 1917/19).
48 Helmut Loos
research. Valuable tesserae are at hand, but when it comes down to it, they amount
to just a fragment, shining only in a few places.
Against this background it becomes clear that is was no minor venture
when Rebecca Grotjahn chose 'The Symphony in the German Cultural Area
from 1850 to 1875. A Contribution to the History of Genres and Institutions'
(1998) as subject for her thesis.20 It was due to the lack of fruitful preparatory
work, particularly in the field of systematic research of repertoire, that the au
thor had no other way than to draw primarily on the wealth of music-periodi
cals. Her reason was: 'While on the one hand the present description depends on
primary sources, it was on the other hand necessary to do without a lengthy, ti
me-consuming search for almost inaccessible (if not overall untraceable) pro
grammes. Instead concert reviews and season-reports, that were regularly prin
ted in the supra regional press, were used as a basis. Added to those were some
local-historical studies, which contained extensive information about program
me-design.'21 Embarrassment sounds from the approach of this thesis, which, to be
solidly based, necessitates the analysis of remote sources, which are unattainable in
the desired abundance. These difficulties imply that the author refrains from consul
ting relevant sources (Programmes, repertoire-statistical allegations, etc.) from the
outset, and enforcedly concentrates on the music-press - which makes the thesis ap
pear as a contribution to concert-coverage rather than the history of the concert in
stitution. Apparently research of repertoire exceeds the working capacities of a sin
gle person; it should be achieved by a researchers association (which is in the hu
manities as rare as it is essential), akin to the RISM-project.
* * *
Let us dare to proceed to the present! To date well-founded research on

repertoire in connection with urban historical studies is scarcely perceptible
Europe-wide. Many studies concerning the early, recent and modern urban his
tory are existent, as are single studies concerning the history of institutions,
preferentially dignified concert halls, orchestras and ensembles or 'Sing- und
Oratorienvereine'. It is remarkable that in many cases these studies are a 'Fest
schrift' to mark a jubilee and often do not comply with the standards of a scien
tific documentation. The existing papers can hardly be considered to amount to
a reliable general overview. Even for local historiography these studies are a
problem, if not an impertinence.22
R. Grotjahn, Die Sinfonie im deutschen Kulturgebiet 1850 bis 1875. Ein Beitrag zur
Gattungs- und Institutionengeschichte (= Musik und Musikanschauung im 19. Jahrhundert.
Studien und Quellen 7), (Diss. Hannover 1997), Sinzig, 1998.
21 Ibid, 143f.
22 On the state of contemporary discussions, see: J. Kremer, 'Regionalforschung heute?
Last und Chance eines historiographischen 'Konzepts'" und R. Nagele, 'Zur Methodologie re-
Moreover they are restricted almost exclusively to so-called 'high cul

ture' that is to say the bourgeois music and theatre life. Hard to ignore the
grave deficit in research concerning overlapping studies about the institutions
of religious music of different confessions or about contemporary popular mu
sic; dance music, military music or light music. The failures of bibliography
are also characteristic: the bibliography of Richard Schaal concerning local
historical research dates back more than fifty years and has not been continued
till this date.23
Nevertheless local historical research holds some aces, not only in the
case of Leipzig. But I will come back to this later. Former cities of residence
like Dresden, Hanover, Kassel, Munich, Mannheim, Meiningen, Oldenburg,
Stuttgart, Weimar or Vienna came to the fore of the science, aside from the civil
cities Breslau, Essen, Hamburg, Cologne or Frankfurt a. M. and self-evident the
metropolis Berlin with its philharmonic orchestra (founded in 1882) that was
the centre of the excellent program documentation by Peter Muck.24
The situation of German research has an analogy in the western part of
Europe: again single studies concerning musical institutions in outstanding cities
dominate and an ascertainment of the general situation is the exception. 5 In the
French research there are some outstanding inventories on the 'Concert spirituel'
(1725-1790) in Paris26 or about the Parisian Association of chamber music in the
second third of the nineteenth century.27 A few years ago a broad study was
announced concerning three Parisian orchestra societies: 'Le Concert Symphonique
a Paris de 1861 a 1914: Pasdeloup, Colonne, Lamoureux', arranged by Elisabeth
Bernard. In Great Britain Simon McVeigh released a pulse in musicology by
researching the musical life of London on a new basis28. Further studies concerning
musical topography are in progress29.The works of William Weber have played a
leading role in American advanced studies for several decades.30 He has an
gionaler Musikforschung oder: Was ist baden-württembergische Musik?', in: Die Musikforschung,
57, 2004, 1 10-121 resp. 121-133; see also N. Jers (ed.), Musikalische Regionalforschung heute -
Perspektiven rheinischer Musikgeschichtsschreibung, Kassel, 2002 (= Beitrage zur rheinischen
Musikgeschichtsschreibung 1 59).
R. Schaal, Das Schrifttum zur musikalischen Lokalgeschichtsforschung. Ein Nach-
schlagewerk, Kasse, 1947.
24 P. Muck, Einhundert Jahre Berliner Philharmonisches Orchester, 3 Vols., Tutzing,
1982.
25 Cf. C. Szabo-Knotik (ed), Wien - Tries! urn 1900. Zwei Stadte - eine Kultur?, Wien, 1993.
26 C. Pierre, Histoire du concert spirituel. 1725-1790, Paris, 1975.
27 J.-M. Fauquet, Les societes de musique de chambre a Paris de la Restauration a 1870.
Preface de Fran cois Lesure, Paris, 1 986.
-8 S. McVeigh, Concert Life in Londonfrom Mozart to Haydn, Cambridge, 1993.
29 See: S. Wollenberg and S. McVeight (eds.), Concert Life in Eighteenth-Century Britain
(Aldershot: Ashgat, 2004). Review from J. Schaarwächter, in: Die Musikforschung, 58, 2005, 445.
30 W. Weber, Music and the Middle Class. The Social Structure of Concert Life in Lon
don, Paris and Vienna, New York 1975; same author. The Rise ofMusical Classics in Eighteenth
50 Helmut Loos
excellent reputation because of his research on social history concerning

European musical life in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, dedicated to the
metropolises of London, Paris, Vienna and other cities. At present an all-
embracing survey resulting from western international cooperation is offered by
the anthology 'Le concert et son public. Mutations de la vie musicale en Europe
de 1780 a 1914' published in 2002. 31 At the same time his concentration on
western countries it is ample proof that research on music culture in Western-
and Eastern Europe have a tendency to go their own ways and not yet to find
together what factual issues actually call for. Though it is conceded that the
conditions for research in the Eastern European Countries under these political
circumstances were not that good before 1989/90 and still they are not always
positive.32
* * *
Let us finally return to the local order of magnitude. In contrast to the

situation mentioned in this place, remarkable for having a gap in the progress of
research, the town Leipzig takes up an unmistakable special status in local and
repertoire research. The concerts of the Gewandhaus and the Gewandhausor-
chester are excellently documented.33 The newer and older research pays stead
fast attention to the rest of the local music institutions though it is not always
revealed.34 It is grown into a habit that research always falls back on the com
plete compiled material of the Gewandhausorchester, if you wish to say some
thing about historical research on repertoire, recognizable in 'Repertoirebildung
und Kanonisierung. Zur Vorgeschichte des Klassikbegriffs (1800-1835)' by
Century England. A Study in Canon, Ritual, and Ideology, Oxford 1992; same author, The Musi
cian as Entrepreneur, 1700 - 1914. Managers, Charlatans, and Idealists, Bloomington, 2004.
31 Le concert et son public. Mutations de la vie musicale en Europe de 1780 a 1914
(France, Allemagne, Angleterre). Sous la direction de Hans Erich Bödeker, Patrice Veit, Michael
Werner avec la collaboration de Julia Kraus et Dominique Lassaigne, Paris 2002. International or
interdisciplinary cooperation was established in a similar way when preparing the entries 'Akademie'
and 'Konzert', as well as the Sammelband: Akademie und Musik. Erschei nungsweisen und
Wirkungen des Akademiegedankens in Kultur- und Musikgeschichte: Institutionen, Veranstaltungen,
Schriften. Festschriftfur Werner Braun zum 65. Geburtstag. Zugleich W. Frobenius (ed.), Bericht
iiber das Symposium 'Der Akademiegedanke in der Geschichte der Musik und angrenzender
Facher' (Saarbrücken 1991), Saarbrticken, 1993.
32 An absolute exception was provided by the work of R. Ritter, Wem gehort Musik?
Warschau und Wilna im Widerstreit nationaler und stddtischer Musikkulturen vor 1939, Stuttgart,
2004 (Forschungen zur Geschichte und Kultur des ostlichen Mitteleuropa, Bd. 19).
13 A. Dorffel, Geschichte der Gewandhausconcerte zu Leipzig vom 25. November 1781
bis 25. November 1881, Leipzig 1884; E. Creuzburg, Die Gewandhaus-Konzerte zu Leipzig
1781-1931, Leipzig 1931; J. Forner (ed.), Die Gewandhauskonzerte zu Leipzig 1781-1981, Leip
zig, 1981.
34 Very welcome was the series: Musikstadt Leipzig. Studien und Dokumente, 4 Vols,
Hamburg, 1998ff.
Erich Reimer. He explained the meaning of the common expressions 'Reper

toire' and 'Kanon' at the beginning of the nineteenth century just by using the
example of Leipzig. It is questionable to what extend the results of his studies
can be generalized.
In spite of the relatively promising situation concerning the town of Leip
zig, there are striking deficits too. The concerts which took place in the 'Alber-
thalle' or even the programs of the world-famous 'Thomanerchor' are still not
documented. They are waiting for research on the slips of paper and record
books written by the prefects of the 'Thomasschule'. The sources are available
in the 'Stadtgeschichtliches Museum' (museum of history) Leipzig and in the
'Thomasschule'. It concerns over 3000 printed slips of paper since 1869 and
handwritten books of motets since 1822 just in the case of the 'Thomanerchor'.
In addition to the institutions above mentioned at the same time there were the
'Orchestervereinigung Euterpe' (1824-1885), the Liszt Society (1885-1902),
the Academic Concerts conducted by Hermann Kretzschmar (1890-1895) and
the 'Windersteinorchester' founded in 1896. 36
The registered societies of choirs and their significance in the late nineteenth
century have to be considered as well. Indeed Leipzig has seen a remarkable
number of these societies. In the 'Taschenbuch fur deutsche Sanger 1864' twenty
four choirs are mentioned in the case of Leipzig, even more than Berlin (twenty
two) or Vienna (seventeen)37. For the situation concerning male voice choirs there
is a snapshot at the moment when the 'Deutsche Sangerbund' was founded in 1862.
Therefore important choirs like the 'Thomanerchor' and the 'Leipziger Sing-
akademie', which participated in great choir-involved symphonic concerts in the
'Gewandhaus' at the beginning of the nineteenth century, are missing. Beyond that,
workers choral societies have been ignored completely at this point At the time of
the statistics other choir societies did not exist anymore like the choir society
'Orpheus' or the 'Musikalische Tunnel',38 or they did not yet exist like the
'Leipziger Gausangerbund' (1864), the 'Bach-Verein' Leipzig (since 1875)39 and
the 'Schubertbund' or the 'Leipziger Lehrergesangverein' (since 1876).40 Almost
35 E. Reimer, Repertoirebildung und Kanonisierung, 241-260.

For an overview of the earlier times, see: B. Senff, Ftihrer durch die musikalische Welt.
Adressbuch, Chronik und Statistik aller Stddte von Bedeutung: Leipzig, Leipzig, 1868; see also
the conclusion by I. and G. Hempel in Musikstadt Leipzig, Leipzig, 1979, 1 13f.
37 F. Brusniak and D. Klenke (eds.), Taschenbuchfur deutsche Sanger 1864. Reprint mit Ein-
fiihrung, Schillingsfiirst 1996, 130-133. Let us mention: Universitäts-Gesangverein zu St. Pauli,
Liedertafel, Germania, Akademischer Gesangverein Arion, Astraa, Guttenberg, Zollnerbund,
Riedel'scher Verein, Ossian, Glocke, Euterpe, Gewerblicher Bildungsverein, Cacilia, Mannerge-
sangverein, Richard MUller'scher Verein, Teutonia, Sängerverein Hellas, Gesangverein Vorwarts,
Anakreon, PhSnix, Liederlust, Liederkranz, Gesangverein die Neunzehner and Luscinia.
38 Schmidt, Das Musikleben, 145 and 153f.
39 R. Beer, Der Bach-Verein zu Leipzig 1875-1899, Leipzig, 1900.
40 Bericht des Leipziger Lehrergesangvereins 1876-1886, Leipzig, 1886.
52 Helmut Loos
nothing is known about the repertoire of these music societies. Their documentation
is still due.
As a result the local research on repertoire shows that the concerts of the
'Gewandhaus' are revealed perfectly whereas concerts of all other institutions,
which are important for the construction of a realistic view of history, still await
documentation.
* * *
In conclusion there is no need to emphasize that a broader basis for re

search concerning the history of repertoire is desirable. It stands to reason to
talk about it as a demand for coming research. Especially in view of the fact that
several researchers either have more tasks than they can handle or at best make
progress at certain points with their time-consuming research. Recall at this
point once again the methodical problems of the work of Rebecca Grotjahn.
What she said about the inadequate state of the research of repertoire, with a
view of the concerts, applies on the contrary not only to the discussed period
from 1850 to 1875, but for the last two centuries as a whole. Yet it is impossible
to overlook that the author concentrated on only one, albeit extensive question
that relates to the position of the symphony in the history of genre and institu
tion. It is easily to imagine what it would mean to extend the question to other
genres and kinds of music or other cultural areas. Similarly you can anticipate
the potential problems every researcher of repertoire would be confronted with.
Nowadays it is easier to succeed in overcoming the repeatedly addressed
desideratum in research by using research methods supported by computing, as the
German research on the broadcast programs of the Weimar Republic did. It is of
urgent interest to music research to use the existent innovative technical potential of
the present in the most profitable way. And we have to take it to the, of now, almost
impenetrable area to improve awareness of the realities of past musical life. This
includes the necessarily diverse concepts of the musical Modern age, beginning
with the 'music of the future' to the point of 'Postmodernism'. They have to be
discussed in their own contexts and not to be played off against each other.
To this reality belongs in the end also the environment of music recep
tion, that at the beginning was adumbrated with the cues 'the people of poets
and thinkers', 'cultural nation', 'romantic view of music' or 'religion of arts'.
For a long time we were used to associate the 'musical main culture' with these
cues. However, everybody knows that the so called main culture has never been
predominant, nor is it today. And because we know this for sure, probably
nothing would speak against assigning the small facts of the big reality to the
ideal world, the repertoire research or multicultural urbanity. 'Rethinking of
modernism' means in this context: 'Rethinking of musical idealism and back to
the facts, or go on to research'.
XejiMym Hoc
OJ\ H/JEAJlHOr flO PEAJlHOr.

nPOMEHA nAPA^HrME
Pe3hMe
HeMUH, KojH ce6e paao BHfle Kao „Hapoa necHHKa h MHonmiaua", ctbo-
Phjih cy My3HKOjio™jy Kao „ayxOBHy HayKy" Koja noKa3yje npHMe™y paBHo-
ayuiHOCT npeMa ohhM HCTopHjcKHM HHH>eHHuaMa Koje ce He oaHoce Ha H3y3eT-
Ha yMeTHHHKa aejia. Kojihkh 3HaHaj jeaHO umpoKO nocTaaibeHO npoyHaBaH>e
peneproapa npnnaaa h MoaepHH, noKa3aHo je Ha npHKa3y CTaH>a y OBoj o6jia-
cth npea noHeTaK jeaHor TaKBor HCTpa>KHBaH>a.
PARADISE LOST: NEOCLASSICISM
AND THE MELANCHOLIA OF MODERNISM
JONATHAN CROSS
THE word 'neoclassical' is a problematic one, especially in relation to

Stravinsky. It traps and constrains us; it distorts. We have become accustomed
to its standing for an entire thirty-year period of Stravinsky's output. While the
problems of such periodisation are obvious, it is nonetheless virtually impossi
ble to shift the entrenched view that all Stravinsky's music written between
c.1920 and c.1950 is essentially neoclassical, and that it is starkly differentiated
from what went before (Russian primitivism) and what came after (serialism).
The consequences of this categorisation are that Stravinsky's neoclassical move
came to represent a turning back on the high modernist achievements of The
Rite ofSpring, an abandonment of the modernist project, an anti-modernism.
In the case of Schoenberg, we are aware that the establishment of his
three style-periods was, in large part, a result of Schoenberg's own self-histori-
cising. His much-discussed essay, 'Composing with twelve tones',1 presents us
with a developmental narrative that leads us from Beethoven via Brahms and
Wagner and the progressive dissolution of tonality, to the culminating achieve
ment of the twelve-note method. Schoenberg claims he had no choice; he was
the product of historical necessity, the Chosen One through whom the true path
to the new music was to be found. Those (progressive) values that made the
music of Beethoven and Brahms great, so his story goes, are what make his mu
sic great too.
And for so long historians have been content to retell this story. Until re
cently it has coloured not only our understanding of Schoenberg's music, but
also our understanding of the whole of musical modernism. Modern music, we
are told, began in 1908 with Schoenberg's abandonment of the key-signature at
the end of his Second String Quartet as the soprano sings, prophetically, Tch
1 See A. Schoenberg, Style and Idea (London: Faber & Faber, 1975).
56 Jonathan Cross
fuhle Luft von anderen Planeten'. This break with the past was consolidated in
the first of the Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11 (1909) - in Allen Forte's phrase,
Schoenberg's 'first atonal masterwork'.2 In Forte's view, there is no vestige of
tonality here; it is absolutely atonal. His 1981 analysis is achieved by means of
pitch-class set theory, whose principles are designed to demonstrate the pres
ence and operation of atonality. But what makes this a 'masterwork'? Ironically,
the same principle that, in Schenker's terms, makes for a masterwork in tonal
music: unity. Forte's analysis demonstrates how the movement can be under
stood as a composing-out of a relatively small number of 'motives' that bind the
whole together. But how is this any different from what Beethoven or Brahms
did? How does this analysis tell us anything about the newness, the modernity
of Schoenberg?
Forte here appears here to be doing Schoenberg's bidding - the analytical
method highlights Schoenberg's connections with Brahms as well as certain
proto-serial procedures (as in Schoenberg's own analyses of Brahms). Striking,
then, is Forte's contradictory denial of any trace of tonal reference. But the
opening of Op. 1 1/1 would seem to suggest otherwise (see Ex. 1). The melodic
shapes, the phrase structure, the appoggiaturas, the cadences, all belong in the
nineteenth century. Why try to deny them? The answer must lie in the fact that
they do not function tonally. 'The music seems to invite, and then frustrate, a
tonal analysis', writes Joseph Straus.3
But can we dismiss the tonal references so easily? Richard Taruskin has
written recently in terms of the 'music that formed the immediate historical
background to Schoenberg's expressionistic idiom [which] was particularly rich
in expressive appoggiaturas (or Seufzer, 'sighs' [...]), and it is clear that
Schoenberg intended such associations to remain in force'.4 It is surely impossi
ble to imagine that an audience in Schoenberg's day would have listened to this
music closed off from its late-nineteenth century context. Even today audiences
will still listen to this music in the context of the wealth of tonal music that
surrounds it.
If, like Forte, we follow Schoenberg's line, then there would seem to be little
that is new about Op. 1 1 . What we hear is not something moving forward to the
future, but rather something that is collapsing inwards with the weight of the past.
There is certainly an extreme intensification of Brahmsian thematicism and
Wagnerian chromaticism here. Yet the functional principles of tonality are absent.
This would seem, then, to suggest something that is not more than Brahms and
2 A. Forte, 'The Magical Kaleidoscope: Schoenberg's First Atonal Masterwork, Opus 1 1,

Number 1 ', Journal ofthe Arnold Schoenberg Institute, 5/2 ( 1 98 1 ), 1 27-68.
3 J. Straus, Remaking the Past: Musical Modernism and the Influence ofthe Tonal Tradi
tion (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 25.
4 R. Taruskin, Oxford History of Western Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005),
Vol. 4, 'The Early Twentieth Century', 319-20.
PARADISE LOST: NEOCLASSICISM AND THE MELANCHOLIA.. 57
Wagner, but less. One might argue that the decadent excess in one domain is meant
to compensate for or even disguise the crucial lack in another. This plays into the
hands of Schoenberg's harshest critics that this is just wrong-note music.
Example 1.
Let us return to the opening bars. There have been other readings.
Leichtentritt, Brinkmann and Samson,5 among others, have written about this
music in a tonal context, an approach also taken by Will Ogden in the next arti
cle in the same issue of the journal in which Forte's analysis appeared. Contra-
Forte, Ogden argues that this passage is in G major.6 He makes a strong case
based on Schoenberg's own notions of 'schwebende' and 'aufgehoben To-
nalitat' (fluctuating, suspended), but is there really much in this music as is to
suggest G-centred-ness?
5 H. Leichtentritt, Musical Form (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1951), 1st
Eng. ed. of 3rd Germ. ed. of Musikalische Formenlehre (1927); R. Brinkmann, Arnold Schon-
berg: Drei Klavierstiicke Op. 11: Studien zur friihen Atonlitdt bei Schdnberg (Wiesbaden: Franz
Steiner, 1969); J. Samson, Music in Transition: a Study of Tonal Expansion and Atonality, 1900-
1920 (London: Dent, 1977).
6 W. Ogdon, 'How tonality functions in Schoenberg's opus 1 1, number 1 Journal of the
Arnold Schoenberg Institute, 5/2 (1981), 169-81.
58 Jonathan Cross
What are the tonal allusions? Ex. 2 is just one attempt to show this by
means of a relatively obvious re-harmonisation. The melody invites such a
hearing. (Note that very few changes have had to be made to arrive at this har-
monisation.) The harmonisation attempts to highlight the proximity of Schoen
berg' s opening, in general, to later nineteenth-century music and, in particular,
to a ubiquitously familiar nineteenth-century work, namely Tristan und Isolde.
Bars 1-3 are a kind of deformation of the opening of the Vorspeil to Act I, with
its characteristic Seufzer. In a similar way bars 4-8 could be heard as a re
working of the Vorspeil to Act III, with its three utterances (bar form), plagal
cadences, 'Tristan' chord and rising melodic figure.
Example 2.
What might this tell us? That this is 'Wagner gone wrong'? No. We know
that Schoenberg could 'out-do' Wagner if he wanted to: just think of the Gurre-
lieder, saturated with Tristan-esque references. I am not suggesting that Op. 1 1
functions like tonal music, because clearly it does not. But I feel this is more
than just 'a facade of antiquated stylistic mannerisms', to use Joseph Straus's
phrase.7 For Schoenberg they were current mannerisms, and their expressive
rhetoric was still valid. In a sense, both harmonisations are present: Schoen-
berg's actual one, in the foreground; mine, in potential, in the background. What
for me is so poignant about this music is the way in which it highlights the gap
between the (only just) atonal present and the tonal past; atonality here can only
be understood in the context of tonality. It is as if we glimpse the past through
Schoenberg's musical glass, darkly. But it is also as if Schoenberg himself is
here straining to reach back to that past, but cannot quite touch it.
The key question is this: what did the tonal past mean to Schoenberg in
the years leading up to the First World War? One hint at an answer can be heard
at the end of a work that might well be described, in part at least, as Schoen
berg's own first neoclassical work: Pierrot lunaire. By 1912, on the verge of
giving up writing any music for almost a decade, Schoenberg was breathing the
ancient scent of far-off days, to use the customary English rendering of 'O alter
7 J. Straus, Remaking the Past, 26.

Duft aus Marchenzeit', a metaphor for a tonal past that could never be recap
tured, or at the very least could never be the same again (a kind of lost inno
cence).
'O alter Duft' is an understated lamenting for the passing of 'die liebe
Welt' and a recognition of its distance (see Ex. 3). The borrowed triads allude to
that past without attempting to resurrect it. They are modernist fragments, not
the whole; the whole has been lost. The fragmented, dislocated, modernist sub
ject yearns for that wholeness, that completeness, even while recognising its
impossibility. There is a strong sense of pathos here, one recognised by Adorno
when he wrote:
In Schoenberg, everything rests on the solitary subjectivity, withdrawn
into itself. The entire third part of Pierrot sketches a 'journey home' to a vitreous
no-man's-land in whose crystalline and lifeless air the quasi-transcendental
subject, liberated from the ensnarements of the empirical, recovers himself on an
imaginary plane. This is served no less by the text than by the complexion of the
music that shapes the expression of a castaway finding rescue, the image of hope
for the hopeless.8
Example 3.
Adorno is here contrasting Pierrot with Stravinsky's Petrushka. Petrushka

is not without subjectivist traits, he writes. However, through 'the liquidation of
the victim [Petrushka, and later the young girl sacrificed in The Rite of Spring],
it [Stravinsky's music] rids itself of intentions, those of its own proper subjec
8 T. W. Adorno, Philosophy of New Music, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 109.
60 Jonathan Cross
tivity.'9 Adorno played a crucial role in sustaining negative attitudes to Stravin

sky's neoclassicism amongst, for example, the Darmstadt generation.
But, of course, after the First World War, Schoenberg too became a neo-
classicist. There is no doubting the new sense of stylisation in his Baroque Suite
for piano, Op.25, an objectivity that comes as much from the renewed engage
ment with the past as it does from the newly discovered dodecaphonic method.
In fact, in the post-war years many composers were declaring a new attitude to
the musical materials of the past. There is much common ground between the
music of Schoenberg and Stravinsky, a shared modernism in their attitudes to
the past, that moves beyond a crude claim to neoclassicism.
My central concern here is an attempt to understand the nature of mod
ernism, the nature of art in late-modern culture. It is an art characterised, I ar
gue, by such features as alienation, nostalgia, loss and mourning. And this is
where long-perpetuated arguments between the (progressive) Schoenberg and
the (reactionary) Stravinsky camps are ultimately revealed to be pointless. Both
composers—albeit in quite different ways—are articulating similar kinds of
alienation. The final song of Pierrot lunaire represents acutely the alienated late-
modern subject, freighted with a melancholic nostalgia for a past that is lost, for
a completeness that can never be regained. The rupture between present and
past, on the verge of the catastrophe of the Great War, could not be more pro
phetic. And the alienated subject is a theme that runs throughout Stravinsky's
works, too: Petrushka, The Nightingale, The Soldier's Tale, Oedipus Rex, Per
sephone, The Rake's Progress, among others. Far from being merely Tart pour
Part', this music, in Stephen Walsh's words, 'that supposedly expresses noth
ing, and always seemed studiously, impenetrably deaf to the world around it,
has turned out to be the most exact echo and the best response to those terrify
ing years that brought it into being'.10 I argue that this theme of the alienated
subject is a thread running through the work of many late-modern figures, from
Mahler to Birtwistle.
Let us examine a clear example of Stravinsky's neoclassicism. The title
of the Symphony in C boldly declares its neoclassical intentions, a 'reactionary'
neoclassicism confirmed by many of the published accounts of the work's form,
thematic organisation and key structure in keeping with its late eighteenth-
century symphonic forebears. It is important to note, however, that the work dates
from the early years of the Second World War, when Stravinsky was moving
home from Europe to America. Though it is not ostensibly 'about' the war, it might
yet be understood to represent both Stravinsky's personal circumstances and the
world's dire situation during these years. It was written at an extraordinarily
difficult time for Stravinsky. He was being exiled for a second time. He had ex-
9 Ibid., 1 10.
10 S. Walsh, Stravinsky: the Second Exile: France and America 1934-1971 (London:
Jonathan Cape, 2006), 572.
perience the deaths within seven months of four close family members. Little
wonder that he described the period during which he was composing the sym
phony as the 'most tragic' of his life. He claims that without this work he would
not have survived these difficult days, though he is also quick to stress that the
symphony should not be considered an 'exploitation' of his grief." A certain
surface humour hides a deeper melancholic strain.
Stravinsky's loss of homeland, daughter, wife and mother is enacted in
the music, not of course in directly autobiographical terms, but allegorically in
terms of a late-modern lament. Or put in a slightly different way, Stravinsky's
personally tragic circumstances led him to take refuge in the music of the past
but with which, ultimately, he was no longer able to identify directly (despite an
ongoing yearning so to do). So, for example, in the introduction, we hear a
Beethovenian three-note motto (B-C-G), ostensibly a A7-A8-A5 figure, but in
which the leading-note is unexpectedly elongated. That B-natural carries with it
its own tonal history, i.e., as a leading-note it yearns for a resolution, for clo
sure, for completeness, but it cannot be found. It is ultimately left hanging, un
resolved. This is the 'narrative' of the symphony. Even if one were to read the
leading-note in the introduction as part of a larger 'dominant prolongation' a la
Beethoven First Symphony, an uncomplicated tonic arrival is not achieved at
the start of the movement proper (see Ex. 4). While one way of hearing the
neighbour notes, passing notes and arpeggiations of the main theme is in C (or
at least, around C), the accompanying voices tell a different story. The reiterated
Es and Gs (no Cs) resist C major. The yearning of the leading-note for resolu
tion is heard against an entirely static harmony that denies such resolution. This
is the longing for what cannot be. A kind of arrival is heard 1 1 bars before the
end of the movement when the bassoon drops down to a low C, but any sense of
closure is contradicted by the final alternating chords in which the leading-note
remains simultaneously resolved and unresolved.
The Symphony as a whole, right through to its concluding chorale, represents a
kind of lament; it is an expression of Stravinsky's late-modernity. The completeness
of the (lost) past cannot be regained; it is present here in the shape and gestures of the
classical symphony but, ultimately, only as a poignantly nostalgic memory.
My argument here leads to the possibility of a re-evaluation of neoclassi-
cism as central to, rather than a reaction against, modernism. Stravinsky's neo
classical music—just as much as Schoenberg's dodecaphonic music—partici
pated in the construction of a modernist Weltanschauung. Stravinsky, like
Schoenberg, was engaged in 'timely reflections on war and death' - to appro
priate Freud's phrase of 1915. 1
1 1 See I. Stravinsky and R. Craft, Memories and Commentaries (London: Faber & Faber,
2002), 188.
12 See S. Freud, On Murder, Mourning and Melancholia, trans. Shaun Whiteside (Lon
don: Penguin, 2005).
Example 4.
One key aspect of modernism, as understood by Adorno among others,

was a profound nostalgia for what had been lost (i.e., the idea of a constitutive
subject). The modernist dwells on this loss, on the impossibility of its retrieval;
in so doing he keeps alive its image as a critique of the present. In his last book,
On Late Style, Edward Said wrote compellingly of the 'return to the eighteenth
century' in the work of such figures as Stravinsky, Britten and Strauss.13 By
adopting—two hundred years too late—the manner and techniques of pre-
revolutionary, pre-romantic Europe, many of these composers were highlighting
their alienation from the horrors that surrounded them. Elsewhere in the book,
Said talks about lateness as 'a kind of self-imposed exile from what is generally
acceptable, coming after it, and surviving beyond it'.14 And following Adorno's
discussion of the ageing of the new music, Said asserts that there is 'an inherent
tension in late style that abjures mere bourgeois aging and that insists on the
increasing sense of apartness and exile and anachronism'.15 I should wish to
argue that lateness becomes a trope for modernism itself. It is not just Strauss's
late style, to take Said's example, that is imbued with a melancholic world-
weariness; alienation, memory and mourning become the defining features of
modernist music and of the late-modern condition.
UonamaH Kpoc
H3rYBJLEHH PAJ: HEOKJIACH1TH3AM

H MEJIAHXOJIHJA MO£EPHH3MA
Pe3hMe
FIo3HOMoaepHH cyojeKT KapaKTepHine ce ocehajeM OTyhjeHOCTH on npo-

iujiocth (iuto ra pa3jimcyje oa nocTMOnepHor cyojeicra). Oh ce MaHH(becTyje
ay6oKO MejiaHxojiHHHOM HOCTajirujoM, caCBHM HenjioaHOM He>KH>oM Ka no-
BpaTKy y (pajcicy) H3ry6jbeHy npouuiocT. HejiamnaH ohHOc koa UIeH6epra H3-
Metjy npouinocTH h cmauiH>ocTH (H3MeI)y „Tpa^HUHje" h „HOBor") jacHO ce Hy-
je y MHorHM aejiHMa H3 aerOBor aTOHajmor nepHona, on Tpu tciaeupcKa Komo-
da on. 1 1 no IJjepoa MeceHapa. Ann h Kon CTpaBHHcKor y H>eroBHM Heoiaia-
CHUHcraHKHM aenHMa nocTojH HenpeMOCTHB ja3 H3Mer}y npouinocTH h (bpar-
MeHTHcaHe peajiHOCTH caaaiuH>ocra, Kao ay6oK koh(J)jihkt H3Merjy OHeKHBaH>a
13 E. W. Said, On Late Style: Music and Literature Against the Grain (London: Blooms-
bury, 2006), Chap. 2.
14 Ibid., 16.
"Ibid., 17.
64 Jonathan Cross
ojx cTapHX My3HHKHx (bopMH h npnopHTeTa HOBe aBaHrapae. H nopea h>hxobc

6e36pH>KHOCTH Ha nOBpuiHHH, OBa aejia HHcy caMo (nocTMoaepHa) Hrpa hjih
nacTHui, Beh h MejiaHxojiHHHH H3pa3 no3HOMOflepHor cTaH>a. KopncTehH npH-
Mepe CuM<poHuje in C (1938-40) h Opcpeja (1947) GrpaBHHCKor, ayrop y oboM
paay npeajiaace HOBy Bep3Hjy MoaepHH3Ma XX Beica, carjieaaHor H3 nepcneK-
THBe OTyr)eHor cy6jeKTa. To je TeMa Koja ce MO»e npaTHTH Kpo3 ueo bck, on
Majiepa no BepTBHCna.
CENTRES AND MARGINS: SHIFTING GROUNDS
IN THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF MODERNISM
MAX PADDISON
IN this paper 1 consider theoretical and philosophical issues arising from

the conceptualization, periodization and location of modernism and the avant-
garde. Drawing on critical and post-colonial theory, dominant paradigms of what it
is to be 'modern' are examined in relation both to centres and to peripheries of
the 'modernist project' - areas which, for historical, cultural and economic rea
sons, came later to the process of modernization and whose manifestations of
modernism and the avant-garde interact tellingly with 'the centre', even if the
centre fails in return to acknowledge their existence. At the same time, such
modernisms at the margins also interact with indigenous traditions, interactions
that often lead to tension and conflict.
For good reason the debates over unequal relations between centres and
margins have come to have particular relevance to regions like the Balkans1 and
other parts of Eastern Europe,2 and also the Iberian Peninsula3 - regions which
have strong indigenous cultural traditions but which are to varying degrees
marginalized in relation to the dominant European urban cultural centres of
1 The 2007 Belgrade conference from which this volume arises testifies to this. I am grate
ful to Melita Milin for the clarity of the conceptual framework she set up for the conference, and
for the opportunity to think through issues that the invitation to take part offered.
2 See especially Sanja Bahun-Radunovic and Marinos Pourgouris (eds.), The Avant-Garde
and the Margin: New Territories of Modernism (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006).
Essays in this volume discuss issues of the avant-garde in Serbia, Romania, Poland, and Greece,
as well as French Canada, India and Japan.
3 The Portuguese composer Antonio Pinho Vargas is currently researching many of the is
sues discussed in this paper with specific reference to the musical situation in Portugal, and I have
profited greatly from many discussions with him in the process of supervising his doctorate at
Durham University. See also Antonio Pinho Vargas, 'A usencia da musica portuguesa no con-
texto europeo: Uma investigacSo em curso', Revista Critica de Ciencias Socias 78 (October
2007), 47-69.
66 Max Paddison
Western and Central Europe. Seen, however, within the context of 'world cul-
ture(s)' and especially 'world music(s)', where, for example, Western art music
becomes on the one hand simply one 'style' within a multiplicity of styles and
on the other hand remains nevertheless an integral part of the dominant power
structure of the West, then, as Bjorn Heile has commented, 'distinctions be
tween core and margin, centre and periphery can no longer be drawn with con
fidence'.4 I argue here that such uncertainties at the permeation of boundaries
and the experience of 'in-betweeness' are the new conditions of the avant-garde,
even though the sheer stylistic diversity of globalized culture may serve to ob
scure this.
I
The extent of stylistic diversity across the arts in the twenty-first century,
especially viewed within the broad context of 'world cultures', might suggest
Leonard Meyer's image of Brownian movement, in perpetual motion but at the
same time static.5 Meyer had suggested as early as 1967 — something that Jean-
Jacques Nattiez re-reads with astonishment as the point of departure for his own
essay 'La musique de 1'avenir'6 of 2001 — that 'the coming epoch ... will be a
period of stylistic stasis, a period characterized not by the linear, cumulative
development of a single fundamental style, but by the coexistence of a multi
plicity of quite different styles in a fluctuating and dynamic steady-state.'7
Meyer's metaphor taken from the natural sciences of a dynamic equilibrium is
on one level both persuasive and prophetic, particularly in theTight of thekind
of imagery subsequently employed by the theorists of postmodernism in the
1 980s to conceptualize what they saw as our condition of an ahistorical present
characterized by a state of non-contradictory but dynamic plurality. Neverthe
less, there is at another level a degree of relativism underlying Meyer's view
4 1 am grateful to Bj8rn Heile for recent discussions with him which I found very helpful
in formulating a final version of this paper. I had already reached a late stage in drafting before I
read his insightful work on 'world music' and specifically 'Weltmusik', and I must admit that I
wish I had been able to read it much earlier. As a result there remains much here that I feel still
needs developing further. See B. Heile, 'Weltmusik and the Globalization of New Music', in B.
Heile (ed.), The Modernist Legacy: Essays on New Music (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009, forthcom
ing), 152-182; also Heile, '"Transcending Quotation": Cross-Cultural Musical Representation in
Mauricio Kagel's Die Stiicke der Windrose fur Salonorchester\ Music Analysis, Vol. 23, No.l
(2004), 57-85.
5 L. B. Meyer, 'History, Stasis, and Change', in Music, the Arts, and Ideas: Patterns and
Predictions in Twentieth-Century Culture (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press,
1967), 102.
6 J.-J. Nattiez, 'La musique de 1'avenir', in Musiques: Une encylopedie pour le XXIe
siecle I: Musiques du XXe siecle, sous la direction de Jean-Jacques Nattiez (Arles: Actes Sud/
Chi de la Musique, 2003; orig. Italian, Turin, 2001), 1392-1424.
7 Meyer, 'History, Stasis, and Change', 98.
CENTRES AND MARGINS.. 67
that is problematical - a relativism that is also (more typically) a feature of

postmodernist accounts of the situation which take everything within a field at
face value and fail to recognize unequal power relations that underlie such sur
face pluralities. Stylistic diversity per se is probably evident enough to all, in
that it is something which characterizes modernism and the avant-garde just as
much as it does all other manifestations in the arts, to such an extent that it al
most goes without saying. Significant questions are raised by the problem of
relativism in relation to the apparently tensionless stylistic diversity of modern
ism and the avant-garde in such a context, however, in view of the historical
aspirations associated both with aesthetic modernism and with what Habermas
has called 'the modernist project'.
Jean-Francois Lyotard has argued that, as a result of the developments in
technology (and in particular information technology) since the Second World
War, and the shift from ends to means: 'The grand narrative has lost its credi
bility, regardless of what mode of unification it uses, regardless of whether it is
a speculative narrative or a narrative of emancipation.'8 If the goal of emancipa
tion is simply another of the grand narratives perpetuated by the avant-garde in
its search for legitimation, then how can modernism survive in the absence of
any convincing belief in such stories of liberation - narratives that have cer
tainly always seemed so fundamental to the spirit of the avant-garde? Or indeed,
are there new language games now being played, new narratives of legitimation
- those of hybridity or of transculturation, perhaps, with the claim that the world
wide web has now rendered the whole notion of centres and peripheries redun
dant? Other pertinent questions concern distinctions between 'modernism',
'modernity', and 'modernization', the relation of the modern to the pre-modern,
the non-modern, and, importantly, to the continuing power of tradition, in the
context both of Enlightenment rationalization processes and of global capital
ism. Then there are questions regarding the dependence of modernism on its
context—social, historical, cultural and economic—and its marked historical
tendency to be the exclusive product of certain cosmopolitan urban centres
mainly in Western or Central Europe, or in America. This leads to more ques
tions: what forms do aesthetic modernism and the avant-garde take in the con
text of globalization; how do they manifest in relation to nationalism in prima
rily agrarian cultures that have come relatively late to industrialization; or, as
we have already suggested, does any of this matter anyway in view of the speed
and almost total embrace of the internet? And finally, one might reasonably ask
whether there are distinctly identifiable features that characterize all 'modern
isms', as well as identifiable conditions, historical and cultural, within which
aesthetic modernism arises? I cannot claim to be able to address all of these
J.-F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. G. Bennington

and B. Massumi, with a Foreword by F. Jameson (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1984; original French ed. 1979), 37.
68 Max Paddison
questions in this paper, not least for reasons of space, so let me start with an
attempt to respond to the last and most general question first, and in this way to
touch on the other questions as well.
II
I propose that all modernisms do in fact have one important thing in
common: they are defined by the conflict between the process of societal mo
dernization and the claims of tradition. By this, of course, I do not mean that it
is simply the case that 'modern art' itself is in direct conflict with tradition
(even though it usually is), but rather that what we regard as 'the modern world'
itself emerges from a conflict between the dynamic and demythologizing social
and economic process of modernization and the resistant mythologizing stasis
of tradition. And yet, aesthetic modernism, for all its different stylistic and cul
tural manifestations, has now, I suggest, acquired a further distinctive feature: to
borrow another term from Jean-Francois Lyotard, the simultaneous unpresent-
ability of this tension between tradition and modernity in an age of globalization
and commodification. That is to say, this conflict no longer appears directly to
us for what it is, but is relativized and thus rendered invisible as part of the
endless variety of consumer choice within an apparently tensionless steady-state
of co-existing but separate stylistic developments characterized by hybridization
and the instantaneity of communication worldwide. It is this state—one which,
in my view, serves to mask the underlying relations of global economic
power—which I attempt to address here. I start from the position that
modernism is indeed not 'one thing', but rather a series of stylistically different
and often conflicting responses to 'one thing': that is to say, the varieties of
aesthetic modernism can be regarded as different responses to a single
overriding dilemma which has become naturalized and is no longer directly
viewable - the process of socio-economic modernization itself in relation to
tradition. I emphasize these terms not because I wish to re-establish a simplistic
binarism 'modernity/tradition' of a kind that is now generally regarded as
having been transcended by globalization, but because I argue that it is the
process of modernization itself that continues on a global scale, albeit without
the idealistic ends associated with 'modernity' from the Enlightenment, and
because tradition, far from having been neutralized and subsumed by the
demythologizing process of modernization, has reasserted itself in often visceral
reaction to the modern world.
It is within these basic terms of reference that the issue of centres and pe
ripheries of modernism and the avant-garde takes on, I suggest, an added sig
nificance. To put it simply: on the one hand the geographical and cultural cen
tres of modernism have a powerful influence on the peripheries and draw them
towards them and absorb them; on the other hand, it is at the peripheries that the
tension between innovation and tradition becomes evident to us, because of in
complete absorption. At the centre—and all centres now become as one—the

tendency is always towards hybridity, permeation, the disappearance of bounda
ries, and the homogenizing effects of globalization. At the peripheries the con
flict between tradition and innovation remains strong, in spite of claims made
for the process of globalization, and the contrasts stand out through the stark-
ness of their juxtaposition. What this reveals, it seems to me, is that the as
sumptions on the part of certain contemporary theorists of the philosophy and
sociology of culture who argue, like Wolfgang Welsch,9 that the traditional con
cept of culture, defined by the separateness and distinctiveness of individual
cultures, is now obsolete and has been superseded by the condition of permea
tion of cultural boundaries, of cultural blending, and of a process of transcul-
turation, are problematical. I suggest that such assumptions present difficulties
not because their claims regarding cultural permeability and transculturation are
false as such—they clearly are not—but rather because they do not sufficiently
recognize the simultaneous but 'invisible' presence of dominant power relations
which underlie and indeed drive the process of globalization. The former British
Prime Minister Tony Blair always talked euphemistically of the need for the
'modernization' of institutions, when what he really meant was that he wished
to make them more controllable, centralized and efficient. The term 'moderni
zation' in this sense is clearly a version of what Max Weber had identified as
the process of rationalization (Rationalisierung), or more specifically (in view
of Weber's four types of rationality) means-ends, or instrumental rationality
(Zweckrationalitdt)}0 According to Jttrgen Habermas: '"Modernization" was
introduced as a technical term only in the 1950s' - a conceptual product of the
empirical social sciences of that period, particularly in the English-speaking
world, to the extent that it 'dissociates "modernity" from its modern European
origins and stylizes it into a spatio-temporally neutral model for processes of
social development in general'." What he has to say by way of elaboration of
the connection with Max Weber's concept of 'rationalization' is invaluable as
part of my attempt to establish a context of ideas in which to place an under
standing of globalization. Habermas writes:
The concept of modernization refers to a bundle of processes that are cu
mulative and mutually reinforcing: to the formation of capital and the mobiliza
tion of resources; to the development of the forces of production and the increase
in the productivity of labor; to the establishment of centralized political power
9 See W. Welsch, 'Cities of the Future: Aspects from Architectural Theory and Cultural
Philosophy', in Undoing Aesthetics, trans. A. Inkpin (London: Sage Publications, 1997), 134-149.
10 M. Weber, Selections in Translation, trans. E. Matthews, ed. W.G. Runciman (Cam
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 28-29.
J. Habermas, 'Modernity's Consciousness of Time', in The Philosophical Discourse of
Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. F. G. Lawrence (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987; orig. German
ed. 1985), 2.
70 Max Paddison
and the formation of national identities; to the proliferation of rights of political

participation, of urban forms of life, and of formal schooling; to the seculariza
tion of values and norms; and so on.
I suggest that we understand globalization as a version of 'modernization' in
this sense - the global extension of capitalism to rationalize world economies and
bring them under one principle. That this also results in the permeation, 'blending'
and homogenization of previously diverse cultures is simply an epiphenomenon. It
is equally true to say that the same process can also encourage the appearance of
diversity if required - for instance, for the purposes of world tourism and the
package holiday industry, or the commodification of 'world music'.
Ill
From the perspective of globalization as a further stage in a larger process
of modernization as economic and cultural rationalization, we need to ask what
it is to be 'modern'—in the sense of 'aesthetically modern'—in the context of
the dominant paradigms of European modernism and modernity. It is clear that
such a notion is dependent on two others which themselves form a polarity: the
concepts of 'tradition' and of 'the new', or 'the avant-garde'. Jürgen Habermas
makes a succinct attempt to identify the key feature of modernism and, in
broader terms, of modernity when he writes: 'Modernity revolts against the
normalizing functions of tradition; modernity lives on the experience of rebel
ling against all that is normative.'12 In his speech given in Frankfurt in 1980 on
being awarded the Theodor W. Adorno Prize he proposed that we are in a sense
'still the contemporaries of that kind of aesthetic modernity which first appeared
in the midst of the nineteenth century.'13 This was itself the result of the disen
chantment of the myths of the classical and ancient worlds and was a direct out
come of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Habermas suggests that 'the
idea of being "modern" by looking back to the ancients changed with the belief,
inspired by modern science, in the infinite progress of knowledge and in the
infinite advance towards social and moral betterment.'14 Contained here, there
fore, is the recognition that conceptions of the modern, modernism, and moder
nity have changed historically. Initially they defined themselves in relation to a
sense of a classical past, but then, by the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
they did so in relation to modernism's own, ever-changing and self-enclosed
notion of 'the classical'. As Habermas puts it:
Our sense of modernity creates its own self-enclosed canons of being
classic. In this sense we speak, e.g., in view of the history of modern art, of a
12 J. Habermas, 'Modernism - An Incomplete Project', in H. Foster (ed.), Postmodern

Culture (London: Pluto Press, 1983), 5.
" Ibid., 4.
14 Ibid.
classical modernity. The relation between 'modern' and 'classical' has definitely
lost a fixed historical reference.15
In view of Habermas's account of notions of modernism, modernity, and
modernization, I suggest that the polar concept of 'tradition' (by which I mean
modernism's opposite) can be understood in at least three distinct but related
senses. First, tradition can refer to 'the classical', or more broadly to 'classi
cism'; second, it can refer to notions of the 'folk', of 'traditional culture', a
sense of 'identity creation' drawing on shared notions of 'the epic' and
'community' and the relation to 'nature'; and third, it can refer to consensus,
particularly that based on a shared sense of rational models, including even that
of the natural sciences as described by Thomas S. Kuhn in his attempt to locate
his concept of the 'paradigm'. Seen in this way, the concept of tradition is itself
riven by contestatory impulses, including both the unreflective and the
reflective: at the one extreme is a traditional form of 'rationality' that is simply
'the way we do things', according to Max Weber - a limiting concept within his
four types of rationality, which is rational only in the narrowest possible sense,
in that it is uncritical and unreflective and simply abides by handed-down rules
of thinking and conduct; at the other extreme, on the contrary, 'tradition' can
also be understood as a reflexion upon established paradigms in order to
continue to test them, according to Thomas S. Kuhn.16
The 'New', on the other hand, has been associated since the rise of Euro
pean aesthetic modernism in the nineteenth century (that is, immediately fol
lowing the 1 848 revolutions that took place across most of Western and middle
Europe, but not in Britain or Russia, or for that matter in most of the Balkans)
with the search for the different, the not yet known, with the implication that
that which is already known, the humdrum and everyday, is no longer worth
knowing, and must be left behind in the search for the new and the unforeseen.
It is Baudelaire who probably best expresses modernism's precarious balancing \
act on the fulcrum between the unbearable and the unknowable. At the same I
time the endless quest for the ever new, inextricably associated with artistic in
novation, is also inseparable from the exotic, the strange, the foreign, the uto
pian, and in its voyages to the peripheries, the boundaries of the already known,
it is in the business of colonising and bringing home rich booty from the lands
of the Other. But Jean-Francois Lyotard points to what is possibly the most im
portant qualification of the avant-garde - that it promotes reflexion rather than
persuasion; and it is persuasion that could be said to characterise the perpetua- J
tion of tradition.17
16 See T. S. Kuhn, The Structure ofScientific Revolutions (3rd ed) (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1996; orig. ed. 1962)
1 See J.-F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Explained to Children (London: Turnaround, 1992), 64.
72 Max Paddison
IV
Innovation in the modernist sense is also the recognition of change
through reflexion, an awareness that the ground has moved beneath one's feet.
Interestingly, the notion of the paradigm shift as catastrophic, sudden change
beneath the surface of the old, the established consensus, can tell us important
things about the emergence of the new. I should therefore like to spend a few
moments considering Thomas S. Kuhn's concept of the paradigm shift. While I
should say immediately that in no sense do I wish to perpetuate the idea that it
is possible simply to transpose Kuhn's celebrated notion of paradigm shifts
from the history of science to the history of art, there is nevertheless much that
can be derived from it to provide models for how change comes about over pe
riods of time also in music. But this is hardly surprising, as Wolfgang Welsch
has also pointed out,18 because Kuhn got his idea for the paradigm shift in the
natural sciences from the history of the arts in the first place. In his 1 969 post
script to The Structure ofScientific Revolutions (1962) Kuhn writes:
To the extent that the book portrays scientific developments as a succes
sion of tradition-bound periods punctuated by non-cumulative breaks, its theses
are undoubtedly of wide applicability. But they should be, for they are borrowed
from other fields. Historians of literature, of music, of the arts, of political deve
lopment, and of many other human activities have long described their subjects
in the same way.19
The recognition that the history of science is, like the history of the arts,
characterized by periods of crisis and revolution as well as by periods of appar
ently rational and cumulative progress is taken by Welsch as support for his
claim that 'the transition to an aesthetic interpretation of truth, reality and cog
nition represents the basic philosophical process of the last two hundred
years.'20 What is to be assumed, at one level at least, is that (i) a certain kind of
'conscious endeavour' is involved both in the natural sciences and in the arts
which at the same time is dependent on intuition and 'hunch' for a radically in
novative breakthrough, while (ii) innovation and change come about not
through trying to work outside any traditional consensus, but rather through fo
cusing closely on the problems and tensions which develop within the consen
sus itself and which, finally, according to Kuhn, lead to its collapse. In his arti
cle 'The Essential Tension: Tradition and Innovation in Scientific Research'
(1959), and which pre-dates his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,
Kuhn draws on the debates from the 1950s about the distinctions between con-
18 See W. Welsch, 'Basic Aesthetic Features in Contemporary Thinking', in Undoing Aes

thetics, trans. A. Inkpin (London: Sage Publications, 1997), 44-45.
19 T. S. Kuhn, The Structure ofScientific Revolutions (3rd ed.), 208.
20 W. Welsch, 'Basic Aesthetic Features in Contemporary Thinking', in Undoing Aesthet
ics, 44.
vergent and divergent thinkers, and emphasises the crucial role played by rigor
ous training, characteristic of convergent thinking, in contrast to the stress
placed on creativity, characteristic of divergent thinking, and normally identi
fied with the arts. In the natural sciences the movement appears to be, according
to Kuhn's theory, from one firm consensus to another, the shift only occurring
when the existing consensus collapses. For Kuhn's theory, each such period of
firmly accepted consensus is what we could call the 'tradition'. Kuhn writes:
Yet - and this is the point - the ultimate effect of this tradition-bound
work has invariably been to change the tradition. Again and again the continuing
attempt to elucidate a currently received tradition has at last produced one of
those shifts in fundamental theory, in problem field, and in scientific standards to
which I previously referred as scientific revolutions. At least for the scientific
community as a whole, work within a well-defined and deeply-ingrained tradi
tion seems more productive of tradition-shattering novelties than work in which
no similarly convergent standards are involved. How can this be so? I think it is
because no other sort of work is nearly so well suited to isolate for continuing
and concentrated attention those loci of trouble or causes of crisis upon whose
recognition the most fundamental advances in basic science depend.21
He argues that discoveries and innovation emerge out of growing know
ledge of the inadequacies of the older models: 'the prelude to much discovery
and all novel theory is not ignorance, but the recognition that something has
gone wrong with existing knowledge and beliefs.'22 It is his view that 'the
productive scientist must be a traditionalist who enjoys playing intricate games
by pre-established rules in order to be a successful innovator who discovers new
rules and new pieces with which to play them.'23 In spite of the questionable
nature of making such connections between science and the arts, it is difficult
not to see the development, for example, of Schoenberg's innovations in the
light of all that Kuhn has said. By this I mean that Schoenberg, as a musical tra
ditionalist, discovered the inadequacies and limitations of tonality in seeking to
extend the system from within to the point of collapse. It was through this that
he became an innovator, not through any essentially radical impulse.
V
The concept of modernism, through the polarization of 'tradition' and
'the new', gives rise to two different relations to time and history in the process
of identity creation: as Homi Bhabha has termed it in The Location of Culture
21 T. S. Kuhn, 'The Essential Tension: Tradition and Innovation in Scientific Research'

(1959), in The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change (Chicago &
London: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 234.
22 Ibid., 235.
23 Ibid., 237.
74 Max Paddison
(1994),24 the traditional relation to the past is characterized by nostalgia, and the
innovatory relation of the avant-garde to the future is utopian in character. And
yet there is something extremely real and concrete about the historical condi
tions that have both given rise to and which have played a role in the changing
face of modernism. This emerges the instant we attempt to locate the emergence
of modernism historically and its utopian narratives.
While it can be said that the 'modern age' begins in the eighteenth cen
tury, as a result of the triple effect of Enlightenment, the French revolution and
the industrial revolution, with perhaps its first optimistic manifestation in the
American Revolution of 1776, 1 subscribe to the view that it was the shock of
the failure of the 1 848 revolutions in Europe that created the unique conditions
for the appearance of an avant-garde.25 By this I mean what is essentially an
alienated and self-reflexive art, which is to say, an art increasingly alienated
from its audience and from the terms of reference that previously had given it
meaning. That there were undeniably other important historical turning points it
would be pointless to deny - for example, 1870-71, with the unification of
Germany, the Franco-Prussian War and the defeat of France. The argument for
this is that French national pride was wounded by the defeat, and this resulted in
attempts to re-establish a sense of national identity - for example, through at
tempts to create a musical tradition to rival that of Germany both through Saint-
Safins 's encouragement of autonomous instrumental music and through the ef
forts of an emerging French musicology to recover the musical past and make it
available through editing and publishing collected editions of the old masters.
Indeed, this kind of frenetic nationalistic activity in France and Germany and to
a lesser extent Italy—the cultural centres of the 'Great Tradition' of European
art music—is mirrored in the European peripheries by the rise of Nationalisms
as an effort to manufacture a sense of identity, community and origins which
could shield consciousness from the anxieties of isolation at the margins, as
well as from the effects of modernity.26 This occurred as various avant-garde
movements were beginning to emerge from the sense of futility and emptiness
following the events of 1848-49. The years leading up to 1889 and the Paris
Exposition Universelle of that year show the flight from 'the unbearable to the
unknowable' that was Symbolism in the context of an extraordinary influx of
the exotic, the strange and in effect 'the New' on an almost industrial scale in
France, and which was a direct result of colonial exploitation by the European
powers. And of course, there is the fin de siecle a few years either side of 1 900
24 H. Bhabha, The Location ofCulture (London: Routledge, 1994; repr. 2006), 324.
25 See E. Hobsbawm, The Age ofRevolution (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962, 3rd
impr. 1996), 270.
26 For an excellent overview and analysis of these positions, see J. Samson, 'Nations and
nationalism', in J. Samson (ed.), The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music (Cam
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 568-600.
with its yearning for the transcendental in harness with the exotic and the deca
dent. There's probably no need to continue with this rapid overview of familiar
starting dates frequently cited as the beginnings of aesthetic modernism and the
avant-garde. And yet, if there are overall trends that become apparent, they are,
on the one hand, an inexorable move from the celebration of audience towards
the retreat from audience, which is the retreat into formalism and subjectivity
that stems ultimately, I would argue, from 1 848; and on the other hand there is
the deep, even atavistic urge to find identity and a sense of belonging in tradi
tion and collectivity, even when this has to be fabricated, as was the case with
the rise of various nationalist movements across Europe right into the twentieth
century. This could be further identified as the attempt to re-establish the pre-
modern in the context of the modern, as a retreat from the process of moderni
zation and rationalization. In this one respect Nationalism in this sense could be
said to have one thing in common with the retreat into formalism and the auton
omy aesthetic: defence against rationalization.
This brings us back to the concept of autonomy as one defining charac
teristic of modernism and the avant-garde. It was, so Adorno had argued, its
very autonomy that had ensured the survival of the avant-garde, of the modern
ist art work, as a moment of protest against its absorption into the means-ends
rationality of the everyday, and of total commodification. But the retreat into
autonomy no longer necessarily leads to the survival of the avant-garde art
work, as in the age of heroic modernism. This had already by the 1950s shifted
towards the modernism of the Absurd, where the Beckettian interior monologue
of the post-war novels had caused even Adorno to reassess the kind of 'heroic
modernism' for which he had up to then continued to act as protagonist, and to
revisit the apparent futility and cynical emptiness of Stravinsky in the light of
Beckett's position.27 But by the late 1960s - let's say for the sake of con
venience 1 968 - the position of an avant-garde already appeared to be seriously
undermined for quite other reasons. In part this was because of what Adorno
had identified as 'the disintegration of musical material', by which he meant
that the handed down material no longer carried the sense of 'historical neces
sity' that had provided the impetus for advanced composers either to develop to
destruction or to reject outright. But also in part, I suggest, it was because of the
1960s cultural 'underground', characterized by eclecticism, ahistoricism, and
boundless curiosity, and which simply accepted, for instance, a vast range of
apparently very different musics as nevertheless having something in common.
Stockhausen, Stravinsky, Webern, Pierre Henry and John Cage along with the
Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa, John Coltrane, Cecil Parker and Bob Dylan, Missis
sippi Delta blues, Tibetan Buddhist temple chants, and Moroccan Sufi music
27 See M. Paddison, 'Stravinsky as devil: Adorno's three critiques', in J. Cross (ed.), The
Cambridge Companion to Adorno (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 201-202.
76 Max Paddison
from the Rif Mountains'" would be regarded as unproblematical cases of the

infinite diversity and creativity of the world in which they lived. In fact, every
thing could be material, and all experience could be the aesthetic experience,
and knowledge of the world could be a sensual knowledge of relaxed creativity.
There was a sense, at least for a few years at the end of the 1960s and the very
beginning of the 1970s, that indeed the margins were the centre now, and that it
was really possible to live at the boundaries where everyone was potentially an
avant-garde artist. This was, of course, a dream, 1880s Symbolism with the
technology of mass culture (it's no coincidence that J.-K. Huysmans A Rebours
of 1884 had a minor cult revival during the late 1960s when republished in
English translation as a Penguin Modern Classic, and Baudelaire's Les paradis
artificiels was read at the sophisticated end of the drug culture). It was a dream,
moreover, which failed to recognize the fundamental power of economic and
political realities even while, at another level, protesting against them. In this
case the 'reality' of 1960s counter culture did not address the realities of an in
creasingly global capitalism.
The idea of 'world music' dominated much of the avant-garde in the
1960s, in particular as Weltmusik, as Bjorn Heile has demonstrated in detail in
recent work29 - pieces by Stockhausen like Telemusik, Stimmung and Mantra
and Kagel's Exotica immediately come to mind. At the same time, however, the
avant-garde had also been strongly influenced by Dadaism and the readymade
through Marcel Duchamp, the Fluxus collective, and in music through John
Cage. It seems to me that this had two important consequences for avant-garde
art: (i) an approach to the structuring of found elements that was constellatory
and non-hierarchical, and (ii) a detached and apolitical relation to materials. But
particularly interesting in this respect is the German artist Joseph Beuys be
cause, although all these elements are in place, his work nevertheless confronts
'hidden meanings', albeit obliquely - in his case the War, Nazism, and Ausch
witz. A radio operator in the Luftwaffe during World War 2, he was shot down
over the Crimea; badly injured and unconscious, he was rescued, so he claimed,
by Tartars, members of a shamanistic culture who treated his injuries with ani
mal fat and wrapped him in layers of felt to keep him warm. As an artist in the
1960s and 1970s his installation work returned constantly to this experience,
using found materials like fat, felt, fur, and animals, both dead and alive, to cre
ate a mythological and shamanistic context of his own, where mysterious rituals
are enacted with 'poor' materials which become heavily symbolic, but where
the overwhelming but never-stated meanings become eloquent in terms of his-
The famous case of what has been dubbed 'the first ever recording of World Music',
the 1971 album Brian Jones presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka, comes to mind here (Rolling
Stones Records COC49100).
29 See B. Heile, 'Weltmusik and the Globalization of New Music', in B. Heile (ed.). The
Modernist Legacy: Essays on New Music.
torical time and geographical space. The Italian art historian Sandro Bocola
cites Thomas McEvilley on Beuys:
Even if his solution to the nightmare of war was first and foremost mythi
cal, symbolic and escapist, at least he addressed it. He addressed the war by
avoiding it, and he avoided it by addressing it. Even if he did not achieve a truly
political standpoint as an artist, he nevertheless embodied the war and its pain
and confusion in an art that reeks so much of Auschwitz that it will not readily
pale.30
It could be said that Beuys 's art crosses boundaries in many senses -
cultural, historical, and geographical - and in ways that it is difficult, for exam
ple, for music to do. At the same time, however, there are many troubling as
pects to Beuys's mythmaking, his assumption of the role of artist-shaman, and
his relation to an archaic world of tradition that seems to be part archaeology
and part healing. Not least, of course, was his perhaps inevitable relation to the
culture business itself, and the need to make money. In the mid 1970s Beuys's
work took the form of lectures around the world, where he talked to people
sometimes in art galleries and often on street corners, standing in front of a
blackboard on which he wrote in chalk, drawing on his discussions with the
public. He argued that 'everyone is an artist', and that everything we do is a
work of art. Each blackboard, when full, was taken down from the stand and
another, empty one put in its place. After each session his assistants sprayed
each of the boards with fixative, and they were then presumably sold. When
questioned about this by a member of the public at a session at the Victoria and
Albert Museum in London in the early 1980s, Beuys simply responded: 'An
artist must live!'.
VI
I conclude not with conclusions but with some thoughts on questions of
hybridity and existence on the margins, in the in-betweeness of shifting bounda
ries, both historically and currently, and how these can be understood in relation
to modernism and the avant-garde. From the perspective of globalization as a
further stage in a larger process of modernization as economic and cultural ra
tionalization, I have discussed what it is to be 'modern' in the context of the
dominant paradigms of European modernism and modernity. I have suggested
that there is a clear distinction to be made between advanced modernization as a
socio-economic process and advanced modernism as an aesthetic movement (or
series of movements). I have also suggested that modernism is defined by the
conflict between the process of societal modernization and the claims of tradi-
T. McEvilley (catalogue of the 1988 Beuys exhibition, Berlin), cited in Sandro Bocola,
'Magic and Ritual: Modern Symbolism', in The Art of Modernism (Munich, London and New
York: Prestel, 1999), 527.
78 Max Paddison
tion. At the same time the question has been raised as to what forms aesthetic
modernism and the avant-garde might take in the context of globalization, and
in particular, how do 'modernisms' manifest in relation to nationalism in pri
marily agrarian cultures that have come relatively late to industrialization. As a
coda to these discussions I want to consider some very relevant issues raised by
Adorno in a famous footnote concerning Bartok and Janacek in Philosophy of
New Music. Adorno writes:
Where the developmental tendency of occidental music was not fully car
ried through, as in many agrarian regions of southern Europe, it has been possi
ble right up to the present to use tonal material without opprobrium. Mention
may be made here of the extraterritorial, yet in its rigor the magisterial art of
LeoS Janacek, as well as much of Bart6k's, who in spite of his folkloristic pen
chant at the same time counted among the most progressive composers in Euro
pean art music. The legitimation of such music from the periphery in every case
depends on its having developed a coherent and selective technical canon. In
contrast to the productions of Nazi blood-and-soil ideology, truly extraterritorial
music - whose material, while common in itself, is organized in a totally differ
ent way from occidental music - has a power of alienation that associates it with
the avant-garde and not with nationalistic reaction. Ideological blood-and-soil
music, by contrast, is always affirmative and allied with 'the tradition', whereas
it is precisely the tradition of all official music that is suspended by Janacek's
diction, modelled on his language, even in the midst of all the triads.31
Bartok and Janacek did not, of course, fit into Adorno 's scheme in Phi
losophy of New Music, which, as is well known, focuses exclusively on
Schoenberg and Stravinsky.32 And yet he recognized the progressive character
of their music, precisely in fact because they came from the periphery, even
though the implications of his scheme seemed to favour the centre. The essen
tial point for Adorno, however, is the relationship to musical material, and the
necessity for a technical consistency to be developed to enable this to come
about 'authentically' in relation to the particular demands of the material - in
this case the use of materials that had until this point, due to their pre-modern
character within what were still largely pre-industrial, agrarian economies, re-
31 T. W. Adorno, Philosophy ofNew Music, translated, edited, and with an introduction by

R. Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), note 4, 176.
32 It is interesting that in Philosophy ofNew Music Adorno regards Schoenberg as essen
tially provincial and traditional in his outlook, in spite of the radical contribution he made to the
emergence of musical modernism, while Stravinsky he sees as cosmopolitan and 'modern', and,
although as essentially conservative in his intentions, not primarily concerned with the traditional
folk culture of his native Russia, in spite of the works of the 'Russian period'. Richard Taruskin's
monumental study Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1996), on the contrary, has revealed the extent to which Stravinsky's modernism was achieved
'by deliberately playing the traditions of Russian folk music against those of the provincial, dena
tionalized Russian art music in which he had been reared.' (R. Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Rus
sian Traditions, Vol. 1, 18).
tained an unfamiliarity that had a radical potential within the context of Euro
pean art music. That is to say, through the encounter with the dominant forms
and genres of European art music, such materials, hitherto associated with tra
dition and nationalism, created a tension which led to the transformation of
both. Hence, so he argued, it had 'a power of alienation that associates it with
the avant-garde' rather than with the reactionary and conservative ideologies of
nationalism.
I end with proposals from Homi Bhabha which shift the frame of refer
ence so that all is now periphery, with the resulting condition of anxiety that this
recognizes - it is, in a sense, the extension of Adorno's notion of the position of
the avant-garde into the age of globalization. Bhabha writes of the need 'to ne
gotiate narratives where double-lives are led in the postcolonial world, with its
journeys of migration and its dwellings of the diasporic.' He suggests that 'these
subjects of study require the experience of anxiety to be incorporated into the
analytic construction of the object of critical attention: narratives of the border
line conditions of cultures and disciplines.' And he concludes, citing Samuel
Weber: 'For anxiety is the affective address of "a world [that] reveals itself as
caught between frames, a doubled frame or one that is split.'"33
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Samson, Jim, 'Nations and nationalism', in Samson (ed.), The Cambridge History of
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Taruskin, Richard, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions, Vol.1 (Oxford: Oxford Uni
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MoKc TladucoH
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nojMOBH MoaepHH3Ma h aBaHrapae, Kaico y oaHOcy Ha uempe eBponcKor Mo-
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KOHuenTH MOaepHH3Ma h H>HXOBe Me^yco6He Be3e, HapoHHTo y oaHocy Ha
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aoM. BpcTe KOH^jiHKTa Koje H3 Tora pe3yjiTHpajy, y KpeTaH>y H3Me^y ueHTapa
h nepH(J)epHja, HHHe KOHuenryajmo cpeaHurre OBor paaa. HaHHH>eHa je flHc-
THHKuHja H3Me^y KOHuenaTa ecTeTHHKor MoaepHH3Ma (KojH cy MHorocTpyKH,
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pa 3ajeaHHHKH kohtckct yHyrap Kojer ecTeraHKH MOêpHH3aM nocTojH, 3ajea-
HO ca pa3jiHHHTHM aBaHrapflHHM noKpeTHMa KojH cy ce nojaBHjiH Kao peaKuHja
Ha H>era).
MUSICAL MODERNISM AT THE 'PERIPHERY'?
SERBIAN MUSIC IN THE FIRST HALF
OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
KATARINA TOMASEVIC
The Missing Part

I WILL start this paper with some observations which, at first sight, but
only supposedly at that, have no relation to the title. They are the result of the
subsequent thinking on certain aspects and effect of the 'encounters' and dia
logues between 'musicology/ies of "centres'" and those of the 'periphery/ies'.
Choosing to speak at the conference about Serbian music in the first half of the
twentieth century which is in the focus of my long-term research, but which,
from the perspective of Western 'Others'—at least according to the old cliche—
belongs to the history of so-called 'small nations on the periphery of Europe', I
was aware in advance of numerous limitations and barriers standing for a long
time in the way of the reception of musicological discourses on a subject which
has not found its place in the anthologies of the 'ever-lasting goods' of Euro
pean music practice, the poetics and aesthetics of modernism. Neither has it
been recognized as one of the equal alterities of the musical identity of modern
Europe.
I believe that in the eyes of a Western musicologist, oriented primarily
towards Anglo-Saxon and German general literature, my initial intention in this
article to 'reconsider' the complex position and characteristics of modernism in
Serbian music in the first half of the twentieth century may seem confusing if
not bizarre. Of course, I will not say anything new by pointing yet again to the
complete absence of Serbian artistic music from general Western histories,1 in-
1 See M. Milin, 'General Histories of Music and the Place of European Periphery',
Muzikologija (Musicology), 1 (2001), 141-148; the same author, 'The Place of Small Musical
Cultures in Reference Books', report at the International Conference 'Music's Intellectual His
tory: Founders, Followers&Fads\ The City University of New York Graduate Centre, New
York, 16-19 March 2005 , in print.
84 Katarina Tomasevic
cluding the most recently published.2 It would certainly be illusory even to at

tempt to list the reasons for the absence of not only Serbian art music but also
art music from the countries of ex-Yugoslavia and the Balkans (with rare ex
ceptions!); it is the fact that it has permanently been marginalized and so far
completely ignored in Western historiography strategies of defining the musical
identity of Europe. The reasons were numerous and various but one, not insig
nificant portion of responsibility, no doubt lies with national musicologies.3
I will state, however, at the outset, that the place of the epoch of Serbian artistic
modernism in contemporary Western historiography cannot be spoken of as
'peripheral'; by simple and complete abstraction it has been placed on the other
side of the line which 'new' Europe, personified in the form of the European
Union has also, at least until now, chosen as the official border of its own civili
zation. Still, although very current and relevant not only for contemporary re
consideration of the complexity of the physiognomy of the European art music
tradition and its reach, but also for the profound methodological revision of
stereotypical views of the relation between 'centres' and 'peripheries', 'cores'
and 'margins' - the problems of music historiography in the postmodern era are
very complex and defy the possibility of dealing in detail here.4
On the other hand, it seemed that, due to the wars themselves in the ter
ritory of ex-Yugoslavia at the beginning of the nineties, when—according to yet
another old cliche—the news about the horrors and strife in the Balkans once
again turned the attention of the world to this region,5 there would be a new op
portunity of making the cultural heritage of the Balkan nations once again more
significantly interesting to Western historians, sociologists, cultural anthropolo
gists, musicologists and ethnomusicologists. After the revolution in academic
circles caused by the publication of the capital work Orientalism by Edward
Said,5 after the wave of reactions following Maria Todorova's important study
Imagining the Balkans? after the witty and provocative analysis pursued in a
Lacanian spirit, in which the world-famous philosopher Slavoj Zizek reasoned
2 N. Cook and A. Pople, The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music (Cambridge

University Press, 2004); R.Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music (Oxford University
Press, 2005)
3 M. Milin, 'General Histories of Music and the Place of European Periphery', 145-146.
4 See e.g. J. Tillman, 'Writing Twentieth-Century Music History in Postmodern Times',
STM/Online, 3 (2000) ISSN 1403-5715; N. Cook's 'Introduction' in The Cambridge History of
Twentieth-Century Music; J. Samson, 'Borders and Bridges: Preliminary Thoughts on Balkan
Music', Muzikologija (Musicology), 5 (2005), 37-55; the same author, 'Rewriting Nineteenth-
Century Music History', http://www.mmc.edu.mk/IRAM/Conferences/ContemporaryTrendslV/
JSamson.pdf .
5 M. Todorova, Imaginarni Balkan (Imagining the Balkans), 2nd edition (Beograd : Biblio-
teka XX vek-Krug , 2006), 348.
6 E. Said, Orientalism (New York : Routledge , 1978)
7 M. Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (New York : Oxford University Press, 1997)
MUSICAL MODERNISM AT THE 'PERIPHERY'?.. 85
the causes of the breakup of the multinational Yugoslavia, it was not unex
pected for the culture of the Balkans to be recognized in the academic circles of
the West as uncharted territory (as Maria Todorova herself 'admitted' when
explaining the 'exclusiveness' of the notion of 'Balkanism'9).
Equipped with modern, efficient tools and the elastic methods of post-
structural and postcolonial theories, scholars from the West, as well as their
followers in the 'domestic field', quickly recognized the 'values' presented by
the Balkans with all its infinite multi-ethnic and multi-religious resources. On
the example of the countries of ex-Yugoslavia, particularly Serbia, it has be
come, moreover, possible to observe and analyze 'in vivo' the role and function
of music in the 'experiments' of establishing and strengthening totalitarian re
gimes, reconstructing nationalist ideologies and collective identities, and re
storing religious and mythical consciousness. Before this last series of Balkan
wars in Europe, all of this could only be read about only in literature! In none of
the countries of the Eastern block which, after the fall of the Berlin wall, gradu
ally entered the transition process were there such convincing and obvious ex
amples as in Serbia of efficacious alliance between music and power politics -
both local and global. The situation of Serbia which, in the eyes of the West
during the nineties was represented as the 'last remaining stronghold' of com
munism in Europe, became radical to an extreme point during the NATO
bombing campaign (1999), when 'neo-barbarism' was righteously discussed on
both sides. If nothing else, the news from Serbia in those months (March-June
1999) became the 'breaking news' in the repertoires of all world's electronic
and printed media; not for the first time in the history of modern Europe, Serbia
was once again at the very centre of world attention! Therefore the focus of
world musicological attention shifted to the 'musical instruments and weapons'
used by the official Serbian politics at that time.
In the eyes of Serbian intellectuals who carried the heaviest burden of
democratic change during the nineties, advocating primarily the political inte
gration of the country into the European circle, the data on publishing quite a
large range of studies dedicated to the phenomena of 'newly composed folk mu
sic' and 'turbo-folk'10 were taken, at the least, as yet another sign of the increase
in the density of the clusters ofnegative images of Serbia and its non-European
cultural identity. However, I don't see anything problematic in the fact that the
'stars' of Serbian commercial 'folk' music—those obscure products and at the
same time one of the most powerful weapons of the totalitarian regime—have
8 See e.g. S. 2i2ek, Tarrying with the Negative (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993),
200-237.
9 M. Todorova, Imaginarni Balkan (Imagining the Balkans), 9.
10 See e.g. M. Slobin (ed.), Retuning Culture. Musical Changes in Central and Eastern
Europe, (Durham and London : Duke University Press, 1996); Lj Rasmussen, Newly Composed
Folk Music of Yugoslavia (New York and London : Routledge, 2002)
come within the interpretative reach of modern scholarship." What is worrying

and what I want to draw attention to is the continuity of relatively scarce interest
from contemporary world musicology in the so-called classical repertoire of the
musical heritage of the Balkans and former Yugoslavia.12
Emerging in close relation to the processes of establishing the cultural
identity of modern Europe, doubtlessly belonging to the heritage which the
West recognizes as its own tradition, the art music of the Balkan nations has in
the past few decades also been exposed to the challenges of contemporary con
textual narratives which rightfully pay equal attention to 'elite' and 'popular',
classic, avant-garde and commercial music. Unlike Serbian literature which—
we believe not only thanks to the Nobel prize awarded to Ivo Andric for his
brilliant novel The Bridge over the Drina—long ago found a safe place in the
curricula of many Slavic studies departments in the West, Serbian music of the
modern era is still on an uncertain path towards, in a hypothetically ideal situa
tion, final international acceptance and recognition as a specific element of
European culture, that is, one of its alterities.
Rethinking 'Centres' and 'Peripheries':

toward a New 'Geo-history' of Modernism
One of the important initial motives for holding the conference Rethink
ing Musical Modernism in Belgrade arose exactly from the wish of some of the
associates of the Institute of Musicology of the Serbian Academy of Sciences
and Arts to present, within an expert circle and, from as wide a range of view
points as possible - various aspects of the modernistic achievements of Serbian
music in its dialogue context. It seems that the initiative was timely, because, as
far as we know, signals have been arriving from many quarters that the time to
study modernism(s) [and avant-garde(s)!] on the 'peripheries' and 'margins' is
yet to come, at the same time as tendencies to revise, reconstruct and to rewrite
the 'new' cultural history of Europe and the West.13 It is interesting, moreover,
1 1 See also in my paper: 'Serbian Music in Times of Transitions', report at the Simposium
Into Modernism and Out of It. The Balkan Rites of Passages, organiser: Katy Romanou
(University of Athens), 'Transitions. 18th Congress of the International Musicological Society',
Zürich, Universität Zurich, Musikwissenschaflishes Institut, 10-15 July 2007, in print.
12 See e.g. J. Samson, 'Borders and Bridges', 48-49.
For instance, in 2003, the main theme of the Annual Conference of the Society for the
Study of French History in Nottingham (April, 10-11) was: France: Centres and Peripheries. In
2006 (November, 23-24), in Norway (Tromse), Det humanistiske fakultet (The Faculty of Hu
manities) and The Nordic Network for Avant-Garde Studies organized the seminar Centre-Pe
riphery. The Avant-garde and the Other. In Austria, in 2003, as a final result of three year re
search project, there was a conference Zentren. Peripherien und Kollektive Identitdten in Os-
tereich-Ungarn. The book that followed three years later, titled the same, is edited by E. Hars, W.
MUller-Funk, U. Reber&C. Ruthner (Tubingen: A. Francke Verlag 2006); see also S. Vervat (S.
Vervaet), the review of the latest book at http://www.ikum.org.yu/_pdf_kistorija/2006/130/6-06
to perceive that the model centre-periphery has not disappeared from theoreti
cal practice, despite the fact that post-structural thinkers have already decon
structed this contrastive pair as one of the leading hierarchy dichotomies of
Western civilization.14 On the contrary, in the flexible environment of the post
modern labyrinth of ideas numerous 'opposite' stances are created, so that right
fully—although without really giving up 'old' dichotomies, but in the attempt to
make them methodologically contemporary—numerous provoking questions
arise as well: ' "What, if anything, constitutes a cultural margin?", "Does the
cultural centre exist?", "Are margins and centres transferable?", "From what
scholarly, ideological and methodological stance can we talk about modernist
'margins'?"...'15 The impression, however, is that contemporary musicology
has just opened up the agenda on many new questions which, at least for the
moment, cannot be agreed upon.16 The already mentioned complex question of
the 'proper' concept of general music history is just one of many. We are wit
nessing processes in which 'small stories' deconstruct the 'big ones', or, at least
- try to do so.17 If in the older theoretical practice (not only in musicology!) it
was quite customary and legitimate to discuss the 'influences' of the 'centres'
on the 'periphery', whereas the 'periphery' was given the subordinate role of
passive receiver, that is why, today, it is absolutely illegitimate to overlook that
both members of that binary model are equally active participants in dynamic
processes of mutual interference. Moreover, it is obvious that—as Nicholas
Cook emphasizes—'the distinction between centre and periphery became in
creasingly fuzzy'.18 As the network of artistic communication is densely entan
gled, we are encouraged to rethink the relation of 'centre' and 'periphery'
within the more complex—risomatic model—or, as Edgar Morin successfully
does writing about European cultural identity in his important book How to
Think Europe - within the model of a whirlpool.19 Under the wing of imago-
logy, postcolonial studies and contemporary cultural studies, as well as semiot
ics, many old stereotypes have disappeared from the path of new rethinking on
the mutual histories of 'centres' and 'peripheries'. This has created, in fact, not
p.pdf.. In Chicago, U.S., in November 2005, a roundtable discussions The Avant-garde and the
Margin was held during the Modernist Studies Association conference; the result was: S. Bahun-
Radunovid and M. Pourgouris (eds.), The Avant-garde and the Margin: New Territories of Mod
ernism, (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006).
14 S. Vervat, 767.
15 S. Bahun-Radunovid and M. Pourgouris (eds.), The Avant-garde and the Margin, xiii.
16 See P. Bäckström, 'Sanja Bahun-Radunovid&M. Pourgouris (eds.), The Avant-garde
and the Margin, New Territories of Modernism, (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006), pp. 198,
http://uit.no/getfile.php?PageId=977&FileId=998.
17 J. Samson, 'Rewriting Nineteenth-Century Music History', 2.
N. Cook, 'Introduction' in N. Cook and A. Pople, The Cambridge History of Twentieth-
Century Music, 7.
19 E. Morin, Penser V Europe (Paris : Gallimar, 1987)
only a chance for new 'discoveries' of 'forgotten' territories of modernism(s)

[and avant-garde(s)] on 'peripheries' ('margins'), but also—as Susan Stanford
Friedman has suggested—for establishing a new, far more complete, and at the
same time more complex - 'geo-history of modernism'.20
There is no doubt that one particular 'small' geo-history of musical mod
ernism^), like the Serbian (as a part of the former Yugoslav), had a lot that was
different and specific to contribute to the future new, 'great', if not possible
'total' geo-history of modernism. The painstaking efforts of dedicated research
ers of the history of Serbian music in the twentieth century have provided ex
cellent starting predispositions for future integration. In a number of mono
graphs and numerous retrospective studies and articles on individual case stud
ies, a large and significant database has been assembled on the perception of the
faces of musical modernism(s) which belong equally to the history of Serbian
music in all its territories and have a certain importance for the completion of
the portrait of the plural identities of musical modernism(s) as a global phe
nomenon.
This is not just about pure facts which would no doubt be very useful for
a complete reconstruction of the map of the phenomenon of modernism. By ap
plying a very simple geo-historiographic strategy which would for a starting
point take the biographies of composers and musicians comprising the history
of Serbian music in modern times, we could, for example, mark all 'points' on
the map of Europe (and the world!) where they were educated, where they
stayed for specialization and where their achievements were presented. But, that
reconstructed map of mutual contacts would certainly form only a preliminary
starting point for examining complex political, ideological, cultural and artistic
relations of 'centres' and 'peripheries' in the networks of modernism(s). No less
important for the completion of the picture of the epoch is the corpus of data
from the history of repertoires and performances on national music stages. The
results of researching the history of musical life in Belgrade in the period be
tween the two World Wars clearly speak of the fact that, unlike the pre-war pe
riod, the capital of the newly-formed Kingdom became a very attractive point in
the international tours of many visiting foreign solo musicians and chamber,
symphony and opera ensembles, some of which were extraordinary! I believe
that the data about the presence of contemporary music in their programs as
well as its reception in Serbian musical critical reviews is significant for com
pleting our insight into specific features of the expansion of musical modernism
towards the territories of the 'periphery', but it also contributes, on the other
hand, to better understanding of position of particular 'centres' according to
S. S. Friedman, 'One Hand Claping: Colonialism, Postcolonialism, and the Spa-

tio/Temporal Boundaries of Modernism', presented at the Modernist Studies Associan Confe
rence, Chicago, U.S.A., November 3-6, 2005. Quoted according to: S. Bahun-Radunovic and M.
Pourgouris (eds.), The Avant-garde and the Margin, xvi.
their impact on the zones of 'peripheries'. As a new medium, the radio was also
a powerful communication channel and an important catalyst of modernization
processes. Data on the broadcast of foreign concerts on the Yugoslav radio net
work is also of great interest for the history of musical modernism. This is also
the case for the broadcast of concerts of Yugoslav music authors from Belgrade,
which were taken over by the all-important capitals in Europe. New music of
modern twentieth-century Europe had its own independent life in Serbian music
critical reviews and journals, which still represents a totally 'new', still un
discovered territory of modernism for the contemporary historiography of the
West.
A completely individual but undoubtedly most important field of the new
'geo-history' of music modernism is the corpus of art music itself. Referring to the
complexity of the nature of artistic communication between individual, group and
collective music identities in the epoch of modernism, the positioning and moni
toring of complex style trends in Serbian music within the dynamic network of Bal
kan and European—Western, Central and Eastern music identities, as well as their
'mixtures'—would deepen not only the knowledge about the direct effects of con
tacts between individual 'centres' and individual 'peripheries', about the close, spe
cific interactions of neighbouring zones of 'peripheries', but also about the dialogue
context of groups of 'peripheries' with groups of 'centres'.
It is clear, therefore, that the front of historiography strategies opening
with the question: 'How do Serbian music alterities illuminate European pro
jects of musical modernism in the first half of the twentieth century?'21 is ex
tremely broad, especially because the very notion of musical modernism, as was
shown in numerous papers at the Belgrade conference as well, comprises very
different phenomena.22 Many of the questions and suggestions I have presented
here originated not only from the research of the Serbian national history of music
and its broader—Yugoslav, Balkan and European frames—but also as the result
of constant re-examination of the methodological positions of national musico-
logy so far. Accepting partly the very destiny of its own territory, Serbian na
tional historiography (not only music historiography!) was characterized by its
frequently 'receptionist' character.23 As has been shown in many other disci-
21 This question is a paraphrase of the question Jim Samson has put in 'Borders and
Bridges', 37.
22 See L. Botstein, 'Modernism', Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accesed 24 July
2005), <http://www.grovemusic.com>. A wide range of definitions and classifications of the no
tion modernism in music, sometimes a deep difference in its use in Anglo-Saxon, German and
Slavic literature, as well as tendencies to use it as a style category (causing the problems with
periodization!), motivated the editorial board of the international journal Musicology, published
by the Institute of Musicology of SASA, to devote the Main Theme of the 6lh issue (Belgrade,
2006) to the notions of Tradition -Modernism-Avant-garde-Postmodernism. The issue can also
be seen on its web site: http://www.komunikacija.org.yu/komunikacija/casopisi/muzikologija.
2j See also M. Milin, 'General Histories of Music', 145.
90 Katarina TomaSevic
plines, the theories and methods of 'centres' could hardly be valid in fulfilling
the tasks of the relevant description, real understanding and evaluation of the
complex phenomena of modernism in the territories of the 'periphery'.24 Na
tional musicology was, for example, long faced with the problems of the style
periodization of Serbian music and that problem is apparently still open and
very provocative. But, with the processes of ever-faster integration of contem
porary Serbian musicology into the frames of postmodern scholarship, the time
has come to revise old cliches according to which the tendencies in Serbian mu
sic were a priori put into a subordinate position in comparison to the 'main
stream, progressive' tendencies in Western 'centres'. Just as in the rest of world,
here there also arose a re-examination and re-evaluation of the position that
Serbian music history has had in the common life of the family of modern
European music nations.
Territories of music modernism(s) have emerged on the horizon as a pre
ciously fruitful ground for re-examining of the place, role and contribution Ser
bian music as one of the alterities of European music has had in the common
fund of music ideas of mankind. On the paths of rethinking about the specific
features of modernism(s) in Serbian music there also arose a very important
question of effects which the processes of social modernization—in the interac
tion with the indigenous traditions—produced in the territories which were
slightly delayed in accepting modernization impulses. As Max Paddison points
out in his theoretically conceived work in this Collection, 'interactions of mo
dernisms with indigenous traditions (...) often lead to tension and conflict.'25
Led by this idea, on the following pages I will try to consider concisely this
very phenomenon, taking as examples only particular aspects of the specific
case of Serbian music in the first half of the twentieth century.
Origins of Tension: Development Discontinuity

and Aspects of Social Modernization
After the end of the First World War, Belgrade became the capital of a
newly established South-Slav state in the Balkans - the Kingdom of Serbs,
Croats and Slovenes.26 On the greatly changed geo-political map of Europe,
24 The problems of implementation of general theories of 'modernization' (by Hans-Ul-

rich Wehler and Talcott Parsons) on the specific case of the modernization of Belgrade and of
Serbian society between the two World Wars were, e.g., clearly demonstrated in P. Markovic's
book 'Beograd i Evropa. 1918-1941. Evropski uticaj na proces modernizacije' ['Belgrade and
Europe. 1918-1941. European Influence on the Process of Modernization] (Beograd : Savremena
administracija d.d., 1992).
25 M. Paddison, 'Centres and Margins: Shifting Grounds in the Conceptualization of Mo
dernism' in this book, 71.
26 From 1929 - Kingdom Yugoslavia, after WW II - Socialistic Federative Republic of
Yugoslavia.
Belgrade received the status of one of the most important political and adminis
trative centres in the Balkans. Still, within the new state, the position of Bel
grade as the cultural centre was specific: unlike other important Yugoslav cen
tres in the West - Zagreb and Ljubljana, as well as in the North - Novi Sad,
which thanks to their (peripheral) position within Austro-Hungarian empire had
enjoyed an even, continuous cultural development, Belgrade was a town with a
complex history of discontinuity whose cultural physiognomy at the beginning
of the twentieth century had achieved significant, positive results in the first
stages of 'Europeanization'27, but was also at the same time colourfully marked
by the layers of its own Oriental past and simultaneously firmly anchored in the
still existent system of its own patriarchal values.
After the First World War, when, as a consequence of a successful policy
of opening up to the West, but with the assistance of direct Western financial
investment as well, the intensive process of the capital's rapid modernization
began, Belgrade was simultaneously exposed to large demographic inflow of
population from the periphery, which in the field of culture produced confron
tation and conflict between various 'horizons of expectations' of the audience.
In the reception system, that conflict of 'horizons' was particularly sharply
manifested as a deep gap between the taste of the small intellectual elite, and, on
the other side - the taste of a much larger audience which brought to the city the
feeling of nostalgia for the country homeland left behind and its indigenous folk
tradition. The openness towards novelty, as a significant symptom of social
modernization, was also a recognizable feature of overall artistic processes in
Belgrade as a local cultural epicentre; however, it was equally opposed by quite
active and efficient resistance towards the New\ The coexistence of the dy
namic principle of 'progress' (a tendency towards change) and the static prin
ciple of 'inertness' (a tendency to keep the existent patriarchal system of values)
formed the field of extreme tension in which opposing political, ideological, po
etic, artistic and aesthetic projects, programs and actions clashed and competed
openly and at times very fiercely.
To what extent, however, that pregnant counterpointal dialogue of mod
ernity and tradition was a specific, exclusive feature of Belgrade as—according
to another old cliche—'cultural "periphery" of the West', but not of its leading
'centres' - Paris, Vienna, Berlin? Isn't the project of modernism, emerging from
the urban cores of Western Europe, exactly generally characterized by ever
The term 'Europeanization' is broadly used in Serbian theory and historiography, in

spite of the fact that Serbian history belongs (with ruptures in continuity!) to the history of Europe
(in its modern understanding). However, the term is often used as a synonym for 'modernization',
or -'Westernization'. As in the first-half of the twentieth century Belgrade also started to accept
indirectly, with the mediation of its Western 'centres' in Europe, influences from the USA, it is
clear that the term 'Europeanization' has became insufficient to cover all phenomena of cultural
interactions.
more dynamic processes of gradual modification, abandoning, reconsidering

and finally open disputation of tradition(s), so that the history of the modern era
in Europe is today rightfully observed as the 'history of decline of traditions'?
Doesn't this coexistence of progressive and regressive forces in the cultural
field of the Eastern-European, or—more 'precisely'—the Western European
'periphery' on the Balkans, represent simply the delayed, variant repetition of
the same phenomenon, where it is also essential to bear in mind the fact that—
due to a faster flow and more intensive communication of 'ideas' in the whirl
pool of European modernity—the 'periphery/ies' was progressively less late
(and, subsequently - closer!) to the 'centre/s'?
Nevertheless, what I would like to emphasize as the important difference
between the dialogicity28 of modernity and tradition in the 'advanced', 'progres
sive' Western 'centres' in comparison with Belgrade—as the observed, 'tardy'
zone of 'periphery'—is the intensity of tension which the oppositely oriented
forces of 'progress' and 'conservatism' reached at their peaks. The one of the
most important causes of the same phenomenon in Serbian music of the first
half of the twentieth century lies certainly in the abrupt, rapid leap of Serbian
society from a patriarchal into a modern social and cultural model; under ever
more frequent and forceful gusts of more radical novelties, the initially vital and
rigid, but with time weakened patriarchal system of values started to burst at the
seams, giving way to newly established models of modern bourgeois but also
anti-bourgeois culture; the emergence of the last was in the thirties connected
with the breakthrough and expansion of the communist left wing, both from the
East (Soviet Russia) and from left-oriented circles in the West.29 From the view
point of diachrony, it is clear that the 'onslaught' of the wave of novelties
coming from the West produced the strongest effect of chain explosions in the
first years right after the First World War, while, considering the strengthening
of the new system of modern attributes - the effect of the later 'onslaughts' was
more successfully cushioned.
The Power of Tradition and the Dynamics of Change

The other important difference between the dialogicity of the modernization
processes in the leading 'centres' and those on the 'periphery' (which were included
into modernization processes with a certain delay for historical and economic rea-
I use this notion in the spirit of Edgar Morin's and Mikhail Bakhtin's ideas.
29 About the typology of cultural models in Serbia see more in Milan Radulovic's book
Modernizam i srpska idealis!icka filozofija [Modernism and Serbian Idealistic Philosophy] (Beo-
grad : Institut za knjizevnost i umetnost, 1989). See also Biljana Milanovic's article 'Proucavanje
srpske muzike izmedju dva svetska rata: od teorijsko-metodoloSkog pluralizma do integralne
muziCke istorije' ['Styding Serbian Music between two World Wars: from Theoretical Methodo
logical Pluralism to Integral Music History'], Muzikologija (Musicology), 1 (2001), 49-91. See
also in my forthcoming book Serbian Music at the Cross-roads between East and West.
sons), is seen with a comparative insight into the sense and physiognomy of tradi
tion in observed periphery zones. Considering the fact that the notions of tradition
and, particularly - artistic tradition, are extremely complex, layered and dynamic,
here I will mention only several conclusions I have reached researching the field of
Serbian art music but which could, in certain circumstances, refer to most phenom
ena taken up by 'modernization' on the 'periphery'.
If tradition or one of its segments is long and fruitful, the degree of
achieved practice is higher, whereas the technical conditions of its preservation
are better, so the need for novelty arises (similarly as in the 'centres') as a result
of saturation leading to transformation. In Serbian music it is the case, for ex
ample, with the tradition of choir a cappella music. In the same way, if in a
relatively poor artistic tradition one genre which does not depend on a large
number ofparticipants has the longest continuity, novelty will, once again be
cause of the factor of saturation, also find its path and gradually or - in sharper
leaps, more rapidly and efficiently destruct the existing practice. Speaking of
Serbian art music, the previous observations refer to 'intimate' genres - to solo
song, piano miniature, chamber music forms. Novelties are slow in conquering
those genres whose realization requires a large number of participants, which
are economically dependent on the audiences' taste and which demand a change
in the reception system. The best examples for the above-mentioned thesis are
stage, theatre music genres: the mass and long-standing popularity of staunch
followers of romantic national ideology on Serbian music stages—Singspiel-
like plays with music—significantly slowed down the development of modern
music drama and almost completely disputed its retention in the repertoire (the best
examples are the modern music dramas of Petar Konjovic: Prince ofZetal 1927 and
Kostana/\93\). On the other hand and only at first sight paradoxically, it has also
been perceived that less developed artistic traditions more easily accept the inflow
ofnovelties: by taking the initiative, new norms are the ones dictating the intensity
and speed of the flow of artistic changes; it is not unusual that—in the absence of
strong resistance from 'the Old'—changes come about abruptly and rapidly, so that
in a relatively short period of time we witness the establishment ofparallelism as
well as the pluralism ofstyle programs, whose internal tension functions as a real
catalyst of future changes.
A Short History of the Tension: the Case of Serbian Music

In an attempt to outline thoroughly the specific position of Serbian music
in the first half of the twentieth century, I will now turn to its style physiog
nomy, which is the result of both a) the delayed development and the features of
inherited tradition which performed as the starting base-model at the beginning
of the century and of b) the effects of the parallel activities of different genera
tions of composers. Briefly, within a relatively short period—during the first

half of the twentieth century, but particularly after World War One—a very
rapid process of professional establishment, maturity and style branching and
layering occurred in Serbian music: ranging from its somewhat delayed and not
equally mature Romanticism results, to the first expressionist, atonal, athematic
and dodecafonic works. The fruitful life of the founder of Serbian music Ro
manticism and the most important figure in the eyes of his followers—Stevan
Stojanovic Mokranjac—ended in 1914. It was the time when the first generation
of composers who considered themselves to be modern appeared in Serbian
music; searching for 'the New', contemporary 'national style', they expanded
the starting Romanticism frame towards Postromanticism, enrichening it with
elements of Impressionism and Expressionism.
In the focus of attention of the debates led for decades by composers of
this generation from divergent strategically—politically, ideologically and aes
thetically motivated positions—there were problems of the 'modern national
style', where the main 'technical' problem was articulated in their various at
tempts at the synthesis of classical forms of Western music tradition with the
specific features of folklore material which most authors evaluated as the basic
'markers' of national identity.31 The review of style characteristics of the most
important representatives of the first generation of modernists—among whom
the oeuvres of Miloje Milojevic, Petar Konjovic and Stevan Hristic stood out—
represents at the same time the sets of dominant style attributes of Moderna in
Serbian music, which largely coincides with the definition of that movement—
die Moderne—given by Carl Dahlhaus.32 Similar to national literature and fine
arts, Moderna in Serbian music was not a monolithic, coherent style formation!
It was primarily the outcome of a restless 'search for style', opening up towards
new means of expression, but also the result of tearing down the national ro
mantic tradition in the spirit not only of recent tendencies of the Western, and
Central European music, but at the same time recent directions in Russian music
which, especially thanks to the post-revolutionary emigration of Russian artists
About thirty composers were active in the period. The representatives of the oldest
generation were Josif Marinkovic (1851-1931) and Stevan Stojanovic Mokranjac (1856-1914).
The main representatives of the next generation were born between 1883 and 1901: Petar Ko
njovic (1883-1970), Miloje Milojevic (1884-1946), Stevan Hristic (1885-1958), Milenko Pauno-
vic (1889-1924), Kosta Manojlovic (1890-1949), Josip Slavenski (1896-1955), Jovan Bandur
(1899-1956), Marko TajCevic (1900-1984), Mihailo Vukdragovic (1900-1986), Milenko 2iv-
kovic (1901-1964). The youngest generation was born during the first decade of the twentieth
century: Mihovil Logar (1902-1998), Predrag Milosevic (1904-1987), Dragutin Colic ( 1 907-
1990), Milan Ristid (1908-1982), Ljubica Marid (1909-2003), Stanojlo Rajicic (1910-2000),
Vojislav VuCkovic (1910-1942).
31 Compare M. Milin's article 'Musical Modernism in the 'Agrarian Countries of South-
Eastern Europe': The Changing Function of Folk Music in the Twentieth Century' in this book.
32 C. Dahlhaus, Musik des 19. Jahrhunderts (Wiesbaden: Laaber, 1980)
MUSICAL MODERNISM AT THE 'PERIPHERY'?... 95
to Belgrade, equally gave significant impulses to the profiling of a modern 'na

tional style' in the first generation of the Serbian modernists. But this generation
also, thanks to folklore, conquered new territories of music modernity: impor
tant contributions to the broadening of the style spectrum of modernism in
Europe were made by the compositions inspired by the Balkan South, whose
specific and unique folklore had been created for centuries as a fruitful synthesis
of the dialogue of Slavic and Oriental musical codes.33
A special place in the search for a new identity of modern music is held
by the oeuvre of Josip Slavenski, the composer who—apart from achieving the
greatest international success among all Yugoslav music authors—even further
moved the limits of understanding the European identity of music modernism(s)
towards the uncharted music territories of the Balkans, Near and Far East.34
Being a typical modernist, Slavenski found the musical planet Earth with its
own music history, however, too small for his expressionistic adventures into
the 'cosmic spheres' of music where, in his Pythagorean pondering over the univer
sal 'laws' and principles of the 'universal beauty', here tried to discern principles on
which he would build a new, 'natural tonal system' as the base for the 'new, natural
music identity' of his times. It is indicative that modern Europe, much better than
young modern Yugoslavia could recognize the freshness and 'authenticity' of
Slavenski's music. Due to the disapproval of Serbian critics, Slavenski's music had
a very important role in the intensification of style tension in the coordinate field of
Serbian and Yugoslav music in the thirties.35
In the fourth decade, Serbian music survived the sharp clash with the early
works of the group of young composers who studied in Prague: the avant-gardism
of the left-oriented followers of Alois Haba (e.g. Vojislav VuCkovic, Ljubica Maric)
had been the maximum tension point reached between the novelties and the tradi
tion that served as a starting model for the first generation of modernists. However,
on the eve of the WW II, Vojislav VuCkovic, until then the greatest fighter for nov
elties of all kinds, made a radical return to the 'old' tradition, composing his first
choral piece (the First Rukovet-Garland, 1941) in the best spirit of Stevan Mok-
ranjac. This 'event' marked the beginning of the so-called 'Newrealistic' move
ment, taken directly from the then most recent Soviet theory and practice.36
33 See e.g. N. Mosusova, 'Das Balkanische Element in der Südslawischen Kunstmusik',

Balcanica, VIII (1977), 781-790; see also in my forthcoming book Serbian Music at the Cross
roads between East and West. Biljana Milanovid also writes about the identity of Serbian
Moderna in her article 'Orientalism, Balkanism, Modernism in Serbian Music of the First Half of
the Twentieth Century' in this volume.
34 See Biljana Milanovic's article, Ibid.
35 K. Tomasevic, 'Conflict and Dialogue between the Old and the New in Serbian Music be
tween Two World Wars' in Geoffrey Chew (ed.), New Music in the "New " Europe 1918-1938: Ideol
ogy, Theory, Practice. Colloquium Musicologicum Bnmense 38, 2003 (Praha : KLP, 2007), 168-169.
36 After the Second World War, the "Newrealism" was 'transformed' and renamed to the
only officially accepted 'style' - Socialist realism. See more about Socialist realism in M. Milin's
In order to understand better the specific feature of this rapid program of

'development' and changing, it is essential to discern the problems of 'incom
plete' national musical tradition which served as the starting basis-model for
creating of the first generation of modernists. What is in question here? There is
no doubt that in the very epicentre of this generation's attention was the work
by Stevan Stojanovic Mokranjac who was the stylogenic figure of Serbian mu
sical Romanticism, and (...) the inventor of the new music art tradition on the
cross-roads of the centuries.37 The problem of 'incompleteness' of the starting
bas\s-model lies in the fact that Mokranjac is credited exclusively with the
establishment of vocal and primarily choral tradition, while his contemporary
Josif Marinkovic—whose impact on the following generation was incompara
bly weaker!—set the foundations of the development of the solo song genre. It
is obvious that the development of symphonic music could not be encouraged in
a country without a professional orchestra, just as there was no point in com
posing an opera without suitable performers and the very institution of the
opera.38 The first generation of Serbian modernists at the beginning of the
twentieth century were confronted with the task of 'conquering the territory' of
instrumental music: only Petar Konjovic entered history as the author of the
first Serbian symphony (Symphony C minor, 1907), first symphonic variations
(In the Country, 1915) and first violin concert (Adriatic Capriccio, 1936).
Another aspect of the 'incompleteness' of the starting model was its style
'anachronism' in the context of contemporary Western style tendencies at the
turn of the centuries. However—and this is something that we must always have
in mind—the most important aim of the first Serbian modernists was 'to catch
up with' their own musical era! They were supposed to, as Dragutin GostuSki
vividly put it, start a 'neck-breaking race'.39
If there are somewhere specific features which made the trends of the
epoch of Serbian musical modernism(s) differ basically from the modernism(s)
of the 'centres', then they lie in the very problem of 'incompleteness' of music
tradition as the starting model. It seems that there are good reasons for the
book Tradicionalno i novo u srpskoj muzici posle drugog svetskog rata (1945-1965) [The Tradi
tional and the New in Serbian Music After the Second World War (1945-1965)] (Beograd :
MuzikoloSki institut SANU, 1998), 14-47.
37 See in my article 'Mokranjac and Inventing the Tradition: A Case Study of the Song
Cvekje cafnalo\ report at the International conference Composer and his Environment, Belgrade,
Institute of Musicology of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, November 2006, in print.
38 Belgrade Opera was founded in 1920, Belgrade Philharmonic - in 1923! About the his
tory of institututions and repertoire see more in my article 'Musical life in Serbia in the first half
of the 20th century - Institutions and Repertoire' in Katy Romanou (ed.), Aspect of Greek and
Serbian Music (Athens : Edition Orpheus, 2007), 53-77.
39 D. GostuSki, istorijski Skripac srpske muzike' ['Historical Scrape of Serbian Music'] in
D. GostuSki, Umetnost u nedostatku dokaza [The Arts in the Lack of Evidences], (Beograd :
Srpska knjizevna zadruga, 1978), 115.
opinion according to which the first generation of Serbian modernists simulta

neously fulfilled a double task: on the one hand, it was necessary to reconstruct
a posteriori and virtually (in compliance with the existing traditions of the
Western, Central-European and Slavic 'Others'), the picture of an imagined
complete 'classical' music tradition; on the other hand and at the same time—
with their own creative action, realized through fruitful dynamic dialogues with
the contemporary context of the epoch—they were supposed to shape that very
imagined tradition further, to 'modernize' and to update towards bringing it
closer to chosen models of the leading 'centres' of musical modernism.
Regarding the idea that one of the most important 'centres' of the gravi
tational field in the focus of the Serbian composers in the first half of the twen
tieth century was Mokranjac's oeuvre, it is interesting to observe that the radia
tion of that very model attracted most strongly Mokranjac's direct followers -
the composers closest to the core of the emission. By selection of its own ideals
and sets of aesthetic values, the following generation was, in fact, the one which
gave full legitimacy to Mokranjac's music as tradition. Still, just as in global
style processes, the emitting force of the starting model progressively declined
with time, so that it is clearly seen in the diachrony that the creative work of the
younger generation of 'nationally oriented' modernists (M.TajCevic, M. Zivko-
vic, M. Vukdragovic, J. Bandur)—due to the introduction of novelties into the
composing practice—ever more rapidly moved away from the set of character
istics of Mokranjac's style.
A more significant increase in tension within the field of Serbian music
began, however, in the thirties, with the appearance of the youngest generation
of composers, who defined their youthful music identity primarily in the
counter-attitude towards everything characterizing the more recent national tra
dition of art music. Although to a larger extent different than similar in their
creative predispositions and affinities, the representatives of this generation
were unique in their turning away from Belgrade immediately upon their arrival
to study in Prague.40 The scale of composing tools and style elements through
which they expressed an open negation of the existing values of the national
music tradition was broad and various, but it possessed at least two common
denominators: 1) none of the young composers showed interest in folklore or
church music and 2) all of them in Prague mostly composed instrumental music.
Completely oriented towards the contemporary 'international' context of the
West, being fully conscious of the fact that the vivid cultural environment of
Prague was one of the leading 'centres' of modernism in Central Europe, the
representatives of the 'Prague group' agreed also in their intention of contri
buting through their own action and programs to the creation of a new, openly
40 The representatives of the 'Prague group' were Dragutin Colic, Mihovil Logar, Ljubica
Marid, Predrag Milosevic, Stanojlo RajiCic, Milan Ristic and Vojislav VuCkovic.
98 Katarina TomaSevid
anti-romantic and anti-folklore, cosmopolitan identity for Serbian music. They

believed that in the near future this 'new', contemporary identity of Serbian mu
sic should completely suppress and replace the 'old one', reflected in the works
of the previous generation whose music the Prague students themselves un
doubtedly considered 'anachronous' and 'peripheral'.41
Not equally motivated for experiments, the representatives of the 'Prague
group' as students made interesting youthful attempts at style synthesis of ele
ments of Post-romanticism, Neoclassicism and Expressionism42 - that is, of
those styles which in the music context of Central Europe legitimately advo
cated the aesthetics of the modernism of the thirties. It is curious, however, that
at the same time, unlike the predecessors (the first generation of Serbian
modernists), the youngest composers showed no interest at all in the heritage of
French Impressionism and the movements of the post-Debussy epoch or in the
extraordinary folklore synthesis of Bela Bartok, early Stravinsky or Prokofiev.
On the scale of shift from national tradition the most forward position
was taken by the several Prague works by Dragutin Colic, Vojislav Vudkovic,
Ljubica Maric and Milan Ristic. In the set of their most radical choices are the
style of the Vienna school, the principles of Schoenberg's dodecaphony,
microtonal (qaurter-tone and sixth-tone) system of Alois Haba, the Hin-
demithian concept of structure and autonomy of linear thinking as the assump
tion of atonality. These choices also represent the maximum point of the prog
ressive advance from the set of style elements that were characteristic for the
beginning of the twentieth century in Serbian music. At the same time, those
'radical' elements very profoundly prepared the ground for the strong tension
between the two active layers of modernisms that would happen soon, when the
Prague students music was presented in Belgrade. It is quite important to point
out the following: as long as the representatives of the youngest generation were
out of their homeland and their works remained unknown, without reception 'at
home', the expressionistic current sparked in their works made a completely
independent, parallel style flow without touching points with the 'older' mo
dernist flows that dominated the domestic music stage.
Particularly significant indicators for research of the specific characteris
tics of music modernism(s) on the 'periphery' turned out to be the reception
aspects at the moments of a stronger inflow of waves of novelties arriving di-
41 This is picturesquely confirmed by the words of Stanojlo RajiCic, who remembered that
his generation in Prague 'was running away from choir singing and folk melodies just as a small
village boy who, after arriving in town, hurries to take off his village shoes and put on elegant
patent leather ones.' Quoted from K. Tomasevid, 'Razgovor sa Stanojlom RajiCicem' ['Interview
with Stanojlo RajiCic'], Novizvuk [New Sound], 1 (1993), 19.
4- About the style tendencies of the 'Prague group' see more in Marija Bergamo's book
Element! ekspresionisticke orijentacije u srpskoj muzici do 1945. godine [Elements of
Expressionistic Orientation in Serbian Music until 1945], (Beograd : SANU, Posebna izdanja,
knj. DXXVI, Odeljenje likovne i muziCke umetnosti, knj. 3, 1980).
rectly from the 'centres'. Followed by a gale of strong opposition—both from

the official critics and from the audience and musicians themselves—the ex
tremely unfavourable reception of the youthful works of the 'Prague group' in
Belgrade sharpened the conflict between two divergent concepts and strategies
of the development of 'national modern music' and substantially increased ten
sion between them. Judging by the shock of the audience in the encounter with
the unknown, as well as by the strength of resistance which the forces of artistic
tradition showed to the novelties, the anti-romantic and anti-folklore style line
in the works of the young, now former 'Prague students' played the role of an
avant-garde in the local context of Serbian music.43
It is indicative that, despite the sharpest protest of the audinece, two
young composers—Vojislav Vudkovic and Stanojlo Rajicic—after their return
to Belgrade not only remained loyal to the style paths conquered in Prague, but
made several steps forward with the aim of sharpening their expressionistic
style. While VuCkovic drew support to his own avant-garde, as before in Pra
gue, from still valid art programs of the left-wing communist ideology from the
USSR, Rajicic was personally provoked by the resistance and resentment the
conservative environment showed for the new, cosmopolitan course advocated
by the youngest generation.44 Loudly opposing invitations to return to the 'right
path' and to 'wash his face in the clear springs of folk song',45 Rajicic struck his
most ruthless blow to the local tradition in late thirties, composing the athematic
and atonal, fully expressionistic cycles of songs [Cuvari sveta, (Guardians of the
World), Jazz, Jesen (Autumn) and Jedanaest motoricnih pesama (Eleven Mo
toric Songs) -193 8/ 1940].46 Bringing also a completely new treatment of the
vocal style, these songs dramatically differed from everything typical of modern
Serbian Lied in the perspective of the older generation (Konjovic, Milojevic,
Hristic). Still, the music gestures of Rajicic's 'rebelliousness' were not merely a
'translation' of 'progressive' achievements of music in the Western 'centres'.
They were directly encouraged by events on the local literary stage where, since
the beginning of the twenties and almost simultaneously with the revolutionary
M. Veselinovid, Stvaralacka prisutnost evropske avangarde u nas [Creative Presence

ofthe European Avant-garde in Serbian Music], (Beograd : Univerzitet umetnosti, 1983).
44 On RajiCic's conflict with Svetomir Nastasijevic, see their polemics in Stanojlo RajiCic,
'G. Nastasijevic ili "laz i tama moderne muzike"' ['G. Nastasijevic or "Lies and Darkness of
Modern Music'"], Slovenska muzika [Slavic Music], (February 1940); Svetomir Nastasijevic,
'Lepota i vrednost naseg narodnog pevanja zanemaruju se u nasem muziCkom stvaranju' ['Beauty
and Value of our Folk Singing and our Folk Songs are Neglected in our Art Music'], Radio-
Beograd [Radio-Belgrade], 26 (1941), 5; 'Lepota i vrednost naseg narodnog pevanja..., miSljenje
g. Stanojla RajiOica' ['Beauty and Value of our Folk Singing..., the Opinion of Mr Stanojlo RajiCic'],
Radio-Beograd [Radio-Belgrade], 12, (January 1941), 5.
45 Ibid.
46 The majority of songs were composed on lyrics by Excpressionists poets Stanislav Vi-
naver and Ante Boglid.
actions of avant-garde in the 'centres' (particularly close were the ties of Serbian
poets with Paris!), in a swift cascade, almost over night, new movements
alternated and clashed: these were Sumatraism, Dadaism, Hypnism, Zenithism,
Expressionism, and Surrealism. The result of those avant-garde blows in the
field of Serbian literature was the definite abandonment of the lyrical paths of
Parnassian and symbolistic orientation in poetry, as well as the tearing down of
Realism in prose procedure. There is no doubt that Rajicic's radical music
gestures were highly motivated by the boldness and innovativeness of Stanislav
Vinaver's poetry; as an artist who entered the history of the European avant-
garde as the author of the Belgrade 'Manifesto of Expressionistic School', Vinaver
was also one of the musically best educated writers of the epoch who was among
the first to represent the achievements of Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg to
the readers of leading periodicals in Belgrade and Yugoslavia and the one who
expertly managed to defend them from the assaults of incompetent and conserva
tive critics.47
What were, in fact, the real effects of the breakthrough of novelties on the
reception system in Belgrade as the capital city and one of the 'centres' of mo
dernism in the Balkans? One thing is certain: the 'horizon of expectation' of the
audience was moved several long steps forward! Not accepting the absence of
folklore, nor the absence of classical forms, nor harmonic language impregnated
with emancipated dissonances, after meeting the works of 'the young', the
audience was encouraged to accept with relief the music created by the representa
tives of the older modern 'national school'. At the end of the thirties, Konjo-
vic's and Milojevic's modernism—to name but a few—were already considered
'classics' of Serbian music in the twentieth century.
* * *
Arriving at the end of this short history of the tension in Serbian music,
I will present conclusions on the specific features of the development of Serbian
music in the first half of the twentieth century. The roots of the substantial and
rapid transformation of Serbian music that took place in a short period of time
lay 1) in the evolutionary potential of the earlier music tradition and its aesthetic
values; 2) they are knotted in complex, not simply individual communication
relationships with the models of the 'advanced' musical traditions. The origin of
the openness to novelty, the speed and the quality of the transformation were
also 3) the product of interference from close artistic fields (particularly poetry).
47 S. Vinaver's articles in Srpski knjizevni glasnik [Serbian Literary Magazine], 45/7

(1935), 515-24 and in Zvuk [Sound], 10 (1935), 384-388. Quated from R. Pejovic, Muzicka
kritika i esejistika u Beogradu (1919-1941) [Music Criticism and Essays on Music in Belgrade
(1919-1941)], (Beograd: Fakultet MuziCke umetnosti, 1999), 286. See also in my article 'Vinaver
i muzika' ['Vinaver and Music'], Danica (2008), in print.
Moreover, for some composers, 4) the quest for novelty was strongly supported
by their adherence to revolutionary, communist ideology. One of the most im
portant driving forces of the changes was 5) the dynamic and fruitful interaction
that occurred between the musical Old and the musical New, between traditional
and modern values. Finally, in the complex of facts with a special value for the
transformation of the music stylistic physiognomy one stable constant stands
out: the intensity of dynamics of changes depended on the tension established
between novelties and an already existing traditional layer.
At first sight, the first half of the twentieth century in Serbian music
represents an extremely heterogeneous epoch. The view from the angle of dia-
chrony speaks of a certain stability and continuity in individual authors' choices
and their creative strategies, as well as of a certain coherence of phenomena
within the same generation of composers. The view of the chronological vertical
line of synchronous phenomena, however, shows—interestingly enough I be
lieve that it could also be considered a typical feature of the 'peripher-
ies'('margins') of modernism—an increase in the density of cluster ofstyle de
terminants from the beginning towards the end of the period. The process of the
emergence of this specific style 'polyphony' was caused by the parallel activi
ties of several generations of authors and the effects of rapid 'progress' in the
range of the composing techniques that was achieved by several of the youngest
authors. Generations were essentially different not only according to the starting
style positions, but also according to frequently completely divergently oriented
ideological programs which reflected the basic political and artistic dilemmas of
the epoch: Pro or Contra Europe? Western or Eastern Europe? Westernisation
ofSerbia or Balkanisation ofEurope?** By broadening the range of observation
from the micro-plan of synchrony towards the macro-plan of diachrony, how
ever, it is possible to realize that the crossing and interaction of style elements
can be considered the style constants of Serbian music in the first half of the
twentieth century—and at all individual levels of its development. This one,
typically modernistic feature, may also become the only of the many promising
startung points for the new, future adventures of exploring musical modern
ism^) on its all 'peripheral', little known or—at least, in the 'musicology/ies of
the "centre(s)"' - still almost 'undiscovered and uncharted territories'.
48 See more about in my article 'Istok - Zapad u polemickom kontekstu srpske muzike iz-
medu dva svetska rata'['The East and the West in the Polemical Context of the Serbian Music
between the Tho World Wars'], Muzikologija [Musicology], 5 (2005), 1 19-129.
KaTapHHa ToMameBHh
MY3HHKH MO£EPHH3AM HA „IIEPHOEPHJH"?

CPnCKA MY3HKA y nPBOJ nOJIOBHHH
XXBEKA
I~Iojia3Ha pa3MaTpaH>a y oboj CTyzmjH noCBeheHa cy KopejiaraBHOM napy

ifeHmap-nepucpepuja, Kao jezmoj on 6a3HHHHX aHXOTOMHja 3anaaHoeBponcKor
MHuijbeH>a. Hajnpe ce yKa3yje Ha npo6jieMe My3HHKe HCTopHOrpa4>Hje 3anaaa,
Koja y CBojHM aocaaauiH>HM cTpaTerHjaMa ae(J>HHHcaH>a My3HHKor naeHTHTeTa
EBpone ynopHO npeBHâ 3HaHaj h yjiory naeHTHTeTa „nepH(J)epHje" Kao con-
CTBeHHX ajiTepHTeTa. HMajyhH y BH^y peBH3Hjy MHoro6pojHHX cTepeoTHnHHX
rjieaHurra Koja cy HacTynana y HObhJhM nocTCTpyKTypajiHCTHHKHM, nocTKOno-
HHjajiHHM, ceMHOTHHKHM h CTynHjaMa KyjiType, yKa3yje ce Ha aiayejiHOCT ne-
KOHCTpyHcaH>a TeopHjcKor Moaejia ifenmap-nepucpepuja, Kao h Ha 3Ha4aj npo-
yHaBaH>a MOflepHH3(a)Ma „nepH(J)epHje" (hjih „MapraHe") Kao „HObootkphbc-
hhx" TepHTopHja MOaepHocra. Iloce6Ha naacH>a noKjiaH>eHa je HHHuHjaTHBH 3a
ocHHBaibe „HOBe reo-HCTopHje MOêpHH3Ma" (Cy3aHa CTeH(J)opa OpnnMaH),
Kao uito je yHHH>eH h nperjiefl acneKaTa HCTopHje cpncKe My3HKe npBe nojio-
BHHe XX BeKa Kojn, HecyMH>HBO, aonpHHOce npeUH3HHjeM h ay6jbeM carjieaa-
BaH>y pe3yjrraTa y3ajMaHHX HHTepKyjiTypHHX h HHTepMy3HHKHX anjanora „ueH-
Tapa" h „nepH4>epHje" y enoxH MoaepHH3Ma.
y apyroM aejiy CTyaHje, Ha oâ6paHOM y3opKy cpncKe My3HKe y npBoj
nojiOBHHH XX BeKa, pa3MaTpajy ce acneKTH 4>eHOMeHa memuje Koja HacTaje
Kao npoflyicr cycpeTa h cyKo6a TpaaHUHje h MOflepHH3aUHOHHX apyurrBeHHX
npoueca. YoHaBajy ce y3poUH („HeKOMnjieTHOCT" nojia3Hor Modem, napanejiH-
3aM aejiOBaH>a pa3jiHHHTHX reHepaunja KOMno3HTopa) h nocjieaHue „y6p3aHor"
nporpaMa „pa3Boja", Kao uito ce yKa3yje h Ha TeHaeHimje npeo6pa»aja hacH-
THTeTa cpncKe My3HKe y h>chhM jyrocnOBeHcKHM, 6ajiKaHCKHM h eBponcKHM
MOaepHHCTHHKHM OKBHpHMa.
ORIENTALISM, BALKANISM AND MODERNISM
IN SERBIAN MUSIC OF THE FIRST HALF
OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
BILJANA MILANOVIC
My aim is to consider those aspects which can be problematized from the

critical positions of Orientalism and Balkanism in current comprehension, in
terpretation or rethinking of Serbian music from the first half of twentieth cen
tury. Theoretical stands on the mutual relationship between these two categories
are not completely synchronized. I will define myself in relation to them and
indicate several fundamental points before I start to consider some of their ef
fects on the landscape of the Serbian musical Modernism. 1
Interpretative strategies about the Balkans could be subsumed under the term
of Balkanism, as defined by Marija Todorova.2 It has to do with images asserted in
the context of European selfhood which were constructed owing to the Western
politics of power and control, and to the cultural ideology based on the idea of
progress. Criticism of this essential system of knowledge and stereotyped rhetoric
gathered around opposing sets of categories such as rational - irrational, civilized -
barbaric, progressive - backward has been the subject of different concepts initially
inspired by Said's Orientalism.3 As the discourse on the ideology of domination,
marginalization and stigmatization it forms part of the interdisciplinary academic
genre which, in some ways, overlaps with postcolonial studies of culture.
According to Todorova, the Balkans represents a unique entity, and with
its historical and geographical peculiarities is different from the impalpable Ori-
1 I first dealt with this theme in B. Milanovic, 'The Balkans as the Cultural Sign in the
Serbian Music of the First Half of Twentieth Century', unpublished, presented at the Eighteenth
International Congress of the International Musicological Society, Transitions, Zuerich, 10 to 15
July 2007.
2 Todorova proposed this concept in one of her texts on the Balkans and then developed it
in her book about Balkanism. M. Todorova, 'The Balkans: From Discovery to Invention', Slavic
Review, 53 ( 1 994), 453-82; M. Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford University Press, 1 997).
3 E. Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 1978).
104 Biljana Milanovic
ent. In contrast to Orientalism as a discourse on imputed opposition, Balkanism

is a discourse on imputed ambiguity: from the Western point of view, the region
has not been characterized as 'other' but as an incomplete, dark side of the
'self. This negative invention of the Balkans Todorova attributes to the Otto
man heritage and draws attention to the special rhetorical arsenal of Balkanism
positioning images of region in a bastard, transitional world made up of people
who are no longer Orientals but have not yet become Europeans.
Such a perception blurs the categories of East and West and Milica Bakic-
Hayden demands a more comprehensive approach, adequate to the liminal position
of the region. She recognizes the specific nature of Balkanism but shows that 'it
would be difficult to understand it outside the overall orientalistic context' which
can, indeed, be detected 'within Europe itself, between Europe "proper" and those
parts of the continent that were under Ottoman (frence Oriental) rule'.4 Balkanism
could therefore be observed as a kind of 'variation on the orientalist theme'.5 In the
same terms, focus on the Ottoman heritage cannot be separable from other histori
cal perceptions of the region, because of the striking continuity in the logic and na
ture of representations that show the various but always present divisions between
East and West. Either as religious, cultural, ideological or political otherness to
Europe 'proper', which have been replaced and reinforced by each other in the dif
ferent historical contexts, Balkan eastern inferiority asserted in the hegemonic na
ture of the general orientalistic framework, however, remains.6 The whole problem
is considered by the author in the context of European symbolic geography and its
axes where the entire hierarchy of representations, which she maps by nesting Ori
entalisms, may be seen 'as declining in relative value from north-west (highest
value) to the south-east (lowest value)'.7 The intersections of all coordinates belong
ing to this mental mapping she perceives in the Balkans, to be precise in the former
Yugoslavia which, being the vertex of Europe, presents a unique possibility 'to ex
plore some of the ways in which these differences have been and are being used to
define "Europe" in terms of symbolic geography' with its changeable 'processes of
inclusions and particularly of exclusion'.8
4 M. Bakid-Hayden, 'Nesting Orientalisms: The case of Former Yugoslavia', Slavic Re

view, 54 (1995), 920-21 .
5 She had started to observe this problem before Todorova introduced the distinctive term.
Later, she points up the convergence of the project which Larry Wolff called 'Inventing Eastern
Europe' with both Orientalism and Balkanism and reminds us that Wolff itself spoke about that as
the intellectual concept of demi-Orientalization. (M. Bakic-Hayden and R. M. Hayden, 'Oriental
ist Variations on the Theme "Balkans": Symbolic Geography in Recent Yugoslav Cultural Poli
tics', Slavic Review, 5 1 (1992), 1-15; Bakic-Hayden, 'Nesting Orientalisms', 920-21)
6 Bakid-Hayden and Hayden, 'Orientalist Variations ', 3-4.
7 Ibid, 4.
8 Demonstrating Nesting Orientalisms in the Yugoslav political rhetoric of the eighties,
the author shows that the elements of different historical divisions form the complexity of per
ceptions of the territory that was the meeting place of empires (Eastern and Western Roman, Ot
toman and Habsburg), scripts (Cyrillic and Latin, and into the nineteenth century, Ottoman Turk-
ORIENTALISM, BALKANISM AND MODERNISM. 105
This liminal status of the Balkans—not only on the edge of solely one of
them but at the turn of worlds, histories and continents—is also pointed out by
Kathryn E. Fleming who believes that such a position does not mean marginal-
ity but rather a kind of centrality.9 Unlike Todorova who criticizes the radical
imagological orientation towards postcolonial discourses—for, as she indicates,
the Balkans did not have administrative colonization—Fleming advocates 'meta
phorical colonialism' which can find its place in a careful setting of historical
perspective. In the work of Eli Skopetee (/ Dysi tis Anatolis) translated as 'West
of East' or 'East's West', she finds one of the best examples of the Balkan his
toriography where Said's model has been problematized in the context of
changeable historical determinations regarding the position of the Balkans in
relation to Western Europe. During this process, the Balkans was considered
extremely 'oriental' in the seventeenth century, then reshaped into 'European
Turkey' and after that resemantized into a vague and insufficiently defined part
of Europe. Whereas the intimacy of alienation of Said's Orient from the West
comes from Western knowledge of the 'foreign other' and from the way it is
being governed, familiarity of the Balkans derives from perceiving similarities
and alienation derives from unwillingness to accept that similarity. This actually
fits the distinction between Orientalism as a discourse on imputed opposition
and Balkanism as a discourse on imputed ambiguity, later defined by Todorova.
Although Balkanism is not the equal of Orientalism, similarities and dif
ferences between these two discourses are not to be generalized without aspects
of their historization. The negative determination towards the Balkans as a
vague, bastard world between East and West is crystallized at the beginning of
twentieth century during the Balkan wars, the First World War and the fall of
the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires, at the end of formation of national states in
the Balkans and at the same time during the actualization of their status in
Europe. It was the time when geopolitical, economic and cultural frustrations
incorporated in the positive image of 'civilized Europe' constructed the Balkans
to the fullest as its 'otherness within'. Therefore, the mentioned imputed ambi
guity of the Balkans between closeness and alienation is simultaneously one of
the manifestations of the crisis in Western liberal bourgeois society and its
modernity.
Internalization of Western stereotypes in the Balkans was an integral part
of the rapid processes of modernization in Serbia of the first half of twentieth
century. Thus the overall orientalistic logic with strategies of 'inclusion' and
'exclusion' in European value rankings, as well as its nesting variants, had a
ish), religions (Roman Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, Protestantism, Islam, Judaism) and
cold-war politics and ideologies (between the Warsaw Pact and NATO, communists-run but un
orthodox, and non-aligned). Ibid.
9 K. E. Fleming, 'Orientalism, the Balkans and Balkan Historiography', American Histori-
cal Review, 105 (2000), 1218-1233.
strong impact in the problem area of sociocultural positioning, that is, in in

venting, constructing, negotiating and representing identities through art and
music itself. The issue is one of collective identification in a changeable geopo
litical and symbolic context in the old framework of the Kingdom of Serbia, the
Hapsburg and Ottoman empires and in the newly formed multi-ethnic, (su-
per)national Yugoslav state (1918). Concerning its complexity I will indicate
only one but a very considerable and significant agent inherited from the nine
teenth century, related directly to modern reactions to the Balkan stereotypes.
This was a type of local discourse which could be marked in the context
of postcolonial musicology as a kind of Orientalism or, maybe better, as re
versible Orientalism. Initially it appeared in popular plays with music through
the nineteenth century and it also marked the first Serbian operas with a theme
usually set in the atmosphere of the conflict between the Christian and Muslim
worlds that is 'good' and 'evil', stereotyped by the musical codes of Serbian
folk melodies and oriental origin, sevdalinka-type music. Such works were ac
tually very popular, which is easy to understand, bearing in mind that the impe
rial reality of Southern territories ruled by the Turks and Northern ones ruled by
Austro-Hungarians lasted until the First World War. On the other hand, roman
tic songs constructed on elements of the same kind of urban svedalinka-type
folklore were welcomed as a particular national variant of Lied, like Serbian
Romantic poetry which flourished while making free use of vocabulary bor
rowed from Turkish. These antagonisms are not, however, unusual because the
adoption of Western ideas of nation and progress was simultaneously marked
by a double ambiguity. On the one hand there were oriental layers which were
appropriated in art music but, at the same time, deep-seated Turko-phobia fu
elled the need to reject this. On the other hand, there were various and strong
Serbian perceptions of European selfness but almost all of them were usually
burdened by the fear of loosing national identity under the domination of West
ern (and Central) European culture. In the wider terms of post-colonialism, Ser
bian nationalistic discourses were in some ways derivative when reproducing an
uncritical and essentialized epistemology of East-West distinctions that had its
powerful terrain in the context of both the historical experience of the imperial-
ized and the sense of the 'metaphorically colonized' collective self. The stereo
types were an important commonplace of different comprehensions of seg
mented social identities, from ethnic and national through larger, regional ones
(Balkan, South-Slav, Slav, South-East European) to European identifications,
which was the problem especially intricate in the processes of modernization.
The Serbian modernists looked for ways to get rid the negative images of
the Balkans. The rich repertoire of artistic answers to cultural stigmatization,
ranging from the adoption of dominant stereotypes and hierarchies to their re
versal, were integral processes in overcoming the marginal position of Serbian
ORIENTALISM, BALKANISM AND MODERNISM.. 107
art. Concrete examples of these processes can be found in both the musical
opuses and the textual discourses of composers.10
The starting point of first Serbian modernists was nationalism and its re
cent musical legacy, primarily imposed by the opus of Stevan Stojanovic Mo-
kranjac (1854—1914) but their projects, regardless of how they differed from each
other, showed larger aesthetic and stylistic endeavours and openness for broader
integrations into the processes of European musical culture. Their main creative
works may be situated in the landscape of 'East-West synthesis' or 'transitions'
of that time, which would also be a challenging issue for a wider study on musi
cal mediation and negotiation in the symbolic geographies of East and West."
To mention, for example, two of the most important modernistic quests
among the first generation of modern Serbian composers, those of Petar Ko-
njovic (1883-1970) and Miloje Milojevic (1884-1946), means simultaneously to
demark the main directions of inventing Serbian and regional music in the
mental mapping of European culture. At the same time, both Konjovic's artistic
claims for Serbian music 'in the East of Europe' and Milojevic's 'in the West'
were two variants of the Balkan metaphor, each of them as a part of individual
creative positioning marked by the desire to revitalize the national and regional
image, actually to change it into a 'positive' one in the broader environment of
European modern music. 1
The two projects, however, only partially overcame the old antagonisms
and stereotypes and even produced the new ones. In these terms we can account
both for Konjovic's refuse of oriental urban folklore—that is 'good' and 'bad
hybridity' or contamination of the rural idiom by Gypsy musicians—and his
changeable attitudes towards Ottoman 'exotics' as well as for his inventions of
race 'purity' related to the pre-modern, unrationalized folk music of Balkan
Slav peasants. Of course, these ideas were ingredients of European Modernism
and Konjovic's refusal of the 'Orient' as the presence of 'Non-European' heri
tage was also a European one.13 At the same time, not only his placing Balkan
I wrote about such examples in B. Milanovic, Balkans as the Cultural Sign.

1 1 I think on 'transitions' in the terms used recently in Jim Samson, 'Placing Genius: the
Case of George Enescu', Trondheim Studies on East European Cultures and Societies, 17 (2006),
31 pp; Jim Samson, 'Music and Nationalism: Five Historical Moments' in A. S. Leoussi and S.
Grosby (eds.), Nationalism and Ethnosymbolism. History, Culture and Ethnicity in the Formation
ofNations (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 55-67.
12 Both syntagms of Konjovic's artistic claims for Serbian music 'in the East of Europe'
and Milojevic's 'in the West' are borrowed from Katarina TomaSevic, 'Istok - Zapad u po-
lemiCkom kontekstu srpske umetnosti izmedju dva svetska rata' ['The East -West Relations in the
Polemical Context of Serbian Art between Two World Wars'], Muzikologija [Musicology], 5
(2005), 119-129.
13 The important feature of Konjovic's modernistic project was the difference that he con
structed between 'West', 'East' and 'Orient'. Both of the first two terms he connected only to
Europe, where peoples speaking the Slav vernacular he marked as the 'East'. This part of Europe,
including also the Balkans, has been musically defined in Konjovic's observations by 'Western'
music 'other' together with the East European one nearer to the 'centre' but es
pecially his voice for 'Eastern Slav orientation' in art music showed his critical
stands toward the West and Central European cultural hegemony and its value
rankings.
Milojevic's ideas were directly and strongly connected to West and Cen
tral European music, actually to its French-German traces as 'universal' culture
which in its various cultivated forms could be effective in the modernization of
Serbian, Yugoslav or other Balkan nations. Believing in the idea of progress he
did not imagine alternative aesthetics for Western Modernism but modern na
tional and regional music which the musical 'centre' could certainly respect.
Milojevic's reactions to the balkanistic and orientalistic stereotypes were posi
tioned in the same conditions. Common rhetorical metaphors gathered around
'friendly' and 'dangerous' Balkan savages, created especially by Western tra
vellers, journalists and writers, had become a usual, almost everyday part of the
mental mapping of both the outside perception and inner self-presentation of the
time, and influenced Milojevic's modernistic quests. His adoption of only one
part of the cultural stereotypes—the one which could be seen by Western civi
lized eyes as positive and unproblematic—became the musical reproduction of
the 'friendly' and 'sensitive' Balkans presented in his critiques as well as in his
compositions.14
Some of Milojevic's artistic results may be defined as very special Balkan
modernistic 'transitions into the West', especially those of the late piano opuses
where the stylistic base of Romanticism, mixtured with Impressionistic and Ex-
pressionistic elements, was synthesized by a kind of Neo-classical simplicity
recognized in old folk dances and songs.15 Also, Konjovic's musical ideas about
the unspoilt' folklore of the 'natural community' and its superiority over the
'decadent' one, led to another variant of the modernistic transition more rooted
and 'Eastern Slavic orientation'. He gave the advance to the second direction that was not as the
'Western' one based 'on the historical line of general musical development' but 'on the knowl
edge' of their own 'indigenousness and vitality' as 'the source for modern and free musical crea
tion'. This orientation, to whom Konjovid also committed himself in his most representative
works, was nourished by 'rhythm and the sound of simple peasant speech and melody' sources.
At first 'felt and consciously comprehended' by Modest Musorgsky and presented in 'its purest
expression' by LeoS JanaCek, the 'Eastern Slav orientation' gave 'a new, original content to the
musical forms' and the powerful ability for 'contemporary music to be enriched'. P. Konjovic,
'Dve orijentacije u slavenskoj muzici' ['Two Orientations in Slav music'], Muzicki glasnik [Mu
sical Herald], 8-9 (1938), 160-64. More detailed on this issue in B. Milanovic, Balkans as the
Cultural Sign.
14 Ibid.
15This is connected with several late compositions for the piano: Melodies and Rhythms
from Sara, Drim and Vardar [Melodije i ritmovi sa domaka Sare, Drima i Vardara] op. 66, 1942;
Kosovo Suite [Kosovska svita] op. 68, 1942; Melodies and Rhythms from the Balkans [Melodije i
ritmovi sa Balkana] op.69, 1942; Povardarje Suite [Povardarska svita] op. 71, 1942; Motives
from the Village [Motivi sa sela] op. 73, 1 942; Sonata ritmica in modo balcanico, op. 82, 1 944.
in creative analysis of indigenous sources, both of musical and speaking intona

tions and rhythms. His musical drama Prince ofZeta [Knez odZete] from 1927
is the most complete result of this project.
Whereas his essentialist concept reduced to Slav 'purity' was gradually
surpassed in Konjovic's opuses and texts, it seems that Milojevic always stood
by his repudiation of everything which would associate the Balkans with
something wild, uncultivated and dangerous. But the problem is not so simple
and one-sided when he tried to overcome the negative Balkan images and even
hide them. This is connected to his stands on other questions related to the mu
sical 'self, 'own', 'other' and 'foreign' that were changeable and antagonistic.
An intricate comparison can be made, for example, between some of his core
views on national music and his creative openness to the Far and Middle East
ern aesthetic, moved by French contemporaries. Thus in one of his numerous
critiques, Milojevic called for the 'shape of own' national 'spirit' that was not in
need of the 'pentatonic' or 'exotic'.16 Also, starting from 1909 he composed
several works based on the verses of Japanese and Persian poets as well as the
French poetry inspired by Japanese lyrics.17 These differences may be explained
by the complexities of sometimes conflicting individual and social positioning,
by tension related to subjective factors and dominant cultural norms and expec
tations. It seems that there was a kind of psychological split, rooted in disjunc
tion between the sense of collective inferiority and desired subjective musical
identification. Did Milojevic's consumption of 'foreign' and distant 'exotic'
stem from his need to find a substitute for his 'own', close 'exotic' which would
be free of association with the undesired side of the 'self? Or was it nothing
more than the imaginary extension of his creative subject, projected into indi
vidual fantasy—his reaction to the European dream world of mass consumer
ism? Certainly, this was one of his westward artistic claims and a special voice
for Serbian and regional placing in European competition for musical space. It
is evident that Milojevic did not avoid the kind of appropriation associated with
Orientalism and exoticism, as conventionally comprehended and analyzed in
postcolonial musicology, and these works could be investigated in more detail
in comparison to other European, especially French composers inspired by the
Far and Middle East.
16 Miloje Milojevid, 'Vaskrsenje. Biblijska poema u dva dela za sola, mesoviti hor i veliki
orkestar' ['Resurrection. The Biblical poem in two parts for soloists, mixed choir and symphonic
orchestra'], Srpski knjizevni glasnik [Serbian Literary Magazine], 1 1 (1912), 862-8.
17 The song Japan [Japan] (1909) was written from the verses of Japanese poet Ohotomo
No Sukune Jakamohi from the eighth century. Milojevid was later inspired by the poetry of the
Persian poet Al Ghazali as well as by the Japanese-influenced poems of French poet Franz Tous-
saint and his last completed opus was the Cycle ofsongs for high voice andpiano [Ciklus pesama
za visoki glas i klavir] op. 87 (1944) based on the haiku verses of Japanese poet Isikava.
Focus on the agencies of internalized Western perception of the Balkans

in the creative output of the first modern composers in Serbia shows that their
artistic invention of a 'positive' regional image as standing for 'East' or 'West'
have regularly led to some inner 'inclusions' and 'exclusions' and resulted in
the reproduction and nesting of internal variants of orientalist and Balkan dis
courses. It was obviously a burden for their projects of modernistic 'transition'
when they wanted to search not only for the intersecting points of East-West
cultural spheres but also to locate a 'third system'.18 The context of Balkan im
ages placed in a bastard, transitional world between East and West resulted in
attitudes to life at the crossroads or on border, where Balkan people themselves
established a sense of identity and, actually, it was very hard to shift the percep
tion to some other, more different cognitive dimension.
In this respect it is very important to mention the creative project of Josip
Slavenski (1896-1955), a Croatian-born composer who worked in Serbia from
1924. His 'third system' could be defined as a critique of Western European
bourgeois aesthetics and its recent Modernist alienation from human and nature.
Its technical and stylistic functioning is based on the inseparable connection of
folklore and investigation of sound which operates on all compositional levels
from the melodic and rhythmic surface to the procedural dimension of harmonic
and facture processes and formal structure. By using recent aspirations that are
not adopted from other composers but found in analysis of folk sound material—
such as examination of mode-scale grounds, the intonation and rhythm of tunes,
structure of natural harmonic row in vertical and horizontal sonority, clusters,
microtones, un-tempered system, use of pedals and ostinatos—it acts as a Euro
pean Modernism alternative to the 'central' one. Besides the approach to the
independent acoustic values of folk phenomenon, the project includes deeper
pensive, emotional, spiritual and extra-musical aspects of Balkan traditions and
heritages therefore presenting a unique aesthetic, very different from that of
other modernists.
The 'third system' of Slavenski is also a critique related to the 'inner'
sense of cultural inferiority, actually to all those who are not ready to accept the
wholeness of the Balkans. It is developed on the complex image of the region as
co-existence, mixture and amalgamation of various cultures. Thus Slavenski
counted on the folkloric heritage of the entire Balkans, from Croatia in the West
to Turkey in the East. In his quest for spiritual roots he imagined the pagan ar
chaic and tunes of old religions, constructed sound visions of Plautus' antiquity,
gave his own interpretation of Catholic sacred music and had presentiments of
the musical images of medieval Byzantium. His sonorous imagining of the Bal
kans was both a fully experienced and a consciously alternative European Mo-
I borrow Jim Samson's thoughts inspired by Todorova's point about transition in his
consideration of Enescus's 'transitional' case. More detailed in J. Samson, Placing Genius: the
Case of George Enescu.
ORIENTALISM, BALKANISM AND MODERNISM.. Ill
dernism that indicated the utmost relativization of boundaries, identities and

spaces, and made it possible for Slavenski to find not only signs of 'Eastern'
and 'Western' sounds but traces leading to the ancient and cosmic.
The integral image of the Balkans was perceived by Slavenski as an ad
vantage which gave the existing liminal position of the region the potential to be
a new centre. In these terms I used metaphor to designate the 'inverted transi
tion' of Slavenski's project that was presented by his imagining of 'Europe in
the Balkans'.19 But it is important to point out that Slavenski's multi-cultural,
trans-space, trans-historical and cosmic visions led him to a widening of the
Balkan concept. At the end of his life he taught that 'contemporary music was
developed to its highest technical possibilities where it exhausted itself and
strongly believed that 'it could only gain new content from the Balkans and the
Orient'.20
Slavenski expressed these ideas much earlier in his Religiophony [Re-
ligiofonija] performed for the first time in Belgrade in 1934.21 This composition
for symphonic orchestra with a huge number of percussions, choir and soloists
could open many intricate themes on Slavenski's Modernism and its relations to
cosmic, religious and political identification, positioned through this project of
his artistic endeavour, expanded further to the East. Apart from this, the work
represents the most complete shaping of composer's creative concept, implying
investigation of folklore as a pure acoustic phenomenon together with its re
flective-archetype, spiritual-emotional and outer-musical context. In regard to it,
but also in the spirit of this study, I will define only the most important aspects
connected to Orientalism and Balkanism.
Religiophony has seven movements - Pagans [Pagani], Jews [Jevreji],
Buddhists [Budisti], Christians [Hriscani], Muslims [Muslimani], Music
[Muzika] and Ode to Work [Pesma radu]. The subtitles of each of them ('Mu-
sica rhytmica', 'Musica coloristica', 'Musica arhitectonica', 'Musica melodica',
'Musica articulatia', 'Musica dinamica', 'Musica vitalica') suggest the impor
tance of the peculiar musical parameter in the form, constructed by shifting the
organization of material such as linearity, polyphony, mode-scale grounds,
rhythms, pedals, ostinatos and so on.
According to Slavenski, his goal in Religiophony was to achieve 'not
only musical evocations of great world religions but to show, through them and
without them, the emotional and spiritual world of man, his feelings, restless-
B. Milanovic, Balkans as the Cultural Sign.

20 Slavenski's worlds from the letter to Gerald Severn on the occasion of Symphony of
Orient recorded by DECCA in 1955 are quoted in Ana Kara-PeSic, 'Prepiska Josipa Slavenskog:
Odjeci kompozitorovih dela u inostranstvu' ['Correspondence of Josip Slavenski'], Novi Zvuk
[New Sound], 15 (2000), 1 17-126.
21 The alternative title invented as 'politically correct' for the performance in 1954 was
Symphony ofOrient [Simfonija Orijenta].
ness, contemplation, ecstasy and triumph'. However, the last two movements,
especially Ode to Work, show that Slavenski demonstrates his particular ideo
logical-leftist faith which puts this mentioned optimistic expression in the open
context of ideological criticism of a liberal bourgeois society, which was a dar
ing and provocative thing to do in 1934. The author makes an utmost utopian
formulation: ' Religiophony is actually religiosophy because music and commu
nism will replace all world religions'.23
Slavenski 's work demonstrates the coupling of two important points. The
first one can be termed a paradigm critique of Balkanism and Orientalism. The
second one shows the ideological avangardism that in conditions of modern ur
ban life during the 1930s announces the musical decoding of socio-cultural
identities in the process of ideological transfer from the peasantry towards the
working class. In this respect, Slavenski is, in a certain way, the predecessor of
the new Balkans which after the Second World War, in different, ideological
divisions of the continent, would be recreated as South-East 'other' in the con
struction of Europe.24
Thus, apart of his struggle against 'metaphorical colonization' as well as
his voice for life in the 'centre' instead on at a 'crossroads' or 'bridge', Slaven-
ski's Religiophony stands as his imaginary figuration of the common Yugoslav
socio-cultural identity, forced later through the common communist state. To
point out again the recent theoretical aspirations of Milica Bakic-Hayden and
her stand that Balkanism is not enough to detect all the dividing lines existing in
the discourses of this period of modern regional history, means this time not
only to prove them by Slavenski's encompassing of all image ingredients being
in his desired and announced—now former—Yugoslavia but to stress the en
demic nature of antagonisms and stereotypes. Surpassing the old and evoking
the new can, ironically, if not tragically, be neutralized and then over and over
revitalized and revalorized.
Inscribing a very little part of modern Serbian musical history in the
context of hegemonistic discourses and its articulation, variation, resemantiza-
tion and deconstruction through music could help to understand the intricate
synergy between the 'real' and 'imagined' attributes in identity positionings that
was the main aspect of musical modernization. This short view shows also that
music, as socially constructed, could contribute to defining a critique of Bal
kanism and Orientalism and its nesting and overlapping internal variants. And,
22 J. Slavenski, 'Kako je nastala Religiofonija' ['How was Religiophony created'],

Stampa, Belgrade, 14 (1934).
23 Ibid.
24 It is interesting that in stylistic context Religiophony is also defined as predecessor, this
time as an avant-garde predecessor of after-war Poems of Space [Pesme prostora] by Ljubica
Maric. M. Veselinovic-Hofman, Stvaralacka prisutnost evropske avangarde u nas [Creative Pres
ence of European Avant-Garde with Us] (Belgrade: UmetniCka akademija 1983), 348-353.
as the voice came 'from the margin' it may serve to indicate the problems of the
both 'centre' and 'periphery' of a Europe which needs to perceive itself in the
entirety of its multi-faced identities.
Ewbana MunaHoeuh
OPHJEHTAJIH3AM, EAJIKAHH3AM
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MODERNISM IN SERBIAN / YUGOSLAV MUSIC
BETWEEN TWO WORLD WARS
NADEZDA MOSUSOVA
SPEAKING of the history of Serbian science (as a relatively new branch of

investigation not only in Serbia) some investigators maintain that after the
liberation from the Turks in 1868, Serbian society was suffering from a
modernity complex. 1 No wonder. The Serbs were not alone in such aspirations,
their state already regarded as a modern one.2
It is obvious that the Serbian 'modernity complex' be it social or cultural,
taking place at the end of the nineteenth century, coincides with the appearance
of a general current of modernism in the 'main' European countries. In a way,
the historian and philosopher Aleksandar Petrovic, quoted above, observes mo
dernism as either hidden or open war against traditional values reminding his
readers of the well-known discussion in the field of art from seventeenth cen
tury France: la querelle des anciens et des modernes? which was perhaps the
first occasion when the word 'modern' started to be frequently used.
What (today) do the words modern, modernism or modernity mean in
general? What was the meaning of the word 'modern' in the past? What is or
what was modern thought, modern science including modern medicine or mod
ern history? Did modern medicine start at the moment when doctors realized the
importance of washing their hands? Can anybody say what modern history is?
1 A. Petrovic, 'O skrivenom horizontu' ['About the Hidden Horizon'] in: Skriveni Hori
zont. Razmedja istorije srpske nauke [Hidden Horizon. Borders of the History of Serbian Sci
ence], Liceum, 10 (2006), 7. (NB The liberation in the Balkans, especially in Serbia, progressed
gradually during the nineteenth century and was not definitely accomplished until the Balkan
wars 1912 and 1913).
It could be interesting to mention an Englishwoman among the early Serbian historians:
Elodie Lawton Mijatovics, The History of Modern Serbia, Wiliam Tweedie, London, 1872.
Quoted after S. G. Markovic, Graf Cedomilj Xfijatovic, viktorijanac medu Srbima [Count Ce-
domilj Mijatovic, The Victorian among the Serbs], Belgrade, 2006, 68.
' Petrovic, 'O skrivenom horizontu', 16.
116 Nadezda Mosusova
What about culture? Have we the right to use this word today, in the age of
postmodernism and other post... isms, spiritual children of our post-apocalyptic,
globalizing era? It makes no sense, anyhow, to quote in the present paper all the
possibilities, or implications of the idea, the term or meaning of being 'modern'.
Leaving aside discussion of the ideology of postmodernism let us remind
ourselves of the imprecise definition of the term modernity in music, art or lit
erature, past and present.4 The term 'tradition' is also a very diffuse one. It is
clear that the words 'modern' and 'traditional' had different meanings in diffe
rent areas, especially in those countries undergoing accelerated social and cul
tural development in the nineteenth century. One of these was the Kingdom of
Serbia, where the importance of being modern from the beginning of the twen
tieth century was expressed in many segments of life.
On the other side there are (European) countries or one country where the
word 'modern' did not and does not exist: in Russia. Not the idea, but simply
the term concerning literature, art or music. Could it be true that before the
revolution nobody was troubled about being modern? Igor Stravinsky, remi
niscing on Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and Anna Pavlova, says that at that time
(he means in 1909) the expressions 'decadent' and 'modern' were interchange
able.5 The term modern is also not used in Russian/Soviet musicology.
Studying Russian art we find that the word 'modern' was usually replaced
with word 'contemporary', concerning developments of the Belle epoque, and the
only use of the term 'modern' was (and still is) reserved for the Russian Art
Nouveau called 'style moderne'. Very soon this Russian fin-de-siecle art would
reach the whole world via cultured emigres. Not only Paris, but also the newly
formed Slavonic states of Poles, Czechs and Slovaks, and last but not least the
South Slavs.
The author of The Horizon asserts that among other (major or minor) ap
pearances, the new state of Yugoslavia, termed the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats
and Slovenes in 1918, was one of the results of political or social modernism (or
modernization).6 In it, a new time was coming for Serbs for the further develop
ment of literature, art and music. Everything was conducive to a great wave of
changes. Notably, after the Russian emigration flooding the Balkan area brought
to Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana distinguished opera singers, directors, chore
ographers and ballet dancers.
The three main Serbian composers of the interwar Yugoslav period, Petar
Konjovic, Miloje Milojevic and Stevan Hristic, in full maturity, took advantage
of the new situation. There were a lot of good performers now, to interpret their
4 See e.g. H.-K. Metzger, 'Der Begriff des Modernen: Fortschritt und Regression' in R.
Riehm (ed.), Musik wozu, Literatur zu Noten (Frankfurt am Main: Edition Suhrkamp, 1980).
5 Pavlova refused to dance in the Firebird because of its 'decadence'. See Igor Stravinsky
in Conversations with Robert Craft (London: Penguin Books,1962), 166.
Petrovic, 'O skrivenom horizontu', 17.
MODERNISM IN SERBIAN / YUGOSLAV MUSIC. 117
stage work! That is what was needed!7 The members of the composing triad
were 'nationalists', sometimes 'cosmopolitan', and very interested in develop
ing their own and Serbian music in general. They had also shared similar mo
dern ideas before and during the war, as very young people, already regarding
their predecessors in Serbia (Stevan Mokranjac, Josif Marinkovic, and Stanislav
Binidki) as heralds of modern music and themselves as very modern and ad
vanced composers.8
The three post-war leaders, Milojevic already the main music critic in
Belgrade, devoted their writings (in local newspapers and journals), starting at
the beginning of the twentieth century, to a plead for modern musical expres
sion in their native land. At the same time they did not take much trouble to ex
plain the term modern in connection with music, even though Milojevic com
posed a modern (Dadaist) ballet in 1923, The Butler's Broom, which can be re
garded as almost avant-garde, Hristic a modern opera in 1925, The Twilight,
(with Equinox left unfinished), and a modern ballet in 1933, The Legend of
Ochrid, and Konjovic two modern operas in 1929 and 1931, The Prince ofZeta
and Kostana.9 The ideas of modernity, as was said, were born long before the
twenties, at the time of their studies in major musical and cultural centres like
Prague, Munich or Leipzig.
Coming from Sombor (Vojvodina) to Prague in 1 904 to study at the Con
servatory with Karel Stecker and Karel Knittl, Petar Konjovic was eager to use
every opportunity to learn and experience events in the musical and theatrical
life of the Czech capital. He sent his reports to the journals of Belgrade and
Novi Sad, full of fascination for the way of life, culture in general, and the mu
sic of Prague. He discovered Richard Wagner, Czech and Russian composers:
'trifolium' Smetana, Dvorak (who had just died in 1904), Fibich, and
Chaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov (still living, just accomplishing his opera The
Legend of the Invisible City Kitez and Maiden Fevronia) and last but not least
Vladimir Rebikov. The latter was in some way very popular in Prague, pre
senting his compositions there in the period 1904-1907, and his work made a
significant impact on this very intelligent and sensible Serbian student.
Describing exciting events Konjovic's texts from Prague were often
adorned with the word 'modern': modern theatre, modern literature, modern
society, and the modern audience. For instance he wrote: 'Gustave Charpen-
7 Especially Stevan Hristic, the Belgrade opera director 1923-1934. Petar Konjovid, lead
ing the opera in Zagreb 1 92 1-1 926 owed much to the family of dancers Froman for the renewal of
the ballet ensemble of the Zagreb National Theatre.
8 P. Konjovic, 'Muzika u Srba' ['Music in Serbia'] in: Licnosti [Personalities], (Zagreb:
Ed. Celap, 1920), 132, 133, 136, 138.
9 The dates of Yugoslav first performances are given here. Abroad was Hristic's opera
premiered in Bratislava (1929) and Rome (1938), Konjovic's KoStana in Brno (1932), Prague (1935)
and Bratislava (1948).
118 Nadezda Mosusova
tier's Louise is the most beautiful among modern operas.' Louise was very
much en vogue in Prague from 1903 onwards, also delighting LeoS Janacek in
those days. Generally speaking, for the three Serbian composers, in the pre-war
years, in the first place for Petar Konjovic, modern was everything new or un
usual: neu und ungewdnlich11 - which could well be applied to a young man
from the provinces in the big city, such as Konjovic.
However, new and unusual occurrences for this Serbian student had to
come with a touch of talent if not genius, and worldliness, for which he pos
sessed an unmistakable instinct, be it in music, art or literature. So, among all
the beauties of Czech cultural life, nothing could compare with the experience
of the Moscow Art Theatre making guest performances abroad. One can be sure
that the acting of 'hudozestvenniki' in 1906 in Prague and the discovery of Bo
ris Godunov in 1918 in Zagreb, definitely made an outstanding Serbian and
Yugoslav opera composer of Petar Konjovic. Much later, in connection with
Kostana 's premiere, he did not forget in his Brno interview of the year 1932, to
mention the melomimics or melodeclamations of the 'revolutionary modernist'
Vladimir Rebikov.12 Already Konjovic's plain Evening Song for voice and pi
ano of the Prague days was a direct inspiration from Rebikov's refined simplic
ity, which was for the Serbian musician a kind of "primitivism" not quite under
standable from the first hearing, but impressive and influential: the Sprechge-
sang applied in Konjovic's later vocal and stage works evidently came from the
style of Rebikov and also from the concert melodramas of ZdenSk Fibich with
the paradigmatical model of Modest Musorgsky's operas and songs.
As a matter of fact, the Serbian 'trifolium' which remained the leading
triad in Belgrade for two decades after the First World War, achieved its mod
ernity without taking into account the radical trends in music such as Wiener-
schule i.e. the work of Arnold Schoenberg, or even the later works of LeoS
Janacek (with whom Konjovic's composing process was often brought into
connection) or Bela Bartok, and the output of Igor Stravinsky. Milojevic was
infatuated by Richard Strauss all his life, Hristic with French and Italian music
(although he studied in Germany and Russia) and Konjovic with the Czechs and
Russians of the nineteenth century (also the Snow Maiden of Rimsky-Korsakov
seen in Prague).
Deeply involved in the live musical tradition of their land—folk melodies
and church music (this was the only genuine Serbian tradition of the time)—the
10 P. Konjovic, 'teSko Narodno pozoriSte' ['Czech National Theatre'], Nova iskra [New
Spark], 7(1905), 222.
" The idea taken from Karel Riesinger, 'Einfachheit und Modernität im "Maifest der
Brunnlein'", Bohuslav Martini Anno 1981, Praha 1990, 131.
u The interview given for this occasion to Czech newspapers (Lydove noviny) quoted in
P. Konjovic, 'Razgovori o KoStani' ('Conversation about "KoStana"'), in Knjiga o muzici [The
Book about Music], (Novi Sad: Matica srpska, 1947), 107.
MODERNISM IN SERBIAN / YUGOSLAV MUSIC. 119
Belgrade composers tried and succeeded in bringing together, with a modern

technique—the rich folk heritage of Serbia and the Balkans and their own aes
thetics of composition. The modern musical language meant for them a tempo
rary abandonment of tonality and widening of the romantic harmony with in
creasing use of various (sometimes very complex) contrapuntal proceedings.
Like many (Slavonic) composers of his time, Konjovic chose an 'ana
chronic' musical form - the opera, to exhibit his modern ideas in using the folk
tunes as leitmotivs. Hristic did the same in his ballet. The modernism of Serbian
musicians did not threaten tradition, i.e. the general European tradition of classical
music, because the Serbian tradition in art music before and after the First
World War was new, and tradition in the performing arts slight and negligible.
The real break with the general tradition, and the 'nationalist' Serbian
tradition, was very open and occurred with the generation of Serbian composers
born in the twentieth century. They came from Prague music studies in the
1930s saying farewell to folklore, writing only instrumental (so called absolute)
music after Alois Haba: Milan Ristic, Dragutin Colic, Ljubica Maric, Vojislav
Vudkovid and Stanojlo RajiCic. Now the 'trifolium' reacted, speaking as pro
tectors of tradition, accusing the 'youngsters' of belated and false modernism
and second-hand avantgardism. The Serbian 'nihilists' had their own good rea
sons, claiming that the folk tradition in art music was already exhausted and
almost dead. But it was not.
The actual response, not verbal but musical, came from Miloje Milojevic.
Unintentionally his new output was an interesting opposition to the radical wave
of Prague students. Milojevic finally had time for intense composition during
the Second World War, during the German occupation, when he was not writing
daily music critiques any more nor holding public lectures in addition to teach
ing. He wrote cycles of piano music using folk songs from the collections he
himself had made in Kosovo and Macedonia. A very distinguished instrumental
music was born during the last four years of his creative life - folk tradition
linked and amalgamated with modern musical language and modern treatment
of piano technique.
Milojevic's colourful piano suites could be regarded as a pendant to the
stage works of Konjovic and Hristic. How modern was their work at the end of
the Second World War? For the foreign ear new and unusual, the same for the
Serbian/Yugoslav audience. In any case for Serbian composers genuineness and
national identity were much more important than any degree of modernity.
120 Nadeida Mosusova
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MUSICAL MODERNISM IN THE 'AGRARIAN
COUNTRIES OF SOUTH EASTERN EUROPE':
THE CHANGED FUNCTION OF FOLK MUSIC
IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
MELITA MILIN
WHEN Leos Janacek came to the fifth festival of the ISCM, held in Frank
furt in 1927, it was not only to assist in a performance of his Concertino for pi
ano and six instruments, which had had its premiere a year before in Brno, but
also to present a group of peasant musicians, who sang Moravian and Slovak
traditional music in the context of an exhibition. Janacek's intention was most
certainly to demonstrate how highly he valued the living tradition of his people,
which had been an invaluable source for inspiration for him as a composer.
However, taking into account that the ISCM festival was a venue for the pres
entation of mostly radically modernist works, he obviously also wished to stress
the importance of bringing together those two worlds of music.1 It is interesting,
incidentally, that Bela Bartok, who was also present at this festival, seems not to
have reacted to the presence of that folk group, even though they came from a
region he himself had researched.
The works composed by JanaCek in the last decade of his life enjoyed
remarkable success, providing new arguments in the ongoing debate on whether
folk music and modernist art music could be fused. The problem of bringing
together these two different traditions had been the main preoccupation of
nineteenth- and twentieth-century composers from the 'peripheral' countries of
Europe. As we know, attempts to do so had an ambivalent response in the West,
mainly on the grounds that they were seen as endangering the universal charac
ter of music. The survival of musical nationalism after the end of the nineteenth
1 See W. Salmen, 'Volksmusik als Sediment in der Kunst des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts',
in W. Salmen and G. Schubert (eds.), Verflechtungen im 20. Jahrhundert. Komponisten im Span-
nungsfeld elitar -popular (Mainz: Schott, 2005), 1 1.
122 Melita Milin
century came as a surprise to many Westerners, since they regarded this idea as
rather obsolete. While in the first decades of the twentieth century the value of
folksong-inspired Romantic music was widely accepted, as an expression of
Herderian ideals of the 'national spirit', there was little understanding of the
penetration of folk materials into modernist musical structures. Today, however,
the output of this neo-nationalist2 inclination is mostly viewed as an essential
part of European or universal Modernism,3 although rapprochement (or ten
sion?) between folk and art music can still nowadays provoke discussion.
It is well known that Schoenberg mocked the attitude of peoples that
lived alongside each other for overemphasising the differences between their
folk musics, which they had regarded as tokens of their culture, importance, and
identity. He specifically mentioned the Balkans, which he imagined as some
'West-Parinoxia' or 'Franimonti'.4 In the same text one can also find Schoen-
berg's often-quoted observation that folk and art music 'mix as poorly as oil and
water.'5 Characteristically, Schoenberg did not mention there any great compo
sers of his own time who were inclined to such 'mixing': there is no reference
to Bartok, or Stravinsky. However, he indirectly admitted that great art music
based on folk melodies was possible. He wrote that although Russian folk music
had certainly outstanding qualities, 'Russian music now exists due to the advent
of some great composers.'6 However, he did not give concrete names. Whether
he was thinking of Musorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and/or Stravinsky, we shall
never know. Neither did he mention Janacek or Bartok, when speaking of those
'smaller nations whose folk music is not as extraordinary [but who] have found
a place in the history of music and in the minds of music lovers through repre
sentatives such as Smetana, Grieg, Chopin, Dvorak and Sibelius.'7 It was
strange indeed to discuss the problem of combining folk and art musics without
mentioning the most outstanding contemporary representatives of such an aes
thetic! There is one important, though ironically expressed, point which
Schoenberg left for the end of his article: 'It seems that nations which have not
yet acquired a place in the sun will have to wait until it pleases the Almighty to
plant a musical genius in their midst.'8
2 R. Taruskin, "Nationalism' in S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell (eds.), The New Grove Dictionary of
Music and Musicians (London: Macmillan, 2001), vol. xvii, 689-706.
1 See, for instance, J. Samson, 'Music and Nationalism: Five Historical Moments' in A. S.
Leoussi and S. Grosby (eds.), Nationalism and Ethnosymbolism: History, Culture and Ethnicity in
the Formation ofNations (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 60.
4 A. Schoenberg, 'Folkloristic Symphonies' in Style and Idea (New York: Philosophical
Library, 1950), 196.
5 Ibid, 197.
6 Ibid, 197.
7 Ibid, 197-8.
8 Ibid, 203.
MUSICAL MODERNISM IN THE 'AGRARIAN COUNTRIES.. 123
Among music aestheticians, Theodor W. Adorno was the most severe

critic of the introduction of folk music idioms into the world of art music. In the
well-known footnote to his Philosophy ofNew Music he stated:
In cases where the developmental tendency of Occidental music has not
been purely developed—as in many agrarian regions in south-east Europe—the
use of tonal material has been permitted down to the most recent past. This was
not a matter of disgrace. Janacek and Bart6k come to mind. Janacek's art is extra
territorial, but nonetheless magnificent in its consequences. Many of Bartok's
compositions, in spite of his folkloristic inclinations, are nonetheless among the
most progressive in European musical art. The legitimation of such music on the
periphery lies foremost in its ability to formulate a technical canon which is in
itself both correct and selective. In contrast to the blood-and-soil ideology—a
party-line tenet of National Socialism—truly extra-territorial music (the material
of which, even though it is familiar, is organized in a totally different way from
that in the Occident) has a power of alienation which places it in the company of
the avant-garde and not that of nationalistic reaction. The external exertion of
this force comes to the aid of inner-musical cultural criticism as is expressed in
radical modern music itself. Ideological blood-and-soil music, on the other hand,
is always affirmative and holds to 'tradition'. It is precisely the tradition of every
offical music, however, which is suspended by Janacek's diction-patterned after
his language - in the midst of all triads.9
Janacek and Bartok died before the publication of Adorno's Philosophy
of New Music ( 1 949), so that we are left to wonder what their reactions to his
ideas would have been. For people unacquainted with Adorno's ideas, some of
the observations from the footnote may sound not only absurd but also irritating:
According to him, 'extra-territorial' music needs 'legitimation', but is 'permitted'
under specific circumstances, for example if it belongs to 'agrarian countries of
south-eastern Europe'. Could Bartok's Hungary and Janacek's Moravia, both so
close to Vienna, really be characterised as extra-territorial and peripheral? Does
one then say that Serbia and Bulgaria are even more 'extra-territorial', examples
of Schoenbergian West Parinoxia or Franimonti? What a strange notion of
'extra-territorialism'! Could that mean that as soon as one left the strictly
Austrian territories, eastwards, as well as—it goes without saying—southwards,
one would find oneself in lands exempt from universal law, in which folk and
art (modernist) music are allowed to fuse?
9 T. W. Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music (London: Shed &Ward Ltd., 1994), trans.
A. G. Mitchell and V. V. Blomster. Footnote No. 5, on pp. 35-6. Let it be mentioned in passing
that the author of this article has compared different translations (into English, French and Serbo-
Croat) of this footnote and has noticed interesting divergencies in the 'interpretations' of some
details from the original. For instance, 'extra-territorial' is translated as 'de caractere ethnique ' in
Th. W. Adorno, Philosophie de la nouvelle musique, traduit de l'allemand par H. Hildenbrand et
A. Lindenberg (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1962), 47.
124 Melita Milin
For Adorno, the notion of 'extra-territorial' obviously referred to

neighbouring countries to the East in which the folk music tradition was still
alive. Material from those traditions did not undergo the process of rationalisa
tion, by which Adorno meant that it was not adapted to Western art music prac
tice, in which motivic-thematic development and the disintegration of large-
scale forms were a result of long historical processes. According to Adorno,
when a composer introduces a folk melody into his work, he draws material
from the pre-modern, mythical past instead of using material that contains his
tory. This material can then be transformed further in the course of the dynamic
process of composition. As has been pointed out by Max Paddison, Adorno was
opposed to the 'unreflective use of folk music to symbolize a state of nature or
the resolution of the tension between the self and others in terms of the ideal
'"natural community'".10 He believed that by objecting to a false reconciliation
between the self and the others, the self and the handed-down forms, composers
would be on the way to Baudelaire's 'promesse de bonheur' and thus keep alive
the liberating power of music. The rupture between the self and forms, the sense
of alienation from a priori formal archetypes, the exhaustion of the expressive
powers of music, the danger that art music could become a commodity - all
these had to be expressed in ways that would be openly critical of the dehu
manized relations characteristic of modern society.
It cannot be denied that there exists a tension between the demands of
modernist musical thinking and a composer's wish to use folk material, the former
aiming at discontinuity with the past and looking to the future in search of novelty,
sophistication and authenticity, the latter symbolizing enduring (oral) tradition and
continuity. The crucial figure of that bold project of fusing folk-derived material
and modernist procedures and expressivity, was no doubt Igor Stravinsky, who was
able to achieve a splendid alternative both to Schoenberg's Central-European
Modernism and to Debussy's Impressionism. Stravinsky found his own solution to
the crisis of the tonal system, which was the true testing-ground of early
Modernism. He also knew how to handle the consequences of the dissolution of
musical genres. He was well-prepared for a novel approach to folk music. Apart
from musical-technical innovations, its main characteristic was a kind of emotional
distancing. He managed to achieve empathy with suffering individuals through a
shocking and ironically tainted simulation of indifference. Later, in his neoclassical
phase, Stravinsky developed further objectification of expression by superimposing
old forms onto his heterogeneous material, creating a deliberate dislocation of
formal design and musical materials which Adorno interpreted—and criticized—as
a kind of masking and alienation.
The other great figure concerned with dialogues between folk music and
modernist art music was Bela Bartok, for whom Adorno showed much more
10 M. Paddison, Adorno 's Aesthetics ofMusic (Cambridge University Press, 1 997), 37.
understanding than for his Russian contemporary. To Adorno, Bartok's music

exhibited modernist alienation through irony, but in contrast to Stravinsky the
result was not just an empty game, since Bartok allowed folk music to reveal its
latent critical potency. Such a harsh judgment of Stravinsky should, of course,
be linked with Adorno's criticism of the Russian composer's famous denial of
music's expressive powers." Stravinsky's statement was undoubtedly designed
to shock: but in any case such a denial was interpreted as a dramatic sign of the
weakening of modern subjectivity. As has been pointed out by Max Paddison,
Adorno labelled the music of The Rite, The Soldier's Story as well the entire
body of Stravinsky's so-called 'neo-classical' music 'objectivism', in that the
music seeks 'to evoke the image of a non-existing 'objective' society or of a
[...] Gemeinschaft. [...Adorno also] maintains that in capitalist, industrialised
societies, neoclassicism was the usual form of 'objectivism', while in underde
veloped agrarian societies it is folk music that provides much of the material.'12
When Richard Taruskin used the term neo-nationalism he stressed 'the
adoption from folklore not of thematic material but of style characteristics, ab
stractly conceived.'13 This is certainly truer of Stravinsky than of Bartok, but it
could also be applied to some 'nationalist' composers of the nineteenth century.
At any rate, the change in the function of folklore in modernist music in relation
to that of the Romantic period should be related to more general changes that
occurred in art music from around 1 890. Although many nationalist composers
continued to exploit folk music for its colouristic potential and to characterise
particular situations, others used folk materials as a means to create an alterna
tive solution to the crisis of tonal music, a very different solution to that found
in central-European musical centres such as Vienna and Munich. The number of
those neo-nationalist composers was of course very small in comparison with
the number of composers who were closer to traditional thinking. The list of the
former always contains the names of Stravinsky, Bartok, and Janacek, and much
more rarely those of some others. De Falla, Enescu and Szymanowski are
among those whom some consider modernist14 while some others view them as
essentially separate from that movement.15 There is often a thin line dividing the
1 1 I. Strawinsky, Chroniques de ma vie (Paris: Denofil et Steele, 1 935), 11 6-1 1 7.

12 M. Paddison, Adorno 's Aesthetics ofMusic, 104.
13 R. Taruskin, The Oxford History of Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005),
Vol. 4, 378.
14 J. Samson, 'Music and Nationalism: Five Historical Moments'. See also the same au
thor's 'Placing Genius: The Case of George Enescu', Trondheim Studies on East European Cul
tures and Societies, 17 (2006), 1-31. However, in 'Placing genius', Samson suggests that 'while
the modernist credentials of Bartok's music are never in doubt, Enescu, on the other hand, was
engaged in a more traditionally Humanist enterprise, in which there was little trace of modernist
alienation'.
15 H. Danuser, 'Funktionswandel des Folklorismus' in Die Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts
(Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1984), 58, 59.
126 Melita Milin
composers of the two groups. One possible way to distinguish them would be to
invoke Adorno's category of alienation. Composers such as Szymanowski,
Enescu, and Kalomiris are usually praised for their imaginative and mature use
of folk elements, but in Adorno's terms they might well be considered insuffi
ciently modernist, and their work defined as a kind of incomplete Modernism.
Of course, we may equally well reject Adorno's approach, and consider all
these composers within a wider framework. Common to them all was the belief
that Modernism and nationalism need not be considered mutually exclusive.
Although their approaches were very different, they all sought—or so it might
be argued—to stake a claim to both aesthetics.
It would be difficult to state with certainty if it was the personal discovery
of the authentic folk music of their respective peoples that decisively led some
composers to change the function of folk music in art music forms.16 Bartok
certainly came into this category, whereas Stravinsky basically used the same
folk music as his predecessors in Russia.17 However, his treatment of it was
radically novel, so much so that he seemed to liberate some hidden explosive
force in the old songs. The fascination with ancient layers of folk music was not
in any case restricted to Stravinsky and Bartok, although it was they who reaped
the most imaginative and forward-looking harvest.
It is also possible to explain the change in the function of folk music in
the early twentieth century as a consequence of the different and wider aesthetic
projects of the modernists (neo-nationalists) as compared with nationalists, as
has been suggested by Jim Samson.18 In other words, JanaCek is seen as pursu
ing a project of realism, Szymanowski that of a 'conquest of the exotic', Bartok
and Enescu one of synthesis between East and West.
The Serbian contemporaries of Bartok and Janacek were 'extra-territo
rial' par excellence and they were as a result totally out of Adorno's sight. This
was hardly surprising, since they were virtually unknown abroad. The interna
tional musical scene of the first decades of the twentieth century was focused on
the most progressive and daring achievements and did not seem especially ap
preciative of Serbian music, which made relatively rare appearances in Euro
pean concert halls and opera houses. There were in fact some successful per
formances, such as that of the opera Kostana (1931) by Petar Konjovic (1883-
1971) in Brno and Prague, and also of the Seven Balkan Dances for piano
(1926) by Marko Tajcevic (1900-1986), a work that was in the repertoire of
some of the most outstanding pianists of the time. The works of Josip Slavenski,
a Croatian composer living in Belgrade, should also not be overlooked, as his
First String Quartet was very much praised at the Donaueschingen festival in
1924, and his orchestral Balkanophony (1927) had numerous performances un-
16 See, H. Danuser, 'Funktionswandel des Folklorismus'. 49.

17 Ibid.
18 Samson, 'Placing Genius: The Case of George Enescu', 8.
der Erich Kleiber across Europe and even in Buenos Aires. In spite of these
successes, Serbian (and Yugoslav) music of the times failed to impress critics
and audiences strongly enough to secure a distinguishable place on the map of
European music. Maybe it was too early for the appearance of a great Serbian
composer, since not all the necessary conditions existed for that.19
It should be stressed that Konjovic, Milojevic, Tajdevic and Slavenski ba
sically shared the same aesthetic ideals as Bartok and JanaCek, i.e.: to achieve a
modern national expression that would be rooted in authentic and pure folk music
and/or a realist approach to speech intonations. The first aim—achieving a recognis
able national style—was the most discussed topic among our composers, who
invariably linked it to finding appropriate ways to draw out the latent harmonies of
chosen folk melodies.20 By 'folklorism' composers understood stereotypical arrange
ments of folk melodies, which demonstrated no real feeling for or understanding of
the latent harmonic structures of melodies.21 Folkloristic works were also criticised
for being too descriptive and colourful, rather than psychologically nuanced and
individualistic. 2 The issue of the purity and authenticity of folk music sources was
also often dealt with, probably under Bartok's influence. In the writings of Serbian
composers it was stressed that it was important to establish a national musical style
based on typically Serbian folk music; in other words, free from foreign influence.
The several centuries of occupation by the Ottomans had resulted in the penetration
of some oriental—Turkish and also Rom (Gypsy)—elements into Serbian folk
music, leaving only rural communities uninfluenced. Therefore pure folklore was
sought from rural areas that had conserved archaic and authentic features.23 Petar
Konjovic believed that folk music was by no means all of equal purity and value,
and that composers had to be able to identify what was a 'supplement' (Serbian,
19 In 'Placing genius: the case of George Enescu', 30, J. Samson proposes a 'reading of
creative genius as a convergence between talent of a rare and truly exceptional kind and the sort
of significant project (uniquely defining of its time and place) enabled by an institution of art. All
three components—the talent, the project, the institution—are necessary constituents'.
20 See M. Milin, 'The National Idea in Serbian Music of the 20th Century' in H. Loos and
S. Keym (eds.) Nationale Musik im 20. Jahrhundert. Kompositorische und soziokulturelle Aspekte
der Musikgeschichte zwischen Ost- und Westeuropa, Konferenzbericht Leipzig 2002 (Leipzig:
Gudrun Schroder Verlag, 204), 39-^t 1 .
21 See P. Konjovid, 'Medjusobni uticaj narodne i crkvene muzike' ['Mutual Influences be
tween Folk and Church Music'], in Knjiga o muzici [The Book about Music] (Novi Sad: Matica
srpska, 1947), 36
22 Stevan Hristic made a distinction between descriptive and psychological nationalism in
'O nacionalnoj muzici' ['On National Music'], in Zvezda, 5 (1912), 316-317; Miloje Milojevic
wrote about subjectivistic and folkloristic trends in national music in 'UmetniCka ideologija Ste-
vana St. Mokranjca' ['The Artistic Ideology of Stevan St. Mokranjac'], in Srpski knjizevni glasnik
3 (1938), 192-201.
23 Bozidar Joksimovid wrote about this 'fatal foreign influence'; see R. Pejovid, MuziCka
kritika i esejistika u Beogradu /1919-1941/ [Music Critiques and Essays in Belgrade / 1 9 1 9-
1941/] (Beograd: Fakultet muziCke umetnosti, 1999), 65.
128 Melita Milin
nanos) that distorted and falsified music whose kernel was healthy and original.24 It
should be added that although the purity of folk music was highly appreciated, not
only for its capacities to express specific national features but also for its purely
musical qualities, composers were also attracted by orientalised folklore when they
wished to express a specific poetic atmosphere or characterise a certain ambience.
Petar Konjovic was a master of solo songs in the manner of the 'sevdalinka' (which
he called a 'Balkan chanson in which short and precise Slavic motives are
combined with oriental motives that are decorative and nostalgic'25). Konjovic also
demonstrated great talent in his interpretation of orientalised folk music in his opera
Kostana ('KoStana', female name) whose main character is a young Gypsy girl and
which is set in a southern Serbian small town in which folk music drew heavily
from Turkish elements.
When compared with contemporary European composers, the great ma
jority of Serbian composers who strived towards modern musical nationalism
would certainly appear to be much closer to Enescu, de Falla and Kalomiris,
than to Bartok and ЈапаCеk. The reason for that is that, while using bold and
ambitious harmonies (including polytonality), and rhythms (including polymet-
ric and polyrhythmic writing), they remained rooted in romantic, subjectivist,
and sometimes 'untamed'26 musical thinking. Among the few exceptions to this
we could count two works in which an objectivisation of expression was
achieved: the Seven Balkan Dances by Marko Tajcevic and the slow movement
from the the neoclassical Sonatina by Predrag Milosevic, both works for piano
and both composed in 1 926. The Seven Balkan Dances were obviously inspired
by the works of Bartok, greatly admired by Tajcevic.27
On the other hand, Josip Slavenski, who used radical harmonic tech
niques and was known for his love of percussive effects, did not feel the need
for an objective aesthetic.28 Only after World War II, in the 1950s, did some
24 P. Konjovic, 'Medjusobni uticaj narodne i crkvene muzike', 30.

25 P. Konjovic, 'Razgovori o Kostani' ['Conversations about Kostana'], in Knjiga o
muzici, 103.
26 Ludwig Strecker, editor of Schott in Mainz, reproached Slavenski for his 'untamed'
musical language, the mark of which was the neglect of technical aspects of his work, especially
form. See M. Milin, 'The Correspondence between Josip Slavenski and Ludwig Strecker', Musik-
geschichte in Mittel- und Osteuropa. Mitteilungen der internationalen Arbeitsgemeinschaft an der
Universitdt Leipzig, 1 0 (2005). 1 82-89. Letter of 1 0 December 1 93 1 . See also the internet site:
http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~musik/web/institut/agOst/docs/mittelost/briefe/MilinEd.pdf
27 See more about the relation Tajcevic - Bartok in K. TomaSevic, 'Duh vremena u delima
i delatostima Mihaila Vukdragovica i Marka TajCevica' ['Spirit of the Times in the Works and
Activities of Mihailo Vukdragovic and Marko Tajcevic'] in D. Despic (ed.), Delo i delatnost Mi
haila Vukdragovica i Marka Tajcevica [Work and Activity of Mihailo Vukdragovic and Marko
Tajcevic] (Belgrade: Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti, 2004), 7, and A. Sabo, 'Bela Bartok -
Marko Tajcevic'. 113-131.
"s That aspect of Slavenski's music was criticised first time in the article by B. Bujic 'Daleki
svijet muzikom dokucen' ['Far-Away World Grasped by Music'], Izraz, 1 1 (1963), 324-336.
composers who used folk motives in some of their works (Milan Ristic, Ljubica
Maric) achieve that distancing effect. They had been radical modernists in their
youth before the war, at that time refusing to compose in the national spirit. I
refer here to several Serbian composers who studied in Prague during the 1930s,
and who, influenced by the open and stimulating musical climate there, dis
played in their early works a strong inclination for the aesthetics of the Vienna
school.29 They were of course very much opposed to using folk music in their
works, but later in the 1930s one of them (Vojislav Vudkovic), who was a
communist, began to change his views in the direction of socialist realism
which meant that he turned towards the use of folk music material. His political
views were shared by the critic Stana Djuric-Klajn who in 1938 wrote: 'In their
race for originality, and for new technical inventions our construcdvists [com
posers belonging to the so-called 'Prague group'] turn their back on folk melo
dies as if they were something reactionary, maybe romantic. [...] In fact, young
revolutionary composers should take that path, if they want their music to reach
social classes other than their own'.30 However, in that same article the author
stated that 'nationalism could be dangerous today', obviously having in mind
the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany. Such a view was quite in line with
Adorno's warnings against the Blut und Boden ideology, as mentioned in a
footnote to his Philosophy ofNew Music. Later, in the 1950s, some of the mem
bers of the 'Prague group', as well as a few younger composers, produced sev
eral outstanding works based on folk material, which were a specific variant of
what Stravinsky and Bartok had done earlier in the century.
Seen in its European context, Serbian musical neo-nationalism shares all
the main features of other similar movements in peripheral or—let us use
Adorno's expression—extra-territorial countries. The change in the function of
folk materials in their music came later than in Russia, Hungary and the Czech
Republic, which can be easily explained by the later instigation of musical na
tionalism in the nineteenth century and more generally by the relatively recent
advent of art music in Serbia. Around 1910, when Stravinsky and Bartok were
beginning to develop highly distinctive musical idioms based on indigenous
traditions of folk music, Serbia worshipped its greatest living composer, Stevan
Mokranjac, who had decisively contributed to the founding of its national music
and musical nationalism. Yet although the following generations of composers
did not have enough time fully to assimilate modernist thinking or to produce an
original contribution to European Modernism, there are quite a number of out
standing works of the national repertoire that, if they were better known abroad,
would enable Serbian music to 'acquire its place in the sun'.
"H Apart from some members of the 'Prague group', there were also younger composers, such
as DuSan Radic (b. 1929), who displayed an objectivistic attitude towards folk music material.
30 S. Djuric-Klajn, "Putevi nase moderne' ["Paths of our Modernism'], Muzicki glasnik 1
(1938), 7-10, 9.
130 Melita Milin
Menuma Mwiun
MY3HHKH MO£EPHH3AM y „ArPAPHMM 3EMJLAMA

jyrOHCTOHHE EBPOnE": nPOMEHA (DyHKIJHJE
OOJ1KJ1OPA y XX BEKy
Pe3hMe
FIpo6j]eM c HapcuHHM MejioaHjaMa y yMeTHHHKoj My3HUH XX Beica Ha-

cjief)eH je H3 npeTxo^Hor BeKa. M3rneaa j\a cy 3anaflHH KOMno3HTopH h My3H-
kojio3h 6hjih n3HeHaêHH HacTaB^>aH>eM HHTepecOBaita 3a (J)y3Hjy flBejy My-
3HHKHX KyjiTypa Hax h nocjie poMaHTH3Ma. CMaTpajiH cy ({KwiKjiopHe ejieMeHTe
yrjiaBHOM cpejjcTBHMa 3a aoHapaBanbe cneUH(J)HHHe aTMOC(f)epe h yHonieH>e
Cj1HKOBHTHX Q^QKaTdi y My3HKy, HHMe Cy - y3 peTKe H3y3eTKe - TaKBHM aejlHMa
oapHuajiH bhuih 3HaHaj.
y6p3O no nojaBH Tloceehetba nponeha CTpaBHHCKor, BapTOKOBHX ryaaH-
khx KBapTeTa h JaHaHeKOBnx KacHHX aejia noKa3ajio ce, HnaK, m je „HObh (J)Oji-
Kjiopn3aM" kojh je y H>HMa ncnojbeH nocTao BHTanaH h noncrauajaH j\eo Mo-
aepHHCTHHKHX TeHêHUHja. Mel)yTHM, joni je oncTajao jaK OTnop My3HuH ca
(J)OjiKjiopHOM ocHOboM jep ce OHa yrjiaBHOM cMaTpajia H3pa3OM napTHicyjiapH-
3auHje yHHBep3ajiHor CBeTa My3HKe - uito joj je npe6aUHBaHO h y XIX BeKy.
y paay je nocBeheHa naaoba jeAHoj (J)ycHora H3 0inojo(puje Hoee M)>3UKe
Teoaopa AflopHa, no3HaToj no hckhM HHTepecaHTHHM H npoBOKaTHBHHM oncepBa-
UHjavia o „eKCTpaTepHTopHjajiHHM" KOMno3HTopHMa kojh KopHCTe HapoaHe necMe
„6e3 cTH/ia". riHTaH>e ({)OjiKjiopHor noTemjHjajia OTyf)eH>a h H>eroBor „KpHTHHKor"
KopHUiheH>a 6hjih cy, Mel)yTHM, norayHO BaH HHTepecoBaH>a BehHHe KOMno3HTopa
XX Beica kojh cy kophcthjih (Jxxriioiop y cbojhM aejiHMa. Obo ce CBaKaKo oaHOch h
Ha cpncKe KOMno3HTope npBe nojioBHHe BeKa, Hnje ce aejioBaH>e npeacTaBjba y ca-
aceTo.vi nperjieay paaa HajHCTaKHyTHjHx npcacTaBHHKa: FleTpa KoH>oBHha, Munoja
MunojeBHha, CTeBaHa XpHcmha h Jocnna CnaBeHCKor, y3 pa3MaTpanbe MoryhHO-
cth H>HxoBor ruiacHpaH>a Ha Mann eBponcKor \io;iepHH3Ma.
A NOVARUM RERUM CUPIDUS IN SEARCH
OF TRADITION: BELA BARTOK'S ATTITUDE
TOWARDS MODERNISM
LASZLO VIKARIUS
I. A Musical Explorer
PERSONAL experience and experimentation with musical phenomena
were often the basis of Bela Bartok's ethno-musicological insights. One of his
most intriguing interpretations of relationship in folk music was in connection
with his late research into Milman Parry's collection of Serbo-Croatian or South
Slavic Women's songs. With obvious enthusiasm, he referred to his recent 'sci
entific' discovery while discussing the use of what he called the extension and
compression of themes in his own music in the third Harvard Lecture of early
1943. To introduce the problem, Bartok spoke about his use of chromatic melo
dies which, he claimed, were inspired by some melodies in his Algerian collec
tion of 1913. At the lecture, he let his audience listen to a recording from his
Arab collection, probably no. 59a whose transcription had been included as Ex
ample 13 in his study, 'Die Volksmusik der Araber von Biskra und Umgebung'
published in the Zeitschrift fur Musikwissenschaft in 1920 (Ex. I).1 Later in the
lecture he referred to the chromatic melody at the beginning of the Dance Suite
(Ex. 2) as having 'some resemblance to the Arab melody' he had just shown his
audience. Then he continued:
This kind of melodic invention was only an incidental digression on my
part and had no special consequences. My second attempt was made in 1926; on
that occasion 1 did not try to imitate anything known from folk music.
1 See in English, 'Arab Folk Music from the Biskra District', in Bela Bartok. Studies in
Ethnomusicology, ed. Benjamin Suchoff (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press,
1997), 50. See also Bartok and Arab Folk Music, CD-ROM, ed. Janos Karpati, Istvan Pavai and
Laszlo Vikarius (Budapest: European Folklore Institute, etc., 2005). The example is F 59a ac
cording to Bartok's serial numbering of the original phonograph recordings.
132 Laszlo Vikarius
In his manuscript of the lecture, Bartok enumerated a whole series of

works, specific movements from compositions of the later 1920s and 1930s be
ginning with the 'Night's Music' form the Out ofDoors suite. He then added: 'I
cannot remember having met this kind of melodic chromaticism deliberately
developed to such a degree in any other contemporary music.' That the use of
device was a conscious choice is clearly shown by the readily available exam
ples in his own works. The device being one of his important compositional
strategies is perhaps best represented by his use of it not just independently but
often rather as a means of variation. This is exactly what he then went on to dis
cuss in the lecture: 'The working with these chromatic degrees gave me another
idea which led to the use of a new device. This consists of the change of the
chromatic degrees into diatonic degrees.' For this, again, he enumerated exam
ples from his compositions. While the best known example is his change of the
chromatic fugue subject of Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta into a
melody that uses a 'diatonically' spaced scale in the Finale, an example he also
includes in the list, it is also enlightening to look at the theme and its chromatic
version in 'Variations on a Folk Tune', no. 112 in Mikrokosmos, included in the
list as an example of compression in contrast to the opposite procedure in Music
for Strings (Ex. 3).
Yb.Knija-d&rz "Ahlilizdm"
1.10
Example 1 F 59a from the Arab collection

A NOVARUM RERUM CUPIDUS.. 133
Example 2 Dance Suite (1923), beginning of the first movement in the piano
transcription
vf—W f^r
— —<»-»-1
Example 3 Comparison of the theme and its 'compressed' chromatic version in

'Variations on a Folk tune', Mikrokosmos, no. 112
It was after mentioning the compression and extension of themes that he

came to his most recent and intriguing scientific insight related to his research
into Milman Parry's collection.
A rather surprising circumstance has been discovered in connection with
the compression of diatonic into chromatic melodies. I discovered it only six
months ago when studying the Dalmatian chromatic style. It appears that this
style is not an independent style, consisting of independent chromatic melodies
which have no variants elsewhere. The chromatic melodies of this style are, as a
matter of fact, nothing else than diatonic melodies of the neighbouring areas,
compressed into a chromatic level. . . . This theory offers a very easy explanation
of the queer major second distance between the two parts [in the characteristic
Dalmatian two-part singing]. The compression simply works in two directions:
in horizontal direction for the melody, and in vertical direction for the intervals
or distance between the two parts. Evidently, the major or minor third distance
usually met with in two-part singing is compressed into the unusual major sec
ond distance.
When I first used the device of extending chromatic melodies into a dia
tonic form or vice versa, I thought I invented something absolutely new, which
never yet existed. And now I see that an absolutely identical principle exists in
Dalmatia since Heaven knows how long a time, maybe for many centuries.
Although, sadly, Bartok never 'enumerated' what he called 'the irrefuta
ble proofs for this theory' at a later occasion because of his sudden illness that
prevented him from completing the planned series of eight lectures, one might
piece together some of his arguments from his posthumously published study,
134 Laszlo Vikarius
Serbo-Croatian Folk Song and the manuscript material, the 'Source Melodies'
(identifiable by way of his 'Tabulation of Material') published by Benjamin
Suchoff in Yugoslav Folk Music} As it appears, his proof was ultimately based
on the identification of a single group of clearly related melodies with identical
or very similar text and musical structure that could be found in both diatonic
and chromatic forms.3 Since Bartok's line of thought has, to my knowledge,
never been followed, I am trying here to make the most important elements of
the idea explicit.
Bartok's prime example (Facs. 1) of the chromatic style that he identified
as variant of diatonic melodies was known to him from Ludvik Kuba's ( 1 863-
1 956) series of publications presenting his collection of songs from Bosnia and
Hercegovina.4 This 'two-part' chromatic song has a structure that can either be
described as ABA or ABBA with 5, 8, 8, 5 syllables per stanza. (According to
Bartok's analysis the song has three phrases, the middle one being doubled,
hence his description of the structure as 5, 8+8, 5.) The text shows a slightly
different structure from the music, the double middle phrase actually having
different words, thus ABCA with, again, an ABBA (or rather RAAR) rhyme
scheme. A translation of the text would be the following:5
Travo kosena! Cut grass!

Ko ce tebe, travo, kosit, Who is going to cut you, grass,
kad ja budem sabjju nosit, When I carry a sabre?
Travo kosena! Cut grass!
- See Bela Bartok and Albert B. Lord, Serbo-Croatian Folk Songs: Texts and Transcrip
tions ofSeventy-Five Folk Songs from the Milman Parry Correction and a Morphology ofSerbo-
Croatian Folk melodies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1951) and Bela Bartok, Yugoslav
Folk Music, 4 vols., ed. Benjamin Suchoff (Albany, New York: State University of New York
Press, 1978). Serbo-Croatian Folk Songs is reprinted in Yugoslav Folk Music, vol. i.
J Compare 'Travo kosena' quoted from an article by Kuba in Bartok Serbo-Croatian
Folk-Songs. 62 and melodies belonging to type 835 in the Source Melodies published by Suchoff,
Yugoslav Folk Music, vol. iv, 122-25, especially those beginning 'Travo zelena'.
4 'Pjesme i napjevi iz Bosne i Hercegovine' [Songs and Melodies from Bosnia and
Hercegovina] published in Glasnik zemaljskog muzeja u Bosni i Hercegovini between 1 906- 1910.
see Serbo-Croation Folk Songs. 22-23.
^ 1 am grateful to Aleksandar Vasic for helping me understand the text of some of the re
lated South Slavic texts during my stay at the Belgrade conference.
A NOVARUMRERUM CUPIDUS.. 135
i¥B#f
b* te-be, ira-vo, ko sii.kad ja bu-dem sab-lu no-sil,
Tra - vo hr> - Se - ua!

U. Zagvozdu; devojkc.
ftTTfTTT^M x jig H j> ^
TrO'-/v«l /trtt-ve, /lra-v« ~ /Ml !

£" . .
Facsimiles 1 and 2 Examples from KuhaC and Kuba, resp.,

from Yugoslav Folk Music
The words of the young lad about to go on service in the army was well
known to Bartok from comparable Hungarian folk songs as shown by his refer
ence to a group of songs starting with the text 'Biiza, biiza, biiza' [Wheat,
wheat, wheat].6 Both melodically and structurally, a number of diatonic melo
dies are related to the chromatic one in Kuba's collection. Probably the clearest
relative is the one from Franjo Kuhac's collection (Facs. 2). Its structure is
again ABA, B being a rhymed pair of lines with 9, 8+8, 9 syllables per stanza.
Its text is the closest possible to that of the chromatic melody.
6 Yugoslav Folk Music, vol. 4, 1 22 (below melody 835a reproduced here as Facs. 2).
136 Laszlo Vikarius
Travo, travo, travo zelena! Grass, grass, green grass!

Ko ce tebe, travo, kosit, Who is going to cut you, grass,
kad ja moram puSku nosit, When I have to carry a rifle?
Travo, travo, travo zelena! Grass, grass, green grass!
While the two melodies might at first appear completely different, one
having the range of a major third filled with all chromatic degrees, while the
other having that of a full diatonic Mixolydian octave, the analysis of the struc
ture, as Bartok proposes, reveals the obvious kinship between the two (Ex. 4).
The fact that not only one diatonic version can be found but a number of them
(Bartok collects four more Yugoslav examples but refers to Slovak variants as
well), makes the case even more convincing.
li_J
-fe—J *1 .J
hJ li «lJ II
,g*r1 ,r ir
" ,r 'J'
J ,f r J)
J U|J 't ^11
Example 4 Comparison of the two melodies
Thus, clearly, Bartok's idea to use extension and compression of melo

dies was not based on the influence of folk music but rather the other way
round, his scholarly insight was based on his previous experience in composi
tion. Nevertheless, he felt himself reassured by the discovery that the idea was
instinctively used in peasant musical culture, which was strong enough evidence
for him to declare it a 'natural' phenomenon.
A NOVARUM RERUM CUPIDUS. 137
Tone Clusters
The use of chromatic versus diatonic forms of melodies was just one im
portant stylistic novelty Bartok happily introduced in his music. The use of nar
rowly spaced notes as chords was another. It is Halsey Stevens's classic biogra
phy that relates how Bartok met the young American composer to whom we
owe the term 'tone cluster'.7
Henry Cowell tells of meeting [Bartok] in London in December 1923; both
were house guests in the same home, and Cowell, then investigating the possibilities
of tone clusters, was playing some of his own music one Sunday morning when
Bartok, attracted by the strange sounds, appeared and asked if he might listen. Bartok
himself had occasionally piled up adjacent notes in approaching clusters, but
Cowell's development of a tone-cluster 'technique' was quite new to him. 'He
immediately arranged for me to play in Paris to his friends, including Roussel, Falla,
Ravel, Prunieres, and I don't know how many others of some importance . . .'
Cowell wrote. 'It was the best thing that ever happened to me.'
Early the next year Bartok wrote to Cowell asking whether the latter would
object to his using tone-clusters in his own music; the letter with this modest request
has disappeared, but the piano music which Bartok wrote in the next few years shows
the effect of his accidental encounter with the young American.
The Hungarian composer's attraction towards Cowell's experimental ap
proach to piano technique was, as Stevens rightly points out, instigated by his
own previous use of something that could be termed as 'pre-cluster technique'
like, for instance, in his Five Songs op. 1 5 (Ex. 5) where he indeed used cluster
like chromatic chords. While at the beginning the same small cluster is used in
both hands (D^-Da-Et,), from bar 5 on we even have two chromatic clusters
clashing (first Fj,-Ft^-Gt, then Ai,-As-B, against D;,-D^-Ei,) and evolving further
in the following bars where Bartok uses them as mixture chords—the most
likely origin of the compositional idea.
Sa . padt vi - ra - gok sor - su - kat vrir - Jak

Pale flow- era stand a wait - Injr their aiaugh - ter
Example 5 'Itt lenn a volgyben' [In the Valley], Five Songs Op. 15, no. 5, bb. 6-8
7 Stevens. Bela Bartok, 67.

138 Laszlo Vikarius
Beginning with his new compositions for piano in 1926, which followed
a period a 'creative pause', Bartok started to employ tone clusters more system
atically. His 'Night's Music' is probably the best early example (Ex. 6), while
the fully developed form of his technique is found in the central Presto section
in the second movement of the Second Piano Concerto.
Microtones
Yet another novelty in compositional technique that intrigued Bartok for
decades was the occasional use of microtones. An interesting, though fairly
natural aspect to his employment of microtones is the fact that his familiarity
with it in folk music did not automatically result in his employment of the de
vice in composition. He originally met non-tempered tones and microtones
during his folkloristic work in Hungary, most often in Romanian songs. His first
scholarly monograph, the Bihor collection of 1913 already contained examples
of notated deviations from the chromatic scale. He then used the accidental #A
to indicate a quartertone. His collection of Arab music from the Biskra district
of Algeria of June 1913 featured a whole series of unusual scales. To notate
these melodies, he adopted a system of a full 'key signature' showing all the
notes belonging to the scale of the melody where he, probably mainly following
Hornbostel's example, also marked deviations smaller than a quartertone
adopting new special signs.
Inasmuch as the overwhelming majority of the melodies has a scale
whose tones differ from our dodecaphonic system, key signatures could not be
used in the customary way. Instead, at the beginning of each melody, I give the
tonal series: the small-head notes that are performed with less intensity, and the
larger ones which have to be taken into consideration when establishing the
range. The plus (+) sign above or below a scalar note indicates that the tone is
raised in pitch by less than a quarter tone, yet discernible by the ear; the zero (o)
sign likewise indicates a lowered tone. The tA and #A signs indicate,
respectively, chromatic alteration of the pitch down or up a quarter tone. These
scalar deviations are valid throughout the entire melody.8
Later in his notation of folk music, he replaced these signs with a simple
arrow whose direction shows whether the tone below it is raised or lowered.
In his compositions, Bartok first used quartertones in the early 1920s
when orchestrating his Miraculous Mandarin. In his full score he used a hori
zontally flipped flat sign which is so reminiscent of Szymanowski's and Alois
Haba's modified accidentals that it was obviously contemporary music that
gave the final impetus for the incorporation of the new device.9 Bartok's
exploitation of these microtones was, in any case, more akin to Szymanowski's
use than to Haba's. While Haba used quartertones as independent degrees of a
hyper-chromatic tonal space, both Szymanowski and Bartok employed quarter-
tones only occasionally and locally as a special expressive means. In The Mi
raculous Mandarin quartertones appear twice in a single Adagio scene that fol
lows the first attempted murder of the mandarin. 'Suddenly the mandarin's head
appears among the pillows; he looks longingly at the girl.' Thus says Bartok's
abridged text of the pantomime grotesque. At that moment, four solo celli play a
sigh motif, a micro-chromatically filled falling augmented second, which is in
fact the mandarin's own characteristic motif (Ex. 7). The instruction that imme
diately follows describes the reaction of the onlookers, the three tramps and the
girl: 'The four shudder and stand aghast.' For some time no further instruction
is given, the next one appearing at the ensuing Allegro molto. Just a few bars
after the mandarin's augmented second sighs, the very strange ondeggiando
effect, using quartertones again, characterize the reviving mandarin's frighten
ing motions (Ex. 8).
There is no doubt that here Bartok used quartertones as some exceptional
means of expression, a technical novelty along with perhaps less unconventional but
still relatively unusual effects like glissandi, con sordino, harmonics or tremolo. It
remained a single occasion of the composer's experimenting with quartertones for
'Arab Folk Music from the Biskra District", in Bartok, Studies in Ethnomusicology. 39.
q The relationship between Szymanowski's quartertone accidental and that in Bartok's
Miraculous Mandarin was first pointed out by Malcolm Gillies, see 'Stylistic Integrity and Influ
ence in Bartok's Works: the Case of Szymanowski", International Journal of Musicology 1
(1992), 1 54. Bartok's decision to use a similar, albeit not perfectly identical sign was, by the way.
natural as the works of all three composers were published by the same publishing house, Univer
sal-Edition.
140 Laszlo Vikarius
)1 means nr quarter of ton* lower

Example 7 The Miraculous Mandarin, fig. 84, strings only
Example 8 The Miraculous Mandarin, after fig. 84, piano and string parts only
A NOVARUMRERUM CUPIDUS. 141
more than a decade. As far as string instruments are concerned, he was more
interested in other technical features that can be abundantly found in his Third and
Fourth String Quartets and he was furthermore preoccupied with trying out unusual
percussion effects especially starting with his First Piano Concerto. Thus it was only
from the late 1 930s that Bartok once again resorted to the use of microtones first in
his Violin Concerto (1937/38) and then in the Sixth String Quartet (1939).1° His last
and most extensive use of microtones (third-tones as well as quartertones) was in his
1944 Sonata for Solo Violin (Ex. 9). The piece, composed for a commission by
Yehudi Menuhin, who himself posthumously edited the piece with leaving out the
microtones to present only the simpler chromatic 'ossia' versions of the microtonal
passages he himself preferred to play, was rarely performed with microtones for a
long time. In the original autograph, as can be seen in the recent new Urtext edition,
the composer used arrows to indicate quartertones just like in the earlier compositions
of the nineteen-thirties as well as in his later notation of folk music, while devising a
new sign for the third-tones appearing in the Sonata. Whatever the sign he used,
however, microtones were still only adopted for producing special effect even though
this time it was the main subject of the movement that exploited the quartertones.
Furthermore, Bartok organically elaborated on its use when he brought back the
original theme in double stops on two adjacent strings in open fifths.1 1
Example 9 Two excerpts from the fourth movement of the Sonata

for Solo Violin, bb. 1-7 and 205-212
10 Quarter-tones are used before the cadenza in the first movement of the Violin Concerto
(see between bars 303 and 308) and in the third 'Burletta' movement of the Sixth String Quartet
(see bars 26-30).
" I have discussed Bartok's use of quarter-tones in more detail in my study, Model! es in-
spiracio Bartok zenei gondolkoddsdban [Model and inspiration in Bartok's musical thinking]
(Pecs, Hungary: Jelenkor, 1999), 123-30.
142 Laszlo Vikarius
The three examples, the special use of chromatic melodies, experiments

with tone clusters and the occasional employment of microtones show Bartok's
commitment to compositional novelty throughout his career. He must have been
consciously one of the 'modernists' of his generation.
II. A Modernist?
Nor was it by chance that the notoriety of Bartok's name during the early
1920s, especially in French musical journalism, was also due to a stylistic nov
elty, his alleged early experiments with bitonality.12 This was part of the reason
why Zoltan Kodaly, a sharp critic and an equally strict ideologue in artistic
questions, scolded those interested in new techniques in Bartok's compositions
as early as 1921: 'His innovations in style and technique', Kodaly stated, 'are
mentioned more often than necessary. Of these, Bartok has as many as anyone
else.'13 Pace Kodaly, Bartok was indeed interested in technical novelty—and
not just in composition.
But then, why do we read in one oft-quoted letter of late 1924 that
Bartok, when advising Weimar's conductor Ernst Latzko about a lecture on
him, declares his music 'not being "modern" at all'? To see Bartok's crucial
statement in context, I first quote Latzko's letter of 8 December 1924.
German National Theatre

Weimar, 8, Dec, [19]24
Dear Professor Bartok,
You have probably learnt from Universal-Edition that the German Na
tional Theater in Weimar wishes to perform your Bluebeard and Wooden Prince.
I heard both works at the Frankfurt premiere and have since tried to organize a
performance here. I have to call your attention in advance to the fact that the very
conservative [stark reactiondre] Weimar is no favourable place for your works
and no great public success can be expected. At the same time, however, within
the intelligentsia, or more precisely among the avant-garde [radikale] artists
(Bauhaus), there are many who are truly interested in your work and look eagerly
forward to the planned performance. I intend to give a short speech about you at
a morning celebration and I would be grateful if you could give me some hints as
to what you think especially important.
12 On the reception history of the First Bagatelle see my article, 'Backgrounds of Bartok's
'Bitonal' Bagatelle', in Essays in Honor of Laszlo Somfai on His 70th Birthday: Studies in the
Sources and the Interpretation of Music, ed. Laszlo Vikarius and Vera Lampert (Lanham, Mary
land: Scarecrow Press, 2005). 410-14.
13 Zoltan Kodaly, 'Bela Bartok' ( 1921 ). in The Selected Writings ofZoltan Kodaly. trans.
Lili Halapy and Fred Macnicol (Budapest: Corvina Press. 1974), 94.
M Denijs Dille, 'Bartoks Briefe an Dr. E. Latzko". Documenta Rartokiana vol. 2, ed.
Denijs Dille (Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1965). 128-31 (p. 130). My translation.
In the remaining part of the letter, Latzko seeks the composer's advice on
performance issues in general and, in particular, regarding the possible replace
ment of the rare saxophone parts in the Wooden Prince. Bartok's reply came
relatively quickly. On 16 December, he wrote a letter that includes not only es
sential information on the performance style of Duke Bluebeard's Castle and
the definitive answer to the question of how to replace the two saxophones, but
also one of his most important statements concerning his position towards
'modernist' tendencies.
... As far as the speech is concerned I would ask you
(1) not to overemphasize the folkloristic features of my music;
(2) to stress that in these stage works, as in my other original composi
tions, I never employ folk tunes;
(3) that my music is tonal throughout and
(4) also has nothing in common with the 'objective' and 'impersonal'
manner (therefore it is not properly 'modern' at all!)15
When he dissociates his music from almost all important categories of
new music, atonality (meaning Schoenberg) and objectivity (meaning Stravin
sky) as well as, most surprisingly, folklorism—in this case, as Carl Leafstedt
rightly points out, to avoid earning reputation for his opera 'along the lines of
Jenufa"—16 Bartok apparently tries to escape from categorization per se. While
his wish to avoid labelling was probably doomed to failure, from then on he
repeatedly expressed his distance from contemporary tendencies.
Another important statement is in a letter of 1 1 April 1927 to his pub
lisher Universal-Edition. Here he even comments on the character of the music
of his The Miraculous Mandarin then recently premiered and immediately
banned from further performances in Cologne. The letter reflects upon a pro
posal by his publisher to change the objected libretto of the ballet to a new text
to save the music.
I have received the revised text for The Miraculous Mandarin. Unfortu
nately, the changes ... do not fit the music at all. For this music, in contrast to
today's objective, motor, etc., tendencies, is intended to express psychological
processes. No text can be underlain which in many places, expresses the exact
opposite mood than that in the music.17
15 Dille, ibid., 128. With slight modifications, the translation was taken over from Carl S.
Leafstedt, Inside Bluebeard's Castle: Music and Drama in Bela Bartok's Opera (New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 78-79. See also Leafstedt's sensible comments on this
disavowal of the 'objective' and the " folkloristic' labels.
16 ibid., 79.
17 The German original text of this letter is included in the selected internet edition of
Bartok's letters to Universal-Edition see:
http://www.unileipzig.de/~musik/web/institut/agOst/docs/mittelost/hefteA'ikarius.pdf
(accessed 20 February 2008).
144 Laszlo Vikarius
It was, however, not only Bartok who disavowed modernism in the

1 920s. Schoenberg and Stravinsky, in their different ways also chose to dissoci
ate themselves from the younger generation of composers who appeared on the
scene after the First World War. This did not mean, however, that any of them
gave up their wish to remain leading modernists.18
Bartok, who had signed one of his letters to his future wife in 1908 as an
'ultra-hyper-neo-impressio-secessionist, the musician of Tomorrow, who is an
opponent of today's public but whose music should be listened to not only ac
cording to Roman Law but also because the Law of Art demands it', naturally
stylized himself as an avant-garde composer in his earlier years.19 His modern
ism, as the quote clearly suggests, rooted in the art nouveau aesthetics.20 Even in
late 1916, when working on the composition of his op. 16 songs settings of five
poems by the Hungarian modernist poet Endre Ady—a song cycle whose musi
cal style he himself called 'strange and good'—he stated: 'My Ady songs are so
wild that for the time being I wouldn't dare include them in a concert in Vi-
enna.
During the First World War Bartok was especially isolated from musical
developments. He had not even taken part in what was Budapest's concert life
since 1912. It is small wonder that around 1920, when he could finally get in
touch with European musical events, Bartok was keen to search for novelties.
One of his first surprises was that his own music turned out to be known to at
least some influential figures outside the German speaking musical orbit, in
England, France and Italy. By then, of course, he had had a contract with an
internationally acknowledged publisher, Universal-Edition of Vienna. That
some of his early works, especially his First Orchestral Suite was praised by
Cecil Gray, the British music critic completely unknown to him although of ap
parent authority, could also have contributed to his feeling of not being regarded
as a newcomer any more despite his long isolation. On the other hand, he
looked for new compositions by his contemporaries through a number of ways
such as studying new scores (by Stravinsky, Malipiero, Casella, Goossens or
Lord Berners), attending and reviewing concerts (with compositions by
Schoenberg or Milhaud, for instance), as well as performing pieces by Debussy,
Ravel, Stravinsky, Szymanowski or Ernst Bloch." He looked upon some of the
See my article, 'Bartok and the Ideal of a "Sentimentalitats-Mangel"' International

Journal of Musicology Vol. 9 (2006), 197-242, especially the first chapter. 'Modernism Dis
avowed'.
19 Cf. Bartok's letter of 24 December 1908 in Bartok Be/a csalddi levelei, 185.
See Janos Karpati, 'A Typical Jugendstil Composition: Bartok's String Quartet No. 1*,
TheNew Hungarian Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 137 (1995), 130-143.
:l Dille, 'Bartok et Ady', Regard sur le passe, 299.
Regarding Bartok's interest and familiarity with contemporary music, substantial
source material has been collected and edited in Documenta Bartokiana, vol. 5, ed. Laszlo Somfai
(Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1977). including Bartok's regular concert reviews of 1920/21 (ed
music with interest and appreciation (like string quartets by Casella and Mil-
haud), some exerted an influence on his own compositions, like Szymanowski's
writing for the violin or probably some elements of Schoenberg's harmony,
while others, Stravinsky's more recent compositions in particular, disappointed
him. A concert series in Berlin in the spring of 1920, a first concert tour to Lon
don, Paris and Frankfurt in 1922, and events linked to the foundation of the In
ternational Society for Contemporary Music helped Bartok keep in touch with
new compositional tendencies. By late 1924, when he most clearly stated the
detachment of his style from 'modernism', he must have become weary of all
the stylistic diversity of the early 1920s, partly also because perhaps he himself
suffered from a low-ebb of compositional creativity. When he could finally pro
duce a series of new compositions that led to the eventual composition of his
long-awaited First Piano Concerto in 1926, he blamed the disconcerting musical
life, especially the most varied catchwords of musical journalism for laming his
creative instincts.23
However, it was not only his interest in new music that underwent a deci
sive change in the inter-war period. Whereas in 1920 he could still write a rather
general article on the problems of new music, discussing atonality, new harmo
nies, and questions of musical notation, by the later 1920s he rather chose to
confine his theorization to the sole field of his avowed musical style, the possi
bilities of the employment of peasant music in composition. Whereas in 1 920 he
could still envisage melodic material derived from folk music being reconciled
with what he then called 'atonal' treatment, by 1931 he felt it necessary to
squarely state that atonality and folksong are irreconcilable, since folksongs are
inevitably tonal.
III. A Folklorist?
Folklorism in European music of the twentieth-century is often regarded
as a remnant of a nineteenth-century approach. There is no doubt that Bartok
also turned to the folklore of his country in order to find a source for his mod
ernistic endeavours of national musical definition. That the population of pre-
First-World-War Hungary—the country of his childhood and youth—was
mixed and multiethnic with different minorities was decisive for this 'national'
musical definition which within a few years' time took on a significantly
broader character that could rather be termed as East-European than actually
and exclusively 'national'. Bartok furthermore became captivated by the experi
ence of spontaneous musicality and, gradually, he also became entangled with
ited by Somfai), catalogues of contemporary music in his library (compiled by Vera LamperD and
in his concerts (compiled by Janos Demeny).
23 See Bartok's letter of 21 June 1926 quoted in Tibor Tallian, Bela Bartok: The Man and
His Work (Budapest: Corvina, 1988), 140.
146 Laszlo Vikarius
the scholarly implications of his research. His experience of primitive village

life in far-away rural areas (especially cultural peripheries) and the village peo
ple's music (songs and instrumental pieces) whose use was often governed by
the customs of communal life became decisive for his composition. What this
music actually meant for his individual style might be approached from a vari
ety of angles. However, an examination of a single specific area of folkloristic
inspiration, the use of and references to peasant pipe tunes, might help us under
stand something basic of what kind of a tradition Bartok actually relied on and
how he did so.
Bartok's first employment of what he regarded 'authentic' musical folk
lore in composition was a single setting for voice and piano of the folksong Ti
ros alma' [Red apple], a setting that originates in the tradition of the German
lied.24 He soon engaged in composing further arrangements without, however, a
clear view of what he later strictly defined as folksong or the peasant song of
villages in contrast to the stock of widespread popular songs of towns and cities.
Thus it happened that two of the next surviving settings which were marked by
Bartok as 'folksongs from Gomor county', later turned out to be nineteenth-
century composed, i.e. 'art', songs by amateur composers. It was due to his
collaboration with Zoltan Kodaly that the first collection of peasant songs, twice
ten simple arrangements for voice and piano were published in 1906. It is char
acteristic, however, that despite the more experienced Kodaly's reservations,
Bartok did include a popular art song in his selection; he replaced the piece by
the arrangement of a genuine folksong in the later editions of the book. A trip to
Transylvania in the next summer, 1907, brought a fundamental change in
Bartok's approach to folksong. It was then that he realized the existence of the
pentatonic scale, which he then called a 'defective scale' for lack of a better
word. The very first composition resulting from this almost two-month- long trip
was a composition based on instrumental pieces rather than songs and has re
mained little known in its original form. Three Hungarian Folksongs from Csik
for piano was originally composed as Gyergyobol {From Gyergyo), referring to the
region where Bartok collected the melodies played on the jurulya, a commonly
used short six-holed peasant pipe.25 From Gyergyo itself was first arranged for the
same instrument—the peasant pipe—accompanied by the piano.26 As all three
- The song was published in Documenta Bartokiana, vol. 4, ed. Denijs Dille (Budapest:
Akademiai Kiado, 1970), 25-26. See further Ferenc Laszlo, "Bartok's First Encounter with Folk
Music', The New Hungarian Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 72 (Winter 1978). 67-75.
25 Published in facsimile in Denijs Dille, Het werk van Bela Bartok (Antwerp: Metropolis,
1979), among the photos at the end of the book. It was also published as Gyergyobol and Aus
Gyergyo. for recorder (!) and piano, by Editio Musica and Schott, respectively. A recording, also
with recorder, is available on the Rarities CD, part of the Bartok Complete Edition (Hungaroton
Records Ltd., 2000. HCD 3 1909).
26 On the single surviving autograph of the piece Bartok refers to the folk instrument per
haps fancifully as 'tilinko'—a name later generally used to designate long pipes—although the
pieces of the series, no. 2 is thus based on a peasant pipe variant of a song. In
this case, the sung version was first recorded by Bartok on the spot before the
pipe variant was performed. This is indeed a well defined type of Hungarian
folksongs, which was considered so important by Bartok that he started the over
300 musical examples of his monograph, The Hungarian Folksong, with
exactly this melody, even though, according to a note added, he hesitated
whether to put the tune into the group of what he called the old style melodies at
all within his collection arranged along the lines of a rough evolutionary theory
of the material. According to his later systematization of the entire collection of
Hungarian folksongs he still included it in Class A, the old style melodies. For
his arrangement of 1907, he did not choose the song but the instrumental
variant.*7 A comparison of the vocal and instrumental form (Ex. 10) puts
specific stylistic elements of peasant piping in relief. Whereas the tune in its
vocal variant as notated by Bartok is already full of ornaments, there is a visible
tendency in the instrumental form of adding different embellishments as well as
lengthening the already longer note values and shortening the remaining notes
of individual motifs—a rubato approach as Bartok's tempo indication also
shows. Diminution, akin to the renaissance sense of the term, of simple pas
sages, is also characteristic, such as can be found in the second half of the third
and fourth phrases where a somewhat rhapsodic combination of quavers and
semiquaver pairs (.-.. and .~) prevail.
In this case, it was obviously this up to then unknown instrumental art
that captivated the composer's imagination. The version for pipe and piano
might justifiably be regarded a piece d 'occasion but it can also be considered an
experimental composition that attempts to combine original sound quality with
higher art accompaniment. The version for pipe and piano was never published
in Bartok's lifetime but, instead, he quickly transcribed it for piano alone. This
version proved to be significant since this was his first attempt at using a special
folkloristic instrumental way of writing for the piano: the highly ornamental
improvisatory style of peasant pipers. That the imitation of this instrumental
style became established as a special type in his writing for the piano is further
reinforced by the composition of 'Evening in Transylvania', no. 5 of the Ten
Easy Piano Pieces (1908), whose double trio form is based on the alternation of
instrument is identified by the player himself as a furulya in the announcement of the still avail
able phonograph recording. See Vera Lampert, Nepzene Bartok muveiben [Folk music in Bartok's
compositions] (Budapest: Helikon, 2005). nos. 22-24 in the catalogue and on the accompanying CD.
7 The first stanza of the song reads in Bartok, Hungarian Folk Music [later also published
as The Hungarian Folk Song], trans. M.D. Calvocoressi, (Oxford: Oxford University Press.
1931), 111, as follows:
When my little dove weeps. I also weep.
We both shed bitter tears.
Mother, dear mother, why torment me,
Why not let me marry this little maiden?
148 Laszlo Vikarius
two themes, a parlando melody reminiscent of pentatonic Transylvanian folk

songs with a descending melody line and a second one 'more in a dance like
rhythm' being 'more or less the imitation of a peasant flute playing', as Bartok
explained in a late radio interview.28
Parlando, J = 68
Sir a kis ga - lam - bom.

[Rubato, J = cca 134| ^ l ;
A ! 6
>f L" a •—*—•—*—i
r ". L 1 •-
—1 0h
^ m,v **—1jK rL_ a : —
ft1* r ' r= F £—— 7T
if— I K 1
Si - runk mind a ke! - ten i - gen ke - ser - ve-se*n.
-0—li« • f J . | p_, E—1LW <—*.'.t.. *. , n

\
—i-i—[
^3=
nyam. a-nyam. mert til - do - zesz en - gem.
Example 10 The tune used in frtwi Gyergyd, no. 2, in its vocal and instrumental
(peasant pipe) variant: the song appears here as published in The Hungarian Folksong
It happened also in the summer of 1907, during his very first Transylva
nian trip that Bartok met a village carpenter Gyoigy Gyugyi Pentek in Korosfo
(now Izvoru Crisului in Romania) from whom he ordered peasant style furni-
'Ask the Composer' (1944), Bartok Bcla Irdsai 1, ed. Tibor Tallian (Budapest: Zene-
mukiado, 1989), 262. The 'peasant flute' here refers to the six-holed shepherd's pipe.
ture. A series of photos taken in his Budapest home in 1908 shows Bartok sur
rounded by these pieces of furniture (Figure 1). In one photo (Figure 2), how
ever, it is not only his flat that is provided with memorabilia from peasant life:
Bartok himself is dressed in a peasant costume. This rare view of the composer
and professor of the Royal Music Academy is probably the closest parallel to
his occasional inclusion of an original peasant instrument in the composition of
From Gyergyo.
Figures 1 and 2 Bartok surrounded by his peasant style furniture in his

Budapest home, 1 908
150 Laszlo Vikarius
The role peasant music could play in Bartok's compositions changed

considerably after the early years of his involvement with this new composi
tional 'raw material'. The only works—sets of compositions—that include self-
assuredly modernist pieces side by side with actual or seeming folksong ar
rangements are the Fourteen Bagatelles and the Ten Easy Piano Pieces, both of
1 908, the exact same period the series of photos was taken of him in his Buda
pest apartment, as well as the Seven Sketches of the following year. By then,
however, Bartok started to prefer collections of arrangements like the pedagogi
cal For Children series for piano or the Four Old Hungarian Folksongs for
male chorus, and a few years later, in 1915, several sets of arrangements of
Romanian folk music such as the Rumanian Folk Dances and the Rumanian
Christmas Carols. In the wake of the First World War, Bartok again started to
undertake essentially new experiments with the employment of folk music—
genuine and imaginary alike. In the Improvisations op. 20 of 1920, the Village
Scenes of 1924 and the Twenty Hungarian Folk songs for voice and piano of
1929, all 'pure' folksong arrangements, he combined the borrowed and care
fully handled melodic material with radically modernistic stylistic elements as
well as a highly organicist approach. In his Dance Suite, the most 'folkloristic'
of all his 'original' compositions he used folk-like melodies and styles of his
own invention imitating a large variety of musical types of motifs and rhythms
in Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian and even Arab music he intimately knew. In a
different manner, his two Rhapsodies for violin and piano of 1928 use several
instrumental pieces from his own collection within a modernistic harmonic
framework to build up a larger-scale structure which itself represents a genre of
folkloristic origin. Four Hungarian Folksongs for mixed chorus (1930) and
Szekely Folksongs (1932) are the last downright arrangements of folksongs.
Otherwise he used folk texts to compose his last choral works (Cantata profana
in 1930 and Twenty-Seven Choruses and From Olden Times in 1935).
His only extensive series of small-scale pieces, almost a farewell to folk
song arrangement, is the Forty-Four Duos for two violins of 1931, composed in
exactly the period when, on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday he was again
photographed in his home (Fig. 3). Looking at him 23 years later, his tender and
loving but aloof relationship to the objects of peasant craft is conspicuous.
Finally, inspired by arrangements of his own compositions by young vio
linists such as Zoltan Szekely, who arranged the Romanian Folk Dances for
violin and piano and Andre Gertler who did the same with one of the 1915 Ro
manian cycles, the Sonatina, Bartok also made some orchestrated versions of
his earlier piano compositions in 1931 and 1933, most of them originally folk
song arrangements {Hungarian Sketches, Transylvanian Dances and, finally,
Hungarian Peasant Songs from selected pieces of Fifteen Hungarian Peasant
Songs of 1914-18).
Figure 3 Bartok in his home at the occasion

of his fiftieth birthday, 25 March 1931
In many ways, the year of 1926 was as decisive for Bartok's stylistic de
velopment as was 1908. Interestingly, his series of smaller and larger scale pi
ano compositions written in the summer of 1926 decidedly avoided folksong
arrangement. This was probably no accident. Exactly as he wished to dissociate
his music from folkloristic compositions in general, he now used elements of
peasant music in an ever more sophisticated way. Thus, even in these pieces,
references to musical folklore can be detected and not just in motifs and
rhythms in general. The 'Night's Music' composed in 1926 and published
within the series Out of Doors shows how Bartok resorted to the distinct stylis
tic elements of peasant music within what is generally regarded as a wholly
original work. It is in this complex and rather individualistic piece that we meet
again, in a highly stylized manner, Bartok's peasant pipe pianism. The melody
itself (shown in Ex. 11) is in four phrases quite in the fashion of the tune in the
second piece of Gyergyobol. Its Dorian scale cast in the black-key C-sharp to
nality recalls Hungarian folksongs, as do its general melodic curve and the pat
tern of the cadences of the four phrases. The stereotyped cadential flourish in
the end of phrases 1 to 3 as well as the final note (C-sharp) approached from the
subtonium (B natural) avoiding the leading tone also show close affinity with
piped versions of folk tunes. Furthermore, one easily discovers the rhapsodic
combination of semiquavers and demisemiquaver pairs—J9 and ~*—according
152 Laszlo Vikarius
to the diminished note values of the notation in the 'Night's Music' familiar
from Gyergyobol. The melody starts on the fifth degree of the scale and the
cadences are on the fourth (phrases 1 and 2) and on the second degree (phrase
3). While the melody is surrounded by strange chords and motifs, it is easy to
recognize it as an imitation of the style of peasant pipers. Its evocation within
what some scholars call the narrative of the piece could be representative of an
ideal community.
Example 11 Peasant pipe style tune in the 'Night's Music'
The peasant pipe style in Bartok's piano writing is just one single element
in a very complex web of stylistic features many of which can be traced back to
the direct inspiration of folk music. It appears in Bartok's compositions not
even as frequently as, for example, the imitation of the bagpipe, an instrument
that particularly fascinated him. Still, the examples of real and 'imaginary'
shepherd's pipe tunes in his compositions might show just how greatly such
stylistic elements contributed to Bartok's individual way of relying on a tradi
tion. This is how Bartok, whom Kodaly once called, probably taking the phrase
from his secondary school reading of De bello Gallico, a true novarum rerum
cupidus, succeeded in finding and, to some extent, constituting this tradition.29
- 'The attacks made on him from both sides [i.e. both Hungarian and Romanian sides] on
account of the Romanian folksong are well known. It is true that his collections in Romanian and
other foreign languages are numerically superior to his Hungarian collection but for his compara
tive studies he required material and did not find enough in the collections then available. Apart
from this, his interest was attracted by the novelty and unfamiliarity of the material. As in every
thing else, he was novarum rerum cupidus in this, too.' See Zoltan Kodaly. 'Bartok the Folklorist'
(1950). in The Selected Writings ofZoltan Kodaly, 104-105.
Jlacno BuKapujytu
NOVARUM RERUM CUPIDUS Y nOTPA3H 3A

TPA/JHUHJOM: O/JHOC BEJ1E BAPTOKA nPEMA
MOÊPHH3MY
Pe3h Me
„Moja \iy3HKa yonujTe HHje MOiiepHa". TaKo ce y cboM no3HaTOM nncMy

H3 1924. roAHHe H3pa3Ho BapTOK, Kojn je jezmy h no aeueHHjy paHHje 6ho no-
BOjbHo caMoyBepeH aa jejHo nncMO noTnnnje Kao „yjiTpa-xnnep-Heo-nMnpe-
CHo-ceuecHOHHCTa, My3HHap CyrpauifbHue, KojH je fipothbhhk jxanauiibe ny-
6jiHKe, ajin HHja My3HKa Tpe6a aa ce cjiyuia He caMO npeMa PhMckoM npaBy, Beh h
3aTO LUTO TO 3aXTeBa 3aKOH yMeTHOCTH". y CTBapH, CKODO UejIOr >KHBOTa BapTOK
je Tparao 3a HOBHHaMa. To je tojihko KapaKTepncTHHHo 3a n>era m cy hckh aHajw-
THHapn tteroBO CTajiHO hh repecoBafbe 3a HOBy My3HKy BHêjiH Kao cna6ocT.
y paay ce paiMaTpajy BaproKOBH npoMeHjbHBH craBOBH npeMa „MoaepHH-
3My", Kao n sxy^Jhw KopeHH H>eroBnx naeja o TpaflHUHjn h Tparaita 3a HHOBaunja-
Ma - npn Heiviy cy npBH KopeHH BHine y cmiany ca cxBaTaH>HMa H>eroBor npnjaTe-
jba 3ojiTaHa Koaajba, j\ok. cy apyrn y npoTHBcraBy y oaHocy Ha h>hx. Koaajb je ot-
KpHo HeKe Heno3HaTe crpaHe EaproKa, a onncao ra je h Kao novarum rerum cupi-
dus. KaKO ce OBe ro^HHe cuaBH KoaajbeBa 125. roanujH>Hua, noKymaj aa ce yno-
peae H>hxobh pa3^HHHTH npncrynH Morao 6n 6htm npmaiaaaH.
VÍTĚZSLAV NOVÁK'S BOUŘE
[THE STORM] OP. 42: A CENTRAL WORK
IN CZECH MUSICAL MODERNISM
JARMILA GABRIELOVÁ
REFLECTING various meanings of the term 'modernism' that appear in

this collection of papers, I would like to start my contribution with a brief com
ment on terminology. Speaking about 'modernism' in the history of Czech mu
sic, I understand and use the word in the historically limited meaning that was
established in the Central European (German-Austrian) cultural milieu around
the turn of the nineteenth century, and which at almost the same time appeared
in Czech cultural discussion and art criticism, too. As a matter of fact, the era of
'die Moderne' (or 'moderna' in Czech, ca 1890-1914)1 was one of the greatest
and most fascinating periods—if not a 'Golden Age'—of Czech literature,
theatre, visual arts, architecture, and (last but not least) of music.2 The composer
VítSzslav Novák (1870-1949), one of the most celebrated musicians and one of
the most influential composition teachers of his time, was once considered the
protagonist of this artistic movement in the Czech Lands.3
1 See C. Dahlhaus, 'Die Moderne als musikhistorische Epoche', in: Die Musik des 19.
Jahrhunderts. Neues Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft 6, (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1980, reprint
1989), 279-85. English translation by J. Bradford Robinson, 'Modernism as a Period in Music
History', in: Nineteenth-Century Music. California Studies in 19lh-Century Music (University of
California Press, 1 989), 332-39.
2 See T. Vlček, Praha 1900. Studie k dějindm kultury a uměni Prahy v letech 1890-1914
[Prague 1900. A Study on Cultural and Art History of Prague in 1890-1914], (Praha: Panorama,
1986), 9 Iff. and 162ff. a.o.
' See B. ŠtSdrort, article 'Novak VítSzslav', in: Československý hudební slovník osob a
institucí [Czechoslovak Music Lexicon of Persons and Institutions], 2 vols. (Praha: Státní hudební
vydavatelství, 1963 and 1965), vol. II, pp. 194-202; V. Lébl, Vítězslav Novdk. Život a dílo
[VítSzslav Novak. Life and Work], (Praha: Nakladatelství Československé akademie vSd, 1964,
296-302); M. Schnierer and J. Tyrrell, article 'Novák, VítSzslav', in: The New Grove Dictionary
of Music and Musicians, second edition, 29 vols. (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001), vol.
XVIII, 210-14, a.o.
156 Jarmila Gabrielova
In my paper, I mainly concentrate on Vitezslav Novak's largest vocal-

symphonic work, i.e. on his symphonic cantata Boure [The Storm] op. 42, and
offer some thoughts and comments on its origin, compositional structure, sty
listic features, and contemporary reception. The commentary on the work in
question is preceded by short biographical information on its composer based
on standard Novak literature.4
Vitezslav (Viktor) Novak was born on 5 December 1 870 in Kamenice nad
Lipou, a small country town in the underpeopled area of South-East Bohemia and
spent the first years of his life in Pocatky, another small town in the same region.
After the early death of his father in 1 882, the family moved to the nearest larger
town of Jindfichuv Hradec (Neuhaus), where Novak attended secondary school and
made his first attempts at composition (songs to Czech and German texts, piano
pieces, a.o.). Having passed school leaving examination in 1 889, he went to Prague
to study law and philosophy at Charles University as well as piano, music theory,
and composition at Prague Conservatory; in 1 89 1 , he became one of the first com
position pupils of Antonin Dvorak.5 Among the works of these 'years of apprentice
ship', Korsdr [Corsair], an overture for large orchestra after G. G. Byron, Ballade E
minor for the piano (after G. G. Byron's Manfred), Variations on a Theme by
Robert Schumann for the piano, Serenade F major for small orchestra, Piano Con
certo E minor, as well as small pieces for the piano ('Reminiscences', 'Serenades',
'Barcarolles', a.o.) and various songs and choruses are worth mentioning.
Having graduated from the Prague Conservatory in 1 896, Novak earned
his living as a private music teacher in Prague and enjoyed his growing reputa
tion as a composer. In 1897, he visited the region of Moravian Slovakia ('Mo-
ravske Slovacko', South-East Moravia) for the first time and discovered specific
traditions and values of its folk music; around the turn of the century, he ex
tended his investigative activities to other Moravian districts and, above all, to
various regions in today's Slovakia as well.6 To his creative achievements in-
4 See note 3.
5 As is well known, Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) was the first professor of composition
ever appointed at Prague Conservatory. He has been teaching there since January 1, 1891. How
ever, from October 1892 to May 1895, he sojourned in the USA, where he served as a composi
tion professor and director of the National Conservator}' of Music in New York. In these years.
Novak continued his studies at Prague Conservatory with Josef Jiranek (1855-1940) and Karel
Bendl (1838-1897).
Novak's 'discovery" of Moravian and Slovakian folklore and folk life, should be under
stood here in its true sense, i.e. not so much as a source for genuine 'national music" but more
likely as a kind of 'exoticism" or 'orientalism" in music, or—seen from the perspective of a Pra
gue middle class intellectual—as an experience of a remote world and alien music language; cf.
C. Dahlhaus, 'Exotismus, Folklorismus, Archaismus', in: Die Musik des 19. Jahrhunderts, pp.
252-61; English translation 'Exoticism, Folklorism, Archaism', in: Nineteenth-Century Music,
pp. 302-11; a.o. The local historical background was outlined by the Jubilejni xystava [Jubilee
Exhibition] of 1891 and the Ndrodopisnd vystava ceskoslovanskd [Czechoslavonic Ethnographic
Exhibition] in Prague in 1895; see Vlcek. Praha 1900, 62-8. a.o.
VITEZSLAV NOVAK'S BOURE 157
spired by Moravian and Slovakian folklore belong both solo songs and choral
ballads on texts from Moravian folk poetry and distinguished instrumental
works; among the latter ones, let us mention Marysa, a dramatic overture for
large orchestra op. 1 8 written for Alois and Vilem MrStik's rural tragedy of the
same name (1898); String Quartet G major op. 22 (1899); Sonata eroica for
piano op. 24 (1900); V Tatrach [In Tatra Mountains], a symphonic poem op. 24
(1902), or Slovacka suita [Slovakian Suite] for small orchestra op. 32 (1903).
Between the years of 1900 and 1910/1914, Vitezslav Novak reached the
peak of his creative development. His major compositions from that period are Pi
ano Trio D minor (Quasi una balata) op. 27 (1902); Udoli Noveho Krdlovstvi [A
Valley of a New Kingdom] op. 3 1, four songs to symbolist poetry of Antonin Sova
(1903);7 O vecne touze [On Eternal Longing] op. 33, a symphonic poem based on a
text by H. C. Andersen (1903-5); String Quartet D major op. 35 (1905); Pan
op. 43, a tone poem in five movements for piano inspired by Knut Hamsun's novel
of the same name (1910; orchestrated 1912),8 and, above all, Boufe [The Storm] op.
42 to a text of Svatopluk Cech (1908-10, see below). In 1909, Novak was ap
pointed professor of composition at Prague Conservatory; later on, in 1920s and
1930s, he was repeatedly elected director (rector) of this institution. In April 1910,
he signed an exclusive contract with the Universal Edition in Vienna for the pub
lishing of his works that was valid until 1918; prior to 1910 and after 1918, his
works were published in Prague, Berlin (N. Simrock), and Leipzig.
In the period of 1919-39, Novak's compositional achievements gradually
fell into the shade. On the other hand, his reputation as a teacher aroused con
siderably. Among his pupils were not only leading Czech musicians and com
posers of the on-coming generation but also students from other Slavonic lands
and/or regions: notably from Slovakia, former Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria.9 In
7 See P. Kordik, Vitezslav Novak a symbolismus. Udoli Noveho Krdlovstvi op. 31, 1903
[Vítezslav Novak and Symbolism. 'The Walley of a New Kingdom' op. 31, 1903], (Praha: Et-
nologicky listav AV tR. 2007), 144pp.
8 What was also typical for the period of 'modernism" in Czech culture and society was a
deep interest in world literature that was manifested in translating a great amount of relevant
works into Czech. Among them, Nordic literature and drama were strongly 'in vogue" at that
time. ArnoSt Kraus, a German philologist and translator (1859-1943), and Jaroslav Kvapil, a
playwright, opera librettist and stage manager (1868-1950), belonged to the pioneers in this field.
Among renowned Czech (and Moravian) pupils of Vítezslav Novak, we can mention Alois
Haba (1893-1973). Karel Haba (1898-1972). llja Hurnik (* 1922), Osvald Chlubna (1893-1971),
Otakar Jeremias (1892-1962), Jan Kapr (1914-1988), Vitezslava Kapralova (1915-1940). 13a KrejCi
(1904-1968), Jaroslav Krombholz (1918-1983), Vilem Petrzelka (1889-1967), Klement Slavicky
(1910-1999), Vaclav Stepan (1889-1944), Vaclav Trojan (1907-1983), Boleslav VomaCka (1887-
1978), Jaroslav Vogel (1894-1970), Ladislav Vycpalek (1882-1969), a.o. Moreover, almost all leading
Slovak composers of the twentieth century studied in Prague, including Jan Cikker (1911-1989),
Dezider Kardos (1914-1991), Jozef Kresanek (1913-1986), Alexander Moyzes (1906-1984), Andrej
OCenaS (191 1-1995), and Eugen Suchon (1908-1993). Other outstanding pupils of Novak were e.g.
Sabin Dragoi (1894 Seliste/Arad - 1968 Bucharest), Mykola Kolessa (1903 Sambir near Lemberg/
1940, Vitezslav Novak left his position at Prague Conservatory and retired; his
compositional activities were now limited by his health condition. In November
1945, a few months after the end of World War II and Nazi-occupation of the
Czech Lands, Novak was awarded an honorary degree Ndrodni umelec ('Na
tional Artist", or 'Artist of the Nation") on the ground of his lifetime ceuvre. He
died on 18 July 1949 in his wife's family seat in Skuted (East Bohemia).
As indicated above, Vitezslav Novak's Boufe ranks among the com
poser's most advanced creative outputs and, at the same time, among the most
crucial and most paradigmatic achievements of Czech musical modernism.
Nevertheless, if we raise the question, how the work came into being, the first
answer is rather simple and quite common: there was a commission at the be
ginning. In 1908, the Brno conductor Rudolf Reissig (1874—1939), Novak's
former fellow-student at Prague Conservatory and longstanding friend, asked
him to write a cantata to mark the anniversary of Beseda brnenska (Brno Phil
harmonic Society). As a conductor of this society, Reissig propagated Novak's
music and frequently performed his works in Brno since the late 1 890s. Novak
undoubtedly felt indebted to Reissig and to Beseda brnenska; for that reason, he
responded positively to Reissig's request. Immediately thereafter, he decided to
set in music the poem (or 'sea fantasy') Boufe by Svatopluk Cech (1846-1908)
and began his work. Other impulses mentioned by the composer himself in his
memoirs were the fact that another Brno conductor and composer, FrantiSek
Neumann (1874—1929), wrote a cantata on the same text in 1903 - and Novak's
ambition was to enter into competition with him and to create a better work on
Czech's words - as well as Novak's own (private) intention or motivation to
write a piece of music representing his admiration of and passion for the wild
sea element.10 Still another reason to compose a cantata on Svatopluk Cech's
text might have been a tribute to the once esteemed and merited Czech poet who
died at the beginning of the same year of 1908.
However, instead of making a 'normal' (brief) festival cantata with
dominating vocal (choral) component that would correspond to the expectations
and skills (or limits) of Brno musicians, Novak worked hard for two years - so
that he missed the scheduled jubilee celebration. At the end, he created one of
his most extensive and most demanding symphonic scores (with a rather limited
use of choruses and vocal soloists) and, at the same time, one of the most de
manding and most fascinating orchestral works in Czech music so far. This is
even more prominent if we take in consideration both the character and the
quality of Svatopluk Cech's text. The poem in question was a work of a 22
year's beginner and was published as early as in 1869. At that time, it aroused
Lwow/ Lviv - 2006 Lviv), or Josip Stolcer-Slavenski (1896 Cakovec/Austria-Hungaria, today Croatia
- 1955 Belgrade); see Lebl. Vitizslav Novak. 345-6, a.o.
10 See V. Novak, O sobe a o jinych [On Myself and on the Others]. (Praha: Jos. R.
Vilimek, 1946; second edition Praha: Editio Supraphon 1970), 156-8; see also below note 10.
VIT&ZSLAV NOVAK'S BOURE 159
some interest in literary circles. However, later in the nineteenth century it was
considered hopelessly out of date and was (by right) harshly criticized for its
poor verses and clumsy vocabulary.
But what is 'modern' or 'modernistic' in Vitezslav Novak's Boufel In my
opinion, one can mention and point out three major aspects of this work here: 1)
extra-musical (extra-artistic) inspirations and contexts and the basic atmosphere of
the whole piece; 2) ideas and ideological contents and contexts of the work in ques
tion; 3) Novak's music in itself, its form, technique, features of style."
Ad 1 ) What is depicted and represented here almost exclusively by the me
dium of music (tone-painting) is a wild, formidable, and dangerous nature, or, more
exactly, a rough, terrible, killing northern ocean. Apparently, this feature was not
involved so much in Svatopluk Cech's poem but based to a great extent on Novak's
own personal experience. He was in his late thirties when he composed his Boufe,
but still in perfect condition. During the period of composition, he undertook a
journey to Scandinavia to experience the ocean at his own risk. Actually, he almost
drowned during a swim he took by himself in a stormy weather.1
Ad 2) Novak took up and emphasized strongly the (originally romantic) par
allel between the destructiveness of the natural elements and that of human passion.
This was the (possible) intention of Cech's poem. In Novak's musical approach,
this 'message' became extremely strong; at the same time, it was transformed in
terms of 'fin de siecle' or 'decadence' ideology: If one is facing death, all social
conventions and moral inhibitions fall; both individuals and the crowd follow their
base instincts only. 'Modernistic' and/or 'decadent' is the association (configura
tion) of death and sexual desire or wildness - pointed out by the provocative con
trast of a powerful black man and a helpless white woman.13
Ad 3) As far as the form of Novak's Boufe is concerned, we can identify
here a combination of a cantata (divided into individual vocal 'numbers" and
designed both for solo voices and for the chorus) and an extensive symphonic
poem (based on the scheme of a 'double function form'). The most of the vocal
'numbers' base on rather simple and transparent strophic forms; however, the
form as a whole is integrated by sophisticated symphonic thematic procedures.14
" For the basic characteristics and analysis of the composition technique and style in
Novak' Boufe, see V. Stepan, 'Symfonicka tvorba Novakova', in: Novak a Suk (Praha: Hudebni
matice UmSlecke besedy, 1945), 39-133; here pp. 104-25.
12 Novak, O sobe a o jinych, pp. 161-3. Through his life, Novak was a passionate traveler
and managed to travel through almost all European countries. As a typical inhabitant of an inland
region, he was fascinated by the element of the ocean as well as high mountains and mountain-
climbing. See also Lebl, Vitezslav Novak, 97-8 and p. 130.
13 Cf. Lebl, Vitezslav Novak, pp. 130-35; see also the text of Svatopluk Cech's poem in
appendix.
14 See the tabular presentation of the form and the respective music examples in appendix
(Figures 1. - 3.).
What also is worth saying are the apparent or actual 'folklore' features of
this work that played an important role in contemporary reception: As a matter
of fact, one of the instrumental (orchestral) themes or thematic variants that ap
pear later in the course of this extensive composition is very similar to the be
ginning of a Slovakian folksong Ldska, boze Idska [Love, oh God, Love].15 Its
symbolic meaning seems to be unambiguous, especially for Czech (and Slova
kian) audiences. In Novak's concept, the song tune represents both 'pure' love
and 'impure' desire. The important thing is that the folksong-theme is not intro
duced and/or used as a citation of 'foreign' ('heterogeneous') material yet ap
pears as a result of variation process ('developing variation') i.e. as a transfor
mation of both the first and the fourth themes.16
The 'episode' of a young woman and her negro servant is characterized
by the use of 'exotic colour', which, however, is a rather conventional or 'na
ive" one: empty chords (without thirds) and pedal points in bass instruments,
augmented seconds and quarts in melody, syncopated rhythms, etc.17
In terms of its overall form design and orchestra technique, the work by
Novak is comparable to the most extensive and most demanding scores of its
time, especially to those of Richard Strauss (Ein Heldenleben op. 40, 1 899 and,
above all, Eine Alpensymphonie op. 64, 1915) but also to those of Alexander
Scriabin, or to Arnold Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder 1900-191 1), a.o.
After the Brno premiere on April 17, 1910, performances in two smaller
towns in Eastern Bohemia, Pardubice and Chrudim, followed early in 191 1. How
ever, it only was the Prague premiere on February 25, 1911 that brought a re
sounding success to the composer and confirmed his reputation as a leading person
ality of Czech musical modernism; the Vienna premiere followed on April 27,
1913.18 Numerous reviews, analyses, and comments that followed the Prague per
formance were written not only by musicians and music writers or reviewers, but
also by poets and people of letters. The fact was stressed that Novak's work repre
sented a peak output not only in Czech music, but also in modern Czech art and
culture as a whole.19 However, two years later the war broke out and the political
and cultural situation in Bohemia changed completely. After the war, the work lost
much of its attractiveness and paradigmatic validity and made way for different
aesthetic ideals, stylistic streams, and artistic experiments.
15 Cf. Lebl. Vitezslav Novak, p. 133. and Fig. 3. in appendix.

1,1 See Figure 3. in appendix.
11 See Figure 2. (Theme 6.) in appendix; cf.also Stepan, 'Symfonicka tvorba Novak-
ova', 120-1; Lebl, Vitezslav Novak, pp. 133-4; Dahlhaus, 'Exotismus', here pp. 255-7; English
translation pp. 304-6.
18 See Lebl, Vitezslav Novak. 135-9.
14 Ibid.,137-9 and 338-41.
VntZSLAV NOVAK'S BOUkE 161
Vitezslav Novak (1870-1949)

Boure (se slovy mofskefantasie Svatopluka Cecha). Symfonickd baseh pro
orkestr, sola a sbor op. 42
[The Storm (with Words of a Sea Fantasy by Svatopluk tech). Symphonic
Poem for orchestra, soloists, and chorus op. 42]
Text: Svatopluk Cech (1846-1908)

First published in: Almanach ceskeho studentstva [An Almanac of Czech
Students], 1869
Composed: 1908-1910
Premiered: April 17, 1910 in Brno

Czech Philharmonic Orchestra (Prague) and Choir of the Beseda brnenska
(Brno Philharmonic Society)
Soloists:
Marie Musilova (Soprano), Jaroslav Hendrych (Tenor), Ladislav NemeCek
(Baritone)
Conductor: Rudolf Reissig
Published: 1912 by Universal Edition in Vienna (full score and piano-vocal

score)
Recorded: 1978 by Supraphon Records in Prague

Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and Czech Philharmonic Chorus (Prague)
Soloists:
Jarmila Zilkova (Soprano), Jarmila SmyCkova (Soprano), FrantiSek Livora
(Tenor), Nadezda Kniplova (Soprano), Richard Novak (Baritone), Karel Petr
(Bass), Jaromir VavruSka (Bass)
Chorus Master: Josef Veselka
Conductor: ZdenSk KoSler
Durata: ca 80:00
Orchestra:
Flauto I-II, Flauto piccolo, Oboe I-II, Corno inglese, Clarinetto I-II in B,
Clarinetto di basso in B, Fagotto I-II, Contrafagotto
Corno I-VI in F, Tromba I—III in C, Trombone I-II, Trombone basso e Tuba
Timpani, Carillon, Triangolo, Tamburo piccolo, Gran Cassa e Piatti, Tam-tam
Arpa, Piano, Pedale d'organo (8', 16')
Violini I, Violini II, Viole, Violoncelli, Contrabassi
Fig.l
Vft&zslav Novak, Boufe op. 42: Form
a) Cantata
[Part 1]
Overture (piano-vocal score p. 3)
[No. 1]
Soprano Solo (piano-vocal score p. 9; orientation No. 7)
Modlitba divky pfed kapli na bfehu: O, hvezdo mofska
[Prayer of a Maid in front of a Chapel on Seashore: Oh, Star of the
Ocean]
[No. 2] Male Chorus (piano-vocal score p. 22; No. 19)
Pisen plavcu o lodnim skfitku [Sailors' Song about a Ship Dwarf]
[No. 3] Soprano Solo (piano-vocal score p. 32; No. 27)

Pisen plavcika na stozdru [Song of a Ship Boy at the Mast]
[No. 4] Tenor Solo, Mixed Chorus (piano-vocal score p. 53; No. 41)
Pisen jinocha pod stozdrem [Song of a Young Man under the
Mast]
Symphonic Interlude (piano-vocal score p. 64; No. 50)
[Part 2]
Symphonic Interlude (cont.; piano-vocal score p. 69; No. 56)
Soprano and Baritone Soli (piano-vocal score p. 82; No. 73)
[No. 5]
Divka a otrok [A Maid and a Slave]
[No. 6] Chorus and Soli (piano-vocal score p. 108; No. 98)

Opili ndmofnici [Drunken Sailors]
Symphonic Interlude (piano-vocal score p. 120; No. 106)

Two Bass Soli (piano vocal score p. 129; No. 1 13)
[No. 7]
Dva pobfezni lupici [Two Coastal Robbers]
[No. 8] Mixed Chorus (piano-vocal score p. 136; No. 121)

Rybafi pred kapli na bfehu: O hvezdo mofska
[Fishermen in front of a Chapel on Seashore: Oh, Star of the
Ocean]
VlTfiZSLAV NOVAK'S BOURE 163
b) Symphonic poem ("Double function form"):
Part [No.] 20; orientation Key Section Movement

number
"Exposition"
"First subject
group"
Theme 1 ("Storm"
Orchestra Introduction D minor and "Death" "First
Soprano Solo [No. 1]; No. 7 A minor - Theme, 4/4): Movement"
B minor Tempestoso
(exposition)
Andante rubato
(devel.)
"Interlude" (1.); four bars "Transition"

after No. 12
"First subject
Male Chorus [No. 2]; No. 19 F major group"
Theme 2: Con
moto 21A
"Scherzo" "Second
Soprano Solo [No. 3]; No. B minor ("Barcarole") Movement"
27 Theme 3: Animato ("Scherzo")
6/8
"Interlude" (2.); eight bars "Development"

after No. 32 (1.)
"Second subject "Third

Tenor Solo and Chorus [No. B flat major group" (Slow)
4]; No. 41 Theme 4: Andante Movement"
3/4
"Interlude" (3.); No. 50 "Development" "Symphonic

(Transition to Part 2) (2.) cycle" on a
Andante rubato small scale:
(etc.) 4/4 First and
Theme 5 ("Love" slow mvts,
See the "cantata scheme" above.

Theme), i.e. "Scherzo",

transformation of and
Themes 1 and 4 "Finale"
Soprano and Baritone Soli A minor - "Episode"

[No.5;cf.No. 4]; No. 73 C minor - Theme 4 ; Theme 6
C sharp
minor
"Interlude" (4.); No. 93 "Development"

(cont.) "Fourth
Themes 5 and 1 Movement"
("Finale")
Chorus and Soli "Development"
[No.6; cf. Nos. 2, 3, 4]; No. (climax)
98 Themes 1 - 4
"Devel"
"Interlude" (5.); No. 106 (retransition)
Theme 1
Two Bass Soli [No. 7]; No. B flat major "Recapitulation"

113 Theme 4
("Second subject
group")
"Recapitulation"
"Interlude" (6.); No. 1 16 Bflat- Themes 4 and 1
C major
"Recap" and
Mixed Chorus C major Coda
[No. 8; cf.No. l];No. 121 Theme 1 ("First
subject group"
transformed):
Moderate) 61A
Coda
"Postlude" B major - Themes 5 and 1 :
C major Andante amoroso.
Tranquillo
VITEZSLAV NOVAK'S BOUkE 165
Fig. 2
\ itczslav Novak, Boure op. 42: Themes
Theme 1 ("Storm"; "Death"), bars 1-9, piano-vocal score p. 3
Soprano solo (Theme 1), eight bars after No. 7, piano-vocal score p. 9
Andante rubato, con molta passione
#=
O, hv&ck) morskh. motko mHo-tti ve svA- ru li -^0 mfr svflj ro hosti [...]
Andante rubato. con mol a passione
^ H r
P
'V di n r af n —
1 -
J—
Theme 2 (Male Chorus), No. 19, piano-vocal score p. 22
Con moto, energico
Lo - dnl mu - Jik- ten si vo - df vAm co slo - ko - vi - ty Sink
Theme 3 ("Scherzo", "Barcarole"), three bars before No. 27, piano-vocal score
p. 32
(Animato)
=4M
vy - st - 14m Si - ro - ko be - dli - \^ zrok
VITEZSLAV NOVAK'S BOURE 167
Theme 4. ("Slow Movement"), No. 41, piano-vocal score p. 53

Andante
. Tenore Solo
» » I* •
J J' Tft 1 r i )t —Ftp—
ppj r 1 Arrr i
t W r 1 V
Jokten o - broz bo2ske Po- nnyv §edy steznekmen o - br6 - zek mi jfe- II -be - zny ✓ stdce
~i—w^) 9
pdolce esp moF< espress.

'
—i-t± > I N ^—n~i—
**> * * d :
Cori
9- . m k
Theme 5 ("Love" Theme), No. 50, piano-vocal score p. 64 (see also Fig. 3)
Andante nibato _ ^
hp Jti
: r yr »F
* i ki
# * P. f&z 1 —A-—- i^- • ' i >
" i_ J - —i -1
* ' " «~_-r i£
^
-j j r i»f f r ir
pFed do - sy Su - dor se pè - sti mé boi
VITfiZSLAV NOVAK'S BOUkE 1 69
Fig. 3. Vftgzslav Novak, Boufe op. 42: "Love Theme" and Its Transformations
"Laska, bo2e laska": Slovakian folksong, published in Slovenske spevy, vol. I,

1880, a.o.
Laska. boie laska1 Kde fa Tudia berti? No hore nerastieS. v poll (a neselu No hore nerastieS, v poll fa neseju
Orchestra introduction (Tempestoso, ma non troppo allegro):

three bars before orientation No. 1
y ** ** 4* 4 "* " '* .
A Maid in front of a Chapel on Seashore (Andante rubato, con molta passione): No. 7
Soprano solo
0. hv6 - zdo mof - ska
A Youth under the Mast (Andante): No. 41

Tenora solo
^p p j r p j r iJlp p ; '
Jok ten o - btez boi - ske Po - nny v5e-dy sle-Jne kmen

Dtto: No. 45
esallcuuL)
KnM-ko ne-bes. o-chrofl zmo-ru Se-dou stS-2n$ hrucT
Orchestra interlude (Andante rubato): No. 50

-1 ehiw=r
p
Orchestra interlude (Animato): No. 66

Fig. 4
Vitfaslav Novak, Boufe op. 42: Text(s)
Boufe (Svatopluk Cech, 1869) The Storm [The Tempest)21

(Tsmpestoso, ma non troppo (Tempestoso, ma non troppo allegro)
allegro)
MODLITBA DIVKY PRED PRAYER OF A MAID IN FORNT OF
KAPLI NA BREHU: THE CHAPEL ON SEASHORE:
SOPRAN SOLO SOPRANO SOLO
0, hvezdo mofska, matko milosti, Oh, star of the ocean, Mother of grace,
ve svaru zivlu mir svuj rozhosti in the clash of the elements may your
a zazen vichru divy snem peace reign,
nebeskych oci pokynem, and may the gales' fury be chased away
6, hvezdo mofska! by the command of your divine eyes,
Oh, star of the ocean!
O, hvezdo mofska, slzy stavici, Oh, star if the ocean who stops the tears'
mej nad korabem svatou pravici, flow,
zahal jej v plaSt' sve zaStity guard the ship well with your holy arm,
a stezen zacel rozbity, enshroud it in your protective cloak,
6, hvezdo mofska! and mend the mast which is broken,
0, hvezdo mofska, dustf touha mi Oh, star of the ocean, in my soul
zavira jako vitr plachtami, longing blows hard as the wind in the
6, knezko ciste lasky ty, sails,
jiz stezen zacel rozbity, Oh, priestess of pure love,
6, hvezdo mofska! do mend the mast that is broken,
(Piu mosso) (Piu mosso)
PISEN PLAVCU 0 LODNIM SEAMEN'S SONG ABOUT A SHIP
SKRITKU DWARF
MUZSKY SBOR MALE CHORUS
Lodni muzik - ten si vodi The boat's own little chap - he prances
vam co slakovity slak, about ,
jako klist' se drzi lodi I say, isn't he truly wild,
povida to stary Zak. clings to it like a leech,
so says the old Jack.
V kazajce a pruhovanych In his vest and striped breeches,
spodkach jako marifiak he has the ways of mariners,
* Translation by Supraphon records.

VITfiZSLAV NOVAK'S BOURE 171
v plachtach seda nadouvanych, sits about 'midst the hoisted sails,

viddl ho tam stary Zak. the old Jack saw him there.
Rad ma lidi, plavcu decka He's fond of men, and sailors' children
uhydkava, sklenku vsak will gladly lull to their night's sleep,
nad stvofeni kocha vSecka, yet most of all he likes his drink,
pravg jako stary Zak. just like the old Jack.
A kde skoupy na vyCepky And where the cask is empty , holds
soudek pron, tu cpe si vak nothing
a prach lodm' stira s trepky, to offer him, there he packs up,
na to dukazy ma Zak. and wipes the ship's dust off his feet,
as old Jack knows all too well.
Hleda lepsi sobS bydlo, He's off, looking for a better place,
ale s lodi amen pak: too bad for the boat:
Zkaza seda na kormidlo. for doom sets 'pon its rudder,
Utone...kfizdS1a Zak. down it goes. . .and Jack says Amen.
PISEN PLAVCIKA V KOSI NA SONG OF A SHIP BOY AT THE
STOZARU MASTHEAD
V kosiku vysoko Set at the masthead
v hm"zdS co ptik like a bird in its nest,
vysilam siroko into the wide open
bedlivy zrak. I cast a watchful eye.
Otec muj korab, The ship and the ocean
voda ma matka, are my mother and father,
plachty me sestry, the sails my sisters,
stezen ma chatka, the mast is my home,
vesele jsem hoSe, I'm cheerful and merry,
prozpSvuju z koSe: and here's my song:
la la la la la, la la la la! la la la la, la la la la!
V jiny se vykrada The ship's guardian spirit
lodni duch stan, is stealing away,
boufe lod' ovlada storm reigns supreme,
ve hvizdu lan. gale whistles in the rigging.
Pode mnou lod' se Deep down the board
kolisa divS is wildly rocking,
po vodm'ch ofu riding the crest
belave hh\t, of the white frothy waves,
stSzen praska holy, until the bare mast snaps and collapses,
ja vsak ve vrcholi: yet up at the masthead, here's how I go:
la la la la la, la la la la! la la la la, la la la la!
Pod nohou stozar mi Under my feet the mast
chvi se jak ded, like an old man does tremble,
a blesku pozar mi and lightnings like so many fires

zaliva hled. dazzle my eyes.
Nech stezen praska! Let the mast snap, though!
V mokrem tom hrobS For down in the wet grave,
voda men, matka, water, my mother,
pfituli k sobS will hold me so tender
krystalnymi lokty, in her crystalline arms,
a vln septnou klokty: and the waves will just whisper:
la la la la, la la la la! la la la la, la la la la!
PISEN JINOCHA POD SONG OF A YOUNG MAN UNDER
STOZAREM THE MAST
TENOR SOLO TENOR SOLO
Jak ten obraz bozske Panny As the Holy Virgin's picture
v sedy stSzne kmen, in the grey body of the mast,
obrazek mi pfelfbezny so the sweetest charming portrait
v srdce zasazen. is set within my heart.
A jak tuto pod obrazem And as here under the picture
lampa mzika tmou, the lamp flickers in the dark,
lasky hvezdicka se miha so does my love's little star
tmavou duSi mou. twinkle in my pained soul.
Za hory jsem strme zasel, I travelled far beyond high mountains,
hlube za mofe, across the deep wide sea,
vSak me srdce zustalo tarn yet my heart I did leave behind
v chatce nahofe. in the cottage amongst the trees
UvidSl jsem dalnych lesu In faraway exotic forests
divukrasny kvet, I saw many a wondrous bloom,
ale krasnSjsi je pfece yet lovelier than any of them
divcinky me ret. are the lips of my love true.
Nespatfil jsem hvezdy take Nor did I ever come to see
v nebi celickem, amongst all the stars in the sky
jaka rybafce me zlate a pair as bright as those which shine
sviti pod vidkem. under my sweetheart's brow.
Za poklady obesel jsem Hunting for treasures I travelled far,
cizich zemi lem, and many lands I saw,
vsak ten poklad ve tvem, divko, yet the sole treasure that's here to stay,
srdci rozmilem. my love, I found in your heart.
KnSzko nebes, ochrafi zmaru Heavenly Princess, do save from doom
sedou steznS hrud' the grey body of the mast,
a dvou srdci vSrne lasce send your mercy and your grace
milostiva bud'! upon a pair of loving hearts!
SMISENY SBOR MIXED CHORUS
KnSzko nebes... Heavenly Princess...
VITfcZSLAV NOVAK'S BOURE 173
Hvezdo mofska! Star of the ocean!

(Andante rubato) (Andante rubato)
(Con juoco, ben accentuato) (Confuoco, ben accentuato)
DIVKA A CERNOCH V KAJUTE A MAID AND A NEGRO IN THE
SOPRAN SOLO CABIN
SOPRANO SOLO
Bojim se te, muj otroku! You frighten me, my slave!
Silenstvi ti hara v oku! There's madness in your eyes!
BARYTON SOLO BARITONE SOLO
Spi, ma mlada, spi, ma pani, Sleep, my young one, sleep, my
ve velkeho ducha dlani, mistress,
spi, ma pani, spi! in the palm of the great spirit's hand,
Ja jsem cerny, ty jsi bila, sleep, mistress of mine, sleep now!
muSelin te obestyla, I am black and you are white,
jako perut' mhy, in muslin you are enwrapped,
spi, ma pani, spi! as in the wings of mist,
sleep, mistress of mine, sleep now!
Spi, ma pani, v boufe ruchu, Sleep, my mistress, in the storm's rage,
perly blyskaji ti v uchu pearls glitter in your ears
jako hvezdidky. like a pair of tiny stars.
Tyjsi svgtla, ja jsem tmavy, You are fair and I am dark,
v luznem vlase plapolavy in your soft hair a glowing
diadem ti tkvi, diadem is set,
spi, ma pani, spi! sleep, mistress of mine, sleep now!
Spi, ma mlada, spi, ma pani, Sleep, my young one, sleep my mistress,
ve velkeho ducha dlani, in the palm of the great spirit's hand,
Brzy budem bili oba, Soon you and I will both be white,
jasnymi nas vodni koba covered by the cupola of waters bright,
spoji prsteny, bound by rings which unite,
SlySiS, slysiS muj otroku, Do you hear now, my slave,
jak to praska v lodi boku? the cracking sound in the ship's side?
BARYTON SOLO BARITONE SOLO
Ja nejsem otrok, vSak slavny jsem I am no slave, a noble king am I!
kral! There was a time when Sudan feared my
Pfed dasem Sudan se pesti me bal, fist,
zlaty kruh okolo lytka mi plal, a shining ring of gold circled my thigh,
ve vlase perly, ba, slavny jsem kral! my hair studded with pearls, a noble
king am I!
Spi, ma pani, korab leti Sleep, my mistress, the ship is flying

cizim bfehum do objeti, into the alien shores' embrace,
na nem okov zni, on board the chains are ringing,
Ba, nejsem otrok, jsem veliky kral, No slave am I, a noble king
jemuz plast' tygfi kol ramenou vlal! whose shoulders wore a tiger's skin!
Spi, ma pani, dolar zvoni, Sleep, my mistress, gold coins are
pod bicem se ze zad roni ringing,
krve potoky, blows of the whip would rain upon my
spi, ma pani, spi! back,
blood spurted out in streams,
sleep, mistress of mine, sleep now!
Ale ted' znovu jsem veliky kral. Here stand I now, again as king.
Slys rachot bitevni, zvoni cimbal... Hear the roar of battle, the cymbals'
din...
BARYTON A SOPRAN SOLO BARITONE AND SOPRANO SOLO
Nespi, draha moje milko, . . . Sleep not now, my tender lover, . . .
Nech mne, Satan ve tvem oku, . . . Leave me alone, for I spy Satan in your
. . . zuh'bam ti bile 5ilko, . . . gaze, . . .
. . . udusiS mne, . . . . . . your fair brow I'll kiss all over, . . .
. . . koralove rty, . . . . . . you are stifling me, . . .
. . . z lodi boku voda vplyva, . . . . . . your lips ruby red, . . .
. . . milko, . . . ... the ship's side is open, the sea storms
. . . zhynem v toku, . . . in, ...
... milko, neusni! ... ... my tender lover, . . .
... pro Jezise, muj otroku! ... we shall perish in this stream, . . .
... my tender lover, fall not asleep! . . .
... for the love of Jesus, slave, this is no
dream!
(Animato) (Animato)
KUCHTIK, KAPITAN A THE SHIP'S SCULLION, SKIPPER
LODNICI NA PALUBE V BOURI AND CREW ON BOARD IN THE
SOPRAN A BAS SOLO, STORM
MUZSKY SBOR SOPRANO AND BASS SOLO, MALE
KUCHTIK CHORUS
SCULLION
Pod palubou vody jako v zumpe! It's wet like in a cesspool down below!
LODNICI MEMBERS OF THE CREW
Vyvalime soudky, bratfi! Let's roll out the barrels, mates!
KAPITAN SKIPPER
K pumpe! All hands to pump!
VITEZSLAV NOVAK'S BOUkE 175

Ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!
KAPITAN SKIPPER
Vam k smichu? Vsak si ticho You laugh at me? The cat-o'-nine-tails
zjednam bicem! will shut you up!
Rozpafme mu bficho! Let's rip his belly open!
Pfivazme ho k stezni, nechat' path' Let's tie him to the mast, and let him
na fadeni naSe! watch
Dobfe, bratfi! our rioting!
There, mates!
JINOCH POD STOZAREM THE YOUNG MAN UNDER THE
TENOR SOLO MAST
TENOR SOLO
KnSzko nebes, ochran zmaru Heavenly Princess, do save from doom
Sedou steznS hrud', the grey body of the mast,
a dvou srdci verne lasce send your mercy and your grace
milostiva bud'! upon a pair of loving hearts!
(vyvalujice soudek na palubu) (rolling out a barrel)
MUZSKY SBOR MALE CHORUS
Plnyt' cely, ani splechu, Full to the brim, won't make a sound,
vSak ti dopomuzem k dechu, just wait for us, we'll help you out,
jen co vyjdeS na palubu, soon as you're up there on the deck,
kapitan ti zacpal hubu, the skipper meant to have you gagged,
lakomy, ha ha ha, lakomy! old miser, ha ha ha, old miser!
Z KAJUTY KRIK SHOUTS FROM THE CABIN
Pro Jezise, muj otroku! For the love of Jesus, slave!
ZENSKY SBOR FEMALE CHORUS
O, Marie, shledni na nas shury, Oh, Mary, do look upon us from above,
a rozptyl hvSzdnym plaStSm dispel our fears with your star-bright
chmury. robe.
Ty, jezto nebeSt'anu kuru You who stand out in the heavenly
roniS pablesk hvSzdny choir,
skrze chmuru c bezdny, ending a shiny beam of hope
6, slituj se, hle, pod nohama through the great void,
nam otvira se more tlama oh, have mercy upon us, for lo, under
a kolem rozsapana luza. our feet
6, hruza! the ocean's cruel mouth is opening,
and mauled wretched corpses whirl all
around.
Oh, horror of horrors!
SBOR OPILYCH LODNIKU DRUNKEN MEMBERS OF THE
MUZSKY SBOR CREW
MALE CHORUS
Hezky, hezky, do kolefika Hop along, turn around,
tod se, brachu, beze strachu, join the dance, mate, lay fear aside,
kdo se boji, ten je bedka, for who's afraid is good-for-nothing,
ple- ple- ple- plesniva bedka. I say, no-no-no-no-nothing.
Kdo se modli, ten je beCka, He who prays is good-for-nothing,
ple- ple- ple- plesniva bedka. I say, no-no-no-no-nothing.
Cely svSt je be- be- beCka, The whole wide world's good-for-
ple- ple- ple- plesniva becka! nothing,
I say, no-no-no-no-nothing!
(Stozar se fiti s desnym praskotem.) (The mast collapses with a terrible
crash.)
HLAS ZE STOZARU VOICE FROM THE MAST
La la la, la la la la! La la la, la la la la!
(Tempestoso, ma non troppo (Tempestoso, ma non troppo presto)
presto)
DVA POBREZNI LOUPEZNICI TWO COASTAL ROBBERS
BASY SOLO BASSES SOLO
(l.)Nu, co'sulovil? (1 ) Well then, what have you got?
(2.) Hoch v pisku bledy, (2) There's a youth lying in the sand, all
znamych tahu. pale,
(1.) U svateho Bedy! seems familiar to me.
Aj, tot' naseho je bfehu dite. (1) By Bede!
Mival devde, na sklam'm kde Stite Why, he's a child of our own shore.
tamo chaloupka se miha v seru. Used to go out with a girl, from up the
Odplul kdysi, v dalku obemzenou, cliff,
jeji prsten sebou nes', as you can see that cottage through the
(2.) a veru s jinou take nevratil se dark.
cenou. He sailed off one day, into the misty
( 1 .) Prstynek mu nech a v more distance,
zpatky carrying along a ring from her.
ponof jej ... (2) I say, he has brought back no other
(2.) Hled', se skaly ten vratky trophy.
divky skok! Jiz bile vznasi dlanS ( 1 ) Let him keep the ring and send him
z vln ... back
(1.) Tot' ona! Pomodlem' se za n£! into the waves . . .
(2) Look there, a girl's frail body,
VITfeZSLAV NOVAK'S BOUkE 111
hurlong herself off the cliff! Her white

hands
are now carried by the waves . . .
(1) That's her! Let's pray for them!
zastup rybaru pred kapll FISHERMEN CROWDING IN FRONT
smlSeny sbor OF THE CHAPEL. MIXED CHORUS
0, hvezdo mofska, kotvo nadeje, Oh, star of the ocean, anchor of hope,
posvatnou dalni uhlad' pefeje, smooth down the rapids with your holy
svit' libS vodnim zavojem hand,
tem, co tam speji s pokojem, send out the tender light of your aquatic
6, hvezdo mofska! veil
towards those who are bound there in
peace,
O, hvezdo mofska, zdroji zivota, Oh, star of the ocean, source of life,
nech boufe zla i korab ztroskota, wherever a ship sinks due to evil storm,
ty na dnS pustem novou chy5 on the bare ocean-bed a new house you
z tech trosek lasce vystaviS, will build,
6, hvezdo mofska! from what has remained of the wreck,
for love to dwell in,
O, hvezdo mofska, dejz, by upadem Oh, star of the ocean, pray make the
kral boufe sklonil mradny diadem king of storm,
a z trosek lasce, hlas naS slys, lay down his merciless dark diadem,
tam na dnS vWnou vystav chyS, and hear our pleas to you to build down
6, hvSzdo mofska! there for love,
from what has remained of the wreck, an
eternal house, Oh, star of the ocean!
Laska, boze, laska (slovenska Love, oh God, Love (Slovak folk

lidova) poetry)22
Laska, boze, laska! Love, oh God, love!

Kde t'a Tudia beni? Where do people find you?
Na hore nerastieS, You don't grow up in woods;
v poli t'a neseju. One doesn't plant you in fields.
Translation jg.
Japjuwia ra6pujejioea
EVPA BHTiECJIABA HOBAKA

- UEHTPAJIHO AEJIO MEIUKOr MY3HHKOr
MO/JEPHH3MA
Pe3hMe
BHhecjiaB HOBaK (5. 12. 1870, KaMeHHue Hail JlHnoy - 18. 7. 1949, Cicy-
TeH) 6ho je jeaaH on HajyrHuajHHjHX h HajnoiuTOBaHHjHX 4eiuKHX koMiio3hto-
pa h neaarora CBor BpeMeHa. H>erOBO aejio - caâ npunHHHO 3aHeMapeHO h
CKopo 3a6opaBjbeHO - HeKaaa ce CMaTpajio napa^HraoM HeiuKor My3HHKor Mo-
aepHH3Ma. Moj paa je pacnpaBa o HOBaKOBHM Haj3HaHajHHjHM HHCTpyMeHTan-
hhM KOMno3HUHjaMa H3 roaHHa 1900-1912, Met)y KojHMa cy H>erOBe chM(J)o-
HHjcKe noeMe V Tatrach [Y TampaMa], O vecne touze [O eennoj neoKtbu], To
man a lesni panna [ToMoh u luyMcm euna] h Pan [IlaH]. rioTOM ce ycpe^cpe-
tjyjeM Ha H>erOBO BpxyHcKO aejio H3 Tor nepHoaa, MOHyMeHTaimy CHM(J)OHHjy-
KaHTaTy Boure [Eypa] m 1910.
TOTAL CAPITALISM AGAINST
TOTAL SERIALISM
KATY ROMANOU
TEACHING the history of Greek art music, I face complex situations

concerning the perception of progress and advancement in musical styles by young
generations. Recently, in a test, a girl comparing a twelve-tone composition by
Nikos Skalkottas (1904-1949) and a tonal piano piece by Manos Chatzidakis
(1925-1994), pointed out the latter as more 'advanced' because, she said, 'it is
closer to us'.
At that moment, I said something like 'Usually, the closer to us a piece
sounds, the less advanced we consider it to be'. The discussion took the usual turn:
me defending originality and my young debater failing to understand its value.
Things became even more problematic when 1 had to disclose that in fact the
second piece was written three decades after the first and, finally, an impasse was
reached when I went on to explain that the second piece does not represent meta-
modernism (a return to tonality) because it is the work of a composer of light music,
which did not go through modernism and did not have to regress. . .
I avowed to the girl the volatility of my credo and went home to write for
this conference on modernism.
1 tried, looking through history, to disentangle my own perplexing ques
tions concerning past and present modernisms, past and present divisions of
music and past and present music historiography. The following is an outline of
the outcome.
During the Cold War, the Western front, already dominated by Ameri
cans, led to forced experimentalism in music,1 and to the adoption of experi-
1 The link between avant-garde music and the Cold War politics of the United States has
been demonstrated in a number of well documented studies, such as: R. Willet, The Americaniza
tion of Germany, 1945-1949 (London and New York: Routledge, 1989); F. Stonor Saunders, Who
paid the piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London: Granta Books, 1999); A. C. Beal,
'Negotiating Cultural Allies: American Music in Darmstadt 1946-1956', Journal ofthe American
180 Katy Romanou
ment in the Academy. In that phase, the ideas originating from the 1 9th century
sanctifying the work of art and its integrity, reached their peak. A work of art
became so important that it was considered fit for the university only and was
deliberately disconnected from society.
With the end of the Cold War, tonality, which was fully applied through
out the twentieth century in Western light and cinema music, as well as in west
ernized traditional music all over the world,2 was restored in serious Western
music circles, because the antithesis to the restrictions imposed on Soviet music
no longer needed to be projected. And the long support of avant-garde music
ceased.
With the beginning of the twenty first century, the so called serious music
which was certainly linked to Western European culture followed the decline of
Western Europe. Art music is underrated, ephemeral music overrated and their
distinction blunted.
The events linked to the inclusion and seclusion of composition (rather,
of totally serial composition) in the University, occurred in the United States at
the end of the 1950's.
In the summer of 1959 on the initiative of Paul Fromm of the Fromm
Music Foundation, an American seminar 'alla Darmstadt' was organized in Prince
ton University. Paul Fromm decided on the seminar when, after a talk with
American musicians on Darmstadt and Donaueschingen, he became convinced
'that Americans need no longer depend upon Europe for their resources'.3
Roger Sessions, Milton Babbitt, Edward T. Cone, Robert Craft and Ernst
Kfenek led the seminar, with guest speakers Elliot Carter, Aaron Copland, Allen
Forte, Felix Greissle, John Tukey, Vladimir Ussachevsky and Edgar Varese.
Igor Stravinsky also paid an informal visit.
Six of the papers presented at the seminar were published in the conser
vative Musical Quarterly in the following year. They were introduced by Paul
Henry Lang with a very critical and irate text scattered with middle age Latin
quotations about the qualities of the music which the other writers disparaged.4
Musicological Society, 53/1 (Spring 2000), 105-139; I. Wellens, Music on the Frontline. Nicolas
Nabokov's struggle against Communism and Middlebrow Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002).
See also, R. Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, Vol. 5 (Oxford and New York: Ox
ford University Press, 2005), 6-22.
* On the phenomenon of world music westernization in the twentieth century, see B.
Nertl, 'World Music in the Twentieth Century: A Survey of Research on Western Influence', Acta
Musicologica, 58 (1986), 360-373.
1 P. Fromm, 'Preface', in P. H. Lang (ed.). The Princeton Seminar in Advanced Musical
Studies. Problems of Modern Music (New York: The Norton Library, 1962), 17-20.
4 All the texts, including the introduction, are also published in: P. H. Lang (ed.), The
Princeton Seminar in Advanced Musical Studies.
TOTAL CAPITALISM AGAINST TOTAL SERIALISM 181
Some of the speakers, such as Roger Sessions for instance, were not fully
convinced that tradition should be completely effaced, and used old fashioned
words such as 'creative imagination', 'expression' and so on.
The sessions posed a basic question. He says:
The principle of the so-called 'total organization' raises many questions
and answers none, even in theory. First of all, what is being organized, and ac
cording to what criterion? Is it not rather a matter of organizing, not music itself,
but various facets of music, each independently and on its own terms or at best
according to a set of arbitrarily conceived and ultimately quite irrelevant rules of
association?5
Allen Forte, well known for having established the 'pitch-class sets'
method of analysis, contributed to the division of Bela Bartok's work with his
speech 'Bartok's "serial" composition'.6 He showed serial treatment in the third
movement of Bartok's String Quartet No. 4, as well as the evaluative depend
ence of twentieth-century music aesthetics from the new trends projected on the
Western side of the iron curtain.
In his paper, 'Extents and limits of serial techniques'7, Ernst Kfenek ap
peared totally liberated from romanticism and expressionism. To some he even
sounded cynical.
His remark on the problem of chance, the unpredictable result of serialism,
which transforms the act of composition into an automaton is significant. After a
description of his oratorio Spiritus intelligentiae, sanctus, he goes on to say:
while the preparation and the layout of the material, as well as the opera
tions performed therein, are the consequence of serial premeditation, the audible
results of these procedures were not visualized as the purpose of the procedures.
Seen from this angle, the results are incidental; they are also practically unpre
dictable...
Then, comparing past concepts of composition to new, he values the
work higher than the composer, saying that inspiration is conditioned by recol
lection, tradition, training and experience and that the contemporary composer,
wishing to be liberated from all that, 'prefers to set up an impersonal mecha
nism which will furnish, according to premeditated patterns, unpredictable
situations. [„.]'8
Finally, he arrogantly states that modern composers are totally indifferent
to communicating: 'If a serial composer', he says, 'were concerned with this
5 Ibidem, 31.
6 Ibidem, 95-107. Nikos Skalkottas' music has also been affected by Cold War aesthetics,
his tonal compositions having been long undervalued. Indeed, the catalogue of his works sepa
rates atonal and twelve-tone compositions from tonal.
7 Ibidem, 72-94.
8 Ibidem, 90.
182 Katy Romanou
problem, he would have to set up a series of "moods" or "ideas", or something

of this sort, to begin with, and then let the other parameters fall in line. It so
happens', he concludes, 'that serial composers do not think in such terms.'9
The most effective acts for the inclusion and seclusion of totally serial
composition in Princeton University were initiated two years earlier by Milton
Babbitt. Babbitt, who considered himself wronged because his early contribu
tion to total serialism was not recognized by European avant-garde musicians,10
proposed to Princeton University the foundation of a doctoral degree in compo
sition, since, he argued, composing requires as much research as musicology
(where doctoral degrees were granted).
The mutual antipathy which existed between Babbitt and the cream of
European avant-garde composers was linked to the image of the contemporary
composer. He considered their innovations non scientific and arbitrary. They
considered him too academic, especially when they became acquainted with
John Cage, who, in fact, described Babbitt to Boulez with the contemptuous 'He
looks like a musicologist'.11
Babbitt presented his arguments on the necessity of founding a doctoral
degree in composition, in a speech made in Tanglewood in 1957. It was pub
lished in High Fidelity,12 not with Babbitt's title ('The Composer as Specialist'),
but with the editor's: 'Who cares if you listen?', a title which gave Babbitt the
fame he had so far been deprived of and which faithfully depicted the article's
contents.
In his speech at the Princeton Seminar, entitled 'Twelve-tone invariants
as compositional determinants',13 Babbitt relates composition to science. He
comments snobbishly on the average listener and says that since it is natural to
expect the average person not to understand anything from a speech on a new
mathematical theory, thus, it should also be natural for the average music lover
not to understand anything from new music which develops in a similar way to
scientific research.
Every work of new music, he says, follows its own laws, which is the
cause of every work's great originality. In order to understand its originality the
listener should be instructed in contemporary analytical theory. He then com
plains that although not understanding science augments the scientist's prestige,
in the composer's case, it has the opposite result. He proposes a solution to this
9 Ibidem, 93.
10 Babbitt serially calculated the duration of notes in his 3 Compositionsfor Piano, written
in 1947, i.e. two years before Messiaen wrote his Mode de valeurs et d'intensites, considered by
the European avant-garde as the earliest serial composition not limited to pitch series.
1 1 R. Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, 154.
12 The editor of which, Roland Gelatt, happened to be in the audience when his speech
was made.
13 P. H. Lang (ed.). The Princeton Seminar in Advanced Musical Studies, 108-121.
injustice to scientifically creating composers with the prophetic wish that 'all
public and social aspects of musical composition' cease to exist, and that the
composer withdraws totally from the public world, protected under the roof of
the university.
The doctoral degree in musical composition (more accurately: in serial
music composition) was established in Princeton in 1961 and in most American
universities within the same decade. Among the seven first Doctoral graduates
of Princeton, only one (Mark de Voto) appears as a composer in the Dictionary
of 20th Century Music.14
Secluded in the university the composer and the work of art reached the
peak of their prestige (as Babbitt wished). Thereafter began their decline as a
natural consequence of the fact itself, aided by the end of the Cold War, the
domination of the United States and the prevalence of total capitalism as the
unique model for growth throughout the globe.
The final cadence is postponed because of existing institutions (profes
sional, educational, commercial) which during the two previous centuries have
been promulgated to world communities. They are gradually adapted to the cur
rent conditions through the constant creation of new branches, among which
light music prevails. It is in fact this protective mechanism of embranchment
which also contributes to the final dissolution.
What is disappearing today was shaped in Europe under the economic
and political situations which favored humanism, particularity (communal and
individual), faith (religious and secular), and creativity.
Notions such as 'work of art' were shaped together with those situations.
Before, music praxis was not connected with such meanings.15
The fact that these notions are again today disconnected from musical
praxis is naturally linked to the present political and economic situation. This
situation is referred to by the French economist, Jean Peyrelevade, as total
capitalism.16 According to him this is the unique model for the organization of
the world economy today.
Total capitalism today is like a gigantic anonymous company of some
thousand anonymous shareholders, who control the world Stock Exchange
capital. More than half of them are located in the United States.
14 John Vinton, editor (Thames and Hudson, 1974).

Nicolaus Listenius is credited with the introduction of the notion of the 'work of art'. In
his Musica, of 1537, he writes, based on Aristotle's' Poetics: '...when some music or musical song
is written by someone, the goal of this action is the consummated and completed work. For it
consists of making or fabricating something, that is, in a kind of labor that leaves behind itself,
even after the artist dies, a perfect and completed work'. Quoted by Claude Palisca in 'Foreword
by the Series Editor', in: J. Burmeister, Musical Poetics, translated and annotated by B. Rivera
(Music Theory Translation Series), (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), vii.
16 J. Peyrelevade, Le capitalisme total (Paris: Seuil, 2005).
184 Katy Romanou
The United States differ from previous world leaders in that they are its
(the world's) first proprietor.
The laws of total capitalism are autonomous, i.e. absolutely independent
of the society's needs. The European model which seeks to harmonize eco
nomic dynamism with social progress is disappearing, and the social compro
mises made in the period of reconstruction and growth after the Second World
War have lost all meaning.
Social classes have been succeeded by the juxtaposition between the per
petrators of globalization and those remaining faithful to an obsolete, local ap
proach, who are nevertheless trapped in the mechanisms of total capitalism be
cause they are the only guarantor of growth. The world is thus guided by an
anonymous authoritarianism.17
The capital circulates with the laws and motivations of the game. The
game is also a new consumer product applied in innumerable daily activities; it
is propagated to tomorrow's citizens of the globe through those electronic
games which uniformly shape millions of tender thumbs and minds. Countless
persons with the same movements and obviously the same thoughts have the
illusion of an individual fight, while participating in a massive act. A huge con
suming mass of isolated individuals.
The ethos of the game contributes to the homogenisation of individuals
and communities and the depreciation of human life and all the values which
make up the value of human life.
Politics and syndicalism, faith and ideologies, humanism and democracy,
history and nations, are all ridiculed. And the best mockery is that the mecha
nisms of total capitalism are indispensable to all.
Western Europe's decline is evident in (and greatly accelerated by) the
new historiography methods and all the circulating ideas which have replaced
the older thesis about the end of history with that proclaiming the end of na
tional mythologies and the beginning of one global true history. The acceptance
of this thesis means that at last, today, the world has reached the peak of human
wisdom; for the first time in history (or in mythology) humanity has attained the
maturity to face the truth!
As a rule, old mythologies were contrived by indigenous writers in lan
guages read by indigenous readers. New history is written by writers from the
international community (i.e. ruler), in English, which is read universally.
New history sees the world with its owner's vision. But what is interest
ing to note, is that with the potency of propaganda and the automatic circulation
of ideas around the world, this vision is also adopted within the properties. Un
der such conditions, citizens loose their ability (or at least, their inclination)
both to create and to perceive what is different.
"Ibidem. 7-10.
If you try to record Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, first movement, in one

of the new sound storage systems, I-pods, it will take up the space of close to 20
songs. Those I-pods which circulated in 2001, advertised as enabling everyone
to put ' 1 .000 songs in their pocket' are universally sold in great numbers (over
1 1 0,000,000 up to September 2007, a record in world consumption). They are
the sound machines which authentically represent the twenty-first century,
gradually replacing the CDs, which were planned on the basis of western classi
cal music.
It should be remembered, that the criterion for the size of the CD, was the
slowest interpretation of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 on a LP record.18
I suspect that to most of us here, the music of all 1,000 songs in our
pockets sounds similar, homogenized.
It was not my intention to dramatize events; as a matter of fact, music
history teaches that many of the changes perceived in the course of time as
positive, were considered as qualitative decline when they first appeared be
cause changes are felt initially by the values they abrogate. Hopefully, we have
not yet perceived the new values. Or, perhaps, total capitalism will, like total
serialism, reach its peak and then begin its decline.
Kemu PoMaHy
TOTAJIHH KAIiHTAJ1H3AM nPOTHB

TOTAJlHOr CEPHJAJIH3MA
Pe3hMe
OBaj paa npe^cTaBjba noicymaj pa3y\ieBaH>a oflHOca H3Merjy êmaBaH>a y

My3HUH XX h XXI Beica h pa3BojHHX TeHaeHuHja Tor ao6a y cqbepaMa nojiHTH-
Ke h eKOHOMHje. AyropKa carjieaaBa yBor)eH>e TOTajiHor cepHjajuoMa Ha aok-
TopcKe CTyaHje y CjeanH>eHHM AMepHHKHM /lp»aBaMa neneceTHX ronHHa npo-
mnor BeKa, Kaaa cy aMepHHKa xereMOHHja h XnaHHH paT 6hjih Ha BpxyHuy,
Kao HaMepHo OflBajan>e My3HHKor CTBapa&a ojx apyiuTBa. Ca 3aBpuieTKOM
Xaa^Hor paTa TOHajiHOCT, Koja je tokoM uejior XX BeKa 6Hjia npHcyrHa y 3a-
naaHoj nonyjiapHoj My3HUH, Kao h y yMeTHHHKoj My3HUH McTO4Hor 6jiOKa, O6-
HOB^>eHa je y 3HaHajHHM 3anaflHHM My3HHKHM KpyrOBHMa jep BHuie HHje 6hjio
The 1 2 cm. diameter and 74 minute duration of the CD was decided towards the end of
the 1970s by the technicians of Philips and of Sony, in order to enclose the slowest interpretation
of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on an LP. (A Wilhelm Furtwängler interpretation recorded in
195 1 ). CDs circulated in Europe and Japan in 1982, and in the United States, in 1983.
186 Katy Romanou
noTpe6HO na ce rpaan aHTHTe3a npe\ia My3HUH c HaMeTHyraM orpaHHHen>HMa

y couHjanHCTHHKHM 3eMjbaMa. IlpecTajia je h noapmica aBaHrapaHoj My3HUH.
HcTOBpeMeHO, yMeTHHHKa My3HKa, Koja je npoH3BOa nojiHTHHKor h apy-
urrBeHor HanpeTKa 3anaaHoeBponcKe uHBHjiH3aUHje, noHejia je m nena cyn,6n-
Hy Te Here uHBHjnmUHje, TaKo aa ce 3anaaca nocreneHO onaaaH>e H>eHor 3HaHaja.
âHac, y BpeMe .ooMHHaUHje CjeflHH>eHHX AMcphmkhx /IpacaBa h npeOBjiaaaBa-
H>a TOTajiHor KanHTanH3Ma Kao je^HHor Moaejia pa3Boja Ha uejioj ruiaHeTH,
yMeTHHHKa My3HKa je nomeiteHa, jiok e(J)eMepHa nonyjiapHa My3HKa ao6Hja Ha
3HaHajy, npn HeMy ce h>hxobc MeI)yco6He pa3jiHice nocTeneHo HHBejiHpajy.
Aj-noaOBH (I-pods), KojH nocTeneHo 3aMeH>yjy KOMnaicr flHCicOBe, 6hjih
cy npBo6HTHO HaMeH>eHH yMeroHHicoj My3HuH. Ohh HaM OMoryhaBajy na np-
achMo „xHjbaay necaMa y cboM ueny" h npeacTaBjbajy jeaaH on O3HaHHTejba
HOBe xoMoreHH3OBaHe My3HHKe KyjiType.
ASPECTS OF (MODERATE) MODERNISM
IN THE SERBIAN MUSIC OF THE 1950s
VESNA MIKIC
THE brackets which separate the notion of 'moderate' in the title of this
paper could serve as a starting point for the discussion of modernism in the Ser
bian music of the '50s. They are there as much as to point out the fact that the
modernism we are dealing with here, while not a radical brand, is still modern
ism, as to indicate the possibility of applying a kind of 'umbrella' term in the
interpretation of the Serbian music of the fifties. This kind of approach could
possibly, in our opinion: a) overcome often tacit but none the less sharp Dalhau-
sian divides between 'history's winners and history's losers'1; b) connect more
firmly pre- and post Second World War compositional practices, thus ensuring
the further re-contextualization of these periods2; c) facilitate understanding of
very complicated neo/isms terminology and d) once again accentuate the im
portance of the fifties in the context of modernism-postmodernism relations in
the later development of Serbian music.
All this can be feasible only if we constantly keep in mind the specific
cultural (political, historical, social) context in which Serbian composers have
worked and in which the divide into pre- and postwar periods must be respected
primarily due to the fact that between these two the radical change of the politi
cal system from monarchy to socialism happened in Serbia, then Yugoslavia.
This change established the country's strong connections with the USSR, i.e.
socialist realism aesthetics. If we accept the notion that 'modernism (also)
challenges the boundaries between art and (...) culture'3 after the political rup
ture with the USSR in 1948, followed by the gradual abandonment of socialist
realism aesthetics, the only possible modernistic challenge that Serbian artists
D. Albright (ed.), Modernism and Music. An Anthology of Sources (Chicago: The

University of Chicago Press, 2004), 1 1 .
: P. Wood (ed.), Varieties of Modernism (London: Yale University Press, 2004), 1-11.
3 D. Albright (ed.), Modernism and Music, 12.
188 Vesna Mikic
could make in relation to the culture and its 'prescribed' aesthetic norms was a
moderate modernism. Different circumstances in the development of the Euro
pean postwar high modernism and moderate modernism in socialist societies as
Serbia then was, (also called socialist modernism by some prominent art theo
reticians, for instance Suvakovic and Denegri) should not be forgotten. 'After
the Second World War in the USSR, Eastern Europe and the Balkans, in the
countries of real socialism, with the decay of socialist realism ideology and the
development of the middle class bureaucratic, technocratic and humanistic in
telligence, the moderate modernism developed as a ideologically neutral and
aesthetized art that enabled compromise between the ideological demands of
revolutionary government (or ideology) and the aesthetic interests of the post-
revolutionary technobureaucratic classes.'4
The term, like its definition is borrowed here from art history and theory
in which, as early as the fifties (as in the field of literary criticism and theory)
feverish polemics where made along the lines of the modernism-realism debate.
Since less turmoil (with a few major exceptions concerning the historical con
cert of 1 954, which we shall set aside for some future occasion) was caused in
the field of music/musicology of the period, thanks to the nature of music itself,
the praxis of denoting different phenomena with style/movements signifiers was
devised and nourished, deriving almost exclusively from the music analysis of
the technical and expressive means used. This, on the one hand could lead to the
unavoidable although somewhat disguised valorization that favored either the
'progressive' pieces, or 'conventional' ones, while on the other, it gave way to
the attrition of the production to the numerous neo- movements that coexisted in
the music of the fifties.5 Since this kind of coexistence is not unusual for musi
cal modernism in a European context, as well as in the contexts of individual
author's (like Stravinsky or Schoenberg) outputs, in our effort to shift the focus
from the valorization of the music production based on attributing certain style
characteristics, to the cultural context from which it originates, we introduce the
notion of 'moderate modernism'. Besides the fact that the adjective at first re
flects the 'pacific' position of the composer in respect to socio-historical con
text, it could however, in a more general sense, serve as a guide to the detection
of some distinct choices in the realm of musical expression. If we accept the
statement that 'Modernism is a testing of the limits of aesthetic construction'6
that could, in the case of the Serbian composers of the fifties, mean distinct
modes of subverting socialist realism ideology/aesthetic construction (that often
4 M. Suvakovic, 'Umjereni modernizam' in Pojmovnik suvremene umjetnosti [Terms of

the Contemporary Art] (Zagreb: Horetzky, Ghent: Vlees & Beton. 2005), 644.
5 We should mention here, however, that one of the prominent Serbian musicologist, Rok-
sanda Pejovic, in her enormous output, often insists on term 'moderately contemporary', trying to
overcome the neo/isms confusion.
6 D. Albright, Modernism and Music, 1 1.
ASPECTS OF (MODERATE) MODERNISM 189
coincide with local and international canonical ones), as well as of personal po

etic/aesthetic constructions. The results of these testings were different answers
to typical modernistic questions of making a balance between tradition and in
novation, national and international, autonomy and engagement, elitism and
communication... In the case of Serbian arts and music, moderate modernism
combines in various ways the traditions of prewar modernisms, both high (ex
pressionism), moderate (neoclassicism) and folklore.
Now we will try to identify some aspects of the moderate modernism in
the Serbian music of the decade in three pieces by the famous Prague group
composers. We also regard those radical modernists of the interwar period as
crucial figures for establishing the moderate modernism of the postwar times.
By then mature and institutionally established authors - Milan Ristic (1908-
1982), Ljubica Maric (1909-2003) and Stanojlo RajiCic (1910-2000) with their
pieces in the fifties created individual modernistic breakthroughs in the cultural
climate that still echoed the sounds of socialist realism. Since the pieces we
have chosen are commonly regarded as examples of neo-romanticism, neoclas
sicism and neo-expressionism we will try to transpose and interpret them in the
explained contextualization of moderate modernism. The pieces, composed in
1951 and 1956, differ in genre, they differ thematically and, as already men
tioned in the choice of musical means. Yet, besides the fact that they stand close
in time and that they were made by authors of a seemingly similar musical
'background'7 they share the common feature of testing the limits of imposed
(from 1948 maybe tacitly) aesthetic constructions. Thus, the song cycle for
baritone and orchestra Na Liparu (1951) by Stanojlo RajiCic, Second Symphony
(1951) by Milan Ristic and Pesme prostora (Songs of Spaces 1956) by Ljubica
Maric can now be discussed together as symptoms/aspects of moderate mod
ernism in the Serbian music of the fifties.
The year 1951 was 'the year' for the establishment of Serbian postwar
(moderate) modernism in the arts. Although Mica Popovic held his famous ex
hibition in late 1950, it could be understood as a symptom of the great break
through of the year 1951 in which Petar Lubarda had his own, Dobrica Cosic
wrote Daleko je sunce, Milan Ristic composed his Second symphony and Ra-
jicic his song cycle. Although this all may seem like a positivistic gathering of
the facts aimed at designing some kind of canonic formation, the real issue here
is not only why this all happened in 1951, but rather the 'way' it happened. By
comparison with the solutions that literature and art histories offer, it should be
said that if Lubarda's and Cosic's works were observed as modern ones (due to
the fact that in these arts it was easier to observe the realism - modernism colli
sion) the effort could be made to regard Ristic's and Rajicic's pieces in the same
For the detailed discussion of differences emerging from evidently very similar back
grounds, see: M. Veselinovic-Hofman, Stvaralacka prisutnost evropske avangarde u nas [The
Creative Presence ofEuropean Avant-Garde in Serbia] (Beograd: Univerzitet umetnosti, 1983).
190 Vesna Mikic
way, considering their possible apprehension as various kinds of drift from the
(socialist) realism demands upon music.
The moderate nature of the postwar modernism could perhaps be imme
diately perceived in Rajicic's choice of the poetry for his song cycles of the 50s.
While in the interwar period his musical radicalism was confirmed also in the
choice of contemporary poetry dealing with subjects from contemporary life, in
the 50s the composer turned to the classics of Serbian romantic poetry - Branko
Radicevic and Djura JakSic, this time showing respect for the tradition of the
Serbian national lied of the Marinkovic-Milojevic-Konjovic kind. Certainly,
even if only partly, what we are dealing with here is a very 'safe' kind of
choice, turning to the values that no one would question, so the composer would
not find himself in the position to explain and elaborate on his choice of sub
ject.8 However, Na Liparu as a song cycle set to Serbian romantic poetry could
be contextualized as a proof of RajiCic's reconciliation with the demands of the
epoch as well as a proof of the typically romantic gateway from reality through
the subversion of conventional subject matter. Maybe Rajicic's choice of poetry
could be interpreted as a kind of 'historicist modernism'9 in Frisch's sense,
where the use of JakSic's verses would proclaim a 'call to order' and provoke a
'healing" effect on, in the sense of thematic subjects, 'squalid' Serbian music
production.
Maybe it is possible to interpret in the same way Rajicic's choice of
genre, only with the additional touch of an elitist approach. Rajidic's cycle is the
first song cycle in the history of Serbian music with an orchestral accompani
ment. Generally speaking, Rajicic's thirst for 'filling the gaps' in Serbian music
literature with first examples of until then nonexistent genres (e.g. concertos for
various instruments) actually reinforces the hypothesis of the elitist and
'enlightening' effect and meaning of his modernism. Naturally, in the period
between the two wars, the institutional conditions for the development of this
kind of lied hardly existed, and quite frankly speaking, the genre itself rarely
provoked the attention of Serbian composers. In some way it turned out to be
quite elitist and lied was usually composed by the most prominent and academi
cally oriented Serbian authors.
Anyhow, if we focus our attention now on the choice of genre in the era
of socialist realism, we must understand Rajicic's decision to turn to symphonic
lied as partly (moderately?) subversive, something like: it is vocal-instrumental
music, it uses a generally known and understandable text, but it is far from be-
8 However, even the classics like Radicevic could come into question, as in the case of
earlier Rajicic's song on Branko's verses. This even more confirms the inconsistency of socialist
realism's critique. See: V. Pericic, Stvaralacki put Stanojla Rajicica [The Creative Path of
Stanojlo Rajicic], (Beograd: Univerzitet umetnosti, 1978).
9 See, W. Frisch, German Modernism. Music and the Arts (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 2005), 138-186.
ing music meant for everybody/anyone. Rajicic ensured the possibility of acting
from such an elitist position by leaning on the tradition of Serbian lied, espe
cially Konjovic's which, to put it shortly in musical terms and in Rajicic's case
meant: using a combination of tonal/modal harmonies, structuring the melody
according to the spoken word flexions, form shaping in accordance to the poet
ics, rudimentary leitmotif technique in the last and most elaborate fifth song,
and finally, reflecting symphonic cyclical form in the five-movement layout of
his song cycle. If it is possible to conceive Jaksic as a 'healer' then it is possible
to think of Konjovic in the same terms in the realm of Serbian music. So, this
'return to Konjovic' that implies a return to the basics of (Slavic) romantic na
tional lied, as well as Rajicic's preparations for the composition of (national)
opera, paradoxically at the beginning of the 50's performed a kind of drift from
leading aesthetics and provided RajiCic with a stable answer to its demands.
Ristic's moderately modernistic choice is different and maybe more
firmly positioned in the sphere of moderate modernism as neoclassicism. He
conceived his Symphony as a simple and pure, almost exemplary piece of neo
classicism, much in the same fashion as Prokofiev did in 1918 with his Classi
cal one. Simulation, as the predominant neoclassical procedure, reveals itself in
several aspects in what would be otherwise perceived as a typical classical sym
phonic creation. Although it could perhaps be questioned in the case of the for
mal solution for the final movement (Fugue), simulation is totally confirmed in
certain harmony, metrical, thematic and orchestration procedures that, however
gently, testify to the 'real time' of the piece's production. Thus, the tonal rela
tion of the principal and secondary subjects in the first movement (the latter os
cillating between F and C major), the mixed meters of the third (5/8 and 7/8 as a
simulation of traditional music), the chromatic melodic movement of the theme
of the second movement, as well as it's orchestration (for clarinet with a trum
pet/bassoons accompaniment) all drift away from 'classical' solutions/procedu
res thus, in effect confirming the simulation procedure.
Furthermore, the final fugue, if not a typical classical choice for a final
movement, could be examined from the, let us call it the 'Hindemith's perspec
tive' which is again very close to the 'Back to Bach' movement -one which,
again, could be thought of from the angle of 'historicist modernism' and the
supposed 'healing powers' of Bach's music. On the other hand, the simulated
folklore solution of the third movement could also be ambivalently interpreted:
as a kind of connivance with the not yet forgotten demands of socialist realism,
and also as a call to the 'great masters' of Serbian music, such as Konjovic
and/or Hristic (thanks to its predominantly brassy sound) of much the same ilk
as the abovementioned call to Bach.
Yet, the real modernist power of the Symphony can be revealed even more
strongly if we reverse the perspective and look on the piece from the point of view
of the then still present socialist realism. By turning to the classical symphonic
192 Vesna Mikic
cycle Ristic actually rejects two crucial prerogatives of socialist realism's aesthetic
- the vocal-instrumental genre, and subject matter from the war and/or the country's
reconstruction. The only obvious way to handle this is in almost exactly in the way
that Ristic did. By choosing the purest possible form of symphonic expression his
priorities were to keep it simple and relatively short, with a touch of folklore (with
which the audience at home and abroad could identify) on the one hand, and a
touch of unquestionable (musical) values on the other. Hence, in one ingenious
move, he turned aside all possible objections from the governing (musical) elite
while at the same time subverting the obligatory ingredients of 'correct' music
making. These are the reasons why the Symphony should be understood as a piece
of moderate modernism. On the surface it retains a neutral ideological position,
while actually subverting some of its corner-stones.
And finally, from the angle of testing the aesthetic norms and limits Lju-
bica Maric's Pesme prostora at once clashes with these, and yet, we think still
in a moderately modernistic way because we are dealing here with cantata - one
of the favorite genres of socialist realism. However, the subject is a strong re
jection of the preferred themes of socialist realism in favor of human and
'transnational' subject matter - death. The choice of the epitaph texts by ano
nym Mediaeval authors of whom we know only the way their lives ended en
ables the composer to achieve a kind of omnitemporal /omnihistorical/ omnis-
patial positioning of the piece. The same goes for music in which the simulation
of the 'transnational', primeval features of traditional music (in horizontal lines
shaped using small intervals, simulating traditional heterophony, based almost
exclusively on metro-rhythmic variations) is in accordance with the archaicity
of the lyrics that primarily in a vertical aspect and through orchestration,
achieves unexpected sound results.
Although we understood the rejection of the vocal-instrumental genre in
the case of Ristic as a symptom of modernistic subversion, we could say that
Maric's decision to stay 'in it' and the way she stays in, result in more radical
offence to the aesthetic norms. However, this radicalism should be thought of
primarily in a local context. If the piece seriously subverts the norms and is
radical in local terms,10 one may wonder is it can still be termed moderate mod
ernism, since we have linked it exclusively with the local context? We must
here make a kind of inversion in search of the elements in which Pesme pros
tora corresponds with the norms. We can then think again in terms of genre
choice but now as Maric 'playing safe'. Also, we can interpret the choice of
subject as quite 'neutral' i.e. acceptable for the aesthetics of decaying socialist
realism. Finally, in one more general sense Pesme prostora are by their musical
means the product of the multilayered relation with tradition, starting with
10 This kind of insight of the peculiarities of Serbian music Serbian musicology owes to
Mirjana Veselinovic-Hofman. See: M. Veselinovic-Hofman, Stvaralacka prisutnost evropske avan-
garde u nas.
folklore (although a simulated),the baroque (in the choice of genre), and the ca
nonic modern (Igor Stravinsky) which is, as we pointed out earlier, typical for
the Eastern kind of moderate modernisms.
Bearing in mind the suggested recontextualization of the Prague group
composers' pieces of the fifties we actually introduce (moderate) modernism
into the rethinking of the terms neoromanticism, neoclassicism and neoexpres-
sionism. This rethinking should on some future occasion turn to the activities of
other Prague group members, as well as to the authors that began their careers
in the fifties, realizing yet another important aspect of modernism that deals
with the relations between high and low art. Also, the history of reception
should be considered and maybe all of this would open up further possibilities
for different new contextualization and interpretation of the modernism-post
modernism relation, and hence maybe the whole of postwar, or twentieth-cen
tury Serbian music, too.
BecHa Muxuh
BHÔBH (YMEPEHOr) MO£EPHH3MA Y CPIICKOJ

MY3HUH IiE/JECETHX TO/JHHA XX BEKA
Pe3hMe
Paa nojia3H oa npemocTaBKe a.a cy ce neaeceTe ronHHe XX Beica y npo-

ayKUHjH yMeTHHHKe My3HKe y Cp6HjH ozuiHKOBajie cjihhhhM aaeojiouuco-icpea-
thbhhM npeTnocTaBicaMa Kao h npoayKUHja y flpyrHM yMeTHHHKHM .hhciiwijih-
HaMa (jiHKOBHoj yMeTHOCTH h KH>H>KeBHOCTH), Kojoj ce Beh nyro npHnncyje
yMepeHO MoaepHHCTHHKH Kapaicrep. Oryaa ce 3aMHcao o oco6eHOM couHjanH-
CTHHKOM eCTCTH3My, OaHOCHO yMepeHOM MOflepHH3My, MOaCIia H COUHjajIH-
cthhkoM MoaepHH3My, pa3MaTpa Ha npHMepy 3HaHajHHX OCTBapeH>a cpncKHX
KOMno3HTopa H3 OBor nepnoaa. Flopea Tora uito ce aHcKyryje o npeaHOCTHMa
h HeaocTaUHMa thx nojMOBa, y paay ce nocBehyje noce6Ha naacoa KOMno3H-
iiHjaMa Tpoje npcueraBHHKa npaiuxe epyne. HapaBHO, HeoioiacHHHH npoceae
HeKHX oa h>hx y noTnyHOCTH ce „yiaiana" y Moaeji yMepeHor MoaepHH3Ma, ajiH
ce nocTaBjba nHTaH>e Ha Kojn HaHHH h aa jih HeKa j\ena Koja cy paHHje TyMaHe-
Ha Kao „HeopoMaHTHHapcKa" hjih „HeoeiccnpecHOHHCTHHKa", TaHHHje ca npeH-
3HaUHMa Ha3aaHor hjih nporpecHBHor, KOHCTHTyHuiy yMepeHO MonepHHCTHH-
KH je3HK KOjH he HeCyMH>HBO H 0.0 AaHaC OCTaTH jeaHO Ofl OMHjbeHHX KOMnO3H-
TopcKHX „cioioHHurra". IIocTaBjba ce h nHTaite aa jih 6h yBor)eH>eM „yMepeHor
MoaepHH3Ma" 6hjio Moryhe peujHTH h 3a6yHy o 3HaHajy h flOMeTHMa êna Koja
npHnaaajy pa3jiHHHTHM Heo-npaBiiHMa y cpncKoj My3HuH neaeceTHX roaHHa?
MODERATED MODERNISM IN RUSSIAN MUSIC
AFTER 1953
IVANA MEDIC
Moderated modernism1 has been a largely underestimated and

misunderstood phenomenon. To call someone a moderated modernist thirty
years ago would have been an insult, since the premises of musical criticism
were built on the basis of modernist notions of progress and evolution. Al
though moderated modernism can be identified in various periods before and
after the Second World War, throughout Europe, I will focus on Soviet (and
more specifically, Russian) music after 1953,2 and try to identify the political
and artistic ideologies which surrounded it.3
It was Theodor W. Adorno who introduced this oxymoron (gemdssigte Moderne in Ger
man). His attitude towards the 'style' was clearly negative, as he called it 'ominous', 'detestable',
etc. Adorno argues that all the works created on the basis of 'old' means are false, conformist,
regressive. He emphasises the truth-telling power of dissonance and argues that tonal music can
no longer reflect social relations because it is worn out, empty and banal, hence it contributes to
preserving the social order. Compare: T. W. Adorno, 'The Ageing of New Music', in R. Leppert
(ed.), Essays on Music (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 2002),
197-198.
2 None of the authors who produced seminal histories of Soviet post-war music defined
the term moderate(d) modernism, although they did mention it en passant. Levon Hakobian
devotes a chapter to 'several "moderates" and "middle-roads'" (Aleksandr Lokshin, Andrey
Eshpay, Nikolay Sidel'nikov, Sergey Slonimsky, Rodion Shchedrin, Yuriy Falik and Yuriy
Butzko) [emphasis mine]. L. Hakobian, Music of the Soviet Age 1917-1987 (Stockholm: Melos,
1998), 314.
' The creation of avant-garde mythology and underestimation of moderated modernism
had a strong political dimension in the context of the Cold War divide. Several American
scholars, such as Richard Taruskin, Peter J. Schmelz, Danielle Fosler-Lussier et al., have
investigated this matter in the recent years. For example, Danielle Fosler-Lussier stresses that the
polarisation of judgments about what was valuable in the arts was an immediate product of this
divide, as 'the dominant discourse in the West since mid- 1940s equated difficult music with the
idea of political freedom, and consonance with subservience and collaboration'. Compare: D.
Fosler-Lussier, '"Multiplication by Minus One": Musical Values in East-West Engagement',
Slavonica Vol. 10 No. 2 (2004), 125-138.
196 Ivana Medic
The oxymoron 'moderated modernism'4 denotes a socially acceptable, non-

avant-garde, non-challenging form of modernism, whose main feature is the artists'
desire to make peace between modernist and traditional ideas and ideals, as well as
between regional and international ones. Composers who adopt moderated mod
ernism are interested in approaching the dominant streams of international modern
ism; however, its most radical variants are alien to them.5 Levon Hakobian de
scribes the composers he dubs 'moderates' and 'middle-roads' in these terms: 'In
regard to their stylistic preferences, none of them could be considered "conserva
tive" i.e. indifferent to the innovatory tendencies coming from the West; on the
other hand, none is really "advanced" in the same sense as those who are habitually
referred to as the "avant-garde". Consequently, after the early 1950s not one among
them was subjected to ideologically coloured critique.'6
Russia had a powerful modernist movement in the first two decades of
the twentieth century. However, one product of the Soviet 'cultural policy' in
the mid- 1930s was a ban placed upon the works of Russia's own most promi
nent modernists, and at the same time, a deliberate and complete isolation from
modernist movements throughout Europe.7 After Stalin's death in 1953, the be
ginning of 'the Thaw' in the domain of arts and in Soviet society as a whole
made the technical and ideological conditions for artistic creation slightly less
repressive, which in turn initiated the processes of de-Zhdanovisation and re-
approachment to the West. The 1958 decree acknowledging errors in the notori
ous resolution of 1948 confirmed the loosening of socialist realist dogma, al
though it did not imply rehabilitation of formalism. Nevertheless, once started,
the process of modernisation and catching up with the rest of Europe could not
be stopped, and by the early 1960s the soil was already prepared for the intro
duction of the Western avant-garde techniques.
4 Although 'moderated modernism' with various grammatical sub-variants is the term

most commonly used to describe this type of artistic discourse, many other more-or-less
synonyms have been in use. These range from descriptive to pejorative, depending on the
scholars' theoretical and ideological positions. Some of them are: moderate mainstream,
moderately contemporary language, ostensibly moderate idiom, socialist aestheticism, academic
modernism, tempered modernism, middle-of-the-road, humanistic tradition, tonal music withfalse
notes, conservative-modern music, officially approved modernism, normal state of art, well-
adjusted art, etc. Compare: I. Medic, 'The Ideology of Moderated Modernism in Serbian Music
and Musicology', Muzikologija No. 7 (2008), 279-294.
5 Compare: M. Suvakovic, Pojmovnik moderne i postmoderne likovne umetnosti i teorije
posle 1950. [Dictionary of Notions of Modern and Postmodern Visual Arts and Theory After
1950] (Belgrade/Novi Sad: SANU/Prometej, 1999), 194.
6L. Hakobian, 314.
7 In the course of 1930s and 1940s this isolationist policy did not do much harm to the
place of Soviet music in the broader context, since that was the period of consolidation and 'mod
eration' of modernist means throughout Europe. However, the first post-war decade witnessed a
radical turnover in the West-European artistic policy and ideology, and the occurrence of a gap
between Western and Eastern artistic ideals.
MODERATED MODERNISM IN RUSSIAN MUSIC AFTER 1953 197
However, what triggered moderated modernism most decisively was the

fact that the entire country's policy in the periods of Khrushchev's and
Brezhnev's rule shifted from Stalinist offensive integrationism and isolationism
to defensive integrationism.8 The state bureaucracy and artists 'agreed' on a
corresponding goal: to end isolation, leave behind backwardness and import and
'domesticate' Western economic and cultural knowledge.
So, the Thaw had begun, but most composers were unsure how to pro
ceed from there, since the canon of Socialist Realism was still officially en
throned, and remained so for the next two decades. Although the officials found
art music generally unharmful because of its ambiguous and abstract nature
(and therefore could tolerate excesses much easier than in more obviously mi
metic arts such as film or literature), any attempt to establish continuity with the
pre-war avant-garde, or even 'worse', to explore the European avant-garde of
the time, was strongly discouraged. The general opinion among senior music
professionals was that composers should seek novelty, but without discarding
the traditional artistic means; also, that the gradual and continuous introduction
of new techniques9 was more desirable than an abrupt break with the past.10
The terms introduced by G Peteri: 'A state socialist regime is characterized by isolation
ism when its dominant discourses, policies, and institutions are geared to minimize interaction
with the outside world, especially with their systemic Other. [...] the period of Zhdanovschina
until the early 1 950s is certainly characterized by offensive isolationism, discourses of Soviet
systemic and Russian national superiority asserted themselves [...]. Conversely, a state socialist
regime is rightly described as integrationist when its dominant discourses, policies and institu
tions are geared to engaging in interaction with the outside world with a view to systemic expan
sion or/and to learning and catching up. Offensive integrationism is probably the right charac
terisation of Soviet expansion into East Central Europe from 1947 to 1952, and it went hand in
hand with an offensive isolationism manifest to their relation to the US and towards 'Marshal-
lized' Western Europe. [...] Finally, defensive integrationism was the dominant pattern, for exam
ple, in Hungary's (but also Poland's and the USSR's) cultural and academic relations with the
West during most of the 1960s.' [emphasis mine] G Peteri, 'Transnational and Transsystemic
Tendencies in the Cultural Life of State-Socialist Russia and East-Central Europe, Slavonica Vol.
10 No. 2(2004), 119-121.
9 The term 'new' here has relative meaning, since in the USSR even neo-classicism could
be new, because that style had been labeled 'formalist' and bitterly suppressed beforehand. As
Yuri Kholopov noted, 'The word "neoclassicism" is paramount nowadays to "conservatism".
Back in the 1950s it was an ideological scarecrow, a sort of "formalism". For at that time such
neo-classical Western composers as Hindemith and Stravinsky were forbidden and considered to
be dangerous.' Y. Kholopov, 'Andrei Volkonsky - the initiator: a profile of his life and work' in V.
Tsenova (ed.), Underground Music from the Former USSR (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic
Publishers, 1997), 4.
10 For example, David Fanning notes that Shostakovich tried to face both ways, even
in his public statements, welcoming and encouraging the new freedoms in general terms, but
warning against any rush to adopt new styles. [...] Shostakovich himself could no longer be
considered to be at the cutting edge of musical progressivism, even in his stylistically retarded
homeland. Rather, he was in the middle of the road, the one side of which had unexpectedly
shifted.' D. Fanning, Shostakovich's Eighth Quartet (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 30 [emphasis
198 Ivana Medic
Gradually, socialist realism evolved into moderated modernism - modernist

enough to promote the country's relative openness towards world, but not radi
cal enough to criticise and disturb the established order. As for the young
generation of 'unofficial' composers, as P. Schmelz notes, it became a matter
of catching up - trying to absorb and master "new" techniques that already had
established pedigrees in Europe and America. This generation was plagued by
the doubts of newcomers, an inferiority complex that affected both the composi
tion and the reception of its music'." This attitude is very characteristic of
defensive integrationism.12
The existing literature rarely offers descriptions of the stylistic features of
moderated modernism, not just in Russia. Arnold Whittall identifies three typi
cal features of the works belonging to the 'moderate mainstream': 1) the dis
tinction between consonance and dissonance (even though this is not an abso
lute), 2) the identifiable presence of motivic or thematic statement and devel
opment, and 3) the consistent use of rhythmic, metric regularity.13 However
relevant, this description is too simplified: not only did moderated modernism
comprise several, relatively independent, sub-styles, but it also evolved in the
course of two decades (especially since, after the demise of Khrushchev in 1964
and the beginning of Brezhnev's detente, the conditions for music creation be
came more liberal). Since these various types of moderated modernism in Rus
sia overlapped, the categorisation is only provisional:
• neo-classicism;
• neo-romanticism;
• neo-expressionism;
• 'polystylistics';
• official serialism, 'socialist realist serialism';
• neo-folkloristic wave;
• neo-primitivism;
• neo-religious/mystical wave.
Due to the limited scope of this paper, I will offer only a brief account on
some of these tendencies.
The first style to be rehabilitated after the Thaw was neoclassicism. Al
though the anti-romanticism, detachment, irony and general anti-expressiveness
of neoclassicism were 'ideologically' opposed to the bombastic rhetorics of so-
mine]. See also: B. Schwarz , Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia. Enlarged Edition 1917-
1981 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), 340.
" P. J. Schmelz, 'Andrey Volkonsky and the Beginnings'.
l: About the Western reception of East-European moderated modernism, and various
streams of criticism directed towards it, see: I. Medic, 'The Ideology of Moderated Modernism'.
Whittall also claims that the works belonging to 'moderate mainstream' should refer
not only to tonality but also to the established genres of tonal composition. A. Whittall: 'Individu
alism and Accessibility: The Moderate Mainstream, 1945-1975' in N. Cook and A. Pople (eds.),
The Cambridge History of Twentieth Century Music (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 375.
cialist realism, in comparison to other, more radical (dissonant, atonal) 'formal

ist' trends, neoclassicism was perceived as relatively accessible. That is why
both Prokofiev and Shostakovich in the years preceding the Thaw, often ven
tured into neoclassicism, despite the ban. As soon as Stravinsky, Prokofiev,
Bartok and Hindemith were 'rehabilitated' in the USSR, they emerged as con
venient models for 'modernising' the realist idiom, and yet remaining accessible
and upbeat. In general, this line of moderated modernism, whose most notable
representative is Rodion Shchedrin (b. 1932) can be discerned in others (espe
cially the, formally quite similar, polystylistic) by its generally cheerful and op
timistic character (although not as bombastic as socialist realism), unpreten
tious, 'unserious' and somewhat anarchic approach to music making, eclectic
assimilation of heterogeneous music(s) and the generally listener-friendly char
acter of the music.
Within the neo-romantic stream, two relatively separate influences may
be distinguished: one of them originating from the German-Austrian late ro
mantic symphonic tradition, most notably from Mahler, the other from the Rus
sian symphonic music of the Belyaev circle. As early as the 1930s, Mahler be
came one of the models for Soviet symphonism. As the dogma of socialist real
ism spread all over the music community, Shostakovich discovered in Mahler a
prototype for a new symphonic model, which enabled him to keep things tonal,
accessible, rhetorical, and yet remain credible.14 Small wonder, then, that in
1953 Shostakovich reverted to a Mahlerian model and produced his first sym
phony in eight years. The resulting piece, Tenth Symphony, is the first (the
only) considerable symphonic work written in the early Thaw years. Since the
process of modernisation had only just begun at that moment, the Tenth is quite
'moderate'. Francis Maes believes the work to offer 'the re-affirmation of offi
cial aesthetics', a 'return to the model of heroic classicism'.15 However, al
though the eclectic musical language of the symphony is by no means daring,
the complexity of symphonic process, the dense web of allusions and refer
ences, and the avoidance of straightforward affirmation, made the work soundly
modern/ist enough to provoke fierce debate and challenge the cultural criteria.
The neo-expressionist stream developed as the composers who adhered to
neo-romanticism began to 'sharpen' the emotional tone of their works towards
expressionist tensions. Later on some of them introduced elements of twelve-
14 The following aspects of Mahler's oeuvre served as models for Soviet/Russian

symphonism: 1) great philosophical-ethical Pathos, 2) grounding the symphony on song, 3)
linking expression at all costs to a distinctive emotional character in the music, 4) an exceptional
command of the apparatus of the orchestra and the human voice. See L. Botstein: 'Listening to
Shostakovich' in L. E. Fay (ed.), Shostakovich and His World (Princeton/Oxford: Princeton Uni
versity Press, 2004), 372.
15 Francis Maes, A History ofRussian Music (From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar), transl. by
A. J. Pomerans and E. Pomerans (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press,
2002), 357-358.
200 Ivana Medic
note and serial techniques, but never according to the rules of serial composi
tion. Shostakovich's turn to note-rows in the mid-1960s was a somewhat logical
extension of his already chromatic language, and in these works he delineated
the semantic/programmatic field of twelve-note themes, mostly used to sym
bolise the fearful, obscure, shadowy aspects of human existence.16
As one of the heirs of the 'humanist' symphonic tradition (and Shostako
vich's pupil), Boris Tishchenko (b. 1939) tried to communicate an ethical message,
usually by confronting contrasting types of musical utterance having different
'ethical indices'. Valentina Kholopova branded his expressive urge 'the universal
outcry', even claiming that 'this outburst is stronger and more desperate than the
one produced, for instance, by the (twentieth) century Viennese expressionists.'17
However, Tishchenko's prime influences were Prokofiev and Stravinsky, and
his relation to expressionism was to a great degree mediated by Shostakovich.
Although he went on to embrace a whole range of avant-garde procedures, and
even invented some of his own, he always applied them in a typically 'Russian'
manner, not as abstract 'meaningless' techniques, but as symbols, suitable for all
sorts of illustrative and expressive effects; and in doing so he never departed
from Shostakovichian symphonic tradition.
The years of 'defrosting' ideological pressures led to the emergence of
the so-called 'Second avant-garde'. Members of this generation18 felt the urge to
discover 'new' sound worlds, whether those of pre-war modernism, post-war
Western avant-garde or their country's own modernist past - in short, all kinds
of 'formalist' music that had been banned for decades. They tried out and
adopted various 'new' compositional methods, in a highly idiosyncratic man
ner." Both foreign and domestic critics attacked the 'young composers': the
Westerners finding this music too 'Russian', as they only noticed its 'historical
lateness' and 'stylistic impurity'. On the other hand, Soviet art officials mocked
16 Schmelz argues that Shostakovich employed twelve-note themes in his works from the
1960s as: 1) catalysts of harmonic instability and atonality, 2) condensed "signifiers" of harmonic
instability or atonality that needed to be quickly "resolved", 3) a means of creating an effect of
long-term shifting instability, only occasionally landing on semi-stable ground, 4) a clear,
condensed opposition to tonal writing, or 5) a wash of sound, akin to the noise experiments of the
Polish avant-garde. Compare: P. J. Schmelz, 'Shostakovich's "Twelve-Tone" Compositions and
the Politics and Practice of Soviet Serialism', in L. E. Fay (ed.), Shostakovich and His World,
308-309.
17 V. Kholopova: 'Boris Tishchenko: striking spontaneity against a rationalistic back
ground', in Tsenova (ed.), Underground Musicfrom the Former USSR, 5 1 .
18 Notable members of this generation were: Edison Denisov (1929-96), Alfred Schnittke
(1934-98), Sofia Gubaidulina (b. 1931), Arvo Part (b. 1935), Valentin Silvestrov (b. 1937) and
many others.
1 Schmelz notes that: 'They desperately wanted to emulate the West [...]. It was only
when they gained fuller access to twelve-tone scores from the West in the 1960s and 1970s that
they realized they had been doing it "incorrectly."' Schmelz, 'Andrey Volkonsky and the begin
nings'.
the 'young composers' for unsuccessfully imitating what the Western avant-
garde had already done.20 One might argue that this iocal avant-garde' 21 actu
ally belongs to moderated modernism, for both technical and ideological rea
sons. Firstly, its artistic means were only novel (and 'shocking') in the local
environment. It emerged through the process of gradual assimilation of new
technical means, and not through radical and organised artistic revolution. Be
sides, it never really questioned the entire ideology of Soviet moderated mod
ernism, which could be described as the defensive-integrationist determination
to open towards Europe and 'modernise' and actualise Soviet culture, but not at
the cost of destroying the existing institutions of musical and cultural life, and
without calling for the radical denial of tradition. But although Soviet officials
and foreign audiences had no illusions about the novelty of the young Soviets'
compositions, * what made them sound 'avant-garde' to domestic ears were not
only the (relatively) new techniques they introduced, but even more, the com
posers' anti-conformist attitude, 'unofficial' status, rebellion against the estab
lishment, and the courage to embrace the banned techniques.23 Another 'new'
feature was the fact that they (at least in the beginning) departed from realist
gestures and turned to abstract, 'non-expressive', 'formalist' compositional
models. So, if we apply only musical criteria, the 'Second avant-garde' was yet
another type of defensive integrationism; but in the Soviet context it indeed
Reflections of this attitude can be seen even in relatively recent publications. For exam
ple, Mikhail Tarakanov asserts that: "... the very existence of the avant-garde in Russian music at
the turn of the 1960s could be questioned... [...] All these [Western, avant-garde] trends found
their expression in the music of Soviet 'avant-gardists' as mere reverberations, being used in
more than moderate, sometimes even in homeopathic doses. As for the main attraction for the
young composers, their ears and minds were primarily preoccupied with the classical, Schoen-
berg 's dodecaphony, which by that time had been a long stage past and gone for Western musi
cians." [emphasis mine] Mikhail Tarakanov, 'A drama of non-recognition: a profile of Nikolai
Karetnikov's life and work' in V. Tsenova (ed.), Underground Musicfrom the Former USSR, 102.
21 M. Veselinovid-Hofman introduced the notion of 'local [or pseudo] avant-garde' to de
scribe local versions/receptions of European post-war avant-garde(s) in the countries 'outside'
European artistic 'centre' in: M. Veselinovid, Stvaralacka prisutnost evropske avangarde u nas
[The Creative Presence of European Avant-Garde in Serbian Music] (Beograd: Univerzitet umet-
nosti, 1983), 33-34.
*2 Again, Tarakanov's writings offer a good example: 'It did not matter that this music
was often ofsecondary nature, nor that it merely repeated the composition procedures discovered
by such masters ofthe foreign cultural centers as Boulez, Nono, Stockhausen, Ligeti, Lutoslawski
and other major and minor gods of the avant-garde. The prime value of this music for the West
was due to the very fact that it had been written over there, in snow-white Russia and therefore it
was entitled to indulgence on the part of strict arbiters making allowances for the inevitable
provinciality of the neophytes...' [emphasis mine]. M. Tarakanov, 'Vyacheslav Artyomov: in
search of artistic truth' in V. Tsenova (ed.), Underground Musicfrom the Former USSR, 145-146.
23 Peter J. Schmelz investigated the unofficial status of these composers in: 'Shostako
vich's "Twelve-Tone" Compositions', 308-353. He observed that 'The unofficial composers were
not only younger, but politically and musically set apart from other Soviet composers. "Unof
ficial" is not only a generational distinction, but a political, social, and stylistic one.' Ibid, 323.
202 Ivana Medic
produced an avant-garde impact and gradually changed the profile of the coun
try's musical scene.
The breakthrough of the 'Second avant-garde' in the early 1960s was a
major shock, not only for the representatives of the official socialist realist line,
but also for prominent moderated modernists of the older generation, because
they suddenly found themselves old-fashioned and irrelevant to youngsters. A
key example here is Shostakovich himself, and his very personal adoption of
note rows was an attempt to re-bond with the young and become relevant again.
The infatuation with dodecaphony and serialism of young Soviet com
posers did not last long, as they soon grew dissatisfied with the abstract ap
proach to composition. As early as the mid-1960s they were trying out the most
divergent compositional devices, and even more so, exploring their potential to
convey meaning and transmit political, philosophical and ethical messages more
directly and expressively. Hence the composers turned to (what else) -
Shostakovichian allusions, quotations, hidden messages craving for hermeneuti-
cal interpretation - only this time around using a variety of contemporary com
positional techniques, and often superposing them in a deliberately crude man
ner. Consequently their styles evolved in the direction of re-assessing the entire
traditions of European artistic, liturgical, popular and folk music(s). In 1971
Alfred Schnittke 'baptised' the new, eclectic trend as 'polystylistics'.24 As Rich
ard Taruskin notes, 'Like so many composers in the 1970s [...] Schnittke aban
doned serial technique out of a conviction that no single or "pure" manner was
adequate to reflect contemporary reality, and that stylistic eclecticism [...] had
become mandatory.'25 The Soviet polystylistics went on to become a major
trend and a good export product - as its emergence coincided with the shift of
cultural paradigms in the Western societies and the emergence of postmodern
ism. It is also worth noting that, ever since the mid-1960s and throughout
1970s, the most prominent 'official modernists' and 'unofficial avant-gardists'
(such as Shchedrin and Schnittke respectivelly) were writing rather similar mu
sic: however, in his public appearances Shchedrin propagated the ideology of
moderateness (and was quickly promoted into the highest ranks of the Compo
sers' Union), while Schnittke chose to point to hypocrisies in artistic evaluation,
confront the officials and let his works get premiered in the West - which made
him persona non grata with the officials. The difference between the official
and unofficial composers was predominantly a matter of the ideological position
of the authors, their rhetorics and autopoetics, and the role they chose to play
within the country's musical community. Still, it was precisely the more ad
venturous among the 'official' composers, such as Shchedrin himself, who ac-
:4 Al. Schnittke, 'Polystylistic Tendencies in Contemporary Music' in A. Ivashkin (ed.), A

Schnittke Reader, transl. by John Goodliffe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 87-90.
25 R. Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music. Vol. V 'The Late Twentieth Century'
(Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. 2005), 465.
tually contributed to the final 'rehabilitation' of avant-garde devices in the eyes

of suspicious Soviet cultural officials. In his popular oratorios Poetorio (1968)
and Lenin in Folk's Heart (1969), Shchedrin proved that it was possible to
combine the advanced Western techniques with Russian folklore and ideologi
cally 'correct' texts. Besides, Hakobian notes that the supposedly 'non-con
formist' Schnittke was not among the victims of the 1960s anti-avant-garde
campaign, and that a good deal of the Soviet intelligentsia regarded him as an
irreproachable representative of their class, 'who, in the era of overall ethical,
intellectual and spiritual decadence kept on speaking to the public about eternal
matters in a rich, meaningful, and yet fully intelligible language.'26 This is an
almost exact moderated modernist's position, and in that respect Hakobian
rightly compares the significance of Schnittke for his contemporaries to that of
Shostakovich a couple of decades earlier.
As for the problem of the final evaluation of moderated modernism, it
cannot be addressed here, as that would require examining the emergence of
postmodernism in the West, and the consequences of the changing of political,
cultural and ideological contexts and paradigms on both sides of the Cold War
divide. These changes brought forth the critiques of the avant-garde in the West
and, consequentially, altered the profile of both art music and its criticism and
historiography. In any case, calling someone a moderated modernist is not such
an insult anymore; one might say today that Russian moderated modernism was
neither good nor bad, or it was both, depending on the ideologies brought to
bear on it which, in turn, determine one's criteria for evaluation.
Heana Meduh
YMEPEHH MOAEPHH3AM y pyCKOJ My3HIIH

nOCJIE 1953. rO/JHHE
Pe3hMe
HaKOH Kpahe pacnpaBe o nojMy yMepeHor MOêpHH3Ma, y paay ce Kjia-

CH(bHKyjy pa3jiHHHTH ranOBH pycKor yMepeHor MonepmoMa nocjie 1953. ro-
aHHe h noTOM yKpaTKO aHajiH3Hpajy HeKH on h>hx (HeoiuiacHUH3aM, HeopoMaH-
TH3aM, HeoeKcnpecHOHH3aM h "apyra aBaHrapaa"). CTajfcHHOBa CMpT 1953. ro-
aHHe O3HaHHjia je noHeTaic pa3ô6jba y KojeM cy ycnOBH 3a yMeTHHHKO CTBapa-
jiauiTBO y PycHjn (h HHTaBOM COBjeTcKOM CaBe3y) nocTajiH hciuto jiH6epajiHH-
jn; Te je - HaKoH totobo aBe aeueHHje norayHe H3ojiau,Hje on Moacphhcthmkhx
26 L. Hakobian, 282.
204 Ivana Medic
noKpeTa uiHpoM EBpone - HHHunpaH npouec noHOBHor npn6jiH»aBaH>a Sana-

fly. Maaa aeKpeT H3 1958. roaHHe (KojHM cy npH3HaTe rpeniKe O3jiorjiauieHe
^CaaHOBjbeBe pe3OjiyUHje H3 1948. rcvmHe) HHje o3HaHHO h HanyurraH>e aoK-
TpHHe coUHjajiHCTHHKor peanH3Ma, je^HOM 3anoHeT npouec MoêpHH3aUHje bh-
uie HHje 6hjio Moryhe 3aycTaBHTH. Beh noHencoM me3fleceTHX roaHHa npnnpe-
MjbeHo je tjio 3a yBol)eH>e HajcaBpeMeHHjnx KOMno3HUHOHHX TexHHKa. Met)y-
thM, BehHHa pycKHx KOMno3HTopa CMaTpana je aa noce3aH>e 3a "HOBHHaMa" He
Tpe6a aa O3HaHH h HanyuiTaH>e Tpa^HUHOHanHHX dpopMH h H3paacajHHX cpen-
cTaBa, Te m je nocTeneHO h KOHTHHynpaHO yBol)eH>e HObhx TexHHKa noacejb-
HHje Oa pa^HKajiHor pacKHaa ca nponuiomhy. IlocTeneHO, coUHjajiHCTHHKH pe-
ajiH3aM je eBOjiynpao y yMepeHH MOaepHH3aM - aOBOjbHo "MoaepaH" m adpnp-
MHuie pejiaTHBHy OTBopeHOCT HOBor pe^KHMa, anH HeaOBOjbHO paaHicajiaH na
hcthhckh y3^pMa eTa6jiHpaHH KyjiTypHO-yMeTHHHKH (h nojiHTHHKH) nopeaaK.
3anaaHoeBponcKH KpHTHHapH yrjiaBHOM cy yoHaBajw HeraraBHe CTpaHe y\ie-
peHor MOaepHH3Ma, H>erOBO "HCTopHjcKO KaimieH>e" h "cTHjicKy HeHHCToTy";
Me^yrHM, cameaaH y KOHTeiccTy cOBjeTcKe My3HKe Tor ao6a, OBaj "cthji" je He-
cyMH>HBO HMao h no3HTHBHHX CTpaHa h aonpHHeo je nocTeneHoj h3Mchh npo-
(J)Hjia uejioicynHe pycKe My3HHKe cneHe.
PROBLEMS OF TERMINOLOGY AND VERBAL
MEDIATION IN NEW MUSIC
MARIA KOSTAKEVA
At the centre of 'the Modern' there is Music

which defines itself.
Reinhold Brinkmann
FIRST of all we should make clear what terms mean and whether a termi
nological apparatus is required. Is a word capable of embodying the nature of
the music? I think the translation of a musical work into a verbal utterance can
be plausible only if it manages to order, and make visible the internal relations
of musical phenomena. In other words, the term should function as a 'key',
which may make it possible to find out, 'to decode' the meaning of the work.
Another question arises: should this so-called 'key' be limited to the technical
elements of the music which are exact and bear no interpretation, or should the
terminological apparatus also elucidate the stylistic, social and historical rela
tions of the work? Where is the boundary between a very accurate description
of the work and its creative verbal interpretation?
I will take for example the famous 'Tristan-chord', the essence of this
opera, where the general conception, stylistic and mental constellations of Wag
ner's music are reflected. The structure of this chord is very common, but there
exists until this day no obvious and unambiguous interpretation of this innova
tory appearance in the music of the nineteenth century. Therefore further ques
tions crop up. Is the nature of a term relevant for all different epochs or does it
change according to changes in reception as time goes by?
A given term should make possible the description of an artistic feature -
in German we have different synonyms expressing the word 'term' like Begriffl
be-greifen (making able to grasp), Bezeichnung I be-zeichnen (giving a picture
of) or Benennung I be-nennen (giving a name to). The literal translation from
Latin of the word term as being a sort of 'boundary', a 'border-stone'). Can the
'Tristan-chord' be called a term? Yes, because it not only points to a borderline,
but to a crossing of the border and makes the artistic feature accessible. Also the
term 'cluster' points out a borderline between the classical-romantic and the
206 Maria Kostakeva
modern epoch. Although the nature of a cluster is completely different in the

music of Ives, Webern, Bartok, Stravinsky or Ligeti, the meaning of this term as
a vertical texture, without any sort of chord structure in it, remains valid.
Although the music of earlier epochs is quite varied, a consistent syntax
and regular grammar were the basis of all music which can also be explained by
reliable terms. Thus for example we can speak of Gregorian monody in the
Middle Ages, Franco-Flemish polyphony in the Renaissance, homophony in the
Baroque period, tonality in the classical-romantic period or dodecaphony in the
first half of the twentieth century. But with Debussy, Bartok, Stravinsky or
Varese a splintering into different 'grammars' already begins. This phenomenon
would increase greatly in the second half of the twentieth century, as the non-
European cultures (not without the influence of John Cage and Morton Feldman)
became ever more apparent in Europe.
In a time where most composers look for their own syntax-free of asso-
ciations-for each individual piece, the verbal mediation of new music becomes
problematic. German composer Mathias Spahlinger ascertains that 'die neue
musik ist die erste und einzige musik, die das syntaktische oder sprachahnliche
system ihrer eigenen tradition suspendiert oder aufgehoben hat'.1 (The new mu
sic is the first and the only music, which has suspended or waived the syntactic
or linguistics system from its own tradition.)
It is clear that the substance of the musical work is not identical to its
grammar and syntactic order: The more opulent and intense the artistic sub
stance of a work, the more difficult it is to adapt the established fixed termino
logical apparatus to it. Just as the classical sonata form gets quite a different
treatment in the music of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert or Schumann,
the post-serial organisation by Boulez, Stockhausen, Nono or Lachenmann also
differs profoundly from one another. Obviously, certain idioms appear in each
epoch, and in the work of each important composer who produces his own and
often unique syntax order. The essential task of the terminological equipment is
to make these idioms accessible.
The enormous variety of aesthetic directions and individual composer
styles nowadays results in a large amount of problems. The pure terminology,
which is based on the traditional means of classical analysis, is not able any
longer to decipher the meaning of a new feature. Furthermore, it becomes ever
more difficult to define new music, as the music experts, due to their narrower
specialisations, have splintered into completely different areas.
Here, the authors themselves come to our aid: In their efforts to explain
their music, the composers introduce new terms, or turn to metaphors. Mention
is often made, for example of 'organic' and 'non-organic' music, the 'music
1 M. Spahlinger, 'dies ist die zeit der konzeptiven ideologen nicht mehr'. MusikTexte, 113
(2007). 35.
PROBLEMS OF TERMINOLOGY.. 207
labyrinth', 'space' music, music 'aura', 'sound form' etc. Can these self reflec
tions be used as categories of definition in scientific-musical analysis? Or
should the researcher create his/her own apparatus, which can also reveal other
and different artistic perspectives ?
In his article 'The author as his own exegete' Reinhold Brinkmann exa
mines this phenomenon using the example of a self-reflection of Helmut La-
chenmann, finding out the same tendencies in the work of such modern com
posers as Stockhausen and Wolfgang Rihm. (I would also add here Gyorgy
Ligeti and Alfred Schnittke). Brinkmann warns that the authors can select them
selves in this way their 'self-appointed place' in the history of music, and thus
influence or even manipulate the 'hearing perspectives' of reception.
In spite of this, one should probably not ignore the suggestions of the
composers. The tendency of such self-reflections, beginning in the post-war
period, continued to spread even more in the post-modern epoch. Even if the
composers turn to using bizarre word formations, peculiar phraseology and ex
pressions, and also metaphors, one should not forget that many new ideas,
which were expressed first with the help of metaphors, were established later as
terms in the context of a new artistic system.
On the other hand, metaphors are sometimes the only means to describe
the nature of a work. Such titles which appeared at the end of the late 1950s and
early 60s, like Ionisation by Varese, Chronochromie by Messiaen, Metastaseis
by Xenakis, Marteau sans maitre and Poesie pour pouvoir by Boulez, Appari
tions, Atmospheres, Lontano, Aventures, Ramifications by Ligeti, Kontakte and
Gruppen by Stockhausen, Canto sospeso and La fabrica illuminata by Nono
need no comment. Metaphor is used by all these authors in order to describe
their individual compositional idea, but primarily to suggest the new kind of
sound complexity as a holistic form.
Pierre Boulez also uses a metaphor, when he defines the new music as an
'an organized labyrinth'2. Gyorgy Ligeti speaks in similar form about 'weav
ing', 'lattices', 'network' and 'labyrinth music' when speaking of his work and
using this as a synonym of the constructional order. The metaphor achieves a
further actuality in the post-modern period. Umberto Eco says: 'Metaphor
forces us to think about the universe of intertextuality making at the same time
the context ambiguous and interpretable in multiple ways (...) One can construct
metaphors out of metaphors, which can be interpreted only in the light of suffi
cient intertextual knowledge'.3
All this makes a basic tendency accessible nowadays: By means of meta
phors, processes and events belonging to completely different fields (nature,
society, biology, astronomy etc.) are connected and explained by one another.
- Boulez defines also fixed and variable, straight and curved, regular and irregular spaces.
See P. Boulez, Werkstatt-Texte, Vol. 2 (München: Propyläen Verlag, 1985), 76.
3 U. Eco, Die Grenzen der Interpretation (München: Hanser Verlag, 1992). 211.
208 Maria Kostakeva
The Bulgarian philosopher and semiotician Ivan Mladenov ascertains that a

general 'Metaphorising' of the world is taking place4 explaining this phenome
non with the further development of technology and the new achievements in
different fields of the natural sciences.
An important feature in the new music is the surging of the electronic era
at the end of the 1950s. In its new, and self-structured tone range, the sound-
processes achieve a dimension in space. The other musical parameters—such as
melody, harmony and rhythm—are also merged within. As early as 1936 Ed-
gard Varese spoke of the 'new magic of the sound' as a result of the release
from the temperate system and the use of traditional instruments. His concep
tion about similitude of subject and energy in a Hyper Space Time seems very
modern. Also Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988) represents sound as a cosmic force
and connects sound and energy. Sound after his theory is spherical and com
pounded from many sound rings, which move concentrically. (Here one is also
reminded of B. A. Zimmermann's theory about the spherical shape of time
(Kugelgestalt der Zeit).
The influence of electronics in acoustic music can be noticed in such a
famous work as Atmospheres (1961) by G. Ligeti: The metamorphosis of sound
and energy are shaping the work. The metaphorical title embodies, however, an
original composition procedure, in which the repercussion of electronic sound
process reflects. Thus this work introduces a new epoch in sound shaping as an
outcome of release from serial thinking. Sound also receives priority in French
spectral music in the 1970s. As a consequence of permanent sound transforma
tions, paraelectronic effects arise in a complex form. The sound becomes form
and the form becomes sound. The composer Tristan Murail, a very important
representative of this musical direction, speaks about the most important revo
lution in 'the Sound Universe' as the result of serious interferences into the na
ture of the sound itself.5
Thus, two diametrically opposed models in the music of the post-war pe
riod were created: The first one is centrifugal, because super-ordinated sound
tends always to transform itself into space (the holistic sound form in the elec
tronic, spectral or some acoustic music); the second one is centripetal, because
its strict serial organization, based on a radical reduction of the compositional
elements, tends all the time towards its centre. The first one is characterized by
dizzy alterations of the sound perspective; the second one appears as an image
of an abstract constructional order: a reflection of itself, a self-awareness.
4 I. Mladenov, 'The Method of Conceptualizing Signs from Everyday Life". Trans. Inter-
net-Zeitschrift fur Kulturwissenschaft, 15 (2004). See also I. Mladenov, Conceptualizing Meta
phors: On Charles Peirce 's Marginalia (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2006).
5 T. Murail, 'La revolution de sons complexes', in E. Thomas (ed.), Darmstadter Beitrdge
fiir neue Musik (Mainz: B. Schott's Sonne. 1980), 77.
PROBLEMS OF TERMINOLOGY.. 209
This last tendency increased in the 1950s and 60s as the consequence of
the rejection of the historical past and the abrupt breaking away from tradition
in avant-garde art. New music like other art forms has articulated itself in the
criticism of existing social conditions. Such terms as established by Adorno,
Nono and Lachenmann like 'refusal' and 'critical composing' suggest dispens
ing with the bourgeois art and music of earlier periods. Thus, the serial and
post-serial organization and the fragmentation of the formal processes became
the basis of a whole aesthetic direction within the range of the new music.
These two very common composition models are not only continued in the
music of the post modern period but they are also often combined. The common
ground being the holistic sound form. That the new 'sounding' and the post-serial
thinking are closely connected, is shown in metaphor-terms like 'sound form',
'sound-structure' or 'structure-sound'7 as used by Lachenmann. It seems that these
definitions are once more a demonstration of the aforesaid modern concept based
on the proximity of the musical process to the organic world.
It is evident that the self-reflections of the composers have to be observed
seriously, even with critical distance towards their self-developed terminology.
Of course several definitions (like 'refusal', 'rejection' 'and 'critical compo
sing' which refer to the period of the 1960s) are historically conditioned. So be
fore we begin to coin new terms or to give a new meaning to existing terms, we
have to review the actual social and aesthetic conditions of the period in ques
tion. This would give new impulses for revitalising and refreshing the metho
dological apparatus within the scope of the new music and thus create plausible
possibilities for its further mediation.
6 Curiously the basic arrow for the avant-garde composer was not the romantic-
expressionistic music of Schoenberg und Berg, but the ideology-free, serial world of Webern.
7 Lachenmann explains this with 'ein Superklang, den wir erst im allmahlichen, zeitlich
gesteuerten Abtasten seiner in die Zeit projizierten Komponenten, also gleichsam horizontal
erschließen.' See H. Lachenmann, Musik als existentielle Erfahrung (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf &
Hartel, 1996), 77.
210 Maria Kostakeva
Mapuja KocmaKeea
nPOBJIEMH TEPMHHOJlOrHJE H BEPEAJ1HA

ME/JHJAUHJA HOBE MY3HKE
Pe3hMe
y oboM paay ce pa3MaTpajy hckh cneUH(J)HHHH npo6jieMH TepMHHOjioru-

je HOBe My3HKe.
y peHHHKy My3HHKHX aBaHrap^HCTa nocjie .ZJpyror CBeTCKor paTa 6ho je
apTHKyjiHcaH npoTecT npoTHB cTapnx couHjajiHHX h cctctckhx HOpMh. yo6H-
HajeHH H3pa3H, Kao „kphthhko KOMnoHOBaH>e" hjih „oa6Hjait>e" H3 JlaxeHMa-
HOBe uiKojie, HacTaBjbajy chctcM MHuijbeH>a Teoaopa AaopHa h JlyHrjHja Ho-
Hoa. HnaK, aaHac je HeonxoflHO aa ce My3HHKoj TepMHHOjiorHjH aa Hobo 3HaHe-
H>e h m ce OHa peaKTHBHpa Kao 3HaHajHO cpcacTBO o6jaiuH>aBaH>a h nocpeao-
BaH>a y cicna^y ca HObhM BpeMeHOM. MerjyraM, y thM noKyuiajHMa KpHjy ce
oaperjeHH npo6jieMH.
FIpBH je ayrope(JwieKCHja Kao aecKpHnraBHa KaTeropHja y HOBoj My3HU,H:
OHa oaCjiHKaBa KOMno3HTopOB UHjb aa o6jacHH CBojy My3HKy cnyiuaoUHMa h
aa je Ha Taj HaHHH yHHHH npHcTynaHHHjoM. BehHHa caBpeMeHHX ayTopa noKy-
maBa jxa TaKBOM Bep6anHOM caMope(JwieKCHjoM npoHarje h HCTOBpeMeHO HCTaK-
He CBoje MecTO y HCTopHjH My3HKe. OBaKBa caMope(J)jieKCHja npeacTaBjba no-
TeHUHjanHy onacHOCT jep cy6jeKTHBHO o6ojeH npHCTyn kojh je y H>oj caapacaH
MO>Ke npecyaHO #a yTHHe Ha ny6jiHKy h Ha H>eHy peuenUHjy My3HKe. /IpyrH
npo6neM My3HHKe TepMHHOjiorHje y caBpeMeHoj enocH npoH3jia3H H3 BejiHKe
yMHO)KeHOCTH ecTeTcKHX npaBaua y HOBoj My3HUH Koja H3HCKyje cneuH(J)HHaH
HayHHH anapaT. y noper)eH>y ca CTapHjHM enoxaMa y KojHMa je My3HHKa rpa-
MaTHKa 6Hjia jeaHHCTBeHa, aaHac nocTojn cneUH(J)HHHa BpcTa opraHH3aUHje
Koa CBaKor KOMno3HTopa h CBaKor aejia, iuto Tpe6a onHcaTH oarOBapajyhHM
My3HHKHM TepMHHHMa. CpeacTBHMa miacHHHe aHajiH3e, Ha npHMep, HHje MO-
ryhe ae(J)HHHca™ Hob 3ByK HacTao nojx yrauajeM ejieiopoHHKe h HOBe opraHH-
3aUHj'e My3HKe nocne /Ipyror CBeTCKor paTa. Pa3Boj KOMnjyTepcKe TexHOjiorHje
oacjiHKaBa ce h y aKycTHHKoj My3HUH, y Kojoj HacTajy e({)eKTH Gjihckh ejieK-
tpohckhM. Cbh obh xepMeHeyraHKH npo6jieMH y3eTH cy y o63Hp y MoM HCTpa-
aCHBaH>y.
REVISITING THE SERBIAN MUSICAL
AVANT-GARDE: ASPECTS OF THE CHANGE
OF RECEPTION AND OF KEEPING HISTORY
'UNDER CONTROL'
MIRJANA VESELINOVIC-HOFMAN
A NUMBER of compositions created in Serbian music in the course of the

1 960s and the 1 970s were perceived in Serbia at the time, as bearing the sense
of avant-garde novelties. However, these compositions did not have this sense
at the level of international music. In this respect, they were not seen as avant-
garde according to any of the features typical of the nature or effect of an avant-
garde event.1
On this occasion, we shall discuss three mutually dependent issues im
plied by this statement. They are: 1) the determinants of an avant-garde piece of
music; 2) the reasons for which our avant-garde failed to gain international
avant-garde 'legitimacy'; 3) some aspects of the change in the individual com
posers' reception of the avant-garde positions of Serbian music.
I have been dealing with the phenomenon of the musical avant-garde—
Serbian in particular—since the beginning of the 1980s,2 and I believe my gen
eral definition and consideration of the phenomenon I formulated at that time,3
still holds. This consideration proved to be vital during my later investigations
1 Let us immediately stress that the presence of compositions at the international level is
no decisive criterion of their artistic value and quality.
- M. Veselinovic-Hofman, Stvaralacka prisutnost evropske avangarde u nas [The Crea
tive Presence of European Avant-Garde in Serbian Music] (Beograd: Univerzitet umetnosti,
1983); the same author, 'Problems and Paradoxes of Yugoslav Avant-garde Music (Outlines for a
Reinterpretation)', in D. Djuric and M. Suvakovic (eds.), Impossible Histories - Historical Avant-
gardes, Neo-avant-gardes, and Post-avant-gardes in Yugoslavia, 1918-1991 (Cambridge, Massa
chusetts - London, England: The MIT Press, 2003), 404-41; the same author, 'Teze za reinter-
pretaciju jugoslovenske muzicke avangarde' [Outlines for a Reinterpretation of the Yugoslav Mu
sical Avant-Garde], Muzicki tolas, 30/31 (2002, published in 2004). 18-32.
3 Veselinovic-Hofinan, Stvaralacka prisutnost [The Creative Presence]
212 Mirjana Veselinovic-Hofman
of contemporary music and also ready to 'meet' an essentially different, post

modern poetical-aesthetical compositional tendency. In fact, my definition of
the avant-garde already implied postmodernism as a notion relational to it,4 which
made it possible to check this definition from the perspective of postmodernism.
That is exactly why my present discourse relies on this consideration.
1) So, this 'relational look' confirms the avant-garde as a unique psy
chological, social and artistic phenomenon realised—most typically—through
an organised, declared and aggressively anti-traditional movement / a project
which acts according to the specific rules of its own life cycle. It is based on the
process of the 'internal combustion' of the movement, during which it does
anything to achieve the aims proclaimed in its manifesto (manifestoes).5
This sheds light on more specific determinants of the avant-garde, among
which are the following: it is not a style; it carries out an uncompromising artistic
(self)critique of art that aims at dismantling the institution ofart; it is often based on
interdisciplinary logic and ideas; it is a radical, excessive episode of twentieth
century modernism; it is esoteric but at the same time decisive in denying and
removing boundaries between artistic fiction and real life.6 Being challenging and
experimental, the avant-garde typically lives in transgression and paradoxes.7
Exceptions to the avant-garde's own distinctive determinants may be
considered as one of these paradoxes. Thus, regarding the highly specific nature of
the sound medium which is the essential means of music, these exceptions are
particularly noticeable in it. We would even say that it concerns a specific musical,
that is, 'medium locality'8 within the artistic avant-garde. This is brought about by
the fact that according to its nature, musical avant-garde is sometimes much more
tolerant towards tradition than is the avant-garde in other arts.9 Hence, the
4 M. Veselinovic-Hofman, Fragmente zur musikalischen Postmoderne (Frankfurt am

Main, etc.: Peter Lang, 2003)
5 M. Veselinovic-Hofman, 'Teze za reinterpretaciju' [Outlines for a Reinterpretation], 20.
6 Ibid.; also: P. Burger, Theorie der Avantgarde (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag,
1974); H. de la Motte-Haber, 'Entwicklung und Bedeutung der Avantgarde nach 1945', in Musik-
kultur in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Kassel: Gustav Bosse Verlag, 1994), 63-70; W.
Welsch, Unsere postmoderne Moderne (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997); M. Suvakovic, Po-
jmovnik moderne i postmoderne likovne umetnosti i teorije posle 1950 [A Dictionary of Notions
of Modern and Post-modern Visual Art and Theory after 1950] (Beograd - Novi Sad: Srpska
akademija nauka i umetnosti - Prometej, 1999), 50-3; the same author, Pojmovnik suvremene
umjetnosti [A Dictionary of Contemporary Art] (Zagreb - Ghent: Horetzky - Vlees & Beton,
2005), 89-105
7 More about this in: Veselinovic-Hofman, 'Problems and Paradoxes'
8 The term locality should not be considered in the pejorative sense, but in the sense of its
original meaning that indicates a peculiarity of the manifestations of a phenomenon (here, the
avant-garde) in a certain sphere (here, music), environment, place, etc., during which this peculi
arity depends on the specific conditions and needs of these spheres.
9 I wrote more extensively about the peculiarities of the musical avant-garde in my book
Stvaralacka prisutnost [The Creative Presence], 132-52, which is why this topic will not be
elaborated in the present text.
REVISITING THE SERBIAN MUSICAL AVANT-GARDE.. 213
affirmation of an avant-garde novelty in the field of musical material and the

procedures to which it is subjected, is not always corroborated by typical forms
of the affirmation of an avant-garde novelty at the social level. And vice versa.
It is possible that these typical 'models' of avant-garde social excess are not
always substantiated by music.10
Diverse modifications of and exceptions to typical forms of the manifes
tation of the phenomenon of musical avant-garde are consequences of the afore
said. In almost all spheres in which avant-garde radicalism in general is usually
exhibited, the radicalism of the musical avant-garde is rather tempered. For ex
ample, in the sphere of the nature and features of a manifesto; the forms of
composers' gatherings around it; the ways and intensity of its fulfilment; the
speed and the range of the 'concentric circles' that emerge around the avant-
garde centres, as effects of strong centrifugal force which the avant-garde de
monstrates in the field of music.
Regardless of the emphasized particularities, an avant-garde piece of mu
sic needs to be recognized by its avant-garde novelty and avant-garde effects in
'its' environment. Quite logically, this is never disputable where it concerns the
very centre of an avant-garde 'explosion'. It is unquestionable even when the
'explosion' emerges in a place that is somewhere on the path of the 'echoes' of
that explosion. Because, as already stressed, the strong centrifugal force of the
avant-garde opens up the possibility of numerous creative reactions on its artis
tic centre. In other words, at geographically and / or chronologically different
cultural and musical distances from the centre, this force can cause the emer
gence of analogously 'explosive' centres in those regional circumstances. In this
way, the force can provide an 'absolute' avant-garde attribute for those 'con
centric circles' (which is precisely the case with some manifestations of the
avant-garde in Serbian music). All this means that one and the same avant-
garde, that is, reiterated avant-garde is just that: the avant-garde reiterated ac
cording to the principle of self-similarity and fragmentation.
A questionable situation arises when, for example, a composer who
originates from a periphery culture" factually may even be the inventor of an
avant-garde novelty (as is the case with Vladan Radovanovid and his proto-
minimalist Chorals of 1956),12 and when this novelty, as such, remains un
known. This simply means that such a novelty is devoid of the features of an
More about this in my studies 'Teze za reinterpretaciju' [Outlines], and 'Problems and
Paradoxes'.
" Although we consider the term 'periphery culture' inappropriate, especially from the
aspect of the current postmodern perspective, we use it because it has a defined meaning in musi-
cological communication.
M. Masnikosa, Muzicki minimalizam [Musical Minimalism] (Beograd: Clio, 1998);
Veselinovic-Hofman, Stvaralacka prisutnost [The Creative Presence], 379; 'Teze za reinterpre
taciju' [Outlines for a Reinterpretation], 22
avant-garde psycho-social-artistic unity, because it lacks 'registers' of its social

effects. And it is in the nature of an avant-garde novelty to act in an offensive
way, in the role of a provocateur and a participant of new artistic and social
communication in the field of music. Even within 'its' own, regional (musical)
culture, a phenomenon can become 'officially' avant-garde only if it does dem
onstrate—Including possible exceptions during this demonstration—necessary
and sufficient avant-garde attributes.
2) Phenomena that have the position of the avant-garde in Serbian music
reached that unity of the avant-garde phenomenon, although they were crystal
lized on the basis of changeable relations and 'hierarchies' among their musical,
psychological and social determinants and effects. But they never 'belonged' to
the phenomena that represented 'epicentres' of avant-garde destruction at an
international level as well. This is mainly so because they never produced any
unknown musical 'matrices' in the international musical context. And, as we
emphasized, an avant-garde novelty may be 'absolutely' avant-garde only when
it first appears. This means that during its later appearances, chronologically
and / or geographically usually distant from the centre, it can be considered as
avant-garde only in the musical culture where it emerges for the first time; and
in which it is established and acts in the context of its specific conditions, crite
ria and needs.
On the one hand, this 'concentric' transmission of the avant-garde, as its
noticeable trait, and which is not characteristic of Serbian music only, indicates
the developed critical and creative integrity of a musical milieu. On the other
hand, it is the crucial reason why achievements that acted as avant-garde within
a periphery culture—and here we refer to Serbian music—remained avant-garde
only within its own boundaries.
However, we should not overlook the numerous cultural and social is
sues, which led to this. For example, in our cultural environment, due to its
chronically badly planned and financially awkwardly directed cultural strategy,
the avant-garde results of Serbian music—as our music in general—were not
presented on the international 'stage' of music, as the results of some other pe
riphery cultures were.
Our avant-garde music—and again our music in general—was deprived
of the necessary prerequisites, such as the continual publication of study scores,
frequent performances, well equipped recordings, an efficient distributive and
advertising network, etc. As these depend directly on well-organized funding by
the relevant social and professional institutions, our avant-garde music could
never fully attain its appropriate position.
This is why one could raise the question of whether the avant-garde re
sults of our music might have a more appropriate reception from the interna
tional musical public if they had been supported by an appropriate system of
presentation and advertising at the moment of their appearance, as was the case
with the avant-garde in Polish music of the 1 960s, for example. This might not
have impacted so 'absolutely' on international music, had it not gained the nec
essary endorsement within the Polish cultural policy of the time. Let us now
pose the same question the other way round: if this had not happened as de
scribed and if the analogous avant-garde results of Serbian music—which, oth
erwise, were part of the first 'impact' during the transmission of the aleatory
writing of the Polish type—had had the same sort of necessary support in our
cultural policy, which direction would that aleatory avant-garde wave have
taken: towards our music or away from it?
Of course, the question is purely rhetorical. Its aim is not to play a game
on the edge of the absurd, but to emphasize the importance of certain social di
mensions of the avant-garde. In the same sense and for the same reason the
question of the prompt musicological identification and elucidation of the avant-
garde occurrences within a musical culture might also be raised. We know that
the theoretical word crucially endorsed the affirmation of the avant-garde phe
nomena within the occidental cultures. It treated them as 'absolute', primary in
every respect. Quite clearly, this was not possible without purely musical
grounds. And yet, might the Serbian musical avant-garde of the 1 960s have had
a different reception in the international musical context if it had already been
musicologically elaborated as such, at the time when it appeared?
However, considering that at one time our musical avant-garde did not
present to the international environment any compositional solutions unknown
to it and that, in parallel, it was deprived of the corresponding social dimension,
we lose any reasonable basis for developing the hierarchical inversion at which
we have just hinted.
3) It is, nonetheless, exactly this inversion which a few Serbian compo
sers today tend to strive for. Although they might be stimulated in this attempt
mainly for the same cultural and social reasons because of which we hinted at
this inversion here, it is primarily motivated by their reception of the above de
scribed thoughts on the avant-garde, displayed—as stressed—more than twenty
years ago.
In their current reception, which is the opposite of their own reaction
from that time, we can notice two interesting tendencies.
One originates from the conviction that the musical avant-garde is noth
ing but the great fallacy of contemporary music. According to that viewpoint,
the avant-garde is the margin where music was led by a number of composers
and musicologists. This involved composers whose work mainly followed the
tradition of the German 'three big B's, including the authors who were some
where on those Schoenbergian paths that 'promised' German music its primacy
during the century to come. An extension of the same belief is the opinion that
these composers were already 'by definition' devoid of 'true' musical invention.
Closely related to this, is the opinion that musicologists who elucidated on
avant-garde music and wrote about it, actually promoted the fallacy. With their
writings they provided it with an importance that should never have been as
cribed to it in any respect.
Hence, according to the same viewpoint, the importance of the musical
avant-garde should be minimized, and even ignored, because deliberately over
looking the facts might be quite a satisfactory system that efficiently leads to the
oblivion of these facts and, with this, to changing the authentic factual 'relief of
the relevant musical occurrences. And yet, all that should be done because, as
implied by the same viewpoint, the 'true' music is 'somewhere else', not in the
avant-garde. Consequently, the 'true ' history of music is 'something other' than
the factual order, in other words, than the order that some personal creative and
aesthetic standpoints do not approve of. It goes without saying that this 'true '
music and this 'true ' history of music, meaning, the 'true ' values of music lie
where 'our' own models are (if we agree at all that we ever had them) and 'our'
own affinities.
However, musicological explanations which, based on the autonomy,
professional standards and purposes of musicological science deliberately ex
amine every segment of musical heritage, including the avant-garde, represent
an irritating obstacle to such an attitude. Because, it concerns the explanations
that, starting from the 'close reading' of scores, reach diverse contextual inter
pretations which, as such, need not be axiologically explicit at the same time,
but, true, they necessarily entail indirect evidence for possible evaluations.
It is quite understandable then why this negative attitude of composers
towards the avant-garde phenomenon also generates a negative attitude towards
its musicological elaboration. This attitude is highlighted in various attempts to
belittle (if not eliminate) this musicological 'barrier'. One of them is embodied
in the mostly indirect personal 'theorizing' of a few Serbian composers, more
precisely through their diverse, mostly informal public displays. Generally
viewed, these displays would suggest, directly or indirectly, a positive evalua
tion of the notional and terminological neutralization, universalization and
changes in the history of music—especially contemporary and Serbian music—
which would ultimately promote as 'absolute' those 'true' alias desired alias
personal 'paths of interest' in music and the 'dramaturgy' of its history.
The other noticeable tendency in the composers' reception of the expli
cation of the avant-garde in our country, is the rejection of its regional charac
ter. This tendency is manifested in two parallel ways, and in both lies the pejo
rative consideration of the notion of the local (the regional) and in treating this
notion as offensive.
One of these ways is directly caused by this negative attitude towards the
avant-garde and it is occupied with conducting a specific tactic. It is intended to
shift the focus from the correspondence of one's own, chronologically proxi
mate composers to one's own more distant aesthetically 'concurring' compo
sers. More precisely, it aims at shifting the focus to some prior, 'basic affinities'
common to both one's own creative interests and the interests of one's own
chronologically proximate compositional models.
The other way of manifesting the same tendency is noticeable in delibe
rate actions whereby some authors try to fight for the primacy of their own
avant-garde over an analogous but factually prior 'central' avant-garde. This is
being undertaken even in spite of the elementary comparative chronology of the
corresponding avant-garde achievements, which seriously deny the grounds of
such actions. Still, these actions are performed, revealing a composer's intention
to provide himself with an entire mechanism by means of which he can keep
under his own control texts which are being written or are to be written about
him and his output. This also implies the possibility of his direct intervention in
the desired course of a text. These interventions may sometimes become almost
comically apparent in a number of rather similar formulations which appear in
texts by different authors.
Clearly, in the described forms of the recent change of reception of the
avant-garde in Serbian music, there are clear relapses into typically avant-garde
behavioural patterns. Maybe it is paradoxical, but these relapses have been con
siderably stimulated by the change of the entire social and cultural paradigm, from
the modern to the postmodern. Because, it is exactly this postmodern paradigm
which, due to its relational nature, implies, even stimulates, revisiting and
reconsidering one's own modernistic positions, particularly those of the avant-
garde. Therefore, the tendencies discussed here disclose a two-fold indication.
On the one hand, they bear elements of a typically avant-garde obsession
with its own plan, coupled with avant-garde organizational cliches aimed at re
alizing the plan. On the other hand, in the coexistent postmodern environment
today, those tendencies reach a legitimately free and, apparently, considerably
protected space for exposing their own manifold creativity but also various fictions.
However, both of the tendencies discussed here—the one that attempts to
'adapt' the (Serbian) history of music according to a personal composer's inter
est and taste, thereby trying to achieve a state of relativism among operative
categories of contemporary music, or the other tendency, which endeavours to
sharpen its avant-garde position, fighting for its primacy on the international
avant-garde scene—essentially neglect the genuine theoretical aspect of re
gional avant-garde phenomena. In other words, they totally neglect the neo-
avant-garde nature of these phenomena. But what mostly characterizes these
phenomena—including the use, development, critique, in a word a kind of in
stitutionalization of avant-garde procedures13—are exactly neo-avant-garde
traits. Thus, let us say that the neo-avant-garde might be a euphemism for the
regional avant-garde phenomenon.
1 3 Burger, Theorie
218 Mirjana Veselinovic-Hoftnan
Although the aspects of the change of reception of the Serbian musical

avant-garde we dealt with here were quite predictable and unsurprising, they
were also rather interesting for us as specific indications of the recurrent, ner
vous need of a very small number of our former avant-garde authors to rearrange
the order of already known musical 'territories', in favour of their own interests.
Mupjana BecejiuHoeuh-Xo<pMaH
nOHOBO y CPnCKOJ My3HHKOJ ABAHrAP/JH:

ACnEKTH IIPOMEHE PEUETIUHJE
H „KOHTPOJlA HCTOPHJE"
Pe3hMe
TokoM 60-hx h 70-hx roflHHa XX BeKa Hacrao je jcaaH 6poj KOMno3HuH-

ja Koje cy y cpncKoj My3Him Tor BpeMeHa HMajie CMHcao h>chhx aBaHrapaHnx
HOBHHa. HHcy to, MehyTHM, HCTOBpeMeHO 6Hjie h KOMno3HUHje Koje cy 6Hjie
aBaHrapflHe y paBHH yKynHe eBponcKe My3HKe: Kao TaKBe, y H>oj HHcy 6Hjie
npeno3HaTe hh no jeaHoj ojx aHMeH3Hja KojHMa ce, HHaHe, KapaicrepHiuy npH-
poaa h aejcTBO aBaHrapflHHX nojaBa. Ajih jecy npcncTaBjbajie yMeTHHHKe j\o-
MeTe Kojn cy, HeocnopHO, opraHCKH npHnaâjiH nojby Taaa HajaKTyenHHjHX
KOMno3HUHOHHX ycMepeH>a, npojeKaTa h npoucaypa; koj'h jecy 6hjih êo jea-
Hor reorpa(bcKH h KyjiTypojiouiKH uinper aBaHrap/mor njiaHa.
H3 thx pa3jiora npoTyMaHeHH y Hauioj MyjHKOjiorHjH c noHeTKa 80-hx
roaHHa npouijior BeKa Kao npHMepH aBaHrapae „jioKajiHor rana", th KOMno3H-
TopcKH aoMe™ cy y HCTopHjH Haine My3HKe ocTaim 3a6ejie>KeHH, My3HKOjio-
ujkh ejia6opHpaHH h npoueibeHH Kao yMeTHHHKH bhcoko KOH3HCTeHTHa êjia
Koja cy cpncKy My3HKy h aBaHrapflHO o6oraTHjia.
Totobo Tpn aeueHHje »HBOTa KojH ce on Ta#a oaBHjao tokoM jczmor no
MHorHM oftriHKaMa apyraHHjer ao6a, apyraHHjer He caMo y KOHTeKcTy uncmu-
myijuje yMemnocmu y Cp6HjH, npHponHO cy yTHuane Ha npoMeHy peuenuHje
thx aejia. Ajih yrauajie cy h Ha HeKe nojczwHaHHe, npcuBHiUbHBe hhtchuho-
HajiHe aKuHje ycMepeHe Ka o6e36et)HBaH>y jiuhho „KopHrOBaHe", jiuhho ycMepa-
BaHe h KOHTpojiHcaHe peuenuHje concmeenoz CTBapajiaHKor onyca.
y oboM TeKCTy je peH o oHOM „Tpary" npoMeHe My3HKOjioujKe peuenUH-
je aBaHrapflHHX êjia cpncKe My3HKe, KojH ynyhyje Ha CHMnTOMaraHaH, npe
CBera ncHxojioiuKH h h^cojiohjkh reHepHcaH h totobo arpecHBaH „BHiuaK"
Spnre o o6e36et)H BaH>y concTBeHe (>KejbeHe) ayTopcKe no3HUHje h concTBeHHX
ecTeTHHKHx Ha3opa y HCTopHjH cpncKe My3HKe.
CALIBRATING MODERNISMS:
THE IDEA(L)S OF MUSICAL AUTONOMY
IN SLOVENIAN CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
LEON STEFANIJA
Aim
A SHORT note on the Slovenian musical modernisms from the first half of
the century would clear the somewhat awkward focus of this paper centred on
the concept of musical autonomy. I would like to emphasize the awkwardness
of the concept of musical autonomy in the modernity debate since the heteroge
neous and heteronomous ideas involved in it reflect different autonomies: dif
ferent relations between the music's autonomy as a social phenomenon and the
autonomy of the composer as its pragmatic differential, to which issues on pro
duction and perception within a certain context of musical practice ought to be
added. It seems that this 'configurational hermeneutics' behind the concept of
musical autonomy has also enabled, in many respects, the frictions and differences
to pervade the history of Slovenian modernisms in the second half of the twentieth
century, to which I shall confine myself. Thus, my aim is to address, through three
musical examples, the levers of defining modernism in this period.
The Modernist Background

If modernism, according to Christoph von Blumroder, is generally seen as
a typical phenomenon of the twentieth century due to its striving toward 'the
emphatically New'1 —it is seen as a set of ideas and circumstances that span
from the fin de siecle till the wide acceptance of the postmodernity proclama
tion in the 1 970s—its roots in Slovenia are marked off especially strongly with
1 Ch. von Blumroder, 'Neue Musik' in H. H. Eggebrecht (ed.), Terminologie der musi-
kalischen Komposition. Handworterbuch der musikalischen Terminologie, Sonderband I (Stutt
gart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1996), 299-3 12.
220 Leon Stefanija
the work of three composers: Slavko Osterc, Marij Kogoj and Lucijan Marija
Skerjanc.
Slavko Osterc, educated mainly in Prague with Alois Haba, was an influ
ential teacher, active from the middle of the 1920s till his death in 1941. As a
fervent advocate of the progressive musical style, his ideas of advancement in
music were founded on a mixture of Neue Sachlichkeit influences (especially
from Stravinsky and Hindemith) and a kind of 'expressionistic constructivism'
(A. Rijavec). Marij Kogoj, on the other hand, living the solitary life of a com
poser, more or less occasional music teacher and essayist, was indelibly im
mersed in the teachings of Franz Schreker and, above all, in the ideational ex
pressionism of Arnold Schoenberg, until he was admitted to psychiatric hospital
at beginning of the 1930s. Although only several years separated them both
from Lucijan Marija Skerjanc (1900-1973), his two years long Viennese studies
of composition with Joseph Marx and piano with Anton Trost, four subsequent
years at the Schola cantorum in Paris with Vincent d'Indy (1924-7) and a de
gree in conducting with Felix Weingartner (1930) made him a central musical
figure of the post- WWII period. Being a omnipresent performer already in the
1930s, influential professor, music theoretician, also musicologist—in short, a
person with immense musical knowledge holding prominent posts in Slovenian
musical life—his music was seen just as contemporary, hardly modern, con
fined within a stylistic scope of late-romantic idioms and impressionism.
Although in the 1930s there were several younger musicians who centered
their musical poetics on modernist ideals introduced by Kogoj and Osterc, the
aspirations toward 'the emphatically New' began to bear fruits only from the
middle of the 1950s on. However, from the 1930s on one should consider a gap
between modernist theory and different practices that would widen it in the
European musical centers, more differences and antinomies in modernism began to
branch out from the musical extremes reached around the middle of the 1950s.
The following anecdote neatly illuminates the gap between theory and
practice of exercising modernist ideals neatly for post-WWII Slovenia. A re
cently deceased composer recalled in an interview- how Lucijan Marija Sker
janc grinned at the entrance examination in the beginning of the 1950s, when a
student apodictically requested to join the composition master class of Slavko
Osterc (d. in 1941 !), since he would like to study modern music from first hand,
as it were. Skerjanc allegedly shrugged his shoulders and silenced the promising
youngster saying that his request was unrealizable, since Osterc was no longer
alive, but he could enroll in his (Skerjanc's) master class instead, since he
would be the next closest choice.
The difficulties in the post- WWII period withdrew gradually, coinciding
with the general displeasure of the youngest generation of composers, born in
- Interview with Samo Vremsak. 3 1 May 2001 . My personal audio archive.

CALIBRATING MODERNISMS.. 221
the 1920s and especially the 1930s. Their work culminated during the 1960s,
when several composers formed the group Pro musica viva, promoting their
heterogeneous modernisms as 'the avant-garde' Slovenian music of their time
especially through performances of their Ansambl Slavko Osterc? With Slavko
Osterc more as a cultural paragon and Marij Kogoj as a spiritual force of reflec
tion behind their different modernist ideals, Pro musica viva realized its
modernism according to the individual potency of each of its members. Their
main stylistic orientation was inspired especially by the Polish sonorism, serial
techniques and later on by electro acoustic music, as heard from the end of the
1950s at the favored festivals by the members of Pro musica viva: Warsaw
Autumn, Darmstadt, Music Biennale Zagreb (1961 —>), Festival of twentieth
century chamber music Radenci (1963-2001), different studios for electro
acoustic music and more liberal Slovenian literary journalism.
Modernism as Reflected Through Postmodernity

This historical background was inevitably necessary to outline the range
of Slovenian musical modernism(s) till the proclamation of postmodernity at the
end of the 1970s. Its heritage may be summed up as follows. On the one side,
the main modernist paragons of the first half of the century, the 'constructivism'
of Slavko Osterc and expressionism of Marij Kogoj, offered a strong moral im
agery to the post-WWII generation of composers, who were to evolve into the
central Slovenian avant-garde phenomenon bypassing the mainstream 'moder
ate modernism' (or 'moderate conservativism'), advocated by Lucijan Marija
Skerjanc. On the other side, the post-WWII period with its antinomous aestheti-
cal and compositional practices of the late 1950s left the members of Pro mu
sica viva without a firm notion regarding modernity; instead, the declarative
mottos about 'modern music' and pragmatically understood autonomy of the
composer was accompanied by different individual aspirations, founded on
rather vague theoretical notions regarding the addressee of their 'messages in
the bottle' (T.W. Adorno).
To address those Adornian messages in the bottle, one may well ask:
which words have been communicated through them for the period of postmod
ernity? Three answers shall be offered in the following discussion. The first one
comes from probably the most influential Slovenian musician today, one of the
most distinguished members of Pro musica viva Lojze LebiC (1934). The sec
ond answer is offered by UroS Rojko ( 1 954), a composer with a firm belief in
modernism, comprehensively trained in the avant-garde master classes as given
3 Cf. M. Barbo, Pro musica viva. Prispevek k slovenski moderni po II. Svetovni vojni [Pro
musica viva. A contribution to the Slovenian Modernism after WWR], (Ljubljana: Znanstveni
inStitut Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani, 2001).
4 Ibid, 80, esp. 255 ff.
222 Leon Stefanija
by Klaus Huber in Freiburg (1983-1986) and Gyorgy Ligeti (1986-1989). The

third answer is given by Marko Mihevc (1957), a composer and conductor
whose voice was among the first and the strongest to extol postmodernity as a
chance to compose, in his words, 'more digestible' music, although he consid
ers himself a pupil of modernism, not of the 'conservative neo/classicism'.
Lojze LebiS, Uro§ Rojko and Marko Mihevc

Although one could never emphasize enough the differences between
these composers, they see the context of their work from the 1980s onward as
belonging to a (differently understood) modernity, for which Lebic saw as a
central phenomenon an '"ecological" shift toward more telling musical narra-
tivity' ('"ekoloSki" premik k vecji povednosti').5 Yet, apart from the general
awareness of the necessity to create communicative music, their compositional
means and respective aesthetics burst the common features asunder. Their re
spective views on the tellingness of different musical narratives could be sum
marized briefly with comments on their views on the autonomy of their music.
Lojze Lebic has several times emphasized that his strongest lesson from
his avant-garde phase is the rigorousness of thought. However, he is far from
underestimating the 'common listener'. Although he would hardly assent to any
pragmatic concession, he has a kind of 'second listener' before his eyes when
composing: 'If [my music] is to attract the listener to seek deeper layers and
hints, the surface of the work has to be understandable and covered with a suffi
cient number of recognizable sounds.'6 However, in Lebic's music these layers
evade the trap of a name. They feature prominently in his music emerging
throughout tissues of complex sonoristic textures as 'hints', 'allusions', 'evo
cations', 'indications', or 'reminiscences' of certain phenomena. Whether it be
an 'evocation' of an archetypal feature, such as the elementary diastematic
fragments in Queensland Music, an allusion to the creation of the world in
Glasba za orkester - Cantico I, or its more or less apparently associatively
'permeable ' sound features, such as the bucolic quality of melodic, emphasized
repetitions of triads in a highly complex texture, a Mahlerian 'moment of narra
tion' (Abbate), or a compliment to Bach's famous cadence from the Fifth Bran
denburg Concerto: these telling details are interwoven carefully in a complex
musical narrative rooted in the formal universals of music.
Lebic himself defined the process of composing as a process of 'framing
something from one world which is found in another'.7 This is, actually, the
most far-reaching change in his current poetics if compared to his avant-garde
5 L. LebiC, 'Glasovi Casov' ['Times' voices']. Nasi zbori, 47/3^1 (1994), 61.
6 M. Dekleva, 'Kot da je svet te dopolnjen' ['As if the world was perfect'] Dnevnik (7
February 1994), 9.
7 Ibid.
ideals of an abstract, arithmetic order of the musical logic: he composes by

searching for 'the grammatical feeling to return to the music some of its lost
ability of speech'.8 Yet, he adds: 'I remain within the limits of my field. This,
however, teaches me that all significant musical works—from Bach's art of
fugue to Bartok's masterpieces with a sectio aurea—are crafted with a great ar
chitectonic consideration, that they are a junction of necessity, that the laws of
these junctions may be analytically discovered just as they were consciously
built; but that the impulses dictating them will be forever hidden.'9
tiros' Rojko, on the other hand, two decades junior to Lebic, has a more
negative experience with the 'tradition of the German and European avant-
garde': 'did not accept it',10 moreover, he reckoned it as 'a dead end'". Espe
cially Ligeti, 'leading [him] with his guru-like poise into uncertainty and horri
ble split',12 has awakened Rojko to distance himself not only from the avant-
garde but also from any other musical tradition. Rojko is inclined to think about
(his) music in terms of an ahistoric soundscape, secluded from any semantic
homologies - except from the most elemental ones appealing to the 'physicalis-
tic' efficacy of music. 'What I've been doing now, in the last five years', em
phasized Rojko in the middle of the 1990s, 'is above all liberation of myself. I
try to understand everything as translating, canalizing of primary energies into a
palpable substance'13 of sound.
Basically, I am striving to achieve beauty that has something profound,
that has a base. This base does not belong to our world. It is something that our
world cannot offer, although it is founded thereof. I would certainly not like to
bring my music to the point of a New Age or similar [cultural phenomena],
where the only goal is to reach a therapeutic condition [...]. I have no therapeutic
intentions with my music. My music borders more on a natural experience, it
tries to reach a sense of well-being.14
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 S. Meh, [Interview with SreCko Meh], Glasbena mladina, 5 (1995), 6.
1 1 [Booklet of Radio Slovenia], Prix Italia '93, Uros Rojko Inner Voices, (Ljubljana: RTV, 1993).
12 S. Meh [Interview with SreCko Meh], Glasbena mladina, 5 (1995), 6.
13 Ibid.
14 Originally the quotes read: 'Ein System sagt noch gar nichts aus, was du daraus machst
ist wichtig.' 'Die Idee, etwas Neues zu machen, war damals, als ich mit Serialismus und Neuer
Musik beschäftigte, sehr wichtig [...] Es geht mir in der Tat um Schonheit, aber diese Schonheit
hat eine Tiefe, hat einen Grand. Dieser Grand liegt nicht in unserer Welt, ist etwas, was unsere
Welt nicht bieten kann und was ihr dennoch zugrundeliegt. Natürlich mdchte ich meine Musik
nicht zu einem Punkt von New Age oder anlichem bringen, wo es nur darum geht, therapeutisch
einen Zustand zu bekommen [...]. Meine Musik hat keine therapeutische Absicht, sie grenzt schon
eher an ein natürliches Erlebnis, so dafl man sich als Mensch wohlfuhlt. [...] Mein Leben ist so
gekommen, daß ich ftir mich eine andere Welt suche. Die Musik drtickt das aus und ist ein Teil
von mir.' (Lauschen auf die innere Musik. Wolfgang Rudiger im Gesprach mit Uros Rojko, CD
ARSMUSICI {AM} 1 122-2, Freiburger Musik Forum 1995, 15, 18-19.)
However modernist a stance might be reflecting through these artistic in

tentions, contrary to the intellectual pretentiousness, or the semantic provoca-
tiveness, of the musical avant-garde, Rojko expects from his listener almost
nothing. Persuaded in the 'untranslatability' of the musical narrative, he be
lieves that it is necessary for both—the composer as well as for the listener—to
'let the events happen by themselves, and let music and musical material unfold
by itself.15 For this reason he draws attention to the "innermost" of the sound,
unimpeded by mimetic analogies: 'The most important truths are by no means
explicable, the least with words, and they cannot be analysed by the intellect.
They can be reached only by experience, or perceived.'16
The quoted thought should be seen as the central philosophical persuasion
and aesthetical demand posed by Rojko: he wants his music to achieve the efficacy
of a sublime physiological stimulus — with no semantic potential 'from without ',
preferably not even from the musical past, of course. In contrast to LebiC's gram
matical logic, Rojko's composition is based on some kind of 'logic of pulveriza
tion' of the sound spectrum, as the beginning of his Sinfonia concertante indicates:
15 [Booklet of Radio Slovenia], Prix Italia '93, Uros Rojko Inner Voices (Ljubljana: RTV, 1993).
16 Ibid.
226 Leon Stefanija
As a counterpart to both the above discussed musical poetics, that of

Marko Mihevc demands 'the integration of the beauty, the emotions, [...] of
healthy eclecticism not intended to imitate the past but to help find new, not to
say palatable styles'. His favoured musical form, the symphonic poem, seemed
most appropriate to develop semantically vivid, almost picturesque sequences.
Attracted by classical Afro-Cuban dance music, as in the symphonic poem In
signo iauri, developing a kind of 'urban folklorism" with sympathies for 'ori
ental sound', as in the cantata In mentem venit mini, his musical structures are
anchored in the opulence of Straussian harmonic texture from the fin de siecle,
transparent modal turns, and effective melodic linearity. The aesthetics of alien
ation, almost epicurean usufructuary of semantically loaded segments indicates
the process that Mihevc described as a 'postmodernist way', a musical logic of
combining 'modern elements with the elements of the previous periods'17 and,
one might add, different cultural milieus.
Historical Embeddedness and Autonomies of Expression

Obviously enough, LebiC's, Rojko's and Mihevc's compositional appa
ratuses stem from different modernist traditions: Lebic's especially from the
Polish avant-garde classics, Rojko's from musique spectrale, New complexity
and different authorial features (comparable to those, for instance, in Giacinto
Scelsi and Georgy Ligeti), Mihevc's from a typically posMnodern combinato
rial perspectivism of layering fin de siecle modernism, 'Orientalistic figments',
and several sonoristic details from different avant-garde techniques.
Although firmly embedded in the twentieth century imageries of mod
ernism, the semantic potential of their music reveals a fairly perplexed picture
of modernist ideals. As their respective historical footages are evident, differ
ences in their narrativity can also be demarcated rather clearly. Lebic's idiosyn
cratic musical flow founded on 'grammatical' logic is trying to communicate
intellectual, cultural, often national—one may well say: sensuous—anthropo
logical imagery. Rojko's musical logic of 'sonoristic pulverization' aims at uni
versal physicalistic immersion in sound, leaving traces of cultural semantics
aside on behalf of refined, as it were, 'visceral vibrations'. To the contrary, Mi
hevc with his compositional logic of alienation strives to combine heterogene
ous, easily perceptible 'musical commonalities'.
However, in spite of the differences, their respective aesthetic autonomies
are difficult to apostrophize as 'messages in a bottle'. Although one should ar
gue about the achievements and degrees of the communicative qualities of their
music, a feature they share can be recognized in their aspirations to encompass
wide segments of musical experience: Lebid has in mind a kind of transhistori-
17 E. SenCur, 'V resni glasbi ni dobrih naivcev' ['There are no good nai'ves in art music'],
Sobotna priloga Dela 41/12(16 January 1999), 40.
CALIBRATING MODERNISMS. 227
cal intellectual experience, Rojko's 'translating, canalizing of primary energies

into a palpable substance' aims at a thorough sublimation of the senses, while
Mihevc strives to gather what he believes are the most efficient musical features
around. In short, they are trying to sidestep the relations between the old (the
traditional as 'made after an example') and the new (the modernistic, avant-garde):
they are trying to focus their musical narratives on different yet basic, elemental
segments of what one may describe as an experience with music as 'a whole and
belonging to all humanity' ('ein Ganzes und Gesamtmenschliches').18
The Classical of the Modern

The quoted description of classical music, borrowed from Friedrich
Blume, is far from alluding to canonical stature, even less to canonization of the
three composers discussed so far. Yet their respective musical poetics are not to
be set within the premise of the avant-garde art - modernism - traditionalism,
but into a thorny question about the classical, about the 'timeless', 'best', 'most
appreciated' values of a musical structure. In contrast to the ideas of advance
ment, modernisation, improvement and similar, more 'material', 'factual', 'his-
toricistic' categories, their main artistic concern shifts the horizon toward a value-
conditioned, axiological ontology of music as common human experience.
Their 'messages in bottles' do not contain or transmit metaphysical
truths; instead, they thematize distinct cultural, mental and physiological com-
monsensical experiences, for which the main values lay in what Rudolf Bock-
holdt sees as three main categories of the classical: the 'ripeness ' (Reife) of
individual style, its 'common intelligibility' (Allgemeinverstandlichkeit), and its
'claim to excellence' (Anspruch).19
It is necessary to observe similar postulates of cognitive universals with
suspicion. It is also important to question their relevance for the concept of
modernism. However, it would be difficult to diminish, let alone deny, its im
portance for a modernist practice of musique informelle from the 1960s, cen
tred, pace Gianmario Borio, in the idea of an 'appeal to the recipient's world'
('Appellcharak[t]er [...] an die Lebenswelt des Rezipienten').20 The postmodern
reflection of modernism in the musical ideals of LebiC, Rojko and Mihevc
seems to struggle with the same problem as musique informelle: with aspira
tions to surpass the fast aging of the new that formed the core of Adorno's cri-
18 F. Blume, 'Klassik', in: F. Blume (ed.), Epochen der Musikgeschichte in

Einzeldarstellungen (Kassel: Barenreiter Verlag, 1974), 233-306, 238.
" R. Bockholdt, 'Ober das Klassische' in: R. Bockholdt (ed.), Uber das Klassische
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag, 1987), 231-236.
:o G. Borio, Musikalische Avantgarde um I960. Entwurf einer Theorie der informellen
Musik, in H. Danuser (ed.), Freiburger Beitrdge zur Musikwissenschaft, Band 1 (Laaber: Laaber-
Verlag, 1993), 173.
228 Leon Stefanija
tique of new music during its 'heroic period' in his broadcast Das Altern der
neuen Musik (1954) .
Although one of the central features of their musical poetics—the 'appeal
to the recipient world'—is infallibly postmodern, the main focus of their work
should be set in a line with the 'emphatically New', not only as a concept of
twentieth century music history, but as a much lengthier stream, a process of
searching for a 'better music'. In this sense, they are but dwarfs on the shoulders
of a giant standing in the period of the enlightenment. Although it is irrelevant
to argue about the modernity of their respective musical idea(l)s and composi
tional practices—their views and music bring hardly anything 'emphatically
new' in the technical or aesthetical sense—they should be positioned within the
concept of modernism in the most elemental, basic sense, as defined, for in
stance, by Boris Groys: 'the new is not only the Other but the valuable Other'
(Groys 1992: 43)21. Their positions within this notion of modern as the search
after the valuable, not only different with regard to the old, could be, of course,
questioned further. But notwithstanding that, their musical poetics are irrefuta
bly an autonomous contribution to the concept of the twentieth century music
modernisms as a perplexed set of streams in their search of the new between
different levels of expressive symbolism (LebiC), aesthetic immediacy (Mihevc)
and acoustic sensualism (Rojko). And this, it seems, is an issue surpassing the
history of modernisms.
JleoH CmecpaHuja
KAJIHBPHPAftE MO/JEPHH3AMA:
H£EJE / H/JEAJ1H MY3HHKE AYTOHOMUJE
y CABPEMEHOJ CJIOBEHAHKOJ MY3HUH
Pe3hMe
IlpHxBaTajyhH uiHpoicy nepcneKTHBy MoaepHOCTH Kao „HeaoBpuieHor

npojeicra" (J. Xa6epMac), Kao HeonxoaHocra y My3HHKoj KyjiTypn y Kojoj ce
npHBHflH CTajiHO TpaHC(bopMHmy, je,HHa on ueHTpajiHHX TeMa My3H4Kor Moaep-
HH3Ma, nHTaH>e My3HHKe ayTOHOMHje, pa3MaTpa ce Kao My3HKOjiouiKH KOHuenr.
Ilopcae ce TpH My3HHKe noeraKe - JIoj3eTa Jle6HHa, ypoma PojKa h MapKa
MuxeBua - c jeaHHM ujubeM Ha yiwy: noHyaHTH cneumbHHHH hhbo ayroHOMHje
21 'Das Neue ist nicht bloß das Andere, sondern es ist das wertvolle Andere.' B. Groys,
Uber das Neue. Versuch einer Kulturdkonomie (MUnchen: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1992), 43.
y My3Hiw y3HMajyhH y o63Hp uempanHy aHTHHOMHjy OBor nojiwa, hhMc ce mo-

aepHH3aM OTKpHBa MoêpHH3aM Kao KOHuenT pa3aneT H3Mef)y naeja „nporpe-
ca", „ayTeHTHHHocTH", c jczme CTpaHe, h anxOBor nopHuaH>a y naeajiHMa KBa-
jiHTeTa ayror Tpajaiba, c apyre. /JpyrHM peHHMa, nopea npeMHce ueHTpHpaHe y
ono3HUHjH HCTopHjcKo - TpaHCHCTopHjcKO h (JwjKwcxJwjH „oHmuheHor" eci7
eTHHKor cTaBa, MOaepmnaM, KaKo cy ra cxBaTHjiH cnoMeHyra KOMno3HTopH,
OTKpHBa ce Kao npeTeacHo cyojeKTHBaH cKyn npeacTaBa KojH He3He 3a Hflean-
hhM je3HKOM, HCTOBpeMeHO ce KOjie6ajyhH muetfy HenoMHpjbHBHx UHjbeBa
KBanHTeTa h apyrocTH.
SPRACHKOMPOSITIONEN IN DER MUSIK
DES 20. JAHRHUNDERTS, INSBESONDERE
AM BEISPIEL ÖSTERREICH
HARTMUT KRONES
Die Verbindung bzw. Aneinanderkoppelung von Sprache, Musik, Gestik

und Bewegung ist in der Vokalmusik der sechziger und siebziger Jahre auf
mannigfaltigste Weise in Angriff genommen worden. Der Bogen beginnt hier
bei rein assoziativen Stücken, die ohne (im herkömmlichen Sinne) semantische
Sprache Geschehen simuliert und Emotionen freisetzt; wir denken hier
insbesondere an György Ligetis Aventures oder an Mauricio Kagels sur scene.
Weiters umfaßt er Werke, die das rein Äußerliche, Technische, Materialhafte
plakathaft verschmelzen und dabei bewußt absurde Wirkungen erzielen, z. B.
Kagels Staatstheater1 oder Karlheinz Stockhausens Originale'. Und schließlich
gibt es dadaistisch-lettristische Versuche, die aus Sprachpermutationen oder aus
speziell komponiertem, nicht semantischem Text eine musikalische Struktur
erhalten, die bisweilen auch bis ins Gestisch-Theatralische reicht und dort ihren
Niederschlag findet; wir verweisen hier etwa auf Kagels Anagrama oder Dieter
Schnebels Glossolalie3 . Umgekehrt gibt es wieder eine Reihe von speziellen
Mauricio Kagel: "Ich habe versucht, verschiedene Formen des Musizierens und des
Geräuschmachens kompositorisch zu inszenieren. Es genügt nicht, musikalische Prozesse sichtbar
zu machen, sondern musikalische Formen sollen vielmehr in der optischen Realisation wieder zu
Musik werden [...]. Die Frage nach dem ,Was soll denn das?' wird durch die Intensität der
musiktheatralischen Idee und ihrer szenisch-akustischen Darstellung zunächst überwunden."
Mauricio Kagel, Tamtam. Monologe und Dialoge zur Musik, hrsg. von Felix Schmidt, München
1975, S. 89tT.
2 Karlheinz Stockhausen: "Selbständige Momente verbunden nach Maßgabe von Intensität,
Dauer, Dichte, Erneuerungsgrad, Wirkungsreichweite, Gleichzeitigkeit, Reihenfolge. Szenenharmonik
- Szenenmelodik (.) Szenenmetrik - Szenenrhythmik(.) Szenendynamik - Szenen-agogik [...]".
Karlheinz Stockhausen, Texte zu eigenen Werken(.) zur Kunst anderer. Aktuelles. Band 2. Aufsätze
1952-1962 zur musikalischen Praxis. Köln 1964, S. 109.
1 Schnebel: "Sprechen als solches und als Musik hat viele Aspekte oder Parameter, wie
man in der neueren Musiktheorie sagt. Aus der breiten Skala eines jeden davon wurden einige
232 Hartmut Krones
Sprachkompositionen, wo die Sprech- bzw. Sprachverläufe gleichsam die

Musik bilden und zu einer autonomen Struktur auf der Basis kompositorischen
Denkens finden; man denke hier an Hans Ottes Alpha-Omega I oder an Dieter
Schnebels Dt 31 6-
Im weiten Feld dieser Sprach- und Laut(klang)komposition nehmen zwei
Österreicher, Anestis Logothetis und Otto M. Zykan, besonders radikale Positionen
ein; sie sind zugleich aber auch besonders universell im Sinne einer Synthese
der verschiedensten Techniken und sinnstiftenden Möglichkeiten. Denn läßt
man die mannigfachen Bestrebungen in diesem Genre Revue passieren, so werden
die genannten Prinzipien des Gesamtspektrums meist gleichsam isoliert angewandt;
deren Vermischung erscheint dagegen eher selten. Die Gegenpositionen sind
hier Sprachkomposition kontra Sprachmanipulation, Eigenerfindung im Sinne
von Lautkomposition kontra Zerstörung der Fremderfindung, ja Komposition
kontra Dekomposition. Logothetis und Zykan haben hier jeweils eigene Wege
gefunden, um die erwähnten Möglichkeiten zu verschmelzen und sich solcherart
der üblichen Einordnung weitgehend zu entziehen.
Wenden wir uns zunächst Anestis Logothetis4 (1921-1994) zu, einem ab
1942 in Wien lebenden Wahlösterreicher griechischer Abstammung. Er war
einerseits einer der wichtigsten Vordenker bei der Entwicklung einer graphischen
Notenschrift5, die weit über die graphischen Versuche eines Earle Brown oder
John Cage hinausging und vor allem auch Gestus und Emotion der Musik in
angemessener Weise einfing. Darüber hinaus bezog sie auch spezielle Möglich
keiten der Wortkomposition ein. Denn hier sind Sätze, Einzelworte und aseman
tische Buchstabenkombinationen derart notiert, daß Größe, optische Anordnung
und gestische Wirkung der Schriftzeichen auf die musikalische Ebene übertragen
werden können; sie fuhren solcherart zu gleichsam musikalisierten Deklamationen,
zu speziellen Betonungen und zu emotionsdurchzogenem Sprechen. Das sprach
liche Material wird meist aus einem zunächst semantischen Grundstock gewonnen,
kann im weiteren Verlauf aber durch Kombinationen und Permutationen einerseits
Mehrdeutigkeit, andererseits musikalische Eigengesetzlichkeit (und dadurch auch
semantische Unbestimmtheit) erhalten.
Werte ausgewählt und miteinander verknüpft. Dies teils so, daß nur einer oder wenige Aspekte
des Materials hervortreten, teils so, daß das Spiel der Sprecher oder das Sprechen der Instrumente
besonders viele Seiten zur Erscheinung bringt." Dieter Schnebel, Denkbare Musik. Schriften
1952-1972, hrsg. von Rudolf Zeller, Köln 1972, S. 257.
4 Zu ihm siehe allgemein Hartmut Krones, Logothetis, Anestis, in: MGG. Die Musik in
Geschichte und Gegenwart. Personenteil 1 1, Kassel etc. sowie Stuttgart-Weimar 2004, Sp. 406-
409, sowie Hartmut Krones (Hg.), Anestis Logothetis. Klangbild und Bildklang. Band 27 der
Reihe "Komponisten unserer Zeit", Wien 1998. In diesen Band sind auch die beiden Haupt
schriften des Komponisten aufgenommen.
5 Erstmals publiziert in: Anestis Logothetis, Zeichen als Aggregatzustand der Musik,
Wien-München 1974.
SPRACHKOMPOSITIONEN IN DER MUSIK.. 233
Zur Verdeutlichung des Gesagten blicken wir auf unser 1. Beispiel, einen
Ausschnitt aus dem "Musik-Hörspiel" Anastäsis ("Auferstehungen"). Man erkennt
zunächst Notensymbole, die jeweils auf Hilfslinien notiert sind, wobei es sich
um gedachte Hilfslinien über dem Baßschlüssel bzw. unter dem Violinschlüssel
handelt. Weiters sieht man Buchstaben, graphische Klangdarstellungen und Wort
ketten. Hiebei handelt es sich um Medikamenten-Namen und Krankheitsbe
zeichnungen, deren Auftauchen seine Begründung in einem zu Beginn des Stückes
rezitierten Liebesgedicht aus assoziativ gewonnenen Verben findet; denn Liebe
ist sowohl chemische Reaktion als auch eine Krankheit, was nichts daran ändert,
daß das Werk mit dem klanglich zauberhaft unterstützten Liebesgedicht endet.
Aus diesen medizinisch-chemischen Begriffen werden nun aber assoziativ auch
ganz andere Worte gewonnen: Wir lesen etwas unter der Mitte: "Ophtalmologica
Trara Ararat TrakTat Track"; Ararat und Trara stellen de facto Buchstaben
permutationen dar, Traktat wird in Trak und Tat zerteilt. Zur Erklärung: "trara"
macht die Trompete, "Ararat" ist ein Berg, Traktat ist eine wissenschaftliche
Abhandlung, doch stecken in diesem Wort auch die Worte "Trak" für Traktor und
"Tat"; "Track" ist sowohl der "track" einer CD als auch ein Neffe von Donald
Duck. In der 3. Zeile lesen wir Onomatomantik, daraus wird dann Taktik, dann
Tag, dann Ticktack (einer Uhr) usw. Um einen ersten Eindruck zu erhalten, wollen
wir uns einen Teil dieser Partiturseite, beginnend mit dem Alpha oben halblinks,
anhören (Tonbeispiel 1). Vergleichen wir die Notation des soeben gehörten
Ausschnittes mit (Beispiel 2) optophonetischen Gedichten eines Raoul Hausmann,
mit der gleichsam graphischen Notation des Lautgedichtes von Man Ray oder
mit Plakaten von Merz-Matineen des Dadaisten Kurt Schwitters, so fällt die
gleiche Grundhaltung auf, graphisch Klang zu suggerieren bzw. - im Falle von
Logothetis - tatsächlich zu notieren.
Wenden wir uns nun einem weiteren Werk von Logothetis zu, und zwar
dem Zyklus Kybernetikon von 1971. Auf 37 Blättern entwickelt sich hier eine
weltanschaulich-ideologische Gedankenwelt, die das menschliche Leben samt
seinen Krankheiten und gesellschaftlichen Verstrickungen beleuchtet. Blatt 5a
des Werkes (Beispiel 3) beginnt mit dem Wort "AuBär", unter welchem Wort
man sich etliches vorstellen kann, jedenfalls sind die "Au" (also die Flußlandschaft)
und der "Bär" deutlich angesprochen. "tAuBer" läßt zwar beide Worte noch
erkennen, erhält aber zusätzlich die Bedeutungen "tauber" (eine männliche Taube
oder auch ein tauber Mensch) und "Tau" (der morgens in der Au liegt). Ähnlich
verhält es sich bei "ZAuBer", womit auf den "Zauber" der Natur verwiesen wird,
ohne daß die Konnotationen "Au" und "Bär" verloren gehen; zusätzlich deutet
das "Z", ähnlich wie "ts" gesprochen, an, was des Morgens in der Au alles passiert
- in welche Richtung man denken kann, verrät das folgende Wort: "SauBär",
worunter man sich nur zu einem geringen Teil die Inhalte von "sauber" vorzustellen
hat, wie nicht zuletzt der Wortteil "Sau" verrät (für "Nicht-Österreicher": ein
"Sau-Bär" ist ein säuisches männliches Wesen; das Wort wird allerdings eher
234 Hartmut Krones
humoristisch angewendet). Und wer ist mit dem "SauBär" gemeint? Ein
"Jüngling", wie das nächste Wort verrät, ein "Lehrling" auf diesem Gebiet noch,
aber einer, der weiß, wofür er lernen will - für das Leben und nicht für die Schule:
"non scholae sed vitae discimus"; Vokabel aus dem "Schulwortschatz" ergänzen
die Assoziation, doch weisen die Worte "Liberalismus", "Aggrammatismus" und
"Freudianismus" erneut auf den inhaltlichen "roten Faden" sexueller Gedanken.
Weiter geht es mit "Schmetterling", und wir sind gleichsam wieder in der
Au. Der Schmetterling ist "flink", "fliegt" - Assoziation: in der Au "schwimmt"
man aber auch - und "fliegt" in den "Lüften", während das Schwimmen eher an
die "Hüfte" erinnert, die sicher auch dem "SauBär" wichtig war und ihm "Düfte"
vermittelte. - So sprang Logothetis bisher "von Wort zu Wort", "von Hauptwort
zu Zeitwort", von "Beiwort zu Fü[h]rwort" (in dem das Wort "führ" bzw. "führen"
steckt); weiter geht es zum "Sprichwort", von dem man nur einen einzigen
Buchstaben ändern muß, um zum zuvor gesprochenen "Speich[er]wort" zu
gelangen. - Die letzten Sentenzen waren sämtlich "klangetymologisch" zerteilt,
haben also beim Vortrag folgendermaßen zu klingen: "von Hau! - pt! [was stellen
sich hier nicht alles für Assoziationen ein, denkt man etwa an den "SauBär"] -
Wo? [in der Au natürlich] - rt! - zu - Z (klingt wie "ts" im Sinne von "ts, ts!")
- Ei! (hier sind im bisherigen Zusammenhang gewiß mehrere Assoziationen
möglich: vom fruchtbaren "Ei" bis zum "ei, ei" des Streichelns, t! (ein emotionaler
Ausruf) - Wo? - rt! usw.; man denke auch noch an die sich bald ergebenden
Worte "Führ!" "Spei!" (ebenfalls als Imperativ), "Ich!" und "Ort!"
Dem Wort "Sprichwort" fügt Logothetis sogleich ein Beispiel für ein
solches an: "Lügen haben kurze Beine", und sofort taucht eine neue Assoziation
auf: Wer an "Beine" denkt, denkt auch an "schlafe nie alleine", und er denkt an
"bei wohn!", wobei die folgende Frage "wo" insbesondere dann zu stellen ist,
wenn die vorige Einheit als Imperativ "beiwohn [!]" verstanden wurde. Es geht
also um das "Beiwohnen". Man muß das "bei" aber gar nicht auf "wohn!"
beziehen, denn auch die Folge "wohn! wo!?" ergibt einen guten Sinn. Wenn dies
aber so ist, wenn sich also "bei" nicht auf "wohn" bezieht, sondern zur vorigen
sprachlichen Einheit gehört, dann ist (eigentlich: war) folgendermaßen zu lesen,
zu artikulieren: "schlafe nie alleine bei", und "bei" bezieht sich auf "schlafe",
was jeder verstehen wird und wie "eigentlich" auch die autographen Schriftzüge
belegen. - All dies fuhrt jedenfalls zu den Worten "um Gottes willen / will ja
fort", und dies muß - wie deutlich zu sehen ist - zittrig erregt vorgetragen werden,
ehe zu "neutraleren" Inhalten weitergegangen wird (Tonbeispiel 2). Abschließend
sei (Beispiel 4) gezeigt, wie Logothetis seine Worte auch im Sinne der alten
dadaistischen Typographie, bzw. Skriptographie, einsetzt: Hier werden 3 nackte
Sirenen, von unten gesehen, sichtbar; Sie müssen nur etwas Phantasie haben.
Die Sirenen, die den Odysseus während seines Weges in die Heimat zu verführen
trachten, beantworten die Frage nach der Zukunft, wobei alte Mythologie und
neue Denksysteme ihre Koppelung erfahren; man ersieht dies aus den Texten,
die den Leibern eingeschriebenen sind: z. B. ganz rechts oben: "weil du nicht
bist, sondern wirst", "stehst ständig! davor! löse!". Mathematische Ausdrücke,
die gleichzeitig Anspielungen auf die Graphik darstellen, ergänzen - z. B. rechts
Mitte "ihre Schenkelbreite 3 mal 17". Auch Sätze aus der Kybernetik6 sind zu
sprechen, und auch sie geben Anspielungen auf die nackten Leiber; unterste Sirene,
oberste Zeile: "die Beziehung Eingang-Ausgang schließt eine eine! Vergangenheit-
Zukunft[-]Ordnung ein!". Gemäß den Anspielungen auf die antiken Sirenen
erklingen aber auch griechische und lateinische Worte.
Anestis Logothetis nennt seine Wortkunst "Hörspiele", wobei die Schreib
weise "HörSpiel!" mit Rufzeichen wieder typisch für das Genre selbst ist. Sie
verarbeiten mannigfache Anregungen aus dadaistischer und asemantischer Dicht
ung sowie aus Graphik und Malerei des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts. Insbesondere
James Joyce's Ulysses war für den Komponisten ein faszinierendes Erlebnis, aber
auch die gesamte Szene absurder und surrealer Kunst hinterließ ihre Spuren in
seinem (Euvre. Als echter Nachfahre der alten "Sprachmusik" bzw. "Sprach
komposition" behandelt er die Sprache selbst als Musik und zerstört so ihre
syntaktische Struktur; andererseits arbeitet er mit semantischem Material und
erhält durch Laut- und Inhaltspermutierung sowie durch Assoziationsketten immer
neues, sinngebend eingesetztes Material.
Der zweite hier zu behandelnde Komponist ist der "Urwiener" Otto M.
Zykan7 (1935-2006), der seit der Mitte der sechziger Jahre an vorderster Front
sowohl des avantgardistischen Musiktheaters als auch der Sprachkomposition
stand. Er ging meist von semantischem Material aus, das einen besonders
aggressiven, meist gesellschaftskritischen Charakter aufweist. Dabei ging es
ihm bisweilen um verschlüsselte Botschaften für Insider, bisweilen aber auch
um gleichsam marktschreierisch-plakative, lehrhaft pädagogisierende Sentenzen,
deren Variation, ja Verstümmelung wieder eine spezielle demonstrative Funktion
besitzt.8
Zykans oft reihenmechanisch strukturiertes Manipulieren von Textbau
steinen erinnert durch seine Assoziationssprünge deutlich an literarische Bestre
bungen sowohl des frühen Dadaismus als auch des Neodadaismus der Wiener
6 Aus Norbert Wieners Buch über die Kybernetik.

7 Zu ihm siehe allgemein insbesondere Hartmut Krones, Zykan, Otto M., in: MGG. Die
Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Personenteil 17, Kassel etc. 2007, Sp. 1609-1612.
8 Hiezu siehe u. a. Hartmut Krones, Dadaismus, "In-Szene" und Gesellschaftskritik. Otto
M. Zykans Konzept eines optisch-akustischen Musiktheaters der sechziger Jahre, in: Oper als
soziales oder politisches Engagement? (Slovenski Glasbeni Dnevi 1992. Kongreßbericht), hrsg.
von Primoz Kuret, Ljubljana 1993, S. 175-186; weiters siehe auch Hartmut Krones, Vom
Wortbruchstück zur Sentenz und zurück: Otto M. Zykans Konzept der Sprachkomposition
zwischen Reihenmechanik und Neo-Dadaismus, in: Musik als Text. Bericht über den
Internationalen Kongreß der Gesellschaft für Musikforschung Freiburg im Breisgau 1993, hrsg.
von Hermann Danuser und Tobias Plebuch. Band 1. Hauptreferate, Symposien, Kolloquien,
Kassel etc. 1998, S. 409-415.
236 Hartmut Krones
Gruppe um Gerhard Rühm und H. C. Artmann.9 Dementsprechend war es schon

in seinem ersten großen Werk, der Bühnenfarce Singers Nähmaschine ist die
beste]0, wesentliches Gestaltungsmerkmal. Als Beispiel 5 sehen Sie den Text
eines Sprechchors, der sinnfällig machen soll, daß das Komponieren einer Oper
bzw. Ode bzw. Opernode eine Sisyphus-Arbeit darstellt. Die vier Zeilen eines
"Systems" in der Notation sind als die vier Chorparte zu lesen - im 1 . Takt wird
also gleichsam das Ausgangsproblem genannt. Ich lese in der Reihenfolge
Sopran-Alt-Tenor: "Oper oder / Ode oder / Opernode". Das in der Konstruktions
reihe nächste Wort ist dann die dem Baß anvertraute "Orderader", durch innere
Permutation aus dem Vorhergehenden entstanden. Betrachtet man die Vokal-
Verhältnisse, so zeigt sich, daß die Reihe O-E-O-E, die zweimal unverändert
blieb (Operoder / Odeoder / Opernode), hier nur an einer Stelle variiert wurde:
O-E-A-E (Orderader). Und das wird nun zum Prinzip des weiteren Geschehens,
das zusätzlich dadurch gekennzeichnet ist, daß jedes vom Baß neu gebildete
Wort von unten nach oben durch alle Stimmen läuft. "Operoder" (Sopran)
verschwindet also im 2. Takt, "Odeoder" (Alt) wandert in den Sopran, "Opernode"
(Tenor) in den Alt (und im 3. Takt in den Sopran), "Orderader" (Baß) in den
Tenor und im weiteren Ablauf in den Alt und in den Sopran. Je Hörverhalten
bzw. Konzentration auf einzelne Stimmen ist also partiell ein Wandern von
Wörtern durch die Chorparte auszunehmen.
Das jeweils neue Wort des Basses tauscht nun jeweils einen Vokal aus,
wobei die beiden fehlenden Austauschvorgänge vom Beginn dadurch nachgeholt
erscheinen, daß zwischen "Orderader" und "Öderautor" drei Positionen verändert
werden. "Öderautor" meint "öder, also schlechter Autor" und besitzt somit eine
zusätzliche semantische Qualität; Verweisfunktion haben auch Worte wie "Chor-
herrauer" (Chorherr in der Au), "Ohrenglauber", "Armhatknappe" (der Knappe hat
einen Arm), "Sängermörder", "Schwulenmule" ("schwul" heißt soviel wie "warm",
englisch "gay") oder "Singersierig" - für Nicht-Österreicher: "Sierig" bedeutet
soviel wie geldgierig, was ja alle "Singer", also Sänger, sind. Vier Takte vor Schluß
wird schließlich "Sissifusis" erreicht. Hier schließt die Wort-Reihe, und Zykan
wartet ab, bis alle dieses Zielwort, das die Endaussage der Nummer darstellt,
sprechen; die Sentenz ist hier gleichsam in ein Wort zusammengefaßt.
Mit dieser Art der Sprachkomposition hat Zykan auch in der Radio- und
Fernsehwerbung Fuß gefaßt. Legende sind hier seine Wortspiele, die nach
ähnlichen Reihenabläufen in dem Satz "Humanic paßt immer" gipfeln - Humanic
ist eine österreichische Schuhfirma, deren Bekanntheitsgrad (und Umsatz) durch
diese Bewerbung sprunghaft anstieg.
9 Siehe Karl Riha, Da Dada da war ist Dada da, München-Wien 1980, S. 223 ff. sowie S.
232ff, wo Gerhard Rühms Texte über lautgedichte und auditive poesie abgedruckt sind.
Mschr. Libretto, Wien o. J. [1965/66]. Zu diesem Werk siehe Hartmut Krones. Dada -
Provokation und Anti-Kunst, in: Provokation in der Musik. Symposium Laibach 1993, hrsg. von
Primoz Kuret, Ljubljana 1993, S. 146ff.
SPRACHKOMPOSITIONEN IN DER MUSIK... 237
Ein weiteres Erfolgsstück des Komponisten, die "Polemische Arie" über

einen Ausspruch Arnold Schonbergs, konzentriert sich vor allem auf
Wortverfremdungen und semantische Permutationen. Ausgangspunkt ist hier
der bekannte Ausspruch Schonbergs "Ich habe eine Erfindung gemacht, die die
Vorherrschaft der deutschen Musik fur die nachsten hundert Jahre sicherstellt".
Zykan geißelt durch mit beißender Ironie durchsetzte Buchstaben-Umgruppier-
ungen die seiner Meinung nach faschistoide Haltung auf, die zu jenem Satz
fiihrte: "Vorherrschaft - Horde schafft - Tor der Haft - forsch er hofft - fahr er
fort - Afterhort" hort man genauso wie "Vorherrschaft der deutschen Musik -
Heil der deutschen Musik - Heil!" - Doch auch hier geht der Chorsatz ebenso
wie der Part des solistischen Sprechers, also Zykans, trotz aller humoristisch-
dadaistischen Effekte nach streng musikalisch-klanglichen Uberlegungen vor
sich (Tonbeispiel 3). Ein Stuck, in dem alle genannten Elemente paradigmatisch
zusammengefaßt erscheinen, ist Zykans zweites abendfullendes Bühnenwerk
"Der Zuriickgebliebenen Auszahlreim" von 1986, das der Komponist als
"Theater fur ein Opernhaus" bezeichnete. Zentrales Motiv des 28 Nummern
umfassenden Werkes ist die Darstellung der laut Zykan "mit der Schopfung
beginnenden und sicherlich bis zur Erschopfung der Welt fortdauernden
.Heiterkeit des Scheiterns'"", und dementsprechend haben samtliche Szenen
irgendeinen Aspekt von Tod oder Untergang zum Inhalt. Zentrales Stuck ist der
bereits vorweg als selbstandige Chornummer entstandene "Auszahlreim", eine
grimmige Anklage gegen Krieg, Gewalt und Streit in der Welt. Als Beispiel 6
sehen Sie den Text:
Ping peng peng katakomb, bomb bomb knatteratta tatterattata pistol puschka
pestilenz, schieß sies suicid diisentschüß sui schieß sß—sB—sB—Ich tu dir nichts,
sagt der Dings, sagt der Dongs.
Ping peng peng allerdings, schlag den Schadel ich dir ein, leuchtet es dir
gar nicht ein...
Dings denkt der Dongs schlechterdings allerdongs
ping peng peng katakomb, waff wau wafflauf wau. Hau auf trau auf
Waffenlauf. Tollwutvoller Treppenroller Truppenkoller LUgenholler! Aber waff
wau wiff ist wenn, waffenwiffe wegwerfwische Waffen bündeln Affen ziindeln?
Ping Peng peng katakomb, bomb bomb knatteratta tatteratta da wo die
dem widerstand, drum Widerstand wer Boses ahnt!
Sand Strand Wald Brand, Deckenstrecker Doppeldecker Phrasenquäker:
Sa a a a alve Casar morituri te sa a a a lutant Sand Wald Brand!
Salutant sandd lad zu tant! Salutschand nur Unflat tarnt! Beißt den Finger,
kiißt die Hand!
" Otto M. Zykan, "Der Zuriickgebliebenen Auszählreim" (Theater für ein Opernhaus).
Wiener Festwochen 1987. Textbuch, Wien o. J. [1987], S. 5. Siehe auch: "Auszählreim" oder Von der
"Heiterkeit des Scheiterns". Hartmut Krones sprach mit Otto M. Zykan, in: Osterreichische
Musikzeitschritt 42 ( 1 987), S. 222-226.
238 Hartmut Krones
Ping peng peng katakomb bomb bomb knatteratta tatteratta da ja wie ja

wo ja wann ja so!
So lauft der Hase! Phrasen auf der Nase aber Zundstoff in der Blase!
Ui je weh ui weh o je. Kriegsdreh Unglücksklee Schießpulverschnee und
wenn der Nebel aufsteigt, der Rest auf hohlen Knochen geigt...
Depperte Debatte patentiert Debakelpack! Ob der die da, ob die der da, ob
der da war, ob der Diva wer den Darmverschlufi als Gagenvorschuß buckeln
muß, wenn bei Torschlußpanik plOtzlich dann der ping peng peng Katakomb
Bunkersong, seine letzte Strophe singt, wenn sein letzter Marsch erklingt Ping
peng peng katakomb...
Ping peng bumsti paff!
Wer singt denn schon wenn alles schlaff!?
Wenn krummer Kriege Gruselkrallen grolend in die Hauser fallen?
Knall Fall Schlußfanal, drangen in den Schußkanal!
Fiir wen, ja von wo, ja nur wie?
Fur den tiber die ja von dort?
Dort wo man Tauben schießt, gibts auch den stinkenden Mistkäfer fliegt
wo zu fressen er kriegt!
Ping peng peng katakomb, bomb bomb knatteratta tatteratata
Pistol, puschka, pestilenz, schieß sie's suicid dusentschiiß suischieß.
Ich tu dir nichts, sagt der Dings sagt der Dongs, konnt man glauben, was
sie meinen, ja dann gings, ja dann gings!
Allerdings muß der ping peng peng Bunkersong dann ausgeblasen,
weggelassen, ohne hassen: unterlassen.
Den Ping peng peng ist zu eng. Knatterattateratatata macht uns taub, mit
Verlaub!
Bomb bomb Bombenzank, Horrorboom Waffengang.
Bumm bumm Bumerang, macht uns bang!!
Knibber knabber Dummian, nimmt Uran start Lebertran und wundert sich
dann schief und bos, warum, wieso er so nervös, warum in seinem Kopfgekros,
so storend quaMt das Kriegsget6s...
Betrachtet man die Vertonung, so sieht man, daß die Nummer mit freien
Assoziationen beginnt, wobei der Wechsel der Einsatze gleichsam zu einer Chor-
Stereophonie fuhrt, die den Text quer durch die Choraufstellung ziehen und
auch verfolgen laßt. Zu Beginn vierstimmig, wird das Geschehen fur kurze Zeit
zweistimmig, und ab Buchstabe A dreistimmig, jetzt aber zum Teil kanonisch.
Der Sopran ist nun genau eine Achtelnote hinter dem Tenor zuriick, bis sich die
beiden Linien vier Takte später wieder vereinigen; der Baß geht zunachst mit
dem Tenor, ehe er durch eine freie Wiederholung des Wortes "Pestilenz"
abdriftet und sich eine Viertelnote hinter dem Sopran einordnet. Bei der Stelle
"schiß uß", die lautmalerisch genau jene Assoziation einbringen soll, die Sie alle
haben, ware die Ordnung folgende: Alt-Sopran+BaB-Tenor. Zunachst stimmt
sie, dann vergißt der Tenor seinen Einsatz, holt ihn aber einen Schlag spater
nach, wodurch der 3. Takt dieser Stelle nun folgendermaßen lautet: Alt+Tenor
Sopran+Baß. Nun geht es wieder in freier Gestaltung weiter. Die Beethoven-

Hereinnahme12 soll sowohl den Mißbrauch klassischer Musik durch faschistische
Regime ansprechen als auch die als "Kitt des Daseins"13 fungierende Musik
rezeption, die in einer Welt der Schrecken zur Beiläufigkeit verkommt.
Insgesamt geht es jedenfalls auch hier um die sukzessive "Hörbarmachung"
eines Textes durch die Komposition, also die Zusammenstellung (das "compone-
re") von Wortfetzen, Silben und ganzen Worten. Dabei werden die Bestandteile
der Ausgangs- bzw. End-Sentenz zum "Thema" im alten rhetorischen Sinne14,
über das nun abgehandelt wird. Die Schärfe ergibt sich dabei - wie einst bei den
Dadaisten - aus den affirmativ eingesetzten und bewußt gesteuerten assoziativen
semantischen Valenzen, die zugleich Text und Kontext, Sprache und Klang sind.
Und auch hierin steht Zykan in einer langen Traditionslinie der Wortbehandlung
sowie (bisweilen) auch der schöpferischen Auseinandersetzung eines Komponisten
mit Literatur seiner Zeit.
Im Verlauf des Chores singen die vier Stimmen einmal das Hauptthema des
Klavierkonzertes Nr. 4(1. Satz) von Ludwig van Beethoven in freier Imitation, gleichsam fugiert.
13 Siehe Michael Alt, Didaktik der Musik. Orientierung am Kunstwerk, Düsseldorf 1968,
S. 14. Vergleiche auch den Adornoschen Typus des Bildungshörers, der "die Themen berühmter
und immer wiederholter Musikwerke summt [...]. Sein Verhältnis zur Musik hat insgesamt etwas
Fetischistisches." Theodor W. Adorno, Einleitung in die Musiksoziologie. Zwölf theoretische
Vorlesungen, Taschenbuchausgabe [Reinbek bei Hamburg] 1968, S. 17f.
14 Siehe u. a. Hartmut Krones, Rhetorik und rhetorische Symbolik in der Musik um 1800.
Vom Weiterleben eines Prinzips, in: Musiktheorie 3 (1988). S. 124ff.
240 Hartmut Krones
SPRACHKOMPOSITIONEN IN DER MUSIK...
242 Hartmut Krones
\ 4?
van
trf«
Beispiel 3
5.
.22u
m
244 Hartmut Krones
CHOR:
OPERODER ODEODER OPERNODE ORDERADER
ODEODER OPERNODE ORDERADER ODERAUTOR
OPERNODE ORDERADER ODERAUTOR CHORHERRAUER
ORDERADER ttDERAUTOR CHORHERRAUER OHRENGLAUBER
oderautor CHORHERRAUER OHRENGLAUBER ABARTKLAPPE

chorherrauer OHRENGLAUBER ABARTKLAPPE ARMHATKNAPPE
ohrenglauber ABARTKLAPPE ARMHATKNAPPE STANDANNAHME
abartklappe ARMHATKNAPPE STANDANNAHME WARENBAHRE
ARMHATKNAPPE STANDANNAHME WARENBAHRE WARERHERRDER

STANDANNAHME WARENBAHRE WARERHERRDER FORDERLEHRER
WARENBAHRE WARERHERDER FORDERLEHRER JAGERHEGER
WARERHERRDER FORDERLEHRER JAGERHEGER SANGERMORDER
forderlehrer JAGERHEGER SXNGERMORDER MOGERJUNGFER

jagerheger SANOERMORDER MOGERJUNGFER UMKEHRMUSE
sXnoermorder MOGERJUNGFER UMKEHRMUSE SCHULENWULE
mogerjungfeb UMKEHRMUSE SCHWULENMULE KUNIGUNDE
UMKEHRMUSE SCHWULENMULE KUNIGUNDE MUSTERSTUNDE

SCHWULENMULE KUNIGUNDE MUSTERSTUNDE MUSIKMIEME
KUNIGUNDE MUSTERSTUNDE MUSIKMIEME INZUCHTBIENE
MUSTERSTUNDE MUSIKMIEME INZUCHTBIENE INTIMSHINSICHT
MUSIKMIEME INZUCHTBIENE INTIMSHINSICHT INZICHTIRRIG

INZUCHTBIENE INTIMSHINSICHT INZICHTIRRIG SINGERSIERIG
INTIMSHINSICHT INZICHTIRRIG SINGERSIERIG GINGERSINGER
INZICHTIRRIG SINGERSIERIG GINGERSINGER SINGERSCHIENE
SINGERSIERIG GINGERSINGER SINGERSCHIENE IRRSICHTSINGER
GINGERSINGER SINGERSCHIENE IRRSICHTSINGER SINGERSURINX
SINGERSCHIEME IRR3ICHTSINGER SINGERSURINX INSIXSINGUR
IRRSICHTSINOER SINGERSURINX INSIXSINGUR SINGERFISIS
singersurinx INSIXSINGER SINGERFISIS sissifusis

insixsingur SINGERFISIS SISSIFUSIS sissifusis
singerfisis SISSIFUSIS SISSIFUSIS sissifusis
sissif03is SISSIFUSIS SISSIFUSIS SISSIFUSIS
Beispiel 5
Xaprrmym KpoHec
rOBOPHE KOMn03HUHJE y My3HUH XX BEKA,

HA nPHMEPHMA H3 AyCTPHJE
Pe3hMe
OcmM y OKBHpy aaâH3Ma H3Met)y aBa CBeTCKa paTa, pa3HOBpcHH HaHH-

hh nOBe3HBaH>a je3Hica, rjiaca h My3HKe nojaBHjiH cy ce h y BOKajiHoj My3HUH
uie3aeceTHX h ceâMaeceTHX roaHHa XX Beica. Moryhe Hx je yoHHTH y acoun-
jaTHBHHM KOMaflHMa kojh CHMyjiHpajy parH>y 6e3 KopHiuheH>a ceMaHTHHKor je-
3HKa (Ha np. y AeanmypaMa "fieprja JlHrerHja h Ha cifenu KapjixajHua lllTOKxa-
y3eHa), Kao h y êjiHiua y KojHMa ce 3ByUH h MaTepHjajiH CTanajy, npn HeMy ce
CBecHO nocTHacy ancypflHH eêKTH (KarejiOBO JJpoKaeno no3opuiume hjih
lllTOKxay3eHOBH OpueuHcuiu), CBe jxo flajjaHCTHHKH HHcnHpHcaHHx ocTBapeH>a,
y KojHMa ce My3HHKe CTpyinype H3rpal)yjy nepMyraUHjoM je3HKa hjih cneuH-
janHO KOMnoHOBaHHM aceMaHTHHKHM TeKCTOBHMa y KojHMa ce yoHaBa npo;jop
recTyajiHOCTH h TeaTpajiHOCTH y My3HHKe CTpyinype (KarejiOBa AnazpaMa hjih
Tnoconanuja ^HTepa lllHe6ejia). CynpoTHO TOMe, HMa hckojihko KOMno3HUHja
y KojHMa tokobh rOBopa h je3HKa o6pa3yjy caMy My3HKy, TaKO ocTBapyjyhH
ayroHOMHy CTpyiaypy 3acHOBaHy Ha koMiio3hu,hoHOM MHuui>eH>y, Kao uito je
peajiH3OBaHO y AiKpa-Ojuezu I XaHca Orea hjih IllHe6ejiOBOM DT 31 6.
HHjcnaH aycTpnjcKH KOMno3HTop - ochM HaTypajiH3OBaHor AycTpH-
jamia T>epl)a JlHreTHja - HHje n.o caâ cnoMeHyr, Maaa cy aycTpHjcKH koMiio-
3htoph CTajiHO H3HOBa H3a3HBajiH Hytjetbe CBojHM HObhM KOHuenuHjaMa. Beh y
1920-hM roflHHaMa Payji XaycMaH je 6ho jeâH oa HajHanpe^HHjHX npcacTaB-
HHKa rOBopHHX KOMno3HuHja, ôk je EpHCT Tox 6ho 3HaHajaH 6opau 3a Taj
npaBau tokoM cjieflehe aeiieHHje. Flocjie 1965. rojiHHe 6eHKH KOMno3HTopH
Tepxapfl PyM h Oto M. U,HKaH, Kao h HaTypajiH3OBaHH BeHjiHja Ahccthc JIo-
roTeTHC, o6oraTHjiH cy My3HHKy cueHy MHOuitboM HObhx iweja Koje cy 3HaTHO
npouiHpHjie acaHp rOBopHHX KOMno3HuHja h MoaepHe My3HKe. y pajry ce aaje
nperjiea obhx ocTBapeH>a h yKa3yje Ha h>hxobc HMaHeHTHe CTpyicrype noisiohy
H3a6paHHX npHMepa.
STRUCTURE - MEANING AND IMPLEMENTATION
OF THE TERM IN THEORETICAL
AND 'MUSICAL' STRUCTURALISM
JELENA JANKOVIC
IN this paper I intend to explore the influence of the theoretical structur

alism (developed in the French culture during the sixth and seventh decade of
the twentieth century) on the composers of the time. Is it justified to interpret
the 'structural' procedures in high modernist music as evidences of musical
'structuralism'? This topic has recently been provoked by an interesting and
important book by Jelena Novak, entitled Divlja analiza (The Wild Analysis),1
in which she discusses different types of analysis of the twentieth century music
- formalistic, structuralistic and poststructuralistic. In the book she outlines the
philosophical movements of formalism, structuralism and poststructuralism and
discusses their implications in the field of musicology. Her observations about
the notion of structure and descriptions of 'musical structuralism' deserve par
ticular attention. Here, these two notions are going to be discussed in relation to
the contemporary works and autopoetic texts by Pierre Boulez (1925) and Ian
nis Xenakis (1922-2001) which seemed to be particularly interesting for this
discussion on musical structuralism, and for several reasons. Boulez and
Xenakis are among the most prominent composers of the epoque in which
structuralism florished, and they shared the same cultural framework with the
structuralists, being their compatriots. Furthermore, their poetic positions are
often interpreted as opposed to one another, since Boulez explored the possi
bilities of the serial technique and Xenakis was critical of serial music and was
one of the first exponents of the 'music of the masses'.2 Finally, both composers
1 J. Novak, Divlja analiza. Formalisticka, strukturalisticka i poststrukturalistiika razma-

tranja muzike [The Wild Analysis. Formalistic, Structuralistic and Poststructuralistic Considera
tions of Music], Edicija Muzika (Beograd: SKC, 2004).
- 'The musical thinking of Iannis Xenakis manifests itself with a true authonomy from all
existing systems, and especially from the serial system. [...] The determinism of the serialism
248 Jelena Jankovic
derived strong creative impulses from various non-musical fields, especially

from the field of science: Boulez from the mathematics, and Xenakis from
physics, mathematics, architecture, but also from ancient Greek philosophy,
astronomy etc.
1. Structuralism - Definitions
Structuralism appeared in academia for the first time in the nineteenth
century and then reappeared in the second half of the twentieth century, when it
grew to become one of the most popular approaches in academic fields con
cerned with the analysis of language, culture, and society. The work of
Ferdinand de Saussure concerning linguistics is generally considered to be a
starting point of twentieth century structuralism.3 The term 'structuralism' itself
appeared in the works of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss
(Anthropologic structurale, 1958), and gave rise, in France, to the 'structuralist
movement', which spurred the work of such thinkers as Michel Foucault, Louis
Althusser, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and others. Structuralism is closely
related to semiotics, developed by Charles Saunders Pierce simultaneously with
Saussure's semiology. Roland Barthes defines semiology as translinguistics,
which studies all semiotic systems which may be connected to language, ex
panding semiology to various forms of communication in culture (film, music,
theatre, fashion, gastronomy...).
In her book, Jelena Novak, summarises the most important features of
structuralism: first of all, it focuses on research of the cultural artefacts using the
methods of the contemporary linguistics, with an emphasis put on the pairs sig-
nifier-signified and synchrony-diachrony.4 Saussure's term sign (signe) referrs
to the whole, while he introduces terms signified (signifie) and signifier (signi-
fiant) for the notion and its accoustic expression. He claims that the combina
tion of the signifier and the signified is an arbitrary entity, and that the linguistic
sign is arbitrary because a supposed onthological and necessary relation be
tween the signifier and signified simply does not exist. However, Saussure says
that language must not be understood as a register of names arbitrarily chosen
and attributed to the sequence of notions because each language articulates and
seemed to him as one particular case of the more general logic the final border of which was the
pure hasard. In other words, Iannis Xenakis posed a principle of incertainty upon all composi
tional systems.' J.-Y. Bosseur, 'A propos de Pithoprakta (1955-56)', www.iannis-Xenakis.org/
bosseur.htm
3 His most influential book, published posthumously in 1916, is Cours de linguistique ge
nerale, C. Bally and A. Sechehaye (eds.), with the collaboration of A. Riedlinger (Lausanne and
Paris: Payot).
4 R. Bart [Roland Barthes], Knjizevnost, mitologija, semiologija [Literature, Mythology,
Semiology] (Beograd: Nolit, 1979), 151. Cf. Novak, Divlja analiza [The Wild Analysis], 73.
STRUCTURE - MEANING AND IMPLEMENTATION.. 249
organises the world in a different manner (that is the reason why the translation
from one language to another can never be literal).5
Differentiating the system of language from its real manifestation, Ferdi
nand de Saussure made a famous distinction between parole - speech and
langue - unspoken and unheard system of language which determines the
structure and meaning of a statement.6 Barthes says that langue and parole only
receive their full meaning in dialectical process which connects them: 'There is
no language without speech and there is no speech outside language'.7 Graham
argues that the hidden langue behind visible parole is not something that exists
independently from the language in use (i. e. the speech). Even though langue
may be different from concrete statements, it can nevertheless manifest itself in
these statements. Concerning the intellectual attractiveness of structuralism, it is
not unusual that the basic ideas of linguistic structuralism spread to other
spheres of research. The most important example is the anthropology developed
by Claude Levi-Strauss. His starting point is the idea that humans get to know
the world with the help of language. According to Levi-Strauss, 'the descrip
tions which are made 'for' the world and 'about' the world do not come
'from' the world but they are artificial models, constructs'.8
Here is how Levi-Strauss defines the object which is suitable for struc
turalistic analysis: 'An object is structured if it fullfills two conditions: that it
represents a system which reveals its internal cohesion, and that its cohesion,
which cannot be observed in an isolated system, is discovered through studying
of transformations which allow to recognize similar characteristics in seemingly
different systems.'9 Graham rightfully concludes that it is not difficult to see
how structuralism can spread its influence on other fields of art: two precondi
tions for existence of a structured system, as formulated by Levi-Strauss, do not
refer exclusively to language and it is possible to imagine other art forms, and
not just literature, as semantic systems, as structural conglomerates.
One of the basic structuralistic postulates is that every system, since it
consists of elements which are interdependent, is different from other systems
thanks to the unique interconnections of the elements that form its structure.10
From the structuralists' point of view, elements that form a structure do not
N. Ivanovic, Muzika i znakovi [Music and Signs] (Beograd: Zavod za udibenike i

nastavna sredstva, 2002), 36.
6 G. Grejam [Gordon Graham], Filozofija umetnosti. Uvod u estetiku [Philosophy of the
Arts; an Introduction to Aesthetics], preveo sa engleskog Z. Paunovic, Ars Theoria (Beograd:
CLIO, 2007), 214.
7 R. Bart, Knjizevnost, mitologija, semiologija [Literature, Mythology, Semiology], 289.
Cf. Ivanovic, Muzika i znakovi [Music and Signs], 68
8 J. Novak, Divlja analiza [The Wild Analysis], 73
9 Cf. G. Grejam, Filozofija umetnosti [Philosophy of the Arts], 215.
10 J. Novak, Divlja analiza [The Wild Analysis], 75.
250 Jelena Jankovic
have any meaning independently, but they get the meaning by forming relation
ships with other elements and by being different from them."
Jelena Novak takes an attitude that the music based on the principles of
dodecaphony, punctualism and integral serialism could be defined as musical
structuralism because it uses 'pre-compositional procedures'.12 Later she
explains that integral serialism and micropolyphony are characterized by musi
cal structuralism i. e. the shift from the process of construction of form to
wards the construction of structure.13 The author also quotes the opinion of
Dunja Dujmic that Anton Webern 'legalized' musical structuralism by saying
that the bearer of the meaning of the whole is its structure, instead of its
individual parts.14 However, Novak quotes on Gisele Brelet who says that 'in
all music, in all its aspects and on all levels, the musical activity [...] consists of
structuring of the sound matter'.15 Continuing in that direction she concludes
that structuralism in music is not limited to the fields of serial and dodeca
phonic music, but it covers a much broader area.16
2. Structure - Definitions
Drawing on Roland Barthes and Mukafovsky, Jelena Novak defines the
structure as a group of signs that form relationships of some sort and which are
determined by the law of unity, where every element contributes to the con
struction of a whole.17 According to Niksa Gligo, structure 'reflects itself in the
manner in which individual elements are organized to create some sort of a
whole'.18 However, the structures in music can be formed on many different
levels, and that is why Gligo says that it is not just languages of serialism and
dodecaphony which indicate structuralism in music - its field is potentially wider.
It seems to me that the most important and useful distinction that Jelena
Novak makes in the book Divlja analiza (The Wild Analysis) is the realization
that in music (or rather related to music) the notion of structure may have
two possible meanings, which are often confused - the 'colloquial' one and
the structuralistic interpretation. 'Colloquially' a structure is defined as a
'concrete relationship among several elements that build a whole or a system'.
The colloquial definition is often used in theory of music and it is very similar
"Ibid, 73.
Ibid. 88. See also M. Milin, 'Jelena Novak: Divlja analiza. Formalisticka, strukturalis-
ticka i poststrukturalisticka razmatranja muzike', Muzikologija. Casopis Muzikoloskog institute!
Srpske akademije nauka i umetnosti. 5 (2005), 410.
13 Novak, Divlja analiza [The Wild Analysis], 88.
14 Ibid, 90.
15 Ibid, 88.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid, 74-5.
18 Ibid, 79.
to the notion of musical form. According to Novak, the only difference is that,
when speaking about musical form, we tend to focus more on the whole, while
in case of musical structure we take a better look at the internal relationships of
its elements.19
On the other hand, the theoretical structuralistic definition suggests that the
notion of structure does not refer to the empirical reality of a piece of music,
but to the descriptive and interpretative models which are constructed for that
piece.20 According to that point of view, the musical structure is not inherent in the
work at question: we cannot identify it by analysing its sound phenomena and its
score. The structure is constructed for the piece; it consists of semiological models
which describe the piece. It is possible to say that, according to this type of
interpretation, the notion of structure refers to the particular sort of analysis
of musical pieces, and not to a certain musical style.21
This is similar to the dichotomy that Umberto Eco sees in the nature of
the structural model:22 it is both the operational process which makes possible
to observe various phenomena from the metalingustical point of view as semi-
otic systems (i. e. interpretative model), as well as the ontological reality
(structure as a whole which can be studied from various aspects). According to
Mukafovsky one of the most important features of a piece of art is its sign-
based nature. He observes a work of art as a very complex sign in which 'each
component and each part bear a partial meaning and merged together they cre
ate the whole meaning of the work'.23 The authors of the 'Czech circle' of struc
turalists claimed that the work of art should be understood as a sign or a struc
ture created of signs.24 Zoran Milutinovic says that in understanding a work of
art as a sign there are several immediate consequences for the study of art. First
19 Starting from the observation that the structuralists have often been 'accused of being
formalists', Claude Levi-Strauss pointed out to the differences between the notions of structure
and form, as well as structuralism and formalism, in his essay Structure and Form. Unlike for
malism, structuralism does not oppose concrete to the abstract and does not give merit to the lat
ter. A form is defined as something opposed to matter, whilst a structure does not have any con
tent that would be separated from it: the structure itself is the content, seen in the only logical
order. Cf: ibid, 77.
20 M. Suvakovic, Pojmovnik moderne i postmoderne likovne umetnosti od 1950 [A
Dictionary of Notions of Modern and Post-modern Visual Art and Theory after 1950] (Beograd -
Novi Sad: Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti - Prometej, 1999), 331.
21 Thus, the chapter of J. Novak's book called 'Strukturalizam u muzici' [Structuralism in
Music] deals with structuralistic interpretations of music.
" U. Eco, La Struttura assente, Milan, 1968. Cf. Ivanovic, Muzika i znakovi [Music and
Signs], 98.
23 J. Mukafovsky, Struktura, funkcija, znak, vrednost [Structure, Function, Sign, Value]
(Beograd: Nolit, 1 986), 2 1 0. Cf. Novak, Divlja analiza [The Wild Analysis], 76.
24 Cf. Z. Milutinovic, Susret na trecem mestu. Ogledi iz teorije i interpretacije [The Meet
ing at the Third Place. Essays in Theory and Interpretation], Edicija teorija (Beograd: Geopoetika,
2006), 119-20.
252 Jelena Jankovic
of all, it means that the study of material aspects of art is insufficient: we cannot
understand its meaning just by observing its internal organization. In addition, it
is necessary to have an insignt into the relationship between that organization
and the most general code in its background. The code should be understood as
the artistic tradition on the basis of which the work of art is perceived and which
'creates' that piece of art in the first place.25 This transition from study of
individual works to study of codes of art represents the transition from parole to
langue. The second consequence of understanding of a work of art as a sign is
study of the nature of the reality to which the sign refers. Mukafovsky says: a
work of art is an autonomous sign which is used as the mediator among mem
bers of the same collective. 'Autonomous' does not mean that it does not refer
to anything but that 'something' to what it refers is inconclusive. That 'some
thing' is the total context of social occurrences.26
Under the influence of Saussure and Barthes, art works are observed as
signs built according to structuralistic principles. It is believed that the meaning
of an art work is 'encoded' in its structure. For instance, Ruwet says that there is
a homology between the structure in music and the structure of reality and
experience, and he sees this homology as solution to the problem of meaning
in music.27 The basic assumption is that meaning and structure are con
nected. Therefore, if it is possible to find a syntactic or quasisyntactic structure,
it is also possible to determine the meaning which is encoded in it. In such
framework the existence of a syntactic structure serves as a proof that music is a
semiotic system. However, Scruton observes that Saussure's linguistics does not
give a convincing theory of syntax, nor does it provide an explanation of how
the syntactic structures 'bear' their meanings.28 For in natural language syntax
and semantics are firmly connected - syntactic composition of a sentence is ex
plained by its semantic aim. Or, in other words, the purpose of syntax in lan
guage is to articulate meaning.29 However, meaning of this sort does not exist in
musical systems, and it is possible to say that the 'syntax' in music is autorefer-
ential - its 'sentences', 'motives' and other constituents of the structure do not
have any external referents. This is obvious in most works of 'absolute' music,
while in case of vocal music (or 'programmatical' music) it is not easy to study
the musical content without relationship to the text (both explicit and implicit).30
P. Steiner, 'Jan MukaFovsky's Structural Aesthetics', in Structure, Sign, and Function.

Selected Essays ofJan Mukarovsky, J. Burbank, P. Steiner (eds.) (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1971), XVI. Cf. ibid, 121.
26 Ibid.
27 N. Ruwet, 'Methode d'analyse en musicologie'. Revue belge de musicologie, 20 (1996).
Cf. Ivanovic, Muzika i znakovi [Music and Signs], 99.
2t Ibid, 188.
29 Ibid, 189.
30 In her book J. Novak studies musical examples which are all 'referential': 1) pieces
composed by Webern, Part and Andriessen which contain the musical motif 'B-A-C-H', 2) works
3. Music as Language, Music as Text

It is a very complex endeavour to try and compare linguistical and musi
cal systems, and structuralistic literature in that field is extremely rich and di
verse. Here I will go briefly through some of the most characteristic points of
view. Levi-Strauss defines music as 'language minus meaning', explaining fur
ther that the 'significative function of music can never be explained verbally.'31
Lotman gives a typically structuralistic definition of art: 'Art can be described
as meta-language, and art works are texts written in that language'.32 According
to Gordon Graham, musical pieces and styles are often valued on the basis of
what they 'tell' us, and that is the reason why composers and performers use
such terminology.33 However, this does not mean automatically that music is a
form of communication - because it is possible that these terms ('statement',
'sentence', etc.) used in musical discourse may have different meanings than in
natural language. For instance, the term 'musical statement' is most often used
to denote a relatively simple exposition of central musical motif or theme which
serve as the starting point for further development of the piece.
Graham suggests that it is possible to imagine very complex representa
tional systems which are nevertheless far from 'natural language'. Their insuffi-
cience, according to Graham, can be described in the following way: they pos
sess vocabulary, but they do not possess grammar.34 He also claims that the
relationship between words and music is asymmetrical: words (libretto or ly
rics of a vocal piece, title, dedication or programme in programmatical music)
may resolve ambiguities concerning the 'meaning' of music; but if the words
are ambiguous in themselves, than their meaning can not be explained with mu
sic (later I will give some examples to ilustrate this comment). Graham con
cludes that music always follows the words, and never precedes them; music
alone cannot express meaning.35
Nada Ivanovic argues that certain compositional procedures in music
(such as exposition, repeating, relationship of equivalence etc.) have their par
allels in poetry; thus, music is closer to poetry than to natural language, despite
the fact that poetry is also based on natural language. However, what differs
poetry as an art form from everyday speech is predominantly its formal frame
work, i. e. its structure.36
of Berio and Cage based on texts by James Joyce, and 3) pieces inspired by the notion, sound or
mechanical structure of a train, composed by Poulenc and Glass.
31 Cf. J. Novak, Divlja analiza [The Wild Analysis], 85
32 Ibid, 75.
G. Grejam [Graham], Filozofija umetnosti [Philosophy of the Arts], 99.
34 Ibid, 105.
35 Ibid, 106.
lb N. Ivanovic, Muzika i znakovi [Music and Signs], 97.
254 Jelena Jankovic
Marcel Cobussen is among the authors who take the view that music can
be regarded as text, if we take into consideration the expanded concept of
text, the one that was defined by Derrida.37 Derrida says that 'There is nothing
outside the text'38, or: 'There is nothing before the text; there is no pretext that
is not already a text'.39 It means that 'every referent, all reality has the structure
of a differential trace, and that one cannot refer to this 'real' except in an inter
pretive experience'.40 According to Cobussen, music is in fact talkative, full of
virtual discourses; it is a system of signs inscribed in the play of differences.
Starting with Derrida's disseminated idea of text, Cobussen says that music can
be regarded as a text on three, interrelated, plateaus. First, the discursive institu
tions, constitutive orders of knowledge and power that identify music as art, as
culture, and as a 'social field' are textual. Second, the representation of music,
of listening to music, in language is (of course) textual. And third, music as
sound, music as a spatial, temporal, and sense event, is text.41
According to structuralist thinking, the meaning of a text is determined
by its inner order; a text is a closed order of signs. In contrast, Derrida takes the
view that its relations with other texts determine the meanings of a text; it is not
a closed order. Textuality is the open production of meanings. Derrida also re
alizes that within a structure, there is always a non-structure functioning at the
same time as well, 'something' which prevents the structure from closing up.
Cobussen thus concludes that music too is not a closed text.42
Graham points out to another important aspect of Derrida's critique of
structuralism.43 Structuralism was thought to represent the final split with
Platonism: while Platonism assumed that human language and the outside world
were two different and corresponding entities, structuralism claimed that the
37 M. Cobussen, 'Music is a Text' in Music and Deconstruction,

www.cobussen.com/proefschrinV100_outwork/120_music_is_a_text/music_is_a_text.htm
38 J. Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. G. Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore & London:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 158, cf. ibid.
39 J. Derrida, Dissemination, trans. B. Johnson (Chicago & London: Chicago University
Press, 1981), 328, cf. ibid.
wIbid.
*1 ,bid
42 Deriving on Julia Kristeva's notion of intertextuality, and in following with M. §u-
vakovic, Cobussen speaks of intermusicality. and sketches three possible meanings of intermusi-
cality: (a) A relation between 'extra-musical' (linguistic) texts and musical texts; (b) the relation
between a musical text and music as a cultural, historic institution; and (c) the exchanges, refer-
entialities, (dis)placements, inscriptions, or mutual coverings of two (or more) musical texts. In
particular, (b) and (c) point to the fact that there is no musical text that exists autonomously. A
musical text always exists only through its relationship with other musical texts, as well as with
other (artistic) texts in a cultural field. Ibid.
43 Graham relies upon Derrida's critique of structuralism as seen in the collection of es
says Writing and Difference. London, Routledge, 1990. Grejam [Graham], Filozofija umetnosti
[Philosophy of the Arts], 217.
reality was not some 'fixed' world but rather the reality of structures of
thoughts and the language itself. However, the problem arouse with the notion
of structure since it was still observed as an actual Platonian entity instead of
just a metaphore. Thus, 'contemporary structuralism is actually the affluent to
the most traditional current of Western philosophy'.44
4. Boulez and Xenakis

Several aspects of structuralists' thinking seem to be closely related to the
ideas and procedures that Boulez and Xenakis elaborated in their works, both
musical and theoretical. I would like to start with the postulate that in
structuralism a piece of art is observed as a closed system, in which all of its
parts are interdependent and they gravitate towards some sort of 'centre'.
According to Allan F. Moore,45 it was Gilbert Chase who noted a re-ori
entation in the mid twentieth century in many fields away from 'discretely de
terministic histories' towards studying 'classes of inter-related events', draw
ing citations from Levi-Strauss' Cultural Anthropology and Chomsky's Syntac
tic Structures, where the 'problem becomes one of modeling [sic] the structure
of the system, rather than measuring each component'.46 In Moore's opinion,
this is clearly true in the 'second wave of modernism' represented by the post
war serialism, in which systems are invented to logically pre-determine the
place of every sound (whether in works of Boulez or Babbitt, or even in antise-
rialism of Xenakis), rather than relying on inherited conventions of rhetoric and
expression.
The traces of the structuralists' point of view—but also the criticism of
it—can be observed in such theoretical works written by Boulez and Xenakis in
which the composers explore the balance between determination and indetermi-
nation in avant-garde compositional techniques. The idea of 'chance' is being
introduced in the rigidly controlled system of a piece, which is evident in the
'stochastic music' of Xenakis or the 'aleatorics' of Boulez.
Moore's principal thesis is that many crucial works of the post-war avant
garde are marked by the refusal of the mantle of compositional responsibility.
He quotes a well known example - the moment in the early and mid-1950s
when the compositional aesthetics of Pierre Boulez and John Cage ran nearly in
parallel. Already at the time it became a somewhat common observation that the
former's supremely rational processes, and the latter's supremely irrational ones,
44 Cf. ibid, 219.

45 A. F. Moore, 'Anachronism, responsibility and historical intension', Critical Musicol-
ogy Journal, A Virtual Journal on the Internet, www.leeds.ac.uk/music/info/critmus/articles/
1997/03/01.html
46 G. Chase, 'Structuralism and music: a preliminary overview' in Two lectures in the
form ofa pair (New York: Brooklyn College Department of Music, 1973), 23-4. Cf. ibid.
256 Jelena Jankovic
were producing equivalent aural results.47 In the Structures of Pierre Boulez,

written in 1951, the outcome of the piece is determined wholly by its pre-
compositional plan, a plan which applied a numerical programme to discrete
musical domains (that programme having been drawn impersonally from
Messiaen's Mode de valeurs et d'intensites for piano, 1949). According to
Moore, the programme, rather than the composer, produces the actual music
that we hear. This is probably the most important reason why Xenakis (who put
an emphasis on the overall sound result48 i. e. the sound-whole of the piece) ex
pressed his dissatisfaction with serialism.
For Cage, the programme (or, more usually, 'system') which produced the
work was the result of chance processes, whether radio station playlists in the
Imaginary Landscape no.4, or performer's freedom in later pieces. The parallel
between the aesthetics of Boulez and Cage, as focused on the relationship
between chance and control, was suggested by George Rochberg in 1 959, in his
insistence that total serialisation was, in practice, a chance process.49 This argu
ment rests on the observation that the composer who uses total serial procedures
does not anticipate each 'event' in all its individuality. Boulez confessed the
same thing in his text Alea: 'According to my experience, it is impossible to
predict all meandering and all surrealities of the initial material'.50 Thus, both
aesthetic positions represent a vesting of authority in an outside force, rather
than in the compositional process.
In his seminal text Alea Boulez, however, insists upon the fact that the
composer must accept responsibility for the piece - and that he must stay in
control of its development. Hence his attempt to 'enslave' the chance, to make it
an integral part of the compositional technique so that it can be 'absorbed' in the
system.51 Boulez says that chance may intervene on different levels of composi-
47 Several years later, Serbian composer Vladan Radovanovic explored this audible
parallelism between pre-composed (serial) and freely composed (atonal) segments of music in his
radiophonic musical work Sferoon (Spheroon, 1960-4/ 'I decided on this two-fold construction
out of the conviction that the application of a priori musical systems is not essential for the nature
of sound unless they are governed by the regulations agreed upon through the experience with
sound.' Vladan Radovanovic, Muzika sfera/Music ofSpheres, CD 1-2, PGP RTS (2005), 21
48 D. Stojanovic-NoviCic, 'Stvaranje kao radanje: tradicija i originalnost u delu Janisa
Ksenakisa' [Creation as Giving Birth: Tradition and Originality in the Opus of Iannis Xenakis] in
D. Golemovic (ed.) Covek i muzika. Medunarodni simpozijum [Man and Music. The International
Symposium], collection of papers, (Beograd, 2003), 425.
49 G. Rochberg: 'Indeterminacy in the new music' in The aesthetics ofsurvival (Ann Ar
bor: Michigan University Press, 1984). Others had of course pre-empted Rochberg's criticism,
most notably Iannis Xenakis' 'La crise de la musique serielle', Gravesaner Blatter no.l (1955).
Cf. ibid.
5(1 P. Boulez, 'Alea', Releves d'apprenti, Textes reunis et presented par Paule Thevenin,
Collection 'Tel Quel' (s. I: Editions du Seuil, 1964). 45. [Translated in: Novi zvuk, Izbor tekstova
o suvremenoj glazbi, Zagreb, 1972, 15-23.]
51 P. Boulez, 'Alea', 45.
tion: 1 ) on the level of performance - the composer can give some liberty to the
performers),52 2) on the level of 'play of the structures' and 3) within the struc
ture itself.53
In his study A propos de Pithoprakta (1955 - 56) Jean-Yves Bosseur
claims that Xenakis was equally interested in finding techniques to control the
chance within a piece - but he did that in an entirely different manner, using
stochastic probability formulas derived from the physics.54 'Actually, the densi
ties, the durations, the registers, the tempi etc. can be subordinated to the laws
of the numbers, with necessary approximations.'55 Based on the probabilistic
logic of organization, the musical writing pretends to have solved the problems
of continuity and discontinuity in musical compositions. Speaking about the
same piece, Dragana Stojanovic-Novicic says that 'Xenakis attempted to sym
bolise the movement of the molecules of gas - the movement which is a conse
quence of thermodinamic laws [...] In Pithoprakta, Xenakis reinterpreted the
theory of gases by observing the orchestra as a gas, and instruments individually
as molecules of that gas'.56 It seems obvious why these attempts to naturalize
compositional processes with methods and techniques of mathematics, physics
and other sciences were sometimes interpreted or identified as traces of struc
turalistic thinking in works of Boulez or Xenakis. For instance, Michel Foucault
wrote about many common traits and relationships between music and other
elements of culture 57 . He believed that these relationships were evident on sev
eral levels - firstly, in the relationship between music and technological changes
and developments.58 However, speaking about Xenakis, Pascal Dusapin59 right
fully observes what Boulez already admitted in Alea and other texts - that
neither composer would let mathematical or other 'scientific' laws rule their
This level of structural liberty and the role of the performer can be related to the
observation of Roland Barthes, who says that the performer is responsible for the production of
signifiers (such as tonality, rhythm, meter) for he is capable of 'relocating, regrouping, combin
ing, arranging, in one word, structuring (which is pretty different from constructing or recon
structing in classical sense).' R. Barthes, The Responsibility ofForms (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1985), 265. Cf. Novak, Divlja analiza [The Wild Analysis], 83.
53 P. Boulez, 'Alea', 45-9.
54 J.-Y. Bosseur, 'A propos de Pithoprakta (1955-56)'.
55 N. Matossian, Iannis Xenakis (Paris: Fayard/Sacem, 1981), 1 16-17.
56 D. Stojanovic-NoviCic, 'Stvaranje kao radanje' [Creation as Giving Birth], 426.
57 From the conversation between Foucault and Boulez see J. Rahn (ed.) 'Contemporary
Music and the Public', Perspective on Musical Aesthetics (New York and London: Nor-
ton&Company, 1994), 85. Cf. Novak, Divlja analiza [The Wild Analysis], 85.
58 It is interesting to note that both Boulez and Xenakis had studied sciences before they
became full-time composers: Boulez studied mathematics while Xenakis initially studied archi
tecture and engineering.
59 P. Dusapin, 'L' imagination au dessus', www.iannis-xenakis.org/dusapin.htm [Source:
Jean-Pierre Leonardini, Marie Collin et Josephine Markovits, Festival d'Automne a Paris 1972-
1982 (Paris : Ed. Messidor/Temps Actuels, 1982), 217-218.]
258 Jelena Jankovic
imagination. This is obvious in works such as Boulez's Le marteau sans maitre

in which serial technique is 'loosened' (in fact, it is only one of several compo
sitional techniques used in various movements of the piece)60 since it is subject
to musical instead of mathematical laws.
Another important question in this analysis would be the relationship
between music and text in works of Boulez and Xenakis. As I mentioned in the
previous chapter, this is a very complex problem and it can be studied from
many different aspects, as it is related not only to vocal and programmatical
pieces, but to the works of absolute music as well. Even works such as Struc
tures can be examined from that aspect, and this is probably one of the most
significant contributions of structuralism and its analytical methods to contem
porary theory of music.
The essays of Pierre Boulez Poesie - centre et absence - musique,61 Son
et verbe,62 Son, verbe, synthese61 and Dire, jouer, chanter64 represent the start
ing point for discussion on Boulez's relationship towards text in his vocal-in
strumental works. In these essays the composer developed his key assumption:
that by using the notion of structure, 'maybe the most typical expression or
our epoch'65 the complex process of interconnecting poetry and music, son et
verbe, can be explained most efficiently. The communication of words and mu
sic is established by means of esthetical or grammatical structure, on the
level of global form or syntax, or on the level of rhythm and sounds of words.66
Boulez observes that, starting from the end of the nineteenth century, important
literary currents have openly rezonated in esthetical spaces of the contemporary
music. He believes that these influences can be classified into either 'precise
and conscious' (i. e. grammatical)—which means that certain achievements
move from one form of expression to another, and they are subject to changes
which are necessary in translation—or 'more fluid, osmotic' (i. e. esthetical) -
in that case 'the relationship is much more complex and it wider in scope,
For full analysis of this work see: J. Jankovic, Le Marteau sans maitre Pjera Buleza -
neki aspekti kompozicione tehnike [Le Marteau sans maitre of Pierre Boulez - Some Aspects of
the Compositional Technique], unpublished B. A. paper (Beograd: Fakultet muziCke umetnosti,
1999).
61 Translated in English as 'Poetry - Centre and Absence - Music' in J. Nattiez (ed.). P.
Boulez, Orientations. Collected Writings, translated by M. Cooper (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1981), 183-98.
K 'Son et verbe' in Releves d'apprenti, 57-62. [Translated as 'Zvuk i rijeC', Zvuk. No.
124-25, 1972, 104-8.]
6 Translated in English as 'Sound, Word, Synthesis'. Boulez, Orientations, 177-82.
64 'Dire, jouer, chanter', published in La musique et ses problemes contemporains
1953/1963 (Julliard - Paris: Cahiers de la Compagnie Madelaine Renaud - Jean-Louis Barrault, s.
a.) Part of this article is translated in English and published as the preface to the score Le Marteau
sans maitre, Universal Edition, PH398 (pocket score), ISMN M-008-01526-7, IV-VI.
65 P. Boulez, 'Zvuk i rijeC' [Son et verbe], 105.
'* P. Boulez, 'Poetry - Centre and Absence - Music', 196.
starting from general structural discussions to common traits of a certain es-

thetical style.'67 To illustrate Boulez's approach to relationship between music
and text I am going to use his masterpiece Le Marteau sans maitre for alto and
six instruments (1953-55, rev. 1957) because many of his theoretical ideas
found their practical use in this work.68 The most interesting ideas that Boulez
explored in Le Marteau... are the following: 1) structure as a mediator between
text and music in a composition, 2) text as 'centre in absence' of music,69 3)
study of comprehensibility of the text used in a composition, i. e. the possibility
to understand its meaning when it is placed in a musical context, and 4) setting
words to music, translating the spoken language into singing (vocal part).
In his vocal-instrumental works composed during the 1940s and 1950s
Boulez used the poetry70 of French surrealist Rene Char.71 Boulez was attracted
to the 'condensed time' in Char's short poems,72 to his condensed and hermetic
verse the meaning of which is not immediately revealed since it is ehidden be
neath layers of metaphores. Boulez says: 'Music fulfills its function perfectly
when it connects itself to the means of expression which are not directly mean
ingful, or when it adjusts them to itself. Music gives unimaginable meaning to
that 'which lies beyond language', and at the same time language enriches the
sonority of music [...] that is why musicians always prefer the 'language' which
does not pose obstacles to purely musical communication.' 73 According to this
author, music communicates with the inconscious, and since the surrealists'
texts were 'dictated' by the inconscious, he establishes correspondance between
Char's poetry and music in his early vocal-instrumental works.
Another reason for Boulez's interest in the poetry of R. Char is his tech
nique called 'verbal archipelago'74 and which had a considerable influence on
composer's understanding of musical structure and consequently provided a
strong impulse for the innovative treatment of the formal aspect of Le Marteau
sans maitre. The notion of 'verbal arhipelago' stands for a poem which is not
67 P. Boulez, 'Zvuk i rijeC [Son et verbe], 105.

AK I studied this problem into detail in Le Marteau sans maitre Pjera Buleza [Le Marteau
sans maitre of Pierre Boulez].
69 P. Boulez, 'Zvuk i rijeC [Son et verbe], 106.
70 P. F. Stacey points to the important fact that all vocal-instrumental works of Pierre
Boulez are based od poetry, and not some other type of texts (prose, dramatic...); Peter F. Stacey,
Boulez and the Modern Concept (s. I: Aldershot, 1987), 53-70.
71 Char first cooperated with the group of surrealists, including Andre Breton and Paul
Eluard, and he explored the subconsciousness and dreams. His most famous work from that pe
riod is Le Marteau sans maitre (1934), the collection of surrealistic poems written between 1929
and 1934. All poems which Boulez uses in Le Marteau sans maitre (as well as in earlier cantatas)
originate from this famous collection. Later Char grew apart with the surrealists. See N. Trajkovic,
preface in R. Char, Arhipelag reel [The Verbal Archipelago] (KruSevac: Bagdala, 1964).
72 P. f. Stacey, Boulez and the Modern Concept, 56.
73 P. Boulez, 'Poetry - Centre and Absence - Music', 188.
74 P.f. Stacey, Boulez and the Modern Concept, 53-6.
260 Jelena Jankovic
narrative, linear, but it is shaped as a sequence of separate surrealistic poetic

images: the images in the poem can be compared to islands in an archipelago, it
is possible to go from one to another in any order and each time the result is the
different sum of experiences. The idea of archipelago can be used to arrange
poems in a cycle or to arrange poetic images or even individual words. Thus it
becomes clear where the 'grammatical' analogy between the structure of Char's
poems and the macrostructural level of Le Marteau sans maitre: Boulez ar
ranges the movements within the work according to the idea of archipelago.75
Individual mouvements in Le Marteau sans maitre represent 'images', their re
lationships are complex and they can be discussed on several levels (relation
ships of movements within each cycle, relationships between the movements
which stand next to one another, interrelations of cycles, interrelations of vocal-
instrumental and instrumental movements etc.) In this piece music is not only
'saturated' by the affective quality of poetry—the poetry also defines the inter
nal structure of music.
Formal aspects of Char's poetry also influenced the form of the vocal-in
strumental movements: for instance, in the first part of the movement No. 9, Bel
edifice, double, symmetrical structure of Char's poem determined the form of
the piece. I will agree with P. F. Stacey that in this movement the relationship
between lyrics and music is accomplished on the basis of structural corre
spondence which Boulez discussed in his earlier mentioned essays.76
In his essay 'Dire, jouer, chanter'77 Boulez discussed the role of the voice
as a mediator who 'introduces' text into music, as well as its relationship
towards instrumental parts in the score as exponents of purely musical structure.
In each vocal movement these relations are different and they lead to the grad
ual 'disappearance' of the text: in Bel edifice - double (No. 9), after the voice
says the final words of the poem, it merges with the instrumental ensemble and
continues to sing - without words, thus rejecting its own specific quality to ar
ticulate words. 'This idea is of great importance to me and I would describe it in
the following manner: the poem is the center of music, but at the same time it is
absent from the music...'78 In other words, the poem is the center of music be-
75 Le Marteau sans maitre consists of nine movements grouped in three smaller cycles:
they are formed around three vocal-instrumental movements based on three poems of the same
names: these are the movements No. 3, L 'Artisanat furieux. No. 5, Bel edifice et les pressenti-
ments and No. 6, Bourreaux de solitude. Each vocal-instrumental movement has got some sort of
musical 'comment': L'Artisanat furieux has prelude and postlude, both instrumental (Nos. 1 and
7), Bel edifice et les pressentiments has got one vocal-instrumental 'double' (No. 9), and Bour
reaux de solitude has got three instrumental coments (Nos. 2, 4 and 8). However, the vocal-in
strumental movements are not immediately followed by their comments (in fact, comments do not
come necessarily after the central movement of their respective cycles!)
76 P. F. Stacey, Boulez and the Modern Concept, 58.
77 P. Boulez, 'Dire, jouer, chanter', V.
nIbid.
cause it defines many structural characteristics of music; but at the same time it
is absent because it is not actually present in the majority of movements - and
even in the vocal movements there are long instrumental sections. P. Evans
rightfully concludes that 'instrumental comments actually take the same rela
tionship towards the lyrics as the vocal movements'.79
Composer is, naturally, interested in the question of vocal emission.
'Should we sing the poem, or recite it, or maybe just say it? This is the moment
when all vocal means come into play and the characteristics of emission deter
mine the future transmission, acceptance of the text...'80 Boulez thinks that sing
ing represents transfer of sonorities of poetic text into musical intervals and
rhythms which are different from the intervals and rhythms of speech: thus the
meaning of the text becomes strange and perverted, and its meaning unclear. 'A
good poem possesses its purest sonorities when it is recited...'81 Therefore, sing
ing cannot emphasise expressiveness of the poetic text - setting to music
changes the poem and adjusts it to specifically musical laws. How is it possible
to resolve the problem of 'incomprehensiveness' of a poem within a piece of
music? Boulez offers several answers in his essays: if you want to under
stand a text, read it or have it read to you! And in case when text and music
have already merged, the smartest solution is to be acquainted with the text in
advance. But... if you are interested in sonorities above everything else, then
choose to work with the text the meaning of which is not so important, or even
meaningless text, created of onomatopeia or imaginary words created specifi
cally to be incorporated in the musical context. Then you will not have to face
virtually insolluble contradictions...'82 This is another answer to the question
why Boulez thought that the poetry of Rene Char was so suitable to be set to
music: the meaning of Char's poetic images is not immediately revealed even
when reading the texts alone, and their sonorities represent a quality per se. To
quote on Boulez, 'such a poem does not resist to music, it invites music.'83
Speaking about the means of vocal expression, Boulez praises the innovative
work of Arnold Schoenberg84 and turns to Pierrot Lunaire (1912) as main
source of inspiration for the treatment of the vocal part. Another influence that
Boulez recognizes in 'Son et verbe' is Antonin Artaud85 and consequently the
theatrical conventions of the Far East.86
79 P. Evans: 'Music of the European Mainstream: 1940-1960', in Martin Cooper (ed.), The
New Oxford History ofMusic, X (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), 446.
80 P. Boulez, 'Zvuk i rijeC' [Son et verbe], 106
81 Ibid, 106.
82 Ibid, 107.
83 Cf. P. F. Stacey, Boulez and the Modern Concept, 57.
84 P. Boulez, 'Zvuk i rijeC'[Son et verbe], 106.
85 Ibid, 108. See also: Antonen Arto [Antonin Artaud], PozoriSte i njegov dvojnik [The
Theatre and its Double] (Beograd: Prosveta, 1971).
86 P. Boulez, 'Sound, Word, Synthesis', 180.
262 Jelena Jankovic
To conclude: in Le Marteau sans maitre Boulez was primarily concerned

with exploration of structural correspondances between music and text. The
poems of Rene Char, the 'centre in absence' of music, represented a starting
impulse for innovations in understanding of musical structure (in its colloquial
meaning, borrowed from theory of music). Boulez approaches structuralistic
thinking because he believes that the meaning of the work of art lies in its inner
organization, in its structure.
In his next major vocal work, Pli selon pli, Boulez turned to the 'enig
mas' of Stephane Mallarme. This was a turn, too, from construction to im
provisation: the work originated from two 'improvisations on Mallarme' that
Boulez wrote in 1957 while beginning two instrumental projects: his Third Pi
ano Sonata (1957-58) and the second book of Structures for two pianos (1961).
The observation of Paul Griffiths that both these instrumental works also have
their Mallarmean aspects seems of particular importance, for it proves yet again
that for Boulez poetic texts were predominantly a source of structural inspi
ration. In particular, Boulez was excited by the recent publication of the poet's
notes and drafts for a Book of manifold mutability, a collection of leaves and
dossiers that could be read in innumerable ways as a labyrinth of words. This
notion of form seemed to answer the needs of the new serial music as Boulez
saw them. Tonal music had been defined by a gravitational kind of harmony,
and therefore by linear form, urging towards the final cadence. Serial music, by
contrast, was 'a universe in perpetual expansion'. There was no endpoint, noth
ing to limit how and where the music took its course.87 The Third Sonata was
his first aleatoric piece and it is closely associated to his text Alea: the freedom
that is given to the interpreter in this work concerns the order of movements and
the internal arrangement of dialogue within each of the movements. The same
compositional procedure is used in the Structures H: it is controlled aleatorics,
in which the composer delegates only a small portion of his compositional re
sponsibility to the interpreter.
Speaking about structuralistic ideas in writings of Iannis Xenakis, several
ideas seem to be of particular importance. Unlike Boulez, Xenakis seems to
have been interested in the second possible meaning of the notion of structure -
i. e. structure as interpretative model for reality. He believes that our entire
experience is 'structured', that human beeings get to know the word
through interpretative models: 'First of all, what does it mean to 'imitate', to
express 'exclamation' if it is not within the syntax, the rules, the construction,
and the structure, no matter how primitive? These are already declarations [...]
of form, of structured perception of the environment [my bold], allowing a
man to be an object per se of some sort, while the nature and his environment
87 P. Griffiths, 'Pli selon pli', www2.deutschegrammophon.com/special/insighttext.htms?

ID=boulez-pliselonpli&DETAIL=l
are something in front of him and, as a consequence, what he sees is the imita
tion of what is perceived by his senses. I think that here it is possible to say that
the fact that a man was capable of imitating the sound of wind [...] shows that
he was able to construct, in a way that was maybe primitive, but already very
complex.'88 This is similar to Claude Levi-Strauss' earlier quoted statement that
humans learn about the world with the help of language, and that the descrip
tions which are made 'for' the world and 'about' the world do not come 'from'
the world but they are artificial models, constructs. Also, it corresponds to Su-
vakovic's definition of structuralism as a theoretical approach to studying of
nature and culture with the help of synchronic structural schemes.89
In the same book, Iannis Xenakis says that music is a cultural phenome
non, even though it is immediately subordinated to the history. It is possible to
differentiate the segments which are more stable than the others and which
represent the permanent and consistent material remains of different periods of
civilisations. 'But what is the essence that these materials are made of? This
essence is the human intelligence, in a solidified form. It seems to me that
music and arts in general represent solidification, materialisation of the
intelligence. [...] The intelligence [...] is, in fact, the result, the expression of the
billions of exchanges, of reactions, of energetic transformations of the cells of
the brain and the body'.90 Further on, Xenakis says: '[...] it is evident and indis
pensable that the artist, and consequentially the art, must be at the same time
rational (inferentiel), technical (experimental) and tallented (revelateur); these
are three necessary modes and combined they are used to avoid making fatal
mistakes [...]'.1 These sentences remind me of Ruwet's earlier mentioned idea
of homology between structure in music and structure of reality and experience.
I believe that this 'credo' of Xenakis summarizes better than anything else the real
range of impact that the structuralistic thinking had on the avantgarde composers of
the period: it is 'safe' to say that the composers expressed in their music and their
writings sensitiveness to the general cultural, scientific and social movement
(fashion) of their time. As Xenakis put it, music is probably the most condensatory
of all arts - it may not be 'meaningful' or discoursive in the same way as the verbal
language, but nevertheless it guards and preserves the sediments of human spirit.
Thus, it is possible to speak about musical structuralism as one specific
manifestation of the philosophical movement, but always having in mind
terminological confusion resulting from different natures of each art as well as from
the specificities (historical and institutional) of their discourses.
Published as: I. Xenakis, O. Messiaen, M. Ragon, O. Revault d'Allonnes, M. Serres, B.

Teyssedre, Arts/sciences. Alliages (s. 1: Casterman, 1979), 49-50.
89 M. Suvakovic, Pojmovnik moderne i postmoderne likovne umetnosti od 1950 [A Dic
tionary' of Notions of Modern and Post-modern Visual Art and Theory after 1950], 331.
90 I. Xenakis et al., Arts/sciences. Alliages, 11-12.
91 Ibid, 17.
264 Jelena Jankovic
Jenena Jawcoeuh
CTPYKTYPA - 3HAHEBA H YIIOTPEEE

TEPMHHA y TEOPHJCKOM H „MY3KlIKOM"
CTpyKTypAjIH3My
Pe3HMe
OchobHO nHTaH>e nocTaBjbeHO y paay - y Kojoj MepH cy OAjiHKe TeopHj-

cKor CTpyicrypajiH3Ma, pa3BHjaHor y (J)paHuycKoj KyjnypH tokoM 50-hx h 60-
hx roaHHa XX Beica, ynmajie Ha My3HHKe CTBapaoue - HHje HObo, ann npOBo-
unpa HOBe oarOBope. J\a jih je cioioHOct bhcokhx MoaepHHCTa Ka „CTpyKTypaji-
HOM" KOMno3HUHOHOM nocTynicy 3aHCTa flOKa3 „CTpyinypajiH3Ma" y My3HUH?
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Tpa^cHjia caM y KOMno3HUHjaMa h ayronoeTHHKHM TeKCTOBHMa HCTaKHyTHx
npeaCTaBHHKa BHCOKor MOaepHH3Ma y My3HUH - Iljepa Byjie3a h JaHHca Kce-
HaKHca.
MODERNISM IN GERMANY AFTER 1968
KAGEL, RIHM AND LACHENMANN
ALASTAIR WILLIAMS
FROM 1946 to the mid-1960s, West Germany was an international centre

for avant-gardism in music, offering it institutional support through festivals
and radio stations. After the first post-war cultural phase, which lasted until
about 1 968, much of the institutional support for new music remained in place,
but the discourses and practices of art music in Germany, as elsewhere, became
more fragmented. With its strong socio-political resonances, 1968 offers an in
teresting transitional point. It covers the end of the first wave of post-war ex- 1
perimentation, exemplified by Stockhausen, which in many ways tried to shut
out the past. And yet, it also marks the start of a social shift that led to music in
Germany becoming more historically reflective, as composers sought to write
music that connected with this nation's illustrious cultural past. This transfor- _J
mation, which affected many established composers, stemmed partly from frus
tration with a blinkered belief in the progress of technology and knowledge, and
partly from a reaction against the previous generation's disdain for tradition.
Mauricio Kagel is an interesting figure through which to observe this
shift in perspective, partly because he was a major figure before and after 1968,
and partly because, having been born and educated in Argentina, he retained a
certain detachment from the European canon. The score of his Ludwig van
(1970) was assembled from close-up shots taken in a specially constructed
Beethoven House, in which the walls and furniture of the music room were
plastered with fragments of Beethoven's scores; these excerpts, the composer
indicated, can be played in any order. This music room features in a scene from
a much longer film entitled LUDWIG VAN (\969), which engages more widely
with the institutionalization of Beethoven. Unlike the score, the film contains
substantial excerpts from Beethoven's oeuvre, but Kagel reorchestrated many of
these in order to remove the gloss of professional recordings.
266 Alastair Williams
LUDWIG VAN is an important transitional work because, on the one

hand, it embodies, by means of irony aimed at a dominant institutionalization of
the composer, the aesthetic of an avant garde wary of the past; on the other
hand, it acknowledges, through creative montage, that the past offers a reposi
tory of meanings that can be actively engaged. With a decline in the cultural
supremacy of classical music, the possibilities for reinterpretation suggested by
this score are now, perhaps, more valuable than its transgressions. Indeed, it is
only fair to point out that Kagel himself has recognized the changed circum
stances in which classical music exists by means of more reverential, though
still critical, encounters with the past, as his Sankt-Bach-Passion (1985) demon
strates. Again engaging with reception history, it is the life of Bach that the Pas
sion unfolds, with Bach himself appearing as a speaker.1 What remains consis
tent across the years that separate the Sankt-Bach-Passion from LUDWIG VAN
is the idea of new music drawing upon the hermeneutic strategies of older music
as a creative resource.
In fact, a range of music stemming from Germany in the 1 970s and 1 980s
struck up dialogues with the past, and it is to such music that I want to turn now,
with regard to the two most influential German composers at the end of the
"\ twentieth century: Helmut Lachenmann (1935) and Wolfgang Rihm (1952).
Because the aesthetic of inclusion associated with Rihm and his contemporaries
serves as a way of holding the established post-war avant gardes at arm's
length, it does not, at first hearing, seem compatible with Lachenmann's seri
ally-influenced resistance to traditional means of expression. And yet, Lachen
mann's emphasis on the physicality of sounds, the ways in which they are pro
duced and what he calls 'broken magic' (something that disrupts the system) is
not commensurate with a serialism's formalist preoccupations. Moreover, even
though Rihm does not generally deploy extended techniques, he shares with
Lachenmann an interest in presenting musical objects in unconventional ways.
The tension ingrained in Lachenmann's music is that its frustration of
conventional expectations leaves the listener somewhat disoriented, and yet it is
precisely this lack of familiarity that creates the potential for sonorities to im
pact directly on the ear. This dichotomy was preserved when Lachenmann
chose to extend the semantic range of his music by applying techniques of de-
familiarization not only to musical materials, but also, in his own, oblique, way,
to existing music. Such referentiality is especially evident in three orchestral
scores. Accanto (1975/76), for clarinettist and orchestra, includes a recording of
Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, which plays subliminally throughout the piece,
occasionally emerging in unexpected ways. Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied
(1979/80), for orchestra and amplified string quartet, includes Haydn's Em-
1 For a recent illuminating study of Kagel, the first to appear in English, see Bjorn Heile,
The Music of Mauricio Kagel (Aldershot. Ashgate: 2006)
MODERNISM IN GERMANY AFTER 1968.. 267
peror 's Hymn, which eventually became Deutschland über alles, along with a
range of mostly baroque dance forms in barely recognizable guises. Finally, the
score on which I intend to dwell, Staub (1985/87), for orchestra, evokes Beet
hoven's Ninth Symphony, no less.
As one might expect, it is not immediately obvious that Staub engages
with the Ninth; in fact, the circumstances relating to the genesis of this work
very much contribute to its meaning. It was commissioned by the SWF Baden-
Baden symphony orchestra, which has a good track record for playing new mu
sic, as a prologue to the Ninth, to be performed at a concert in 1986 celebrating
the orchestra's 40th anniversary. With Lachenmann already an established fig
ure at this time, the nature of the music he was likely to compose was beyond
doubt; nevertheless, the eminence of its composer did not deter the orchestral
manager from cancelling the premiere of this score. Why this happened is ex
plained in the title of an interview with Lachenmann on this topic: 'Not with
Beethoven, and not in front of Späth' (the Baden-Baden federal minister at the
time).2
Despite this unpropitious start in life, the work's Beethovenian context
remains, not least in the title, dust, which, as Lachenmann 's programme note
indicates, signifies an accumulated temporal deposit.3 Approaching the Ninth,
reverently, as a quarry, the composer suggests that we stumble over the rubble
of the expressive formulae that surround us, which become more or less unrec
ognizable components of a perception field. Hence Largo cantilenas, pulsations
and bare intervals are transformed for a listener who has overcome, but not for
gotten, his or her philharmonic attachment.
Some specific allusions are to be found in the score, although these
prompts are unlikely to be heard by an audience—even one familiar with the
Ninth. At bars 194-6, a skeletal reference to the concluding phrase of the first
subject is penned in beneath the percussion parts, as a way of showing the con
ductor, presumably, how this rhythm is to be picked out in the wind and percus
sion. Likewise, bars 203-4 contain a comparable reference to the 'Ode to Joy'
theme, which is used to determine the rhythmic onsets, some of which are heard
as string clusters, across the whole orchestra. Perhaps the initial point of orien
tation for an audience, during a live performance, is that, with the exception of
some extra percussion, Staub uses Beethoven's orchestra. Other signals include
the prominent timpani part, perhaps suggestive of the Scherzo; the tonal chords
that are occasionally to be heard emerging through gaps in the ensemble; and
- H. Lachenmann, 'Nicht mit Beethoven und nicht vor Späth', in Musik als existentielle
Erfahrung, Josef Hausler (ed.) (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Hartel, 1996), 186-90. For more on
Staub and this interview, see Richard Toop, 'Concept and Context: A Historiography Consid
eration of Lachenmann 's Orchestral Works', Contemporary Music Review, 23/3+4 (2004), 138-9.
3 H. Lachenmann, 'Staub. Fur Orchester ( 1 985/87)', in Musik als existentielle Erfahrung, 398.
the use of sustained pedals and tremolandi, perhaps suggestive of Beethoven's

famous opening texture.4
Lachenmann's extended techniques and non-pitched sounds undoubtedly
make the symphonic gestures unfamiliar; presumably, this is what he means
when he says that, in the context of the Beethoven, this is 'Nicht-Musik'.5
Nevertheless, as befits a student of Nono, the composer is sensitive to the his
torical nature of the material deployed. Indeed, the score plays on a tension
between tonal and symphonic allusions being understood, on the one hand, as
dispersed traditional elements, and being interpreted, on the other hand, as
sound objects because they are not organized in the conventional manner. How
ever, the rubble moves in two directions, one might say: not only do we hear
muffled resonances of Beethoven in Staub, but we also become attuned to the
precursors of Lachenmann's sound objects in Beethoven's symphonic gestures.
Because this music refutes a certain reception history of Beethoven, along
with many of the values upon which the masterpiece culture is built, it is very
much part of the ongoing debate about what Beethoven's vision of human val
ues offers to modern society.6 Staub keeps alive the utopian dimension of the
Ninth—though without making universalizing claims—because Lachenmann's
modernist refusal of habit and his attenuation of perception encourage listeners
to become aware of the processes by which they attribute meaning to music.
In different ways, such processes also lie at the heart of Wolfgang Rihm's
approach to a range of traditional resources, because this inclusivity seeks a de
gree of estrangement from its materials. For Rihm, it is not merely a case of
taking stable techniques from the past and rendering them unstable, but of re
sponding creatively to an already present instability, especially in an Austro-
German context. I intend to pursue this topic by focusing mainly on Rihm's
earlier vocal settings, in which the aesthetic of inclusion is frequently linked to
the theme of mental illness.
Neue Alexanderlieder: fiinf Gedichte von Ernst Herbeck (1979), for
baritone and piano, were written during the year (1979) in which Rihm's cham
ber opera Jakob Lenz (completed in 1978) premiered, and were dedicated to
Richard Salter, who sang the part of Lenz, as well as subsequently taking prin
cipal roles in Rihm's later music theatre pieces. It is certainly not hard to make
the transition from Lenz, a figure who cannot find social acceptance, to Rihm's
invocation of the deranged sentiments of Herbeck, in a cycle in which we find
4 For a more detailed study of Staub, see R. Nonnenmann, 'Beethoven und Helmut La-
chenmanns "Staub" fur Orchester (1985/87)', frogmen: Beitrage. Meinungen und Analysen zur
neuen Musik, 33 (2000), 4-3 1 .
5 H. Lachenmann, 'Staub. Fur Orchester (1985/87)', in Musik als existentielle Erfahrung, 398.
6 Elsewhere, I indicated that the visionary dimension of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is
not defunct, even if it now functions at a less generalized level. A. Williams, Constructing Musi-
cology (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 131-9.
MODERNISM IN GERMANY AFTER 1968.. 269
allusions to the romantic Lied fused with enactments of mental instability. The
title of the cycle is explained by the fact that Ernst Herbeck (1920-91), who was
diagnosed as a schizophrenic and spent much of his life in mental hospitals,
published his best-known poetry under the pseudonym 'Alexander'. The open
ing song of Rihm's setting, 'Die Frau in Mir', brings out the disconnected
qualities of Herbeck's verse by resorting to passages of extreme range and dy
namics that are not implied by the preceding music. Not only does this device
serve to alienate tonal harmony, it also manages to skew the strongly unifying
tendencies of the repeated motif that Rihm deploys. The second song, 'Der
Herbst', enables Rihm to engage with a tradition of hunting motifs, which are
duly shattered by tremolandi marked 'with more terrible power'.
The third song, 'Ich mag euch alle nicht' (1 don't like the lot of you')
opens with a strongly tonal, Schubertian, rippling accompaniment, suggestive of
well being, that grates with the misanthropic sentiments of the words.
Your're so annoying I
don't like the lot of you.
You're so stupefying.
If only you would go away
from me. I would be
happy about it.
This incongruity assumes another dimension when the song's accompa
nying pattern turns to pounding Eb-minor chords, at bar 31, which function
more as somatic gestures than as tonal symbols. (The most extreme example of
this effect in Rihm's output is found in Klavierstück nr. 7, a score composed the
following year, in which the frenzied repetition of an Eb-major chord serves to
create the most 'dissonant' passage in the music.)
The opening of this song shows that sometimes Rihm's tonal references
signify the past in a very connected way, while the conclusion demonstrates that
at other times they function as intensities, detached from a structural or histori
cal context. In other words, this song transforms the former tendency into the
latter: the broken triadic accompanying figures that are redolent of the past be
come the Eb-minor chords that offer intensity without tonal meaning. What this
amounts to is that Rihm manages to juxtapose modernist anxiety, alienation and
fragmentation with the rootless intensity of postmodernist culture, as described
by Fredric Jameson. It is the ambiguity of jostling old-style anxiety alongside
new-style intensity, of mixing of inner subjectivity with semiotic codes, that
enables this music to reconfigure the components of self in unexpected ways.
Kagel engages with Beethoven as an institution; Lachenmann also in
vokes a reception history, albeit one reduced to rubble, while Rihm extends the j
semiotic possibilites of established practices in ways that are not generally hos-
tile to the values they embody. These practices suggest ways of releasing new
latencies from the past, in a manner not envisaged by the post-war avant gardes,
by loosening established practices so that we encounter them in unexpected
configurations. Partly through the disruption of existing practices, Lachenmann
and Rihm contribute to a larger search for a critical language capable of under
standing the past in terms of the present. They also contribute to the larger cul
tural project of bringing the more abstract procedures of modernity into contact
with heightened, self-reflexive forms of perception. To engage the play of past
and present, of procedure and immediacy, is to shape the cultural experience of
modernity.
Anecmep BwiujoMc
MO/TEPHH3AM Y HEMAHKOJ nOCJIE

1968. rO/JHHE: KArEJl, PHM H J1AXEHMAH
Pe3hMe
On 1946. a.o cpe,aHHe 1960-hx roaHHa 3ana^Ha HeMaHica je 6Hjia HHTep-

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apuiKy npeKO (J)ecTHBajia h paflHO CTaHHUa. riocne npBe nocjiepaTHe KyjiTypHe
(ba3e, Koja je Tpajajia no oko 1968, BehHHa HHtbpacTpyioype je ocTajia TaMO nie
je 6Hjia, anH .HHcKypcH h npaKce yMeTHHHKe My3HKe y HeMaHKoj, Kao h jxpyrne,
nocTane cy (bparMeHTapHHje. CBojHM jaKHM couHO-nojiHTHHKHM pe3OHaHuaMa,
roaHHa 1968. Hyan HHTepecaHTHy TpaH3HUHjcKy TaHicy. OHa noKpHBa icpaj np-
Bor Tanaca nocjiepaTHor eKcnepHMeHTHcan>a, Kaaa ce tokhjio o^6aUHBaH>y
npouijiocTH (ranHHHO 3a to BpeMe je LUToKxay3eHOBO aejiOBaite). Ta roaHHa
HCTOBpeMeHO O3HaHaBa noHeTaK coUHjanHe npoineHe Koja je BOaHjia Ka Behoj
HCTOpHjcKOj peCDJieKCHBHOCTH My3HKe y HeMaHKOj, jep Cy KOMI1O3HTOpH TeHCH-
jih CTBapaH>y My3HKe Koja 6h noHOBO ycnocTaBHjia Be3y ca cnaBHOM KyjiTyp-
HOM npoiujiomhy OBe HaUHje. Taj npeoSpaacaj, KojH je ocTaBHO Tpara Ha aejiH-
Ma MHorHX eTa6jiHpaHHx KOMno3HTopa, ^cjiHMHmHO je H3a3BaH (bpycTpaUHjaMa
36or paHHje npeBejiHKe Bepe y nporpec TexHOjiorHje h 3HaH>a, a aejiHMHHHO pe-
aKUHjaMa Ha npe3np TpaaHUHj'e koa npeTxoaHe reHepaUHj'e. Y oboM paay ce
pa3MaTpajy aejia Jlydeue eaH (1969) MaypnUHja Karejia, Ylpaiuuna (1985/87)
XejiMyra JlaxeHMaHa h Hoee AneKcandpoee nec.ue: nem neca.ua Epncma Xep-
6eKa (1979) BojKbraHra PHMa.
ECHOES OF MODERNISM IN ROCK MUSIC
OF THE LATE SIXTIES AND EARLY SEVENTIES.
THE INFLUENCE OF KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN
ON EARLY WORKS OF THE GERMAN GROUP CAN
DRAGANA JEREMIC-MOLNAR and ALEKSANDAR MOLNAR
TWO years after the completion of Darmstadt international Ferienkurse

which gave birth to the first two collective works, Ensemble (summer 1 967) and
Musik fur ein Haus (summer 1968), Karlheinz Stockhausen proudly announced
that his new teaching of collective composing had started to spread tremen
dously, thanks to the efforts of his former students and collaborators:
'The collective composition Ensemble of my Darmstadt seminar in 1967
- realized by 12 composers, 12 instrumentalists and 4 sound producers - found
adherence a long time ago: from Smolence to the Dutch Opera Community [...]
New groups were later formed by the former assistants or students such as Hugh
Davies (The gentle fire), Roger Smalley ( Intermodulation '), Cornelius Cardew
(Scratch orchestra) in London; David Johnson in Cologne, together with Holger
Schiiring (experimental 'pop music')'.1
Contrary to his usual underestimation of pop(ular) music, expressed on
many earlier (as well as later) occasions, Stockhausen in 1970 was willing to
accept the possibility that a mixture such as 'experimental pop-music' seemed
to be conceivable, if not desirable. By mentioning it in the context of the further
development of one of his compositional principles, Stockhausen admitted that
'pop-music' was not hopelessly vulgar 'bodily music', which primarily ap
pealed to the 'animal' in men, but one of the legitimate branches of music, in
which some of his disciples could explore and, more importantly, apply the
newly gained techniques of collective composing.
1 K. Stockhausen, 'Kriterien (1970)', in Texte zur Musik 1963-1970. Band 3: Einflihrun-

gen und Projekte. Kurse, Sendungen, Standpunkte, Nebennoten (Koln: Verlag M. DuMont
Schauberg, 1971), 222.
272 Dragana Jeremic-Molnar and Aleksandar Molnar
The main reason for the change in Stockhausen's attitude towards 'pop-
music' was probably his high respect for David C. Johnson, who was at the time
an independent collaborator at the Electronic Studio of West German Radio.
There he assisted Karlheinz Stockhausen with the production of his electronic
work Hymnen and also operated the live-electronics in the first performances of
the chamber-orchestra version of Stockhausen's Mixtur (1967). What is even
more important, Johnson was the instructor of electronic music both on the Co
logne and Darmstadt courses, organized by Stockhausen. He also played in the
ensembles that performed Ensemble on 29 August 1967 and Musikfur ein Haus
on 1 September 1968 for the first time. However, Stockhausen did not know
that at the time he was happily announcing the beginnings of the 'experimental
pop-music' project in Cologne, David C. Johnson was no longer part of it. He
departed in early 1969, disappointed with the fact that the music composed and
played by the newly formed group, which would later be known as Can, was
falling increasingly under the influence of rock.
Another disciple of Stockhausen's and the co-founder of the group Can,
Holger Schuring (later known as Holger Czukay), turned out to be more impor
tant and more persistent in the efforts to create and perform 'experimental pop-
music'. Czukay was among the oldest students of Stokchausen. He took part in
the first three Cologne Courses of New Music (first from 1 October - 20 De
cember 1963; second from 1 October 1964 - 31 March 1965; third form 1 Oc
tober 1965 - 1 April 1966). On the second and third Courses he became ac
quainted with Stockhausen's new student David C. Johnson, and on the third
Course both of them got the opportunity to meet Irmin Schmidt, another co-
founder of the group Can whom Stockhausen would overlook in his announce
ment of 'experimental pop-music', quoted at the beginning of this paper. During
his studies in Cologne, Czukay achieved some success as a composer. Stock
hausen arranged the performance of his student's independent work Paare fur
einen Schlagzeuger on 27 February 1967, and two years earlier (on 18 March
1965) he organized the performance of Henri a quatre, the first collective com
position in whose creation Czukay had participated, together with his colleagues
from the Cologne Courses for New Music: Attilio Filieri, Gonzalo de Olavide
and Ivan Cherepnin.
In spite of his original enthusiasm for the Cologne 'experimental pop-
music' project, Karlheinz Stockhausen remained untouched by the later musical
developments made by the group Can. Furthermore, he was reluctant to take
credit for inspiring the music of Can (or any other German, so-called 'Kraut-
rock' group) and never praised any of its compositions or members. It was in
1997, during a conversation with the contributor of the journal Die Zeit, when
made to comment on one of the most experimental compositions of Can,
Aumgn, that Stokhausen diplomatically avoided saying anything decisively
positive or negative about it. As Holger Czukay later correctly observed, it was
ECHOES OF MODERNISM IN ROCK MUSIC. 273
impossible for him to 'make the leap into the musical hereafter [musikalisches
JenseitsY'•
As time passed, musical links between Stockhausen and the group Can
seemed to become more and more controversial, even to Holger Czukay. On
one occasion Czukay admitted that, considering his importance for the forming
of the group, Stockhausen represented a father figure to the members of Can?
Nevertheless, from the very moment of their foundation, they had committed
'patricide', by 'cursing him and playing rock' music.4 On another occasion
Czukay tried to be more specific in explaining this troublesome relationship
with Stockhausen: 'We never combined Karlheinz Stockhausen with rock mu
sic. In the first place, we forgot everything that we learned with him and just let
things happened'.5
At first impression, Czukay's words sound convincing. For Stockahusen,
as for all other avant-garde composers in the sixties, powerful 'beat', simple
melodic lines and conventional harmonies were all - as Reginald Smith Brindle
correctly observed - 'anathema'.6 All members of Can were reluctant to make
any further experiments in atonality, nonmetric or arhythmic music, and, in
stead, opened themselves to the influences of the beat music. This path led them
to the creation of music which didn't have overt similarities with any of the
compositions Stockhausen had composed at that time or earlier.
However, this is not the whole truth. At the time the group Can was
formed, Stockhausen was passing from one to another phase of his conceptual
artistic work: from a polyphonic world-music concept (developed for the com
positions Telemusik, Hymnen and Kurzwelleri) to an intuitive music concept
(developed for the textual pieces Aus den sieben Tagen, Fur kommende Zeiten
and Musikfur ein Haus). As we shall see later, both concepts played a substan
tial role in the music Can made in the late sixties and early seventies.
The first concept could be summarized in four basic principles:

1 . World-music ought to be performed by four or five performers only;7
2 W. Kampmann, 'Sanger aus dem Ather. Interview Holger Czukay', in Hildegard

Schmidt and Wolf Kampmann (eds.), Can Box: Book (MEDIUM Music Books, 1998), 141.
3 'If the man had not existed, there would have be no Can'. Quated after M. Pilz, 'Die
Disco ist ein Ort fttr junge Spießer', Welt, 1 1 July (2003), www.welt.de/printwelt/article245584.
"Ibid.
5 Kampmann, 'Sänger aus dem Ather. Interview Holger Czukay', 136.
6 'Jazz and pop have one characteristic which makes them almost incompatible with
avant-garde music - they are based on powerful 'beat', which is just what avant-garde composers
want to avoid. At the same time they both have simple melodic lines and conventional harmonies,
which again are anathema to the radicals'. R. Smith Brindle, New Music. The Avant-Garde since
1945 (Oxford University Press, 1988), 138.
7 Karlheinz Stockhausen, 'Questions and answers on Intuitive Music', www.stockhausen.
org/intuitive_ music.html ( 1 97 1 ).
2. Although, generally speaking, 'it is best if the players know each other
well', one should try 'by all means' to work with musicians who have a com
pletely different musical background;8
3. The real world-music is only the music which is unrestrictedly based
on 'polyphony of styles, times, and areas';9 and
4. In spite of the openness of the form developed for 'polyphony of
styles, times, and areas', world-music is striving for the equilibrium of com
posed 'determinism' and 'indeterminism' left to the performers for the sake of
improvisation.10
The first two principles of the polyphonic world-music concept were still
valid for the intuitive music concept, but not as important as before - due to the
fact that the first text piece ever performed (Musikfiir ein Haus) was played by
twelve performers with approximately the same musical background." There
fore, the intuitive music concept, developed for the first time in May 1968 for
the collection of textual pieces Aus den sieben Tagen, was founded on four
completely new basic principles:
1 . Intuitive music is new music - music never heard before - because it is
determined exclusively by the 'universal consciousness', shared by all human
beings, but accessible only to the enlightened few;
2. Intuitive music is styleless, timeless and comes from the inner (sacred)
areas of the human mind and not from the outer (profane) areas of the Globe;
3. There are no compositions of intuitive music stricto sensu; there are
only text pieces, i. e. verbal guides for the performers who should, by playing in
concert, bring themselves, as well as the audience, to the higher levels of 'uni
versal consciousness'; and
4. The ultimate consequence of the intuitive music concept is that it
abolishes division between the composer and the performer and establishes
members of the performing ensemble as equal participants in the collective act
of spontaneous creation. Stockhausen was always at pains to admit and accept
this consequence, reserving for himself, as the author of the text pieces, the role
of a path-finder or kind of a guru, who inspired, enlightened and led all the
members of the performing ensemble.
8 Ibid.
9 K. Stockhausen, Towards a Cosmic Music (Longmead, Shaftesbury, Dorset: Element
Books, 1989), 25.
10 See J.-C. Eloy, 'Stockhausen or the Metamorphosis of Creative Vitality'. Determinism
and Indeterminism Throughout His Work', www.stockhausen.org/Eloy-Stock%20English%
20Full.pdf (1987)
" See M. Iddon, 'The Haus That Karlheinz Built: Composition, Authority, and the 1968
Darmstadt Ferienkurse', The Musical Quarterly, 87 (2004), 87-1 18.
Having this in mind, it will be shown below that the group Can accepted
all the four principles of the polyphonic world-music concept, and also the last,
fourth principle of the intuitive music concept. As a matter of fact, although
never attached to the idea of intuitive music (and particularly to its religious
core), the members of Can implemented the last principle more consistently
than Stockhausen himself, and succeeded in practicing real collective acts of
spontaneous creation. We have reached the point where the discussion on the
implementation of all five principles in the music of the group Can is needed.
1. A group consisting of four or five members

Having played for several years in the sixties with five extraordinary mu
sicians, Stockhausen came to the conclusion that 'mass begins with 7' players
because 'all becomes too dense'. Serious problems can occur even with six
players, for, in Stockhausen's opinion, most of them don't have enough 'self-
discipline to stop playing for relatively long periods of time during the perform
ance, and to know exactly when the right moment has come, so that solos and
duos and trios can also occur, and not just sextets all the time'.12 Stockhausen,
obviously, was convinced that the best number of players for the performance
of polyphonic world-music and, later, intitutive music was four or five.
Can began as a sextet, and as early as January 1969, with the departure of
David C. Johnson, they became a quintet. Towards the end of 1973 they were
reduced to a quartet due to the fact that the singer Damo Suzuki became a Jeho
vah's Witness and left the group. Until they disbanded late in 1978 they played
without a singer, and it was for a short period of time in 1977 that they appeared
again as a sextet. So, for most of its existence, the make-up of the group proved
to be optimal for playing music Stockhausen called 'polyphonic' or intuitive.
2. A group of players who know each other well

and have a completely different musical background
The sole original idea around which Irmin Schmidt, David C. Johnson,
Holger Czukay, Jaki Liebzeit and Michael Karoli (shortly augmented by Mani
Lohne) had gathered in the spring of 1968, was to break through the borders
between New music, jazz and beat music.13 The first three of them had roots in
Stockhausen's music; Jaki Liebzeit—as well as Holger Czukay before he be
came Stockhausen's student—played jazz for a couple of years; Michael Karoly,
ten years younger than all the others, was the sole member who was acquainted
with beat music. In the autumn of 1968 American sculptor and amateur singer
Malcolm Mooney joined the group, bringing with him a spark of raw and
12 Stockhausen, 'Questions and answers on Intuitive Music'

W. Kampmann, 'Unendlich viel Wahnsinn. Interview Irmin Schmidt', in Hildegard
Schmidt and Wolf Kampmann (eds.). Can Box: Book, 54.
wreckless spontaneity. Nobody knew where the experiment could lead, and
what kind of music should be expected to be born out of the interaction between
individuals with such heterogeneous musical backgrounds. According to Irmin
Schmidt, 'without knowing what we exactly wanted to do, the enterprise Can came
into being on 19 July 1968, so called because we put all our income in one can'.14
This testimony is very interesting because it reveals two important facts
about the whole experiment: first, the lack of any clear, consistent and sustain
able musical orientation and, second, stress on the social cohesion within the
group. As time passed, 'the can' became a symbol not only of the joint man
agement of financial matters, but also of the communitarian and egalitarian way
of life. Jaki Liebzeit was very clear about it:
Each of us was the boss, and each of us was equal. Naturally that came
from the political ideas of 1968, when communal thinking sprang up. We were
never a commune, never lived together, but in the studio everyone had equal
rights and was equally responsible for the group.15
It was the so-called 'Inner Space' studio where the members of the group
Can spent most of their lives in the whole decade of 1968-1978, where they
developed extremely tight mutual relationships and where the distinguished and
original Caw-sound finally emerged. During the first three years they used an
improvised studio in SchloB Nörvenich near the city of Cologne, and in 1971
they rented a cinema in Cologne and adapted it for the purpose of playing, re
cording and producing music. In these two studios the group of musicians with
such different musical backgrounds came to know each other very well and to
transform their friendship into an adventurous musical enterprise.
3. 'Polyphony of styles, times, and areas'

The early sound of the sextet with David C. Johnson and Mani Lohne can
be heard today thanks to a rather poor quality recording of their very first ses
sion in Schloss Norvenich, some time in June 1968. The recording is valuable
only as a document of the search for musical expression, undertaken by six
young people with different musical backgrounds and without either common
performing experiences, or ideas what their music should sound like. No won
der that in such circumstances no 'polyphony of styles, times, and areas' could
emerge. Nevertheless, Holger Czukay was right when he observed, thirty years
later, that in those days he and his friends were 'miles away form being a
worthwhile group. But from the beginning on, we incorporated all kinds of mu
sic from all over the world'.16 This endeavor to incorporate 'all kinds of music
14 W. Wilholm, Deutschrock-Lexikon (Berlin: Lexikon Imprint Verlag, 1999), 47.

15 W. Kampmann, 'Der Geist aus der Dose. Interview Jaki Liebzeit', in Hildegard
Schmidt and Wolf Kampmann (eds.), Can Box: Book, 340.
16 Kampmann, 'Sänger aus dem Ather. Interview Holger Czukay', 137.
from all over the world' was doubtlessly one of the most important and persis
tent characteristics of Can music, although in its beginnings the group was in
capable of integrating all these influences.
The crucial moment in the musical development of the group was the re
placement of Mani Lohne by Malcolm Mooney. Mooney's uniqueness lay in
his singing style. He used his voice as a rhythmic instrument and soon built with
the drummer Liebzeit 'a unit', 'a rhythmic cell with unbelievable strength'.17 In
this way Mooney, like his successor Damo Suzuki, previously a street-singer,
brought a spark of raw artistic enthusiasm, thus setting two processes in motion:
1 ) an overwhelming orientation towards beat, although a peculiar one, that was
uncommon even to English and American contemporary beat music, not to
mention jazz and New music; and 2) integration of 'all kinds of music from all
over the world' in the new and recognizable polyphonic world-music.
Beat was very important to the members of Can because it possesed a
huge potential for creating trance-like states of mind. Neither New music, nor
jazz could produce such powerful rhythms that 'blow the minds' of listeners.
Wilfrid Mellers made a good observation of this 'ritual' aspect of beat music:
'In this way the ritual value of the sound is inseparable from its musical nature.
Its melodic and harmonic material is rudimentary, its rhythmic appeal obvious
in its excess [...]. The essential characteristics of beat music are that its phrases
are very brief and are hypnotically repeated; that its rhythm is obvious and un
remitting; and that its sonority is very loud'.18 The beat of the group Can be
came even more powerful, repetitive and penetrating. Although the percussive
singing of Malcolm Mooney made a great contribution to the beat, its most per
sistent and permanent source was the drum kit. The uniqueness of the Can
sound came through the leading role of the drumming of Jaki Liebzeit who
never played usual rock or jazz rhythms. He discovered a different rhythm for
every piece of music and played it in cycles, from the beginning to the end, with
only minor interruptions and variations19 - sometimes, like in Yoo Doo Right,
for over twenty minutes - creating in that way a tremendous hypnotic effect on
the audience. Although it had some similarities with contemporary rock music—
which led to the identification of Can as the rock band—it was peculiar enough
to cross all the borders of musical styles and sapcey enough to let the very het
erogeneous contents fill and mould the Can sound.
Until the end of 1968 all members of Can—with the exception of David
C. Johnson—accepted this new identification and felt somehow entangled in the
emerging rock culture. But rock music was for them—as Irmin Schmidt later
explained—just another "universal language" (Weltsprache), made of particular
Kampmann, 'Unendlich viel Wahnsinn. Interview Irmin Schmidt', 61.

18 W. Mellers, 'New Music in a New World', in Jonathan Eisen (ed.), The Age of Rock.
Sounds ofthe American Cultural Revolution (New York: Random House, 1 969), 1 80-1 8 1 .
1 Kampmann, 'Der Geist aus der Dose. Interview Jaki Liebzeit', 302.
cliches and patterns, not necessarily rooted in American or British rhythm and
blues. Furthermore, rock music was fully compatible with the completely 'dif
ferent surroundings' - in the range from Stockhausen's music, in which
Schmidt and Czukay had 'grown up' and which 'made' them what they were,20
through jazz, to the various musical traditions from the whole world. Willing
ness to integrate elements of such traditions was already transparent in 1968: in
Boat Woman Song from the first Holger Czukay 's album, released shortly be
fore the formation of Can, as well as in the so-called Ethnological Forgery Se
ries, whose first ten pieces came into being in collaboration with David C.
Johnson. These, as well as later pieces which can be heard on the compilation-
albums Unlimited Edition and Canaxis 5, are the first and most prominent mani
festations of the group's conviction 'about the only-apparent difference between
true invention (the original meaning of "forgery") and a fraudulent copy'.
Furthermore, on the sleeve of the mentioned album Unlimited Edition from
1976 we find a statement which gives the best explanation of the group's atti
tude towards the musical styles they persistently integrated into their own mu
sic: 'Can 's version of Indian, African, Greek, avant-garde and other musics, of
jazz, even of sailor's hornpipes and Scottish reels, are so patiently bogus as au
thentic ethnic manifestations that they become second cultural realities in their
own right'. Creation of such 'second cultural realities in their own right' was
Can 's own way—although completely opposite to the one Stockhausen chose a
few years earlier—to compose 'polyphony of styles, times, and areas'.
4. Equilibrium of composed 'determinisms' and 'indeterminism'

left to the performers for the sake of improvisation
When dealing with the music of Can, one must bear in mind that this mu
sic shares one of the most important features of rock music - its orientation to
wards recording. In his excellent book Rock: The Primary Text. Developing a
Musicology of Rock Allan F. Moore described the crucial change in the way of
musical transmission that took place with the occurrence of rock music:
The primary medium of transmission of music throughout the European
art tradition is and always has been stave notation. The primary medium of
transmission of rock, since at least the mid-1950-s rock'n'roll, has been the re
cording. The distinction is fundamental. European art music is performed with
reference to a pre-existent score, which is accepted as an encoded version of the
sounds intended by the composer. The rock score, where one exists, is actually a
transcription of what has already been performed and produced. Therefore, al-
- 'Interview with Irmin Schmidt' on Can-DVD (Spoon, 2003). Even Michael Karoli
thought that Can only used 'elements' of rock and that their music was as close to New music as
to rock music. W. Kampmann, 'Der Kick aus der Kalte. Interview Michael Karoli". in H. Schmidt
and W. Kampmann (eds.), Can Box: Book, 284.
though the analysis of art music is, normally, the analysis of the score, an analy-
sis of rock cannot follow the same procdure. 21
In the case of Can it was not only the rock tradition that shaped this incli
nation towards recording. Stockhausen's electronic and concrete music gave
enormous impact to the way the music was recorded and produced. In the time
he studied with Stockhausen Czukay become aware of the problem that he
wanted to be a composer but that he disliked the notes.22 He got fascinated by
tapes, samples and loops that could be used in many, sometimes quite unpre
dictable ways and give birth to a completely new sonority.
Maybe the most interesting characteristic of Can music—at least in the
early years—was that the orientation toward recording paralleled the flourishing
improvisation. The uniqueness of Can music lies in the fact that it was a product
of endless improvisation on the composed themes, which took place not only at
numerous concerts but also in the studio. As a matter of fact, playing in the stu
dio was much more improvisational than 'live performances' and sessions
lasted for many hours. Yoo Doo Right from the first album, for example, was
the product of a twelve-hour improvisation. After the playing was over, an
equally important phase would follow: editing the taped material, for which Holger
Czukay was mostly responsible. So, all Can LP albums were approximately 40
minutes long and thoroughly edited selections from the numerous tapes which had
been made during the studio sessions.23 Such was the equilibrium of 'determinism'
and 'indeterminism' on which the music of group was based.
5. Collective acts of spontaneous creation

Collective and spontaneous creation was the principle idea that inspired
the whole 'Can enterprise'. If this idea looked like Stockhausen's concept of
intuitive music, the resemblance was only partial, because there were no reli
gious afterthoughts in the direction of a particular unio mystica. Irmin Schmidt
said on one occasion that he had in mind 'to start a group that invented sponta
neously and collectively',24 using the German word 'erfinden' which Stock-
21 A. F. Moore, Rock: The Primary Text. Developing a Musicology of Rock (Buckingham

and Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1993), 32-33; see also: S. McClary and . Walser, 'Start
Making Sense! Musicology Wrestles with Rock', in S. Frith and A. Goodwin (eds.), On Record,
Rock, Pop, and the Written World (New York: Pantheon Books, 1990), 282; R. Middleton,
Studing Popular Music (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1990), 104; M. Elicker, Semiotics
of Popular Music. The Theme of Loneliness in Mainstream Pop and Rock Songs (Tübingen:
Gunter Narr Verlag, 1997), 34.
Josef Spiegel, 'Das Gesetz der Zellteilung', in Hildegard Schmidt and Wolf Kampmann
(eds.), Can Box: Book, 402.
23 Christian Borsing, 'Analytische Betrachtung zu Peking O', in Hildegard Schmidt and
Wolf Kampmann (eds.). Can Box: Book, 438-439.
24 Kampmann, 'Unendlich viel Wahnsinn. Interview Irmin Schmidt', 54.
280 Dragana Jeremid-Molnar and Aleksandar Molnar
hausen in the article 'Erfindung und Entdeckung. Ein Beitrag zur Form-Genese'
reserved for traditional composition only.26 Entdeckung and intuitives Spielen
never attracted the attention of the members of Can.
Although it was not perceived as intuitive in Stockhausen's sense of the
term, the music of Can was collective and spontaneous because it was pur
posely created 'out of the subconscious' and was 'totally untouched by the
egos' of the musicians.27 The sound of Can was constantly created by four, five
or six musicians without a desire to stand out or play fascinating solos. Even the
singer, publicly the most important figure in almost all rock bands, had to fit in
like every other instrumentalist. That's why all the texts in Can's music were
meaningless and created spontaneously during the performance of all the musi
cians.28 Malcom Mooney's 'lyrics' were often invented on stage, as a response
to the music played by other members. When performing of Yoo Doo Right, for
example, he simply sung the text of the letter he had just received from his girl
friend in America. 9
So, from the very start, members of the group avoided mentioning any
thing which could have the slightest connotation of Stockhausen's concept of
intuitive music. Instead of intuitive search for the religious contents of 'univer
sal consciousness', they were, according to Irmin Schmidt, 'looking for the
magic moments, when everything sounds perfect and music is played so to
speak by itself. If the contemporary witnesses are to be believed, there were
enough such moments and many of them were also preserved on the sound
bearers'.30
* * *
Having all this in mind, it can be concluded that the 'experimental pop-
music' of the German group Can was never part of the real adherence to the
collective compositions such as Ensemble or Musik fur ein Haus. On the other
hand, its occurrence and development could have been impossible without
Stockhausen's concepts of polyphonic world-music and intuitive music. If it is
true that Stockhausen was the 'father' of Can, then the resemblance between the
two cannot be spotted at first hearing but only established upon a thorough ex
amination.
K. Stockhausen, 'Erfindung und Entdeckung. Ein Beitrag zur Form-Genese (1961)', in

Texte zur elektronischen und instrumentalen Musik. Band 1: Aufsdtze 1952-1962 zur Theorie des
Komponierens (Köln: Verlag M. DuMont Schauberg, 1963)
*6 On the contrary, entdecken was for Stockhausen experimental way of composing and in
the late sixties became the synonym for the creation of intutive music.
27 Kampmann, 'Der Kick aus der Kalte. Interview Michael Karoli', 288.
28 Kampmann, 'Der Geist aus der Dose. Interview Jaki Liebzeit', 316.
29 K. Unland, 'Can', in German Rock, www.germanrock.de/c/can/index.htm (1998)
30 M. Ruff, Rolling Stone (Mai, 1997), www.spoonrecords.com/critiques.html#german
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Stockhausen, Karlheinz 1971b. 'Questions and answers on Intuitive Music', www.

stockhausen.org/intuitive_music.html
Unland, Klaus 1998. 'Can', in German Rock, www.germanrock.de/c/can/ index.htm
Wilholm, Wolfgang 1 999. Deutschrock-Lexikon. Lexikon Imprint Verlag
JJpaeana JepeMuh-Monnap h AneKcandap Monnap
O/JJEUH MO/JEPHE Y POK MY3HUH KACHHX

IIIE3/JECETHX H PAHHX CE/JAM/JECETHX rO/JHHA
XX BEKA. YTHUAJ UITOKXAY3EHA HA PAHE
PAÔBE HEMAHKE rPYIiE CAN
Pe3hMe
My3HHKH MOaepHH3aM je Hipao Majiy yjiory y pa3Bojy TaKO3BaHe npo-

rpecHBHe poKeHpoji My3HKe tokoM flpyre nojiOBHHe uie3aeceTHX h npBe nojio-
BHHe ceâMaeceTHX roaHHa ^BaaeceTor BeKa. HnaK, Ma kojihko Mana, OBa yno-
ra 3acjiy>Kyje aa 6yae HayHHO HCTpaaceHa. CTora cy ce ayropH TeKCTa onpeae-
jthjih jxa pa3MOTpe yrHuaj jeiiHor oa Haj3HaHajHHjHX h HajyTHuajHHjHX npea-
CTaBHHKa ManepHe, KapnxajHua LllTOKxay3eHa, Ha My3HKy H>erOBHX CTyaeHa-
Ta, Xojirepa Uyicaja h MpMHHa LLlMHTa, KojH cy 1968. dpopMHpanH rpyny Can.
W nopea Tora iuto je Can CMaTpaH (h iuto ce ciwaTpa) jeflHOM on BoaehHX
"Kraut-rock" rpyna, OBa O3HaKa HHje aOBOjbHa h aaeKBaraa 36or jeaHHCTBeHor
CTHjia rpyne, y KojeM je poKeHpoji cyncTaHua 6Hjia aonyH>eHa h o6oraheHa
pa3jiHHHTHM cacTojUHMa. yranaj KapjixajHua LUTOKxay3eHa Ha My3HKy Kojy je
KOMnoHOBajia, npcayUHpana h CBHpana rpyna Can pa3MaTpajy ce Ha npHMepy
h>hxobhx paHHX paaOBa H3 nje3aeceTHX - Prehistoric Future: The Very First
Session, Delay 1968, Canaxis 5: Studio Demo Tapes, Monster Movies - h pa-
hhx ccnaMfleceTHX _ Soundtracks, Tago Mago, Ege Bamayasi and Future Days
- Kao h Ha npHMepy opHrHHajiHor cojio an6yMa Xonrepa Uyicaja Canaxis 5.
HaMepa ayTopa je m noxary m UJTOKxay3eHOBH cTyaeHTH LlyKaj h LUMhT,
HaKo o6pa3OBaHH y My3HHKoj TpaaHUHjH MoaepHe, HHKaaa HHcy ycnejiH aa je
pa3BHjy y noTnyHOCTH - y npaBuy, peUHMO, LtyKajeBor cojio paaa Canaxis 5 -
36or Tora uito cy npeocTajia aBa HjiaHa rpyne, Kojn cy aojia3HHH H3 apyraHH-
jHx My3HHKHX TpaaHUHja, HMajiH cynpoTCTaBjbeHe RHeje. Mjia^H 6HT-rHTapH-
CTa MHxaeji KapojiH o6e36eano je opHjeHTaUHjy rpyne Ka poKeHpoji TpaannH-
jH, /lOK je 6y6H>ap JaKH JlH6najT HaivtepHO pacKHHyo ca free-jazz-OM kako 6h
HCTpa>KHBao HOBe peneTHTHBHe phtMhhkc o6pacue, KojH cy ycKopo nocxanH
HajyneHaTjbHBHja KapaicrepHCTHKa My3HKe rpyne Can.
RADICAL (MODERNIST) MINIMALISM BETWEEN
NEO-AVANT-GARDE AND POSTMODERNISM
MARIJA MASNIKOSA
HAVING emerged within the family of American experimental music

practices of the second half of the twentieth century, minimalism inherited a
large number of ideological characteristics from this movement in post-war
New Music. The practice of post-war American experimental music received its
avant-garde impetus from Cage's works with chance operations from the 1930s,
after which it embarked on a course of 'criticism of the modernist domination in
culture and its models of the autonomy of art, apoliticalness, abstract formalism
and aesthetic formalism'.1 Because of its excessive and innovative character, as
well as the time of its development, American experimental music of the second
half of the twentieth century was perceived, according to Burger's theory of the
avant-garde, as neo-avant-garde in the contemporary art theory.
Accepting Cage's, essentially destructive, attitude towards the institutions
of art, the composers of American experimental music working in this period
realized 'different artistic-existential forms of behaviour'' in their works and,
during the 1950s and 1960s, directly continued the line of historical avant-
gardes. 3
The excessive and critical artistic practices of indeterminism and Fluxus
(American aleatory experience) advocate some of the key principles of neo-
avant-garde such as the destruction of the disciplinary autonomy of music, that
is, 'the expansion of art into existential spheres', the negation of the autonomy
of a work of art and the negation of the category of individual creation. Burger's
only criterion of neo-avant-garde that American pre-minimalist experimental
1 See M. Suvakovic, Pojmovnik moderne i postmoderne likovne umetnosti i teorije posle

1950. [Dictionary of Modern and Postmodern Art and Theory of Art - since 1950], (SANU i
Prometej. Beograd - Novi Sad, 1999). 52.
5 Ibid, 101.
' Ibid.
284 Marija Masnikosa
practice of the era of inauguration and Fluxus does not satisfy is 'the reduction
of the destructive intensity of creative actions'.4
The historical position of radical minimalism in the order of American
experimental art movements, which has not yet been deduced in musicological
literature in the context of modern theories of the avant-garde, is fundamentally
determined precisely by the fact that the destructive intensity of minimalist ac
tions was noticeably reduced. By its transparent simplicity, this movement criti
cally opposed indeterminism, complexity and forms of processual organization
in pre-minimalist experimental music without significant external excesses. We
believe that this unequivocally determines it as neo-avant-garde practice (in ac
cordance with Burger's theory), especially since this is a movement that re
stored the autonomy of music as a discipline by its departure from polymediality.
It seems particularly significant that, similar to minimalism in visual arts5
that literally carries out a creative analysis of the limitations of the historical
avant-garde and the first neo-avant-garde, radical music minimalism at the same
time represents a 'return' to Webern's contribution to European historical music
avant-garde and 'a deferred (re)action' to Cage's neo-avant-garde piece 4' 33"
Silence for the Pianist (1952), so that the argumentation for the thesis on the
neo-avant-garde status of American minimalism is further supplemented by
elements of Foster's psychoanalytical interpretation of the avant-garde and neo-
avant-garde in twentieth-century art.
Art historian Hal Foster views the history of art as a subject and sees the
avant-garde 'hiatuses' in its history as traumas that can be recognized and un
derstood only through a Freudian 'deferred action'. In this respect, Foster per
ceives every neo-avant-garde as 'a return to the historical avant-garde' and
claims that neo-avant-garde'addresses this institution [of art] with a creative
analysis at once specific and deconstructive'.6
Music minimalism, as a specific return to Cage's neo-avant-garde, most
evidently satisfies the second of Foster's mentioned criteria for the neo-avant-
garde. All the more so since, by re-examining the conventional limits of music
and exploring the perceptive, cognitive, structural parameters and discursive
rules of music as an art, this movement does in fact create 'new aesthetical ex
periences, cognitive links and political interventions'7, which, according to Fos
ter's aforementioned theory of the avant-garde, corresponds to the status of the
4 Quoted according to: M. Veselinovic-Hofman, 'Teze za reinterpretaciju jugoslovenske

muziCke avangarde' ['Outlines for a Reinterpretation of the Yugoslav Musical Avant-Garde'],
Muzicki tolas, 30/3 1 (2002), 21.
5 In the works of Dan Flavin, Donald Judd and Robert Morris in the early 1960s and later
on in the works of David Buren, Michael Asher and others.
6 Cf. H. Foster, The Return of the Real, (An OCTOBER Book, The MIT Press, Cam
bridge, Massachusetts, London, England, 1 996), 4, 20.
7 Ibid, 14.
RADICAL (MODERNIST) MINIMALISM.. 285
'second neo-avant-garde'8 in the order of the twentieth-century avant-garde

movements.
As a movement whose works are almost diametrically opposed to the ex
perimental works from the stage of inauguration or Fluxus, minimalism inheri
ted some of the characteristics of the experimental avant-garde in the larval and
virtually unrecognizable form.
American experimental pre-minimalist practice was guided by the idea
that a work should be a process in progress and, from its very first works, it af
firmed the concept of 'work-as-a-process ' which, in terms of its indifference to
the final identity of a work, was very close to Adorno's notion of work-in-pro
gress!
This was already evident in the early works of Cage, Feldman, Brown
and Wolf (the inauguration stage, according to Nyman) and was not later aban
doned as a tendency either in the works of Fluxus or in the most complex com
positions of the period of indeterminacy.
Early minimalist works created in the late 1950s and the 1960s were a di
rect continuation of this experimental practice and true examples of the experi
mental iwork-as-a-process\
The openness and limitlessness of Young's 'tune-in' minimalism, as well
as of some early works by Riley (Keyboard Studies, In Q and even Glass (Mu
sic in Fifths), maintain a neo-avant-garde continuity with the basic orientations
of previous stages in the development of experimental music.
The compositions of early minimalism, therefore, retain the characteristic
neo-avant-garde (experimental) processual organization, the exploratory char
acter of the previous experimental practice, and the lack of teleological focus.
However minimalist processes are different from all those inaugurated by pre
vious experimental practice. Unlike experimental works from the stage of inde
terminacy (which started almost concurrently with minimalism, at the beginning
of the 1960s), minimalists opted for the reduction of material and the strictness
of process, so that non-focused multiplicity9 from the stage of intederminacy
received its opposition in the form of 'controlled singularity', which could serve
as a slogan for minimalism.
8 In his theory of avant-garde, Foster defines the first and the second neo-avant-gardes, as
'two historical alternatives to the modernist model' which 'challenge the key point of reference of
the then current modernism: the bourgeois principles of the autonomy of art and artistic expres
sion' (Ibid, 4.) He situates the first neo-avant-garde in the 1950s, emphasizing that it 'very liter
ally' rediscovered the historical avant-garde that had been 'institutionally repressed' at the time of
its development. Foster sees the impetus for the appearance of the second neo-avant-garde (that
took place in the 1960s), which, in his opinion, included minimalism and Pop art, in the process
of acculturation and adaptation of the historical avant-garde to the first neo-avant-garde, which
'inspired a criticism of this process in the second neo-avant-garde'. (Ibid, 24)
9 The syntagm used by Michael Nyman. See M. Nyman, Experimental Music. Cage and
beyond ( Schirmer Books, A Division of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., New York, 1974), 139.
What is paradigmatic in that sense is Young's 'unfinished and unfmish-

able' composition - namely, the 'total environment ' 10 The Tortoise, his Dreams
and Journeys (which 'was being created' between 1964 and the mid-1970s),
which represents an act of lifelike, strictly controlled permanent exploration of
the intonation of voice drone and one of the peaks of early minimalism of the
1960s."
However, already in some of Reich's cyclic, closed, gradual and com
pletely pre-composed processes, based on the principles of phase shifting12, as
well as in certain closed and pre-composed compositions of Philip Glass, the
work became a 'closed', pre-arranged procedure, like those that can be observed
in the compositions of post-war European modernism! The unpredictability of
the process, its indeterminacy and openness13 were lost in favour of pre-
composing and total control by the author. Reich's integral-minimalist pieces
and some of Philip Glass's closed and pre-composed works remained open in
the experimentalist manner, but only to the extent to which the listener's per
ception participated in their final realization!
Consequently, the category of process as an 'open structure' was replaced
with the model of modernist process as a closed and autonomous work.
These completed, autonomous works lost the specific kind of independ
ence from their authors that Cage advocated. Having created something that was
neither a 'living organism' nor a text - having created a process as a machine
whose activity was still independent of its constructor and performer, the author
nonetheless 'snuck' into the system yet again, albeit hidden behind his work and
pushed into the background, which, according to Jencks, is one of the important
characteristics of the art of late modernism.14 Thus, the principles of (neo-)
avant-garde, which constituted American experimental ideology and dominated
neo-avant-garde practice of the era of inauguration, Fluxus and indeterminism,
lost their supremacy with the appearance of radical minimalism and were sup
planted by the arguments of post-war modernism. Abandoning the most promi
nent neo-avant-garde attributes of American experimental practice, 'integral
minimalism' broke away from the neo-avant-garde experimental practices of
See W. Mertens, American Minimal Music (Kahn & Averill, London. Pro/Am Music
Resources Inc.. White Plains, NY, 1983), 30.
1 1 See E. Strickland, Minimalism: Origins (Indiana University Press, Bloomington and
Indianapolis, 1993), 235.
The tape pieces It's Gonna Rain (1965), Come Out (1966), Melodica (1966), as well as
the instrumental compositions Piano Phase (1967), Violin Phase (1967), Phase Patterns (1970).
and even the cult composition Drumming (197 1 ), were based on the principle of phase shifting.
13 The term 'open structure' is used here in the meaning defined by Stockhausen and it re
fers to the absence of a traditional structure in a composition, as well as to the absence of 'strict
dialectical principles of beginning and end'. (See W. Mertens, American Minimal Music, 101)
14 See C. Jencks, 'Postmodern versus Late-Modern', in: Zeitgeist in Babel: The Post-Mod
ernist Controversy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991/1992), 19-20.
American music. Having returned to the media framework of music as a sepa

rate artistic discipline, American minimalism reaffirmed the modernist auton
omy of music15 and thus made a specific shift towards the more conservative
European concept of late modernism.
After all, experimental music created before minimalism also clearly
demonstrates its basic, high-modernist characteristics: the neutrality of the cho
sen material, discarding of historical paradigms, composing 'from scratch' (as
irrefutable proof of the proclaimed modernist auto-referentiality), non-hierar
chical ordering, consistent avoidance of conventional music expressiveness, etc.
In addition to the larval characteristics of American post-war neo-avant-
garde and the entire aforementioned set of common characteristics of European
and American post-war New Music16, minimalism also exhibits, as its own spe
cific distinction, a number of other features—such as: pre-composing of the
process (as a specific concern about compositional procedure), musical purism,
the principle of 'textual unity', and even the very concept of reduction17—
which, paradoxically and unexpectedly, bears the attributes of European high or
late musical modernism.
The critical position of music minimalism with regard to the experimental
neo-avant-garde that preceded it is, however, revealed in the fact that this
movement made a radical break with its complexity, which, after all, also char
acterized European post-war New Music.
Unlike the authors of experimental works from the era of indeterminacy,
who composed works of great complexity (for example, Cornelius Cardew's
The Great Learning), the minimalists opted for simple, strict and pre-composed
processes which did not have an in-depth structure. Another, no less important
fact is that the minimalist reduction of the material to neutral 'unitary forms'
without inscribed meanings implied their 'literal reading', which had been in
conceivable in previous stages of the development of experimental music. By its
shocking simplicity, minimalism—without crossing the divide of representation
or any other musical 'objecthood'—took the streams of New Music to the place
of the 'new beginning', devoid of the dead weight of complexity and structure.
15 Among other things, in contrast with some of La Monte Young's early minimalist
works which, as mentioned, were designed as intermedia 'works in progress', early minimalist
works by Riley, Glass and Reich were removed from the influence of Fluxus and were 'reduced'
to the language of music, which brought them back to the (European) modernist concept of the
disciplinary autonomy of music.
16 The syntagm New Music is used here in the meaning defined by Hermann Danuser,
who defines this coined word as a collective name for the entire post-war musical modernism.
17 In a table designed to monitor 30 parameters of modernism, late modernism of the
1960s and postmodernism, Jencks writes that reductiveness is a general characteristic of late
modernism. Jencks, of course, views this characteristic from the perspective of the expected in
creasing complexity within modernism! Cf. C. Jencks, op.cit, 19-20.
On the other hand, by its neo-avant-garde 'creative analysis of art which

(the analysis) was simultaneously specific and deconstructivist' and which re
sulted in 'new aesthetical experiences (and) cognitive links', American mini
malism also developed some (transgressive) characteristics that brought it to the
very threshold of musical postmodernism.
It should be stressed here that all the transgressive characteristics of
minimalism, which we could name as proto-postmodernist, originated from its
obsessive repetitiveness, which in itself can be understood as a step away from
the technical framework of modernist compositional technique, and even as an
explicit rebellion against the universal modernist ban on repetitiveness, which
had dominated ever since Schoenberg's time.
The most important of all the proto-postmodernist characteristics of
minimalist music is its 'different temporality'1 , or 'vertical time'19 as a feature
of the minimalist musical flow. This characteristic of minimalist music acquires
the meaning of a transgressive feature due to its ability to produce a postmod
ernist 'multiply-directed time'20, (specific characteristic of postmodern music,
named by Jonathan D. Kramer), interacting with an older, time-oriented, narra
tive type of musical discourse.
Following the same principle, the non-narrativness of the minimalist mu
sical flow also acquires the quality of the transgressive feature of this music,
because the minimalist anti-narrative, being put in a hypothetical or real 'dia
logue' with other, narrative musical discourses can produce a typical postmod
ernist 'multiple narrativity' (which can be clearly noted in postminimalist music
as an effectively achieved musical characteristic).
Also, the minimalist concern for the listener, retained as part of its ex
perimental heritage, which, paradoxically, suggests a certain ideological inter
ference between the American experimental music and musical postmodern
ism,21 can be regarded as the transgressive, proto-postmodernist feature of this
music. Naturally, the minimalist (essentially modernist) obsessiveness with
temporality of perception as a process, differs from the postmodernist 'birth of
Behind this 'different temporality' lies repetitiveness as a process whose redundancy

gives the impression of the immobilization of time. The absence of all conventional means of
musical narrativeness (contrast, opposition, rise and decline of tension, etc.) disorients the listener
who, due to the lack of musical events, feels as though time has stopped.
19 Jonathan D. Kramer perceives minimalist music as 'vertical music' that materializes an
'eternal present', but 'does not destroy the temporal continuum', and describes the 'absence of
events in the musical flow' with the syntagm 'vertical time' or 'nonlinearity'. Quoted according
to: J. W. Bernard, 'The Minimalist Aesthetic in the Plastic Arts and in Music', Perspectives of
New Music, Vol.31, no.l (1993), 122.
20 See J. D. Kramer, 'Postmodern Concepts of Musical Time', Indiana Theory Review,
vol.17, no.2, (fall 1996), 22-25, 48-53.
21 The problem of interference between American experimental and postmodern music is
implicitly or explicitly included in all theoretical studies that regard Cage as a postmodernist.
the listener', but the very concern of minimalism for 'the mode in which music
affects the listener', not only because of its objective characteristics, constitutes
an important step towards the orientations and focuses of the ideology of musi
cal postmodernism.
All of the above mentioned transgressive, proto-postmodernist character
istics suggest a borderline and key position of minimalism, viewed from the
other, postmodernist side of music history. The hybrid and ambivalent 'stylistic
equation' of minimalism22 (which bears clear indications of postmodernist as
well as modernist characteristics), otherwise typical of postmodernist artistic
tendencies, testifies to the fact that musical minimalism, as the last in the order
of musical modernist movements, was at the same time the meeting point of the
two most important artistic ideologies and practices of the last century.
It is in this constitutional ideological duality of radical American mini
malism that the pivotal position of this movement in the order of the art move
ments of the second half of the twentieth century is revealed.
As the last 'offensive reconnaissance' (Sloterdijk) of musical modernism
and, at the same time, the first late modernist movement, whose larvaeral ideo
logical duality enabled its postmodernist re-constitution (the birth of postmini-
malism!), musical minimalism deserves to be regarded as a neo-avant-garde
'apogee of modernism' and, at the same time, as a 'paradigm shift to postmo
dernist practices',23 as concluded by Hal Foster on minimalism in the visual arts.
Mapuja MacnuKoca
PA^HKAJ1HH (MO/JEPHHCTHHKH) MHHHMAJ1H3AM

H3MET>y HEOABAHrAPÊ H MY3HHKOr
nOCTMO/JEPHH3MA
Pe3hMe
CbojhM HacTaHKOM y noponHUH aMepHHKHX eiccnepHMeHTajiHHX My3HH-

khx npaKCH MHHHMajiH3aM je HacjieaHO Heice naeojiouiKe KapaicrepHCTHKe aMe-
pHHKe nocnepaTHe My3HHKe HeoaBaHrapae. PaHH MHHHMajiH3aM, HaHMe, 3aap-
HcaBa eiccnepHMeHTajiHH Kapaicrep CBojHx ocTBapeH>a (Jla Mohtc JaHr, PajjiH,
Tjiac), npouecyanHOCT h OTBopeHocT aejia Koje je cxBaheHO Kao work-in-pro
cess, H>erOBy HeycMepeHOCT, HenpeaBuzmBOCT h HeoMerjeHocT, ajiH ry6H HajBa-
An early identification of ideological contradictions in minimalism can be found in

Wim Mertens. Cf. W. Mertens, American Minimal Music, 87.
23 Ibid, 36.
»HHjy HeoaBaHrapaHy upiy: Bpaha ce MoaepHHCTHHKOM CTaTycy ayroHOMHje

My3HKC
OcTBapeH>a pa^HKajiHor aMepHHKor MHHHMajiH3Ma noKa3yjy KapaicrepH-
cthhHO MoaepHHCraHKe ozmHKe: KOMnoHOBaite „H3 noHenca" Tj. caMoyreMe-
jbeH>e, 3aoKynjbeHOCT KOMno3HiiHOHOM tcxhhkoM, JeflHOCTpyKo Ko;wpaH>e"
My3HHKor TeKCTa, HeyrpajiHOCT MaTepHjajia, on6aiiHBaH>e HCTopHjcKHX napa-
anrMH, oflcycTBO Kay3ajiHTeTa y My3HHKOM TOKy, HexHjepapxHjcKO ycnocTa-
BJbaite nopeTKa, peajiHH HeaocTaTaK npaBua KpeTaH>a h aeioiapaTHBHO H36era-
BaH>e eKcnpecHje.
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MOaepHHCTHHKH npaBau, MHHHMajiHCTHHKa ocTBapeH>a h3bcchhM cbojhM Ka-
paKTepHCTHKaMa HarOBeurraBajy h npHnpeMajy nojaBy hckhx ozuiHKa My3HH-
Kor nocTMoaepHH3Ma. Y OBa „npeKopaHyjyha" CBojcTBa paflHKajiHor MHHHMa-
jiH3Ma cnaaajy aHTHHaparaBHocT .uncKypca, HejiHHeapHo My3HHKo BpeMe, imo-
uiHOct h oacycTBo ^y6HHe, Kao h aKTHBHpaH>e, Tj. „pot)eH>e cnyuiaoua" KojH he
y My3HHKOM nocTMOêpHH3My 6hth cxBaheH Kao Koayrop jxena.
HHH>eHHua m pajiHKanHH MHHHMajnmM (Kao nocjieaitH HeoaBaHrapaHH
noKpeT y MyjHun XX BeKa) y ce6n noMHpyje ozuiHKe nocjiepaTHe aMepnHKe
HeoaBaHrapae, eBponcKor KacHor MoaepHH3Ma h HarOBeurraje KapaicrepHCTHKa
nocTMoaepHe My3HKe, hhhh OBaj npaBau npeKperaHUoM y HCTopHjH „HOBe My-
3HKe" apyre nojiOBHHe XX BeKa. AMepHHKH pa^HKanHH MHHHMajiH3aM je
yHCTHHy 6ho „anorej MoaepHH3Ma", h „napaaHrMa noMaKa npeMa nocTMOaep-
hhM npaKcaMa", KaKO je MHHHMajiH3aM y jihkobhhM yMeTHOCTHMa OKapaKTepH-
cao Xan (I>ocTep.
THE TRADITION OF OPERA AND THE NEW MUSIC
STAGE WORKS BY YOUNG SERBIAN COMPOSERS
GORICA PILIPOVIC
IN the last few years the music stage in Serbia has experienced a unique
proliferation. Several music theatre pieces by authors mostly belonging to the
younger generation, one who bravely embarked upon the questioning of tradi
tional opera concepts, have appeared, desperately needed considering the pre
dominantly conservative attitude towards the genre in our culture, especially
within the context of current European trends which have brought numerous
innovations to this field. Namely, since the end of the sixties, an awareness of
the inevitability of change in the opera stage has emerged, ranging from Pierre
Boulez's cry to demolish the opera theatres to Bohuslav Schaeffer's statement
announcing the crisis of modern opera. He believed that no new prophetic, im
portant piece would appear on the music stage until it reached breaking point.1
This breaking point was reached in 1 976 with the piece Einstein on the Beach
by Phillip Glass and Robert Wilson. Shown the same year in Belgrade, at
BITEF festival, this minimalist opera inevitably made an artistic impact.
Whether or not by coincidence, the first minimalist compositions by our authors
also date from the same year, yet it is only the next generation, today's genera
tion of composers, who were born at that time, who have brought the innova
tions of Einstein on the Beach to our music stage. Innovations such as the lack
of plot in the sense of narrative flow, a fragmented structure, the introduction of
a non-coloratura voice, the use of mass-cultural artefacts etc.
And just like Glass's opera was shown here as part of a theatre festival,
so do the contemporary musical projects of our young artists, which I will be
discussing, occur outside an official institution - the Belgrade Opera. Instead
they can be found in those theatres and alternative venues willing to provide
their resources, venues which are open to theatrical innovation. This social mo-
1 B. Sefer, 'MuziCko-scenske vizije buducnosti' ['Musical Stage Visions of the Future'] in

P. Selem (ed.), Novi zvuk [New Sound], ( Zagreb: Nakladni zavod Matice hrvatske, 1972), 96.
292 Gorica Pilipovic
ment also refers to the audience, which does not consist of so called melomani-
acs, but of theatre lovers and especially theatre professionals who do not usually
attend operatic plays. This says a great deal more about the familiarity between
these new creations and the so-called post-drama theatre (the play Tesla, Total
Reflection [Tesla, totalna refleksijd], for example, was included in the Show
Case programme at BITEF 2007), and it implies a kind of artistic familiarity
between all of the creators taking part in the play - theatrical, musical, literary,
visual etc. In other words they make up an artistic group founded on their com
mon musical and theatrical sensibility.
I have chosen four pieces as the subject of this paper: the chamber opera
Narcissus and Echo by Anja Djordjevic,2 the music-theatre event Tesla, totalna
refleksija by a group of authors,3 ten opera-like pieces with singing Mozart, lus
ter, lustik by Irena Popovic,4 and the rap-opera The Land ofHappiness [Zemlja
srece] by Vladimir Pejkovic.5 1 have listed only the names of the authors of the
music, but in these new pieces, again analogous to the Glass-Willson profes
sional relationship, the role of the director, or the person responsible for the
concept of the play as a whole, has become equally important. I could certainly
add the pieces Dream Opera by Jasna Velickovic, and The Opera is Feminine
[Opera je zenskog roda] by Bojan Djordjev (for example, he is a director by
vocation, not a composer), but unfortunately, I am not well enough acquainted
with those pieces. On the other hand, I believe that Zora D by Isidora Zebeljan,
one of the most important works of this period, does not belong to the group,
the criterion being respect for the traditional genre elements. The Zebeljan ope
ra, namely, stands out with its modern musical and theatrical language, but does
2 BITEF Theatre, 10 October 2002. Libretto - Marija Stojanovic, music - Anja Djord-
jevid, directed by Alisa Stojanovid, costumes - Zora Mojsilovid-Popovid, scenography - SaSa
Ivanovic. Cast: Narcissus - Radmilo Petrovic, Echo - Anja Djordjevic, nymphs - Aneta Hid,
Ivana Dimitrijevic. Instrumental ensemble Arte, conducted by Premil Petrovid.
3 JDP, 16 December 2006. Libretto - Marija Stojanovic, music - Anja Djordjevic, Igor
GostuSki, Vladimir Pejkovic, Boiidar Obradinovic, director - MiloS Lolid, costumes - Maja
Mirkovic, scenography - Igor Vasiljev, choreography and dance - Isidora StaniSid. Performers -
Vladislava Djordjevid (in the role of Tesla), singers-actors - Milan Antonid, NebojSa Babid,
Zarko Danduo, Anja Djordjevic, Jelena Hid, Mirjana Jovanovid, Ivana Kne2evid, Marko Mark-
ovid, Radmilo Petrovic, Nikola Vujovid, dancers - Irina Savid, Jovana Nestorovski.
4 Sava Centre, 21 December 2006. Libretto - Maja Pelevid, Jelena Novak, Marija
Karaklajic, music and concept - Irena Popovic, director - Jey Sheib, costumes - Danijela Stoja
novic Diridondica, video - Igor Vasiljev, Nikola Ljuca. Performers - Gertraud Steinkogler-
Wurzinger, soprano, Ileana Luiajid, soprano, Damjan Kecojevic, actor, Isidora StaniSic and Bo-
jana Leko. dancers, choir of the Music School Slavenski, rock-band Kanda, Kodza & NebojSa,
ensemble Acrobat, conductor Tijana Kovadevic.
? Kalemegdan, 28 July 2007. Libretto - Dusanka Stojanovic, music - Vladimir Pejkovic,
director - Djurdja Tesic, costumes - Jelisaveta Tatic-Cuturilo, visual identity and scenography -
Gabrijel Glid, video - Danilo Popovic. Cast: Baja - Nikola Vujovid, Cica - Dubravka Arsid.
Choir of the artistic group Chinch, instrumental accompaniment realised on the computer.
THE TRADITION OF OPERA AND THE NEW MUSIC STAGE.. 293
not question the three basic elements I will be dealing with in the paper - form,
libretto and voice.
Formal-conceptual specification
The piece Narcissuss and Echo is traditionally labelled as chamber opera.
This speaks foremost of the number of performers or characters on stage, and of
the kind of accompaniment, which is by no means a symphonic orchestra. This
further implies intimate content and relatively restricted theatrical means, but
unlike the specifications of the other pieces in this group, this is not implied in
the creative concept.
The authors of Tesla, however, have symptomatic intentions when label
ling this piece a music-theatre event. Thus they have already taken an ironic
stance towards tradition by simply calling their play an event which implies the
presence of some music on the stage. It turns out, however, that Tesla comes
closest to a kind of highly aesthetic cabaret.
Irena Popovic takes an explicit stand towards tradition: her concept im
plies 'ten opera-like pieces with singing'. She does not avoid the incriminating
term opera, perhaps because her character is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, one of
the greatest opera composers, and thus her creation becomes auto-reflexive, mu
sic about music. The miniature instrumental introduction is reminiscent of an
overture, but are the repetitive models and the ascending and descending scales
that it contains, appropriate material for introduction to an opera? What follows
is a piece which could be labelled an aria, the text belonging to one of Mozart's
songs, but the singer treats it with irony, and in some moments the spasmodic
flow imitates the sound of a broken record. (The fact is that even then the aria
radiates melancholy). Then there's the recitative, the rapid pronunciation of the
text with sparse instrumental accompaniment, and the occasional leap from
speech to singing. And the ensemble scene consists of a female choir, an actor
and a female singer. But what about the characterization - the characters mutu
ally exchange text, their lines are interchanged, their parts do not imply the text
as a whole and the text is in two languages, sung and spoken in alternation.
The Land ofHappiness possesses a dual formal-conceptual specification:
rap opera by title, silicone melodrama by subtitle. The rap opera specification
clearly speaks of the use of a musical genre originating in popular culture, a
genre far away from the classical opera idiom, and provocative by definition.
The question remains as to how it was used in an operatic context. In this case,
it is the clear characterization of the protagonists: the hero - Baja, sings in rap
form, and the heroine - Cica, is a representative of the soprano opera idiom, her
costume maintaining operatic stereotypes, those belonging to the late eighteenth
century for example. The silicone melodrama specification, on the other hand,
steers us towards the content of the piece, the subject matter associated with a
certain social stratum of, more often than not, problematic moral and aesthetic
values, the subject matter presented in the form of a melodrama, i.e. a love story
with a tragic ending.
The subtitle clearly reveals the ironic approach to the subject matter,
while the approach to the aforementioned musical idioms implies no irony
whatsoever, on the contrary, they represent themselves without meta-meaning,
they are equal structural elements and the comic effect, the primary expression
of the piece The Land ofHappiness, arises from their relationship to the text.
Libretto
The text, in other words the libretto, greatly influences not only the macro
form, but also the microform of the pieces as well. It is, except in one case, no
longer a libretto which implies a plot, dramatic events in the classical sense, but
in most cases a sequence of poetic images, or textual fragments which hint at
the subject instead. The poet Marija Stojanovic, in collaboration with composer
Anja Djordjevic, created a series of separate numbers for the opera Narcissus
and Echo, illuminating the elements of the myth in different ways and estab
lishing it in a modern visual context. Narcissus is an arrogant, self-loving yup
pie, who admires his own body in a gym; the nymphs are members of the punk
movement, and Echo, innocence and purity lost; a character who is nothing
more than a voice. Although 'the poetic images and conditions follow a certain
dramatic progression', as the author proclaims, the spectator experiences them
more as separate numbers from a thematic authorial pop-album.
The same team of authors, and by all indications the leading team, Anja
Djordjevic and Marija Stojanovic, conceived the play Tesla, Total Reflection in
a similar fashion, but the dramatic progression is completely absent here, since
the symbols and objects from the life of the title character, namely their musical
explications, simply follow each other.6 The title character is now a historical
person (whether because of extrinsically imposed reasons—marking the 1 50th
anniversary, is of no importance) and the well known facts from Tesla's life
become the subjects of poetic elaboration—the terms and objects are symbols of
biographical situations and they are shown as symbols through a highly aes
thetic theatrical expression. The separate numbers differ in terms of the criteria
of musical language (a unique case of several authors taking part in the musical
composition), the performance apparatus and the theatrical means used etc. And
just as the author of the text poetically superimposed these facts, often trans
mitted by popular myth, so did the authors of the text and the concept of the
play Mozart, luster, lustik, after taking up the subject of Mozart's life for similar
anniversary reasons, line up his imaginary letters to his mother, sister and fa-
6 The titles of the numbers: Moje osobine [My Characteristics}, Neprijatelj vreme [Time
as an Enemy], Pismo [The Letter], 2ene [Women], Automat [The Automaton], Nijagara [Nya-
gara], Beograd [Belgrade], Konj [The Horse], Totalna refleksija [The Total Reflection],
ther. They highlight Mozart's human character, he becomes a lonely being,

writing about his feelings, memories and expectations, about the things that
happen to him, sometimes trivial by nature, but expressed in a highly poeticised
manner. The song about Mozartkugeln, the number 'Mozart and the Chande
lier', or the imaginary conversation with Haydn interrupt the letter sequence
establishing a different kind of deviation from the subject matter - albeit ironic,
comic or absurd.
The Land ofHappiness, unlike all the previous pieces, possesses a certain
degree of continuous narrative, but told indirectly, through the dialogues and
texts of the protagonists. The starting point is the first meeting between the he
roes, Baja and Cica. And accordingly, unlike the other works in this group, The
Land of Happiness has a continuous flow; its form consists of musical mono
logues, dialogues and ensembles being woven into the logical flow of the plot.
In addition to the main characters, a five member choir also appears, sometimes
taking on the role of the commentator, sometimes taking part in the plot. It
visualises a modern moment in Serbian society, a world inclined towards a
criminal behavioural pattern, in an extremely engaged text filled with satirical
blades and as such represents a unique example in operatic art. And another so
cial moment emerges from this fact - opera is no longer a form of elitist art
which takes no notice of the world around, but an engaged theatre piece which,
by delving into popular culture, especially a rebel segment like rap music, be
comes a theatre play with a social conscience.
Voice
The voice, of course, coloratura voice, as one of the basic elements of
operatic form, simply had to experience an appropriate transformation, i.e. it
had to gain meta-meaning in an engaged piece such as The Land of Happiness.
Naturally, the most obvious intervention is the introduction of the rap form, i.e.
the appropriate voice, not only non-coloratura, but of a certain coarse nature.
This is how the hero speaks, and the heroine, as a somewhat snobbish, artificial
beauty, is a traditional operatic soprano. And while the satirical text, brimming
with street language, curses and slang perfectly fits with the rap interpretation,
the similar, although rare expressions in the soprano part make the comic effect
even stronger due to the total inconsistency with the voice idiom. In other
words, the soprano idiom provides a completely new, unusual interpretation of
the text and becomes one of the main means of theatrical expression. Then there
is the ensemble, or the choir, as well, as a kind of transitional medium, singing
composed musical numbers in non-coloratura voice, in other words, comment
ing on the plot as a representative of the people in ancient Greek theatre, only
here the people are dressed in football strips (does this mean they are football
fans?), the scene reminds us of a football stadium, and the country where this is
taking place is no ancient state with exalted cultural and ethical norms.
For the piece Mozart, luster, lustik, Irena Popovic chooses rock music
from the well of popular culture, music whose method is also that of the non-
coloratura voice. It is but one of the elements of fragmentary structure. The rock
band on stage simply performs several individual numbers inserted into the se
ries of Mozart's letters, introducing their own poetics and establishing them
selves as the co-author of the play. All the numbers in this play, in fact, and as
Popovic herself claims, may be listened to individually, just like the different
layers of this specific structure - vocal, instrumental, dance, acting, video - are
completely independent of one another. This also speaks of the so-called dis
jointed nature of operatic texts, as Jelena Novak sees them in the book Opera in
the Time of Media.1 The form of opera is totally deconstructed, not only in the
horizontal, but in the vertical sense as well, and that gives the spectator a new
task - how to find the meaning in the separate elements of the structure. In this
way the traditional concept of following the music as art existing in time is also
abandoned and there is no longer any reminiscence or anticipation so that the
purpose of opera as a kind of representing art form is also brought into question.
Let us return now to the voice. In Tesla,Total Reflection it is equally
treated in all its forms - natural and coloratura, spoken and sung, because the
participants are the actors and singers, and the form consists of spoken and mu
sical fragments. As for the popular music genres, although the piece as a whole
can be regarded as a popular genre of cabaret, the stereotype of pop-singer is
also used. These camp numbers, however, gain a surrealistic flavour due to their
texts.
For the first time the natural voice, as the most important destructive
force of traditional operatic form, has been used in the opera Narcissus and
Echo. Here it is part of the concept: the affectation and snobbishness of the hero
is represented by the most artificial of all singing voices - the countertenor,
whereas his echo, his lost innocence and purity is represented by natural voice.
And while Narcissus's love of self is reflected in the nonsense of neobaroque
coloratura, Echo's arias are 'outside baroque music, they are close to jazz and
pop ballads with their straightforward and nonparodic subjectivism, and direct
ness of sound statement', as Zorica Premate puts it. She also emphasizes the
thesis of the composer Anja Djordjevic that 'the coloratura voice is depersonal
ized and ridiculous in its affected and coded uses'.8
7 'With the appearance of structure and the relationship of operatic texts in Einstein on the
Beach (by operatic text, J.N. means musical, literary and theatrical text - G.P), opera became free
of the battle for supremacy of one text, and the rule of "democratic" arbitration of their cohesive-
ness was established. In Einstein on the Beach this kind of relationship is shown in a manifest,
poster-like manner.' From J.Novak, Opera u doba medija [Opera in the Age of Media] (Sremski
Karlovci-Novi Sad: Izdavadka knji2arnica Zorana Stojanovica, 2007), 49.
8 Z.Premate, 'Eho Narcisa u nama' ['Echo of Narcissus in Us'], unpublished material.
Conclusion
It is obvious that the young Serbian authors of the new music stage works
have moved away from tradition. Parallel flows, disconnection, various individ
ual styles in the same piece, the different genres that are used, the poly-func
tional parts and the deconstructed traditional structure are all the marks of
something completely new. Jelena Novak introduces the term post-opera but in
any case, opera within the context of the discussed pieces, tries like never be
fore to become close to a non-music stage. And in the presence of post-drama
theatre, i.e. in the situation where music, dance and movement are legitimate
elements of theatrical expression - opera by all means will succeed.
roputfa Tlnnunoeuh
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MIHAILO VUKDRAGOVIC AND HIS ATTITUDE
TOWARD THE CONTEMPORARY TENDENCIES
IN MUSIC (1920-1980)
ROKSANDA PEJOVIC
THE aim of this paper has been to comprehend fully the thoughts of the
composer and music critic Mihailo Vukdragovic (1900-1986) on modernism,
during the sixty years from 1920, when he first started writing about music, un
til 1980. Most Belgrade musicians who, like him, continued to write critiques
and articles after the Second World War, shared most of his opinions, and the
same applies to most of the younger ones who made their appearance after the
war. The value of the musical works was of primary importance to them, and
the same goes both for contemporary and modern music. Some of them did not
make a distinction between the two notions, characterizing the works of certain
composers alternatively as contemporary and modern.
Vukdragovic closely monitored Belgrade musical life. The choice of
compositions he wrote about naturally depended on the repertoires during the
period of sixty years. The list of works he wrote about is a very long one, start
ing with Serbian composers, his contemporaries, who were orientated toward
the impressionistic style. As regards foreign music, he paid special attention to
the Slav composers and those who were influenced by folk music. When evalu
ating Serbian composers he tended to apply European criteria.
Vukdragovic was one of the most conservative Serbian composers and
music critics. He made a strict distinction between modern music on the one
hand, and avant-garde / experimental music, on the other. He persistently fought
against avant-gardism and protested at concerts, demonstratively leaving them
during the performances of extremely provocative compositions.
He was well informed about European musical events, attended many
festivals starting from the Vienna Festival Weeks to the festivals in Bayreuth
and Prague, listened to many modern pieces, but was not well disposed towards
most of them. He was convinced that the decreasing attendance of concerts,
300 Roksanda Pejovic
even in countries with a cultivated public, reflected their negative attitude to

wards modern music.
Vukdragovic was knowledgeable of the musical disciplines, which en
abled him to make analytical comments in which he elaborated his views and
judgments, either negative or positive.
He was tolerant of contemporary composers if their works leaned on tra
dition, and were based on functional harmony. He considered the works of
Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel contemporary. He highly appreciated Al
bert Roussel, but described the works of Florent Schmitt as 'an unhealthy de
generation of the French music'.1 According to him, Benjamin Britten was not a
modern, but a contemporary composer, while his Flower Songs were a 'con
vincing testimony that one could achieve the contemporary expression in the
framework of a broadly conceived tonality'.2 The Simple Symphony was in
Vukdragovic 's opinion 'a very rare type of artistically valuable music for which
one could justly say that it moved the hearts of the listeners'.3 The Violin con
certo by William Walton 4 sounded contemporary to him.
Being a Czech student himself, he often praised the Czech composers:
'After the Prague premiere of Jenufa in 1916 and its Vienna premiere in 1918
[...] the creative work of LeoS Janacek [lived to see its] affirmation, which rep
resented a strong and rarely vivid breakthrough of something very characteristic
and original within contemporary European currents, something that, by its va
lues reminded one of the previous appearance of Modest Musorgsky'.5 If he
was right about Janacek's works, it appears that he overestimated Karel
Boleslav Jirak's Wind Quintet, considering it one of the best examples of the
contemporary chamber music.
When Bohuslav Martinu's Fourth symphony was performed in Belgrade
in April 1955, Vukdragovic wrote that 'it was a rare piece of the present day,
vigorous and cheerful [...] full of music that wasn't charged with intellectual
1 M. Vukdragovic , 'Pregled knjiga. Muzika od kraja 16. do 20. veka' ['Book Review.
Music from the End of 16th to the 2ffh Century'], Politika, 31 May, 1 and 2 June 1936. N.B. In all
the following footnotes M.V. will stand for Mihailo Vukdragovic.
' M. V., 'Koncert Beogradske filharmonije. Dirigent KreSimir Baranovic, solista Miroslav
Cangalovic' ['Concert of the Belgrade Philharmonic. Conductor: KreSimir Baranovid, Soloist:
Miroslav Cangalovic'], Borba, 20 October 1953.
3 M. V., 'Koncert Beogradske filharmonije. Dirigent KreSimir Baranovic, solista Bruno
Brun (klarinet) i Branko PivniCki (bas)' ['Concert of the Belgrade Philharmonic. Conductor:
KreSimir Baranovic, Soloists: Bruno Brun (Clarinet) and Branislav PivniCki (Bass)'], Borba, 12
December 1952.
4 M. V., 'Huan Hoze Kastro za pultom Beogradske filharmonije. Solistkinja Marija Miha-
iloviC (violina)' ['Juan Jose Castro conducting the Belgrade Philharmonic. Soloist: Marija Mi-
hailoviC (Violin)'], Borba, 25 December 1952.
5 M. V., 'Kaca Kabanova LeoSa JanaCeka. Premijera u Operi Narodnog pozoriSta u
Beogradu' ['Katja Kabanova by LeoS Janacek. Premiere at the Opera of the National Theatre in
Belgrade'], Borba, 15 July 1956.
MIHAILO VUKDRAGOVlt AND HIS ATTITUDE.. 301
formulations, which frequently give a stamp of despair and desolation to con

temporary musical expression', adding that it was based on 'the tradition of the
finest models reconciled with deeply genuine personal expression.'6
'During the past five decades the music of the European West, in convul
sive search for new forms of expression, has led itself into a wasteland'7: Vuk-
dragovic was convinced that contemporary music had for decades been in crisis
and was characterized by 'most heterogeneous tendencies [...], starting from the
"classics" of the modern music, namely Stravinsky, Bela Bartok, Sergey Proko
fiev, Arthur Honegger and their followers, continuing with the revolutionary
works of Arnold Schoenberg and fanatic advocates of his twelve-tone system,
up to the latest experiments of admirers of the "concrete" and "abstract" music,
which were unacceptable even for dodecaphonists'.8
He was aware that Igor Stravinsky was the central figure of the new mu
sic and considered his influential objective attitude toward music in his works
as a reflection of the turmoil of contemporary intellectual and humanist ideas.
He admitted the importance of his output for the creations of the French neo-
classicists, and more widely for the whole avant-garde.9 'Every new piece by
Stravinsky, after the move from the Russian tradition reflected in the Firebird,
Petrushka and the Rite of Spring, produced surprise, misunderstanding, disbe
lief and wonder in the audience. Only he among the modern classicists was able
to provoke such astonishing echoes and offer new encouragement for compos
ers [...] In this miraculous complex of creative turns Stravinsky, although rec
ognizable and genuine, has to the present day remained inexplicable in his reac
tions to diverse influences that questioned the authenticity of his own personal
ity'.10 Vukdragovic quoted Ernst Kfenek saying of Stravinsky: 'No one knows
what was there hiding behind his true personality - perhaps not even himself,
and it is quite possible that he didn't want to know it', and then continued that,
'Stravinsky kept secret a crucial fact about his generally mysterious life - how
he managed to move from the Rite of Spring to Le Jeu de Cartes? ' Vukdrago-
vic's reaction to The Symphony of Psalms was ambivalent: 'The freezing line
arity of The Symphony of Psalms, chiselled as if out of stone in its monolithic
architecture, meagre in harmony in the consistent elimination of emotional
6 M. V., 'Uspeh Cetvrte simfonije Bohuslava Martinua' ['Success of the Fourth Sympho
ny by Bohuslav Martinu'], Borba, 10 April 1955.
7 M. V., 'Povodom osamdesetogodisnjice rodjenja. Petar Konjovic' ['On the Occasion of
the 80lh Birthday of Petar Konjovic'], Borba, 28 April 1963.
8 M. V., 'Utisci sa koncerata nagradjenih dela' ['Impressions from the Concerts of
Awarded Works'], Borba, 30 December 1953.
9 M. V., 'Prvo jugoslovensko izvodjenje Persefone od Igora Stravinskog' [The First
Yugoslav Performance of Persefone by Igor Stravinsky'], Borba, 20 February 1955; M. V., 'The
Success of the Fourth Symphony by Bohuslav Martinu', Borba, 10 April 1955.
10 M. V., 'Kralj Edip I. Stravinskog. Koncert Beogradske filharmonije' ['Oedipus Rex by
Stravinsky. Concert of the Belgrade Philharmonic'], Borba, 26 December 1955.
chromaticism and its sound close to the organ's, was more appealing to me in
those rare moments of Russian-Byzantine echoes from afar than in its overall
Gregorian effect'.11
'When Honegger's Le Roi David was first performed in Belgrade,
twenty-five years ago', Mihailo Vukdragovic wrote in 1954 'it represented one
of the most significant musical expressions of the modern music [...] In the
meantime, contemporary European music has restlessly searched for new means
of expression, rarely producing important achievements, while more often
reaching dead-ends. Similar to flashing meteors, from time to time some musi
cal works would shed light on the dark horizon of the European music, but often
they would soon disappeared for ever'.1* The Liturgical symphony by Arthur
Honegger 'by its purely musical quality of expression and form, belongs to the
best works of not only this author but of the entire modern European symphonic
music [...] Helpless and lonely, Honegger lost faith that people could create a
new world, better than the existing one and looked for inspiration in the liturgi
cal texts'.13
Vukdragovic's opinion that Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Bartok, Hindemith
and Honegger, were the 'classics of contemporary music' shows that he did not
always distinguish between the notions of contemporary and modern,14 as does
the comment about Gordon Jacob (1895-1984) whom he called a contemporary
composer.15 He persistently reminded his readers of the need to perform con
temporary works of Stravinsky, Hindemith, Honegger, Milhaud and Britten in
Belgrade.
Mihailo Vukdragovic was among the greatest opponents of avant-garde
music: 'What is today referred to as the lasting, even victorious fanfare of the
future, by tomorrow will have disappeared from the repertory, sinking into
oblivion'.16 'When hearing Mozart's music, the reaction of today's public, tired
of the abundance of romantic music and weary of the often aggressive sound of
M. V., 'Prvo izvodjenje kantate Pesme prostora Ljubice Marid. Simfonijski koncert
Beogradske filharmonije. Solista Zilber Zanlongi, dirigent Zivojin Zdravkovic' ['The First Per
formance of the Cantata Songs ofSpace by Ljubica Maric. Concert of the Belgrade Philharmonic.
Soloist: Gilbert Zanlongi, Conductor: Zivojin Zdravkovic'], Borba, 13 December 1956.
l: M. V., 'Artur Honeger: Kralj David ' ['Arthur Honegger: King David], Borba, 18
January 1954.
13 M. V., 'Koncert Beogradske filharmonije. Dirigent Oskar Danon, solistkinja Melita
Lorkovic (klavir)' ['Concert of the Belgrade Philharmonic. Conductor: Oskar Danon, Soloist:
Melita Lorkovic (Piano) '], Borba, 7 February 1953.
14 M. V., Ibid.
15 M. V., 'Koncert Beogradske filharmonije. Dirigent Oskar Danon, solista Ivan TurSic
(fagot)' ['Concert of the Belgrade Philharmonic. Conductor: Oskar Danon, Soloist: Ivan TurSic
(Bassoon)'], Borba, March 1954.
M. V., 'Premijera u Hrvatskom narodnom kazalistu u Zagrebu. Igor Stravinski: Zivot
razvratnika' ['The Premiere in the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb. Igor Stravinsky: The
Rake 's Progress'], Borba, 7 March 1954.
MIHAILO VUKDRAGOVIC AND HIS ATTITUDE- 303
the modern musical language, could be compared to the feeling of a man who
crosses from a muddy river where even logs remain unnoticed, into a clear
mountain spring in which even the thinnest splinter disturbs its clarity and har
mony'.17
According to Vukdragovic, Carl Orff was a modern composer whose mu
sic 'went straight into the hearts of his listeners'.18 Wouldn't he be rather called
a contemporary composer? In his opinion, works such as the following were
modern: the Little Symphony Concerto by Frank Martin and two rondos by
Theodor Berger, Rondino giocoso and Rondo: the former was characterized as
'excellent' while the latter as a composition reflecting 'vigorous strength'.19
Vukdragovic also had strong opinions on Serbian contemporary music.
Like many other musicians and critics in the period between the two world
wars, he was convinced that using national idioms was necessary for the true
development of Serbian music. He supported the music based on the heritage of
Stevan Mokranjac (1856-1914), whom he considered as next to Glinka, Mo-
niuszko and Lisinski and believed that the artistic value of his music could be
compared with that of Palestrina and the other great masters of vocal poly
phony.20 In his later years he did not change those opinions, but he no longer
persistently insisted on inspiration from folk music, thinking that 'the right way
for the domestic musical life should be to based on the performances of the mu
sical inheritance of the past, to which should be added works belonging to the
legacy of the "classics" of new music.'
According to Vukdragovic, the true contemporary expression was
achieved in the music of Petar Konjovic (1883-1970), who was 'the most per
sistent and talented follower of Mokranjac, whose works represented the ulti
mate success achieved by Serbian music [...] The strength of his musical
thought was always vital, true and striking, and very often miraculous in its ex
citing vibrations'.21 Konjovic followed Mokranjac's idea that Serbian music
17 M. V., 'V. A. Mocart: Don Huan (Premijera u Narodnom pozoriStu u Beogradu)' ['W.
A. Mozart: Don Juan (Premiere in the Belgrade National Theatre)'], Borba, the performance was
held on 20 October 1953.
18 M. V., 'Karmina burana Karla Orfa (u izvodjenju Akademskog hora Branko Krsmano-
vicY yCarmina Burana by Carl Orff (Performed by the Academic Choir Branko Krsmanovic)'],
Borba, 7 June 1955).
19M. V., 'Nove kompozicije domacih autora na programu Beogradske filharmonije'
['New Compositions by Domestic Authors on the Repertory of the Belgrade Philharmonic'],
Borba, 5 May 1955.
20 M. V., 'O stogodiSnjici rodjenja (Stevana Mokranjca)' ['On the Centennary of Mokra
njac's Birth'], Borba, 16 January 1956; M. V., 'Stevan St. Mokranjac', Letopis Matice srpske,
1964, 394, 4, 2550/256.
21 M. V., 'Simfonijska muzika Petra Konjovica. Na koncertu Beogradske filharmonije o
kompozitorovoj pedesetogodiSnjici' ['Petar Konjovid's Symphonic Music. Concert of the Bel
grade Philharmonic on the Occasion of the Composer's Fifty Years of Composing'], Borba, 18
January 1954.
304 Roksanda Pejovid
could only develop on the basis of Serbian folk music, and in that way would be
aligned together with Musorgsky, Borodin and especially ЈапаCеk.'22
He found the new European expression in the compositions of Miloje
Milojevic (1884-1946) and Josip Slavenski (1896-1955), as similar to that of
Konjovic, 'based on the psychological potentials of the folk music and the ade
quate conception of the aesthetics of musical nationalism as embodied in the
works of Stevan Mokranjac'.23
Vukdragovic defined the characteristics of Slavenski's music as modern
and contemporary: 'Josip Slavenski took the same road that many European
composers, starting from Debussy or Cyril Scott to the present day had taken
before him, trying to push aside or regenerate weary expression with new
rhythms, melodies and sounds [...] rich, original and strong ideas [...] the har
mony that strives towards polytonality, enriched with the bright colouring of the
orchestra'. Vukdragovic was convinced that Slavenski's compositions have
their place in the canon of contemporary European creative work. He also
thought that the Four Balkan Dances 'represented a genuine Balkan version of
the European modern music of the period between the two world wars, just like
that of the early Stravinsky and Bartok.24 Vukdragovic was aware that Slaven
ski's music was reminiscent of Bartok's, but he didn't doubt at all in the inno
vative creative spirit of the Yugoslav master.25
Vukdragovic appreciated domestic music if he recognized in it creative
elaboration of the music of the 'classics of modern music'. He claimed that the
Wind Quintet by Dragutin Colic (1907-1987) was a 'composition of Hin-
demithian atmosphere, imaginative and virtuosic'.26 In Milan Ristic's (1908-
1982) Concerto for piano and orchestra he praised the 'excellent anti-romantic
orchestration, whose language operated mostly within the Hindemithian expres
sion'.27 As much as his earlier works, Ristic's Burlesque is seen by Vukdrago
vic as full of Prokofievan gaiety.28 Vukdragovic welcomed the use of tonality in
M. V., 'Povodom osamdesetogodisnjice rodjenja. Petar Konjovic' ['On the Occasion of

the Eightieth Birthday of Petar Konjovic'], Borba, 28 April 1963.
23 R. Pejovid, Muzicka kritika i esejistika u Beogradu (1919-1941) [Musical Critiques and
Essays in Belgrade (1919-1941)], (Belgrade: Fakultet muzicke umetnosti, 1999), 239.
24 M. V., 'Koncert Beogradske filharmonije. Dirigent Zivojin Zdravkovic, solista Andreja
Preger (klavir)' [ 'Concert of the Belgrade Philharmonic. Conductor: Zivojin Zdravkovic. Soloist:
Andreja Preger (Piano) '], Borba, 9 April 1953.
25 M. V., 'Muzika dvadesetog veka. Koncert hora Radio Beograda' ['The Music of the
Twentieth Century. Concert of the Radio Belgrade Choir'], Borba, 20 February 1957.
26 M. V., 'Koncert Beogradskog duvackog kvinteta. Primer za ugled' ['Concert of the
Belgrade Wind Quintet. An Example to be Followed'], Politika Ekspres, 2 March 1978.
27 M. V., 'Koncert Beogradske filharmonije. Prvo izvodjenje Koncerta za klavir i orkestar
Milana Ristica' ['Concert of the Belgrade Philharmonic. The First Performance of the Concerto
for Piano and Orchestra by Milan Ristic'], Borba, 6 March 1 955.
-8 M. V., 'Umetnik velikih perpektiva' ['An Artist with Great Perspectives'], Borba, 6
October 1958.
MIHAILO VUKDRAGOVIC AND HIS ATTITUDE.. 305
the Concerto for orchestra by the same composer: 'How lovely and contempo
rary can traditional triads in root position sound, even in the work of present
days!'29
As one more proof of Vukdragovic's cautious acceptance of the new,
objective and anti-romantic sounds, we have the extraordinary praise addressed
at the composer Ljubica Maric (1909-2003) in 1931 when the Prague Wind
Quintet performed her Wind Quintet in Belgrade.30 Maric's later works im
pressed him even more: 'Meditative, introverted, romantically inspired, con
templative, Ljubica Maric is inclined towards the absolute, the 'ultimate things'
that stay outside our tangible world. She composed the cantata Songs of Space
for choir and orchestra, using the texts from epitaphs on medieval tombstones,
and presenting them musically in an outstanding manner. In this very significant
work the elements of vital, genuine folk impulses were integrated into romantic
chromaticism of almost Scriabinian contours, as was the romantic saturation of
orchestral colours combined with the cold musical expression of the later Stra
vinsky, but also with something that recalls the Symphony of Psalms.^ Vuk-
dragovic also recognized the importance of another work of Ljubica Maric:
'The Byzantine Concerto is a work of outstanding value in terms of its content,
well-known formulae are rejected, elements of tonal musical language and
sharp expressionistic accents are connected spontaneously and naturally. The
use of the motifs from the Octoechos adds an archaic dimension to the work,
but all the time the spirit of our times is convincingly present'.32
Vukdragovic was always ready to greet the return to tonality in the works
of previously atonal composers. So he did with Stanojlo Rajicic's (1910-2000)
ballet Under the Ground, although he found the new harmonic idiom 'rough'
and 'sharp'.11
He was also consistent in his views when assessing younger composers
who made their appearance after World War II, from Josip Kalcic to Vera Mi-
lankovic. According to him Kal&c's (1912-1995) Musica Concertante was
successful in some details and created refined sound effects, but lacked firmness
and coherence of form, thus producing an impression of improvisation.34
:i) M. V., 'Koncert za orkestar Milana Ristica' ['Concerto for Orchestra by Milan
Ristic']. Borba, 1 1 January 1964.
30 M. V.. 'Koncert PraSkog duvaCkog kvinteta' ['Concert of the Prague Wind Quintet'],
Politika, 1 7 December 1 93 1 .
1 M. V., 'Prvo izvodjenje kantate Pesme prostora Ljubice Marid' ['The First
Performance of the Cantata Songs ofSpace by Ljubica Marid'], Borba, 13 December 1956.
,: M. V., 'Ljubica Marid: Vizantijski koncert' ['Ljubica Marid: Byzantine Concerto',
Borba. 8 June 1963.
33 R. Pejovic, Muzicka kritika i esejistika u Beogradu (1919-1941) [Musical Critiques and
Essays in Belgrade (1919-1941)], (Belgrade: Fakultet muziCke umetnosti, 1999), 239.
,4 M. V., 'Festival Muzika u Srbiji. Bez pravog odjeka' ['The Festival Music in Serbia.
Without Appropriate Echo'], Politika Ekspres, 1 December 1977.
306 Roksanda Pejovi6
As could be expected, Vukdragovic was annoyed by the Integrals and

Antinomy of the avant-garde oriented Vitomir Trifunovic (1916-2007): 'I
honestly didn't know what these mathematical and philosophical titles were
meant to tell the audience, except maybe that in Darmstadt or some other centre
of the avant-garde - they have just led us into a blind alley of so-called new
sound, from which - it is quite clear to almost everyone - there is no way out'.35
'The Fifth Symphony by Vasilije Mokranjac [1923-1984]', Vukdragovic
wrote, 'will beyond any doubt become an anthological value sui generis in the
history of Serbian and Yugoslav music. I say sui generis because it is an out
standing, even a unique example of ingenuity, with no match whatsoever, not
only locally but in a much broader context, at the European level. Compressed
into a single movement lasting fifteen minutes, expressed in the language of
very extended tonality, within which even the sharpest vertical constructions
were psychologically justified, this Symphony vividly and eloquently reminds
us of the reflection of the prominent conductor, mathematician and musical
philosopher Ernest Ansermet about the music of the future, elaborated in his
extensive study entitled The Foundations of Music in the Human Conscious.
"The music of the future" - Ansermet wrote - "could be nothing but a free, per
sonally shaped application of the existing stylistic variations: diatonicism,
chromaticism, enharmonicism, tonal harmony, polytonality, occasional extra-
tonality, and cadencial thythms in the melodic flow. There are no other op
tions". Vasilije Mokranjac has yet again convincingly assured us of his crea
tively strong potential as a natural symphonist of sovereign composition and
technical virtuosity'.36
Vukdragovic observed contemporary tendencies in the works of Enriko
Josif (1924-2003): 'The second movement of the Sinfonietta by Enriko Josif
was expressive and formally more balanced than the first, which is broad, lyri
cally and meditatively cheerful, more profoundly inspired than the first, relying
on the achievements of the classics of modern music, primarily Stravinsky, in
search of his own lyrical expression'.37
The adherence of Dusan Radic (b. 1929) to modern tendencies provoked
a critical response from Vukdragovic. When listening to the Sinfonietta, he no
ticed that 'boldness could lead him astray which was not a rare case in modern
music', although it was still, 'in turmoil, in the large-span sphere from Stravin
sky and Prokofiev, to Bartok and Slavenski. 'Bizarre and artificial combinations
35 M. V., 'Muzika u SrbijV ['Music in Serbia7], Politika Ekspres, 23 November 1977.

36 M. V., 'Koncert Simfonijskog orkestra RTB. MokranjCeva Peta' ['Concert of the Sym
phony Orchestra of Radio Television Belgrade. The Fifth Symphony by Mokranjac'], Politika
Ekspres, 8 April 1979. .
17 M. V., 'Simfonijski koncert Beogradske filharmonije. Dirigent r3usan Skovran, solista
Andreja Preger' ['Concert of the Belgrade Philharmonic. Conductor: Dusan Skovran. Soloist:
Andreja Preger'], Borba. 25 December 1954.
of sounds in harmony and orchestration' were naturally less appealing to Vuk

dragovic than the 'warm lyrical atmosphere, especially in a slow movement,
which was musically most interesting'.3
'The collection of songs called The Besieged Gaiety to the poems of
Vasko Popa, composed for female choir and two pianos, mirrored the atmos
phere of Igor Stravinsky's music, especially in Pribautki for solo voice and the
group of instruments and Les noces. The piano also started in the manner of
Stravinsky from the mentioned period: compact dissonances of seconds, se
venths and ninths, harmony of fourths, persistent application of ostinato, which
produced the effect of stasis. The music of this composition is interesting pri
marily as a document of a disoriented time in which a born musician such as
DuSan Radic opposes such a state by exposing something close to an "atavistic
sensitivity'".39
Vukdragovic was not prepared for the bold means of expression dis
played in Radic's Oratorio Profano. He was especially shocked with the third
and fourth movement:
'How can Dusan Radic possibly consider taking this road today, when
requiems have already been sung to the avant-garde, when Western musicolo
gists write about the "new tonality" and meaninglessness of experiments that
have for decades been destroying music? [...] He is experienced enough to
cleverly organize the sound material, dividing it into several instrumental and
vocal groups, and in this collage to imaginatively create contrasts in tempo,
rhythm, colour and melodic accents. I only wander what the goal of all this
was'. Vukdragovic then quoted Radic's own text from the programme booklet:
'I haven't discovered anything new, neither in terms of sound, form or ideas. I
didn't even intend to do so. I used the selection of expressive means, invented
during the last twenty years, the means that the present day avant-garde com
posers offered in exchange for the classic tonal system, in order to give an over
view of events in today's art. I won't even believe that the author of The Tower
of Sculls by using the expressive means of avant-garde authors, wishes to iden
tify himself with them. The final bars of the work do encourage me to think so.
Or they may be just a nostalgic echo of the irrevocable, because everything that
had been said before has a more vital message that leads to the idea that art
without experiments is dead, whereas art without radicalism is sterile (Ivana
TriSic in a comment on the work). Dusan Radic is the one who should reply to
that view.'40
,* M. V., 'Koncert Beogradske filharmonije. Dirigent Zivojin Zdravkovic, solista Zdenko

Marasovic' ['Concert of the Belgrade Philharmonic. Conductor: Zivojin Zdravkovic, Soloist:
Zdenko Marasovic (Piano)'], Borba, 13 November 1955.
,g M. V., 'Muzika dvadesetog veka. Koncert hora Radio Beograda' [Music of the
Twentieth Century. Concert of Radio Belgrade Choir'], Borba. 20 February 1957.
40 M. V., 'BEMUS 79. Oratorio profano', Politika Ekspres. 8 October 1979.
308 Roksanda Pejovtf
Adherence to tradition and tonality, and avoidance of the avant-garde

were, in Vukdragovic's opinion, necessary for the survival of music. From this
aspect he contemplated the works of Petar Ozgijan (1932-1979): 'In the turmoil
leading to the blind alleys of the contemporary musical language and expres
sion, which most directly influenced generations of composers to which Ozgijan
himself belonged, provoking confusion among many, even the most talented
among them, he succeeded in facing the progress of the European avant-garde
from a distance, both emotionally and intellectually, believing that the future of
the new in music was not in the overall rejection of the old but in cleverly built
continuity with the past. In his Nocturno Ozgijan cautiously uses models of the
'new sound', in an organised way, almost constantly with association to tonality
which, nearing the end, becomes emotionally more expressive, to the limits of
meaningful post-romantic sensibility'.'"
After having stated that the dramatic oratorio Uprising Against Dakhias
by Rajko Maksimovic (b. 1935) was 'largely independent and particular' and
that it 'contained rich, convincing music', Vukdragovic expressed his criticism
of the 'harmonic language based on the fourths and fifths structures without
thirds' and persistent avoidance of tonality. 'If a composer's procedure aspires
to become a system or even a dogma - which seems to be the case with Maksi-
movic's score - the road to despair will be the almost certain result. The half-a-
century that has passed since Schoenberg's free atonality, dodecaphonic dogma
and everything that followed, have only harshly convinced us that we were
right. However, Maksimovic does not seem to be aware of this.'42
Vukdragovic never accepted the abandonment of tonality. On Slobodan
Atanackovic's (b. 1937) Chamber Concerto he wrote: 'The odiousness of his
harmonic language was unbearable - the furthest possible from anything that
would remind one even remotely of tonality'. Commenting on another work by
the same composer, Ad vivum, Vukdragovic, however, admitted that Atanac-
kovic could 'skilfully exploit' avant-garde cliches. 43
It seems that few musical professionals had any understanding for the
choreo-torio Step by Zoran Hristic (b. 1938). According to the assessment made
by Mihailo Vukdragovic, this composer has 'for years and ad absurdum ex
ploited the "heritage" of the avant-garde: even sound surfaces on a single tone,
crescendo dynamics, the dominant role of percussions, aleatory music in various
41 M. V., 'Koncert Beogradske filharmonije. Ozgijanov Nokturno' ['Concert of the Bel

grade Philharmonic. Nocturno by Ozgijan'], Poliiika Ekspres, 16 May 1980.
i2 M. V., 'Koncert hora i simfonijskog orkestra RTB. Znacajno delo' ['Concert of the
Choir and Orchestra of Radio Television Belgrade. A Significant Work'], Politika Ekspres, 23
March 1979.
4' M. V., 'Festival Muzika u Srbiji. Bez pravog odjeka' ['The Festival Music in Serbia.
Without Appropriate Echo'], Politika Ekspres, 1 December 1977; M. V., 'Festival muzika u
Srbiji. Prvo vece' [The Festival Music in Serbia. The First Evening'], Politika Ekspres. 21 May
1978.
forms, choir unisons, whispering and reciting with obligatory glissandos. He

degraded the role of orchestra to a sound coulisse deprived of everything that
would point to its independent functioning. Apart from few elaborate vocal
lines in the solo sections, the lack of melodic invention appears to be one of the
striking characteristics of this music, while thematic work was non-existent. A
positive side of this work is the way the verses of Branko Miljkovic are set to
music performed by the soloists: calm lines, good old tonal and modal princi
ples, with Hristid's personal stamp'.44 Yet another composition of 'the gifted
composer Zoran Hristic: Within Eight, a resounding collage made of a series of
resounding situations', was commented upon as 'music that leaves no traces
behind it'.45
Vukdragovic did not have a positive opinion about Moving Mirrors for
four pianos by Srdjan Hofman (b. 1944) either, considering that the 'talent of
this composer was wasted in the search of the new within a closed circle. Be
cause of that the result did not reflect truly his creative potential. Hofman's firm
tonal foundations - the road to salvation that he chose - enable us to discern
clearly the structure of the piece, aiming at the stasis of a closed circle'.46
Ivana Stefanovic (b. 1948), was also among the composers whose ideas
were opposed to Vukdragovic 's, so he criticised her too, for moving in a closed
circle. Comparing her works with Hofman's, he maintained that she was 'in
clined to irrational and subjective spheres, while her colleague displayed more
rational and objective traits. On the other hand, the procedures they used were
similar: sharp vertical structures, static and compressed blocs with few agitated
motions in high registers and with extremely contrasting dynamics [...] If the
composition lasted even a second more, that would be fatal for the listeners.'47
Vukdragovic's views on the works of Ivan Jevtic (b. 1947) were based on
his attitude to the tradition: 'A composer should not be the slave of fashion and
the new at any cost, but a creator based upon tradition, with a healthy, contem
porary spirit',48 'healthy sources of inspiration and healthy contemporary sound,
without a single touch of avant-garde ideas'.49
Vukdragovic found that the choreographic poem Anagnorisis by Vera
Milankovic (b. 1953) had 'a specific personal accent', but he commented that
44 M. V., 'Premijera Koraka Zorana Hristica. JednoliCno' ['The Premiere of Zoran Hri-
stic's Steps. Monotonous'], Politika Ekspres, 8 October 1980.
4 M. V., 'Muzika u Srbiji' ['Music in Serbia'], Politika Ekspres, 23 November, 1977.
46 M. V., 'BEMUS 79. Zanimljivo veCe'f'BEMUS 79. An Interesting Evening'], Politika
Ekspres, 1 1 October 1979.
47 M. V., Ibid.
48 M. V., 'Koncert Beogradske filharmonije. U novoj funkciji' ['Concert of the Belgrade
Philharmonic. In the New Function'], Politika Ekspres, 20 January 1978.
49 M. V., 'Resital Ksenije Jankovic. Mladi majstor' ['Recital of Ksenija Jankovic. A
Young Master'], Politika Ekspres, 18 March 1980.
by 'applying bitonality, polytonality and even atonal blocks [the composer] did
not contribute to the aspired at contemporary character, quite the contrary'.50
Mihailo Vukdragovic openly exposed his views about contemporary,
modern and avant-garde music, and he certainly wished to utilise European cri
teria, but his character inclined to radicalism and conservativism prevented him
from understanding them fully. However, he proved to be right in his high ap
preciation of a certain number of composers, such as Petar Konjovic, Josip
Slavenski, Ljubica Maric and Vasilije Mokranjac.
PoKcanda IJejoeuh
MHXAHJIO BYWArOBHTi H H>ErOB O/JHOC

nPEMA CABPEMEHOJ MY3HUH (1920-1980)
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(1900-1986) o MoaepHH3My, y BpeMeHCKOM HHTepBajiy on rue3,neceT ronuna,
on 1920, Kaaa je noHeo na nHiue o My3HUH, no 1980. roaHHe. BetUma 6eorpaa-
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je noHHH>ajia on KOMno3HTOpa HMnpecHOHHCTHHice cthjickc opHjeHTaUHje. Bho
je Merjy HajKOH3epBaTHBHHjHM cpncKHM My3HHapHMa. ynopHO ce 6opno npo-
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BOBHMa 6ho npeTepaHO HCKjtyHHB.
M. V., 'Koncert Beogradske filharmonije. Novo ime' ['Concert of the Belgrade

Philharmonic. A New Name'], Politika Ekspres, 13 January 1978.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS / AYTOPM
Jonathan Cross is Professor of Musicology at the University of Oxford and

Tutor in Music at Christ Church. He wrote The Stravinsky Legacy and was edi
tor of and contributor to the Cambridge Companion to Stravinsky. His other
major publications include the book on Harrison Birtwistle. Cross was editor of
Music Analysis 2000-2004.
Jarmila Gabrielova is Head of the Department of Music History of the Institute

of Ethnology in Prague and Head of the management of The New Dvorak Edi
tion. In her research she concentrates on the history of nineteenth and twentieth-
century Czech music, especially on the works of Dvorak and Martini!
Jelena Jankovil is a musicologist, graduated from the Faculty of Music in Bel

grade. She obtained her Masters Degree at the University of Arts in Belgrade
and Universite Lumiere Lyon 2. Since 2002 she has worked at Jugokoncert, a
Belgrade Concert Agency.
Dragana Jeremid-Molnar teaches History of nineteenth-century music at the

Department of Musicology, Faculty of Music in Belgrade. Her most important
books are Myth, Ideology and Mystery in Richard Wagner's Tetralogy (coau
thor A. Molnar) and Richard Wagner, Constructor of "Genuine " Reality.
Maria Kostakeva is Associate Professor at the Institute of Musicology, Ruhr

University in Bochum. Her main areas of study are twentieth-century music,
opera and music theatre, as well as Bulgarian and Russian music. She has pub
lished books on Ligeti (1995) and Schnittke (2005), as well as many articles.
Hartmut Krones is Professor at the Universitat fur Musik und darstellende

Kunst in Vienna and Head of the Arnold-Schonberg-Institut and the Institut fur
musikalische Stilforschung. He has published numerous works mainly on the
performing practices of old and new music, music symbolism and rhetorics and
twentieth-century music.
Helmut Loos is Director of the Institute of Musicology at Leipzig University.

He is leading the international project Musica migrans and has previously or
ganised similar projects based on research of the music in Central and Eastern
Europe. He is author of a book on Beethoven and editor of several other books.
312 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS / AYTOPH
Marija Masnikosa is Assistant Professor at the Department of Musicology of

the Faculty of Music, University of Arts in Belgrade. Her research is focused
primarily on the problems of minimalism and postminimal music. She pub
lished the book Musical Minimalism (Belgrade, 1998).
Ivana Medic is a doctoral student and teaching assistant at the University of

Manchester, United Kingdom. Her current research focuses on the Soviet non
conformist music of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, particularly on symphonic
works by Alfred Schnittke and his peers.
Vesna Mikil teaches music at the Department of Musicology, Faculty of Music

in Belgrade, and various PhD. courses at the University of Arts. She is Deputy
Editor-in-Chief of the international journal New Sound and author of the book
Music in Technoculture (Belgrade, 2004).
Biljana Milanovid is research-assistant at the Institute of Musicology in Bel

grade. Her studies include early twentieth-century music with particular focus
on the Serbian heritage in the context of identity positionings as well as the re
searching of works for the musical stage.
Melita Milin is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Musicology in Belgrade.

Most of her study is focused on twentieth-century Serbian music and particu
larly on the works of Ljubica Maric. She is author of The Traditional and the
New in Serbian Music after WW2 (Belgrade, 1998). She was editor of Muziko-
logija 2001-2005.
Aleksandar Molnar is Professor of History of political and social ideas and

Sociology of music, at the Department of Sociology, the Philosophical Faculty
in Belgrade. His most important books are People, Nation, Race and Treatise on
Democratic Constitutional State in five volumes.
Nadezda Mosusova is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Musicology in Bel

grade and Professor at the Faculty of Music (now in retirement). The main
themes of her research include musical nationalism in Serbian and other Slavic
cultures, with the focus on opera and ballet, and the works of Petar Konjovic
and Stevan Hristic.
Max Paddison is Professor of Music Aesthetics at Durham University. He has

written books on critical theory and Adorno: Adorno's Aesthetics of Music
(1993,1997), and Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture (1996, 2004). He is
also joint editor of a volume of essays with I. Deliege, Musique Contemporaine:
Perspectives theoriques et philosophiques (2001).
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS / AYTOPH 313
Roksanda Pejovid is Professor of Music at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade,

now in retirement. She published works on musical instruments in medieval
Serbia but the main focus of her research is on musical life and criticism in Ser
bia from the beginning of the nineteenth century to 1941.
Gorica Pilipovil is a musicologist with a master's degree from the Faculty of

Music in Belgrade. Author of a book on Dusan Radic and articles on twentieth-
century Serbian music, she is currently focused on the research of contemporary
opera. Since the early 1990s she has been a presenter at Radio-Belgrade 2.
Katy Romanou teaches Musicology at the University of Athens. She has done
considerable research on recent Greek music history. She is member of the edi
torial boards of the Greek periodicals Musicologia and Polyphonia, and associ
ate editor for Greek language in RIPM.
Jim Samson is Professor of Music at Royal Holloway, University of London.

His main areas of study include early twentieth-century music, the social history
of music in east central Europe, nineteenth-century musical aesthetics and the
piano music of Chopin and Liszt. Samson is currently working on a research
project on music in the Balkans.
Leon Stefanija joined the Department of Musicology, Faculty of Arts, Univer

sity of Ljubljana in 1995 and since 2001 has chaired systematic musicology
there. His main research and teaching areas are episetmology of music research,
contemporary music, the social psychology of music and music education.
Katarina Tomasevid is a Researcher at the Institute of Musicology in Bel

grade. The main fields of her research include the European frames of Serbian
music, the history of stage music and theories of tradition, modernism and the
avant-garde. She is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Muzikologija.
Vlastimir Trajkovid is Professor of Composition at the Faculty of Music in

Belgrade and corresponding member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and
Arts. Editors: Max Eschig, Paris; Gerard Billaudot, Paris; Berben, Edizioni mu-
sicali, Ancona; Association of Serbian Composers, Belgrade; Editions EAV7,
Belgrade.
Mirjana Veselinovid-Hofman, Professor in the Department of Musicology in

Belgrade; affiliated to the Music Department at the University of Pretoria
(2003-6). Editor-in-Chief of New Sound; has written five books (e.g. Frag-
mente zur musikalischen Postmoderne, Frankfurt a.M., 2003) and texts on con
temporary music.
314 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS / AYTOPH
Laszl6 Vikarius is Head of the Bartok Archives of the Institute for Musicology
in Budapest and lecturer at the Liszt Academy (now State University) of Music.
He is currently working on critical editions of Cantata profana and Duke Blue
beard's Castle for sample volumes of the planned Bela Bartok Complete Criti
cal Edition.
Alastair Williams is Reader in Music at Keele University. His interdisciplinary

research interests focus on intersections of music theory, critical theory and
twentieth-century music. He is author of New Music and the Claims of Moder
nity ( 1 997), of Constructing Musicology (200 1 ), and of numerous articles.
INDEX OF NAMES1
Abbate, Carolyn, 222 Binicki, Stanislav, 117

Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund, 33, 43, Birtwistle, Harrison, 60
59, 60, 63, 70, 75, 78, 123-126, Blair, Tony, 69
129, 209, 221, 227, 285 Bloch, Ernst, 144
Ady, Endre, 144 Blume, Friedrich, 227
Albeniz, Isaak, 19 Blumroder, Christoph von, 219
Althusser, Louis, 248 Bockholdt, Rudolf, 227
Andersen, Hans Christian, 157 Bocola, Sandro, 77
Andric, Ivo, 86 Borio, Gianmario, 227
Ansermet, Ernest, 306 Borodin, Alexander, 304
Artaud, Antonin, 261 Bosseur, Jean-Yves, 257
Artmann, H. C, 236 Botstein, Leon, 24
Atanackovic, Slobodan, 308 Boulez, Pierre, 206, 207, 247, 248,
Attridge, Derek, 21 255-262, 291
Boym, Svetlana, 19, 20
Babbitt, Milton, 180, 182, 183 Brahms, Johannes, 55, 56
Badiou, Alain, 21, 22 Brelet, Gisele, 250
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 191, 222, Brezhnev, Leonid, 197, 198
223, 266 Brinkmann, Reinhold, 57, 207
Bachelard, Gaston, 38 Britten, Benjamin, 63, 300, 302
Bakic-Hayden, Milica, 104, 112 Brown, Earle, 232, 285
Bandur, Jovan, 97 Butt, John, 23
Barthes, Roland, 248-250, 252 Burger, Peter, 283, 284
Bartok, Bela, 78, 98, 118, 121-129, Byron, George, 156
131-139, 141-152, 181, 206, 223,
301, 302, 304, 306 Cage, John, 75, 76, 182, 206, 232,
Baudelaire, Charles, 71, 76, 124 255, 256, 283-286
Beckett, Samuel, 75 Cardew, Cornelius, 271, 287
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 55, 61, 185, Carter, Elliot, 180
206, 239, 265, 267-269 Casella, Alfredo, 144, 145
Belyaev, Mitrophan, 199 Chaikovsky, Piotr, 117
Berg, Alban, 100 Char, Rene, 259-262
Berger, Theodor, 303 Charpentier, Gustave, 117
Bernard, Elisabeth, 49 Chattier, Roger, 24
Berners, Lord, 144 Chase, Gilbert, 255
Beuys, Joseph, 76, 77 Chatzidakis, Manos, 179
Bhabha, Homi, 73 Cherepnin, Ivan, 272
1 Only the names from the main text are listed.

316 INDEX OF NAMES
Chomsky, Noam, 255 Eggebrecht, Hans Heinrich, 42

Chopin, Frederic, 122 Einstein, Albert, 27
Chrysander, Friedrich, 46 Enescu, George, 125, 126, 128
Cobussen, Marcel, 254 Engelman, Günther, 44
Coltrane, John, 75 Etzion, Judith, 16
Cone, Edward , 180 Evans, Bill, 36
Conversi, Daniele, 19 Evans, Peter, 261
Cook, Nicholas, 87
Copland, Aaron, 180 Falla, Manuel de, 30, 31, 37, 38, 125,
Corea, Chick, 36 128, 137
Cowell, Henry, 137 Faure\ Gabriel, 31
Craft, Robert, 180 Feldman, Morton, 206, 285
Czukay, Holger, 272, 273, 275, 276, Fernandez, Angel Pulido, 18
278, 279 Fibich, Zdengk, 117,118
Filieri, Attilio, 272
tech, Svatopluk, 157-159, 161, 170 Fleming, Kathryn E., 105
Colic, Dragutin, 98, 119, 304 Flory, Jagoda, 17
Forte, Allen, 56, 57, 180, 181
Cosid\ Dobrica, 189 Foster, Hal, 284, 289
Foucault, Michel, 248, 257
Celebi, Evliya, 16 Frauke, Hess M., 44
Freud, Sigmund, 61, 284
Dahlhaus, Carl, 21, 94 Friedman, Susan, 88
Davies, Hugh, 271 Fromm, Paul, 180
Davis, Miles, 36
Debussy, Claude, 30-33, 36, 37, 39, Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 28
124, 144, 206, 300, 304 Gallie, Walter Bryce, 23
Denegri, Jerko, 188 Gertler, Andre, 150
Derrida, Jacques, 22, 254 Gesualdo da Venosa, 31
Diaghilev, Sergey, 116 Glass, Philip, 36, 285, 286, 291, 292
Dilthey, Wilhelm, 42 Gligo, Niksa, 250
Dujmic, Dunja, 250 Glinka, Mikhail, 303
Duchamp, Marcel, 76 Goossens, Eugene, 144
Dusapin, Pascal, 257 GostuSki, Dragutin, 96
Dvorak, Antonin, 117, 122, 156 Graham, Gordon, 249, 253
Dylan, Bob, 75 Granados, Enrique, 19
Gray, Cecil, 144
Djordjev, Bojan, 292 Greissle, Felix, 180
Djordjevic, Anja, 292, 294, 296 Grieg, Edward, 122
Djuric-Klajn, Stana, 129 Griffiths, Paul, 262
Grotjahn, Rebecca, 48, 52
Eco, Umberto, 207, 251 Groys, Boris, 228
INDEX OF NAMES 317
Haba, Alois, 95, 98, 119, 139, 220 Kagel, Mauricio, 76, 231, 265
Habermas, Jürgen, 67, 69-71 Kaliic, Josip, 305
Hakobian, Levon, 196, 203 Kalomiris, Manolis, 126, 128
Hampe, Felix, 18 Karoly, Michael, 275,
Hamsun, Knut, 157 Kestenberg, Leo, 46
Hancock, Herbie, 36 Kleiber, Erich, 127
Haydn, Josef, 206, 266 Kodaly, Zoltan, 142, 146, 152
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 38 Kogoj, Marij, 220, 221
Heidegger, Martin, 20 Konjovic, Petar, 93, 94, 96, 99, 100,
Heile, Bjorn, 66, 76 107, 109, 116-119, 126-128, 190,
Hemsi, Alberto, 19 191, 303, 304, 310
Henry, Pierre, 75 Kienzl, Wilhelm, 47
Herbeck, Ernst, 268, 269 Kholopova, Valentina, 200
Hess, Frauke M., 44 Khrushchev, Nikita, 197, 198
Hindemith, Paul, 98, 191, 220, 302 Knittl, Karel, 117
Hofman, Srdjan, 309 Kramer, Jonathan, 288
Honegger, Arthur, 301, 302 Kfenek, Ernst, 180, 181, 301
Hornbostel, Erich von, 138 Kretzschmar, Hermann, 57
Hristic, Stevan, 94, 99, 116-118, 191 Kuba, Ludvik, 134, 135
Hristic, Zoran, 308, 309 KuhaC, Franjo, 135
Huber, Klaus, 222 Kuhn, Thomas S., 38, 71-73
Huysmans, Joris Karl, 76
Lacan, Jacques, 84, 248
Indy, Vincent d', 220 Lachenmann, Helmut, 206, 207, 209,
Ivanovic, Nada, 253 266-270
Ives, Charles, 206 Lang, Paul Henry, 180
Lara, Manrique de, 18, 19
Jacob, Gordon, 302 Lasso, Orlando di, 31
JakSic, Djura, 190, 191 Latzko, Ernst, 142, 143
Jameson, Fredric, 269 Leafstedt, Carl, 143
JanaCek, LeoS, 78, 118, 121-123, Lebic, Lojze, 221-223, 225-228
125-128, 300 Leichtentritt, Hugo, 57
Jarrett, Keith, 36 Lenz, Jakob, 268
Jencks, Charles, 286 Levi-Strauss, Claude, 248, 249, 253,
Jevtic, Ivan, 309 255, 263
Jirak, Karel Boleslav, 300 Levinas, Emmanuel, 19
Jobim, 36 Levy, Moric, 16
Johnson, David C, 271, 272, Liebzeit, Jaki, 275-277
275-278 Ligeti, Gyorgy, 36, 206-208, 222,
Josif, Enriko, 306 223, 226, 231
Josquin des Pres, 31 Lisinski, Vatroslav, 303
Joyce, James, 235 Logothetis, Anestis, 232-235
318 INDEX OF NAMES
Lohne, Mani, 275-277 Mrstik, Alois and Vilem, 157

Lubarda, Petar, 189 Muck, Peter, 49
Lutostawski, Witold, 36 Mukafovsky, Jan, 250-252
Lyotard, Jean-Francois, 67, 68, 71 Murail, Tristan, 208
Musaus, Johann Karl August, 41
Maes, Francis, 199 Musorgsky, Modest, 122, 300, 304
Mahler, Gustav, 60, 199, 222
Maksimovic, Rajko, 308 Nattiez, Jean-Jacques, 66
Malipiero, Gian Francesco, 144 Neumann, FrantiSek, 158
Mallarme, Stephane, 262 Newton, Isaac, 27
Marinkovic, Josif, 1 17, 190 Nono, Luigi, 206, 207, 209, 268
Maric, Ljubica, 95, 98, 119, 129, 189, Novak, Jelena, 247, 248, 250, 251,
192, 305, 310 296, 297
Martin, Frank, 303 Novak, Vitezslav, 156-162, 165, 169,
Marx, Joseph, 220 170
McEvilley, Thomas, 77
McVeigh, Simon, 49 Ogden, Will, 57
Mellers, Wilfrid, 277 Olavide, Gonzalo de, 272
Menuhin, Yehudi, 141 Orff, Carl, 303
Mesarites, Nicolas, 37 Osterc, Slavko, 220, 221
Messiaen, Olivier, 30, 207, 256 Otte, Hans, 232
Meyer, Leonard, 66 Ovidius, 27
Mihevc, Marko, 222, 226-228 Ozgijan, Petar, 308
Milankovic, Vera, 305, 309
Milhaud, Darius, 144, 145, 302 Paddison, Max, 90, 124, 125
Miljkovic, Branko, 309 Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da, 31,
Mill, John Stuart, 42 303
Milojevic, Miloje, 94, 99, 100, 107, Parker, Cecil, 75
109, 116, 117, 127, 190, 304 Pavlova, Anna, 116
MiloSevic, Predrag, 128 Parry, Milman, 131, 133
Milutinovic, Zoran, 251 Pejkovic, Vladimir, 292
Mitchell, Donald, 33, 35, 36 Petrovic, Aleksandar, 115
Mladenov, Ivan, 208 Peyrelevade, Jean, 183
Mokranjac, Stevan Stojanovic, 94-97, Pentek, Gyorgy Gyugyi, 148
107, 117, 129, 303, 304 Pick, Daniel, 23
Mokranjac, Vasilije, 306, 310 Pidal, Menendez R., 18
Moniuszko, Stanislaw, 303 Pierce, Charles Saunders, 148
Mooney, Malcolm, 275, 277, 280 Pink Floyd, 75
Moore, Allan F., 255, 278 Pinto, Benjamin, 1 7
Morin, Edgar, 87 Plautus, 110
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 206, Popa, Vasko, 1307
266, 293-296, 302 Popovic, Irena, 292, 293, 296
INDEX OF NAMES 319
Popovic, Mica, 189 Schnebel, Dieter, 231, 232

Popper, Karl, 28 Schnittke, Alfred, 202, 203, 207
Premate, Zorica, 296 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 42
Prokofiev, Sergey, 31, 98, 191, 199, Schönberg (Schoenberg), Arnold, 24,
200, 301, 302, 304, 306 25, 30, 32, 34-38, 55-61, 73, 78, 98,
Prunieres, Henry, 137 100, 118, 122-124, 143-145, 160,
188, 215, 220, 237, 261, 288, 308
Radid, DuSan, 306, 307 Schreker, Franz, 220
Radicevic, Branko, 190 Schubert, Franz, 206
Radovanovic, Vladan, 213 Schumann, Robert, 156, 206
RajiCic, Stanojlo, 99, 100, 119, 189- Schüring, Holger, 271, 272
191, 305 Scott, Cyril, 304
Ravel, Maurice, 31, 137, 144, 300 Scriabin, Alexander, 30, 160, 305
Rebikov, Vladimir, 117, 118 Scruton, Roger, 252
Reich, Steve, 286 Sessions, Roger, 180, 181
Reimer, Erich, 51 Shchedrin, Rodion, 199, 202
Reissig, Rudolf, 158 Shostakovich, Dmitry, 199, 200, 202
Rihm, Wolfgang, 207, 266, 268-270 Sibelius, Jan, 122
Rijavec, Andrej, 220 Skalkottas, Nikos, 179
Riley, Terry, 285 Skopetee, Eli, 105
Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolay, 117, Slavenski, Josip, 95, 110-112, 126-
118, 122 128, 304, 306, 310
Ristic, Milan, 98, 119. 129, 189, 191, Sloterdijk, Peter, 289
192, 304 Smalley, Roger, 271
Rochberg, George, 256 Smetana, Bedfih, 117, 122
Rojko, Uros, 221, 223, 225-228 Smith, Antony, 17
Roussel, Albert, 137, 300 Smith-Brindle, Reginald, 273
Ruwet, Nicolas, 263 Sontag, Susan, 25
Riihm, Gerhard, 236 Sova, Antom'n, 157
Spahlinger, Mathias, 206
Said, Edward, 63, 84, 103, 105 Stacey, P. F., 260
Saint-Saens, Camille, 74 Stalin, Yossif, 196
Salter, Richard, 268 Stecker, Karel, 117
Samson, Jim, 57, 126 Stefanovic, Ivana, 309
Saussure, Ferdinand de, 248, 249, 252 Stevens, Halsey, 137
Scelsi, Giacinto, 208, 226 Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 75, 76, 206,
Schaal, Richard, 49 207, 231, 265, 271-273, 275, 278-
Schaeffer, Bohuslav, 291 280
Schenker, Heinrich, 56 Stojanovic, Marija, 294
Schmelz, Peter, 198 Stojanovic-NoviCic, Dragana, 257
Schmidt, Irmin, 272, 275, 278, 280 Straus, Joseph, 56, 58
Schmitt, Florent, 300 Strauss, Richard, 30, 63, 118, 160
320 INDEX OF NAMES
Stravinsky, Igor, 31, 33-37, 55, 59- Wackenroder, Heinrich, 42

61, 63, 75, 78, 98, 116, 118, 122, Wagner, Richard, 29, 30, 55, 57, 58,
124-126, 129, 143-145, 180, 188, 117, 205
193, 199, 200, 206, 220, 301, 302, Walsh, Stephen, 60
304, 305, 307 Walton, William, 300
Suchoff, Benjamin, 134 Weber, Max, 69, 71
Suzuki, Damo, 275, 277 Weber, Samuel, 79
Szekely, Zoltin, 150 Weber, William, 49
Szymanowski, Karol, 125, 126, 139, Webern, Anton, 30, 33, 35, 75, 206,
144, 145 250, 284
Weich-Shahak, Susanna, 16
Skerjanc, Lucijan Marija, 220, 221 Weil, Simone, 27
Suvakovid, MiSko, 188 Weingartner, Felix, 220
Wellesz, Egon, 37, 38
Taj&vtt, Marko, 97, 126-128 Welsch, Wolfgang, 69, 72
Takemitsu, Toru, 36 Whittall, Arnold, 198
Taruskin, Richard, 56, 125, 202 Wilson, Robert, 291, 292
Tishchenko, Boris, 200 Wolf, Christian, 285
Todorova, Maria, 21, 84, 85, 103-105
Toynbee, Arnold, 28 Xenakis, Iannis, 36, 38, 207, 247,
Trifunovic, Vitomir, 306 248, 255-258, 262, 263
TriSic, Ivana, 307
Trost, Anton, 220 Yack, Bernard, 18, 25
Tukey, John, 180 Young, La Monte, 285, 286
Varese, Edgard, 180, 207, 208 Zappa, Frank, 75

Velickovic, Jasna, 292 Zhdanov, Andrei, 196
Vinaver, Stanislav , 100 Zimmermann, Bernd Alois, 28
Voto, Mark de, 183 Zykan, Otto M., 232, 235, 236, 239
Vuekovic, Vojislav, 95, 98, 99, 119,
129 Zebeljan, Isidora, 292
Vukdragovic, Mihajlo, 97, 299-310 Zivkovic, Milenko, 97
Zizek, Slavoj, 84
Ussachevsky, Vladimir, 180
CIP - KaTaTOrM3aqMja y ny6nnKau,MjH
Hapo^Ha 6w6nnoTeKa Cp6Mje, Beorpafl
78.036 MOflEPHM3AM (082)

MY3MHKM MOflepHH3aM - HOBa TyMaHeH>a : 36opHHK paflOBa ca HayHHor CKyna
oflpa<aHor on 1 1. flo 13. OKTo6pa 2007. / ypeflHMn.n flejaH flecnnh, MenMTa Mm/imh. -
Beorpafl : CAHY : My3MKonoiuKn MHCTMTyT CAHY, 2008 (Beorpafl : KpajMHarpaep). -
320 dp. ; 24 cm. - (HayHHH CKynoBM. CAHY ; kh>. 1 22. Ofle/beH,e /imkobhc m My3HHKe
yMeTHOCTH ; kh>. 6)
Ha cnop. Hac/i. CTp.: Rethinking Musical Modernism. - PaflOBH Ha enrn. je3HKy. -
Tnpa>K 500. - Bn6/iMorpa(pMja y3 nojeflHHe paflOBe. - Pe3MMen.
ISBN 978-86-7025-463-3 (CAHY)
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This is a reproduction of a library book that was digitized

by Google as part of an ongoing effort to preserve the

MY3HHKH MOAEPHH3AM - HOBA TYMAHEftA

3BOPHHK PAAOBA CA HAYHHOr CKYFIA O^P^CAHOr

ripHMjbeHO Ha II CKyny Oaejbeiba jihkobhc h My3HHKe yMeTHOCTH

MY3HKOJIOUIKH HHCTHTYT CAHY

PROCEEDINGS OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE HELD

Accepted at the II meeting of the Department of Fine Arts and Music

TeXHHHKH ypeaHHK Prepared for print by

JJtttajH KopHua Cover design

Tupaac Number of copies

Academician Dejan Despic, Introductory Address 11

Dr Danica Petrovic, Director of the Institute of Musicology,

1 . Jim Samson, Either /Or 15

2. Vlastimir Trajkovic, Thinking the Rethinking (ofthe Notion of)

3. Helmut Loos, From the Ideal to the Real. A Paradigm Shift 41

4. Jonathan Cross, Paradise Lost: Neoclassicism and the Melancholia

6. Katarina Tomasevic, Musical Modernism at the 'Periphery '?

7. Biljana Milanovic, Orientalism, Balkanism and Modernism

8. NadeZda Mosusova, Modernism in Serbian / Yugoslav Music

9. Melita Milin, Musical Modernism in the 'Agrarian Countries ofSouth-Eastern

10. Laszlo Vikarius, A novarum rerum cupidus in Search of Tradition:

12. Katy Romanou, Total Capitalism versus Total Serialism 179

13. Vesna Mikic, Aspects of (Moderate) Modernism in the Serbian Music

15. Maria Kostakeva, Problems of Terminology and Verbal Mediation

16. Mirjana Veselinovic-Hofman, Revisiting the Serbian Musical

17. Leon Stefanija, Calibrating Modernisms: theldea(l)s ofMusical

1 8. Hartmut Krones, Sprachkompositionen in der Musik

1 9. Jelena Jankovic, Structure - Meaning and Implementation

20. Alastair Williams, Modernism in Germany after 1968:

21 . Dragana Jeremic-Molnar and Aleksandar Molnar, Echoes ofModernism

24. Roksanda Pejovic, Mihailo Vukdragovic and his Attitude toward

Index ofNames 315

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INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS AT THE CONFERENCE

Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 1 1 October 2007.

Dear colleagues, honoured guests!

YBO/JHA PEH HA HAYHHOM CKYFiy

y CpncKoj aKaaeMHjH HayKa h yMeTHOCTH, 11. oKTo6pa 2007.

IToiuTOBaHe KOjiere h yBaaceHH rocra!

INTRODUCTORY GREETINGS AT THE CONFERENCE

Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 1 1 October 2007.

n03^PABHA PEH HA HAYHHOM CKYIly

y CpncKoj aKaaeMHjn HayKa h yMeTHOCTH, 1 1 . oicro6pa 2007.

* Celebi was a seventeenth-century courtier and 'professional' traveller, whose monumen

transplanted Sepharad by demonstrating Hispanic survivals in the music as well

10 A. Pulido Fernandez, Los Israelitas espaholes y el Idioma Castellano (Madrid, 1904)

14 D. Conversi, 'Mapping the Field: Theories of Nationalism and the Ethnosymbolic Ap

nostalgia has become a cultural project, something Svetlana Boym argues is a

21 See J. M. Smith, A. Light and D. Roberts, introduction: Philosophies and Geographies

On transitional states, see N. Schwartz-Salant and M. Stein (eds.), Liminality and

3. I want to come finally to just a very few reflections on modernism it

D. Pick, Faces ofDegeneration: A European Disorder, c. 1848 - c. J918 (Cambridge:

R. Chartier, Cultural History: Between Practices and Representations, trans. L. G.

y paay ce HcrpaHcyje MoaepHH3aM y My3HUH noMohy aHcKypca KaKO

L 'acquisition des connaissances fait approcher

Prolem sine matre creatam.

Rem tene, verba sequentur.

SCIENTIFIC theories are revocable, whereas stylistic categories are subject