Music in the Balkans

Balkan Studies Library

Editor-in-Chief
Zoran Milutinovi, University College London

Editorial Board
Gordon N. Bardos, Columbia University
Alex Drace-Francis, University of Amsterdam
Jasna Dragovi-Soso, Goldsmiths, University of London
Christian Voss, Humboldt University, Berlin

Advisory Board
Marie-Janine Calic, University of Munich
Lenard J. Cohen, Simon Fraser University
Radmila Gorup, Columbia University
Robert M. Hayden, University of Pittsburgh
Robert Hodel, Hamburg University
Anna Krasteva, New Bulgarian University
Galin Tihanov, Queen Mary, University of London
Maria Todorova, University of Illinois
Andrew Wachtel, Northwestern University

VOLUME 8

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bsl

Music in the Balkans

By
Jim Samson

LEIDENBOSTON
2013
Cover Illustration: The bridge on the Drina at Viegrad, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Samson, Jim.
Music in the Balkans / by Jim Samson.
pages cm. (Balkan studies library, ISSN 1877-6272 ; 8)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-25037-6 (hardback : alk. paper) ISBN 978-90-04-25038-3 (e-book)
1.MusicBalkan PeninsulaHistory and criticism.I.Title.

ML3600.S26 2013
780.9496dc23
2013012191

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual Brill typeface. With over 5,100 characters
covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the
humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface.

ISSN 1877-6272
ISBN 978-90-04-25037-6 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-25038-3 (e-book)

Copyright 2013 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing,
IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV
provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center,
222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA.
Fees are subject to change.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

 To
Efi, Richard, Vasilis and Stefanos
 CONTENTS

List of Illustrations.......................................................................................... xiii

List of Maps ...................................................................................................... xv

Introduction ..................................................................................................... 1

PART ONE
BALKAN GEOGRAPHIES

1Exodus......................................................................................................... 13
Sarajevo: Little Jerusalem ................................................................. 13
Two Peninsulas: The Sephardic Diaspora ................................... 17
Singing the Community: Music of the Sephardim ................... 21
Opening Out: Themes and Developments .................................. 28

2Ecologies..................................................................................................... 35
Music and Place................................................................................... 35
Ringed by Mountains: The Oa Country...................................... 40
On the Voice: The Dinaric Alps and Other Mountains........... 44
Deep in umadija ................................................................................ 51

3Displacements .......................................................................................... 58
Investing in Place ................................................................................ 58
Migrations: Serbs in a Habsburg World ....................................... 63
Trading Places: Greece and Anatolia ............................................ 69
Tallava Rules: Kosovars in Macedonia ......................................... 75

4Ecumenes ................................................................................................... 80
In the Minority .................................................................................... 80
All Together in Vojvodina ................................................................ 83
Orchestrating Thrace ......................................................................... 91

5Centres ........................................................................................................ 101

All in the Family: Mapping Montenegro ..................................... 101
Finding the Centres: People and Traditions ............................... 110
East West ........................................................................................... 115
viii contents

PART TWO
HISTORICAL LAYERS

6A Makam-Echos Culture..................................................................... 133

Grand Narratives............................................................................... 133
Byzantine Reflections ...................................................................... 142
Ottoman Canons............................................................................... 150

7Eastern Recessions ............................................................................... 160

Allahu Ekber ...................................................................................... 160
Coffee Break ....................................................................................... 173
Turning West ..................................................................................... 180

8Infrastructures........................................................................................ 189
Littoral Balkans: Venice and the Adriatic ................................. 189
Mitteleuropa: The Reach of the Habsburgs .............................. 196
Reciprocities: Modernising the Peripheries ............................. 202
The Principalities and Beyond ..................................................... 208

9Nations ..................................................................................................... 220

The First Steps ................................................................................... 220
Two Nations ....................................................................................... 228
The Berlin Balkans ........................................................................... 235
Yugoslavism ........................................................................................ 240

10Inspirers ................................................................................................... 249

Building the Pyramids: Reflections on High Culture............. 249
Greeks... ............................................................................................. 254
...and other Agents ......................................................................... 261
Either/Or: Reflections on Modernism ........................................ 266

PART THREE
MUSIC IN TRANSITION

11Mixing It .................................................................................................. 275

Discourses of Transition ................................................................. 275
Nuts and Bolts: Elements of Popular Music ............................. 281
On the Record: Surveying the Legacy ........................................ 287
 contents ix

12Join the Club .......................................................................................... 302

Following the Leader: Manolis Kalomiris ................................. 302
Drawing the Circle: The Greek National School ..................... 313
Another Way: The Failure of Greek Modernism .................... 325

13Moderna ................................................................................................... 332

Garlands: Stevan Mokranjac ......................................................... 332
One People, Three Names: The First Yugoslavia .................... 338
Late Arrivals: Croatian Modernisms ........................................... 344
Parallel Tracks: Bulgarian Advances ........................................... 351
Transit to Prague .............................................................................. 358

14Serbo-Croat ............................................................................................. 369

Who Owns Slavenski? ..................................................................... 369
From the Balkans... ........................................................................ 376
...to the Cosmos .............................................................................. 383

15Placing Genius ....................................................................................... 391

A Tempting Comparison: Locating George Enescu ............... 391
Closing In: Enescus Journey ......................................................... 398
Wider Again: In the Modernist Canon ...................................... 407

PART FOUR
EASTERN EUROPE

16The Curtain Descends ......................................................................... 415

Left, Right... ...................................................................................... 415
In Extremis: The Singular Case of Albania ................................ 424
Administered Music: Performing Communism ...................... 431
Composers on Message .................................................................. 437

17Diverging Paths...................................................................................... 444

Traffic with Moscow ........................................................................ 444
The Acolyte: Bulgarian Bridges .................................................... 451
The Zealot: Albanian Austerities ................................................. 456
The Maverick: Romanian Renewals............................................ 459
x contents

18Another Try............................................................................................. 468

Politics versus Culture: The Second Yugoslavia ...................... 468
The Dark Decade: Mainly Serbia ................................................. 474
In from the Cold: Mainly Croatia, a Little Slovenia,
and Back to Serbia ...................................................................... 479
Catching Up: Other Republics ...................................................... 489

19Birthright of the People ...................................................................... 495

Orchestras: Classicising Traditional Music ............................... 495
Newly Composed Folk Music ....................................................... 503
Simulacra: Wedding Music and More ........................................ 513

20One Got Away ........................................................................................ 519

Popular Art Music: Theodorakis at Large ................................. 519
Art Music: Modernism is Official................................................. 527
Popular Music: Rebetika and Beyond ........................................ 540

PART FIVE
GLOBAL BALKANS

21All Change ............................................................................................... 549

Brave New World.............................................................................. 549
Another Balkans: The Diasporic Imagination ......................... 555
Composers in Exile .......................................................................... 563

22Conservation .......................................................................................... 573

Who Needs Classical Music?......................................................... 573
Has Modern Music Really Grown Old? ..................................... 580
Where Have All the Folksongs Gone? ....................................... 589

23Balkan Beat ............................................................................................. 595

Heroes .................................................................................................. 595
Re-Inscribing Yugoslavia ................................................................ 599
Divas ..................................................................................................... 605
Greek Mythology .............................................................................. 611
 contents xi

24On Boundaries and Events................................................................. 616

In Theory ............................................................................................. 616
Greece and its Neighbours ............................................................ 621
Music Partitioned........................................................................... 628
...and Not Quite Partitioned........................................................ 636

25Endgame .................................................................................................. 642

Degenerations .................................................................................... 642
Generations ........................................................................................ 649
Balkan Ghetto: The Story of Kosovo........................................... 655
Are We There Yet? ........................................................................... 660

Glossary .............................................................................................................. 669

References ......................................................................................................... 673
Index ................................................................................................................... 705
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Part I

12.The Croatian Musical Institute, Zagreb, exterior and central

staircase .................................................................................................... 8
3. Gaida player Paschalis Kitsikoudis from the village of Patagi,
Evros in Western Thrace. Singer Stratis Laboudis from the
village of Poimenikon, Evros............................................................. 9
4. Cham Albanians dancing before the opening of the Folklore
Festival Oda Dibrane in Peshkope, Northern Albania in
1999 ........................................................................................................... 9
5. National Folklore Festival in Gjirokastr, Albania in 2004.
Male dance from Kor ...................................................................... 10
67. Tekoto dance from Macedonia, performed by Tanec, the
National Folksong and Folkdance Ensemble of Macedonia ... 11
89. The Theatre of San Giacomo in Corfu. Exterior and stage ..... 12

Part II

10. Christmas celebrations in Topola, umadija, pre World War II.

The men prepare to collect ritual oak branches. Traditionally
the priests and the families burn the branches on Christmas
Eve to invoke sunlight and heat for the coming year............... 126
11. A photograph of the Serbian composer Ljubica Mari
(19092003) taken in 1933 .................................................................. 127
12. Iconic performance of Mozarts Requiem amongst the ruins
of the National Library in Sarajevo. Sarajevo Philharmonic,
Sarajevo Cathedral Choir. Conductor Zubin Mehta, Soloists
Jos Carreras, Ruggero Raimondi, Cecilia Gasdia, Ildiko
Komlosi. 19 June 1994 .......................................................................... 128
13. Folk music group from Bosnia and Herzegovina, with
performers on zurna, drum, accordion. Teanj, Bosnia
and Herzegovina, mid-20th century ............................................... 128
14. Markos Vamvakaris and his Piraeas ensemble, Athens, 1968 129
xiv list of illustrations

15. A photograph of the Greek composer Manolis Kalomiris

(18831962) from the late 1950s ........................................................... 130
16. Little-known photograph of the Romanian composer George
Enescu (18811955) .................................................................................. 130
17. The Cluari from Vlaca at Moilor Fair......................................... 131
 LIST OF MAPS*

Map 1. The Ottoman Balkans in the mid-16th century ..................... xvi

Map 2. The Military Border in the 17th and 18th centuries .............. xvii
Map 3. The Balkan states in the 1880s .................................................... xviii
Map 4. The Balkan states after World War II ....................................... xix
Map 5. South East Europe in 2013 ............................................................ xx

*Maps 14 are from Dennis P. Hupchick and Harold E. Cox, The Palgrave Concise His-
torical Atlas of the Balkans. New York: Macmillan, 2001. Reproduced with permission from
Palgrave Macmillan.
Map 1.The Ottoman Balkans in the mid-16th century
Map 2.The Military Border in the 17th and 18th centuries
Map 3.The Balkan states in the 1880s
Map 4.The Balkan states after World War II
 Danube R.
Bratislava
Vienna

AU S T R I A Budapest
Iai
Kishinev

Trieste SLOVENIA HUNGARY

Venice Zagreb Cluj
Ljubljana
Rijeka C R O AT I A Timioara
Vukovar
Biha Novi
ROMANIA
BOSNIA- Sad
HERCEGOVINA Belgrade Bucharest
Zadar
Knin
Sarajevo SERBIA Constana
Danube R. Silistra
Mostar Nis
MONTENEGRO
Turnovo Shumen Varna
Dubrovnik Podgorica Pritina
I TA LY KOSOVO Sofia B U L G A R I A
Prizren Plovdiv Burgas
Shkodr Skopje
Naples Edirne
Durrs MACEDONIA
Tiran Ohrid Kavala
ALBANIA Thessaloniki THRACE
Istanbul
Vlor

Ioannina Larissa

GREECE
TURKEY
Athens
Patras

Tripolis
MILES
0 50 100 150 200

0 100 200 300 RHODES

KILOMETERS
CRETE

Map 5.South East Europe in 2013

 INTRODUCTION

South East Europe resides in the margins of music histories, a footnote

at best. Most music lovers know little of the art music from this region.
Although it is part of Europes cultural heritage, it has been all but written
out of the European story. There are obvious reasons for this, to do with
the political, social and cultural consequences of Ottoman rule. The famil-
iar scenery of European modernity appeared late in South East Europe.
There was an element of catch-up involved, though putting it in that way
(placing coeval cultures on different symbolic time lines) begs a few ques-
tions. Chauvinism also played its part: the chauvinism of nation states in
the region itself, and the chauvinism of the West, to use a term that will
be scrutinised later. One task I have set myself is to address these ques-
tions head on. This means exploring centres and peripheries. It means set-
ting little stories alongside grand narratives. And it means analysing the
singular counterpoint of politics and culture that is everywhere manifest
in this part of Europe.
If the art music of the Balkan peninsula is little known, its traditional
music has long been a hunting ground for scholars from without, and
especially from the North American college circle. This asymmetry is strik-
ing, and it exposes the other side of the modernity coin. Pre-modern rural
music-making survived longer in the Balkans than in many other parts of
Europe. Its distinctiveness, closely tied to place, has made it an easy prey
for appropriation by local nationalisms, by state socialism and by exoti-
cist agendas in the West. I will address these questions too in what fol-
lows. To do so I will need to cross conventional scholarly divides between
musicology and ethnomusicology. Indeed, since I am really attempting a
panorama of music, culture and politics in the region, I will cross several
divides. There are commentaries on art music, church music, traditional
music and popular music in this volume. I am best qualified to discuss
the first of these, and the neglected art music of the region does indeed
lie at the heart of my narrative. But in the interests of a rounded picture I
have no compunction about having a go at the other three. Even where I
rely heavily on existing scholarship, I aim nonetheless to advance a point
of view.
The book is written for outsiders, to whom this whole field remains
arcane, but also for insiders, whose knowledge of their own musical tra-
ditions may be comprehensive, but who often know surprisingly little
2 introduction

about the music of their immediate neighbours. This brings me straight

to nationalism, a topic that looms large over South East Europe and its
culture. Nationalism is part of the history, of course, and as such it will
be interrogated in the book. But it also distorts the history, re-inventing
the past in its own image and then freezing that past into ossified figures.
Partly, then, I engage in an act of recuperation: an attempt to rescue some
aspects of music history that have been either suppressed or distorted by
nationalism. I hope to do adequate justice to empire (Ottoman, Habsburg
and other), and to the legacy of empire; in other words, I try to highlight
the commonalities rather than, or as well as, the divisions. But I want
also to present some of the music that exists or existed on the precari-
ous edges or in the darker corners of nation states: the music of so-called
minorities.
There should be a word about the two major labels used to classify this
region, neither of which is entirely neutral. South East Europe suggests
an accommodation to the European project; more than that, it implicitly
recognises that all these modern nations may in due course become part
of the European Union. The term has a modern ring, rehabilitating a terri-
tory that was once thought to be either part of the East or an aberrant part
of Europe: an orient within. The Balkans, in contrast, signals the darker
past of this region. Outsiders have gone so far as to generate a pejorative
verb from the label, while insiders have cultivated an ethos of denial; the
Balkans is always further south, further east than our present location. So
how are we to understand the Balkans? If we seek a working definition,
we could do worse than follow Maria Todorova, who equates the term
with Ottoman presence and legacy in Europe. Politically speaking, this
suggests that the term may soon outlive its usefulness. But as a pointer
to the cultural commonalities that have resulted from that presence and
legacy, its day may not be done.
As to geographical boundaries, it is best not to be too specific. If we
treat the Balkans as a metaphor, we will leave the question of boundaries
entirely open. If, on the other hand, we try to mark out the peninsula with
precision, we will cut across recognisable culture areas. Neither approach
is satisfactory. In this book there is a core region of Ottoman territory,
but there is also a shaded surround to this core, and it will be drawn into
the narrative from time to time. None of this is an exact science. Anato-
lia, poised precariously between Europe and the Middle East, has been
largely excluded, for example, though the overlapping concerns are obvi-
ous, and some Ottoman basics naturally need to be set out. Hungary has
likewise been left out of the picture. Despite the Ottoman presence there,
 introduction 3

it is more closely aligned to Central Europe or East Central Europe, to use

two labels that carry their own ideological burden. And Slovenia makes
only a marginal appearance, precisely when it is drawn into the political
communities of the two Yugoslavias. Not everyone will be content with
these decisions. I can only hope that they will be justified by the internal
coherence of the narrative.1
I write as an outsider looking in, of course. The advantages and dis-
advantages of this have already been intimated. There is a wealth of
detailed knowledge and understanding of music history in South East
Europe among the scholarly communities there; indeed one of my aims
is to bring some of this knowledge available for the most part in minor-
ity languages only to wider notice. However, the tendency of insider
scholars has been to write discrete national histories, even where this is
not the ostensible aim. An outsider can take a wider view, and can make
connections that are not always apparent from within. The drawback is
that this can only be done at some cost to specialised knowledge. It is in
the nature of a book like this that it will do some injustice to detail. I see
no way of avoiding this if I am to identify helpful patterns in the cultural
history of the region as a whole. My portrait of the Balkans is both syn-
thetic (drawing together a wide range of existing published scholarship)
and reductive (forging bold figures from a mass of detail), but I offer it in
the hope that it might be examined critically and adjusted accordingly.
Quite simply, it has seemed to me worth making some attempt, however
imperfect, to write an account of music in this region that cuts across
the familiar national borders, even if this guarantees offending just about
everyone.
There should be a word here on more practical matters. For ease of
reading, Greek and Cyrillic names and titles have been transliterated
throughout, though this carries certain obvious penalties. As to spelling,
it is all but impossible to be consistent in dealing with this region. This is
a minefield. The working principle I have adopted is to spell place names,
proper names and genre titles according to the appropriate context. Thus,
it is ilhi in Turkey, but ilahija in Bosnia and Herzegovina, zurla in Mace-
donia, zournas in Greece. With place names it would become laborious
and even pedantic to give all possible versions in every case. The most

1The five states or former states at the heart of this narrative are Albania, Bulgaria,
Greece, Romania and Yugoslavia, exactly the territories covered by Barbara Jelavich in her
history of the region (Jelavich 1983).
4 introduction

contentious area is Kosovo, and it illustrates just how hard it is to avoid

the charge of bias. Already in the above I have elected for a compromise
by choosing the familiar Kosovo over the Albanian Kosova or Kosov.
This seems right to me, but it will not necessarily seem right to Albanians.
And it is trickier still with towns and cities. Given Kosovos proclaimed
independence, backed by a substantial number of states, it would seem
reasonable to go for Peja, for example. But if we are describing the Serbian
Orthodox Patriarchate in that city, how can we use other than Pe? For
similar reasons, you will find both Pritina and Prishtina in what follows.
There will be many inconsistencies of this kind within the book, and not
all of them are the result of carelessness.
Plurals are another problem. With most European languages I have
opted for the native plural. But for non-European languages I have angli-
cised plurals with -s (makam-makam-s, rather than makam-makamlar).
And where the term now seems familiar in English, I have simply given
the English plural (sevdalinka-sevdalinkas). Finally, I have included a very
rudimentary glossary of recurring terms (genre titles, instruments and the
like) for ease of reference. They are minimally defined, and only one ver-
sion of each term is used (versions in other languages should be easily
recognisable).
It goes without saying that I have innumerable co-authors. Many of
them have become friends. Indeed some are now close friends. They are
included in the list below, and they know who they are. But more gener-
ally, people were invariably generous with their knowledge as I cornered
them during my wanderings in South East Europe. In fact I have been
offered so much help over the last few years that it seems invidious to sin-
gle out individuals. I must do so, however. Among those whose thoughts
and insights are written into my own text are the following, presented in
alphabetical order. I am grateful to all of them.
Eralp Adanir, Sofia Aggelidou, Ardian Ahmedaja, Blent Aksoy, Engle
Atamert, Mehmet Atun, Felicia Balan, Marin Marian Blaa, Maja Barali-
Materne, Iannis Belonis, Valton Beqiri, Nada Bezi, Milena Bojikova,
Dimitrije Buarovski, Ivano Cavallini, Ivan avlovi, Valia Christopoulou,
Mihai Cosma, Octavian Cosma, Mihail Cozmei, Dan Dediu, Nicoletta
Demetriou, Aleksander Dimitrijevski, Zoe Dionyssiou, Markos Dragoumis,
Arbnora Dushi, Myrto Economides, Mustafa Elmas, Deniz Ertan, Nice
Fracile, Ana Gaceva, Ertem Gal, Panikos Giorgoudes, Asli Giray, Nika Gligo,
Dimitrije Golemovi, Basak Gler, Andri Hadjiandreou, Anastasia Hasikou,
Marc Heeg, Aida Islam, Trena Jordanovska, Jelena Jovanovi, Vasilis Kallis,
Tamara Karaa-Beljak, Kostas Kardamis, Athena Katsanevaki, Pavlos
 introduction 5

Kavouras, Nicos Kokkas, Sofia Kontossi, Rreze Kryeziu, Valon Kryeziu,

Krisztina Lajosi, Danka Laji-Mihajlovi, George Leotsakos, Katerina
Levidou, Claire Levy, Alexander Lingas, Besa Luzha, Stathis Makris,
Tatjana Markovi, Linda Meriku, Vesna Miki, Biljana Milanovi, Melita
Milin, Pirro Miso, Irena Mitevska, Ivan Moody, Iva Neni, John Neubauer,
Zymer Neziri, Muhamed Nezirovi, Jelena Novak, Yiannis Papadakis, Anna
Papaeti, Igor Paspalj, Sara Peno, Danica Petrovi, Svanibar Pettan, Mirsad
Pinjo, Eckehard Pistrick, Ioannis Polychronakis, Sperana Rdalescu, Sanja
Raljevi, Amila Ramovi, Andrej Rijavec, Marko Rogosi, Katy Romanou,
Donika Rudi, Margaritova Rumiana, Albin Sadiku, Kibris Sanat, Eva
Sedak, Dardan Selimaj, Velika Stojkova Serafimovska, Sokol Shupo, Biljana
Sikimi, Vasiliki Sirakouli, Kenneth Owen Smith, Angelina Sotiriou, Leon
Stefanija, ebnem Susam-Saraeva, Ivona Tatarceska, Katarina Tomaovi,
Dafni Tragaki, Ioannis Tsagarakis, Effie Tsangaridou, Panos Vlagopoulos,
Pllumb Vorpsi, Haris Xanthoudakis, and Susanne Ziegler.
Closer to home, I am very grateful to John Tyrrell for his unfailing
support of the project and for immensely useful suggestions, to Stephen
Lovell for sharing thoughts, to Adrian Thomas, Zoran Milutinovi and
Danijela piri-Beard for helpful advice, and to two anonymous readers
who commented constructively on the manuscript. And I am especially
indebted to Efrossini Spentzou and Richard Alston for intellectual stimu-
lus, moral support and warm friendship. It is to them and to their two
children Vasilis and Stefanos that the book is dedicated. Thanks also to
Theodora Lebesi, my guardian angel in Nafplio.
I am also grateful to Ivo Romein , Tessel Jonquire and Zoran Milutinovi
at Brill for their initial interest, subsequent enthusiasm and unfailing
efficiency, to Dennis P. Hupchick and Harold E. Cox for permission to
reproduce maps 14 (from The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of the
Balkans), and to Zoran Milutinovi, Milena Bojikova, Ardian Ahmedaja,
Mihai Cosma, Efi Spentzou and Valia Christopoulou for helping me to
negotiate the difficulties presented by transliteration, diacriticals and so
on across a range of different languages. Needless to say, they should not
be blamed where I have fallen short.
And finally, I extend my thanks to the Leverhulme Trust, the British
Academy, the Onassis Foundation and Royal Holloway, University of
London for generous financial support.

Jim Samson
London and Nafplio 2013
 PART ONE

BALKAN GEOGRAPHIES
12.The Croatian Musical Institute, Zagreb, exterior and central staircase
(photographs Damil Kalogjera).
Courtesy of the Croatian Musical Institute.
3.Gaida player Paschalis Kitsikoudis from the village of Patagi, Evros in
Western Thrace. Singer Stratis Laboudis from the village of Poimenikon, Evros
(photograph Haris Sarris).

4.Cham Albanians dancing before the opening of the Folklore Festival Oda
Dibrane in Peshkope, Northern Albania in 1999 (photograph Ardian Ahmedaja).
5.National Folklore Festival in Gjirokastr, Albania in 2004. Male dance from
Kor (photograph Ardian Ahmedaja).
67.Tekoto dance from Macedonia, performed by Tanec, the National Folksong
and Folkdance Ensemble of Macedonia.
Courtesy of Tanec.
89.The Theatre of San Giacomo in Corfu. Exterior and stage. Watercolours by
M. Pieris.
Courtesy of the Music Museum Nikolaos Halikiopoulos Mantzaros of the
Corfu Philharmonic Society.
 CHAPTER ONE

EXODUS

Sarajevo: Little Jerusalem

If you stroll around Sarajevo today you will see a modern, feisty European
capital. You may need to remind yourself that this was a city under siege
in the 1990s, and that many of its inhabitants carry vivid memories of
what is usually just called the war. For some, the memories are no doubt
suppressed. Even where events are less strident, our memory sometimes
prefers to leapfrog the more immediate past. It seeks a safer territory.
Unlike Mostar to the west or the Drina valley villages to the east, now in
Republika Srpska, Sarajevo retains relatively few physical scars from the
war. What has been destroyed is being destroyed is the toleration of
difference, for no Balkan city had been as multinational, multireligious
and multicultural as Sarajevo. Present-day divisions are palpable, and they
remind us that the rebuilding of tolerance, here as elsewhere in South
East Europe, will be a daunting task. The memory of co-existence haunts
the city. As for the violence, this is now encased in commemorative sym-
bols; it is rendered into history.
The Dayton accord held in check some of those same ethnonational
energies that had triggered an earlier war, when Gavrilo Princip stamped
Sarajevo indelibly on the history books. Again there are symbols, book-
marking the infamous date: 28 June 1914.1 Princips target was an Arch-
duke, but a dynasty fell: more than that, an entire dynastic system. And
the dynasties are inscribed in Sarajevos urban landscape. As you stroll
down Ferhadija, now a pedestrian walkway thronged with shoppers, the
Habsburg scenery at the upper end yields to the Ottoman old town, with
its medresa and bezistan, a tourist trap for sure, but still charming. History
is peeled back in layers as you walk. You will pass the Catholic cathedral,
and you may glimpse the spire of the Franciscan church and monastery
across the river Miljacka, all built after the Habsburg occupation of 1878.
You will walk within a block or two of the Saborna Crkva, the new Ortho-
dox Church on Trg Osloboenja [Liberation Square]. You might then make

1Snel 2004.
14 chapter one

a short detour to visit the old (sixteenth-century) Orthodox Church on

Mula Mustafe Baeskije. Either way, you will end up in the Turkish quar-
ter. Here you will find the Gazi Hsrev Bey mosque, and on the hillside
directly ahead the Muslim cemeteries overlooking the city. This is now a
predominantly Muslim town.
One thing you might easily miss is the Jewish museum (the old syna-
gogue) on Mula Mustafe Baeskije. Today there is a community of around
seven hundred Jews in the city. But you will find few visible signs that
right up to World War II Sarajevo was a leading centre of Sephardic Jewry
in the Balkans. The Sephardim arrived there mainly from Salonica [Thes-
saloniki] in the mid sixteenth century. We learn snippets about their life
in Sarajevo under Ottoman rule from passing references by Turkish and
European travellers, including the seventeenth-century writer and travel-
ler Evliy elebi (161182),2 and there is also factual data in the archives of
the Jewish Sephardic Community as recorded by Rabbi Moritz Levy,3 and
in the kadi records of the local Muslim court. All this is supplemented by
retrospective accounts of the Ottoman period in Jewish magazines from
the early twentieth century. We learn that the new immigrants settled ini-
tially in a large building known as ifuthan [the Jew house] by locals and
Il cortijo [the courtyard] by the Jews themselves, but that in due course
they established other residential districts on the edge of Muslim dis-
tricts. They were a close-knit community, largely self-governing, and they
integrated reasonably well with the local community, serving as treasur-
ers, customs officers and land-registry clerks. Yet they preserved many of
the oral traditions of their heritage, including their language (a dialect of
Judeo-Spanish) and their music.4
Modernity impacted on the Sephardim with the switch to a Habsburg
administration in 1878, one of many such collisions of Ottoman and Habs-
burg dynasties in the Balkans. Life in rural Bosnian communities was not
greatly affected, but it was a different story in the towns, and especially
in Sarajevo. There were transformations in architecture, interior design,
transport (the introduction of trams), and cultural practices. For the most

2elebis Seyhatnme [Book of Travels] is an indispensable source of information

on Ottoman life and culture (Dankoff 1990; Dankoff and Elsie 2000), and on what Rob-
ert Dankoff calls the Ottoman mentality (Dankoff 2004). Among the many accounts of
the Balkans by European travelers, one might cite Wilkinson 1848, Bou 1854 and Maurer
1870.
3Levy 1996.
4More detailed accounts of Jewish life in Sarajevo can be found in Freidenreich 1979,
Nezirovi 1992 and Shaw 1991.
 exodus 15

part Jewish secular musical life was unaffected by the tight bureaucratic
control exercised by the new administration over music.5 As an oral cul-
ture, predominantly amateur and without dedicated performance venues,
it was exempt from the license system that crippled other forms of music-
making. But it did reap the benefits of the new programmes of education
introduced by the Habsburgs and of the cultural awareness that flowed
from them. And it responded to a developing cultural nationalism among
the Sephardim, a response to the Habsburgs, but even more a response to
the Ashkenazim who accompanied them, and who established their own
community in the city.6 With the change of administration the Sephardim
got themselves organised, establishing formal structures of identity,
through which they might articulate a new sense of self and history.
Hence the appearance of institutions such as the charitable founda-
tion La Benevolencia in 1892, and the short-lived Judeo-Spanish magazine
La Alborado, founded by the Bulgarian reformer Abraham Kapon in 1900.
And hence too the first steps in an identity-defining collection of oral
culture, in line with nationalist movements more generally at that time.
Sephardic folk ballads in particular began to be collected just before the
turn of the century, partly under the auspices of La Benevolencia. And
as so often in such movements, the motives of the collectors were part
political and part conservationist. Outsiders were the prime movers.
They included the 1893 notations of the Czech ethnologist Ludvk Kuba,
stimulated largely by the activities of the recently established Zemaljksi
muzej,7 the 1898 Leo Wiener collections published in North America,8 the
pioneering romanicist studies of Angel Pulido Fernndez9 and Ramon
Menndez Pidal,10 and the 1911 collections of Manuel Manrique de Lara, a
key figure in the conservation of Sephardic oral cultures. La Benevolencia
also supported the activities of the choral and tamburica society La Gloria,
which featured on the historic recordings made in Sarajevo in 1907 by
Felix Hampe for Deutsche Grammophon. These are among the earliest
recordings of Sephardic music, and happily copies are extant, rendering
the private voice public and permanent.11

5Risto Pekka Pennanen has discussed this bureaucracy based on researches in the
Zemaljska Vlada Sarajevo [Provincial Government Archive]. See Pennanen 2005.
6Freidenreich 1977.
7Milojkovi-Djuri 2002, 149.
8Wiener 1903.
9Fernndez 1992 and 1993.
10Pidal 1958; Armistead 1978.
11 Pennanen 2003 and 2007.
16 chapter one

As we move into the inter-war period, the history of Sephardim in Sara-

jevo is entwined with the wider history of Jewish communities within the
first Yugoslavia, a history that was all but extinguished during World War II.
Prior to this, Jewish culture in Sarajevo was both enabled and threatened.
There was a new intellectual interest in Judeo-Spanish between the wars.
The spoken language may have been forced into decline (the Talmud
Torah in Sarajevo had been closed in 1910), but new writing flourished
in the city, folklore collectors were active, and new Jewish magazines
appeared: initially idovska svijest [Jewish Conscience] and Jevrejski ivot
[Jewish Life], with their rival Zionist and Sephardic nationalist agen-
das, and then the consciously synthesising Jevrejski glas [Jewish Voice].
All these included articles on world Jewry and Jewish history, but they
also serialised fiction, and Jevrejski glas published ballad texts.12 On occa-
sion we are afforded a vivid glimpse of the dramas of identity played out
on shifting grounds of marginality. A short story Tardi di vjarnis [Friday
Afternoon], published in Jevrejski glas and signed with the pseudonym
Josefiko, depicts the doorstep reflections of two Sephardic women on the
mysterious ways of the Ashkenazim. It is a parable about how we draw
borders between communities, and between generations, and about how
the modern world transmutes difference into alterity.13
It may be that the texts of Sephardic songs published in Jevrejski glas
and elsewhere can yield comparable insights into cultural identities in
an era unavailable to ethnographic study, for these folk songs occasion-
ally hint at meanings that lurk beneath their manifest surfaces. Existing
traditions of generic and philological research discuss the contamination
that occurs between some of the songs, accounting for illogical breaks
in the narrative as one song slips into the world of another. Work by
Judith Maulen-Berlowitz, for example, invites us to speculate not just
on the textual and musical commonalities that may have promoted such
contamination, but on the latent possibility that they may be expressive
of a shared world view; there is a suggestion, for instance, that eastern
Sephardic contaminations might somehow signify a collective fear of the
tragic ending.14
This may be pushing speculation to its limits. But at least it draws
attention to the anarchic twists and turns of the narrating voice in

12These were requested from readers, and in principle one was published with each
issue. Several ballads from Jevrejski glas are included in Armistead and Silverman 1971.
13Nezirovi 1992, 56.
14Maulen-Berlowitz 1995.
 exodus 17

several of these songs, straining against the Proppian functions proposed

by the leading scholars of Sephardic texts, Samuel Armistead and Joseph
Silverman. Some of the surrealities, all but inexplicable in conventional
narrative terms, even invite the kind of psycho-analytical readings afforded
by cultural critics such as Julia Kristeva. Might the fissures in these texts
allow elements of the (Lacanian-Kristevan) imaginary to break through
the well-ordered surface of the community? Might they hint at collective
insecurities, and perhaps even articulate a latent longing for the past on
the part of the Sephardim? Such questions take us beyond Sarajevo into
the whole remarkable story of the Sephardic diaspora. And for that we
need to backtrack more than five hundred years.

Two Peninsulas: The Sephardic Diaspora

In 1492, following a presence of more than a thousand years, the Jew-

ish population was expelled from Spain by a direct edict from los reyes
catlicos.15 Five years later there were forced conversions en masse of
those who had moved to Portugal, and in the course of the following cen-
tury there was a steady exodus of Marranos and Jews from Portugal too.16
These were not the only mass expulsions of Jews from the Christian lands
of Western Europe in the Middle Ages. But the Iberian case was distinc-
tive. Contrary to the usual Jewish practice of ready submission to the law
and customs of host Jewish communities, significant numbers of Iberian
Jews carried with them and jealously preserved the traditions of their
homeland; indeed the name by which they became known was itself an
assertion of origins: they were the Jews from Sepharad, which had come
to mean Spain in Hebrew.17 This is not to say that the Sephardim were
everywhere resistant to assimilation. Those who travelled northward to
the Low Countries and England yielded some of their distinctive identity
to host cultures, while settlers in North Africa allowed their ritual prac-
tices and social mores to merge gradually and imperceptibly with existing

15The expulsion edict of 1492 followed the re-establishment of the Inquisition in Spain
in 1480, itself indicative of a marked deterioration in the relations between Jews and
Christians.
16The Marranos were converted New Christians who aimed to reconvert to Judaism
at the earliest possible date. An extensive practice of crypto-Judaism thus developed in
Portgual. See Mea and Steinhardt 1999.
17The term Sephardic has in recent years been applied more generally to more-or-less
all Jews who do not have an Ashkenazi European background. See Sola Pool, Patai and
Cardozo 1960, 5 for speculation on the reasons for this.
18 chapter one

Judeo-Arab elements to create a uniquely synthetic Maghrebi Jewish cul-

ture. But the story was different in the Levantine and Balkan territories of
the Ottoman Empire.18 Here the Sephardic Jews lived up to their name.
One author speaks of a transplanted Sepharad.19
Already prior to the Sephardic immigration, there had been population
transfers within the Ottoman territories. But the arrival of the Sephardim
was on a different scale. Of course it was not instantaneous. Partly they
came in waves, pouring into the major cities, and in some cases establish-
ing significant Jewish populations where none had existed before. But in
addition there was a steady infiltration spread over many years, with tem-
porary settlement at numerous points on the long route from one pen-
insula to another: from the western rim of Europe to its eastern rim. Try
to imagine the experience of individual families as they travelled by foot,
mule or cart towards the nearest port or frontier, and then beyond. Inevi-
tably the major Ottoman ports were the first recipients: Istanbul itself,
Valona [Vlor] on the Albanian Adriatic, Salonica, Smyrna [Izmir] in Asia
Minor, and some of the Aegean island ports under Ottoman control.20
Later, inland Balkan cities including Belgrade, Sofia, and Monastir
[Bitola], as well as Sarajevo established major Jewish quarters.21
These were Ottoman mahalas (neighbourhoods), and not ghettos, even
if most of the Jewish population did live in impoverished circumstances.
From Bayezit II onwards, the Sultans were more than happy to welcome
a people with professional skills and commercial experience, useful to the
Sublime Porte and the army, and with the potential to develop trading
networks based on the geography of diaspora.22 As the years unfolded,
the Sephardim vied with the Greeks to dominate the textile industry
of the southern Balkan peninsula, to supervise commerce between the
Ottomans and the Dalmatian and Italian coasts, and to act as mediators
between the ruling class and the remainder of the raya (the non-Muslim
flock). As Lady Mary Wortley Montague observed in her travels in the

18The culture of Moroccan Jews retained even closer links to Spain than their Balkan
counterparts. See de Quirs 1972, 334; also Shiloah 1992, 193.
19Benbassa and Rodrigue 1993, xvii. The path was cleared for the Sephardim in part by
the wealth and commercial acumen of Donna Gracia, so-called Queen of the Jews.
20Rhodes became an important centre after the defeat of the Knights of St. John.
21 Frejdenberg 1999.
22The Sublime Porte was the name given to the Divan or Court of the Ottoman
Empire.
 exodus 19

Ottoman Empire in the early eighteenth century: Every pacha has his Jew,
who is his homme daffaires.23
They were of further strategic importance to the larger proselytis-
ing goal of the Ottomans. If the Catholic West chose to reject its Jewish
populations, then the Sultan would welcome them, and would use them
to best advantage, not least to create a balance of power with Christian
populations, for in practice the Jews often occupied a precarious social
interstratum.24 Above all, they were people of the book. For the Ottomans,
religion was at least in theory the motor driving the conquests, where
war (the gathering of the hosts) was literally a season of the year;25 and
it was also the main basis on which they structured dependent peoples,
through a so-called millet system that existed in varying degrees of for-
malisation, with the Jewish millet less centralised and less hierarchically
structured than its Orthodox Christian counterpart.
From the start the empire had been accepting of difference even as
it was protective of hierarchy.26 As part of their contract with the Otto-
man authorities, Christian and Jewish communities were not just free to
practise their own religions; they were ceded a substantial measure of
self-government, even down to matters of jurisprudence. For the Sephardic
Jews this devolution enabled continuity and some measure of stability.
And in return for these freedoms and for Ottoman protection, they paid a
special tax, and were required to organise the collection of that and other
taxes within their community. Of course the supremacy of Islam was never
in question.27 Like Orthodox Christians, the Jews remained subordinate
in all major respects to the Sublime Porte,28 and that meant in practice
to a ruling class of officials, soldiers and administrators. Throughout the

23Montague 1800, 126.

24In the second of the so-called Casino Talks, Antal de Quental (184291), a key figure
of the Portuguese Revivalist movement in the late nineteenth century, attributed much of
the decline in Portuguese fortunes to the expulsion of the Jews. See Simes 1984.
25Wheatcroft 1995, 51. The season of war began to break down as a pattern during the
eighteenth-century, in the so-called Tulip era.
26The Ottomans were more tolerant than most Muslim polities in their approach to
conquered subjects. Hence what was regarded from the East and the South as the Pax
Ottomanica, reminiscent of the Roman Empire.
27This was even represented symbolically, in that churches and synagogues were built
on a lower level than mosques. There are numerous graphic illustrations of this in the
Balkans today.
28With the nineteenth-century reform movement (Tanzimat), equal rights for the
millets were notionally achieved, with Jews and Christians admitted to provincial councils
and to the Supreme Council of Ordinances. These and other rights were enshrined in the
short-lived Constitution of 1876.
20 chapter one

empire, non-Muslims were subject to social and economic discrimination.

But in the end, whatever the problems and given the choice, most Jewish
communities, and many Orthodox for that matter, preferred a Muslim to
a Catholic overlord.29
Jewish communities from the Balkans to the Levant made up one dis-
tinctive pattern in the patchwork quilt of religions and ethnicities that
constituted the Ottoman ecumene. Their specificity was conditioned by
the ritual practices of their faith, and by the Sephardic liturgy.30 But their
language also distinguished them,31 and so too did a wealth of cultural
practices. In due course the Sephardim squeezed out, or absorbed, exist-
ing Jewish cultures to become the dominant Jewish presence in the west-
ern Ottoman lands. It would be going too far to claim that they preserved
an undisturbed pocket of culture from medieval Spain and Portugal out
there in the Balkans, keeping alive forms and practices that had long since
died out in the Iberian peninsula itself. But there is a kernel of truth in this
myth of a paradise lost. Following the trauma of expulsion, one option
was to recreate the homeland, to keep alive fading, no doubt idealised,
memories of an Iberian Eden, and to rely on familiar markers of cultural
identity to do so. The names of the congregations conveyed this message
(Catalonia, Cordova, Evora Portukal), while the decoration of homes, the
street names in Jewish quarters, and the dress of the women all reinforced
it. Music played its part, reaching beyond the distinctiveness of the lit-
urgy to embrace secular romances and canciones with texts derived from
medieval Spanish.
The time capsule theory of Sephardic culture in the Balkans has proved
attractive to many. Yet it needs to be balanced by some acknowledge-
ment of the steady process of acculturation that followed the expulsions.
As Iberian cultural forms entered the Ottoman ecumene, a world of mul-
tiple languages, faiths and customs, and of hybrid cultural idioms, they
absorbed and adapted Ottoman forms and genres. And of all cultural
forms music was especially prone to this process of transformation and
adaptation.32 The sequence is complicated by presumed affinities between

29Benbassa and Rodrigue 1993, 1626.

30The Sephardic liturgy was in due course shared with the so-called oriental Jews,
referring especially to those exiled from Palestine who moved eastwards to Iraq, Iran and
Afghanistan, south to the Arabian peninsula and into North Africa.
31 Until the thirteenth century the Jews of the Iberian peninsula spoke Arabic rather
than Spanish, but from that point they acquired numerous varieties of Castilian Spanish,
albeit incorporating Hebrew, Arabic and Turkish terms.
32Benbassa and Rodrigue 1993, 54.
 exodus 21

wider Middle Eastern musical practices (Byzantine echos, Persian dast-

gah and Arabic maqm) and the practices of pre-expulsion Al-Andalus
[Arabic Spain].33 But modern scholarship has established that most of the
melodies that make up surviving Sephardic repertories actually postdate
the expulsions,34 and in many cases direct borrowings from well-known
Greek or Turkish melodies have been demonstrated. All this suggests that
where Iberian origins are registered, they are registered more through the
texts than the music.
In the end there will always be imponderables when we attempt to
reconstruct the histories of oral repertories. Despite the evidence pro-
vided by sources other than musical documents, we come up against what
Oliver Strunck once called the impenetrable barrier of oral tradition.35
At some point the musical idioms of medieval Spain yielded to those of
the modern Balkans and the Levant. Some have claimed that the seven-
teenth century arguably a point of maximum interpenetration between
Sephardic and host cultures, and at the same time the period when Jews
began to lose something of their privilege within the empire, even as their
congregations became increasingly unified represented the key stage in
this transformation, and have produced supporting evidence.36 Yet even
if this holds as a generalisation, the detail and dynamic of this epic musi-
cal transfer from peninsula to peninsula, and the vivid reality of it, will
continue to elude us.

Singing the Community: Music of the Sephardim

If the idea of a transplanted Sepharad makes sense in musical terms,

it applies in the first place to synagogal repertories. Despite all kinds of
local variation, certain basic structures of the Sephardic liturgy remained
constant across Sephardic communities in diaspora.37 Some scholars have

33Spanish scholars, notably Menndez Pidal, have focused on Iberian origins, though
mainly through the study of texts rather than music. The major scholarship to emerge
from this school is to be found in the publications of Samuel G. Armistead and Joseph H.
Silverman. See Armistead and Silverman 1970, 1981 and 1986. Arguments for the Spanish
roots of the music are made in Galant 1932 and elsewhere.
34See the discussion of this problem in Shiloah 1992, 189196.
35Strunck 1977, 5567. For a general discussion of this problem, see Shiloah 1992,
3738.
36Seroussi 2001.
37See the early essay by David Aaron de Sola and Aguilar Emanuel (De Sola and
Emanuel 1857). The most comprehensive anthology is Levy 196480.
22 chapter one

even argued for the proximity of Sephardic cantillation not just to medieval
Hispanic practices but also to much earlier Jewish traditions.38 Yet what-
ever the continuities, processes of acculturation were rife. If we home in
on religious music around the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centu-
ries, at which point certain concrete things can be studied, and even heard,
it is clear that the practice at that time was heavily influenced by Ottoman
traditions of classical and Mevlev music. Whether cantillation constitutes
music is, of course, as much of a question for Jewish as for Islamic tradi-
tions.39 Accompanied song was unambiguously music, but chanting was
understood not as music but as saying, reading or learning. Its function
was to enhance the text, and especially so in the Sephardic service, where
the Hazan was less a cantor in the developed Ashkenazic sense than a
traditional reader and leader, intoning the chants with meticulous atten-
tion to correct pronunciation and clear enunciation.
Music or not, Sephardic cantillation followed a system of Biblical
Accents (teamim) that was common to all Jewish liturgy, indicating not
just emphasis and punctuation but mode and, in a very general way,
melodic pattern.40 This was a form of neumatic notation, and the prac-
tice it signified was an ancient one, a particular variant of a more general
Middle Eastern or eastern Mediterranean musical culture.41 The modal
basis of the music had become fundamental, and it was preserved in a tra-
ditional form in the Sephardic liturgy, where the saying of prayers would
be adapted to the mode appropriate to each Sabbath, feast day or fast day.
The Spanish (pre-expulsion) Jews were also responsible for some of the
great Arab-influenced hymns (piyyutim) that enriched particular services
in the Middle Ages.42 And since the piyyutim were meant to be sung, in
the familiar understanding of that term, they ensured that music, not just
heightened recitation, took its place in the service. Musical qualities were

38A.Z. Idelsohn, whose ideological bias is apparent, has shown how widely separated
practices have retained the same readings (Idelsohn 1948, 39). He contrasts this with more
developmental Ashkenazi traditions.
39Following the destruction of the Second Temple music was proscribed in the syna-
gogue, and all musical instruments were, in theory, out of bounds.
40This was formalised in the so-called Tiberian system of the ninth century. See
Idelsohn 1948.
41 It was Robert Lachmann who re-directed Jewish music studies from the quest for
continuities within a single tradition towards a more contextual approach across Middle
Eastern musical cultures; see Lachmann 1978. Yet we are cautioned by Peter Jeffery against
too easy an acceptance of cross-cultural analogies (Jeffery 1992, 2).
42Key figures were the great poet and Neo-Platonist philosopher Solomon ibn Gabirol,
and the Toledan doctor and poet Yehuda Halevi.
 exodus 23

further highlighted by the Sephardic practice of transferring tunes to new

texts, and thus emancipating the melody from its association with a spe-
cific text. This practice, where the poem would be be-lahan sung to a
particular lahan or tune was widespread, but it was especially common
in Oriental-Sephardic traditions.
Following the expulsions, rhythmic music seems to have gained
ground in the Sephardic synagogue, for the piyyutim crossed the divide
between synagogue song and public or private ceremonial occasions.
Strictly speaking, secular tunes could be introduced to the synagogue
only under certain conditions, but the practice was common.43 The
last of the great synagogal poets to write in Hebrew, Rabbi Israel Najara
(c. 15551625) adapted the poems of his first Diwan to Turkish, Arabic,
Spanish and Greek melodies; and it has also been possible for scholars to
trace piyyut melodies back to traditional Balkan songs.44 As the demand
for newly-composed piyyutim, and for related, more domestic, pizmonim
(Holy Day songs, stanzaic in form), steadily increased in the communi-
ties of the Balkans and the Levant, partly due to the needs of kabbalist
movements centred in Salonica,45 they would have absorbed more and
more of the characteristics of surrounding Middle Eastern music. This
extended to specific aspects of performance practice. It was symptomatic
that the rhythmic piyyut would on particular occasions be preceded by
an ornamental improvised introduction (mawwal) of a kind familiar in
Arab-Ottoman traditions (the Ottoman taksm), with the explicit function
of outlining the maqm, together with its pre-existing melodic formulae,
modulating through other maqm-s, and then returning to the original.
We might, then, describe a spectrum within Sephardic music, taking
us from the traditional cantillation of Biblical texts to newly composed
piyyutim, where the influence of Middle Eastern musics would have been
more pronounced, and from there to non-synagogal religious repertories,
including table hymns sung in Hebrew and virtually indistinguishable
from synagogal song. From there we would move to ritual songs inspired

43Shiloah refers to the practice of Moshe Vital, a Sephardic cantor of Jerusalem who
was born in Izmir and studied with Isaac Algazi in Rhodes (Shiloah 1992, 701).
44Najara 1587. In this Diwan (Songster), the tunes are ordered by maqm, and the
poems sung to a mixture of Ladino and Hebrew. Idelsohn points out that Hatikvah, a
hymn whose melody was thought to have developed from older Sephardic Hallel and Tal
tunes, may in fact be derived from the Moldovian-Romanian folk song Carul su boi [Cart
and Oxen] (Idelsohn 1948, 3768).
45These demanded hymns for Baqqashot (supplication) gatherings at midnight and for
the early risers or watchmen of the morning.
24 chapter one

by the Sabbath and the events of the Jewish year, together with count-
less paraliturgical songs associated with the life cycle: parida (childbirth),
asuar (display of dowry items), bodas (weddings) and so on. Such ritual
songs were often described as coplas, a genre that appears to have devel-
oped largely within the Ottoman Empire; it was not identical to the secu-
lar Spanish genre so labelled. Written mainly in Ladino, coplas formed
part of the traditional or popular music of the Sephardim, and they lead
us to our final category, Ottoman-influenced secular repertories, which
included narrative romances and love songs or topical songs (canciones),
invariably performed by women, whose role in public life was restricted.
Whether sacred or secular, the poetic forms and some of the texts of
these traditional Sephardic songs and the surviving repertory is exclu-
sively vocal can often be traced back to Hispanic origins, no doubt
because for the texts, though not for the music, there emerged a sta-
bilising written tradition in the form of song collections (romanceros,
cancioneros).46 Indeed, as indicated earlier, there has been some impres-
sively detailed philological study of selected song texts from this wider
repertory, comparing extant sources for the songs, many collected in
North America, unpicking their multiple linguistic elements, and dem-
onstrating archaisms of language that have now disappeared from Spain
and Portugal.
Classifying Sephardic songs is in the end a treacherous exercise. For one
thing, the separation of sacred and secular is less straightforward than the
above summary suggests; narrative romances and even canciones often
have sacred or semi-sacred themes. And for another, there was a splinter-
ing of Sephardic traditional song into several distinct pathways, for exam-
ple Italian (Venice and then Livorno), Ottoman-area, and Moroccan.47 Not
only were titles differently understood across these separate traditions;
they were used somewhat permissively within each of them. Nonethe-
less, some general distinctions can be drawn. The Sephardic romance is
conventionally a narrative poem traceable to, though greatly reducing in
scale, the Hispanic epic ballad, with which it shares the poetic structure
of assonant couplets of two eight-syllable lines. The Ottoman-area tradi-
tion retained this structure, but here the term romanza tends to embrace

46For a discussion of musical survivals from Spain, see Katz 1992. Katz critiques simi-
lar attempts to relate peninsular and Sephardic repertories in Etzion and Weich-Shahak
1988.
47According to Shiloah, the early eighteenth century was the point at which Ottoman-
area and Moroccan musical traditions parted company (Shiloah 1992).
 exodus 25

lyric as well as narrative poems, while the subject matter of the narrative
poetry often refers to relatively recent Ottoman or Balkan history. More
common than romanzas are canciones (or canticas), shorter strophic folk
poems on any number of different topics from daily life, but very often on
themes of love.48 And finally there are coplas, which usually highlight spe-
cifically Jewish themes, though in certain cases this term has been used
generically to cover almost any kind of Judeo-Spanish song.
What of the music, sacred and secular? Musicologists such as Judith
Etzion, Susana Weich-Shahak and Israel Katz have indeed demonstrated
Hispanic survivals. But it seems that from as early as the Diwan of Israel
Najara the piyyutim at least would often have been based on makam-s
(strictly makamlar, plural of the Turkish makam; cf. Arabic maqm/
maqmt), and would have employed a performance style characteristic
of Ottoman music.49 Of other repertory, it is likely that the romanzas and
coplas would also have adopted Middle Eastern musical idioms at an early
stage, even where the texts were explicitly Hispanic. This is supported by
ethnographic evidence,50 and also by the more concrete evidence that
became available in the early twentieth century, when collectors first
began to transcribe the music of the songs as well as their texts.
We have already encountered some key figures here (above all de Lara,
who in 1911 and 1915 collected both tunes and texts from the Balkans and
North Africa), but a major collector from a later generation was Alberto
Hemsi (18981975). Hemsi began collecting in Asia Minor in 1920, then in
Rhodes (19241927), and later (intermittently) in Alexandria and Salonica.51
His arrangements of Sephardic melodies for voice and piano exhibit
what he himself called a triple process of reproduction, reconstruction
and re-creation,52 and they contextualise the traditional melodies in a
highly specific, Spanish-influenced manner. However, these arrangements

48An attempt at systematic comparative analysis of the music of such Judeo-Spanish

ballads is Etzion and Weich-Shahak 1993.
49In his second collection, Sheerit Yisrael, Najara gives the makam and in some cases
also the usl (the rhythmic cycle in Ottoman classical music) along with the texts.
50The Jewish-American singer Flory Jagoda, who was born in Sarajevo but emigrated
to the United States, has discussed this on several occasions, not least in Ankica Petrovis
film The Key to Spain: The Songs and Stories of Flory Jagoda (2002).
51 As noted earlier, some of the earliest musical examples of Sephardic song are the
notations made by Ludwk Kuba in Sarajevo in 1893 (see Weich-Shahak 1990). Text collec-
tions were published by A. Danon in 18967, but Sephardic ballad scholarship began in
earnest with Pidal 1958. The most scholarly presentation of Hemsis collections is Edwin
Seroussis edition (Hemsi 1995).
52Hemsi 1995, 46.
26 chapter one

represent only a small fraction of his total song collection. His larger
enterprise was truly ethnological, involving the preservation of the texts
and many of the melodies of Ottoman-area Sephardic song, some of it
of ancient lineage, but much of it more recent. He set the compass read-
ing for later mid-century collections, by Leon Algazi (18901971), Moshe
Attias, and Isaac Levy, all of which extended the purview of Sephardic
songs to embrace other than Ottoman-area traditions.53
From the transcriptions of these collectors, from documented accounts
of performances, and of course from the earliest sound recordings, some
picture of performance practices in the Balkans begins to emerge, at least
for the later stages of the Sephardic diaspora. In a pioneering study, Israel
Katz attempted to bring some realism to this issue by stressing the influ-
ence of Middle Eastern music, including the music of Sufi confraternities
in Turkey (the ilhi-s, or devotional hymns, associated with Sufism were
especially influential in Albania and Bosnia, where Islam gained a firm
foothold).54 In doing so, he was reinforcing a message that had already
been articulated in Alberto Hemsis commentaries. And the same message
is underlined when we turn to early twentieth-century compositions and
performances by leading Jewish musicians, several of whom were promi-
nent in Ottoman classical music; they included composers such as emtov
ikar (18401920) and Ishak Varon Efendi (18841962), singers such as the
eminent Haim Yapaci Efendi, and the Algazi family, of whom Isaac ben
Solomon Algazi (18821964) has left a recorded legacy.55 The recordings
by Samuel Benaroya of songs associated with the Maftirim choir in Edirne
in eastern Thrace also open a window to this world.56 And then, to add
further ballast to the argument that the sound world of Ottoman-area
Sephardic song was indeed a Middle Eastern one, we have the valuable
fieldwork of Pamela Dorn on the music of Turkish Jewry.57
Something of this sound world is recaptured in the work of those
present-day recording artists who choose to perform Sephardic music
using an oriental voice production,58 the makam-s of Turkish music (at
least as a trace presence), and an accompaniment of instruments such as

53Algazi 1958; Levy 1959; Attias 1961 and 1972.

54Katz 1972.
55See Dorn 1991a for a discussion of leading Jewish musicians of the Ottoman area. For
a study of Algazi, see Seroussi 1989.
56Seroussi 1998.
57Dorn 1991a and 1991b.
58I refer to the nasal tone colour and fluctuating vibrati, and especially the type of wide
vibrato known as titrek in Turkey, characteristic of Middle Eastern singing.
 exodus 27

the ney (oblique reed flute), kann (plucked zither), frame drum, and saz
(Turkish long-necked lute). However, this is only one option among sev-
eral in a market whose extent and eclecticism bear witness to the revival
of interest in Judeo-Spanish song in the late twentieth and early twenty-
first centuries. Some artists have acknowledged through their performance
style the similarities between Sephardic and other popular repertories
from the Balkans, notably Bosnian sevdalinkas and Bulgarian and Greek
urban songs.59 Some prefer to bolster the medieval Hispanic association
either through the use of early instruments, or by introducing flamenco
idioms (notably Yasmin Levy), all suggestive of nostalgia as a studied proj-
ect, or as Svetlana Boym has argued a symptom, of our age.60 Then again,
some have created a Mediterranean tinge, linking the Sephardic repertory
to traditional music from Italy, Sardinia and southern France. Others have
opted for the pure folksong manner, minimally accompanied if at all,
which was generic to folksong revivals everywhere in the late twentieth
century, while yet others have combined the Sephardic ballad style with
contemporary popular idioms. The point is that Judeo-Spanish song is
now literally in revival. It has moved to the public concert and the record-
ing studio, and has little contact with the traditional ritual practices of a
living Sephardic-Jewish culture.
Since World War II such a culture has barely existed in the Balkans,
except in small isolated pockets, notably in Bulgaria.61 Sephardic cul-
ture had already been dealt a major blow by the demise of the Ottoman
system, whose innate conservatism had proved an ideal context for the
preservation of traditional beliefs and customs, but with the Holocaust it
was all but extinguished. Where liturgical music is concerned, the effect
of this destruction of Balkan Jewish culture was to sharpen the division
between an eastern Sephardic tradition, referring now to Turkey and the
Near East, and the Sephardim of Western Europe. And as Edwin Seroussi
has pointed out, the centre of gravity of this eastern tradition has now
moved to Jerusalem following the migrations to Israel; Seroussi refers to
a Jerusalem-Sephardi style, which absorbed many elements of an earlier
Ottoman-area practice.62 However, the situation seems rather different
with Judeo-Spanish song. Increasingly this was marketed as a species of
world music, with a relatively free exchange of idioms across the several

59Kaufman 1964.
60Boym 2001.
61 Cichon 2006.
62Seroussi 2001.
28 chapter one

different Sephardic traditions, and between those traditions and more

international popular music styles. In the context of modernity and post-
modernity Sephardic traditional song achieved a kind of afterlife. In its
recent transformations, attuned to consumer culture and world commu-
nication networks, the genre has found new energy from the many possi-
ble synergies between the specificities of local cultures and the anonymity
of global markets. Sephardic song is a musical culture in decline in one
sense, yet experiencing a veritable boom in another.

Opening Out: Themes and Developments

It is possible to tease out some larger issues from this brief account of
Sephardic music in the Balkans. They are issues that will emerge as the-
matic to my account of music in the region generally, so it will be worth
some attempt at exposition here. One concerns the power of place. In
practice, history and geography are constantly in dialogue in our discus-
sions of music, but history has tended to have the upper hand, provid-
ing musicologists with the basic conceptual models, as well as many of
the specific tools, of their trade. Recently this has been changing, per-
haps a measure of the smudging of boundaries between musicology and
ethnomusicology.
We noted two hypothetical narratives about the Sephardic exodus, one
depicting a transplanted Sepharad and the other a process of accultura-
tion within the Ottoman ecumene. These are narratives of place. At the
root of the first narrative lies the assumption that everyone has a proper
place; we may not be there (we may be displaced), but we should be,
so we define our identity by constructing our proper place in our pres-
ent place, which is tantamount to constructing the past in the present.63
Music can facilitate this. Of its nature it can be a ritual of remembrance,
haunting the landscape, like a mythological Echo. At the root of the sec-
ond narrative is the assumption that we are creatures of the places we
inhabit, shaped more by our present than our imagined past. As the Arab
proverb has it: People resemble their times more than they resemble their
fathers.64 Here music might enchant rather than haunt the landscape,

63See Light and Smith (eds.) 1998, 119.

64Quoted in Boia 2001, 47. This quotation is attributed to Guy Debord in Bauman
2000, 128.
 exodus 29

giving it symbolic density and significance.65 And while this foregrounds

presence rather than absence, it can also involve a strategic amnesia. Part
of the process of defining our identities, in this narrative, might involve
silencing certain historical voices, or deciding not to hear them. For the
Sephardim both narratives were in play. The tendency of subsequent
commentators modernist storytellers in the main has been to make
a choice.
A further issue arising from the Sephardic story concerns identity
politics and culture. There is every reason to explore collective cultural
identities, provided we recognise that external ascription and internal
experience are quite different things.66 We all have many identities.
They are fluid and dynamic and clearly cannot be aligned with perceived
collective identities in any straightforward way. But they are often con-
structed with reference to those collective identities. We learn from the
Sephardic story how Jewish communities negotiated their cultural identi-
ties within very different contexts, and in relation to very different groups
and structures. First, there was Ottoman officialdom. The status of the
millet within Ottoman administrative structures required a delicate bal-
ancing act between the claims of rabbinical law and Ottoman versions of
sharia law, for example, as also between the more powerful Rabbis and
Ottoman officials. Second, there were rival religious and ethnic communi-
ties, be they Romaniot Jews, Greek Christians, or Turkish Muslims. Third,
there were changing polities, as nation states were carved from empire,
and were in turn subsumed by new federal structures. And finally there
was the Haskalah or Jewish Enlightenment, which had a direct bearing on
domestic and gender identities, as Enlightenment ideas confronted the
patriarchal family. In all these ways, the Sephardic story might well serve
as a model for a more general theme in Balkan studies. This, after all, is
a region where many cultures have collided, and continue to collide, and
where collective identities are endlessly transformed as they come into
contact with other such identities, even to the point at which their con-
stitutive elements are all but lost.
Just how borders are constructed, then, and once constructed how they
may be crossed, will be a concern of this book. The borders around collec-
tive identities foreground alterities at various interlocking levels (institu-
tional, cultural, personal), and comprised of various overlapping qualities

65On the enchantment of place, see Eliade 1961, especially 2026.

66For a discussion of external and internal definitions, see Jenkins 1994.
30 chapter one

(religious, linguistic, geopolitical, social, ethnic). And although the borders

themselves remain historically in flux, there is often an in-built resistance
to crossing them at any given time. There may be coercion, of course,
where the connections and commonalities between people are deliber-
ately eliminated, and one might include here the colonisation of musical
consciousness by hegemonic powers. But there may also be conversion;
or bridge building, designed precisely to facilitate movement across the
more difficult borders.
Music is directly implicated in such dramas of identity. Like other sym-
bolic forms, it can work to reinforce collective identities, but equally it can
work to subvert them. Musical styles can exhibit, and may even encode,
membership of particular cultural communities, for example, and they
can be subject either to transformation or to defiant preservation as they
come into mutual contact. But individuals can make highly personal syn-
theses from available styles, and separate musical practices (for example,
Ottoman classical music and Sephardic synagogal music) can converge in
the work of a single musician. One moot question, then, is just how far
stylistic borders in music may be compared in their nature and operation
to other kinds of border. Another is how particular musical styles, as sym-
bolic systems, map onto, or are appropriated by, particular social groups
in order to assert or deny a collective identity. With a little bend, says Ara
Guzelimian, a melody goes from Jewish to Arab to Christian.67
A cluster of historical issues also arises from the Sephardic paradigm.
One recurrent theme is the difficulty of doing historical justice to oral
traditions, and not just because the unavailability of primary evidence
prior to the phonograph places undue weight on those fragments of testi-
mony that happen to have survived.68 Even with recorded and transcribed
repertories there are challenging questions about practices and products,
about stability and change, about the meeting-points between musical
styles, and (conversely) about the effects of cultural isolation. There are
questions too about how changes of musical idiom map onto underlying
social changes, and about how we can, or whether we should, draw local
styles into anything like a synthesis. All such questions are germane to
our Sephardic repertories, but they have wider applicability. Some of the

67Guzelimian 2005.
68Where Sephardic cantillation is concerned, there are naturally synergies with chant
studies in general, and especially with the debates about oral and written transmission
conducted by Leo Treitler, Kenneth Levy, Peter Jeffery and others. See, among many other
texts, Tokumaru and Yamaguchi (eds.) 1986.
 exodus 31

richest music of the Balkans Ottoman classical music, Orthodox Chris-

tian music, urban songs and traditional agrarian music has relied heav-
ily on oral transmission; indeed this is the norm, not the exception, in
music history.69 And as with Sephardic repertories, we need to ask just
how we can construct historical narratives for these musics, and how such
narratives might account for what is often an endemic diversity of styles.
In some rural traditions, the diversity is such that determinants of musical
style, even down to specifics, vary from village to village.
A related issue arising from the Sephardic story is the impact of moder-
nity on traditional cultures. Jewish culture in the Balkans was of its nature
conservative, and it maintained a high degree of cultural isolation. Yet
it could not remain impervious to the effects of modernisation, and in
some cases of what is usually called westernisation.70 Under the impact
of Ottoman reform programmes, and of developing ideas of the nation,
the Sephardic Kulturbereich already started to show signs of fragmenta-
tion in the nineteenth century. That process intensified during the first
half of the twentieth century, when the Sephardim were obliged to adapt
to new political realities. With the consolidation of nation states (not least
Turkey), the mutual relation of religion and state changed radically, and
this threatened more traditional Sephardic values and practices. More-
over, in some centres (notably Salonica) the nationalist imperative also
helped promote and disseminate in the Balkans the transformative Zion-
ist ideology that was then shaping the world view of Ashkenazi Jewry.
That latter point should not be overstated. The Sephardim of the Balkans,
even in Salonica, were much less gripped by emigrationist fervour than
their Ashkenazi counterparts (they were more exercised by the need to
preserve their relative autonomy). But there was undoubtedly an increas-
ing interaction between western and eastern Jewry in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, and this, together with the educational
(propagandist) programmes of the French Alliance Isralite Universelle,71
ensured that modern thinking, associated with the Jewish Enlightenment,
slowly percolated through to the Sephardic communities of the Balkans.
While the case of the Sephardim is sui generis, it resonates with the
wider topic of modernity in the Balkans. Across much of the region

69The point is well made in Nettl 1983, 200.

70The two terms are distinguished in Nettl 1985, especially 20.
71 The influential Alliance Isralite Universelle was founded by French Jews in Paris in
1860, and, in the words of Benbassa and Rodrigue, represented Western Jewrys urge to
reform its coreligionists in the East (Benbassa and Rodrique 1993, 83).
32 chapter one

village life was organised on traditional, even pre-Ottoman, lines well

into the twentieth century. Typically, administration was local, with only
the marketplace as a shared space with the towns. And while there was
an almost infinite variation in local practices, there were also common
intra-national structures not just imposed from above but generated from
beneath by the patterns of everyday life. In this context social modernisa-
tion was usually effected in response mode, a reaction to ideas and prac-
tices from elsewhere.72 Much the same can be said of cultural change.
Meeting-points between the provincial mind and cosmopolitan reason
were given expression through cultural forms, and the fragmentation or
transformation of traditional musical cultures was an important dimen-
sion of this.73
Just how are we to understand the changes in traditional music? At
what point does an accumulation of such changes amount to a break with
tradition? In addressing such questions we confront a familiar problem in
ethnology. It is axiomatic that the more traditional the culture, the more
our knowledge of it will be dependent on the observation of outsiders.
Boidar Jezernik has helped us by providing an account of the Balkans
in the gaze of western travellers, the more useful in that it balances the
views of outsiders with the insider perspectives that were articulated in
indigenous nationalist-orientated ethnology from the mid nineteenth
century onwards.74 Vesna Goldsworthy and David Norris have looked
specifically at literary representations, and Larry Wolff has closed in on
a particular corner of the field with his account of Enlightened Europes
discovery of the Morlachs [black Vlachs] of Dalmatia.75 All these studies
will bear on our narrative.
A final issue, yet more challenging, arises from our Sephardic story. It
bears directly on historical method, and it might be approached by way
of a familiar debate in the social sciences: the competing claims of struc-
tures and agencies. These categories need not be mutually exclusive, but
they tend in different directions, and this has implications for how we
choose to represent the dynamics of historical change. As described by

72Tito Maiorescu used the phrase forms without substance (Boia 2001, 86). See the
discussion in chapter 9.
73Radomir Konstantinovi sets up the opposition of provincial mind and cosmopoli-
tan reason in his Filozofia palanke [Philosophy of Provincialism]. Quoted in Bjeli and
Savi (eds.) 2002, 13. Peter Burke has discussed the related collision of elitist and popular
cultures, albeit in a rather different way, in Burke 1978.
74Jezernik 2004.
75Goldsworthy 1998; Norris 1999; Wolff 2001.
 exodus 33

Carl Dahlhaus, a history of music might understand successive stages of

historical evolution by means of a kairos (a culminating point or point of
perfection), which generates a kind of essence that is then presumed to
characterise that stage as a whole.76 This is a form of structural history,
even if the structures are of an evolving character and are understood
retrospectively. Thus the kairos in a history of Sephardic music might be
represented notionally as the point of maximum integration between two
separate musical cultures, allowing us to understand the essential under-
lying dynamic of that history in the terms of a transitional state.77 Under-
stood in this way, the Sephardic story might then serve as a paradigm for
many other such meeting-points of styles in Balkan music history. Indeed
it might even exemplify one of the most common interpretations of the
region as a whole, where it is viewed as a kind of bridge between East
and West.
Alternatively, our history might draw on the literary critic Derek
Attridge, and (perhaps at a greater distance) the philosopher Alain
Badiou, by allowing for the new directions, the alternative visions, even
the explosive transformative innovations that become possible through
human agency, very often in direct response to what these writers call
events.78 Events involve some sort of exceptional rupture with the status
quo, usually occurring in a context where prevailing values have been at
least temporarily neutralised. The flow is arrested, and in the space left
available (Badious evental site) new worlds become possible.79 Music
history, in light of this, is not just about works, institutions and struc-
tures. It is also about agency, about actions occurring 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 institutions
that house them.80 If we were to read Sephardic music history in terms of
events and agencies in this way, we would have no difficulty in singling

76Dahlhaus 1983. The literal meaning of kairos is the right time for action, correct pro-
portion, fitness, or due measure.
77On transitional states, see Schwartz-Salant and Stein (eds.) 1993. This is part of a
wider literature whose orientation is psycho-analytical, but whose findings create reso-
nances for cultural history.
78Attridge 2004; Alain Badiou 1988 and 2006.
79There are related discussions of rupture and re-articulation in Kristevas thought. See
Chanter and Ponowska-Ziarek (eds.) 2005.
80For a discussion of the practice as a category, see MacIntyre 1981. Elsewhere (Samson
2002, chapter 1), I have addressed the 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.
34 chapter one

out the key transformative events, even to the point of identifying an ori-
gin and a telos. Again it is tempting to transfer such ideas to the larger
Balkan canvas. Recent political history in this region might be understood
as an event series that has been directly interventionist in music history,
impinging on the beliefs, options and actions of musicians, and transform-
ing their understanding of their practice. We can actually take that further
if we choose to follow Alain Badiou. For him, events are prerequisites for
subjectivity. We cannot really have a subject without them.
It is rather hard to see how we can find an accommodation between
these two approaches. We seem to be forced to choose between very dif-
ferent 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 historical sequence. At this point, we might turn to
Jacques Derrida for yet another perspective. Derrida warns us against
just this kind of reductionism, against the excesses of what I will later
describe as an either-or mentality. Nor is he solely a deconstructive voice.
By unravelling the complex hinterland to events,81 he offers us a possible
way to reconcile our two historiographical perspectives. He achieves this
by embedding events within mini-histories their hidden and intertwin-
ing backgrounds and by viewing them as simultaneously reactive and
proactive.
This approach is sympathetic to the ambiguities of little stories, which
have a way of constantly taking detours from the simple characterisa-
tions of grand narratives. Much of what follows might well be classified
as little stories: about art music, church music, popular music and tradi-
tional music. Of course they are really big stories. They are just not much
reported. But they only really come into their own, and reveal some-
thing of the world that engendered them, when we set them alongside
counterpoint them against the grand narratives that have shaped our
broader understanding of that world. Much of this book seeks to do
just that.

81Derrida 1994.
 CHAPTER TWO

ECOLOGIES

Music and Place

In common parlance we say that a musical performance takes place, but

most of our critical discourses emphasise rather that it takes time. This
returns us to history and geography. In practice, it is hard to make a clean
separation between these two perspectives. As Boidar Jezernik reminds
us, there is no history without a place, and no place without a history.1
Place might even be defined as space imbued with history, and not just
in such iconic cases as the ruin, where, as Walter Benjamin put it, his-
tory has physically merged into the setting, or the shrine and monument,
where memory is blatantly on display.2 If we mark a place for conscious-
ness, we bring now and then, presence and absence, into conjunction, so
that the place acquires symbolic density. Performance, including musical
performance, can contribute forcefully or expressively to this marking
of place, and even to impregnating it with power. It is one mode of ter-
ritorialisation, a way of drawing a line around ourselves with sound. That
metaphor describes rather well how music was used by the Sephardim to
create borders. It marked their places they may have been displaced,
but they also had their places; Sarajevo was a little Jerusalem and it
separated them from others.
Scholars in the humanities, including musicologists, have been alive to
the explanatory value of place: increasingly so in recent years, one might
venture. For at least one philosopher there are even formal arguments for
its existential power, in the sense that being there distinguishes exis-
tence from being.3 Yet as Edward S. Casey suggests, the earlier history
of ideas described a contrary trajectory, one in which place increasingly
yielded to, or dissolved into, space, until by the late eighteenth century
enlightened Europe had all but excluded place from its reasoning, if not

1 Jezernik 2004, 211.

2Benjamin 1977, 1778. See also Gross 1992.
3See Badiou 2006: If we take into account the etymological framework, we can see
that existence, which depends on Dasein, is a topological concept. It means to be here,
to be in the world.
36 chapter two

from its sensory experience.4 Another way of saying the same thing, or
something like it, would be to argue that civilised society lost some of its
capacity for the social memory that is imbued in place, even as it devel-
oped an enthusiasm for the writing of history (or, as Jeffrey Olick has sug-
gested, as it confronted too much history), so that this conjunction has
had to be rediscovered, or reclaimed.5 Memory, in this reasoning, drained
away from the charismatic centres, with their rootless urban elites. Yet it
remained, and to some extent still remains, fundamental to the experi-
ence of more traditional rural societies, where there is little interest in
the writing of history.6
The novelist Ivo Andri wonderfully illustrated this convergence of
the provincial place and the longevity of memory in The Bridge on the
Drina.7 The story-telling episode during the Viegrad flood is telling in this
respect, and it includes an evocative account of the historically associative
power of epic song sung by a Montenegrin with gusle, and by extension of
music generally.8 As to periphery, Andris novel reminds us throughout
that for the Balkans this has been all but a defining term. The competitive
cultural nationalisms of the nineteenth century may have drawn some
territories from the peripheries of Europe closer to its cultural centre,
but they pushed others, and especially in the Balkans, yet further away.
Memory selectively invoked, it need hardly be added is long in the
Balkans.
The Bridge on the Drina tells us how place may be carved out of space
through a process of marking and naming. More than that, it illustrates
how a place can become a structure within which subjectivities are negoti-
ated and renegotiated across time, in this case several centuries. Through-
out the novel we witness ever-changing interactions between subjects and
their environment, as deeply embedded responses to a real physical place,
with its landmarks of memory, are brought into conjunction with the
more immediate stimuli that the place may provide at any given time.

4Casey 1997.
5Olick 2007.
6On this, see Lowenthal 1985; also Maria Todorovas introduction in Todorova 2004.
For more theoretical discussions of the relationship between history and memory, see
Samuel 1994, and the introduction to Hodgkin and Radstone 2003.
7Andri 2003a. The translation of cuprija as bridge is hardly adequate. The original
incorporates the idea of a meeting-place, reinforcing the privilege of place.
8Story-telling is built into the structure of some of Andris writing, notably in the
novella The Damned Yard, described by Celia Hawkesworth as a story about story-telling
in the introduction to her translation. See Andri 2003b.
 ecologies 37

It might even be argued that a sense of place of being there is a pre-

requisite of subjectivity, so deeply rooted in subjectivity that it is crucial
for our identity formation. As Denise Von Glahn has suggested, it is one
way we organise our experiences and order our memories: it tells us who
we are.9 For the more experiential aspect of this process some cultural
geographers have used the term landscape, a subset of place rather as
place is a subset of space. A landscape is defined by our entire experience
of a place, and that can include not just dwelling in it (Heidegger), but
also conceptualising it.10
Naturally it is a considerable step from the forging of subjectivities
by way of place to imbuing a place with intersubjective meanings that
may contribute to a collective identity. Yet a further suggestion of The
Bridge on the Drina is that over time a place might gather to itself col-
lections of sensory material, combining them to create a single spirit of
the place (genius loci) that leaves its mark on all who dwell in it. Orhan
Pamuk conveys something of this in his portrait of Istanbul; the special
character of the place, he argues, is the sum total of every chance encoun-
ter, of every memory, letter, colour and image jostling in its inhabitants
crowded memories after they have been living on the same streets for
fifty years.11 A landscape in this sense becomes a kind of cultural image,
though since it operates partly in an imaginative realm it is open to con-
testation. As many have argued, music may be constitutive of just such
a cultural image, and through its associative power it may help weld the
landscape to history, to collective social and even national identities.
We return, then, to borders, with their negations and exclusions, their
prescriptions of difference. In music as elsewhere, borders may be imposed
externally, and music history in the Balkans is not short of examples. But
the delineation of stylistic borders is a more subtle process than this.
Musical styles are symbolic systems as well as social products. In con-
sequence, their borders are more fluid than those marking out political
and socio-economic domains, just as the commerce between them and
the diversity within them are often greater. Places may be marked, and
landscapes constructed, by particular styles, repertories or instruments,

9Von Glahn 2004.

10Heidegger 1975, and especially the essay Building, Dwelling, Thinking. To dwell, to
be set at peace, means to remain at peace within the free sphere that safeguards each thing
in its nature. The fundamental character of dwelling is this sparing and preserving. Pierre
Bourdieu politicises this with his adoption of Marcel Mausss concept habitus.
11 Pamuk 2005, 99.
38 chapter two

and all of these may come to serve as signifying conventions, especially

when reinforced by commemorative institutions.12 But countering such
fixities are the unpredictable narratives of individuals, who are free to use
music in any number of different ways, often identifying with it precisely
because it corresponds to [their] sensibility and vision of the world.13 In
negotiating private identities they may establish unusual alliances, dis-
mantle existing borders, improvise counterpoints to prevailing orthodox-
ies, and bring external experience and knowledge to what is there already.
Pace Erik Erikson, individual identities are not mere instantiations of a
social identity.14
There are thus areas of stability and areas of instability in all musical def-
initions of place. Signifiers of various kinds promote stability, but they are
weakened by the semantic ambiguities of music, and are easily subverted
or even inverted by individual agency. And while none of this is period-
specific, it seems clear that areas of stability are under particular threat in
our contemporary world due to the mediating and border-crossing effects
of modern technologies: in a word, to globalisation. There are two quali-
fications to make here. First, it is far from obvious that a sense of place
can be so easily undermined, even if the range of reference is dramatically
widened; nor is it obvious, conversely, that in a pre-modern world places
were entirely self-defined. Even in todays global village locality retains its
potency, if only in the sense that indigenous styles become local signifiers
of place within worldwide marketing networks. Here place can become an
attribute of music, rather than music an attribute of place.
The second qualification is that there was a significant pre-history to
globalising tendencies in the Balkans. The Sephardic story bears witness
that migration was endemic to the history and geography of this region.
There were local migrations from rural to urban settings, impelled by
changing patterns of economic geography, but leading in due course to
transformations and fusions of cultural forms. There were politically moti-
vated upheavals, transferring populations en masse, and establishing two-
way dialogues between different places and their different cultures. And
there were diasporas to far-flung places in the new world(s), where local

12Models of cultural geography developed by Peter H. Nash and George O. Carney are
useful in examining the signifying conventions of music in this way. See in particular Nash
and Carney 1996.
13Aubert 2007, 1.
14In Erikson 1969, it is argued that the mapping of individual to collective identities is
defining of a culture.
 ecologies 39

cultures were transplanted to radically different contexts, and on occasion

preserved in diaspora when they had disappeared in the homeland.15 In
other words, moving through places, and here I adopt the language of
Michelle Bigenho, was a familiar pattern in South East Europe long before
the age of radios and cassettes.16 Moving through places in turn resulted
in interactive and syncretic musical cultures.
Such fusions were a largely urban phenomenon, and they were partly
by-products of the unique physical geography of the Balkans.17 Mountains
and rivers ensured that there was a restricted number of well-defined
trade and military routes crisscrossing the region, so that in many cases
Balkan communities had closer ties with the world beyond than with
their neighbours. The larger Balkan towns were positioned at key points
along these routes, including their intersections. With traffic flowing in all
directions, their populations were fluid, and they hosted multi-ethnic and
multi-cultural communities that in most cases carried little sense of the
national definition that would later attach to them. They had major stra-
tegic significance, of course, but they also developed very particular cul-
tural ecologies, with a notable tendency towards hybridity. Genres, styles
and ideas were all transferred from place to place, repelling or attracting
one another, co-existing or fusing, in an intrinsically dynamic process of
transcultural flow.
I will return to these ecologies in due course. But for now I want to
focus on the converse effects on rural settings of this same physical geo-
graphy. Here the mountains and rivers acted as lines of resistance that
made internal communication difficult and fostered closed, self-defined
places. Sealed from the world beyond, such places developed site-specific
cultural ecologies that nurtured relatively autonomous and often highly
distinctive cultural forms, responsive to particular lifestyles and envi-
ronments and differentiated from those of even their most immediate
neighbours. Bigenhos unique authenticity conveys something of this
hermeticism, though it has additional resonances, not least the reminder
that the companion of specificity is often inaccessibility; and it is, alas, but
a short step from this to misinterpretation and appropriation.18 We are
fortunate, then, that over the years local cultures of this kind, including

15For an example of this, see Dunin 1988.

16Bigenho 2002, 6.
17A good concise description of that geography is the first chapter of Hall 2011.
18Bigenho 2002, 20.
40 chapter two

musical practices and musical forms, have yielded some of their secrets to
the patient observation of ethnologists.

Ringed by Mountains: The Oa Country

Let us journey to the extreme edge of the region covered by this book.
There is a corner of Maramure in northern Transylvania known as ara
Oaului [Oa Country], comprising in all some thirty-six villages and their
environs. The geographical isolation of this region, ringed as it is by moun-
tains, has ensured that older layers of music-making have survived here
rather longer than elsewhere in Romania the impingement of modernity,
the effects of emigration, and the folklorisation promoted by the Commu-
nist regime.19 Jacques Bout first visited the region briefly in 1969, return-
ing in 1979, and again with two other researchers in the 1990s. The foci of
his fieldwork on all three occasions were the so-called Sunday dance, in
which voice and violin are ever-present, the musical system underlying
the characteristic genres of Oa, especially as represented by the ubiqui-
tous dan, and the complex ceremonial dimensions of social events, nota-
bly, but not exclusively, weddings.
In the course of their 1990s research, now published as a book,20 the
three scholars worked to find answers to some of the intractable questions
already posed by Bout during his earlier visits. We travel with them on a
voyage of discovery, as they first acquire a vocabulary, and then test out
its possible, distinctly contested, meanings. First in line is the enigmatic
dan, a term (literally dance) whose use by informants seems permissive,
at least initially; then there is pont, a component (melodic segment) of
dan, it seems, but again with definitions that seem to vary from musi-
cian to musician, and with meanings derived from dance as well as from
music; and likewise with the third key term, figur. We work through the
various stages of clarification with the authors, until they arrive first at a
more-or-less satisfactory definition of pont, and then at a general scheme
for dan.
This research uncovers certain universals in improvisation, while at
the same time documenting the uniqueness of a musical culture that has

19Compare areas such as Mariovo in western Macedonia, or the Plav-Gusinje region of

Montenegro, both also surrounded by mountains and also preserving many elements of
traditional culture until very recent times.
20Bout, Lortat-Jacob and Rdulescu 2002.
 ecologies 41

remained isolated from its surroundings: in short, it probes indigeneity.21

The relation between the three categories (figur, pont and dan) is a
relation of small through to large, or simple through to complex, and by
tracking it we can see how basic models are elaborated in improvisation
to create larger forms, themselves relatable to certain archetypal patterns.
It is a practice replicated in improvisational practices from widely differ-
ent musical traditions the world over. Thus, the figur belongs to a stock
of common materials, partly determined by genre, but mainly responding
to an idiomatic imperative, and related to and distinguished from each
other by small-scale identities and differences. They are recycled to cre-
ate a repertory of short melodic segments (ponturi), themselves subject to
variation, and combined in larger, open-ended patterns to form the dan.
The result is a surface of melodic prolixity, yet generated from a restricted
source pool of figures. By uncovering these workings, the analyses pre-
sented by Bout and his colleagues exemplify and make concrete a famil-
iar paradox of improvisation (in whatever style), namely that the demand
for constant spontaneity ultimately promotes the formula. They further
reveal how the idiomatic is elevated to a major principle of creativity. And
finally, their transcriptions expose, albeit unwittingly, a difficulty of meth-
odology. The more sophisticated the transcription, the further it widens
the gap between acoustic and notational forms, especially, but not only,
in the rhythmic domain.22
It is when we come to examine the musical materials themselves,
as distinct from the transformational processes to which they are sub-
jected, that the singularity of this music becomes truly apparent. The
vocal style is highly distinctive, a kind of high-pitched yelling tue-tte.
And the violin, with its moto perpetuo stream of virtuoso figures, gener-
ates a sustained level of spiky dissonance against the relatively static har-
monic platforms established by the guitar, characteristically held upright
and strummed in rapid pulsations. Even when performed singly the vio-
lin manages to produce complex textures, contributing to the sense of
dynamism, while improvised poems [purituri] are shouted against its

21 Thomas Hylland Eriksen reminds us that indigeneity is a far from neutral term in
anthroplogy. See Eriksen 1993, 1314. Notions of authenticity are often closely linked to
indigeneity, and especially in studies of traditional music; see Johnson 2000; also Bigenho
2002.
22Several of the detailed segmentations in this book seem permissive; conversely, the
spectographic notations run the risk of tautology.
42 chapter two

high-momentum line. Typically this is music of the outdoors, as the vocal

style suggests, and also the dissonance level.
It is a communal music, designed for village activities, including the
familiar seasonal rituals associated with the cycle of the crops, the church
calendar, and the important events of family life, notably weddings with
their elaborate rituals, and funerals.23 And as always with such traditional
cultures, the music is closely bound to the occasion, as are the highly dis-
tinctive costumes, whose semiology is even more rigid than that of the
music. So too are the associated dances, where there is again a counter-
point of universals and particulars, an individuation of familiar forms
and functions from village to village. The round dance is found every-
where in the Balkans, for instance, but it assumes distinctive forms in
Oa, accreted over many years. And although there are endless surface
variations according to season and function, the ethos permits very little
change as to underlying patterns. A clear sense of ownership of such tra-
ditions emerges from the informants in the book. They commonly trace
the origins of a particular dan to one or other of the nearby villages, rein-
forcing the sense of hermeticism: of enclosed, region-specific repertories,
whose true meanings are barred to the uninitiated.
If we try to contextualise the traditional music of Oa, we might begin
by relating it to Maramure of which it is a part. Like Oa itself, the wider
region is mountainous, and, as Bartk noted back in 1913, this geographical
isolation helped preserve its traditional cultures, and also a certain inde-
pendent-mindedness among its inhabitants.24 Thanks to pioneering work
by Tiberiu Brediceanu in 1910, collecting expeditions with phonogram
recordings actually pre-dated Bartk, while fieldwork in the region contin-
ues to this day.25 So there is no shortage of information about everyday life
and traditional culture. Until the 1990s other Maramure villages preserved
many of the same rituals and customs as those found in Oa, including the
Sunday dance, raising incidentally all kinds of questions about how social
space is controlled, about inter-village competition, and about gender
roles; characteristically only men would be allowed to enter the dancing
space, for example, while women needed to be invited. There were also

23There is also a more private tradition of song and flute playing within the culture,
suited to indoor performance.
24I am referring here to the traditional region of Maramure, since the name is now
often applied to a rather wider region stretching beyond the mountains.
25Brediceanu 1957; Bartk 1913. On Brediceanus hostility to Bartk, see Blaa 2002,
and in the same issue an extensive discussion of rival Hungarian and Romanian views of
Transylvania in music.
 ecologies 43

commonalities as well as many differences, of course in choreology

(Alexandru refers to the small tramping steps of the Maramure round
dance),26 in musical performance style (the strigturi [shouts]), and in
musical genre (the hor lung [long song], a specific type of doina).27
The important difference is that when Bout and his colleagues were
recording a living tradition in Oa (albeit in decline), other Maramure
villages had already all but lost touch with these traditions, partly due to
widespread emigration in the early 1990s, but also to the familiar effects
of television and tourism. Recent work in some of these villages (200104)
has been concerned with the revitalisation rather than the recording of
local traditions, notably through the efforts of Sperana Rdulescu, one
of the co-authors of Bouts book, with the help of committed locals such
as Ioan Pop from the village of Hoteni.28 There is an ambiguous status
here, as traditional cultures hover precariously between disintegration
and preservation. Thus, the village dancing party, once a venerable insti-
tution, is revived, but the villagers are now observed, and they are paid
to participate!
It may be useful to consider yet wider contexts for the music from Oa. It
has, for example, been categorised as a local culture within a larger entity
described as Romanian folk music,29 presupposing deeper commonali-
ties among a single people: a nation. Here a (relatively) self-defined music
is, as it were, unbound. There is often a conflation of separate narratives
in the common tendency to place regional histories within the framework
of national histories in this way. It would really be more realistic to rec-
ognise that regional histories introduce another form of global discourse,
albeit of an intransitive and intra- (rather than inter-) national kind. It is
somewhere in the space between the inter- and the intra-national that a
polity intervenes to make decisions about things national, and this can
be an especially sensitive issue in border regions such as Oa, since these
regions will be prey to the general tendency of states to want to define the
nation as culturally homogeneous.30

26Alexandru 1980, 84.

27The doina, which has been emblematic of Romanian folk culture, is a freely orna-
mented lyrical song, replete with melodic formulae, while the hor lung [long song] is a
sub-genre of this known in northern Transylvania.
28The project was discussed in a session entitled Revitalizing the Village Dance of
Maramure, Romania in a Cultural Tourism Context: the Project and its Limits, at the Inter-
national Council for Traditional Music meeting in Sheffield, 2005.
29Alexandru 1980.
30The idea of national bypass in todays culture is explored in Malm and Wallis 1993,
from 237.
44 chapter two

As part of Transylvania, Maramure as a whole belonged to Austro-

Hungary prior to 1918, and general Hungarian-Slovak affinities have indeed
been noted in songs from the region.31 Then, after 1918, the entire province
was divided, and it is currently split between Romania and Ukraine. Local
cultures have been no respecters of this northern political frontier either.
But even more suggestive than such commonalities across political bor-
ders are the parallels between dance music from Oa and music from the
northern Carpathians, in present-day Slovakia and southern Poland. The
heterophonic violins, the blue notes, and the three-string bass accom-
paniment found in the music of the Polish Tatras find an echo in Oa.
What this suggests is that even the most region-specific repertories belong
to wider musical families, in this case embracing what may once have
been a more geographically widespread idiom in the Carpathians. And
this suggestion is firmed up when we cross the Danube and explore the
very different music to be found in the northeastern Serbian mountains
and the Dinaric Alps.

On the Voice: The Dinaric Alps and other Mountains

In his film Gluvi barut [Silent Gunpowder], set in the Bosnian moun-
tains during World War II, Bato Cengi conveys something of the deso-
late beauty of the Dinaric Alps, which run southwards in parallel to the
Adriatic coastline and then stretch eastwards into Bosnia and Herze-
govina, Montenegro and part of Serbia. The specificity of place, captured
so evocatively in this film, is enhanced by a musical score from Goran
Bregovi, best known for his association with the rock band Bijelo dugme
[White Button], and for his subsequent work with the film director Emir
Kustorica.32 Bregovi achieves this distinctive sound world by drawing on,
and processing in various ways, an ancient layer of vocal music found
in these regions, of which ganga associated with several traditional
mountain communities, including the people once known as Morlachs in
Western Hercegovina, Central Bosnia and Imotska Krajina is probably
the most familiar genre.33

31 Bartk noted these affinities, and they are further discussed in Alexandru 1980, 67.
32Bijelo dugme was the most famous of the bands that made up Sarajevos thriving
popular music scene in the pre-war years. See chapter 19 for further discussion.
33For a detailed study, see Petrovi 1977. Ganga is a rather specific genre in which solo
voice and a group of between three and five singers alternate, with texts semi-improvised
and based on units of one couplet of two ten-syllable verses.
 ecologies 45

These ancient Dinaric songs, including so-called duge pjesme [long

songs], in which the singers stagger their breathing to achieve continuity,
are closely linked to pastoral communities and their associated occupa-
tions in the mountain regions right across the Slavonic Balkans. Character-
istically they are performed either in heterophonic unison or in a two- or
three-voiced polyphonic texture (iso-polyphony) in which one voice func-
tions as a drone, which in some regions itself modulates.34 The lead voice
has a narrow ambitus, using no more than four or five unequally tem-
pered scalar pitches. Characteristically the lowest will be a tone below the
final, often resulting in consonant major seconds at cadences; in some
traditions this results either from the lead voice guiding down or stop-
ping the phrase by descending to the tone below the drone; in others it
results from the supporting voice dropping a tone. In general these vocal
styles are characterised by an unbroken flow, with trembling [potresanje]
sections, extended melismas (characteristic of so-called drawling songs),35
various species of semi-improvised ornamentation to dress the melody
(including slicing and sobbing effects, the distinctive i cry, and exclam-
atory shouts [ojkanje]).36
The songs are usually designed for outdoor singing, and projection
across the distance informs the voice production (chest register with fal-
setto ornamentation), as also the role of the subsidiary voice(s), part of
whose function is to lift and help project the leading voice. There is often
a complex semiology, which depends on some degree of communicative
competence, in Chomskys sense, to register fully. In some regions of for-
mer Yugoslavia, for example, singers claim that the glissando i wail com-
monly heard at the end of melodic lines or strophes is supposed to drive
away demons (similar stories are told in parts of Ukraine, where ritual
singing of this kind just about survives today). This kind of symbolisation
is common in the wider region, and can take various forms. In war songs
from northern Albania, for example, the initial vocalisation, accompanied
by appropriate visual gestures, represents a warlike and highly dramatic
squaring up to death.37

34This is the case, for instance, in traditional singing na glas in the Tetovo region of
northern Macedonia.
35Fulanovi-oi 2003.
36The vowel sound used for non-semantic syllables varies according to certain local
traditions.
37Rexhep Munishi has written interestingly about this (Munishi 1987).
46 chapter two

Mountains are the salient physical fact about the Balkan peninsula.
Mountains come first is the apt quotation (from Fernand Braudel) that
introduces the first chapter of Mark Mazowers concise but nicely crafted
monograph on the region.38 The Dinaric Alps extend southwards until
they become the Albanian Alps and then the Greek Pindus and Taigetus
ranges. To the east they branch off into the Rhodope and Balkan moun-
tains. So it is not surprising that in many different guises these ancient
forms of group singing survived and among vanishing populations of
older singers, still survive across mountainous regions of the peninsula
as a whole. Depending on the region the repertories might be mono-
phonic, heterophonic or polyphonic.39 In certain areas (parts of western
Macedonia in Greece, for example), the melodic structures of monophonic
songs indicates a probable earlier polyphonic practice, now lost, demon-
strating that the borders of the polyphonic tradition have been far from
stable. Conversely, in some existing polyphonic practices (north Pindus,
for example) ornaments within the melodic style, such as the mid-phrase
leaping seventh, seem to have taken their origins from the distinctive
vocal cries (a kind of yodelling) that are common to many ancient forms
of group singing.
Although related genres of ritual and occupational group singing were
once to be found in traditional cultures over much of South East Europe, they
were divided by certain cultural boundaries that no doubt had an ancient
provenance. Identifying the distinctive families of group singing created by
these boundaries has occupied a number of scholars. There have been
attempts to weld some of these idioms to an exclusively Slavonic cul-
ture.40 And there have been suggestions by some specialists of links with
much older cultures, referring to the Hellenic traditions of north Pindus,
to the Illyrian idioms of Albania and the Dinaric Alps, and to a rather dif-
ferent, independent Thracian tradition in Bulgaria and western Thrace.41
One might even propose correspondences between Dinaric idioms and
Alpine traditions further north, notably those of the Austrian Juchzer. This

38Mazower 2000.
39Iso-polyphony may have developed from the heterophonic practices that commonly
emerge from group singing. At least within the Hellenic tradition, speculation about this
might return us to the worded melody of classical antiquity, marked by the association
between accent and a rising interval (notably the fourth), providing two points of orienta-
tion around which melodic ideas might cluster. My thoughts on this come mainly from
discussion with Athena Katsanevaki.
40Rice 2004, 21.
41 See the discussion in Nitsiakos and Mantzos 2003.
 ecologies 47

is the more striking in that all these repertories stand in sharp contrast
to those of Maramure and ara Oaului, reminding us that the Transyl-
vanian and Carpathian mountains are separated from the Northeastern
Serbian and Dinaric Alps by a cultural as well as a physical fault line (the
Danube is the physical border, with the most dramatic point of separation
the gorge known as the Iron Gates).42
It is not realistic to generalise about such a wide range of traditions.
In particular, the Dinaric styles including north (Geg) Albanian are
significantly different from the distinctive polyphonic repertories found
among Vlach-, Albanian- and Greek-speaking communities further south
in Epirus. Nor have analytical approaches to these separate traditions
been at all uniform. Compare the complementary insights yielded by
the very different approaches of Ankica Petrovi in her study of ganga
in Dinaric regions and of Athena Katsenevaki in her analysis of the tonal
basis of music from north Pindus.43 The former demonstrates how a lim-
ited repertory of basic and compound melodic patterns made up of any-
thing between one and five notes can be subject to endless permutation
and variation, with melodic diversity closely linked to particular locali-
ties. In contrast, the latter proceeds reductively, revealing that archetypes
of either hemitonic or anhemitonic pentatonic sequences underlie the
melodic prolixity of traditional repertories in this part of northern Greece;
indeed the whole region of Epirus, including what is now south Albania,
has been described as a kind of pentatonic zone.
The polyphonic music of Epirus has long been recognised as singular
(the Albanian variety is one of the listed masterpieces of UNESCOs so-
called oral and intangible heritage of mankind).44 It is a true polyphony,
in the sense that each part has a distinctive role and function: one lead-
ing, one cutting, and others providing and elaborating the drone (the
ison), and is very much sui generis. Nonetheless it is not an entirely unified
tradition. There are certain differences, for example, between Albanian
and Farseriot Vlach versions on one hand and Greek and Koutsovlach
versions on the other. In brief, the Albanian traditions often have a dis-
tinctive rhythmicised ison and a significantly different underlying pitch

42This gorge, once right on the old Turkish frontier, is now the site of a major hydro-
electric dam.
43Petrovi 1977. Katsenevaki 1998.
44At the meeting of the relevant committee in Abu Dhabi in 2009 reservations were
expressed about the rationale of this scheme, not least because classifications are by
nation.
48 chapter two

structure, albeit still pentatonic. Like Dinaric singing, moreover, Epirotic

styles incorporate many regional variations. Tracing these differences and
linking them to the historical record is an important task. But to the out-
sider it will be the commonalities between this music and other ancient
layers of singing in the Balkans that will seem striking, not least because
their tonal principles are a world apart from those of modern Western
harmony.
As an ideal type, then, such ancient songs embodied an outdoor ritual
life that survived in mountain regions well into the post-World War II
years. Depending on the occasion they were sung by either men or women
but usually separately, and they invariably related to communal activities,
including the familiar calendrical cycles of work (haymaking, herding,
shearing, gathering, weaving), and of religious rituals, including saints
days. Laments and ritual wedding songs were among the most common
forms of female singing, but Holy Day songs were no less important.
Typical are the songs associated with the Lazarian rite, found all over
the region as far east as Bulgaria, where Lazarian traditions are strong,
and even beyond; they are found in Georgia, for example. Velika Stojkova
Serafimovska has examined these songs in the villages of the Radovi
municipality in Macedonia, and her work allows us to reflect a little on
the dynamics of preservation and change.
On St. Lazarus Saturday, a week before Orthodox Easter, unmarried
girls dress in bridal costumes, with a feather for protection against evil,
and do the rounds of the village houses, dancing in front of each of them
and singing St. Lazarus songs, to wish good health to all within. The cer-
emony is still performed in an earnest spirit, but there has undoubtedly
been some loss of functionality, and along with that an obvious change
in the music. What is significant here is not that new Lazarian songs
appear, absorbing and transforming older stylistic components. These are
regarded as acceptable, given that the young girls perform their roles in all
sincerity, albeit with a new self-consciousness. The real change has more
to do with performances of the older songs, and it results from subtle
alterations to the voice due to the changing ethnic composition of the
villages, as (Bulgarian) Shopi settlements increase.45 It is for these reasons
that the older songs are sometimes not now recognised, at least by the
older women, as on the Lazarian voice.

45Palikrusheva 1986, 33.

 ecologies 49

The (untranslatable) term voice here is significant, and its use may
help us gain some understanding not just of the particular case, but of the
relationship between functionality and the aesthetic in this music more
generally. In some parts of former Yugoslavia, singing na glas [literally
on the voice or to the voice] is the term used to describe this older layer
of song, distinguishing it from a newer type of singing na bas [on or to the
bass], where the norm of consonance is the third and the cadence is on a
fifth, or alternatively from epic song, as performed by guslars.46 But more
crucially it refers to melodic patterns (voices) created within a given
tonal structure and strictly determined by the conventions of the rite or
occupation, as also (secondarily) by the place of performance, the specific
ritual or occupational function, and the status of the performer. Hence
Lazarian voice, but also wedding voice, bee-keepers voice, travellers
voice, kolede voice (from the round dance or kolo), and so on.
Traditionally, the voice here was inseparable from the rite, occasion,
place or role it was indeed defined by such categories and it was thus
regarded as one important way to preserve ritual meanings across the
centuries. For it should be stressed that these melodic types are almost
certainly of ancient origin, and were probably associated originally with
nomadic, tribal societies. It is only in a very limited sense that we can
speak of an audience or a listener for such performances, if indeed per-
formances is the mot juste. The voice was integral to the rite, so that any
threat to the integrity of the rite was also a challenge to the authenticity of
the voice. Within this constraint, there could be considerable freedom as
to the aesthetic manifestation of the voice. The melodic type or formula,
in other words, could be given life in numerous different ways, depending
on place, time, person or situation, while the underlying meaning would
remain the same.
Like other forms of ritual activity, singing na glas provided a framework
for the expressive life of its participating community. Such frameworks
functioned as a protection against the destabilising and potentially dis-
ruptive effects of individual expression. To express it in Lacanian terms,
they protected against the pre-rational, pre-symbolic Imaginary, or per-
haps more relevantly still, against the Kristevan Semiotic; they by no
means denied such expression, but rather channelled it, and socialised it.

46The voice in this terminology has several connotations. It can refer to outdoors
singing (iz glasa [from the throat]); it can identify a ritual or function; and it can refer to
a mode. I am grateful to Velika Stojkova Serafimovska, who discussed these points with
me at length.
50 chapter two

Put more simply, life in the mountains was hard, and this ancient form
of singing was one way to make it easier; it was that rather more than an
entertainment in any conventional sense of the term.
There is a more general point here. Ritual forms are established to sup-
ply order. They create a temporal and physical space within which various
kinds of affective experience, including the more extreme affective states
associated with, for example, bereavement, might be socially sanctioned.
However personal a lament may be, writes Gail Holst-Warhaft, it is sung
in company; other women pick up phrases from the first lamenter and
incorporate them into their own song.47 In this way ritual forms preserve,
or act as surrogates for, what Kristeva and Lacan call the Symbolic register,
whose role is to regulate: to bring order and rationality to the chaos of our
lives. At the same time they act as a necessary bulwark against what Lacan
calls the Real, those ineffable (sublime or brutalising) manifestations of
the world whose intrusions on the Symbolic are no less threatening than
the Semiotic (or Imaginary). Rituals, in other words, protect the Symbolic
Order from both the Semiotic and the Real. And while they are cultur-
ally specific, they are also cross-cultural, since the Semiotic and the Real
are universals of human experience. The voice in ancient Dinaric singing
might thus be regarded as an embodiment of the Symbolic Order.
Compare this with more recent lyric (rhymed) songs which form no
less a part of mountain traditions in the Balkans, but are without ritual
significance. Here the individuated message the particular text, speak-
ing mainly of love, in countless romances is aesthetically encoded by
the performers; it is embodied in the melody which carries it and whose
memorability is essential to its communication. Here one can indeed
speak of an audience, of a performance, of a product as well as a process.
Aesthetic values are foregrounded from the start; the song has an identifi-
able tune rather than a melodic formula. This presents us with an intrigu-
ing paradox, for although they are by definition more individuated, less
a vehicle for collective expression, non-ritual songs have been preserved
more consistently and have allowed for much less fundamental musical
change than ritual songs. Their identity is linked to their aesthetic prop-
erties, and that allows them some capacity to transcend a local ecology.
Hence the functionality may change freely (is the song to be performed
by women, men, or both? Is it to be sung outdoors, indoors, or either? Is
it to be part of a private or a public occasion? Is it a traditional rendition

47Holst-Warhaft 2000, 52.

 ecologies 51

or a modern revival?), but too much change to the melody itself will result
in a loss of recognition.
The non-ritual song, in short, can survive the incursions of modernity,
and can maintain its identity in often dramatically changed conditions.
This throws into relief the fate of singing on the voice in recent years.
Since World War II it has all but disappeared as a living tradition, though
genres such as ganga were reformulated for new urban environments for a
time in the 1970s, and the idiom is preserved today in carefully researched
performances and recordings by some leading secondary ensembles,
designed above all for the folk festival and even for the mass media (at
the time of writing Croatia is submitting such a repertory to UNESCO
for inclusion in the oral and intangible heritage of humanity). The real
point here is that singing na glas was so intimately linked to an outdoor
ritual life and to a traditional mountain ecology that it could survive the
destruction of that life and ecology only as an echo or an obituary.

Deep in umadija

Travelling to the north and south of Belgrade, you enter two different
Serbias. As you journey northwards into Vojvodina, you approach cen-
tral Europe, physically and culturally. Apart from the mountainous region
Fruka Gora, home to a cluster of Orthodox monasteries, the landscape
flattens out, until eventually it reaches the Pannonian plains. The urban
geography also changes, as Austro-Hungarian Baroque begins to replace
Byzantine-Slavonic in some towns. And (noticeably) the ethnicities
become more diverse, for along with the Banat, of which it was once a
part, Vojvodina can claim to be one of the most multi-cultural provinces
in the region. In contrast, as you travel southwards from Belgrade, you
enter a world of forests, wooded hills, and rolling contours, with Rudnik
mountain in Grua standing at the centre. You have a sense that you
are probing deeper into the Balkans. You are in umadija, the heart of
Servia,48 where the early nineteenth-century insurrection began. This is
the land of Karaorevi, whose memory is revered in this region, and
whose tomb and home can be visited in Topola, one-time capital of the
newly liberated territories.

48Durham 1904, 204.

52 chapter two

In umadija you are mainly among Serbs, though settlers from Dinaric
Herzegovina are also found there, as are communities of (Serbian) Roma,
with their marvellous gift a gift that amounts to genius for playing
stringed instruments.49 The sense of history in this region, strikingly cap-
tured in travel literature by Alphonse de Lamartine, and in a later period
by Edith Durham and David Footman, is palpable.50 It has fed too into
fiction, notably in Lawrence Durrell.51 Yet although this territory is indeed
the Serbian heartland, it has never been isolated in the manner of the
mountain regions discussed earlier. On the contrary, it was constantly
traversed, as over the centuries the Serbian people made their way across
it, travelling northward in recurring cycles of migration either from the
Dinaric regions or from the Kosovo-Metohija basin. These migrations left
visible traces on umadija, but they were no threat to its strong sense of
identity, a genius loci stemming from shared ethnicity, shared history, and
shared experience.
This is not to say that umadija is, or ever was, uniform in culture.
Partly because of its centrality within Serbia, and within the Balkans as
a whole, its traditional music has registered influences from the different
worlds that surround it. You can almost draw a line through the prov-
ince separating east and west, with the western flank belonging to the
peripheries of Dinaric culture. In some of the villages of western umadija
ancient Dinaric singing was familiar until relatively recently, and it is still
remembered by an older generation today. Yet here we find a softer ver-
sion of the tradition, not just in terms of voice production, but in the privi-
leging of unison-heterophonic over multi-voiced singing, though even in
unison singing there is a clear division between lead singer and support-
ing voices. It is also worth noting that ritual songs are less common in
this region than in the Dinaric Alps, mainly because it is a land of cattle
breeding rather than shepherding.
In the eastern part of the province the music responds to a rather dif-
ferent musical world, the world of eastern Serbia, bordering on Bulgaria.
But again these influences are processed, their livelier features, especially
in the rhythmic domain, moderated. And as a result the musical idiom is
again rendered distinctly umadijan. As for the central and northern ter-
ritories, if there is (or was) a single prevalent idiom of traditional music it

49Ibid., 210.
50See the discussion in Goldsworthy 1998, 168.
51 Durrell 1957.
 ecologies 53

would be the modern style of singing described earlier as na bas, where

the lead singer is answered by multi-voiced refrains to a simple harmonic
formula of parallel thirds, and with a cadential close on the fifth. This style
is common all over umadija, and is more formalised here than elsewhere
in the former Yugoslavia; the underlying harmonic formulae are relatively
few, and individual songs conform to them surprisingly strictly. But it is
no doubt significant that here in the notional centre of the Balkans we can
find the only sustained examples of a hybrid style that synthesises both
the na bas and the na glas singing styles.
These hybrid forms, first so described by Dragoslav Devi,52 are abun-
dantly clear in the published collections of songs made by Ljubinko
Miljkovi from lower Jasenica in 1986.53 The layout of this book is highly
formalised, and in ways that underline the separation of old and new
styles. Of its three parts, the first is given over to speech rhythms, without
any melodic indication, the second to chromatic melodies sung na glas,
and the third to diatonic songs of the modern (na bas) variety. And
because the presentation is so schematic, the hybrid songs that appear
in the second section stand out all the more clearly. Later work by Jelena
Jovanovi in upper Jasenica, where many of the Dinaric peoples settled,
and in Grua, also registers this synthesis.54
In her collection of songs from Grua, Jovanovi again presents old, new
and hybrid styles, though not schematically. She also makes further classi-
fications within the older style, identifying several species of two-part sing-
ing, notably heterophony (a mainly unison melody, and with the descent
of the leading voice crossing the accompanying final), heterophony-drone
(alternating heterophony with a more elaborated ornamental leading
voice descending to the major second below the accompanying drone),
and drone (the melody carried only by the leading voice, with the accom-
panying voices giving only the drone). But perhaps most crucially, she
is alive not just to the complexity of stylistic patterning found even in a
relatively homogeneous region such as umadija, due to the inflections
produced by neighbouring cultures, but also to the impossibility of estab-
lishing a direct congruence between musical styles and ethnic groups.

52Devi 1997. The phenomenon is also described, but without the term hybrid, in
Golemovi 1984. See also Golemovis articles in Novy Zvuk, vols. 8 and 9.
53Miljkovi 1986.
54Jovanovi 2002. The Grua collection is based on material recorded by Radmila
Petrovi and later by Jovanovi herself, and is published as Petrovi 2003.
54 chapter two

Thus, Dinaric peoples are in the majority in western Jasenica, for example,
but this is not reflected in the distribution of musical styles.
Aside from current research by Jovanovi, there has been fieldwork
done by Dragoslav Devi and Dimitrije Golemovi in the 1970s and again
in the early 1990s in the neighbouring Takovo district, situated just to the
west of Grua. This region, like upper Jasenica, was populated in the main
by Dinaric settlers from Montenegro and Herzegovina, and while it devel-
oped a singular repertory of entertainment music and some unique stylis-
tic features, its music and music-making can easily be related to practices
both in upper Jasenica and in central umadija, notably through the famil-
iar division between singing na glas and na bas. Devi and Golemovi
provide some intriguing information on the older layer of singing in the
Takovo district, notably on related groups of wedding and harvesting
songs, on verse forms, and on the manner in which informants distinguish
the voices. But they also describe a rich tradition of instrumental music,
mainly designed for village dancing.55
Here we are in the territory of the umadijan kolo, in all its many forms,
originally accompanied by svirala [short pipe], frula [flute], dvojnice [dou-
ble flute] or (often home-made) clarinet.56 The bagpipe was also used of
course, especially for semi-professional performances at special occasions
such as weddings, fairs and public ceremonies, but following World War II
it was gradually replaced by the accordion, and in the 1960s it was an
accordion-dominated ensemble that became associated with a distinctive,
trans-regional, folk idiom (often performed by Roma) that became famil-
iar and widely popular not just through wedding traditions but through
folk festivals such as Gua, at least in its early days.57 Subsequently, the
Takovo district went the way of the rest of Serbia and the wider region
generally, as older ensembles made way for electronically amplified instru-
ments: for the world of the electric guitar, the drum kit and in due course
the synthesizer.
In umadija today even the commercial folk idioms of the 1960s struggle
to survive, while the more traditional idioms have all but disappeared. It
is mainly through ensembles such as Tipoplastika and Moba that they are

55Devi and Golemovi 1997.

56There are interesting descriptions of such festivities in the late nineteenth century
in the Geschichte der Serben written by Benjamin von Kllay, the influential consul to the
Serbian court appointed by the Dual Monarchy in 1868 (von Kllay 1878).
57The hugely popular Gua festival is best known for its brass bands, and specifically
for trumpet-playing traditions, and has of recent years become a cult event.
 ecologies 55

preserved, though some younger groups are now following suit (the folk
festival in Topola, now almost 40 years old, is of key importance here).
Among an older generation one can find people who were once active
as semi-professional musicians and whose memories of the old songs are
invaluable to researchers.58 Occasionally the results can be surprising. In
autumn 2006, five men who had performed together as a group several
years previously gathered in a school in Svetli, a small village just south
east of Topola.59 They performed an extensive repertory of songs, exclu-
sively na bas in style. The singing was strong, especially from Dragan Jefti,
the lead singer. After the recordings and interviews they made way for
three women from the same village, and at this point the music changed
course completely. These women had not sung together for many years,
and there were predictable self-deprecatory noises at the beginning of the
session. But when the singing started, it was unambiguously in the ancient
na glas idiom, and in several instances it employed that umadijan hybrid
of na glas and na bas styles, marking the place. It was a world apart from
the singing of the men.
This blatant gender divide is not unique to umadija. Sokol Shupo has
noted something similar in Albanian villages, and Athena Katsanevaki in
the Pindus region. And much earlier Bartk observed that women pre-
served an ancient stratum of song because they were bound to the home
and had relatively few opportunities for external contacts. That it extends
well beyond the Balkans is also clear from writings by Amnon Shiloah.60
Several scholars of music in South East Europe have been exercised by
questions of gender, and with good reason. Within many of the more tra-
ditional rural communities women played distinctly subordinate social
roles, and were confined largely to the private sphere. This extended to
making music, for mens and womens songs were treated as distinct and
separate, and there was a widespread presumption that while women
would participate freely in ritual singing (not playing), they would not be
involved in public performances. It was in the post-World War II years,
particularly under state socialism, that this began to change. The stag-
ing and public representation of traditional music and dance was official
Communist policy, and women increasingly played their part in so-called
village gatherings and folk ensembles. As Ana Hofman has pointed out in

58One such is Tomislav uri, now living in Natalinci, and the founder and leader of
the ensemble itoito, which was active in Saranova, near Topola, in the 1970s and 1980s.
59This fieldwork took place on 5 November 2006.
60Shiloah 1995, 159.
56 chapter two

her studies of women singers in the Niko Polje region of Serbia, this had
major repercussions. This might seem an unlikely setting for a case study
in cultural capital, and Hofman does not use the term. But she does dem-
onstrate that performance was an empowering force for women, a subtle
mode of negotiation between old and new female roles.61
Returning to umadija, we might note that although traditional singing
was the product of a particular ecology a predominantly mono-ethnic
region where musical markers of ethnic identity were strong enough to
absorb the movement of peoples and the impingements of neighbouring
cultures it has begun to take on new meanings more recently. There is
renewed interest in umadijan traditional music in certain circles today,
and there are sustained attempts to recover it, not least because it can be
read rather easily as an assertion of ethnic identity against the homogenis-
ing tendencies of the modern nation state.62 The idea that these reperto-
ries have survived for centuries gives them a powerful emotional charge
as cultural representations of strength and stability. It goes without saying
that there is an element of idealisation here, nostalgia for the pastoral, for
a world that might have been rather than one that ever was. This quest
for a mythic world of conservative values, where older moral and social
orders are preserved, is of course common in folk revivals, and Serbia is
no exception. Lying behind it is perhaps a fear of change, a rejection of
the contemporary world and the commercialism that it embodies, and
an impulse to replace that world with one that is lyrical and stable, even
unchanging, one in which identities are fixed and established values are
maintained.
Traditions are invented in folk music as well as art music, and even
present-day collectors are prone to idealise the traditional life of a rural
peasantry; in a word, to reify the concept of traditional culture, and to
present it as somehow free of internal contradictions. Suraiya Faroqhi has
commented on this, and in the process she has usefully problematised
the terms high culture, popular culture and folk culture, suggesting that
it may not be entirely helpful to separate them cleanly.63 Context is all,
of course. Interviews with the men from Svetli revealed a specific set of

61 Hofman 2010; see also Hofman and Markovi 2005. One fascinating instance of gen-
der roles and music was the phenomenon of sworn virgins in North Albania. Dressing as
men, and acquiring mens rights, they were able to perform on musical instruments. For
an introduction, see Young 2000.
62On this, see Jovanovi 2005.
63Faroqhi 2005.
 ecologies 57

values, where a strong competitive rivalry with other folk groups loomed
large, where appearances in the city (Belgrade) were eagerly sought, and
where failure to secure a television performance some time earlier was
not just a misfortune but carried with it a real sense of grievance, accom-
panied by a plethora of explanations, that has clearly come to dominate
much of their conversation. There was, in short, a hard-edged realism in
these discussions that is somewhat at odds with the idealism of the reviv-
alists. Their music was in its own way and within its own sphere no less
commercial than that of the pop groups.
 CHAPTER THREE

DISPLACEMENTS

Investing in Place

Displacements occur when people argue over a place, having first invested it
with ideological meaning, whether religious, ethnonational, or both. More
often than not, those displaced are not those who made the investment.
In Balkan history, religious affiliation invariably preceded national affilia-
tion, but in some circles, and especially from the mid-nineteenth century
onwards, there was a tendency for the one to map closely on to the other;
some commentators have referred to ethno-religious communities.1 In
this respect even the later stages of our Sephardic story were not entirely
typical, for Jewish places were widely dispersed, and largely indifferent to
the ethnonational divisions that shaped and responded to Balkan geogra-
phies. On another level, of course, Jews were the very embodiment of dis-
placement, and they bequeathed to European nationalism such resonant
ideas as the Holy Land and the chosen people.
The potency of these associations can be demonstrated by turning for
a moment to the later history of Yugoslavia. Here the intertwining of reli-
gion and nationalism was fundamental to the myth-making that accom-
panied strengthening aspirations to separate nationhood by the dominant
republics.2 Thus, in the later years of the federal state, the celebrations
and symbols associated with Titos brotherhood and unity were all but
crowded out by the ever more insistent public presence of the major reli-
gions, their ceremonies, congresses and festivals freighted with collective
national memories, and empowered to construct national landscapes.3
The conflation of religious and national symbols here was transparently
designed to create the illusion of a stable social and intellectual order, a
utopian ideal that might stand in sharp contrast to the dissolving struc-
tures associated with existing social realities at the time.

1 Bringa 1993.
2Roudometof 2001.
3Perica 2002, especially 89108.
 displacements 59

The music of the Serbian Orthodox liturgy had long embodied national
values,4 and in the later Tito years it worked to keep those values alive
and assertive in the face of official opposition.5 Thus the crescendo of Ser-
bian nationalism in the 1970s and 1980s was punctuated by a sequence
of public commemorations in which the church marked the place, and
music ennobled it, cementing the bond between social space and sym-
bolic power.6 One starting point might be the services accompanying
the public transfer of Tsar Duans relics to the church of Saint Marko in
Belgrade in May 1968, an explicit association of the faith and the nation
that drew openly on medieval precedent.7 The momentum was sustained
by the Jubilee celebrating 750 years of ecclesiastical independence (1969),
held jointly in Belgrade and ia, and in the mid 1970s by jubilees mark-
ing the centenary of the Herzegovina uprising, the 800th anniversary of
Saint Sava, and the 375th anniversary of the Orthodox monastery Gomirje
in Croatia.8
Then in the eighties, following the death of Tito, there ensued the
consecration of the massive, and still unfinished, church of Saint Sava in
Belgrade (1985), a new programme of church and monastery building, and
a whole series of pilgrimages and festivals, including a year-long tour of
the relics of Prince Lazar, associated with the 600th anniversary of the
battle of Kosovo (1389), the defining event in Serbias image of itself and
of its history.9 In all of this the symbolism of place, especially associated
with the Kosovo myth (Kosovo as sacred place, in Eliades sense,10 as
well as heroic battle site), was strengthened by a potent convergence of
three very different kinds of music: Serbian Orthodox chant, epic songs
about the Kosovo myth, and a new wave of popular music on Kosovan
themes, including YU-Grupas Kosovski bouri, recounting a famous leg-
end of the battle, Lutajua Srcas Jemifija, about the fourteenth-century
Serbian nun and poetess, and Idolis Odbrana i poslednji dana [Apologies

4The Patriarchate of Pe was authorised by the Porte in 1557, and although Ohrid
Greek-dominated, it increasingly took on the character of a national church (Banac
1984, 64).
5Ramet 2005.
6Bourdieu 1989.
7Duan was the greatest of the Nemanji kings, and following his death in 1355 the
medieval Serbian empire disintegrated.
8The preparations for the Gomirje event, including renovation of the monastery, wit-
nessed an unusual degree of cooperation between Serbs and Croats.
9As Tim Judah remarks, the battle was more significant for the legends it spawned
than for its strategic importance (Judah 1997, 27).
10Eliade 1961.
60 chapter three

and Last Days], which invoked Kosovo to the combined strains of rock
beat and Orthodox chant.11
The Catholic Church in Croatia maintained a safer distance from such
explicit political agendas. Yet, as Vjekoslav Perica has demonstrated, it too
had a nationalist agenda in the later years of Yugoslavia. It was epitomised
in the revival of the Marian cult as a powerful national symbol, enacted in
the seventies through a series of commemorations, congresses and festi-
vals similar to those in neighbouring Serbia.12 Like Serbia, moreover, Croa-
tia had its sacred places, notably Marija Bistrica, the shrine that served as
the site for many of the major mass gatherings sponsored by the Church,
and (from 1981) Meugorje in Herzegovina, home of the much trumpeted
Marian apparitions, and subsequently an important, if much exploited
and manipulated, pilgrimage centre.13
Once again music was important as a means of detaching these sacred
spaces from their amorphous (profane) surroundings, and then imbuing
them with ideological significance by juxtaposing iconic representations
of the Church and the nation. Thus, the mass singing of Marian hymns
alongside the Croatian national anthem in Marija Bistrica at the Interna-
tional Marian Congress of 1971 was potently symbolic, and the same con-
junction was repeated on numerous occasions during the so-called Great
Novena, a nine-year Jubilee (19751984) that explicitly followed Polish
precedent. On such occasions ceremony and spectacle served as clarion
calls of separatism, with Catholicism clearly identified as an integral ele-
ment of Croatian nationality. Meugorje, meanwhile, soon attracted a
whole repertory of Marian songs for the pilgrims, now widely available
on cassette and CD.
The investment of sacred places with national meanings in this way
turns them into sites of conflict. The circle of stones (Eliade) surround-
ing them, compacting their myths and symbols, also serves to exclude the
world beyond; it functions, in short, as an analogue for a national border
or would-be border. This was the fate of both the Kosovan holy places
and of Meugorje. They became twin foci in the war of the churches,
which both paralleled and catalysed the war of the nations. Churches,
remarked Edith Durham, long before these events, are the most powerful

11 See Perica 2002, 2812.

12Ibid., chapter 4.
13On 24 June 1981 six children from Meugorje reported the miracle appearance of a
Madonna, instigating a major cult that continues to this day.
 displacements 61

political engines in the Balkan Peninsula.14 In both cases a third faith was
implicated, and this time a faith that (from 1968 onwards) was officially
designated an ethnic nation, an illogicality with Ottoman roots but here
stemming from more immediate Serbian and Croatian designs on Bosnia
and Herzegovina. The Muslims of Bosnia were less politicised than their
Orthodox and Catholic neighbours, and they remained pro-Federation
until the late 1980s, when ethnonationalist agendas from Serbia and Croa-
tia forced both a response and a mobilisation.15
In due course the Muslims marked their own places and from 1990
onwards began to muster their own cultural propaganda, including the
restoration of pilgrimages (these days increasingly folk-touristic) to the
Muslim shrine of Ajvatovica in western Bosnia to commemorate the leg-
endary story of Allah splitting the rock that blocked a key spring at Prusac.
This was helped by a revival of Sufism in Yugoslavia, after many years
of suppression by the official Islamic Community. Sufism soon became a
powerful force engaged in the defence of the Muslim community against
the nationalist agendas of Bosnias neighbours, and since music played an
important role within certain Sufi orders, it was harnessed to the political
cause. In the mid nineties, in the aftermath of the Bosnian war, the music
of Islam was made available to mass culture in a blatant assertion of Bos-
nian national identity, not least through the appropriation the making
public of private devotional genres such as the ilahija.
What do such musical commemorations of place tell us? Even this brief
sketch is enough to indicate how politics, myth, history and religion are
all implicated in territory, with imaginative culture in a strong supporting
role. My synopsis of commemorative events in Yugoslavia illustrates how
musical, like visual, symbolism can play a key role in associating a cultural
landscape with a collective sense of loss and remembrance. The tendency
of such symbolism, as of ritual generally, is toward fixity of meaning. A
place becomes associated with clearly defined sets of values and these
lend it meaning and privilege. And if a place is privileged in this way,
people will claim it, fight over it, and close it off from others. In the Bal-
kans place has been fiercely contested in recent years. There have been
sustained attempts to use the institutions and resources of both church
and state to give authority to particular meanings and concepts associated

14Durham 1905, 67.

15For a detailed account of the issue of Muslim identities in Bosnia, see parts of Poulton
and Taji-Farouki 1997.
62 chapter three

with place, and at the same time to prevent competing meanings from
being articulated. It is this essentialisation of place that leads in the end
to displacement.16
The key point about displacement is that two existing worlds establish
a dialogue. The dialogue may take many forms an absent culture may be
studiously preserved or inadvertently caricatured (through idealisation);
a host culture may be a source of creative transformation or an object
of facile imitation but it remains a dialogue, an awareness of simulta-
neous dimensions, as Edward Said expressed it.17 Svetlana Boym used a
more graphic cinematic metaphor, referring to a superimposition of two
images home and abroad, past and present, dream and everyday life.
And she elaborates: The moment we try to force it into a single image,
it breaks the frame or burns the surface.18 Nuances abound in all of this.
Identity is a quest that is always open, says Claudio Magris, and he goes
on to argue that an obsessive defence of origins is as much a form of slav-
ery as willing submission to displacement.19
In articulating these nuances, the world of imaginative culture has the
advantage that it can mediate between individual and collective experi-
ences of displacement, and can thus help reconnect the Semiotic and the
Symbolic (Kristeva).20 Kristeva reminds us that the division and separa-
tion involved in displacement may well tap into much deeper psychic
realms in the lives of individuals.21 Mediation between the individual
and the collective can be a thought-out strategy of narrative fiction,
as in Milo Crnjanskis novel Seobe [Migrations],22 or more recently in
Dubravka Ugreis account of exile, The Ministry of Pain.23 But equally,
and perhaps especially through the medium of music, mediation can
result from the preconscious expression of shared experiences and intu-
itions, resisting easy rationalisation. Through music, more tellingly than
through explicit articulations, the Kristevan Semiotic can break through
the symbolic barrier of language, and perhaps reawaken the tragic

16 Knapp 1991, 12.

17 Said 2000, 17384.
18 Boym 2001, xiv.
19 Magris 2001, 43.
20Initially in Kristeva 1984. For Kristeva, the Semiotic is related to the infantile state
(the Imaginary) in Lacan and Freud, at once opposed to and influencing the Symbolic (the
social code, akin to a status quo).
21 See Sprengnether 1990 for a discussion of Kristeva in this context.
22The only English translation is Tsernianski 1994.
23Ugrei 2005.
 displacements 63

moment of separation. It can express both an individual and a collective

longing to reconnect.

Migrations: Serbs in a Habsburg World

In 1690, reportedly under the leadership of Patriarch Arsenije III arno-

jevi, many thousands of Serbs (the number is disputed, as is the role of
Arsenije III) left Old Serbia, meaning the Sandak, Metohia and Kosovo,
and made their way northwards across the Danube into the recently
regained Habsburg territories of Srem and Baka, and of the Banat,
where they were ceded land and religious freedom in return for military
service.24 Known as the Great Migration, these flights from the Serbian
heartlands, a defining stage in the general northwards movement of the
Serbian people (and indeed the Serbian lands),25 were a response to failed
rebellions against the Ottomans in support of Habsburg territorial ambi-
tions. For the most part the Serbs fled into the so-called Vojna Granica
[Military Border], established by the Habsburgs in the sixteenth century
and extended eastwards into Slavonia and present-day Vojvodina in the
late seventeenth century following Ottoman retreats.26 This was a kind of
buffer zone separating Habsburg Catholics and Ottoman Muslims, and as
such it was also a cultural fault line between what Ivo Andri described
as two warring worlds.
As the constantly shifting political borders attest, much Balkan his-
tory from the early modern period onwards was framed by collisions
between these two worlds, whose political centres lay outside the region
itself. However, the Serbs were at war with both these warring worlds.27
Like much of the Balkans they belonged culturally to Orthodox Eastern
Europe, part of the legacy of Byzantium. And although their relations with

24Noel Malcolms doubts about the details of this story, and especially about the role of
the Patriarch, are not shared by native historians. In any case, as effective history the story
carries a powerful symbolic weight, even today. See Malcolm 1998, chapter 8.
25There had been northward migrations since the beginning of the fourteenth century,
stemming from the Dinaric region and from Kosovo. Some Kosovan migrants crossed into
Romania and Transylvania in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with later implica-
tions for the traditional musics of Vlach populations in eastern Serbia, when they returned
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thereby hangs a quite different tale of
displacement.
26For a discussion of music in the Military Border, see Kos 1998a.
27Here I appropriate Andris description of the plight of the Turkish political prisoner
in his novella The Damned Yard (Andri 2003b).
64 chapter three

fellow members of the Orthodox millet were far from harmonious, they
established especially through the migrations close connections with
Russia, a more distant Orthodox place. In some quarters this amounted
to the kind of mystical Russophilia (shared with Bulgaria) that is perfectly
captured by Vuk Isakovi, the central character in Crnjanskis Seobe: Just
as my sweet Orthodoxy did reside forever within my mother, so shall it
reside forever within me and those who come after me. Our Russia is also
sweet. I pray to God the Creator to show me the way there.
The ideology of modern Serbian nationalism was forged from the mix
of influences at work on the border Serbs, as they are often called. As Tat-
jana Markovi has noted, one of the key attributes of Serbian intellectual
history in general is that its driving forces have often been communities
of Serbs living beyond the national frontiers in Buda, Prague, and above
all Vienna rather than those in the homeland.28 The Serbs were divided
between two empires, and in this respect we might argue that there are
two Serbias even today; almost every election provides ample evidence
of the division between a pan-European strand in Serbian culture and a
more traditional rural Serbia, proud of its Byzantine-Slavic roots. It was
the Habsburg Serbs who played a key role in modernising the Serbian
language and culture, and in constructing the canonic narratives of the
national history. Removed from the original homeland, which was exten-
sively settled by Albanians and Turks, they were open to intellectual
influences both from Catholic Austria and from Orthodox Russia. Yet far
from weakening their sense of Serbian identity, these contrasted influ-
ences contributed to a strengthening sense of (anti-Ottoman) nationhood
among the migr communities.
From the late eighteenth century onwards, formative notions of pop-
ular sovereignty and of civic, essentially secular, nationalism gradually
migrated eastwards to the border Serbs, confirming them in their quest
for independence: for a modern nation. At the same time a more holistic
model of the nation made its way from Russia, collectivistic and ethnic
rather than individualistic and political in character, and closely linked to
the Orthodox Church, which came to acquire powerful symbolic values.
When we combine these two waves of influence, we see that it was indeed
a volatile alloy that was fused in the collective psyche of the border Serbs.
Once again the individual dilemmas of exile are perfectly captured by
Crnjanskis novel, where the action intercuts between two locations (the

28Markovi 2005.
 displacements 65

distant Habsburg wars and historic Zemun, the last frontier of the Habs-
burg empire), and where the central character has to make his choice
between a committed Orthodoxy and an expedient Catholicism (How
could a non-Catholic serve a Catholic Empress?).
But the novel also hints at a divorce between ideology and social reality
among the border Serbs. Their nationalism, it seems to suggest, thrived
on myth and dream: the myth of a glorious past, the dream of a glorious
future.29 In the aftermath of the migrations, it was the Habsburg Serbs,
rather than those in the older heartlands, who carried the torch for Serbia;
indeed it is no exaggeration to claim that Sremski Karlovci became the
centre of Serbian culture. And it was in the Habsburg cities that Serbian
writers would later cultivate that rhetoric of history we associate with
nineteenth-century romantic nationalisms more generally, especially in
Eastern Europe: the waves of heritage gathering, the struggles for language
rights in education and the public domain, all based on notions of lin-
guistic and ethnic homogeneity that developed in Europe following the
Enlightenment.
But that is to leap ahead. At the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries the Military Border was a locus for negotiation between conflict-
ing Austrian, Russian and Ottoman interests. It was also a meeting-point of
cultures, and although under Habsburg control following the defeat of the
Turks in 1699, it still exhibited pronounced Ottoman cultural influences.30
On arrival in the Habsburg lands, then, the Serbian immigrants would have
confronted a variety of musics, of which popular military or military-style
repertories, clearly marked by Ottoman traditions and often performed
by Roma, were among the most prominent.31 Such repertories, crucial
to the Ottomans because of the strategically useful association of mili-
tary power with culture, would have been stylistically eclectic, blending
Austro-German and Ottoman elements, and since Serb musicians formed
part of the border troops, they would certainly have performed them. It
should be noted, though, that the migrations coincided with a period of
transition to a military music of more obviously western character, where

29The two brothers, soldier and merchant respectively, represent particular archetypes
of the Serb at home and in exile.
30The Treaty of Sremski Karlovci [Carlowitz] in 1699 formalised the success of the Habs-
burgs in driving the Ottomans out of Hungary and (in the main) south of the Danube.
31 The musical idioms associated with Ottoman Janissary bands [mehterhna] had a
well-documented influence on European styles, though the subject is a complex one, not
just in relation to the origins and specificity of the Janissary music itself, but also in respect
of the alaturca style. This will be discussed briefly in Chapter 7.
66 chapter three

the Ottoman element was reduced and domesticated, eventually forming

the basis of the essentially European genre of Turkish music.32
This in turn was part of a more general Europeanisation of cultural
traditions in the region, in which the border Serbs were implicated. They
had brought with them their own traditions of street theatre, medieval in
origin, and they appear to have adapted these to their new surroundings,
almost certainly drawing on elements of folklore, including folksong, from
existing (Austro-Hungarian) populations and blending them with home-
grown materials. But, as Katarina Tomaevi has pointed out, they were
also exposed to theatrical traditions closer to the spirit of the Austrian
Baroque, and as such much further removed from their own Byzantine or
Ottoman inheritance.33
A specific role was played here by Jesuits, for whom culture formed an
integral part of a faith mission driven by the Counter-Reformation. This
had led to the establishment of colleges in Belgrade, then a Turkish city
that came under Austrian control for a brief period in the early eighteenth
century (171739), and later in the fortress town Petrovaradin.34 Along
with these initiatives came prestigious programmes of theatre (including
so-called school dramas on Biblical themes), together with public cer-
emonies and street processions on feast days. Music was involved in all
these programmes, though relatively little is known about it. The theatre
productions often incorporated musical numbers, probably in a multi-
voiced sacred idiom, while religious processions and ceremonies included
both vocal and instrumental performances. In other words, Jesuit activi-
ties setting aside the churches, from which most Orthodox citizens
would have absented themselves provided a context and a model for
the development of western cultural practices by the Serbs.
In 1726, for example, the first Serbian secondary school, known as
the Slavonic-Latin School, was founded by Maksim Suvorov in Sremski
Karlovci partly on the model of Jesuit secondary schools, and it proved
of some importance in the development of Serbian culture, offering
places not just to the border Serbs but also to the southern Serbs. It was a
teacher from the school, Manuilo Kozainski, who wrote the first Serbian
school drama Tragedokomedija [Tragi-Comedy] in the mid 1730s, a kind

32See the discussion in Kos 1998a, including an account of changes in costumes and
instrumentarium.
33Tomaevi 1997.
34Tomaevi 1996. Belgrade was also taken by the Austrians briefly in 1688 (with disas-
trous consequences for the Jews of the city) before being recaptured in 1690.
 displacements 67

of allegory that explicitly linked the medieval Serbian empire with possi-
bilities for contemporary cultural renewal. Kozainski also inadvertently
provided a footnote to Serbian music history. The music of the three songs
for Tragedokomedija has not survived, but the melody of one of them was
transmitted orally, and more than a century later it was sung to one of
the father figures of Serbian art music, Kornelije Stankovi (183165), who
arranged it both as a solo song and as a set of piano variations.35
The importance of the Slavonic-Latin School and the centrality of
Sremski Karlovci can only be grasped when we turn to the second area
of influence on the border Serbs. Like the founder of the School, Suvorov,
Kozainski was a teacher from the Ukraine, and had been sent to Sremski
Karlovci along with other Ukrainians by the Russian authorities at the
request of the Serbian Metropolitan Mojsej Petrovi. The background to
this was the relative autonomy reluctantly granted by the Habsburgs to the
Serbian Orthodox church within the military border region, with Sremski
Karlovci as the seat of an independent archbishopric for the Orthodox
population. It was partly to defend that restoration of autonomy that links
with religious centres in Kiev were strengthened, and such links were in
turn a strategic support for Russias growing territorial ambitions in the
Balkans.36 During the eighteenth century Russian money, liturgical books
and teachers were all made available to the border Serbs, and scholarships
for study in Russia were offered, leading among other things to a major
shift in orientation in the literary language.37
A community of interest developed around Orthodoxy, and where
music was concerned this played a part in transforming the chant, as
the polyphonic, usually three-part, idiom associated especially with the
Kievan Mohyla Academy infiltrated Serbian practice. The so-called Kar-
lovac chant that developed in Sremski Karlovci (Dimitrije Krsti was a
key figure), and was also largely practiced in Belgrade, was of some sig-
nificance, helping to drive a wedge between Greek and Serbian traditions
and preparing the way for the later notations and polyphonic settings of

35The song appears in Book II of Stankovis collection of Serbian Folk Songs, published
in Vienna in 1863. For a discussion of early traditions of folksong collection in Serbia, see
Djuri-Klajn 1971.
36Danica Petrovi discusses these links in relation to a specific Russian manuscript
(Petrovi 1985).
37For a discussion of the politics of language in the region, see Part One of Skendi
1980.
68 chapter three

Kornelije Stankovi and Stevan Mokranjac (18561914).38 No less impor-

tantly, the link with Russia strengthened the national symbolism associ-
ated with Serbian church music, stressing its differentiation from a parent
Byzantine tradition. As I will indicate in a later chapter, present-day
debates about Serbian church singing have returned to this distinction,
and in doing so have problematised it further.39
Here, on the eve of modernity, the migration of the Serbs brought a sub-
ordinate group into direct contact with two politically dominant groups,
instigating a transcultural process that took a good century to work itself
through to synthesis.40 For the migrs, the Military Border was a crucible
of change, in which the east receded, the west advanced, and Russia was
embraced.41 Indeed the Metropolitans of Sremski Karlovci were skilled
diplomats when it came to keeping all relevant parties in the frame. It
needs to be emphasised that Serbian music prior to the migrations was
rooted in (Slavonic) folk and medieval Byzantine traditions, and that both
of these maintained a high profile throughout the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries; the Academy at Irig, for instance, was a centre albeit
in decline for the promotion of epic poetry.42 Likewise there was an oral
tradition of monophonic church chant that seems to have been very simi-
lar to Greek traditions, but cut to Old Church Slavonic, and this was still
the main practice even in the time of Mokranjac.43 Elements of traditional
Ottoman music would also have been present, especially in urban song,
bearing in mind that the populations of the cities were ethnically mixed,
and with a pronounced Turkish component.
In short, the modernisation of Serbian music was anything but instan-
taneous. It was largely thanks to the migrations to displacement that
windows were opened both to the Habsburg West and to Russia, in

38Some sense of this tradition can be gleaned from the recording of the Nuns
of Ljobostinja in Kosovo made in 1963, and presented by Arsenjije Jovanovi on the
WERGO CD SM 1619 2.
39See Milin 2000.
40For a general account of transculturation, see Pratt 1992.
41 It has even been suggested (Tomaevi 1997) that through the genre of the Christ-
mas ritual known as Vertep, which included musical numbers, this crossroads of cultures,
involving church, school and folklore traditions, was semi-formalised.
42Note too how Crnjanski has the sweet viols of the soire followed by Vuk and his
friends singing to the gusle at the top of their lungs (Tsernianski 1994, 93).
43Vesna Peno has looked at this question, and at the rather chaotic state of the practice,
by way of church magazines and newspapers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. Her paper Pojaka praksa u srpskim crkvama u vreme Stevana Stojanovia
Mokranjca is unpublished at the time of writing.
 displacements 69

due course enabling exchanges between the Military Border and Serbia
proper. Crudely put, goods were transferred in one direction and ideas in
the other. The ideas proved the more durable. They prepared the way for
political change, for language reform, for the development of a national
literature, and in general for the embrace of a European elite culture,
including a modern, increasingly professional, and nationally orientated
musical life that would culminate in both the creative and the prosyletis-
ing achievements of Stankovi, Mokranjac, and their successors.44

Trading Places: Greece and Anatolia

The practice of ethnic cleansing is ages old. Only the term is recent. Wit-
ness the exchange of populations contrived by the governments of Turkey
and Greece in 1923 as a consensual political resolution to their recent hos-
tilities, and sponsored by the international community at the Lausanne
Conference.45 True, it was religion rather than ethnicity that controlled
the exchange, a legacy of the millet system that bequeathed to later gov-
ernments even to this day very real legal difficulties in their treatment
of respective minorities. But the outcome in any event was a massive
influx of Christians from Asia Minor to the Greek mainland, and a rather
more modest traffic of Muslims in the opposite direction. As Bruce Clark
has pointed out, the whole process was awash with anomalies.46
The exchange formalised developments that had been under way for
some time. We can track them right back to the policies of a newly inde-
pendent Greek state, asserting its Christian identity, but there was an
accelerating momentum in the years leading up to Lausanne. The Bal-
kan wars of 191213, the events of the First World War, including the anti-
Ottoman Entente, and the Greco-Turkish hostilities of 191922 all led
to expulsions in both directions, and frequently in a context of alarm-
ing brutality.47 Clarks semi-ethnographic study bears witness not just to
the complexity of the exchange, but to the complexity of the response it

44Czech musicians played a prominent role in this process in the nineteenth century.
See Perii 1969 and Tomaevi 2006.
45A record of the Lausanne conference was published as Lausanne Conference on
Near Eastern Affairs 19221923: Records of Proceedings and Draft Terms of Peace (London:
H.M. Stationery Office, 1923).
46Clark 2006. See also Hirschon 1989 and 1993.
47Exchanges between Greece and Bulgaria in 1919 and between eastern and western
Thrace in 1922 anticipated Lausanne.
70 chapter three

engendered, as members of plural societies, harbouring antipathies but

equally nurturing shared experiences, were forced either side of the line.48
Nothing more clearly epitomised the journey from an Ottoman ecumene
to a world of nation states, from traditional communities to modern ter-
ritories, than Lausanne.
There was an asymmetry of numbers, but also of effect, as Greece
struggled to accommodate, and then to integrate, the refugees from Asia
Minor, who were anything but universally welcomed by existing popula-
tions. They came from Smyrna, the neighbouring province of Aydin, and
other coastal provinces;49 from some Turkish-controlled Aegean islands;
from the extensive Pontic regions on the southern shores of the Black Sea,
with their singular dialects and distinctive culture;50 and from Cappado-
cia in central Anatolia (including Sinasos and Kayseri [Caesarea]), where
the Christian communities, the Karamanli, were largely Turkish-speaking
(compare the Greek-speaking Muslims the Valaades in northern
Greece).51 Many ended up in tightly clustered communities in Athens
and Piraeus,52 while others especially from Pontos and Cappadocia
were sent to Thrace and Macedonia, thus strengthening Greek ethnicity
in those newly acquired northern territories. Naturally they brought with
them customs and cultural practices associated with their lives in Asia
Minor, adapting these gradually to local conditions.
Where music is concerned, Risto Pekka Pennanen has commented on
distorted perceptions of the music of the Asia Minor Greeks,53 and given
the misreadings that have attended the almost fetishistic study of songs
widely and loosely described as rebetika,54 his analysis has been neces-
sary and important. Following it, we can see that while the exchange of
populations did indeed have a major effect on the direction taken by
Greek popular music, the story conventionally relayed by Greek and other
scholars is in need of revision. In particular, Pennanen demonstrated
that the oriental rebetika described in Greece as smyrneika tragoudia,

48Some of this is given fictional articulation in de Bernires 2004.

49For a general account of the Greeks in Asia Minor, see Augustinos 1992.
50Ibid., 17 for a discussion of the importance of the great monastic houses in preserving
Greek culture in the Pontic regions.
51 In several cases whole communities, including villages, were moved en masse. On
the language of the Cappadocians, a more precise description would be Karamanlidika-
speaking, i.e. Turkish but with the Greek alphabet.
52Hirschon 1989. Also Pentzopoulos 1962.
53Pennanen 2004.
54I use the plural form rebetika in this book.
 displacements 71

originating among the flourishing Greek community in Smyrna (along

with Constantinople, the leading cultural and commercial centre of the
Greek world prior to 1923)55 and arriving in mainland Greece with the
Lausanne exchange, were really Greek-language instantiations of a much
wider genre of Ottoman caf music, centred on the institution known as
the kafe aman [music caf] and performed all over the eastern Balkans
and Anatolia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
This music took a variety of forms, ranging from simple kantos to
makam-based, semi-improvised oriental laments known as amanedes,
Greek-language versions of (Ottoman) gazel-s. Such Ottoman caf music,
performed using instruments such as the santr [santorini], kann
[kanonaki], saz or oud [outi], and kemne [Middle Eastern lyra] or vio-
lin, was well known in mainland Greece prior to the exchange of popula-
tions. Moreover, it continued to be performed and recorded subsequent
to the exchange, reaching its heyday, it seems, in the years just preced-
ing the Metaxas dictatorship (193641). There is no foundation, then, for
the identification of the repertory in any exclusive way with a Greek tra-
dition from Smyrna. Yet it is easy to see how this misreading played to
larger Greek agendas following the exchange of minorities. The real issue
here is that i megali idea [the Great Idea] beloved of Greek ideologues
a unification of the entire Greek world of the Middle East, effectively a
reconstituted Byzantine Empire was transferred from the political to
the cultural sphere in the aftermath of Lausanne. The political failure was
palpable after the catastrophe of Asia Minor, but the cultural battle was
still to play for.
One effect of displacement, then, was to intensify the nationalist
agenda in Greece by first claiming and then naming a repertory of com-
mon ownership. Rather similar narratives attended some of the regional
styles of traditional music Cappadocian and Pontic when they were
transferred to northern Greece after 1923. Pontic musical idioms in partic-
ular maintained much of their distinctiveness (they had developed in rela-
tive isolation) when they arrived in their new surroundings. But this did
not prevent them speaking into yet another story of pan-Hellenism that
exhibited the ideology of the Great Idea, downplaying the blatant affini-
ties between this music associated with the kemne, touloum [bagpipe
chanter], kaval [a kind of flute] and daouli [double-headed drum] and

55Milton 2008.
72 chapter three

Caucasian (Georgian-Lazi) as well as Turkish (Bektashi/Alevi) traditions.56

Moreover, the heavily ornamented Pontic idiom, with its characteristic
parallel fourths (achieved by simple double-stopping), its preference for
Phrygian and Hicz modes, and its specific fast-tempo rhythmic genera
(notably 5/8 and 7/8 patterns), takes on an even more eclectic charac-
ter in vocal music, given that the spoken dialect is a mix of old Greek
(Ancient and Byzantine) and OttomanTurkish, with an additional smat-
tering of Persian and Caucasian words.57
In a more concrete way the exchange of minorities in 1923 acceler-
ated processes of stylistic synthesis that were already under way in urban
music. These involved synergies between Ottoman kafe aman traditions,
performed especially by Asia Minor immigrant musicians, and popular
music (including urban songs of some vintage, usually based on traditional
Greek-Anatolian dance rhythms) associated with the amateur musical life
of the Piraeus-Athens underworld of prisons and tekedes or hashish dens.
The process crystallised in what Pennanen has described as the local syn-
cretic style of rebetika, connoting the anarchistic lifestyle and philosophy
of the rebetes or manges. These characters, the products of rapid urbanisa-
tion and concomitant social disadvantage, existed on the margins of the
law, wore distinctive outfits, and lived life with a certain swagger; they
owed something to ideas of honour attributed to the klephts and pre-
served in some of the klephtic songs.
The rebetes were among the most singular of many marginalised popu-
lations in the Balkans. It might even be argued that they embodied yet
another form of displacement, not literal but psychological. More con-
cretely, in these early days the Piraeus ensemble, in which the bouzouki
and its offspring the baglama came centre stage, was associated especially
with the professional activities of Markos Vamvakaris and his Piraeus
Quartet, which entered its classic era in the early 1930s. Countering any
emergent uniformity and further marking the specificity of place and an
orientation towards the West, Piraeus rebetika singers tended to avoid
the oriental style of the kafe aman traditions, cultivating a vocal manner

56Black Sea repertories were extensively studied by Kurt Reinhard. See Reinhard 1966,
especially p. 11, on the migration to Greece; also the anthology of texts: Reinhard and Rein-
hard 1968. The question of Georgian polyphony is explored in Nadel 1933, Schneider 1940
and Tsurtsumia and Jordania 2003.
57Excellent examples of this repertory are found in the LP recording Musik der Pontos-
Greichen (Musikethnologische Abteilung Museum fr Vlerkunde Berlin: MC-05/2). See
also the 1930 recording digitised as Songs of Pontos by the Melpo Merlier Music Folklore
Archive.
 displacements 73

that was rough, earthy and immediate, analogous to American Blues in

its direct expression of hardship and in the priority it assigned to emo-
tional authenticity. Vamvakaris in particular pioneered this manner of
singing. At this stage rebetika were not commercialised. They were not
really popular music.
Through rebetika we can register something of the dialogue between
two places that characterises displacement. The two types of rebetika
Asia Minor and Piraeus were distinguishable, but they had a common
basis in dance genres, and in melodic and modal types. Increasingly they
interacted, and the dialogue between them was expressed technically
through interplay between dromoi [literally roads: Greek versions of
makam-s] and chordal harmony. It was not a straightforward yield of one
system to another, though the replacement of the saz by the bouzouki
had a lot to do with it; as did the homogenising effects of the commer-
cial recording studios that started up in Athens and Piraeus from the late
1920s.58 Rather it was a complex process of adaptation and compromise,
a form of transition in which the general direction was towards equally
tempered pitch and European functional harmony, but with movement
in the other direction too, and with the most typical state one of hybridity
and transition. In a similar way Piraeus rebetika winnowed the rhythmic
cycles of the wider Balkan-Anatolian area into well-defined types, promi-
nent among them the slow 9/4 zeibekiko rhythm [originally a solo Anato-
lian warriors dance] characteristic of northern Greece, the duple metre
Balkan hasapiko [butchers dance], the tsifteteli [often associated with
the oriental belly dance], and island genres or nisiotika.
The subsequent history of rebetika is inseparable from the pendulum
swings of ideological change. In geographical translation, that amounted
to swings between mainland Greece and Anatolia, between Europe and
Asia Minor. There was, for instance, the censorship imposed during the
later stages of the Metaxas dictatorship in the late 1930s, during which
tekedes were closed and the rebetes were persecuted. Here some ancient
tropes came into play. In a climate where authentic national values were
supposedly served by traditions of rural folk music, however dubious any
such easy association may be, rebetika were condemned as oriental and
therefore morally dubious. The state was interested in using culture as a
means of consolidating national identity, but it was clear that the tradition

58There are insights into the effects of recording in Torp 1993.

74 chapter three

of rebetika could only be claimed for the nation if it cleaned up its act, in
a word if it were purged of corrupting oriental associations.
In post-war years rebetika had a further incarnation with a more popu-
lar appeal in the hands of Vassilis Tsitsanis and associates such as the
singer Sotiria Bellou. The centre of gravity shifted at this time follow-
ing the occupation and during the Civil War from Athens to (Greek)
Macedonia. And it was here, in the post-Civil War years, that the tradition
was further Europeanised. Paradoxically, this allowed the oriental idiom
to resurface as a specific sub-genre in the late 1950s, its atmosphere of
exoticism and fantasy often reinforced by the familiar tsifteteli rhythm.
This idiom found its ideal exponent in Stelios Kazantzidis, whose vocal
delivery represented something of a return to the world of the earlier kafe
aman traditions, though with a resonance from later nightclub idioms.59
The background to this revival was a more general, politically sanc-
tioned, investment in rebetika through the post-war nationalist mass
media of radio and commercial film. This continued through the Civil
War, and its propaganda value was such that it had a defining effect on
public taste, allowing rebetika to replace other kinds of traditional music
as a model of Greekness in music. Following the Civil War the pendu-
lum swung once more towards Europe, as rebetika acquired a new status,
and even an accommodation to bourgeois taste. In particular, the style
informed highly influential popular art songs associated with Manos
Hadjidakis, and in a rather different way with Mikis Theodorakis. This is
a development to which I will return in later chapters, but it should be
remarked here that the ambivalent term popular art song (more literally,
artistic popular song) points to interesting questions of strategic hybrid-
ity in its address to different taste publics within Greek society. Popular
art songs are not rebetika, but they would not have been possible without
rebetika.
In the late sixties popular art songs, at least in the hands of Theodorakis,
were transformed into protest music, and they functioned as a symbol of
resistance against the Junta when the composer was in exile. In the politi-
cal environment of that time they increasingly came to represent a Greek
national style in music, partly assuming the role formerly assigned to itself
by Kalomiriss national school of art music. It seems likely too that appro-
priations such as these encouraged the revival of original rebetika that
became such a marked feature in the late 1970s, following the collapse of

59Holst 1975.
 displacements 75

the Junta, and promoted in part by the Costas Ferris film of 1983 about
Marika Ninou. From this period onwards the revival was associated with
an increase in the archiving of early performances of rebetika, as also with
the return to prominence of some of the older singers. Already here we
may note a central irony. Composers such as Hadjidakis and Theodorakis
played a major part in preparing the way for the rebetika revival. But one
effect of that revival was the cultivation of a discourse of authenticity that
distinguished true rebetika from the music based on them.
Alongside the development of popular art songs, a more orientalised
popular music idiom (an oriental surge) was cultivated in 1980s, associ-
ated with a re-negotiation of identities by youth culture. This was a wider
Balkan rather than a specifically Greek phenomenon,60 but in Greece it
invoked particular connotations, a nostalgia for Asia Minor, and a long-
ing to reconnect that did not exclude dialogues with Turkey (it was given
more cultivated expression in the urban musical movement known in
some quarters as paradhosiaka).61 This oriental idiom came in the wake of
a blatant rejection of the bouzouki by modern Greek youth, and a parallel
engagement with western pop-rock. But in truth it represented a kind of
third way, enabling some measure of separation both from tourist stereo-
types of Greek popular music and from western fashions. It was at once
modern and enticingly different, and its popularity in recent years is sug-
gestive of the idea that things might be expressed through popular music
that cannot be expressed through official channels (there are comparable
developments in other forms of mass culture, including TV Soaps). After
all, the reconnection is not just with Anatolia, but also with a shared Otto-
man inheritance. In Kristevan terms, music here speaks the unspeakable.
It articulates a pre-verbal Semiotic at odds with public discourse, and one
that is inseparably linked to our sense of place.

Tallava Rules: Kosovars in Macedonia

As the Ottoman Empire disintegrated, no single issue engaged the Balkan

nations with greater fervour than the fate of Macedonia. The historic region
so described was extensive, and of great strategic importance. There was
territorial interest from Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece, on the usual grounds
of historic rights, as well as from Turkey and Albania. In the aftermath of

60Rasmussen 1996.
61 Kallimopoulou 2006.
76 chapter three

the Balkan Wars (191213) Bulgaria was the principal loser, though it did
secure Pirin Macedonia.62 Greece acquired the Aegean littoral, including
Salonika, and this has remained a stable border until today, while Vardar
Macedonia went to Serbia, or rather was subsumed by the first Yugoslavia,
and eventually became a constituent republic of the Communist state.
The present-day nation state of Macedonia (originally known as FYROM)
resulted from the secession of that republic from Yugoslavia in 1991, hard
on the heels of Slovenia and Croatia.
Native Macedonians have been anxious to assert a specific ethnic iden-
tity other than the more generalised South Slavic roots that might distin-
guish them from Greek Macedonians.63 Yet because of its geographical
position this territory had long been traversed by many peoples and
settled by several nationalities. It had been right at the centre of medieval
Bulgarian and Serbian empires, and was later heavily populated by Turks.
Among the most prominent of its inhabitants were Albanians (often
described as Turks, meaning Muslims), who had been a stable presence
in this region, as in present-day Greek Epirus, since antiquity. So it was
hardly to be wondered at that irredentist ambitions in Tirana should have
embraced western Macedonia as well as Kosovo. What would have been
harder to predict was the influx of Kosovar Albanians at the very end of
the twentieth century.
The story of Kosovo in 1999 has been told many times. There have been
histories, not always impartial (Noel Malcolm), first-hand reports by jour-
nalists (Janine di Giovanni), and accounts that lie somewhere in between
(James Pettifer).64 There have also been sober and thoughtful, but com-
mitted, analyses by Balkan historians (Maria Todorova).65 In brief, the
borders imposed on a newly independent Albania by the Great Powers
following the Balkan Wars left Kosovo harnessed to Serbia, but with a
majority Albanian population, predominantly Muslim, seeking indepen-
dence, and a Serbian minority who ascribed iconic historical and religious
significance to a province which they regarded as the heartland of Old
Serbia. Subsequently Kosovo was incorporated within the first Yugosla-
via, and it was then assigned the constitutional status of an autonomous
Serbian province (in 1963) in the second Yugoslavia. In 1989, under the

62Bulgaria acquired new Macedonian territories following the First Balkan War, but
lost them after the Second War.
63Roudometof 2002.
64Malcolm 2002; di Giovanni 2004; Pettifer 2005.
65Todorova 2000.
 displacements 77

Miloevi regime, it became an integral part of Serbia (its autonomous

status revoked), and there was a crescendo of discrimination against the
Albanian population through to March 1999, when the failure of the talks
at Rambouillet led to ethnic cleansing on an extensive scale.
The Albanian population was all but routed by the Yugoslav (de facto
Serbian) National Army in Spring 1999. Later, following the NATO air
bombardment of Serbia, the Serbs withdrew from Kosovo, NATO forces
moved in, and the ethnic cleansing went into reverse (and this despite the
NATO presence). At the time of writing, Kosovo [Kosova]66 has declared
its independence, and this status has been recognised by some, but not
all, members of the international community; its status is that of a NATO
protectorate. My concern here is with the first cycle of ethnic cleansing,
at which point Kosovar Albanians were driven from their homes, most
headed for Albania, but others settling in neighbouring Greece or in Mace-
donia. Today some Macedonian villages around Skopje are predominantly
Albanian, while towns such as Tetovo have a majority Albanian popu-
lation. In early 2001 ethnic minority grievances erupted in an Albanian
insurgency in northwestern Macedonia, and the subsequent ceasefire
(July 2001) resulted in enhanced civil and political rights. Despite this, the
Albanian population remains essentially distinct from the Macedonian,
and maintains close cultural ties with Albania proper and with Kosovo.
The Kosovar Albanians who settled in Macedonia brought their music
with them, including the genre known as tallava, typically the preserve
of Roma.67 The Roma of Kosovo were of low social status and subject
to discrimination, but they were highly valued as musicians, not least
because in many cases they alone knew the appropriate music for both
Serbian and Albanian rituals. In earlier times they would adopt the cos-
tumes appropriate to the occasion, Serb or Albanian, as well as the req-
uisite musical idioms. In urban settings their basic ensemble was the
Ottoman-influenced algija, originally comprising clarinet, with kemne
or violin, kann, oud and frame drum, but later replacing some of these
instruments with accordion, guitar, drum set, and (more recently) syn-
thesizer. Svanibor Pettan has argued that this modernisation was part
of a quest for ethnic neutrality and so-called universality, and that this

66The Albanian majority use the term Kosova (rather than Kosovo) to describe the
independent state.
67Tallava is not of course the only genre associated with the Kosovar Albanians. Other
repertories have been examined by Alma Bejtullahu, with a special focus on the changing
roles of female performers in a time of war (Bejtullahu 2006).
78 chapter three

same quest motivated the eclectic approach to repertoire in the 1980s and
1990s.68 What is undoubtedly true is that the mounting ethnic tensions
of those decades created something of a tight rope for the Roma, who
traditionally made no claim on territory. And it may well have been their
attempt to preserve this traditional ethos that led them to cultivate tal-
lava, an Albanian-language genre that developed out of a particular style
of female music,69 but was transformed into a highly distinctive, oriental-
sounding popular music idiom.
So what exactly is tallava? It is minimalist in idiom, with a single
repetitive rhythm applied to very simple, largely unchanging, harmonies
in a manner akin to some disco idioms. Over this background the soloist
improvises (and for very long periods) in a distinctly oriental, nasal-toned
manner, but with a melismatic idiom that is often more akin to Indian
than to Arabic traditions; it should be noted here that Indian film music
had played something of a symbolic role for Kosovo Roma, partly as a way
of connecting to perceived origins. The genre is associated above all with
the Ashkalije (Albanian-speaking Roma from Kosovo, said to have origi-
nated in Palestine), and it is performed mainly at weddings, with impro-
vised lyrics directed to the particular occasion, and peppered with topical
references. As a music that remained entirely separate from the political
agendas of partisan groups in Kosovo, tallava marked out a unique ter-
ritory for the Ashkalije. At the heart of the genre was always the union
of improvisation and virtuosity that has long been associated with Rom
music-making (as formulated for elite publics in Liszts book),70 and it is
entirely in keeping with this that certain star performers have emerged as
iconic figures among Albanian and Rom populations.
Pettan reminds us that for a time after 1999 Rom musical activities
were badly affected. But in diaspora, and especially in Macedonia, tal-
lava lives on today. Carol Silverman has pointed out that even under
socialism Roma in Macedonia suffered much less discrimination than
in neighbouring Bulgaria, and that they were accordingly able to play a
more visible role in musical life.71 Nonetheless, as a low-status music, even
today, tallava seldom has access to official cultural channels. It is of course
frequently played on Rom radio and television stations, but mainly it is

68Pettan 1996a. Pettan has elaborated on these ideas in numerous publications, and in
his video Kosovo Through the Eyes of Local Rom (Gypsy) Musicians (Krko, 1999).
69Pettan 1996c.
70Liszt 1859.
71 Silverman 1996.
 displacements 79

known through live wedding performances and privately produced com-

pact discs or cassettes, marketed on the streets but also available in some
of the shops. If we try to understand its significance in Macedonia today,
we note a double appropriation. Although originally associated with the
Ashkalije community in Kosovo, and welded to the Albanian language,
tallava has been adopted as a Rom genre by non-Albanian-speaking Roma
in Macedonia (many of them settled in utka, a large and vibrant Muslim
Rom city just outside Skopje, dating from the immediate post-earthquake
period), and Rom musicians regularly perform it in dialects of the Romany
language.72 Yet at the same time its Albanian credentials have ensured
its wider acceptance among non-Rom Albanian communities not just in
Macedonia, but also, and increasingly, in Albania itself and throughout
the widespread communities of the Albanian diaspora. Popular singers
such as Muharrem Ameti regularly include tallava performances on their
recordings.
The effects of displacement are not straightforward, then, and they
distinguish this case study of displacement from my other two. In the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Serbian migrations enabled a pre-
modern culture to embrace modernity through transculturation. As a
result, Serbian music was brought into contact with European idioms and
ideals, and that included an increasing commitment to European models
of cultural nationalism. In the early twentieth century, the triumph of
those same modernist ideals was evident in the effects of the population
exchange in Greece and Asia Minor, where a shared music was appropri-
ated and then transformed until it could be claimed by the nation as its
exclusive property. At the same time there was a gesture of reconnection
in the later stages of that narrative, something belonging in some ways to
late modernity, or even culturally speaking to a postmodern world.
The tallava story in Macedonia reveals another facet of that world. Here,
in the early twenty-first century, a genre that was consciously apolitical
and boundary-crossing in inception has been transformed through dis-
placement into an embodiment of liminality. It functions today partly as
an underground music, but not in the familiar sense that it carries explicit
and subversive political messages. Rather tallava in Macedonia has been
a means of forging and consolidating the identities of ethno-religious
minorities within a society whose ostensible aim is precisely to transcend
such categories.

72See the Cultural Cornerstones CD The Shutka Music Project: Heartsongs from the
Gypsies of Shutka Macedonia.
 CHAPTER FOUR

ECUMENES

In the Minority

In addressing some of the issues that arise when societies, nations and
even civilisations come into contact, practitioners of world history have
identified two broad approaches. The first examines the units that inter-
act, while the second examines the field of their interaction, described by
Ross Dunn as an interactive zone, and by William McNeill as an ecumene.1
How might we transfer these two approaches to the study of world music
today? The first would be concerned with individual, musically articulated,
identities the music of a particular community, ethnic or social group,
or indeed religion and would recognise that such identities are subject
either to transformation or defiant preservation as they come into con-
tact. The second would consider an ecumene, well tuned to our present
global age but by no means unique to this age. Ecumenes have their own
developing histories, but it is arguably not necessary to invoke history at
all (and thus to interpret plurality as somehow postmodern) in order to
envisage them. We might think of them rather synchronically, imagining
systemic fields of interactive musical idioms sharing a single space.
The relevance of these approaches to the study of world music seems
uncontroversial, but they have a less obvious purchase on music from a
single geographical territory such as the Balkans. All the same, I think
they might help us address issues of cultural identity in this region. If
we understand the Balkans primarily as Ottoman presence and legacy in
South East Europe, the second approach seems especially pertinent.2 Otto-
man governance, tolerant of faiths and ethnicities, embodied or promoted
the characteristic qualities associated with an ecumene. Co-existence and
diversity (though not equality) were central to the political philosophy
of the empire, and this influenced its cultural world. The effects were
evident in musical life, not least in the Balkans, where the commerce

1 McNeill 1998.
2See Maria Todorova on the difference between legacy and tradition (Todorova
1995).
 ecumenes 81

between styles was both fluid and dynamic. Thus the Balkans as a whole
might be viewed as a working model of a musical ecumene. And within
the wider region there are particular territories that invite this ascription
in their own right, places that are defined musically by the interplay of
co-existing styles. At risk of labouring the point, I will review the sites
already discussed, positioning them within the continuum defined by our
two approaches.
The traditional music of Oa can be placed at one end of the spectrum,
with relatively little interactivity or change. As the product of a particular
ecology, the music here helped define the place. That of Radovi has also
been relatively stable, but we noted that an ethnic shift resulting from
the migration patterns of the Shopi led to significant changes in style.
Again, the first approach is the more helpful, tracking the development
of a communitys music, and noting its transformation as it comes into
contact with alternative cultures. The first approach might also be applied
to the music of the umadijan villages, and perhaps even to the music of
Sephardim in Sarajevo. However, in the latter case there is a difference.
Musical repertories may have marked Sephardic identities, but in no sense
did they define a place more generally. If we want to define Sarajevo musi-
cally, we need our second approach. And this goes for the sites associated
with our case studies of displacement too. If our focus is on the places
involved the Military Border in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
the towns and villages of Asia Minor and the Greek mainland in the early
twentieth, or Macedonia in the early twenty-first it will be diversity and
interactivity that prove to be defining.
It would be misleading to suggest that such interactive zones are neu-
tral territories in which the different idioms have equal weight. As its
etymology suggests, the term ecumene suggests not just a plurality of
cultures, but the interactive field that results from the impact of external
elements on a home or dominant culture.3 Characteristically, ecumenes
are sites of peaceful co-existence, but the various elements nevertheless
exist in a power relationship, determined either by an inherited socio-
political framework or by some disruption to existing structures, nota-
bly through diaspora and migration flows. Ethnicity has been one of
the principal categories by means of which such interactions of peoples
and their music have been understood. Yet although debates about so-
called ethnic groups became increasingly prevalent from around the mid

3The word comes from the Greek noun oikos (home) and the verb meni (to live).
82 chapter four

nineteenth century onwards, the concept of ethnicity has proved resistant

to precise definition.
Some cautions are necessary. First, as Thomas Hylland Erikson has
pointed out, ethnicity is a relational concept, carrying little real meaning
until contact has been established with others (as in Radovi, but not in
Oa).4 Secondly, ethnicities do not map directly onto particular cultures,
nor for that matter onto particular social or religious groups; there can
be considerable non-congruence between these categories, as our story
of Greeks and Turks demonstrates. And finally, it is salient, dependent
as much on self-definition as on external observation, and susceptible to
manipulation. We should therefore be wary of essentialising ethnicity by
fixing it as a stable category, though it is often in the vested interests of
particular parties to do just that.5 There is undoubtedly some objective
reality to definitions of socio-political relations in terms of majorities and
minorities in the Balkans (as determined by census statistics and in rela-
tion to a status quo), but ethnic identities are not always reducible to such
straightforward binaries.6
Behind any of the stories we may choose to tell of ethnic minorities,
then, there will be a more complex narrative. The homogeneity of an eth-
nic group may depend on a range of criteria, including duration of settle-
ment, language or dialect, and religion. Moreover, majority status is not
just a matter of numbers but also of access to the sources of economic
and political power, and it is for this reason that there is often an over-
lap between ethnicity and class. Likewise, exclusion from these sources
of power, often accompanied by territorial marginalisation, often consti-
tutes minority status, though simple failure to participate in the ethos of
the group may also qualify. Typically, minorities will be either migrating,
locked into insulated pockets, or positioned at the borders between differ-
ent majority cultures (usually nation states). A key factor here is that the
minority culture, read as pure in its original place, will often be read as
degenerate a symptom of decaying culture when it is dislocated.
Minorities and their rights have been increasingly recognised in recent
years, but whether tolerated or persecuted, their basic condition tends to

4Eriksen 1993, 1112.

5Knudsen 2007.
6This book will discuss some minority communities in the Balkans, but it would be
impossible to include all. To take Greece as a single example, I will discuss briefly Vlachs
but not Sarakatsani, and Pomaks but not Christian Slavophones. For an account of Greek
minorities, see Clogg 2002.
 ecumenes 83

be one of social liminality.7 They are, in Hommi Bhabhas words, the dif-
ference within.8 Music in these circumstances can function as a means
of consolidating identities in adversity; in short it can carry the minor-
ity culture by affirming its traditions, and giving voice to its interests.
Alternatively, given that musicians often possess what Pierre Bourdieu
calls cultural capital, it can serve as one means of gaining access to social
spaces inhabited mainly by the majority culture.9 In the first case study I
will revisit Vojvodina, broadening out beyond Serbian history to embrace
music in this region more generally. In the second I will revisit the ter-
ritory of the population exchange, but this time narrowing the range of
that territory to focus on the villages of Western Thrace. And as part of
both case studies I will return to the Roma, who have always played, and
continue to play, a key role in Balkan music.

All Together in Vojvodina

In one respect the tension between our two approaches played out his-
torically as a tension between ethnicity and territory. This tension was
characteristic of emerging nationalisms in the Balkans. We can find it
already in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the quest for a
greater Greece, a rebuilding of Byzantium that would incorporate Greek
populations in Asia Minor; indeed Greek concepts of nationhood are still
governed more by ethnos than by territory. And it surfaced more recently
in Serbian ambitions to embrace minority Serb populations in Croatia and
Bosnia within a greater Serbia, with the aim of establishing a Serb corridor
across three states, and likewise in the irredentist ambitions of Albania.
The Serbian example returns us to the Habsburg Military Frontier. As
we noted earlier, the territory of present-day Vojvodina played a key role
in the modernisation of Serbian culture. But as a heavily colonised region
bordering Hungary and Romania, and as a natural victim of shifting impe-
rial ambitions, it was home to many different ethnic groups, and in con-
stantly changing configurations, depending on the ruling power at any
given time. Its role in the 184849 revolution was symptomatic, as the
Serbs (the largest ethnic group) rebelled against the Hungarian authori-
ties, and joined with the Habsburgs in crushing the revolution, even

7Ceribai and Haskell 2006.

8Bhabha 1994, xv.
9Bourdieu and Passeron 1970.
84 chapter four

though the territory was destined to remain Austro-Hungarian until the

collapse of the Habsburgs in 1918. Then, as Danubian Banat, it was a prov-
ince of the first Yugoslavia before it was attached to Serbia as an autono-
mous province of the second Yugoslavia after World War II, incorporating
Srem (part of Croatia during the war), western Banat and Baka. Under
Miloevi, there was some loss of autonomy, but since his downfall this
has been partly restored.
As a relatively prosperous, fertile, and strategically positioned territory,
Vojvodina attracted a steady stream of immigrants from all directions,
especially during the nineteenth century. Germans (mainly Catholic) and
Hungarians came in large numbers under the Habsburgs, but at various
times Romanians, Slovaks, Ruthenians, Macedonians and Roma all made
their way to the province. Successive census dates have revealed numer-
ous changes in the constitution of these nationalities over the years, with
a major alteration following World War II, when Tito expelled many of
the Germans, and again within the last two decades as a direct result of
migrations from Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.
Census results could never be more than an approximate indicator of
the demography of this multi-ethnic province. In the census of 1991 it was
clear that several of the Germans declared as Hungarians, while many of
the Roma declared as Romanians. Historically there were certainly ten-
sions between the various ethnic groups, depending on the politics of the
day, and at some points (especially during World War II) there was major
oppression of some of them. But by the standards of South East Europe
as a whole, inter-ethnic relations were reasonably harmonious. As in the
Banat, now part of Romania but sharing much of its history with Vojvo-
dina, we may speak entirely legitimately of a culture characterised by its
broad acceptance of ethnic diversity.10 Vojvodina today is closer to a mul-
ticultural province than a melting pot, but it is closer still to an ecumene
in that there exists a dominant culture in relation to which the others
enjoy the status of (at least officially) respected minorities.
Statistics, however flawed, tell part of this story. In the census of 2002,
Vojvodina had a population of just over 2,000,000, of whom 1,320,000
declared as Serbs, 290,000 as Hungarians, 57,000 as Slovaks, 57,000 as
Croats, 32,000 as Romanians, 30,000 as Roma, and 16,000 as Ruthenians.
In addition there were significant but smaller numbers of Germans,

10Vojvodina was part of the historical region of the Banat, which was divided between
Romania and Yugoslavia in 1918.
 ecumenes 85

Montenegrins and Macedonians. Broadly speaking, Hungarian communi-

ties tend to be located in the north, Romanian in the east, and Serbian
in the central and southern parts of the region. There are, as one might
expect, disputed views as to the legitimacy of historical claims on Vojvo-
dina, but these have never been as passionately voiced as in neighbouring
Transylvania. As for the musical life of the province, there are continu-
ities within each of the separate ethno-cultural traditions, and that can
include strategic present-day attempts at preservation. But there has also
been a process of interaction. And in more recent years there has been
some move towards the obliteration of any such boundaries, as Vojvodina
enters into dialogue with wider global processes.
In considering musical traditions we can locate three major groupings
based on shared pasts or related ethnicities. The majority Serbian (and
Montenegrin) communities host a family of musics shared with Serbia
proper. Thus, multi-voiced singing na glas arrived in Vojvodina with the
migrations and then gave way to the modern style of singing (na bas)
that can also be found in Croatia, Bosnia and western Serbia. Epic songs
with gusle, a tradition associated especially with Montenegro, could also
be found among these communities, though often performed here with
gaida. And there is also a distinctively Serbian repertory of ritual songs and
dances associated with wedding festivities, again accompanied by gaida.
These can be differentiated from other traditions in Vojvodina by their
characteristic melos, simple refrain forms and symmetrical rhythms, and
also as Nice Fracile has observed by the construction of the pipes.11
Until a few decades ago the distinctive, complex instrument of the
traditional Serbian piper (with its oscillating drone and double bel-
lows enabling him to accompany himself singing) was an indispensable
adjunct to any wedding party, and it was distinct both from the Hungar-
ian instrument and from the characteristic gaida commonly found among
Wallachian communities. More recently traditional piping has been on
the wane, as the old customs gradually disappear. But there has been a
notable attempt to revive the practice on the part of younger Serbian pip-
ers, and interestingly they have largely abandoned the Serbian instrument
in favour of the Bulgarian gaida, whose construction is better suited to
a concert-orientated virtuosity, with an appropriately adapted repertory.

11I am grateful to Nice Fracile for sending me his unpublished paper, Changes of Style
and Repertory in the Instrumental Music of Serbs, Wallachians and Romanians in Serbia,
read at an ICTM Study Group in Innsbruck, May 1723, 2000.
86 chapter four

This in turn is part of a much wider raft of changes in the constitution

and presentation of traditional Serbian music throughout the region; if
we cross to the Banat, for instance, the declining Serb minority has been
steadily losing touch with its traditional culture in recent years, as urban
influences prove unstoppable.
The music of minority Hungarian and Slovak communities in Vojvo-
dina constitutes a second grouping that reflects wider historical and
political associations between these two nationalities. Here traditional
music is performed by groups of singers accompanied by peasant zither
bands, often with kcsgduda [friction drum]. The zithers are distinctively
Hungarian in style and construction, and their popularity among Hungar-
ian and Slovak inhabitants of the province is reflected in the numerous
festivals that are centred on the instrument. The idiom is unmistakably
that of Hungarian and Hungarian-Rom traditional and popular music,
focusing on the well-known verbunkos genre that developed from the mid
eighteenth century onwards. This idiom, known as style hongrois when
appropriated by art music, transparently belongs to the cultural world of
the eastern Habsburg empire, a provenance that is all the more appar-
ent when the repertory is performed, as it often is, by Hungarian-style
string bands rather than zithers. It is a world of music-making that stands
somewhat apart, clearly distinguishable from the traditional Slavic music
associated with Serbian communities in Vojvodina, as also from the Otto-
man-influenced idioms associated with Romanian and Romanian-Rom
populations.
This latter pairing constitutes the third major grouping within the musi-
cal traditions of Vojvodina. Minority Romanian communities have long
been established in this region, coming initially from the Banat and then
from Transylvania, with traditional music and dance determined by these
different origins. The ardeleana family of couple dances obviously sug-
gests Transylvanian ancestry, for example, whereas the hora (circle dance)
has been more commonly associated with the Banat. But at least where
music is concerned there has been considerable generic interpenetration
within a recognisably Romanian idiom, as well as an impressive conti-
nuity of tradition that links some of Bartks findings in the region with
recent fieldwork by Nice Fracile.12 As well as discussing the fate of some
long-standing customs,13 Fracile has argued for asymmetrical rhythms as

12Fracile 1995.
13Fracile 2003.
 ecumenes 87

a distinguishing feature of music from traditional Romanian communities

in Vojvodina, linking those repertories to others from the eastern Balkans,
and differentiating them clearly from Serbian and Hungarian repertories
in the province.14 These rhythms have long been noted in ethnomusico-
logical literature. They are an important component of traditional music
in the eastern Balkans, and for that reason they merit more general con-
sideration at this point by way of an excursus.
It is well known that Bartk described such asymmetrical patterns as
Bulgarian rhythms, drawing on the work of the Bulgarians Dobri Hristov
and Vasil Stoin.15 However, the eminent Romanian folklorist Constantin
Briloiu demonstrated that they were a global phenomenon, albeit with
a marked concentration in the eastern Balkans, Anatolia and the Levant.16
In Macedonia in particular they have come to be perceived as an essential
defining feature of a native traditional music, especially in the dactylic
form of a foot-tapping 7/8 rhythm (3 + 2 + 2). Although it may be tempt-
ing to explain these and other asymmetrical rhythms in terms of Ottoman
legacy, it is probably more realistic to see them as Wouter Swets has
done as indigenous to the traditional music of the entire Balkan-Ana-
tolian region, even if it is the usl (rhythmic cycle) of Ottoman-Turkish
classical music that has provided their theoretical rationale.17 The Roma
are often linked with such rhythms, but it is more than likely that their
performance practices played some part in a process of simplifying what
were once even more intricate patterns.
Some of the metres (or usl-s) identified in traditional music across
the entire Balkan-Anatolian region are complex (they also vary greatly
from region to region), though presenting them in western notation
(29/16, 22/16, and so on) obfuscates what native musicians tend to regard
simply as aggregates of long (3-beat) and short (2-beat) units. Nowa-
days the tendency anyway is to simplify the longer usl-s, translating
them into patterns of 4, 5, 7 or 9 beats. Aside from theoretical evidence
of the antiquity of complex metres in the Balkans,18 there are intriguing
strands of more concrete evidence, including transcriptions made by the

14Fracile 1996. According to Fracile, the dactyloid form of the rhythm 7/16 (3+2+2) is
especially characteristic of the Romanians in Vojvodina.
15Hristov 1913; Stoin, 1927. Fracile demonstrates that Bartks transcriptions of the music
of Yugoslav Romanians on occasion miss these asymmetrical rhythms (Fracile 1996).
16Briloiu 1967.
17See, among other writings (including informative cd liner notes), Swets 1997.
18It is often noted that they are represented in the theoretical writings of Aristoxenus
(Fracile 1996), but this is a complex question, treated in some detail in Katsanevaki 1998.
88 chapter four

musician-novelist Daniel Speer (16361707) during his travels in the late

seventeenth century,19 and an original composition from a more unusual
source dating from even earlier, in 1621. The Gypsies Dance from Ben Jon-
sons masque, The Gypsies Metamorphosed, possibly composed by Robert
Johnson, is in a characteristic aksak rhythm (2 + 2 + 2 + 3), unusual in
art music at the time, and clearly perceived as a genre marker of gypsy
music.20
Quite apart from the continuity implied by this source (bearing in mind
that appropriations by art music can often yield important historical clues
about the nature of pre-1900 oral repertories), we are reminded of the
importance of Rom musicians generally as agents of transculturation. It is
often and plausibly argued that the unique identity of Rom music has less
to do with compositional styles, where the borders between folk, popular
and Rom musics may be rather fluid, than with distinctive performance
styles. It is for this reason that Roma have been able to move with notable
ease from one idiom to another, assuming various cultural identities in
the process. On one hand they have played a key role in cultural con-
servation by taking over ritual musics that had been discarded by host
populations.21 Yet on the other hand they have acted as pollinators, dis-
seminating musics far and wide, and generating multiple hybrid idioms
as they do so.
It is true that in the past there were certain formalised divisions between
Romanian and Romanian-Rom musicians in Vojvodina, many of them off-
shoots of social divisions (characteristically the Roma lived in mahala-s
on the edge of the towns and showed little interest in agriculture). Thus
the fanfar (wind and brass orchestra), widely associated with Roma else-
where in the wider region, tended to consist mainly of Romanian perform-
ers in Vojvodina, while the band (string ensemble, often accompanied by
accordion or cimbalom) would be made up of Roma. Yet cultural and even

19Published in 1688 under the pseudonym Simplicissimus as Musicalisch-Trckischer

Eulenspiegel...mit Ungarisch- Griechisch- Moscowitisch- Wallachisch- Kosakisch- Rus-
nakisch- und Pohlnisch lustigen Balleten. A modern edition, with an introduction in Czech
and German, was published by Opus in Bratislava (Speer 1978, 1980). Speer transcribes
ethnic dances which he claims are based on music he encountered while traveling.
20There is a studied ambiguity in this Masque, in that although the texts flatter royalty,
the gypsies serve as a symbol of alterity, their freedom and anarchy implicitly critiquing
the authoritarian ambitions of King James.
21 One of many examples here is the ritual of falling women (in a rain-making dance)
performed by Roma in Vojvodina. I am grateful to the social linguist Biljana Sikimi for
telling me about this Serbian tradition, early descriptions of which date back to the early
1920s.
 ecumenes 89

ethnic boundaries are not always so clear-cut. Even today Roma will often
regard themselves as Romanian principally on linguistic grounds. But in
any case it has long been the practice of Rom musicians to adopt and
then to personalise the idioms and genres associated with the majority
nationality in a region, and in that sense the Roma have greatly enriched
Romanian instrumental traditions in Vojvodina across many generations,
as performers at village dances, wedding parties, and similar events. It is
clear that in many of Bartks early recordings from these communities
Romanian really meant Romanian Rom; indeed, as Fracile points out,
the notes on Bartks own transcriptions tell us as much.22
During the last half century there have been sustained attempts to
make some order in the wealth of music associated with the Vojvodina
Roma. In the 1950s, for example, the composer Ern Kirly instigated col-
lecting programmes, and the results of his research have been classified
and published according to four major ethnic groups in the province:
Vlach, Serb, Hungarian and Romanian.23 We may note too that in recent
years Rom musicians have themselves made a contribution to some of the
ethnomusicological initiatives carried out in the province, not least the
attempt by Radio Novi Sad to preserve as much as possible of the cultural
heritage of the Vojvodina Romanians, including field research centred on
the traditional instruments and their repertories. Such enterprises, where
Roma are representing other ethnic groups, underline the central diffi-
culty facing all students of Rom music-making, and not just in Vojvodina.
How far do Rom identities carve out a singular stylistic space, as opposed
to inhabiting established spaces in unique and distinctive ways?
In the last few decades the boundaries between traditional group-
ings in Vojvodina, once clearly separated out, have been freely crossed.
Fracile has documented some of the early stages of such crossovers, not-
ing fusions of Hungarian violin repertories and Serbian brass band music,
together with newly composed folk music that draws together the idioms
of Wallachian-Romanian and Serbian gaida traditions. He outlines quite
specific instances of melodic and rhythmic cross-fertilisation in these case
studies.24 But actually the dialogues and fusions increasingly responsive
to institutional change, and especially to the invasion of public space by
traditional music extend far beyond such examples. The star performer,

22Fracile 1996.
23Kovalcsik 1992.
24Fracile 2004.
90 chapter four

improvising on clarinet, taragota, violin or cimbalom, has become the

main protagonist of a widespread professionalisation of traditional music
now often sited in the concert hall, and Rom musicians have again been
in the vanguard, in a skilful alliance between clever marketing strategies
and a more general politicisation of Rom culture. Thus a star system has
emerged within the concertising of established folk ensembles such as the
Folk Orchestra of RTV Novi Sad, with stylistic reference points in well-
known Rom bands from Romania itself, such as Taraful Haiducilor [Taraf
de Haidouks] and Mahala Rai Banda.
All this comes in the wake of processes of modernisation that were
already in place in the immediate post-war years, when traditional rites
and customs began to disappear from the region. In the Communist era
folk orchestras replaced traditional ensembles, modern factory-made
instruments substituted for home-made ones, and high-profile performers
of a newly-composed repertory took over from local exponents of ritual
music; and all that before we mention stages, artistic directors, choreog-
raphers, or the electronic mass media. In due course I will address these
developments, which affected the wider region. But it may be noted here
that the transformation of traditional music in Vojvodina smudged not just
ethno-cultural and geographical borders, but to some extent class borders
too, in that folk ensembles increasingly drew upon and transformed rep-
ertories from the western tradition as well as popular repertories from all
over the world. Effectively the old traditions were transformed into newly
invented styles, and it is this that has kept them alive. It has, after all,
created a new, essentially middle-class, taste public for traditional music,
overlapping at one end of the spectrum with a popular music public and
at the other end with a classical music public.
In the post-Communist years, here as elsewhere, traditional music has
tended to morph into the commercial category world music. And here
too the Roma played a key role. One could go further, and argue that long-
established Rom values favouring eclecticism and hybridity have harmon-
ised remarkably well with the much more generalised climate of change
associated with world music today. Thus, instrumentalists associated with
all three major traditions in Vojvodina now engage in projects of synthe-
sis or fusion, and these projects typically extend their reach well beyond
the Balkans. It is enough to cite one of the most familiar examples, the
cross-fertilisation that has taken place between verbunkos and flamenco
idioms, begging much-rehearsed questions about commonalities and
shared origins. This is a familiar fusion among local Rom musicians in
Vojvodina, but it is obvious that it is not peculiar to this small corner of
 ecumenes 91

the Balkans. It is modeled above all on the popularisation of flamenco

by various international and heavily promoted gitano groups, creating a
kind of pop-flamenco that has been very widely disseminated throughout
South East Europe as a whole.
What such developments invoke are questions about the limits of cul-
tural relativism. It may not be fanciful to think of Vojvodina as a Yugo-
slavia, or even a Balkans, in miniature. This province offers us what is
perhaps the most positive reading there might be for ethnic diversity and
multiculturalism in the wider region. Yet even in Vojvodina, and whatever
official policy may say to the contrary, there is no doubt that some groups
remain more equal than others. There is a clear correspondence between
cultural elites and dominant ethnicities, for example, and arguably this
has been strengthened by political aspirations in Belgrade. Conversely, in
the context of the major economic downturn that followed recent migra-
tions (from 1990 onwards), and in light of the subsequent and transparent
failure of capitalist economics to deal with the full implications of these
migrations, there is not much doubt about who bears the brunt of any
hardship that ensues.

Orchestrating Thrace

Since the exchange of minorities in 1923 Greece has been relatively

homogeneous ethnically. This has been changing in recent years. Like
other countries in the European Union, it has absorbed large numbers of
migrant workers from the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe,
including Albanians and (later) Kosovar Albanians, while its location has
made it a first stop for wider immigration to Europe from the Middle East,
India and Pakistan. The point is moot as to whether this immigration may
begin to undermine the strong sense of an ethnic nation. In the case of
the Albanians one might expect to see some community of interest with
one of the most venerable existing minorities in Greece, the Arvanites. Yet
this rarely occurs, for although they are of Albanian origin and have a dis-
tinctive culture (including music), the Arvanites have been readily assimi-
lated (Hellenised), not least because, rather like many Vlachs, they have
adopted the Orthodox faith.25 Their acceptance points to the alliance of

25For an anthology of the music (some of it in asymmetrical rhythms), and with a use-
ful introduction, see Moraitis 2002. The Music Folklore Archive in Athens has also released
a double CD including Arvanitic songs from Florina, Konitsa and Oresteiada.
92 chapter four

church and nation that has been so crucial to a sense of Greek identity,
partly explaining why the only officially recognised minority in Greece is
not ethnic but religious.
The acknowledgement of the Muslim minority, and the rights accorded
it, have their origins in the Lausanne exchange. The relevant point is that
there were significant exemptions built into the Lausanne Treaty, affect-
ing the Orthodox Greek community in Istanbul, home of the Patriarchate,
and the Muslim communities in northern Greece. And it is for this rea-
son that significant Muslim populations constituted principally of Turks,
Pomaks (Slavic-speaking Muslims) and Roma are to be found primarily
in western Thrace, just as other Slavophone minorities are found in Greek
Macedonia.26 These northern lands were of course the last to be incorpo-
rated within the Greek nation state.27
The historical territory of Thrace exerts a particular fascination as
the easternmost edge of Europe, the point at which Europe might be
said truly to begin. This region was a victim of ethnonational disputes
as the Ottoman empire began to disintegrate, resulting in two popula-
tion exchanges that predated Lausanne between Greece and Bulgaria
in 1919, and between Greece and Turkey in 1922 and in the subsequent
allocation of Western Thrace to Greece, Eastern Thrace to Turkey and
Northern Thrace (roughly the Ottoman province of Eastern Rumelia) to
Bulgaria. My focus here will be on Western Thrace, but there remains a
strong sense of Thracian regional identity in Bulgaria, and to some extent
in Turkey too. In other words, there are aspects of Thracian culture that
have survived the imposition of national borders.28 Conversely, ethnic
differentiations are registered within this generic Thracian culture, and
these are apparent not only between the different provinces but between
majority and minority populations within each of them.
Where music is concerned, then, we can identify in Western Thrace
elements of a more general Thracian culture, while at the same time not-
ing singularities belonging to the Turkish, Pomak and Rom minorities.
These minorities, Muslim in the main, are to be found in all three prefec-
tures of Western Thrace, adding up to more than 40% of the population

26Danforth 2001.
27For a discussion of hierarchies within the minority groups in particular localities,
see Papakostas 2008.
28Thrace has legendary associations with music, through the myths of Orpheus. Tour-
ist brochures in Bulgaria lay claim to Orpheus and to the mythical birthplace of music,
while at the same time Thrace has been widely considered to be the musical heartland
of Greece.
 ecumenes 93

in Xanthi and Rhodopi, and around 10% in Evros.29 But such statistics can
give a misleading picture of ethnicity and culture. For one thing, there are
numerous additional ethnic groups (they include Pontic, Arvanite, Arme-
nian, Gagauz, and Sarakatsan populations); and for another, individuals
may and do choose to move between groups for strategic or pragmatic
advantage, or simply because the pattern of their lives precludes any
straightforward mapping of their cultural onto their ethnic identities. In
keeping with this, very different tastes in music are displayed right across
the region, ranging from Turkish popular music to wedding music genres
associated with Bulgaria. In other words, it would be an oversimplification
to assign genres to ethnic groups in a straightforward way.
Music and dance in Western Thrace has been subject to canonising
processes of a kind found elsewhere in Greece, in that a pan-Thracian
repertory, suitable for presentation at festivals and promotion by so-called
cultural associations, has worked to appropriate and absorb the diversity
of idioms belonging to neighbouring and minority cultures. This is part
of a much wider synthesising and classicising impulse, and it is epito-
mised in the construction of the zonaradikos as the characteristic dance
of Thrace. The ideological charge here may not have been as strong as
in Communist Eastern Europe, but we can note the same redesigning of
traditional practices and the same accommodation of these practices to
new taste publics, with the aim of reinforcing a collective identity that
is profiled against alterities of place and time (the neighbouring Muslim
village; the Ottoman tyranny).
Motivations are not always as political as this suggests. The teaching
of traditional dance in cultural associations of necessity imposes some
canonising tendencies, even to the extent that on returning from peri-
ods of working abroad, people effectively re-learn dances they knew as
children, but in more uniform, standardised forms. The relation between
then and now is indeed complex in this area. Folk ensembles belong in
essence to the world of modernity, for example, but it is much too simplis-
tic to see them as entirely oppositional in values to an older layer of fast-
disappearing traditional music-making. Miranda Terzopoulou has argued
cogently to the contrary, suggesting that there is real reciprocity here, as
supra-local forms feed back to rural communities and generate new ritual
practices based on the commonalities of historical memory.30

29Prior to the exchange of minorities, when this whole region had only just emerged
from Ottoman rule, Greeks made up only 20% of the total population of Western Thrace.
30Terzopoulou 1999.
94 chapter four

In any event, the dominant repertory in Western Thrace is essentially

Greek in character, with similarities to those of (Greek) Macedonia and to
the neighbouring island of Thasos (though this has distinctive features),
and it has been researched intermittently over a period of some fifty
years.31 The music of ethnic minorities has been less well served, but rel-
evant research programmes have been undertaken, and as their findings
have now been made widely available the complexities of this interac-
tive zone are becoming ever better known.32 In addition to the music of
native Greek communities, there are the distinctive repertories of refugee
communities made up of Pontics and Cappadoceans; then there are semi-
professional Rom musics, which may be directed either to Christian or
Muslim audiences; and there are musics associated with the Turks and
Pomaks.
As in Vojvodina, relations between these communities have been
broadly harmonious, but there are undoubtedly some tensions between
and within the different groups. This is not even a recent phenomenon.
Patrick Leigh Fermor tells us of the anxieties of the Sarakatsans to keep
themselves separate from the Vlachs back in the 1930s.33 The position
of Pomaks from the Rhodopi villages is especially sensitive. Most have
now come down to lowland towns such as Cimmeria on the outskirts of
Xanthi, and the issue of identity looms all the larger as they come into
more direct contact with other communities. Not only are they either
claimed or rejected by all, with their language penalised by the education
system; they also face an internal crisis. There is a Pomak cultural associa-
tion in Xanthi, for instance, but it meets with opposition from within the

31 A key figure here was Melpo Merlier, who founded the Music Folklore Archives in
Athens, and who recorded Thracian musicians in 1930. These recordings, together with
the findings of other collectors, were drawn together by Polydoros Papachristodoulou and
Pantelis Kavakopoulos into a series of radio programmes Thracian Folk Melodies (195356),
and in subsequent years Kavakopoulos continued to collect and publish folk songs from
the region. The most recent research in the area is part of the research programme Thrace
sponsored by the Friends of Music Society under the leadership of Lambros Liavas. One
major publication resulting from the programme is Liavas 1999.
32In addition to the Friends of Music programme, there are several relevant publica-
tions, including Brandl 1996, and Hoerburger 1976. Some work on Pomak villages has been
undertaken by Nikos Kokkas, who has published several texts on the Pomaks and has also
produced cds of Pomak musicians.
33Fermor 1966, 19. Fermor also describes a wedding at Sikarayia including a klephtic
song about the War of Independence leader, Kolokotrones. This description nicely cap-
tures the contrast between the slow klephtic ballad style and the Rom band that follows.
 ecumenes 95

Pomak community itself, for many prefer assimilation to culture conser-

vation. There are also difficulties of generation and gender here.34
Faced with this diversity, one simple but telling inroad to music in West-
ern Thrace is to examine the traditional instruments, most of which have
all but disappeared from contemporary music-making. The instruments
themselves open windows onto wider practices; they register the fluid-
ity with which styles have been transformed and appropriated; and they
embody symbolic values within the culture. Where stringed instruments
are concerned, I will pass over the familiar outi [oud], which was prominent
both as a solo and an accompanying instrument, and move directly to the
pear-shaped Thracian lyra, bowed, like its rectangular Pontic counterpart,
and with an ancestry in Byzantine secular music. In todays world the lyra,
known as the gdulka in Bulgarian Thrace,35 is largely confined to institu-
tionalised folk ensembles, but it remains active in at least one intriguing
setting, the fire-walking rituals of the anastenaria, performed by refugee
Greek populations from Bulgaria in the village of Mavrolevki, just outside
Drama in eastern Macedonia (essentially of Thracian culture), as also in
a cluster of villages around Serres (similar rituals were performed by the
nestinarki [fire-dancers] in mountain villages of south east Bulgaria).
Although denounced by the Church, and very likely of pagan origin, the
anastenaria is an Orthodox ceremony lasting for several days. Aside from
the hypnotically repetitive music that accompanies the ritual dancing (the
anastenarides hold icons of St Constantine and St Helen as they dance,
seized by St. Constantine, both within the konaki and around and over
the hot embers on the final evening), slow-moving, richly ornamented
ballads from the Byzantine epic Digenes Akritas are sung at the close of
each evening. Stylistically, the music of these ballads has some synergies
with Byzantine sacred repertories. Throughout the proceedings, a particu-
lar species of Thracian lyra is centre stage. Two of them invariably accom-
pany the ballads, while for the dancing one lyra plays a drone, another
elaborates a narrow-compass modal melody, and the daouli [large frame

34See Tsibiridou 2004 for a discussion of the subject positions of the Pomaks. There is
a Rhodopi culture with regional variants that cuts across the various ethnic and religious
groups. At the same time there is an attempt on the part of some Pomaks to preserve
their separate culture, and an attempt by others to conceal it and merge with the major-
ity culture. The gender issues are related to the nervousness of Muslim women to perform
publicly. One young amateur singer told me that she felt obliged to change her name when
she recorded a cd of Pomak songs in 1995.
35The instrument has been modernised in recent decades.
96 chapter four

drum] provides an unchanging, hypnotic rhythm.36 The anastenaria is sui

generis, but it also affords us a glance backwards to a time when the lyra
was one of the ubiquitous accompaniments to the songs and dances of
Thrace and Eastern Macedonia.
No less central to traditional music-making in the region is the Thra-
cian gaida. The gaida is said by some to have originated in ancient Thrace
before spreading to Macedonia and later becoming staple fare in the
music of Slavic peoples all over the eastern regions of Europe; but in real-
ity, in one form or another, it seems to have been part of European pasto-
ral life more generally in the ancient world. Traditionally it accompanied
songs (the pipe, after all, was the invariant accompaniment to elegiac, as
opposed to lyric, poetry in the ancient Greek world), as well as fast-tempo
dances such as the circle dances zonaradikos and xesyrtos, the seven-beat
couples dance mandilatos, and the nine-beat processional synkathistos.
The latter two dances were commonly performed at characteristically
prolonged, sometimes three-day, wedding ceremonies.37
The Thracian gaida is different in construction from its Macedonian
and Bulgarian counterparts, and at one time its use was geographically
specific, marking out a Thracian cultural territory. As in Vojvodina, how-
ever, the indigenous instrument began to lose ground to the more sophis-
ticated Bulgarian gaida, which among other things maintains its tuning
more effectively.38 The Bulgarian instrument was also commonly used
(until recently) for the music of ethnic minorities in Western Thrace. It
accompanied the songs of Arvanitic minorities (notably in Evros), distinc-
tively different from Greek songs; it featured in the music of Pomak Rho-
dopi villages such as Echinos in the Xanthi prefecture, where the repertory
has much in common with music in Bulgaria proper even if active links
with Bulgaria are surprisingly few; and it even infiltrated Turkish commu-
nities in towns such as Komotini. As in other spheres, the several musical
idioms here have been increasingly accommodated to a generic Thracian

36For a detailed study of the anthropology of this ritual, see Kondos 2000, and for a
wider perspective, see Danforth 1989. See also Neikova 2000. The ceremony did give rise to
two major projects of classical music, one Greek, the other Bulgarian. They are the Anas-
tenaria tryptych by Iannis Xenakis, from which Metastaseis was extracted to form the first
work of his maturity, and the ballet Nestinarka [The Fire-Dancer] by Marin Goleminov.
37These and other Thracian dances, which are usually inseparable from the vocal rep-
ertory, are also preserved in diasporic societies. The US-based Orpheus newsletter gives
some insight into such diasporic activities.
38Every year there is a major gaida festival in the Bulgarian Rhodopes. One Pomak
musician and instrument maker from Cimmeria, Ferat Ali Afendi, indicated to me that he
now models his gaidas on the Bulgarian instrument.
 ecumenes 97

style, a process that is neatly represented by Marika Rombou-Levidi in

her study of the nine-beat Turkish dance karsilamas and the five-beat
Bulgarian badouska, both traditionally accompanied by the gaida.39
Two other traditional instruments, both associated with the outdoors,
but now stalwarts of the folk ensemble, are the floyera [shepherds pipe]
and kaval [a longer version of the same], both closely linked to Bulgarian
traditional music, but once widely played right across the region, includ-
ing rural Turkey, both in pastoral settings and for village festivities.40 They
made way for the klarino [folk clarinet], violin and accordion, all preemi-
nent in urban ensembles, when music was increasingly repositioned as an
indoor entertainment in the aftermath of the Greek Civil War, the years
that really marked the beginning of the end of a rural Thracian culture.
Other factors contributed to this widespread modernisation of traditional
music. For one, music became subject to educational practices embodied
in the mandoline orchestras and even the philharmoniki that sprang up in
urban centres in Thrace and Eastern Macedonia around the mid twenti-
eth century, and in some places considerably before that. And for another,
it was brought into contact with modern culture through the common
experience of exile (xenitia) and return, as discussed by Pavlos Kavouras
in his Biography of a Folk Musician.41
In this intriguing essay, Kavouras links the stages of one folk musicians
life to the symbolic role of his instruments. Thus, the floyera and kaval
represented for our musician the traditional life he once knew in Ormenio
(traditionally young boys would be given a kaval when they began shep-
herding, and would be largely self-taught),42 while the klarino was asso-
ciated with a later period of xenitia in Germany and became in several
respects both a symbol of otherness and also a marker of supra-local
styles (it had, for example, a clear association with the music-making of
Turkish Roma). The Bulgarian gaida meanwhile became the instrument
that symbolised cross-cultural synthesis, marking the musicians return to
a new Ormenio, but at the same time registering his growing relationship
with Bulgaria (for which the gaida is emblematic) in a climate of political
and cultural change.
One further instrument should be mentioned here. The zournas [large
conical oboe] has special significance as the almost exclusive preserve

39Rombou-Levidi 1999.
40Fermor 1966, 54.
41 Kavouras 1999.
42Ferat Ali Afendi described his own introduction to music to me in just these terms.
98 chapter four

of the Roma, the oldest and largest single minority in Greece, with par-
ticular concentrations in Macedonia and Thrace. Despite being awarded
Greek citizenship in the 1970s, the Roma have never been assimilated by
Greek society, living in mahala-s at the edges of the cities or in separate
Romani villages such as Anthi and Flambouro south of Serres, or Alan
Kuju in Komotini.43 Nor has their distinctiveness been readily tolerated.
Indeed sustained practices, and even policies, of discrimination have led
in some quarters to the rejection of their Rom identity not just by indi-
viduals (compare the Pomaks) but by whole communities, such as that
of Ifaistos [Kalkanza] in Komotini, in favour of the descriptor Muslim or
Turk. In other cases, the ethnic confusion is a familiar one, in that Roma
who do not speak any Romany dialect are inclined to describe them-
selves as Turks, though they may not be recognised as such in Turkey
and are widely regarded as yiftoi [gypsies] by the non-Rom populations
in Thrace.
As elsewhere in the wider region, the Roma of Thrace are associated
with music-making of a semi-professional kind, including performances
with the zournas-daouli (zurla-tapan or shawm-drum) ensemble compris-
ing two zournas-s and large frame drum (in some cases the karamouza
replaces the zournas). While this ensemble is found in various forms in
many traditional cultures, it derives here from Middle Eastern traditions,
and until recently it was widespread across northern Greece, Macedo-
nia (where the instrument is known as zurla),44 South West Bulgaria
(where it is zurna),45 and Albania. It is still a living tradition among
Roma exclusively performed by men, and passed down from genera-
tion to generation in the Xanthi and Rhodope prefectures of western
Thrace, as also in Greek Macedonia and South West Bulgaria (Pirin Mace-
donia). As to the daouli: Thrace is the beat of a drum, writes Patrick Leigh
Fermor.46

43In addition to Turkish and Greek Roma, there is a branch known as the Athinganoi,
whose religion combines the Muslim faith with elements of paganism. The marginality of
Rom communities, and at the same time the dedication of certain teachers and priests
devoted to improving their conditions, was apparent to me when I visited a Rom mahala
on the outskirts of Thessaloniki.
44For a fascinating ethnographic study of Rom musicians in Greek Macedonia, see
Keil and Keil 2002.
45On south west Bulgaria, see Peycheva and Dimov 2002. This book contains interest-
ing accounts of the zurna in folklore texts and in travellers writings.
46Fermor 1966, 227.
 ecumenes 99

The musical idiom of these ensembles is generally perceived to be ori-

ental in character, with improvisation, elaborate ornamentation, interval
structures related to dromoi or makam-s, and a dirty tone production.
Characteristically the second zournas provides a drone, but on occasion
both play in heterophony, with each instrument furnishing independent
ornamentation. Repertories vary somewhat according to region, faith and
ethnicity. Thus the ensembles perform for Christian communities at vil-
lage weddings and calendar feasts (Saints Day panigyria), but they are
especially linked to the Muslim population of Turks, Roma and Pomaks,47
performing for weddings, bayram-s (especially the Kurban Bayrami), the
all-important feast of Hidirellez [Romani Ederlezi] in early May (effectively
marking the beginning of summer), and snnet-s (multi-day circumcision
feasts which include competitive games and the ubiquitous wrestling).
Even within these Muslim communities there are different musical incli-
nations, with Pomak festivities favouring various kinds of horo (especially
the nine-beat daichovo horo performed in Bulgarian Thrace), while Turk-
ish and Rom communities prefer the seven-beat rchenitsa (Bulgarian
raichenitsa), the Anatolian halay, and above all the nine-beat oek, or
tsifteteli turkiko, associated especially with the Roma.
All of this begs the question of the longer-term survival of the zournas.
You can still hear these Rom ensembles at weekend bazaars and in other
traditional contexts, and they have been subject to revitalization by eth-
nomusicologists and others committed to local cultures. But they struggle
to compete with the drum kit and synthesizer. Even so, modernisation
cannot undermine the central achievement of the Roma from Thrace,
which has been to preserve key components of a musical culture that is
both distinctive in itself and a model of diversity and even synthesis. By
moving around with virtuosic facility between several different musics
Greek, Turkish, Bulgarian, Rom these musicians implicitly critique dis-
courses of alterity and dualism (majorities minorities). What they offer
in place of such discourses has been aptly described by one source as rites
of inclusion.48
As a footnote to this discussion, I should mention one other tradition
of instrumental music, albeit not involving endangered instruments. This
is the urban tradition of the fanfara [brass band], also widely though not

47Brandl 1996, and Hoerburger 1976. The association between the shawm-drum duo
and Muslim communities is not confined to Greece; see Pettan 1996a.
48Keil and Keil 2002, 267.
100 chapter four

exclusively associated with the Roma. It developed in part as a legacy of

the military presence, both Turkish and Austrian, and it is certainly not
unique to Thrace; indeed it has been cultivated with greater success in
other Balkan countries. Celebrated by festivals such as Gua in Serbia,
where the tradition is especially strong, the fanfara has been made famous
by the films of Emir Kusturica, and it has now been reinvented for world
music in the form of popular bands such as Fanfara Ciocrlia (Romania),
the Boban Markovi Orkestar (Serbia), the Koani Orkestar (Macedonia)
and the Fanfara Tirana (Albania).49 Such has been the success and influ-
ence of these bands that one might even speak of their influence on Greek
musicians as a kind of Balkanisation of native traditions. The fanfara is
now a presence, notably involving Roma, right across northern Greece,
though it is Greek Macedonia rather than Thrace that has produced
famous modern bands such as the Florina Brass Band and Christodaktyli
[The Gold Fingers]. Interestingly Goran Bregovi, closely associated with
Kusturica, is hugely popular in Greek Macedonia.
In Thrace the tradition is found especially at events like the annual
carnival at Xanthi. This is a major event, and it has been studied closely
by Vasiliki Sirakouli, who notes how, as with many such events, the
organisers face many political difficulties over the balance of represen-
tation between particular communities and particular repertories.50 The
carnival in this sense encrypts rival claims that speak more widely into
contemporary culture: the claims of the indigenous and the global, the
young and the old, the majority and the minority. The result is of course
an unwieldy compromise (Sirakouli traces some of the politics behind the
scenes with sensitivity), with a now well-established pattern that alter-
nates a week of indigenous music and dance with a week celebrating the
global scene. Of course there are many carnivals in Greek cities.51 But it is
precisely because of the interacting ethnicities and religions I have been
describing that the one at Xanthi presents us with such an interesting and
challenging ethnographic text.

49There is an extensive literature. See in particular Golemovi 2006 and Rdulescu

1999. In the second of these essays the author argues that it is a tradition in decline.
50Sirakouli 2010.
51 They have been studied by Maria Papapavlou of the University of Athens. For
approaches to the study of carnival more generally, see the chapters by Olga Supek and
Stjepan Sremac in Rajkovi 1988.
 CHAPTER FIVE

CENTRES

All in the Family: Mapping Montenegro

Wherever I am is the centre. Others may not agree. I may be persuaded

by the others. What these three propositions boil down to is that identi-
ties are constructed in the gaze of others, usually through a process of
negotiation between what is assigned and what is experienced. By defini-
tion our own subject position is centred, but we may accept a designation
of periphery, and 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 are sidelined by the dominant
narrative, but at the same time mimic it. The key concept in all of this
is alterity, which plays an important role in identity-building even when
it functions passively as a marker of difference. That was the message of
Hegel, for whom alterity was the prerequisite of any awareness of the self.1
Emmanuel Levinas went further, arguing that it is the face-to-face con-
frontation with a (not-fully-knowable) other, and the responsibility we
feel for that other, that gives us meaning (the self, in other words, is fun-
damentally relational).2 Both positions confirm the importance of alterity
for any discussion of culture and identity. At the same time they suggest
that the binaries self-other and centre-periphery are closely related.
In surveying Balkan histories, it is tempting to think of towns as cen-
tres and rural villages as peripheries. Yet this is not always an appropriate
reading. Over a period of many centuries this region indeed the eastern
half of Europe generally became familiar with a specific pattern of colo-
nisation, in which urban and rural communities were not just differently
structured economically but differently constituted ethnically. Typically
there would be mixed populations in the towns depending on the set-
ting there might be Turks, Greeks or Germans, but there would usually
be other groups, including Jews, Armenians and Roma (at the edge of
town) surrounded by predominantly Slav (but also Vlach, and in some

1 Hegel 1967 (1807), 22840.

2Levinas 1981. This will be discussed further in the penultimate chapter.
102 chapter five

settings Romanian) populations in the countryside. Towns, in other words,

were replete with immigrants, as distinct from the relatively stable mono-
ethnic populations of rural communities.
The result, predictably enough, was a cultural dislocation between town
and country, with a leaning towards hybridity in the towns and relative
autonomy in the villages, and with limited space for cultural interactivity
and mutual dependencies between the two. This is a very rough analysis,
and if we look to the detail we can easily find the exceptions, notably
where trade and military routes incorporate the smaller towns.3 But it
stands as a generalisation, and it suggests that the mutually dependent
centrifugal and centripetal tendencies that would allow us to think in
terms of centres and peripheries in strictu sensu were not always to be
found. At least until the onset of modernity, the cultural lives of town and
village were pursued in large measure separately, and their music will be
characterised separately here.
Openness and receptivity to difference are characteristics often associ-
ated with urban cultures. And given the ethnic and religious diversity of
towns in the Balkans, it is not surprising that music especially urban
song was susceptible to multiple influences. Broadly we can identify two
classes, of which the first is oriental. I have already referred to music caf
traditions in Greece and Asia Minor, but one could equally cite the Ashiki
songs of Albania and the important genre known today as sevdalinka. This
developed in Bosnia, but was also found in southern Serbia, where it was
associated especially with the important Ottoman trading town Vranje
and its surroundings. These poems (often neo-Petrarchian in character)
were not always sung, but many became popular as songs, including well-
known poems (to Serbians!) such as Protuzila Pembe-Ajsa and Abassah
by Jovan Ili. There are in short commonalities of instrumentation, form
and melos across all those regions where the Ottomans were a sustained
presence, allowing us to speak of a family of related styles.
A second class of urban song, including school songs, love songs, and
patriotic or revolutionary songs, flourished in the second half of the
nineteenth century, as the towns gradually established an independent
economic and cultural life and became the foci of so-called national
revivals.4 Often linked to the development of national theatres, these
songs were responsive not only to the nationalist imperative in itself, but

3See Golemovi 1996 and Katsanevaki 2006.

4Balareva 1985.
 centres 103

to the educational activities, including choral singing, associated with that

imperative. With their texts foregrounded as the crucial component, and
with sentiments more heavily reliant on traditions of bourgeois poetry
from central Europe, they remained distinct from the oriental class.
Flourishing all over the region, from Macedonia to Serbia, they drew on
neighbouring traditions whose orientation was broadly European, includ-
ing Russian, Italian, Croatian and Czech.5 Very often they appeared in
songbooks with text only, but by the end of the century it was common
to find them published with western musical notation and with named
composers. They were a marker of the emergent national consciousness
of Balkan cities, for nationalism (like its antithesis cosmopolitanism) was
a largely urban phenomenon.
What, then, of the very different world of the villages prior to moderni-
sation? Here too we can group repertories into broad stylistic families,
in many cases of ancient origin. We noted in Chapter 2 that there was a
marked contrast between the music of the Dinaric and Carpathian moun-
tain ranges, but we might contrast both of these groups with the more
eclectic idioms found in the eastern Balkans, more oriental in character
and sharing features with repertories in North Africa and what used to
be called the Near East. At the opposite extreme, we might look at the
very different traditional music found along the Adriatic coastline, once
the Dalmatian territories of a Venetian empire, then part of the Habsburg
domains, and registering something of those backgrounds through the
practice of singing in thirds. Naturally all of this is in search of fine-tuning.
But at least until the incursions of modernity, when the towns became
more accessible to the villages and various forms of symbiosis began to
develop in the cultural sphere, the families of both urban and rural musics
retained an element of mutual distinctiveness. And of course all these
families stand in marked contrast to yet another family, that of western
classical music, which occupied a growing space in Balkan musical life.
It may be interesting to examine the coexistence of several different
stylistic families in a region not yet referenced in this book, the present-
day state of Montenegro. Following the wars of Yugoslav succession, only

5In major Serbian cities, influences came from Vojvodina. The song Sve to mene
okruava of 1793 by Dositej Obradovi (a writer from Vojvodina who was influential in
spreading Enlightenment thought in Serbia) is characteristic, with the melody written
down by Josif lezinger (17901870), and later, in a different version, by Isidor Baji (1878
1915), while one of the best-known of all made famous not least through a popular set of
piano variations by Kornelije Stankovi (183165) is to se bore misli moje, whose text
was by Prince Mihailo Obrenovi.
104 chapter five

Serbia and Montenegro were left in the federal state, and Montenegro
gained its full independence from this rump Yugoslavia as late as 2006.
Following the Ottoman conquest, depopulation, and an inflow of Vlachs,
modern Montenegro emerged in the early eighteenth century under a
Petrovi-Njego theocracy based in the old capital of Cetinje.6 It gained
formal recognition in 1878. As one of the few regions in South East Europe
to have held the Ottomans at bay, Montenegro was widely regarded, and
regarded itself, as a warrior nation that embodied neo-medieval quali-
ties of heroism, stoicism, and rugged independence, qualities that were
an easy prey to romantic myth-making. As a result it became a hunting
ground for writers, including librettists, from elsewhere in Europe, with
impetus from the sonnet by Tennyson.7 At the same time it responded
to nineteenth-century national myth-making by fostering and nurturing
its own sense of an heroic past, mainly through the ancient genre of epic
song accompanied by gusle, in which the famous deeds of heroes such as
Marko Kraljevi of Prilep are recounted. 8
A musical map of Montenegro and surrounding territories might well
begin with this genre, one of the oldest in the Balkans. It has become well-
known to literary scholars through the work of Milman Parry and Albert
Lord, who followed Matija Murko in using this living tradition of epic to
cast light on the Homeric genre. They are of the same diamond dust, the
same seed, says the Great Lady in the second of Kadares Three Kosovo
Elegies, comparing the tales of the Balkan minstrels to the Greek tales.9
Indeed Kadares intriguing novel The File on H (a reference to Homer)
was itself directly inspired by Parry and Lord. This thesis proved influen-
tial not only in Classical scholarship, but in studies of epic more gener-
ally, including canonic works of Old and Middle English.10 In a nutshell,
Parry and Lord were oralists, who were keen to downplay any sense of a
monumental author, and who preferred to understand the Homeric epics

6Despite its rich cultural heritage, Cetinje today has a neglected feel. With its impos-
ing monastery and other public buildings in a village-like context, it strengthens the sense
of Montenegro as the most Ruritania-like of all the modern Balkan states.
7See Wilkinson 1848, i, 5334, for a characteristic presentation of this romanticised
view of Montenegro. A more comic portrait was drawn by Franz Lehr, who used Monte-
negro as his model for Pontevedro in The Merry Widow.
8Strictly speaking these songs come from adjacent Herzegovina. See Fisher 1990 for an
account of the Marko songs that compares written texts with the oral tradition. See also
Wilkinson 1848, i, 4401, where it is clear that the genre in 1848 was much as it is today;
also Trevor 1913, 60.
9Kadare 2000, 70.
10For an introduction to some of this work, see Foley 1981.
 centres 105

as products of a tradition of improvised heroic songs that existed across

the cultures and the ages, and of which extant written versions are just
instantiations.
The system (not too strong a word) developed by Parry and Lord
claimed to reveal the formulaic basis of improvised epic poetry, explain-
ing the textual sophistication of the Homeric epics in terms of the natural
emergence of repetition structures, variation sequences and other forms
of patterning based on formula and theme (compare Proppian func-
tions and the generative grammar of Chomsky).11 As Philip Hardie puts
it: The epic strives for totality and completion, yet is at the same time
driven obsessively to repetition and reworking.12 The primary concern
of Parry and Lord was with the poetic text, but Lord also dealt with the
interdependence of text and melody, and his account proposes a cre-
ative process in the music that echoes that of the poetry, an improvised,
yet highly formulaic sound world, in which voice and (one-string) gusle
shadow one another in heavily ornamented formulaic lines within a very
narrow range. The point for now is that although Montenegro and Old
Herzegovina were major centres for this tradition, it was by no means
confined to these territories. It was also found in southern Serbia, Bosnia,
Bulgaria and Albania, though parallels with Albania are complicated by
the difference of language.
It was part of the Parry-Lord premise that this kind of epic poetry would
once have been much more widespread. Indeed the singer-poet accompa-
nied by some form of fiddle in narrative and epic songs was once common
throughout the Middle East and even down to parts of West Africa,13 and
there are obvious parallels with other traditions, not least in Ireland. The
nub of it is that for Parry and Lord epics survived as a living tradition
only in those parts of Yugoslavia and Albania that had resisted moderni-
sation. The material they collected was from both Christian and Muslim
communities, but with a leaning towards the latter on the grounds that
the Muslim singers were less contaminated by contact with the printed
text. Thus the tradition of Montenegrin Christian epic poetry, famously
canonised in written form by Petar II Petrovi Njego and by the Croatian

11 See Lord 1965, and especially chapter 3. Note here too the link with Judeo-Spanish
ballads in Maulen-Berlowitz, 1995.
12Hardie 1992, 1.
13Hale 1998.
106 chapter five

Ivan Maurani (as well as by successors such as Radovan Beirovi),14

belonged to the same world as the Southern Slav epics collected by the
Serb Vuk Stefanovi Karadi. And likewise the Muslim songs recorded
by Parry and Lord in eastern Montenegro, especially sung by the guslar
Avdo Meedovi from Bijelo Polje, were part of a wider tradition in the
Sandak (now divided between Serbia and Montenegro), Herzegovina
and large tracts of Bosnia.15 Naturally the subject matter is antithetical
(repelling the Turk; defending the Turk),16 but in terms of musico-poetic
structures and processes the Christian and Muslim traditions were all but
synonymous.17 Together they represented a family of semi-professional
and exclusively male music-making that was associated especially with
Montenegro and Herzegovina.18
Interestingly, this is an art that is still highly valued in Montenegro
today even among the younger generation.19 Nor is it purely a museum
piece. New epics were created during the first Yugoslavia, and again dur-
ing World War II in support of both Serbian etniks and Croatian Ustae.
Then in the wars of the 1990s the genre appeared in further revivalist incar-
nations, in which the nationalist heroes of the day were duly elevated
by association with those of old. The familiar poetic imagery, steeped in
popular tradition, was harnessed to new causes, as the cult of the gusle
lived again. Indeed such adaptability was part of the history of the epic.
Undoubtedly the symbolism of the gusle, resonant of virility and heroism,
was considerably tarnished by the politics of the 1990s, but we should be
wary of projecting this stigma back to the earlier history of the genre. The
art of the (traditionally and mythically blind) guslar, was (is) assigned a
high status, associated with public gatherings, competitions and festivals
as well as with more local entertainments. He was, after all, the guardian
of his countrys heroic past, a kind of troubadour, except that his social
class was not necessarily high (pace Njego).

14The best-known poem by Beirovi is the epic The Battle at Mojkovac, based on the
World War I battle at which the Montenegrins inflicted heavy casualties on the Austro-
Hungarian army.
15For a discussion of Bosnian epics, see olakovi 2007.
16Wilton 2004. Also Boskovi 2004.
17See the splendid description of epic singing in Durham 1904, 2078.
18There is an evocative account of a gypsy performing with gusle at a Turkish home in
Herzegovina in Wilkinson 1848, ii, 445.
19Danica Laji-Mihajlovi, an ethnomusicologist at the Serbian Academy of Sciences
and Arts, has researched changing performance practices within this tradition.
 centres 107

On a different level were the village musics that could be found all
over the country, including genres we have already encountered. Ganga
is one such, and although its sound world is at some remove from that of
epic song, it too relies on formulaic improvisation based on a very limited
pitch range. There is some overlap in the geographical spread of these
two Dinaric-centred genres, but whereas we can track the epic tradition
eastwards to embrace Serbia, ganga ranged rather to the north, where it
maintained a strong presence in the land of the Morlachs, in western
Herzegovina, Imotska Krajina and the Dalmatian Zagora (in the Croatian
Dinaric alps). Then again, we might turn our gaze to the savage border-
land to the south of the country (the land of the blood feuds and the
Kanun of Lek), where we would encounter a different idiom, associated
with Albanian Catholic villages such as Zatrijeba and Gusinje. Much of
this music is preserved today in the work of contemporary ensembles like
Besa,20 and it includes wedding songs and dances (the ubiquitous kolo),
together with pastoral genres performed on fyelli [floyera]. Predictably, it
is similar in style to music from northern (Geg) Albania, of which these
villages were once a part. And like the other traditional musics of Monte-
negro, it follows a pattern that we have already encountered elsewhere.
As long as the villages remained relatively isolated, their music was both
unique to the specific locality and at the same time united with music
springing from similar ecologies much further afield. Then, as village and
town increasingly interacted, we find a remorseless ironing-out of such
local styles to contribute to the more standardised idiom of the festival
and the CD.21
The southern and eastern borders of Montenegro were in fact contested,
especially before and after World War I, when there were tricky negotia-
tions about Albanian independence and about the status of the Sandak
centred on Bijelo Polje. All these territories remained under Turkish rule
until the Balkan wars of 191213. Even Podgorica, the present capital, was
occupied by the Turks as a garrison town in 1474 and only transferred to
Montenegro in 1878, at which point it had a mere handful of Montene-
grin inhabitants.22 The Turkish legacy here was both direct and indirect,
and in some cases it resulted in fascinating shifts of meaning. In addition

20The Albanian word besa, roughly translatable as oath, is drawn from the law of
Lek.
21 The traditional sound of Montenegro is widely marketed on CD today.
22Part of Titos strategy in confirming the republic status of Montenegro was to weaken
the hegemonic tendencies of Serbia and Croatia.
108 chapter five

to pan-Ottoman urban traditions that continued to flourish here (Edith

Durham, describing a Rom wedding in the city, refers to a long howling
chant, while the pom-pom and metallic jingle of the tambourine sounded
over the voices with mechanical regularity),23 Podgorica after 1878 assimi-
lated a tamburica tradition that had by then become a familiar part of
the soundscape of the western Balkans, flourishing especially in northern
Croatia and Vojvodina.
Here we find yet another transformation in the symbolic significance of
an instrument, setting up a cluster of associations that are in sharp con-
trast with those attaching to the gusle. The tamburica (tanbr) arrived in
the Balkans from Turkey initially, but the tamburica societies that sprang
up in the towns and cities of the wider region (the earliest recorded was
founded by Pajo Kolari in Osijek in 1847) quickly divested themselves of
their oriental characteristics, including their unequal temperament.24 Ini-
tially these ensembles were cultivated by Hungarian Roma, but later they
were linked to the Illyrian nationalist movement, and in due course they
were often associated with the socialist movements and even with the
factories and workplaces that accompanied emergent industrialism in the
wider region. The earliest reference to a tamburica ensemble in present-
day Montenegro takes us to coastal Kotor [Catarro] in 1866, but other
towns followed suit in the later nineteenth century, and that included
Podgorica, where, as Gordana etkovic points out, the gradske pjesme
[urban songs] were often accompanied by a tamburica ensemble.25
The repertory, which can still be heard in revival today, certainly fore-
grounded local traditions, but the musical idiom is best thought of as a
local variant of yet another family of styles, this time characteristic of
towns and cities all over the western Balkans. Through its association
with both Croatia and Serbia, the tamburica ensemble became in due
course an explicit symbolic statement of proto-Yugoslav cultural indepen-
dence, and eventually a construction of Serbian and (especially) Croatian
nationalisms.26 But its associations were not with the heroic deeds pro-
claimed by the guslar, but rather with (Illyrian) peace and harmony, with
an Arcadian, pastoral ideal.27 In particular, it has developed a thriving

23Durham 1904, 25.

24See Feldman 1996, 143 on the origins of the tanbr.
25etkovic 2002, 18.
26March 1983. On neo-traditional tamburica music, see also Bonifaci 1993.
27ani 2007, 6275.
 centres 109

tradition in diaspora, though the label tamburica orchestra is treated very

loosely these days; it seems the tamburica is no longer a prerequisite!
Turkish influences were stronger and longer-lasting in Muslim townlets
in eastern Montenegro. Thus towns such as Plav, once an Albanian strong-
hold, maintained an oriental tradition of music-making much longer than
Podgorica, and the tradition is preserved today, at least in fragmentary
form. Epic song with gusle is found here, and so too is traditional singing
na glas. But in addition there is a distinctive Muslim tradition of song and
dance characteristically accompanied by an ensemble of tamburas, accor-
dions and the vase-shaped goblet drum known as tarabuka. This idiom
marks an intriguing stage of the double transition between east and west,
pre-modernity and modernity. And Dimitrije Golemovi has suggested
that it also represents a point of transition between village and town,
somewhat akin to the ravna pjesma [flat songs] that he identifies (contro-
versially) as an early form of sevdalinka in Bosnia.28 The harmonic world
occupied by this Muslim tradition of Plav is characteristically ambivalent.
It preserves the cadential second of village song, for example, but then
tends to absorb this either within an oriental modality, or (because of the
accordion) an implicit or explicit diatonic structure. In some contexts the
second is left unresolved, while in others it functions as a component of a
pseudo V7 harmony, except that the ensuing tonic (even when it closes
the song) is simply a momentary resolution and does not represent an
underlying tonality.
One final musical idiom a world away from Plav should be men-
tioned here. The very different history and topology of the Montenegrin
coastal strip has promoted a very different kind of music-making. This
coastline, embracing the Gulf of Kotor, was known prior to Habsburg
annexation as Venetian Albania, signifying its ambivalent status as an
appendage to Venices Dalmatian territories or a remnant of its former
Albanian territories. Musically, it is marked above all by a style of choral
singing associated with the klapa [singing group], a tradition Montenegro
shares with littoral Croatia. It is now a well established and immensely
popular tradition all along the Dalmatian coast, and while the Montene-
grin practice is mainly confined to amateur groups, in Croatia it extends
to fiercely competitive semi-professional choirs which form part of a
highly sophisticated infrastructure, involving tours, television and radio
performances, festivals and competitions.

28Golemovi 1996. See p. 298.

110 chapter five

The homophonic idiom of the songs themselves is much closer to pop-

ular Italian choral music than to anything heard in the mountain villages,
and this is reflected in the common practice of accompanying the songs
(where they are accompanied at all) with mandolins rather than, or as well
as, tamburas. With their sweet harmonies and characteristically nostalgic
tone, the Dalmatian songs represent a kind of meeting point between tra-
ditional and popular musics; indeed the journey from the former to the
latter is reflected in what has now become a common subdivision of the
genre into traditional klapa, festival klapa and modern klapa. Where
the first of these categories signifies a staple diet of traditional songs, the
last refers to the common tendency of the klapa to promote new compo-
sition. The newly composed songs may in their turn enter the repertory
as classics of Dalmatian harmony, but more crucially they point to an
important distinction between this tradition and most of the others dis-
cussed here. The klapa repertory is neither preserved, nor in revival, but
is part of a living tradition.29

Finding the Centres: People and Traditions

I have used the term tradition rather freely in this brief guided tour of
Montenegro. It has been invoked largely on geo-cultural grounds, refer-
ring to the transmission the handing over (Latin: tradere) of musi-
cal traits that are distinctive to certain communities in certain segments
of the country. Such segmentation is hardly an exact science. We are
speaking of very roughly defined regions with which particular cultural
characteristics have been loosely identified. But the key point is that
each of them points beyond the political state to suggest affinities with
much wider geo-cultural areas that share something of the same char-
acteristics. As we begin to identify these larger cultural areas we may be
tempted to give a clearer focus to them, in a word to speak of traditions:
traditions of epic song that reach deep into the heartlands of the central
and eastern Balkans; of strident village musics shared with neighbouring
Albania; of peasant singing na glas that gives expression to the distinc-
tive mountain culture of the Dinaric alps; of tamburica ensembles that
point to the Illyrianism associated with towns and cities in the western
Balkans; of urban songs and dances that look right across the Balkans to

29aleta 1997 and Marjanovi 1998.

 centres 111

an Ottoman-Turkish homeland; and of singing groups that signal a Medi-

terranean world of Italian-influenced resorts and islands.
Mapping the traditions in this way is not a neutral exercise. In the
act of mapping we appropriate them and ascribe values to them. For, as
Michel Foucault reminds us, traditions are contained within, rather than
existing prior to, the discourses about them.30 They are retrospective con-
structions, and invariably linked to larger issues of cultural politics. One
could go further and suggest that the point at which a tradition becomes
identified as such is the point at which it is already appropriated, and
hence subject to transformation, or alternatively revival. Invariably it is
the outsider who labels and classifies, and in the case of the Balkans that
means the Western outsider drawn from a relatively small literate elite.
This process came into its own in the late eighteenth century, at which
point enlightened Europe, having emerged from the religious wars of the
seventeenth century, seemed increasingly anxious to construct a mar-
ginalised other to its own educated, sophisticated, and well-bred circles.
Several peoples exemplified this opposition between civilisation and its
(barbaric) other, including at various times the Scots, Bretons and Andalu-
sians. But the Montenegrins also served, albeit often as a kind of append-
age to the Morlachs of Dalmatia, a Vlach people whose discovery in the
late eighteenth century generated an important body of travel literature
and fiction.31
For Western travellers, the main point about the Morlachs was that
they were the people of the mountainous interior, as distinct from the
coast, and they were variously identified with Dalmatian Croats, Serbs
from the Krajina, Slavicised Vlachs or Montenegrins.32 The historical
background to their discovery was the extension inwards of Venetian
Dalmatian territories in the early eighteenth century, following which the
Dalmatian Morlachs joined Slavic Eastern Europe in the construction of
what Larry Wolff has aptly called a geography of backwardness.33 And
in keeping with this prevailing colonial or semi-colonial discourse, the
Morlachs were naturally labelled barbaric, wild and primitive. They were
a race of ferocious men, unreasonable, without humanity, capable of any
misdeed.34

30Foucault 2002, 33, and elsewhere in the book.

31 The best introduction to this, both from historical and literary points of view, is
Wolff 2001.
32Ibid., 157.
33Ibid., 7.
34Ibid., 2.
112 chapter five

There was, however, an alternative discourse. The Abb Fortis claimed

to have found among the Morlachs the innocent and natural liberty of
the pastoral centuries, finding these people uncorrupted by the society
that we call civilised.35 And in an interesting intellectual trajectory, this
Rousseau-inspired ideology of Romanticism, also a product of the Enlight-
enment but at odds in many ways with Enlightenment values, not only
found its way into the influential theories of culture (as distinct from civili-
sation) promoted by Herder, but was later absorbed and transformed by
an elitist, Enlightenment-engendered Modernist ideology, within which
uncontaminated, primitive societies came to assume a privileged status.
The ambiguities in this story even left traces on the much later devel-
opment of comparative musicology (later ethnomusicology) as a disci-
pline. For one thing, the colonial perspectives proved hard to eradicate.
European scholars in particular found it difficult to avoid slipping into
discourses that betrayed all too clearly the European origins of their dis-
cipline. As Michael Herzfeld put it with reference to the mother discipline
of anthropology, marginality highlights the Eurocentric ideology that
both spawned [the discipline] and now elicits its most pious ire.36 Yet
at the same time, a modernist ideology, in anxious quest for authenticity,
was careful to place rural folk music alongside modernist art music on
the side of the angels. Both were pure, in the sense that they were respec-
tively innocent of, or wary of, the debasements of mercantile art. Bartk
became the touchstone for this ideological position. It not only informed
his project as an ethnomusicologist; it further clarified his compositional
project, where he sought to create an ambitious hybrid of unrationalised
peasant music and Modernist art music.
This same ideology was responsible for devaluing urban popular music,
which was thought to be tainted and degenerate, hybrid in the worst sense,
and in the case of Balkan music oriental to boot. These repertories, and
the Roma who so often performed them, were therefore deemed to lack
authenticity by a Modernist generation, and this influenced the ethnomu-
sicological agenda, which for long enough remained nervous of cultural
hybridity. It is only relatively recently that the ways in which music inhab-
its urban spaces have attracted serious scholarly attention. Moreover, to
the extent that urban popular music in the Balkans was shaped by Otto-
man traditions it faced an additional layer of prejudice from native schol-

35Ibid., 1601. See also Gulin 1997.

36Herzfeld 1987, 3.
 centres 113

ars, for whom the Ottoman era was often regarded as a kind of dark ages,
even a suspension of history. Within a modernist discourse that separates
out progress and degeneracy, such music was located on the wrong side
of the divide. On the right side was European art music. This, after all, was
not only the most highly valued and prestigious music to infiltrate the
Balkans; it was widely regarded (including by the Ottomans) as a potent
symbol of social status and progressive values.
Where Montenegro was concerned this infiltration was hardly extensive,
but it occurred nonetheless, and on several fronts. In the first place a har-
monised Orthodox chant on the Serbian model was practiced in Cetinje,
following the partial devolution of jurisdiction from Pe to Sremski Kar-
lovci. Njego was a familiar figure in Sremski Karlovci, given that for much
of the nineteenth century the monastery and the royal court were closely
allied in a formal theocracy (as it happens, a separate Montenegrin Ortho-
dox church was created much later in 1993). At the same time theatrical
productions of plays by ore Proti, including singing parts, coincided
with the momentous arrival of a piano in Cetinje,37 while the demands
of international ceremonial and diplomatic protocol led to the formation
of a first military band in 1871, followed by a second in Podgorica in
1899 under the leadership of Frantiek-Franjo Vimer and Robert Tolinger,
though it too moved to Cetinje in 1892.
The band was an ambitious venture, functioning as a music school for
around forty youths (Ludvk Kuba recalls staying in the Podgorica school
in 1892), and in 1899 it engendered a separate string orchestra.38 There
were other developments along these lines, including choral societies in
both towns (Branka in Podgorica; Njego in Cetinje). And there was also
an important tradition of formal music-making associated with Kotor
and its environs, somewhat analogous to that found in the more presti-
gious Ragusa [Dubrovnik] just along the coast. This was mainly Venetian-
inspired, but there was some influence from Austro-Hungarian circles too,
especially following 1815. In the main, it consisted of bands and amateur
societies, but there were occasional visits from Italian opera troupes, for
these regularly toured the Adriatic coast as well as visiting the Italian-
influenced Ionian Islands to the south.

37It is widely thought that the first piano arrived in Montenegro with Princess Darinka,
when she came from Trieste to marry Danilo I.
38Kuba 1996. For an account of the second band, see Ivanovi 2001.
114 chapter five

To view this musical life from the perspective of a European elite is

again to invite a discourse of centres and peripheries. Here we need to
consider a broader European narrative. It is a familiar one, in which privi-
leged social classes, aristocratic and then bourgeois, defined themselves
culturally by institutionalising their music first within sacred and courtly
life and then in a manner independent of both. In this latter stage in
the late eighteenth century a newly consolidated bourgeois class estab-
lished its principal ceremony, the public concert, in the major cities of
England, France and central Europe, and then created a repertory of clas-
sical music, with related concert rituals, to confirm and authenticate the
new status quo. The resulting European canon was not so much a self-
confirming demonstration of universal value (let alone truth) as a model
of the privilege attaching to one corner only of a plural cultural field. The
canon, in other words, was an instrument of exclusion, and one that legiti-
mated and reinforced the identities and values of those who exercised
cultural power. Moreover, it was no less integrally linked to the construc-
tion of centralising national identities.
Within this narrative Montenegro, like the Balkans as a whole, was rel-
egated to a periphery; the region became part of Larry Wolffs geography
of backwardness. That is where we entered this chapter: with a hegemonic
discourse of marginalisation that emanated from enlightened Europe but
had a considerable capacity to shake self-belief at the periphery. The fact
that humanism, cosmopolitanism and modernism were understood as
essentially European or western categories not only by those at the cen-
tre but by those who were marginalised is of some significance here, since
it produced an experience of liminality, an awareness of the minority
vantage-point, that promoted (in art music at least) a culture that might
be characterised by way of Gellners category hostile imitation.
It is within this context, a context that promotes European exceptional-
ism, that the familiar description of the Balkans as a frontier region has
been made. A frontier is by definition a peripheral zone, and it can often
take on rather particular characteristics, creating a specific mentalit, a
periphery of the imagination against which the cultural and political iden-
tities of others might be constructed. As Charles King remarked, people
shape themselves against this image of the frontier,39 for it is a site that
nurtures what Homi Bhabha has called the dream of the deprived, or the

39King 2004, 811.

 centres 115

illusion of the powerless.40 Yet frontiers also present certain advantages,

not least that they are potentially privileged sites from which to look criti-
cally at a centre, if not indeed to probe the stability and durability even
the very idea of that centre. And from this vantage point one might
either deconstruct or collude with the Eurocentric tendency first to alien-
ate or exoticise a cultural other and then to appropriate it by imbuing it
with European values (or alternatively to project it as a dependent nega-
tive image of those values).
If we return to our musical map of Montenegro we might re-examine
our categories in this light. With art music, we might argue, native music-
making was largely in response mode; nor did it acquire critical potential,
as happened elsewhere in eastern Europe when ideas and practices from
the centre fused with slowly developing nationalist sentiments on the
periphery. Village music, on the other hand, initially alienated from the
centre, was in due course appropriated by it as a convenient symbol of an
ahistorical natural community, a counterweight to commercial culture.
And finally Ottoman-influenced urban popular music was parcelled up as
oriental, invoking values associated with the essentialised and polarised
geo-cultural pairs Europe and Orient, and at least since Thermopylae
with a clear implication of the cultural and moral superiority of the for-
mer. This invokes another advantage of a frontier. It usually invites us to
look in two directions. We might turn around and face east, and then we
would see another, quite different, centre.

East West

On the eve of World War I, the travel writer Roy Trevor published a short
book on Montenegro.41 Travel books on this region were not uncom-
mon at the time, and like many of them Trevors is an odd mix of acute
observation, idealisation and prejudice, similar in its descriptions to the
account by John Gardner Wilkinson more than sixty years earlier. The
basic story is an admiring one, depicting a warrior kingdom peopled by
scrupulously honest, fearless heroes, currently governed (in 1913) by a scru-
pulously honest, fearless King. Yet the book identifies certain downsides
to the legendary heroism of the Montenegrins. The infamous vendettas or
blood feuds a practice shared with neighbouring Albanians (described

40Bhabha 1994, xi.

41 Trevor 1913.
116 chapter five

by Edith Durham in High Albania, dissected by Margaret Hasluck in The

Unwritten Law, and brilliantly depicted by Ismail Kadare in his novel Bro-
ken April) are by no means idealised, and the warrior ethos is deemed
to foster not just a contempt for hard work, but a profound misogyny; this
was no country for a woman.42
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Trevors account is the contrast
it presents between the heartland of the nation, depicted as a kind of
insular mountain fortress peopled by indigenous Montenegrins of provin-
cial culture, and the borderlands of the Sandak and Albania (including
Podgorica), which were multicultural in aspect, marked by the babel of
strange tongues, the roar of rough, harsh voices. The marketplace, we
are told, thronged with Turks and Albanians rather than Montenegrins,
and it was clearly a site of shared experiences as well as ancient hatreds.
Already this portrait challenges pedigreed narratives about a collision of
empires and religions (Habsburg-Ottoman, Christian-Muslim), and there
is further qualification in Trevors insistence that Orthodox Montenegrins
harboured their grudges against Catholic Albanians with no less venom
than against Turkish Muslims. We are reminded, in short, that there are
dangers in reading Balkan histories reductively as pre-histories to the kind
of clash of civilisations famously proposed by Samuel Huntington.43
The Montenegrin case demonstrates something of the space that
exists between our validating historical discourses (together with their
slogans) and the lived experience of historical subjects on the ground.
And much the same applies to the wider Balkan region. It has become
conventional to think of the Balkans as transitional between something
that is an essentially European culture and something else. Whatever that
something else may be, it is usually filed under some version of East,
though the geographical and conceptual definitions of East remain fluid.
Vesna Goldsworthy refers to an asymmetry in this picture. While it is true
that Europe constructed the Balkans to its own specifications, this was
achieved through an imperialism of the imagination in which a leading
part was played by Britain, the very country which had the least mate-
rial (i.e. economic) involvement with the region. Conversely, while the

42Hasluck 1954; Durham 1985 (1909), Kadare 1990. In theory at least, the law of Lek
accorded some degree of privilege to women within what is by any standards a patristic
society. It is intriguing that Albania has proved attractive to independent women travellers
(Allcock and Young 1991).
43Huntington 1993. Adam Kuper points out that Huntingtons reading was memorably
anticipated by T.S. Eliot. Antagonistic religions, according to Eliot, means antagonistic
cultures; and ultimately, religions cannot be reconciled (Kuper 2006).
 centres 117

Ottoman Empire colonised much of South East Europe physically, and for
a long period, its direct narrative contribution to the way the Balkans are
seen and imagined by outsiders is negligible.44
In general, Goldsworthy is a little too ready to impose on the Balkans
a Saidian model of cultural imperialism that meets the case in some par-
ticulars but not in others.45 Yet even if her approach relies too heavily on
polarising East and West, it has the merit of exposing starkly the question
of subject position: of a European Balkans, an Ottoman Balkans, and a
Balkan Balkans. None of these are stable categories indeed the reifica-
tion of the first is a problem with Goldsworthys book and there is no
shortage of fissures leading from one to the other. Nonetheless, there may
be some value in presenting them reductively at this point. The qualifica-
tions will appear soon enough.
How did the Balkans look from Western Europe? This question has
generated an extensive literature, and it will be dealt with quickly here.
It begs another question. Where, and what, is Europe? Which is Europes
true mass?, asks Kadares Great Lady. More than a name, and more than a
place, Europe is above all an idea, and one that gained focus in Enlighten-
ment thought and the historiography that emerged from it.46 As an entity,
Europes borders were historically fluid and with considerable slippage
between geo-political and geo-cultural description; it lacks in truth clearly
marked physical frontiers. Pedigreed histories of the idea describe a slow
process of holistic self-definition to a liberal agenda, proceeding alongside
a gradual rise in status to global hegemon.47 In this narrative, the Byzan-
tine Empire was the crucial protective shield that enabled the process
to occur,48 while the self-definition itself is presumed to have proceeded
hand-in-hand with the definition of an oriental other. At a late stage of
this narrative, the Balkans, which in the seventeenth century was still
widely perceived to be part of the East, was appropriated by Europe, but
problematised within it. If it really was a part of Europe, it was an alien,

44Goldsworthy 1998, x.
45Said 1978. For an appraisal of the orientalism debate, see chapter 1 of MacKenzie
1995.
46Leyser 1992. The seventeenth century was arguably the crucial period of European
self-definition, the point at which its distinctiveness from other cultures and civilisations
(based on a neo-Hellenic ideal stemming from the Renaissance) was affirmed.
47For an interesting angle on evolving definitions of Europe, see Stoianovich 1994. See
also Le Goff 2005.
48This point is well made by Judith Herrin in several publications. See, for example,
Herrin 2007.
118 chapter five

marginal part, and transitional to other spaces. And it is arguably this

liminality, rather more than Goldsworthys imperialism, that defined the
Balkans in relation to the formative category Western Europe.
Thus, in music history the tendency of European critical discourses
was either to exoticise the Balkan region in the manner described by
Goldsworthy (the case of traditional musics) or to write it out of Euro-
pean culture altogether (the case of art musics). Either way there was a
larger universalising agenda, promoted in a select cluster of high-prestige
cultural centres. That agenda privileged a modern musical culture in
Europe, associated with the twin formation of a canon and an avant-garde
and predicated above all on certain historical and analytical readings of
Beethovens heroic style and its aftermath. This narrative I will call it
the march to modernity is one to which I will return later. The point to
make here is that there is certainly little doubt about where the Balkans
sits in relation to it. This region barely makes the standard music history
books.
In our present political and intellectual climate there are other ways to
read European history, and these suggest ways of reconfiguring the status
of the Balkans. It will be enough to mention Edgar Morin, whose book
Penser lEurope invites us to think Europe by engaging with the struc-
tural and cultural pluralism that shaped it in the first place, predating
the monolithic thrust of modernity and arguably surviving its demise.49
Morin refers to the meeting of multiple components in the construction
of a collective European identity as a carrefour, and he goes on to argue
that this multiplicity persists into modernity de facto, that there are mark-
ers of identity that prise open the closed borders defining territories, reli-
gions and ideologies. More than that, he demonstrates that even the elite
centres depend on their peripheries to preserve their status. The traffic, in
other words, is two-way. Not only do the common ideals that crystallised
in the centres permeate the peripheries; the constitution of those ideals
draws heavily on those same peripheries in the first place.
Morin is not of course denying the importance of centres, nor their
universalising tendencies. But he does accord to marginality a positive
role beyond the obvious one in which it has served as an important motor
of activism in European politics and society.50 The application of Morins

49Morin 1987.
50This is not the place to elaborate such thoughts, but it is certainly tempting to look
at redefinitions of civilisation that are emerging in the new Europe, in which the tradi-
 centres 119

carrefour to music can only be hinted at here. We can trace it way back
to the transalpine origins of Gregorian chant, the beginnings of a long
process of mutual interaction and accommodation between northern
and southern European styles and practices, at least as significant as any
later East-West dialogues. And we can demonstrate that in subsequent
periods peripheries not only served as stylistic feeders to central musical
traditions, but were themselves subject to radical reevaluation and even
reconstitution with the rise of a nationalist ideology.
It is reasonable to ask a less familiar question. How did the Balkans look
from the Asian rather than the European side of the Aegean? How exactly
did the Ottomans view the Balkans?51 This question needs more sustained
consideration at this stage. There has been a recent spate of publications
on Occidentalism, and this literature, which is mainly about how the
Rest views the West, is distinctly relevant to our question. However,
I will argue at the very end of this book that so-called Balkanism cannot
be aligned with Occidentalism in a straightforward way, any more than
it can be aligned with more familiar orientalist discourses. For now I will
simply remark that the Ottoman perspective on Europe was anything but
stable. It oscillated from engagement to withdrawal and back again: from
a position that was antithetical to Europe to one that was sympathetic to
Europe, from fierce rejection to studied emulation.
In principle, the values of the Ottoman Empire remained largely unme-
diated by those inter-dynastic, essentially cosmopolitan, agendas of ratio-
nalism and liberalism, modernity and progress, that increasingly defined
Europe following the religious wars. For the Ottomans the ostensible goal
and duty was to extend the domain of peace, which they did on behalf
of Islam with a war machine that in its heyday was second to none in
efficiency and ruthlessness, and with sustained policies of repopulation.
And within this domain there was a tolerance of faiths and nations that
contrasted with the proselytising and controlling mechanisms associated
with the later European empires. This was the dubiously labelled Pax
Ottomanicus. It bore little resemblance to modern European nationalisms,
but was if anything closer to the social technologies of imperial Rome,
where qualities of Romanity were not dependent on ethnicity but were
disbursed to the conquered under certain conditions.

tional legitimations of a highly centralised Franco-German system are challenged by an

eastwards drift and by a greater acceptance of diversity.
51See Adanir 2002 for several takes on this question.
120 chapter five

Aside from the security they offered, the Ottomans did little for subject
territories; infidels were taxed more heavily than Muslims, and there were
other constraints on their activities. Indeed this was part and parcel of the
philosophy. They left surprisingly little in the form of a durable material
culture, while at the same time they expected and demanded that their
basic needs especially while engaged in military campaigns would be
met by subject peoples. All the same, government was exercised for the
most part with a light hand, for the only major obligation was to preserve
order in the expanding domain of peace. Indeed the linking factor in the
Ottoman conduct of war and peace was precisely the primacy of order,
and the singular combination of elegance, rigour and ruthlessness with
which order was achieved and maintained. It held for the bureaucracy of
war, for the complex mechanism of rewards and penalties, for the millet
system of government, for the symbolism of public life that extended from
the courts of the Palace down to the ordering of public processions and
even to the dress codes that identified peoples and their religions, and for
the institutions of arts and learning.52
The empire operated by way of various kinds of contract established
between the Sublime Porte and native elites (religious in the main),
many of which retained their legislative authority under Ottoman rule. It
encouraged but did not usually enforce conversion to Islam, but in cer-
tain parts of the Balkans, notably Bosnia, the Sandak and Albania, mass
conversion did indeed take place. Its self-image was one of medieval cer-
tainties, defined against the simplest of alterities: anything outside the
domain of peace was the domain of war. Its hierarchies were rigid, but
it was relatively non-discriminatory, finding stability in its diversity, and
harnessing the multiple, regionally distinctive, talents of its subjects to the
service of the centre.
Thus the Ottoman view of the Balkans, whose core territories were
known by them as Rumelia, was both inclusive and appreciative, not
least because this region was a major source of wealth and power. With
its complex history, it not only differed in important respects from the
eastern territories; it was itself internally diversified, anything but a single
entity. For the Ottomans this was its strength. They were in no need of a
foil to help shape some emergent identity; that is abundantly clear from
the Ottoman mentality so skillfully filtered by Robert Dankoff through the

52Dankoff 2004, 8593. Histories of the Ottoman Empire and its aftermath include
Shaw 1976 and Shaw and Shaw 1977, Kinross 1977, Goodwin 1998, and Wheatcroft 1993.
 centres 121

voluminous travel writings of Evliya elebi.53 What the Ottomans needed

were the multiple skills available: the commercial and maritime acumen
of the Greeks, the legal and bureaucratic skills of the Jews, the equestrian
know-how of the Bulgars, the talents of the Ragusan goldsmiths and the
Salonican textile manufacturers, the musical gifts of the Roma. To a large
extent it was the people of the provinces the raya who maintained the
Ottoman system. They fed in their taxes and their skills, but at the same
time they benefited from the stability of the system, and from the freedom
of religious expression it allowed.
This account maps easily onto music. The Ottoman tradition of art
music, having forged its independence from earlier Islamic traditions, was
centred on the Court. It was an elite music, standing outside local ethnic
and religious conventions, but more than in Europe this central tradition,
while it remained separate from peripheral cultures, was constructed in
part from those cultures.54 In this it perfectly epitomised the Ottoman
system, at once highly centralised and a patchwork of nationalities and
lifestyles. Interestingly, it was just when the socio-political system was
beginning to weaken at the centre (broadly speaking from the beginning
of the eighteenth century) that Ottoman high culture entered its most cre-
ative phase, marked by a productive reciprocity of centre and periphery.
Where music was concerned, not only was the central tradition inclusive
of non-Muslim and non-Turk musicians (Jews, Greeks and Armenians
were prominent in its constitution, and were attached to the Court and
trained at the Royal school); what actually survives of this oral tradition in
notated form was largely due to musicians from the European periphery.
The later development of the tradition even down to basics of
organology likewise depended on imports, acquisitions and adapta-
tions from folk traditions and from the constituent regions of the empire,
especially the Balkans. In this respect the Roma played a crucial role, but
Greek and Romanian musicians were also important (the terms sirto and
longa, Greek and Romanian respectively, were widely adopted for rele-
vant dances, for example), and so were Sephardic Jews. In other words,
while the basic genres, scale systems and improvisatory devices belonged
to a wider Middle Eastern culture, elements drawn from a pre-Ottoman
musical practice were synthesised into something uniquely and centrally

53Ibid.
54This is discussed at length in one of Blent Aksoys essays in Aksoy 2008.
122 chapter five

Ottoman. The tradition then maintained its vitality in part through con-
stant infusions from peripheral cultures.55
Famously, of course, the empire declined, even as Western Europe
flourished. Modernisation may have been an economic necessity, but the
underlying structures could not easily be changed, and there is some irony
in the fact that the Tanzimat reforms served only to hasten the end. In
their nineteenth-century dialogues with the Great Powers the Ottomans
increasingly borrowed European discourses, including those ethnonational
discourses that were already shaping the thinking of Balkan elites. Even
as the forces of nationalism overwhelmed the empire, educated sectors
of Ottoman society were looking to Europe, aspiring not just to European
values, but to European fashions. The empire was increasingly sidelined,
its structures and values widely regarded as old-fashioned, indeed its very
survival dependent on mutual antagonisms among the Great Powers. By
the time we reach modern Turkey, Atatrk was outperforming anyone
in Europe in his contempt for the Ottomans, though he retained a reluc-
tant affection for their art and music (indeed, modern Turkeys need to
absorb its Ottoman legacy is a resonant topic in itself). The world of cul-
ture reflected these changes, but not in a straightforward way, for peoples
lives take time to register political change, and cultural continuities often
play a compensatory role.
Three points might be noted. First, the music of heterodox Islam was
forced underground in Turkey in the late 1920s, and the Sufi tekke-s closed.
Significantly, music continued in the tekke-s of the Balkans, however,
though these were more often part of the Bektai and other orders than
the Mevlev, with which Ottoman art music has been closely associated.
Second, Ottoman popular music music caf traditions in the eastern
Balkans, and various hybrid genres in the western Balkans continued
to thrive after the collapse of the empire, so that in this respect the Otto-
man legacy remained active. And third, the music of the western classical
tradition, already high-status in parts of the western Balkans, increasingly
permeated Turkey itself, a process that had begun in the nineteenth cen-
tury but accelerated in the early twentieth.
Finally, and again briefly, how did the Balkans look from the Balkans?
It is an impossibly generalised question, even in relation to those com-
munities of social and intellectual elites who might have thought to ask it.

55An interesting inversion of this is the unusual phenomenon of a Turkish musicolo-

gist writing about the Balkans: See Gazimihal 1937.
 centres 123

Implicated in the question is another: how did the world beyond look
from the Balkans? Ivo Andri, in The Days of the Consuls, conveys some-
thing of the stoic hostility with which silent Bosnia viewed the meddlers
from without, whether they were Turks or Franks.56 However, the irony
is that attempts to celebrate our own, as distinct from a foreign, culture
drew heavily on premises bequeathed from without. We are back to the
opening propositions of this chapter. At times it really does seem that this
region is for ever fated to enter history on the back of other histories, as
a kind of adjunct to, or alternatively in resistance to, Central Europe or
the Ottomans.
With the demise of the empire, the tendency was to block out the Otto-
man years completely and then to replace Balkan identities with national
identities. For historiography, including the historiography of culture, the
result was a series of discrete ethnonational histories. Our own became
synonymous with the nation. There were interesting, but unsustained,
attempts to invert some of these categories, as in the Zenitist movement
in literature and art, whose founder Ljubomir Mici demanded a bal-
kanisation of Europe. But the more serious part of this enterprise was, as
Miodrag Maticki argues, precisely an attempt to overcome the opposition
between our own and foreign.57 More to the point, in our present age,
with Occidentalism on the critical agenda, it has been possible for critical
theorists from the Balkans to investigate this topic afresh. Rather than
making do with the Balkans in the gaze of others, we can now make
room for a Balkan-instigated concept, now indeed a major publication,
Balkan as Metaphor.58

56Andri 2003c.
57Maticki 2006.
58Bjeli and Savi 2002.
 PART TWO

HISTORICAL LAYERS
10.Christmas celebrations in Topola, umadija, pre World War II. The men pre-
pare to collect ritual oak branches. Traditionally the priests and the families burn
the branches on Christmas Eve to invoke sunlight and heat for the coming year.
Courtesy of the Archive of the Foundation of King Peter I Karaorevi,
Topola.
11.A photograph of the Serbian composer Ljubica Mari (19092003) taken in 1933.
Courtesy of the Archives of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
12.Iconic performance of Mozarts Requiem amongst the ruins of the National
Library in Sarajevo. Sarajevo Philharmonic, Sarajevo Cathedral Choir. Conduc-
tor Zubin Mehta, Soloists Jos Carreras, Ruggero Raimondi, Cecilia Gasdia, Ildiko
Komlosi. 19 June 1994.
Courtesy of the Sarajevo Philharmonic.

13.Folk music group from Bosnia and Herzegovina, with performers on zurna,
drum, accordion. Teanj, Bosnia and Herzegovina. mid-20th century.
Courtesy of the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
 14.Markos Vamvakaris and his Piraeas ensemble, Athens, 1968.
Courtesy of the Musical Folklore Archives of the Centre for Asia Minor Studies,
Athens.
15.A photograph of the Greek composer Manolis Kalomiris (18831962) from the
late 1950s.
Courtesy of the Manolis Kalomiris Society Archive.

16.Little-known photograph of the Romanian composer George Enescu (18811955)

Courtesy of Romanian Composers Union.
17.The Cluari from Vlaca at Moilor Fair (photograph Nicolae Ionescu).
 CHAPTER SIX

A MAKAM-ECHOS CULTURE

Grand Narratives

From the perspective of what we now call Western Europe, there were
two neighbouring Easts prior to the Balkan Wars. Islam carried the
East with it into Central and South West Europe, with historically fluid
boundaries as political fortunes ebbed and flowed. Christianity created a
further East, and in this case the geography was more clear-cut. The Bal-
kans remains to this day the heartland of Orthodoxy.1 There was no love
lost between Ottoman and Orthodox cultures. But the divide between
them was widened by Balkan nationalist agendas. These agendas effaced
from collective memory any elements of co-existence that had prevailed
in Ottoman South East Europe, for there were certain natural alliances
between Ottomans and Orthodox Christians, based on a shared antipathy
to the Latin, Catholic world and to emergent Enlightenment values; in the
early days of the empire Greeks and Turks lived cheek by jowl.2 But all
those areas of communion between the two worlds were suppressed by
the alignment of Orthodoxy to nationalist causes. And to understand this
process, we must turn first to Greece.
Inconveniently, at least for some cultural historians, Greece is an inte-
gral part of the Balkan peninsula. Even the most adventurous metaphori-
cal reading of the Balkans cannot quite ignore this basic geography. The
difficulty lies in accommodating the geography within pedigreed historical
narratives both of Western and of Southeastern Europe. There is a narra-
tive of Greece and the West, where Greece is viewed as seminal to Euro-
pean self-awareness, and is widely regarded as symbolically privileged,
ancestral to, and formative of, our core values. The eastern context for
ancient Greek culture is played down in favour of an idealised uniqueness
that can be claimed by the West.3 Greece becomes an oasis of civilisation

1 For an informal ethnography of todays Orthodox world, see Clark 2000.

2Kinross 1977, chapter 1. The term Byzantine was applied long after the event to
describe the Eastern Roman Empire.
3A polemical, albeit controversial, alternative view is offered in Martin Bernals three-
volume study Black Athena (Bernal 19872006).
134 chapter six

in a desert of barbarism, whether ancient Persian, Ottoman-Turkish or

East-European Communist, though, as Michael Herzfeld reminds us, there
is a price to pay for this: a perception that the modern nation somehow
fails to live up to European standards of statehood and culture that were
derived from putative Greek values in the first place.4
Then there is a narrative of Balkan hatreds. Here Greece is exempted
from a popular stereotyping of the wider region as alien and aberrant, an
ethnic cauldron where simmering ancient feuds would periodically boil
over into violence. It is easy to use such stereotypes to make sense of, and
to establish continuities with, the excesses of more recent Balkan history,
as though Great Power politics had nothing to do with it.5 But whichever
narrative we choose Greece as the fountainhead of European values;
ancient Balkan hatreds begetting modern Balkan hatreds the effect is to
divorce Greece from its (mainly Slavonic) Balkan neighbours. It is sepa-
rated off from the more general culture of South East Europe and acquires
in the process a unified national history, drawing together its ancient,
medieval (Byzantine) and modern phases.6
If our narrative of Balkan hatreds others a place, that of Greek origins
others a time. It separates the past (the ancient world) from the pres-
ent (the modern world) as though by some invisible caesura.7 It seems
we need to distance the past and divide it off from us in this way before
we can appropriate it, before we can create an autonomous present that
might be related to an autonomous past (quite when the past ends and
the present begins is a question here). Of its nature, the writing of history
contributes to marking off the past in this way. It is a way of registering
the centrality of memory, the principal means by which we make sense
of our selfhood, and of the relation between that selfhood and the social
world.8 Memory, individual and collective, has no need of words, however.
Words reify it, and stratify it. The fluid relation of past to present, where
the distant event can feel contemporary and the recent event remote, can
be prejudiced by words, and so too can a sense that the past lives on in a

4Herzfeld 1987.
5A widely-read presentation of this narrative is Kaplan 1993 (there is also a genre of
semi-autobiographical travel literature of this kind in the Balkans; see Winchester 1999).
In contrast, Glenny 1999 assigns due blame and credit to the Great Powers.
6The prototype for such histories is Paparrigopoulos 1925.
7Sahlins 1983.
8Eric Hobsbawm argues that the destruction of the social mechanisms that link ones
contemporary experience to that of earlier generations is under threat in todays world
(Hobsbawm 1995, 3).
 a makam-echos culture 135

dependent (rather than an autonomous) present, that it is ever with us,

central to our daily lives.9
Yet the written text has distinct advantages, not least because it offers
us protection, prestige and power. There are the comforts of classification,
keeping at bay a disordered present; there are the pleasures of analysis,
of sifting and dissecting, of supposedly demystifying the world;10 there is
the promise of access to privileged knowledge; and above all there is the
freedom to shape the past to our specifications. One effect of elevating the
Greeks was to obscure alternative stories, including stories of other liter-
ate cultures in the eastern Mediterranean and the greater Middle East.11
Narratives of music history are embedded in all of this. One is a story of
oriental infection. A foreign element, dangerous but seductive, was trans-
ferred to Europe by the Turks as the Ottoman Empire reached westward.
This story is part and parcel of the narratives of national identity that
developed throughout the Balkans in the nineteenth century.12 Some-
thing pure and natural, essentially European and preferably mono-ethnic,
was corrupted, and the factors involved are specific. There is an Otto-
man instrumentarium: those non-European musical instruments that
are widely found in the hybrid cultures of Ottoman territories in Europe.
There is a vocal style characterised by nasal voice production, wide vibrato
singing, and an elaborate improvised ornamentation circling around key
scale steps. There are asymmetrical rhythms. And there is the so-called
Hicz tetrachord, whose augmented second, albeit in equal temperament,
has been widely read as a signal and symbol of the Orient, mainly through
innumerable European appropriations.
Yet it is not obvious that any of these features can be attributed exclu-
sively to Ottoman influence. The organology of ancient and traditional
cultures suggests that there were long-standing commonalities in the
nature and function of musical instruments across a much wider circum-
Mediterranean region, embracing North Africa, the Levant and the east-
ern Balkans. The same goes for vocal idioms and rhythmic cycles. And as
for the Hicz tetrachord, this is present in the plagal second echos within
Orthodox chant, whether medieval or post-Byzantine. The form of this we

9De Certeau 1988.

10The corollary of Max Webers progressive rationality is a disenchantment (or demys-
tification) of the world. Musical instantiations are discussed in Weber 1958.
11 Dimitris Kitsikis has argued for a Greco-Turkish common space (Kitsikis 1995). As
yet this book has not been translated from Greek, but it has been discussed at length in
zkirimli and Sofos 2008.
12See Milin 2008 for a view of this in relation to Serbia.
136 chapter six

recognise today may or may not have predated the Ottoman Empire; so
far as I am aware, there can be no certainty either way.13 But in any case,
rather than lining up Greece and the West in opposition to Ottoman tra-
ditions, one might speak of an older, more general culture of the eastern
Mediterranean and Middle East, a culture of which Greece was a part.
A related narrative of music history describes ancient Greek traditions
as formative not only of European music, but also of Ottoman music. It
proposes continuity between ancient Greek traditions and Byzantine rep-
ertories, which were in their turn the immediate ancestors of Ottoman art
music. It further notes that the music theory of the ancient Greeks was
transmitted in large part through Arab-language scholarship, by which
route it reached both medieval Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire.
The Ottomans then neatly closed the circle by transferring these ideas
back to modern Greece. As presented here, the narrative is reductive to
the point of caricature, but even this brief outline is enough to indicate
how the singularity of Greece is again emphasised.
The continuity narrative was widely adopted by Greek musicologists,
notably Constantinos Psakhos,14 but its influence has been more perva-
sive than this. It is certainly striking that distinguished articles on ancient
Greece and on Byzantine chant in the New Grove Dictionary contextualise
their topics more-or-less exclusively in relation to western music. Thus
the reception of Greek theory in the West is discussed in some detail, but
synergies with Persian and Arab theory are largely ignored. Likewise, par-
allels between Byzantine and Gregorian chant are discussed, but there is
little hint that Byzantine echoi might have any connection whatever with
Arab maqm-s or Ottoman makam-s.15 Only in a separate article on echos,
first published in the 1980 edition, is there a hint that some such con-
nection might exist. It has also been suggested, writes Milo Velimirovi,
that the concept of Echos strongly resembles the Arabic Maqm in its use
of formulaic patterns. Such points need further study before the formula-
tion of principles common to both musical cultures can be attempted.16
Already in his pioneering studies of Arab music, Henry George Farmer
separated out the independent systems of Arab, Persian and Byzantine

13See Dragoumis 1966 for a comparison of Byzantine and Neo-Byzantine repertories,

with clear implications for continuities.
14Psakhos was of major significance for his establishment of a Department of Byzan-
tine music within the modernised Athens Conservatory in 1904.
15Matheisen 2001; Levy and Troelsgrd 2001.
16Velimirovi 2001. A more adventurous approach to the topic is taken by Powers in
his contributions to Powers et al. 2001.
 a makam-echos culture 137

musical cultures, and later scholars have further differentiated them.17 But
the differences are articulated mainly in Books of music theory, whose
relationship to praxes was by no means one of straightforward congru-
ence. Whatever the differences in scales, modes and rhythms, interactiv-
ity between Arab and Persian traditions is a matter of historical record;
indeed many of the theorists were themselves of Persian extraction, even
if Arabic was the unifying language. Suffice it to say that historians of Near
and Middle Eastern music commonly refer to the development of medieval
pan-Islamic musical practices, covering an extensive geographical range,
in the terms of a single Great Tradition, linked with varying degrees of
specificity to the music practiced in ancient oriental civilisations.18
It has been less conventional to associate Byzantine sacred repertories
(and we may include here the music for Christian rites in Georgia, Arme-
nia and Syria, and even Egypt and Ethiopia) with this Great Tradition.
The tendency has been to make a clean separation between Islamic and
Christian musical cultures. Naturally there is a solid basis for this separa-
tion; it would be surprising if the spread of Christianity had not resulted in
distinctive and specialised repertories. But within the complex and com-
peting musical rites associated with the Christian Church in Syria, influ-
ences from Persian and Arabic traditions are now widely acknowledged,19
just as in Islamic Damascus, in the time of the Umayyads and even more
under the Abbasids, we know that musicians played and sang Byzantine,
as well as Arab and Persian, music.
In his Ichos und Makam, published in 1994, Ioannis Zannos reinforces
and generalises this point, drawing on medieval sources to establish that
Byzantium contributed to the lingua franca of the Great Tradition.20 The
orientalised Hellenism of Byzantium, in other words, was of distinct rele-
vance to Arab and Persian musicians (men such as Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahn
studied Byzantine repertories), just as in a later period Ottoman art music
proved to be important for post-Byzantine Orthodox traditions. Greek
musicians from Asia Minor were very familiar with makam. They treated
Ottoman art music as a secular counterpart to church music: witness the
existence of Ottoman works in Byzantine notation, church compositions

17Farmer 2001 (1929). See also Farhat 1990 and Feldman 1996.
18Shiloah 1995.
19For suggestive similarities, homophonies [and] processes of toponymic assimilation
between the Byzantine and Ottoman worlds, see Balivet 2004. See also Balivet 1999 and
Jeffery 1992.
20Zannos 1994.
138 chapter six

with explicit references to secular music in their titles, and lists made by
Greek (Phanariot) musicians of the eighteenth and early nineteenth cen-
turies detailing the relation between echoi and makam-s.21 Such reciproc-
ity within a cosmopolitan culture makes for a more convincing historical
description than accounts of a straightforward genealogical descent from
ancient Greece via Byzantium to the Ottoman Empire.22
Before introducing two repertories that have reverberated across the
Balkans, it will be worth commenting on yet another grand narrative of
music history, by no means confined to the Balkans. According to this
narrative, music history describes a progression from simple to complex
forms. It may be explained in evolutionary terms (a kind of aesthetic
Darwinism) or in the terms of an increasing rationalisation of resources
(as described by Max Weber), and it may and in earlier times almost
always did include some linkage to ideas of aesthetic value. Decon-
structing this narrative is hardly a challenge. We need go little further
than the acknowledgement that there are different qualities of complex-
ity, and that it is risky to generalise criteria drawn from a single musical
culture.23 Yet the covert influence of this thinking lingers on, not least in
the tendency to equate oral traditions with simplicity and written tradi-
tions with complexity.
Leo Treitler warns us against separating these categories too cleanly,
arguing that we need to break down the oral/literate dichotomy and to
make explicit the tacit assumptions of the paradigm of literacy wherever
they operate.24 Thus the products of literate traditions, usually associ-
ated with composers, works and complexity, still depend heavily on oral
transmission, and on a body of performative insight that is largely unwrit-
ten. And conversely, the fact that a composition does not exist in notated
form, but lives rather in the minds of performers, does not disqualify it
as a work, and as complex. There are resonances here not only for art
music from several cultures outside the West, but also for so-called folk

21 Eugenia Popescu-Judetz reminds us that Cantemir studied in the Greek Patriarchal

Great School (Popescu-Judetz 1999). It was customary for Phanariot collections to be
ordered by makam-s rather than choi. For a case study of correspondences, see Plem-
menos 2006.
22There is little evidence to suggest that the musical treatises of antiquity were known
in any kind of detail by Byzantine musicians. The translation and transmission of those
treatises in the Arab-speaking world towards the end of the first millennium represented
an independent scholarly enterprise.
23Garnett 1993.
24Treitler 1986; see also Treitler 1974.
 a makam-echos culture 139

music. Leaving aside the intervention of the collectors (who often had
their own agendas, political and otherwise), we may note with Alan Mer-
riam that items of culture do not simply appear out of nowhere; there
must be contributions from specific individuals, whether these contribu-
tions can or cannot be pinpointed after the fact of composition.25
Treitlers paradigm of literacy may also refer to the perils of a retro-
spective fallacy, where we read back from techniques and principles asso-
ciated with a European notated tradition (at what is taken to be a defining
stage of its development) to earlier forms of that tradition, including and
this is Treitlers particular interest church chant. The classification of
chant in relation to other musical repertories requires careful handling.
Peter Jeffery has drawn our attention to the tripartite classification pro-
posed by Johannes de Grocheo around the year 1300, roughly translatable
as folk, church and art.26 It is clear from Jefferys account, moreover,
that Grocheo classified repertories not just in terms of genres, forms and
materials but in relation to the use made of them. This surprisingly mod-
ern, Chartier-like criterion of social utility, can lead to interesting inver-
sions of categories such as elite and popular, allowing for the different
meanings such terms carried back then.27
Then or now, it is clear that neither folk music nor art music can be
regarded as entirely stable categories.28 The intriguing aspect of Grocheos
classification, however, is his separation of church music, meaning Gre-
gorian chant, from both of these. Chant, in other words, occupied for
Grocheo a kind of middle ground between folk music and art music, both
of whose exponents have tended to make claims on it. This tripartition
carries considerable conviction. Church chant is not, of course, an evolu-
tionary stage taking us from one category to the other. Nor need there be a
hierarchy of value. Rather we might think in terms of layers, each unfold-
ing separately but often in close mutual dialogue. And finally, we should
note that although Grocheos model refers to music in Western Europe
(the chant is Gregorian), it is no less applicable to Orthodox repertories
in the Balkans.
I will shortly move directly to church music and art music, the second
and third of Grocheos layers. But it will be worth offering a brief comment
here on the first layer, comprising those traditional repertories that have

25Merriam 1964, 166.

26Jeffery 1992, 8586.
27Chartier 1988.
28For a detailed examination of this very interesting issue, see Gelbart 2007.
140 chapter six

engaged and addressed very broad segments of the (often non-literate)

population. Both church chant and art music drew freely upon demotic
music. In the case of early Christian chant, any such transfer would have
been achieved through a mixture of osmosis and simple borrowing, and
it allowed for movement in the other direction too. Synergies between
church chant and demotic music are very marked in Greece in particular,
and in the hands of Simon Karras the latter was effectively drawn into an
explanatory theoretical system based on the former. An osmotic relation-
ship no doubt also describes the incorporation of traditional music into
the practice of Ottoman art music.
With European art music, on the other hand, the transfer came to
involve a more self-conscious appropriation, especially in more recent
times. From the early nineteenth century onwards, this was often moti-
vated by the Herder-inspired ideology with which folk music was increas-
ingly freighted. Even today, when the term folk music is usually replaced
by the more neutral traditional music, this ideology is hard to expunge.
It goes some way beyond the rhetoric of authenticity, mono-ethnicity and
pastoral integrity that supposedly separated rural folk music true folk
music from urban popular music to embrace a powerful myth of atem-
porality, a reassuring but questionable belief that prior to the sea-changes
of modernity there was a static repertory of folk music that had existed in
much the same form for centuries. Early recordings are characteristically
privileged here as documents that are presumed to inscribe some sort of
primary state of the music in question rather than a particular stage of its
evolution.
In reality, it seems more likely given the nature of oral transmission
that traditional music in the wider region would have been subject to a
process of very gradual change, on the principle of Chinese whispers. It
is hard to track the history of such repertories, but we can at least claim
that there were many common traits among the diverse idioms of tradi-
tional music spread across a very broad geographical area that stretches
from North Africa across to the Middle East and into the Balkans. It is
enough to remind ourselves of some of the instruments we encountered
in Part 1. Organologists tell us that many instruments with eastern asso-
ciations were familiar in the Balkans well before the Ottoman conquests.29

29Among numerous organological studies from the region one might cite Alexandru
1956; Atanasov 1977; Anoyanakis 1979; Sokoli and Miso 1991; Pejovi 2005. Detailed investi-
gations into the instruments of the Byzantine era are documented in Maliaris 2007.
 a makam-echos culture 141

They go by different names, but the long-necked lute known as tambura

or tamburica in the Balkans is found all over the wider Balkan-Anatolian
region (indeed far beyond it), as is the short-necked oud [outi], the zither
(kann [kanonaki]), the kemne (later replaced by violin in the Balkans),
the flute known as ney, the darbuka, and the zurna-tapan ensemble dis-
cussed earlier in relation to Thrace. And the list could be extended to
include instruments associated with rural settings: the gajda, floyera and
kaval.
It is apparent from ethno-organological research that there were simi-
larities in the construction and function of instruments resulting from
the endless migrations of herdsmen and craftsmen, as well as from the
peripatetic trading of a merchant class. It is also clear that multiple differ-
ences arose when instruments were acclimatised to the needs of particu-
lar cultures (not least because musicians and craftsmen in rural settings
would look to home-grown materials). All this could be, and indeed has
been, subject to close analysis. But the main point to make here is that
it is much too simplistic to account for the traditional instruments of the
Balkans in terms of Ottoman legacy. Like various kinds of folk dance (cir-
cle dances, line dances and sword dances), like epic song accompanied by
some form of stringed instrument, and like the long songs and laments
sung by women, they are better understood as part of an older stratum of
music-making common to the wider Balkan-Anatolian region.
This began to change with the end of Ottoman rule and the encroach-
ment of western traditions and values. It was not just modernisation but
the related growth of a nationalist ideology in the nineteenth century that
led to the fragmentation of common practices in the traditional music of
the Balkans. In particular, national cultures promoted and valued western
harmonisation in the presentation of traditional music, and thus changed
the character of that music from an essentially monophonic or hetero-
phonic repertory with an unequally tempered modal basis, and a supple
and often intricate rhythmic organisation, into something more imme-
diately recognisable as todays folk music. The tendency of some Balkan
scholarship has been to view much of this through the wrong end of the
telescope, attributing to the Ottoman ascendancy qualities that were indig-
enous to the wider region, perhaps stretching back in one form or another
to an ancient world whose practices were made accessible to theory by
the Greeks, but which were by no means unique to classical Greece.
This is not a crude argument for survivalism. It is obvious that studies of
folklore and classical antiquity are easily colonised by nationalist agendas,
generating continuities in time that complement imposed homogeneities
142 chapter six

in space.30 And frankly it would hardly be sensible to deny Ottoman influ-

ences on the traditional music of the Balkans. But we may still suppose
that there were regional continuities, elements that remained invariant
even as other elements changed around them, for the past is both a for-
eign country and a few handshakes away. Despite the constant interac-
tivity between the different traditions of the eastern Mediterranean, and
the remarkable degree of regional specificity, it seems likely that there
were common underlying structures stretching back a very long way.
Such claims are bound to be controversial, but it is at least suggestive
that specific studies of the pitch and rhythmic patterns associated with
particular places suggest connections between layers of traditional music-
making in some isolated communities today and music-making in the
ancient world.31

Byzantine Reflections

Since relevant notations did not appear until close to the end of the first
millennium, and diastematic notations later still, our knowledge of the
sacred music of early Christian communities cannot be certain knowl-
edge. Nonetheless, the hypotheses entertained by chant scholars are per-
suasive and evidence-based, even if the evidence is indirect. It seems likely
that the chant developed by communities in the eastern Roman Empire
for the recitation of liturgical texts, especially the psalter, drew eclecti-
cally from a wide range of traditional (including sacred) repertories from
the Middle East. Early forms of Aramaic-Syriac Christian music, together
with Jewish domestic rituals, may well have been influential in the forma-
tion of this chant. It developed in rural often desert monastic settings
as well as in the cathedrals and churches of the cities, and its centres of
gravity shifted over a period from Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria to
Constantinople.
Exactly when and where the oktoechos modal system crystallised and
how this system relates to earlier forms of the chant remain subject to

30On this, see zkirimli and Sofos 2008, 87.

31 Katsenevaki 1998. It may be worth specifying here just one example from Katsene-
vaki, the survival (as she sees it) of the enharmonic genus in the rural communities of
north Pindus, despite the widely- and correctly-held belief that it declined among profes-
sional musicians. Katsanevakis comparative study of repertories in over a hundred villages
in the area allows her to note both commonalities and variations, and this in turn enables
her to track developments not just spatially but also historically.
 a makam-echos culture 143

debate, but the transmission route conjectured by Peter Jeffery takes

us from origins in Jerusalem chant and by way of Syrian hymnody to
the Byzantine rite, with the eighth century a privileged moment.32 And
although there is some danger of retrospective misreading, it seems likely
that the echoi bore some relation to older modal practices associated with
non-Christian traditions: Greek, Hebrew and Arab. (Our understanding of
mode in this context naturally embraces much more than scale, incor-
porating structural hierarchies within the scale, associated melodic for-
mulae, and characteristic melodic direction). As with parallel traditions
in the West, the development of notation, occurring in several distinct
stages, had a stabilising and stylising effect, directing a semi-improvised
and formula-based practice towards the status of a composed repertory,
and one that played a special role within Orthodox spirituality as a model
in praesentia of the timeless perfection of paradise.33
From the time of the Schism (1054), this repertory was placed at the
service of an increasingly self-contained eastern church. The separation
from Rome was not expected to be permanent, and its initial effects can
easily be exaggerated. But hopes of reconciliation were firmly squashed
by the events of the Fourth Crusade and the sacking of Constantinople
in 1204, and from that point the gulf seemed harder to bridge, despite
the Council of Ferrara-Florence in 143839. The subsequent restoration
of the empire proved to be short-lived, but even as Byzantium declined
politically, its cultural influence and that includes its music remained
far-reaching, so that by 1453, when Constantinople finally fell to the Otto-
mans, there existed a rich and varied tradition of sacred chant that might
be related to a parent Byzantine tradition. Aside from the Greek-speaking
world, it embraced much of the Christian Middle East, including Syriac,
Armenian and Georgian practices, as well as Coptic and Ethiopian rites.
It was also a long-established presence in Romania and in much of the
Slavonic world.
The transfer of eastern Orthodoxy to Slavonic cultures had taken place
in two phases: the evangelising mission of Cyril and Methodius in the
mid-ninth century, and the importation of Christianity to Kievan Rus a
century later. In the process the texts of the liturgical books were trans-
lated into Old Church Slavonic, and at various points the melodies cut
to fit. From a fairly early stage Russian chant developed an independent

32Jeffery 2000.
33See Raasted 1985 on the formulaic basis of composition within these traditions.
144 chapter six

profile, eventually developing into the unique znamenny chant, but the
southern Slavonic chants remained fairly close to their Byzantine coun-
terparts. And although they were of course separated off from the sacred
music of the western Balkans, Croatia in particular for the divided
church was a marker of wider political and cultural divisions there was
almost certainly (as Svetlana Kujumdziewa suggests)34 a more open cul-
ture between east and west in the medieval period than conventional
wisdom would have it.
Even so, in the aftermath of empire, bridges to western culture and
these included early moves to harmonisation on the part of eastern
chant were undoubtedly damaged, arguably leaving the music of Ortho-
dox Christianity more open to influences from a surrounding Ottoman
culture. Although the old Irmologion all but disappeared after 1453, most
of the Byzantine hymnals remained in use. But they were supplemented
by new compositions, and they were subject to increasingly melismatic
improvisational practices that no doubt registered Ottoman influence
(Romanian scholars trace this influence to the late seventeenth century
in relation to their own psaltic chants).35 All the same, the tradition of
Orthodox music preserved its main defining characteristics during the
Tourkokratia through the faith and through the church. These two catego-
ries were not synonymous. There was a tension between them, and that
tension was heightened by the new political realities of a post-Byzantine
world.
The faith signals the Orthodox ideal of a universal kingdom of the
spirit. The archetypal Hesychast [from Hesychia: inner silence] will be
in the world but not of it, and will be informed by an intense spiritual-
ity, suspicious of reason and promoting transcendence through asceticism
and withdrawal. This ideal, increasingly at odds with a western Reforma-
tion and Enlightenment culture, was embodied in the monasteries, where
it had initially developed as a reaction against the politicisation of the
Church. It was the monasteries that kept Byzantine culture alive under
the Ottomans and preserved its musical heritage both in liturgical prac-
tice and through manuscript conservation. And since the faith invests in a
universal truth, the musical tradition supporting it should ideally remain
constant. One should not exaggerate this. Just as monastic and conventual
traditions were not all about withdrawal (the medieval establishments

34Kujumdziewa 2002.
35Ciobanu 1976, i, 10.
 a makam-echos culture 145

were among the prototypes of the modern town), so their music was not
unresponsive to wider contexts. But in principle it remained free from
the fickle dictates of contemporary styles. The monasteries of Mount
Athos stood for this Hesychast ideal in its purest form, and here national
variants of the chant were largely subordinated to a central Byzantine
tradition.36
Music history did not, of course, stand still. After the Fall of Constanti-
nople there was a decline of the written tradition, placing greater weight
on oral transmission and depriving chant scholars of information on an
evolving musical practice for a good century and a half. But towards the
end of the sixteenth century something began to move. Inter alia, the
modal practice changed, and although the chromatic system as such is
not of Ottoman origin, it is likely that some of the microtonal elements in
the echoi were indebted to Ottoman traditions. Along with these changes,
and perhaps responding somewhat to the powerful counter example of
Latin polyphony, a new and highly elaborate repertory of kalophonic
(ornate, melismatic) and composer-centred chant began to take shape,
culminating in a large production of manuscripts from the second half of
the seventeenth century onwards. The notational system for this reper-
tory was by no means precise, and as a result there was a wide diversity
of practice even within the same community. Indeed it was partly the
confusion caused by this, together with the influence of Enlightenment
thought, that led to the reforms of the so-called three teachers at the turn
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But before addressing that, we
should consider wider political questions.
As we move into the eighteenth century it becomes ever harder to
isolate church music from politics. Our gaze shifts from the faith to the
church, to the earthly politics of institutions, and that includes the catalytic
role played by Orthodoxy in empire- and nation-building programmes.
With these programmes, Orthodoxy, far from unifying the eastern Bal-
kans, became an agent of its division into nation states. Under Ottoman
rule the Greek patriarchate of Constantinople was assigned full jurisdic-
tion over the Orthodox millet, but its aspiration to control the entire East-
ern Church was thwarted by the ambitions of the Bulgarians and Serbs
to regain their autonomous churches. Against this background, church
music lent support to movements that increasingly assumed the aspect

36Hasluck 1924. For a modern study, looking inter alia at aspects of tradition, moder-
nity and Europe, see Lind 2012.
146 chapter six

of emergent nationalisms. For the Greeks, such movements found their

ideological grounding in i megali idea, not least because it implied a syn-
thesis of two distinct brands of Greek nationalism, the Byzantinism of the
Romaioi, nostalgic for the Empire and distrustful of the West, and the Hel-
lenism of the Greek Enlightenment, embracing modernity and celebrating
the legacy and continuing influence of the Ancient Greeks (Patrick Leigh
Fermor referred to an Helleno-Romaic dilemma).37
The history of the chant registers these conflicting positions. Thus
the spirit of Byzantium was preserved in the conservative chant tradi-
tions cultivated on Mount Athos, in the monasteries generally, and in
Constantinople. However, even these traditions succumbed in due course
to the reforming agenda of the three teachers. The reforms, part of a
more general opening out of Ottoman culture to the West, culminated
in the widely-accepted system of Chrysanthine notation, which lifted the
chant clear of the closed circles of private teaching, transferred it to the
classroom, and gave it both wider accessibility and greater uniformity.38
This involved eliminating redundant signs, simplifying the notation in
matters of rhythm, and greatly reducing the improvisational element by
writing out embellishments, at least in skeletal form. There was no radical
break in continuity between post-Byzantine and Chrysanthine music (the
impact on practice was not immediate, but the reforms were in the end
widely adopted),39 but there was an institutionalisation of the tradition
and its teaching, and a developing engagement of the chant with nation-
alist agendas. In the Greek world, these agendas culminated in the War
of Independence, following which the Greeks acquired a self-governing
church, effectively a state church.
Orthodox music from this point was increasingly appropriated by
the nations. Already in the late eighteenth century the Patriarchate had
regained control over the Orthodox community in the Balkans. Both
the Serbian Patriarchate of Pe, which had been reinstated in 1557, and
the Bulgarian Archbishopric of Ohrid, home to an exceptionally rich

37See Fermor 1966, 10615, including a seven-page list of contrasted characteristics,

including musical preferences! See also Kazantzakis 1965, 1678, where the idea of a
double-descended identity is discussed. The same case was later made in Herzfeld 1987.
38This rationalisation of Byzantine notation, institutionalised already in 1814, was codi-
fied in the Great Theoretic of Music of Chrysanthos of Madytos, published in Trieste in 1832.
See Romanou 1990.
39The Romanian territories were among the first to take them up, and it was in Bucha-
rest that the first printings of psaltic music were issued, on Greek texts. See Ciobanu 1976,
i, 15.
 a makam-echos culture 147

medieval literary tradition, were abolished at this time, leaving the way
clear for the forces of Greek nationhood. In the aftermath of the War of
Independence, an autonomous Greek church sponsored ambitious and
proselytising political and cultural programmes. So it is not surprising that
debates about the chant, common in the press of the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, were caught up in debates about the nation.
Post-Chrysanthine chant, itself distinguishable from older traditions,
had already been appropriated for the nation, though a more detailed
survey would do justice to a range of distinguishable regional traditions
(Smyrnean chant would be one). Increasingly the issue at the heart of the
debate was harmony.
There had been an incipient polyphonic practice prior to the Fall of
Constantinople, but this was stymied by the collapse of the empire. Later,
polyphonic settings made their way from the Greek diaspora in Europe
(especially Vienna), first to Crete, which was occupied by the Venetians
until the Ottoman annexation in the 1690s, then to the Ionian Islands,
where many Cretans took refuge and which belonged largely to the sphere
of Italian culture, and eventually to the Greek mainland.40 The Cretan
practice was really an oral tradition of harmonised chant that extended
back to at least the seventeenth century, and included a unique modal
system related to old Byzantine echoi. Something of this Cretan prac-
tice was also adopted in the Ionian Islands, though an independent poly-
phonic practice may have predated the Cretan presence there. In any case
the islands developed their own specificities, including (in Zakynthos)
mixed monophonic-polyphonic chants, and a specific form of three-voice
harmony. There were, in other words, various kinds of folk polyphony
in the island practices, often closely related to secular traditional music.
But nothing is straightforward in attempts to summarise these tradi-
tions. It seems, for example, that more established westernised versions
of the chant, associated with settings by Ioannis Sakellarides (18531938),
were also known in the Ionian Islands from the late nineteenth century
onwards.
On the Greek mainland, there was yet another model for the devel-
opment of a polyphonic practice. It was partly due to the demands of
Russian-born Queen Olga that Russian influences were registered in the
royal palace. Orthodox Russia was read by the Greeks in two quite dif-
ferent ways: on one hand as an important eastern bulwark against the

40Panagiotakis 1990.
148 chapter six

Catholic and Protestant West, all the more crucial in a post-Byzantine

world, but on the other hand, and because it had adopted harmony, as an
example of western-influenced progress in ecclesiastical music.41 Tradi-
tions of Ukrainian and Belorussian chant had already been westernised
(with staff notation and harmony) in the late sixteenth century, and when
these lands were joined to Russia almost a century later the official church
policy was to support polyphony. Only the Old Believers [Raskolniki] kept,
as they continue to keep, the tradition of znamenny chant alive, today
mainly in Baltic villages and in the global diaspora.
Polyphony took root more easily in traditions outside Greece. As we
noted in chapter three, Ukrainian polyphony impacted on Serbian tradi-
tions, culminating in the liturgical settings of Stankovi and Mokranjac,
which in later years supplanted existing oral traditions of monophonic
chant as the national church music of Serbia. Byzantine roots were still
evident in the Mokranjac tradition, of course, but at the same time it
evolved into something entirely distinctive. In the main, this occurred
well into, if not after, Mokranjacs lifetime. Not only was the earlier chant
more enduring than has been thought; it survived as a relatively continu-
ous tradition in the Hilandar monastery on Mount Athos, and has come
into the foreground again in recent times. There were parallels in Bulgaria,
where Dobri Hristov (18741941) and others claimed an independent tra-
dition evidenced by the discovery of Bolgarski rospev [Bulgarian chant]
in Russian manuscripts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (their
significance has been contested), and where harmonisations similar to
those of Mokranjac were cultivated. The wider Bulgarian practice had in
any case diverged from that of Greece, following conflicts with the Greek
patriarchate back in the 1860s. These conflicts culminated in the estab-
lishment of a Bulgarian Exarchate, and the nationalist tendency to propri-
etorship over repertory was further intensified after the liberation.
Such, then, was the background to those late nineteenth-century
debates in Greece. The general Greek practice was monophonic chant
with ison [drone], but in the last two decades of the century polyphonic
choirs established in Athens met with some success, and this further
fuelled the debate. The points of dispute were fourfold. First, they were
doctrinal. Does the new music corrupt a sanctioned truth; or is it a neces-
sary adaptation to the contemporary world? Second, they were about the
perceived Greek character of the chant. Here the debate focused on the

41Filipoulos 1997.
 a makam-echos culture 149

need to preserve the chant from corruption from east as well as west, a
point that exercised Sakellarides in particular, but not only him; in 1881
Patriarch Joachim III established a committee to systematise church
music, cleansing it of every foreign element,42 and in the 1890s com-
plaints about the nasal singing coming from the East were commonplace.
Third they were about origins: familiar constructions of the nation bridg-
ing ancient Greece and Byzantium. And fourth they were about musical
integrity. How should one harmonise the intervals of the Byzantine echoi
within a western rational system?
As the argument rolled on, the issue of national character moved centre
stage, though again this could be presented in very different ways. Should
the purity of the chant, and of the national character, be preserved from
foreign elements? Or should musical progress be embraced as a welcome
sign of national progress, of the Europeanisation of Greece? And tied into
this debate was the ancillary issue of a developing competition between
Athens (rapidly expanding from not much more than a small town in the
early nineteenth century) and Constantinople for the place of the true
capital of Hellenism. This, then, was the tightrope walked by Byzantine
chant. Both western polyphony and eastern music, depending on the cir-
cumstances, might be renounced or embraced for the preservation of this
fictitious balance. What started as a musical debate very quickly became
an essential part of a cultural debate whose motivation was the formation
of a Greek national identity.
The gathering support for polyphonic music as the century turned was
part of the increasingly influential belief that Greece should represent a
kind of model synthesis of East and West. As noted earlier, a key figure in
this musically was Ioannis Sakellarides, who occupied key teaching posi-
tions in Athens and was thus in a position to proselytise for his wester-
nised settings of the chant.43 But in the end the tide turned, and polyphony
was not to be the way forward for church music. Interestingly it is only
through the Greek diaspora to North America that the Sakellarides tradi-
tion lives on today. Harmonisation was not abandoned, of course. One
leading composer of art music, Emilios Riadis (18801935), an important

42Romanou 2006a. Romanous main concern in this article is with the fascinating
organs constructed in the 1880s and again in the 1920s (by Constantinos Psakhos) with
tunings designed for Byzantine Echoi.
43A separate issue was the translation of harmonised church music to the concert plat-
form, something much developed in Serbia and Bulgaria, but also cultivated in Greece. As
Katy Romanou points out (Romanou 2006a), there was a larger issue here about building
a national school on the foundations of Greek-Byzantine music.
150 chapter six

figure in the development of the so-called national school, turned to the

liturgy and contributed his Cherubic Hymn. Then, rather later, the com-
poser Michael Adamis (19292013) developed harmonic settings that work
outwards from inherent characteristics of the chant to find a multi-voiced,
often complex and modern language that has deep roots in the Byzantine
tradition. But for the most part, and despite an enormous diversity of local
practices, monophonic chant (essentially an eighteenth-century tradition
though developed in various ways since) held fast in Greece.
In Bulgaria, on the other hand, Petar Dinev (18891980) built on Dobri
Hristovs example, exploring polyphonic idioms that blend Byzantine-
Bulgarian traditions with Russian styles in creative ways. In Romania,
where both Greek and Slavonic chants were cultivated until the intermit-
tent introduction of the vernacular in the eighteenth century, harmonisa-
tion was introduced in the late nineteenth century by Gavril Muzicescu
(18471903), and it was embraced even more willingly in the twentieth,
notably by Nicolae Lungu (190093), Ioan Chirescu (18891980), and
in more recent years Nicu Moldoveanu (b. 1940) and Viorel Munteanu
(b. 1944). The latest twist is in some ways the most remarkable of all: a
back to the (pre-reform) roots movement in both Slavonic and Byzantine
traditions. This takes the form of a return to a pre-Chrysanthine practice
in Greece itself, and to a pre-Mokranjac monophonic tradition in Serbia.
Even Russia has not been exempted from a movement that seems to
spell out with peculiar clarity just how far nostalgia has become a studied
project of our times.44

Ottoman Canons

The Conquest of Constantinople in 1453 was the culmination of a cen-

tury of Ottoman jihad in the Balkans. Using Gallipoli as their base, and
Adrianople [Edirne] as a European capital, Ottoman forces had already
acquired, or reduced to vassal status, the modern territories of Bulgaria,
Serbia, Wallachia and much of present-day Greece when the imperial city
was finally captured. As the new capital of an Islamic Ottoman Empire,
Istanbul underwent a rapid regeneration and transformation, restoring it
to something of its former glory; indeed there was some measure of conti-
nuity with its traditional role as the political centre of a theocratic empire.
Subsequent territorial expansion by the Ottomans reached its apex under

44Boym 2001.
 a makam-echos culture 151

Sleyman I in the sixteenth century, and by the time of Sleymans death

in 1566 the empire embraced a solid block of European territory with a
northern border that enclosed most of Hungary, much of modern-day
Croatia, and (as vassal clients) the Romanian principalities.
The line was held to the north by the Habsburgs and Romanovs, and to
the west by Venice, which at that time controlled much of Dalmatia, the
Ionian Islands, parts of the Peloponnese, and Crete. Then, for some two
centuries, and with the second siege of Vienna a key turning point, there
was a steady contraction of Ottoman territory as the Habsburgs reclaimed
Hungary, Transylvania and Croatia, prior to the national independence
movements of the nineteenth century. In other words, there was a core
area of Ottoman-controlled land in the Balkans for more than five centu-
ries, while around the edges of this core there were territories that either
came under Ottoman rule for relatively short periods, or (in a few cases)
alternated between Habsburg and Ottoman rule.
We noted that the organisation of non-Muslim communities in the
empire was based on millets, determined by religion rather than ethnicity.
And given the relatively laissez-faire approach to local governance by the
Sublime Porte, these millets were able to foster distinctive cultural identi-
ties among their peoples, as well as enjoying considerable political power
and influence. The Orthodox community constituted by far the largest of
them, with Greece and Romania (at various times including Transylvania)
subject to the Patriarchal seat in Istanbul, while Bulgaria (together with
present-day Macedonia) was subject to Ohrid, and Serbia (together with
present-day Montenegro) to Pe. In other words, Orthodoxy, whether
Greek or Slavonic, was able to generate its own cultural world in the post-
Byzantine Balkans, including a liturgical life enhanced by singular musical
traditions in the monasteries and churches scattered across the empire.
These traditions were anything but sealed off from the (Ottoman)
world around them. But it is rather obvious all the same that, against
this background, Orthodox repertories maintained a distinctive profile.
Much the same could be said of traditional music across the Ottoman-
controlled Balkans. No doubt there were deep-rooted links between agrar-
ian communities, stemming from ancient layers of music. But we might
nonetheless differentiate between the overlapping traditions including
some Turkish-language folk music of the southeastern core (Rumelian)
region, and the music of the western Balkans.45 Rural communities in

45Just what can be meant by Turkish folk music, and its relation to Turkism, is dis-
cussed in Stokes 1992, 2049.
152 chapter six

these western areas were touched only tangentially by the imperial pres-
ence; rules were imposed, but there was relatively little contact with either
the officials or the cultural practices of the ruling dynasty, other than the
local Pasha. Ottoman musical influences were not significant here. What
really distinguished the isolated villages of the western Balkans musically
were their highly distinctive, largely autonomous repertories. The more
geographically isolated the region, the more singular the music.
The deepest cultural marks left by the Ottoman presence were to be
found rather in urban centres. Musically, the most widely acknowledged
influence until the early nineteenth century was that of the mehter bands
of the Janissary Corps (originally recruited through the devirme system),46
mainly because they were stylised by European composers in the famil-
iar alaturca idiom.47 Much has been written about these appropriations,
principally within a Saidian discourse of Orientalism, and in some cases
this has resulted in subtle reflections on the penalties, as well as the con-
viction, carried by Saids thesis, and in ways that carry wider messages for
musicology.48 There have also been easy assumptions about organology,
and especially about the influence of the mehterhne not just on Euro-
pean military bands, but on town and theatre bands, and on the emergent
symphony orchestra. It may be that some of these assumptions need to
be revisited. What is not in question, however, is the impact of the bands,
of which there were many scattered across the empire, with Roma promi-
nent in the ranks.
It is well attested in the writings of European travellers that during mili-
tary campaigns in the Balkans over several centuries (until the dissolution
in 1826 of the increasingly self-promotional and mutinous Janissary Corps,
at which point the military bands were Europeanised) this was a powerful
agent and symbol of war,49 though the mehter bands played a ceremonial
role in civilian life too.50 At the heart of the band was the ks [the rulers

46The forced recruitment of Christian youth for the military was a feature of the Otto-
man system in its early history, and one that could bring very real advantages to the youth
in question.
47See Popescu-Judetz 1996. Chapter 2 is entitled Mehter as an Act of Power and
Performance.
48Windschuttle 1999; Irwin 2006. Both authors argue that Said oversimplifies the
motives of Orientalist scholarship by aligning them with political (imperialist) agendas.
For a discussion of musical resonances, see Head 2000. Mary Hunter has suggested that
the alaturca topic was only used in Western art music while the Ottoman Empire still
constituted a threat, whether imagined or actual (Hunter 1998).
49For a description, see Dankoff 1990, 235.
50Ibid., 271. See also Dankoff 2004.
 a makam-echos culture 153

drum], accompanied by wind instruments such as the zurna, boru [bugle],

kurrenay [a kind of horn] and mehter whistle, as well as nakkare [small
kettledrums], cymbals and tambourine. The core sound, re-created after a
fashion in the band and standard performances at the Military Museum
in Istanbul today, has some similarities with the zurna-tapan ensemble
we noted in Thrace and found very widely across the region. And from the
late seventeenth century it was common and fashionable for European
courts to import not just the style, but also the instruments, and in some
cases the musicians too.
Two further categories of music associated with the empire left their
traces on the Balkans. They are religious music and classical music, closely
linked in practice by concepts and rituals pertaining to Sufi mystical tra-
ditions. Islamic religious authorities have traditionally been nervous of
music; indeed the admissibility, let alone the definition, of music was
as much at stake in the mosque as in the synagogue. Within Orthodox
Islamic musical practices there were two performance areas associated
with formal worship: the minaret, the site of adhn (Turkish ezn) [the
call to prayer], and the interior of the mosque itself, the site of tadjwd, or
Koranic cantillation [Turkish tilvet], a form of heightened learning of
prayers that was generally arhythmic in presentation, as well as of rhyth-
mic ilhi-s [simple Dervish hymns] for special Holy Days: for example, the
mevlt ceremonies dedicated to the birth of the prophet.
Koranic chanting followed specific rules, but strictly speaking it could
not itself be music. This is as much a theological as a musical issue. It could
not be music because it was the voice of God. Or rather, as it approached
the condition of music it was shifted to another heavily mediated dimen-
sion: mediated by the voice of humanity, by the hand of history. In reality,
as Walter Feldman has pointed out, the Ottoman tradition was less severe
about this than other Islamic cultures (it was based on relatively flexible
Hanafi Sunni beliefs), and was more inclined to see a continuum between
religious and secular forms. Thus, we might consider the various forms
of religious music designed to accompany the ceremonial and festive
occasions associated with Holy Days such as bayram-s or with snnet-s as
somewhere in the middle range of Feldmans continuum.51
Music and dance assumed greater significance in the rituals associ-
ated with Sufi confraternities. There are many forms of Sufism, of course,
and many forms of music associated with it: folk-popular in some Bektai

51Feldman 1996, 22. See also Kusi 1997.

154 chapter six

orders, more often classical in the Mevlev order. But in general the power
of music, provided there is an appropriate attunement (sam [literally,
listening as distinct from hearing]), is enlisted in support of meditation
and ecstasy, the two principal routes to effective communication with
God. Some of the most interesting metaphysical reflections on music are
to be found within the orbit of Sufi mysticism, and here Ottoman theorists
were heavily indebted to the Arab Systematists. Saf al-Dn was translated
into Turkish already in the fifteenth century by Abdlkadir Marag, and
as Popescu-Judetz points out, the Abdlkadir dynasty of theorists, and
indeed Turkish theorists generally in the fifteenth century, advanced inde-
pendent theory only tentatively and always with reference to validating
figures such as Saf al-Dn and Al-Frb.52
Categories such as the Ottoman mutlak (soundless) and mukayyad
(sounding), as employed by Abdlkadir in particular, can only really be
understood in relation to that earlier tradition, and in particular to Sufi
authors such as the twelfth-thirteenth century Andalusian Ibn Arab. The
sense is that sounding (rather than soundless) sam, the lowest stratum
of which corresponds very roughly to a Boethian musica instrumentalis, is
a stepping-stone to an inner hearing that is eventually free of music alto-
gether. At the same time, Ottoman theorists made some effort to bridge
the gap between such theories of listening and theories of creativity, not
least by stressing the Neo-Platonist orientation in some Arab writings
(again Ibn Arab), where considerable privilege is attached to human
creativity, allowing its capacity to transform objects (through himma [the
power of the heart]) into symbols of the divine, rather than simply rep-
resent them as part of a Platonic degenerative sequence. In other words,
divine creativity is perceived to be at work here in and through the human
imagination.53
Within the orbit of Sufism, there was a close relationship between such
speculative theory and the zikr [dhikr] the naming of God or remem-
brance of God rituals of the dervishes, through which union with God
was sought. This is especially intense in the case of the sem ritual, part of
the mukaabele ceremony associated with the Mevlev (Sunni) order, com-
monly found in the tekke-s [lodges or monasteries] of Anatolia and else-
where.54 Several Mevlev lodges (mevlevihne) were virtually schools of

52See the essay, Intertextuality in Turkish Musical Writings in Popescu-Judetz 1996,

6781.
53eraska-Kominek 1986.
54See the account given by Lady Mary Wortley Montague (Montague 1800, 1701).
 a makam-echos culture 155

music and poetry at the very least they were important meeting-places
for musicians and poets and the repertories composed for their rituals
fed into what is usually described as Ottoman classical music.55 Indeed
the musical traditions of the Mevlev order, centred on the multi-part
yn-s composed for the ritual, were closely related to those of classical
music, with the yn very roughly comparable to the classical fasil. It is no
surprise, then, that many of the leading Ottoman composers were them-
selves Mevlevs.
Following the conquest, Istanbul was the centre of Ottoman music, and
of Islamic music generally. The royal court, the intellectual and artistic
hub of the empire, was the leading patron, in that professional musicians
and instrument makers received a court salary, and music was taught
institutionally at the Enderun, the imperial school.56 But the tradition
was eventually widespread across the elite cultures of the empire, culti-
vated not least through the at homes of private teachers (mekhne-s).
All the same, it was some time before a truly distinctive Ottoman reper-
tory emerged historically. With no clearly defined tradition to inherit, the
Ottomans drew eclectically on existing styles, ranging from well-estab-
lished Persian traditions (it is worth remembering that the literate elite
were largely Persian speaking) to music from Ajerbazan, Armenia and
the Anatolian provinces, and the Byzantine Empire. The precise nature
of the transition from a pre-Ottoman Great Tradition to a distinctively
Ottoman music remains hazy, but there are concrete sources, and they
include notations as well as treatises. The transmission of key concepts in
the transition is often attributed to fifteenth- and sixteenth-century theo-
rists such as Yusuf bin Nizameddin and eyd. Major sixteenth-century
figures were the Crimean ruler, Gazi Giray Han (15541607), a poet and
composer of instrumental pieces, Hatib Zkir Hasan Efendi (1545?1622),
who composed mainly religious music, and the Sufi master Aziz Mahmud
Hdy (15411628).
Scholars seem to be in agreement about dating the early stages in
the crystallising of a singular Ottoman style obvious markers of which
included the adoption of Turkish texts, development of new musical forms,
changes in instrumentarium, and redefinitions of makam-s and usl-s to
the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Murad IV was a leading
patron of this era, supporting the traveller-musician Evliy elebi, as well

55Signell 2006.
56The Enderun was replaced by a more western-orientated school under Mahmud II.
156 chapter six

as composers such as Miskal Solakzde (d. 1658), Ama Kadr (d. 1650),
Yusuf Dede (d. 1670), Koca Osman Efendi (d. 1665), Kek Dervi Mustafa
Dede (d. 1683) and the Azeri etar Murad Aa (d. 1673). Mehmed VI also
supported music, and during his reign there were notable composers such
as Hafz Post (d. 1693) and Tazde Receb elebi (d. 1690), as well as
the Polish-born theorist Ali Ufk Bey [Wojciech Bobowski] (161075), who
produced historically important staff notations in his Mecmua-i Saz Sz
[Instrumental and Vocal Collection].
At that point, so it is argued, there almost certainly began an extended
period of consolidation, and in general detailed historical source materi-
als are exiguous after Ali Ufk Bey. There is a hiatus in the theoretical
record until the early eighteenth century, at which point the famous nota-
tions and treatise by Prince Demetrius Cantemir (16731723) initiated a
self-consciously new approach, set up in a kind of dialectical relation to
the old.57 The result, according to Popescu-Judetz, was a new theory of
Turkish music independent from Arab and Persian musical influence.58
What Cantemir really achieved was a special notational convention for
Ottoman music, differentiating it from antecedent Persian music, and his
notations effectively documented the tradition up to that point. As with
other such notations, they were a way of collecting and recording the
music, and were not intended as scores for performance.
That Cantemir was Moldavian was symptomatic of the tendency of the
tradition to draw widely on the provinces and on non-Turkish ethnici-
ties, including Phanariot Greeks, who were influential in Moldavia and
Wallachia, as also Jews and Armenians; there was constant immigration,
willing and otherwise, to Istanbul. Following Cantemir, further major
changes took place within the tradition. In the first place there was a pro-
liferation of new makam-s as well as some changes to the structures of
existing ones and a notable tendency towards compound makam-s; and
partly as a result of these changes the standard two-octave scale on which
the Great Tradition is based, was extended. In addition, there were fur-
ther alterations to the usl system of rhythmic cycles; there were changes
to the instrumentarium; and there were new compositional forms, includ-
ing the small-scale ark, and the development of the four-hne [section]
perev. Through all of this the extended classical or semi-classical fasil,
with its fixed sequence of vocal and instrumental forms dominated by the

57Wright 1992 and 2000.

58Popescu-Judetz 1996 and 1999.
 a makam-echos culture 157

tanbr and the ney (as described in the early eighteenth century by both
Cantemir and Fonton), remained the fundamental schema for concert
music performed at the meclis [reunion].59
It was suggested in chapter 5 that at the very period in which the socio-
political system was weakening at the centre (broadly speaking from the
beginning of the eighteenth century) Ottoman high culture entered its
most creative phase, and that this rising curve, together with continu-
ing processes of transformation, seems to have continued into the early
nineteenth century. This was the era of Selim III, the most famous of
the Sultan-musicians, during whose reign and at whose behest another
notational system Hamparsum Notation, based on the Khaz script of
the ancient Armenian Church was developed. Among the many lead-
ing nineteenth-century composers were Ismail Dede, the classicists Zeka
Dede (d. 1897) and Tanbr Ali Efendi (d. 1890), and the innovators Hac
Arif Bey (d. 1885) and Tanbr Cemil Bey (d. 1916), associated with the
so-called Romantic School.60 According to Walter Feldman, even those
versions of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century perev-s (an instrumental
movement that forms part of the fasil, following the introductory and
improvisatory taksm) that can be found in nineteenth-century sources
took on all the aspects of nineteenth-century compositions.61
The term composition here is used advisedly. That improvisation was
an important component of the Ottoman classical tradition in no way
detracted from the centrality of composition, whether or not the results
were deposited in print. Pieces were often designated first by usl, then
by makam and form, and finally by composer. As a result, we encoun-
ter this music today as a tradition of canonic works transmitted across
the generations from master to pupil (the so-called mek [lessons] sys-
tem). They were composed in the main between the eighteenth and the
early twentieth centuries, at which point, with the establishment of the
Turkish nation state, the tradition was suppressed for ideological reasons.
Ottoman classical music as performed today is, in other words, a recogn-
isable corpus within a defined historical period. And as such it was sum-
marised and re-theorised in relation to the Systematists as a kind of
post hoc rationalisation by the early twentieth-century theorists Rauf

59Fasils were also played at court by the mehter bands.

60Panagiotis Poulis writes about the construction of Tanbr Cemil Bey as an innova-
tor in Poulis 2005.
61 Feldman 1996, 413.
158 chapter six

Yetka, Suphi Ezgi and Sadettin Arel.62 It is by way of the so-called Arel-
Ezgi system, based on trichordal, tetrachordal and pentachordal genera,
that it is taught in Turkey today, following the rehabilitation of this music
in the 1980s.
While Ottoman classical music was associated initially with the royal
court, it soon established institutionalised performance traditions not
only in the tekke-s but also in the wealthy homes of Istanbul, and in major
Ottoman cities such as Bursa, Edirne, Izmir and Salonika. Yet subtle and
tricky questions arise, beyond the scope of this exposition, as to the sty-
listic borders of the tradition. What were its synergies with Turkic makam
traditions in Central Asia, for example? What were the links between Sufi
repertories in the Ottoman Empire and the music of neighbouring Safa-
vid Mevlevs? How far did the conventions of classical music percolate
through to less elite genres, or indeed itself draw sustenance from those
genres? How do we classify genres of popular dance and processional
music, or of light music and caf music, that were performed not only
by the numerous professional musicians of Istanbul (organised in guilds
and featuring prominently in all public festivities), but also by travelling
ensembles made up of Turkish Roma? These repertories too were based
on the makam-s and usl-s of classical music. Indeed for Ottoman theo-
rists they were often understood as a less complex and formalised species
of this classical music. The key distinction was that folk music was local,
whereas classical music was empire-wide.63
In any event the later nineteenth century witnessed significant changes.
The old complex forms lost ground to simpler lyric forms, and they were
also threatened by pronounced westernising tendencies that had been
instigated with the Tanzimat. There was a quest for simplicity (for some
Turkish musicologists that equates to a process of degeneration) in the
declining years of the empire, with smaller lyric forms such as the vocal
ark replacing the more sophisticated improvised gazel. There were com-
parable changes in instrumental music, as the old fasil performances were
replaced by simpler, more popular genres, including shorter versions of
perev-s (a development pioneered by Tanbr Cemil Bey). In the early
twentieth century the less sophisticated genres of Ottoman music, includ-
ing domestic repertory (ilhi-s and secular ballads), semi-classical music,

62The clearest exposition of this is found in Signell 1977. This includes an account of
the seminal article by Rauf Yetka.
63See Faroqhi 2005, for a discussion of this distinction within the Ottoman world.
 a makam-echos culture 159

and the popular music associated with the music caf were to be found
everywhere in the core Ottoman territories, not least those European ter-
ritories that had been substantially Islamised.
At the same time, western (alafranca) styles of popular music (and
for the social elites western classical music too) increasingly permeated
the soundscape of the empire. In short, just as an insistent oriental voice
lingered on in the Western Balkans, in the heartland of Europe (and it
has not fallen silent), so western traditions increasingly colonised the
core Ottoman lands of Asia Minor. In some places notably some of
the Aegean islands, and in particular Lesbos musical traditions liter-
ally fused together elements of Asia Minor traditions and western popular
music. But these are instances of a much more general condition. The ter-
ritory of South East Europe is located precisely at the crossroads of these
two musical worlds. The Balkans is a place of transit.
 CHAPTER SEVEN

EASTERN RECESSIONS

Allahu Ekber

It was a journey from the Adriatic coast to the mountainous interior that
first attracted me to this part of Europe in the late 1960s. Armed with a
short introduction in the series The Modern World a (then) plausibly
optimistic account of Yugoslavia by A.W. Palmer, still in my possession
I left the resorts and headed inland.1 The towns and villages of Bosnia
and Herzegovina made an indelible impression. There were the mosques
and minarets, but even more there was the ezn, the call of the mezzin,
not quite as in Istanbul, but still a perennial passport to a mythical east
and a mythical past for the western observer. Even today, with the sound
of Islam a familiar part of metropolitan environments, it feels strange to
encounter it in rural settings within Europe. Whether they are music or
not, adhn and tadjwd became part of an Arab-language soundscape in
South East Europe with the early Ottoman advances, and they remain so
to this day in those parts of the Balkans that retain numerically significant
Muslim populations.
Islamisation was facilitated by a policy of steady colonisation, with
Turkish settlements established along the major routes through Thrace,
Bulgaria and historical Macedonia. The initial settlers were Ottoman
officials and their retinues, together with soldiers. There was also some
agricultural settlement, as Anatolian nomads transferred stockbreeding
traditions to the eastern Balkans, and dervishes were translated from
ghazi warriors into timar-holders. But most of the settlement was urban.
Very often it would be the tekke that helped establish or further develop
urban communities, paving the way first to market place and then to
town, and allowing the dervishes to play a key role in the guilds or esnaf-s
of an increasingly oriental urban culture. Mark Mazower gives statistics
for Muslim populations in eastern Balkan towns for 1530 as follows: Lar-
issa 90%, Serres 61%, Monastir 75%, Skopje 75%, and Sofia 60%.2

1 Palmer 1964.
2Mazower 2005, 36.
 eastern recessions 161

In this way, the music of Islam entered the Balkans, partly transplant-
ing Anatolian traditions to Balkan soil, but partly allowing the Balkans to
participate in the formative stages of Ottoman traditions. The most prom-
inent sites of music-making in these early stages of the conquest were the
tekke-s. These Sufi lodges were significant in bedding down the Ottoman
presence in the Balkans, not least because they met the social as well as
the spiritual needs of local populations, and proselytised to people of all
faiths and ethnicities.3 They were established in tandem with the Otto-
man advances, and usually with official sanction, either in existing Chris-
tian buildings, in private houses, or in newly-built foundations, and they
undoubtedly helped Islam to penetrate local cultures, while at the same
time preserving its voice in adaptation to local languages.
Not only did music and dance play a role in the rituals of Sufi tarikat-s
[brotherhoods]; the formation of an Ottoman classical music tradition was
closely associated with the Mevlev order in particular (Mevlev rituals
foregrounded the reed-flute [ney], accompanied by kdm [kettle drums]
and zil [cymbals] right across the Middle East). In general the Mevlevs
were from the higher social classes and the urban intelligentsia; they were
men of the pen. They often had wealthy backing, and their educational
programmes in music and literature carried prestige. However, they were
less influential in the Balkans than in Anatolia, and were mainly confined
to educated circles in the cities. This may partly account for the fact that
Ottoman classical music remained the preserve of a small, elitist, and
mainly Turkish, society in the major urban centres of the Ottoman ter-
ritories in Europe.
It was familiar in some of the major towns of the eastern and southern
Balkans, but was never really adopted by Islamic society in Bosnia, despite
a Mevlev presence in Sarajevo.4 The key point here is that Bosnia was not
settled extensively. Indeed its Islamisation over a period of more than a
century begs a clear explanation. Noel Malcolm attributes it mainly to
the fractious competition between Catholic and Orthodox churches, as
opposed to a single, strong national church, as in Serbia or Bulgaria.5 But
arguably the strong Catholic background in Bosnia was a more telling fac-
tor, since for Catholics, as Ines Aeri points out, there was a major loss

3Michael Balivet argues that the most original phenomenon in the diffusion of Islam
in the Balkans is the essential role played by the dervishes (Balivet 1999).
4An impressive study of Islamisation in Bosnia is Aeri 2004. See also Hickok 1997
and Adanir 2002.
5Malcolm 1994.
162 chapter seven

of legitimacy under the Ottomans.6 The papacy was in effect removed

from the political world of the empire, whereas the Orthodox patriarch-
ate remained inside it and was if anything strengthened by an Ottoman
ascendancy.
More prevalent in the Balkans was the Bektai order, not least because
of its close links with the Janissaries, men of the sword. In general Sufi
orders were responsive to what Muslims took to be significant earlier
revelations of God, but for the Bektai synergies with Christian practices
were especially important, and this helped acclimatise Islam to the region.
The temporary ban on the Bektai order that followed the abolition of
the Janissaries in 1826 was the trigger for a major exodus of Bektai Babas
and dervishes to the Balkans.7 Almost a century later, Frederick Hasluck
recorded the results, researching the lodges in Bulgaria, Romania, Mace-
donia, Greece and Albania. He noted just how many had been destroyed
during the Balkan wars, and he also pointed out that although their true
centre of gravity remained the shrine of Hadji Bektash near Kirshehr in
central Anatolia, they had developed a large and important presence in
Albania.8
Albanian populations had been converted to Islam mainly in the sev-
enteenth century (as in Bosnia, there was a strong Catholic presence), and
there the Bektai instituted what was effectively an independent sect of
Islam.9 Elsewhere in the Balkans the Bektai remained a Sufi order, how-
ever. Their presence in Bosnia was relatively small, but in Macedonia, Bul-
garia and Greece they flourished, and like the Mevlevs they placed much
emphasis on music and dance. However the style of music in Bektai
rituals was rather different from that associated with the Mevlevs. The
Bektai did attract famous musicians, but they were drawn less to elite
traditions than to popular regional styles, and for this reason the music
used in their ceremonies took many different forms, was more populist in
orientation, and was thus a further force for the acclimatisation of Islam
to Balkan communities.

6Aeri 2004.
7The Bektai shaykhs are known as Babas.
8Hasluck 1929. The map of Bektai distribution in Albania at the end of Volume 2 is
instructive.
9I retain Bektai for convenience, though Albanians would have Bektashi. There is
an exquisite shrine at Kruja, near Durres, associated with the Bektai saint Sari Saltik, but
in recent years the Bektais have struggled to reassert themselves in Albania following the
rescinding of Enver Hoxhas ban on religion.
 eastern recessions 163

There is a diversity of practices among Sufi orders. So the characterisa-

tions offered here are broad-brush. It will be enough to describe briefly
four additional orders that had a significant presence in the Balkans. Two
of them, the Rifai and Halvetije, were prominent throughout the south-
ern Balkans during Ottoman rule, and they could hardly have been more
contrasted in constitution and character. Music and dance, of both cul-
tivated and vernacular character, played a part in the (sometimes vio-
lent) rituals of the Rifai order, once prominent in Kosovo and northern
Albania.10 There is a surviving tekke in Skopje that in its heyday attracted
eminent poets such as Jahja Kemal Beyatli and musicians such as Sheik
Sadeddin Sirri.11 In contrast, the beliefs and rituals of the Halvetije order,
second only to the Bektai in its size and distribution in the Balkans (it
were prominent in Bulgaria and Serbia), were closer to Orthodox Sunnite
traditions, and its music consisted mainly of simple, usually unaccompa-
nied, hymns.12
The other two orders, again contrasted in character, were especially
prominent in Bosnia. Like the Rifai, the Kadiri [Qadiri] order, which was
firmly established there by the late seventeenth century, placed a high
value on music and poetry, and its ceremonies were elaborate, including
solo instrumental forms and percussion accompaniments not just to the
prayers sung by the zakir (singer) but also to the Koranic readings. The
Nakibendi order, on the other hand, was associated with silent rituals,
and consequently found rather less place for music, or at least for musical
instruments, in its ceremonies. Its historical importance lay partly in secur-
ing Orthodox (Sunnite) Islam for urban centres in the Balkans. This order
was of key importance in Bosnia, where the largest number of tarikat-s is
Nakibendi, even today, but it is also prominent in Macedonia.
Surprisingly little has been recorded about the specifics of music in
the Balkan tekke-s. Apart from the tendency for national histories in the
region to blank out sustained discussion of Ottoman traditions, there
is a paucity of sources dealing with music. For the earlier stages of the
empire, up to the late seventeenth century, we must rely on the Ottoman-
insider accounts of travellers such Evliy elebi for insights into musi-
cal practices.13 elebis accounts of extensive travels across the Balkans

10Sheholli 2006, 401.

11 I am grateful to Aida Islam for educating me in these matters.
12There are numerous sub-orders of the Halvetije order, and several still function in
Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia today.
13Dankoff and Elsie 2000.
164 chapter seven

are fascinating precisely because they are undertaken from the Ottoman
perspective. In addition to providing evidence of the extensive Ottoman-
Muslim infrastructure in the region, including detailed, if unreliable,
listings of the mosques, han-s, medresa-s, hammam-s [bathhouses] and
tekke-s he encountered in his journey through Kosovo, northern Albania
and Montenegro, he speaks with delightful condescension about the cus-
toms of the Christian raya, in a neat inversion of the usual perspective of
Balkan travel literature.
elebis enumerations of the tekke-s in the Balkans are often second-
hand and widely thought to be over-estimates, but they are a valuable
reference point, and there is really nothing comparable until the anthro-
pological studies of the early twentieth century. He was himself a singer,
serving at various times as both Imam and Mezzin, and elsewhere in
his book of travels he is specific about musical practices at the homes
and courts of local dignitaries, listing the many types of song sung by the
Abdal Khan of Bitlis in eastern Anatolia, for example, together with the
extensive range of musical instruments in his collection.14 There is less
specificity about music in his accounts of Balkan travels, but the Book
does include some descriptions of local music and dance in Albania. They
include a memory of the dancing following a wedding party in Zharovina,
together with a description of mourning rituals in Gjirokastr. There are
also references to love songs he heard in Elbasan, and descriptions of the
Roma who were employed in the mehter bands.15
Even so, and despite an extensive account of the activities and writ-
ings of the Bektais, there is little about religious music in elebis writ-
ings, beyond a mention of the teaching of Koran melodies at a medresa
in Berat. In any case, soon after he traversed the length and breadth of
the empire, the Ottoman state distanced itself from the Sufi orders, in
a so-called anti-Dervish movement whose turn to piety and orthodoxy
resulted in intensified policies of Islamisation in the late seventeenth cen-
tury. The movement was not sustained, but it may partly explain why
subsequent accounts of Muslim music in the Balkans, from the early eigh-
teenth century onwards, tended to come from western rather than Otto-
man sources (a more obvious reason, of course, was the waning power of
the Ottomans following the Treaty of Karlowitz).

14Dankoff 1990, 99101. See also zergin 1972.

15See Shupo 2006, 14950 on some of the possible ambiguities here.
 eastern recessions 165

The many accounts by European visitors to the Balkans constitute a

second layer of historical description. They are often instructive, but they
invariably reveal institutional and personal prejudice. The characteristic
perspective is anti-Turkish, so that the fleeting glimpses we are afforded
into musical life tend either to ignore altogether or else to denigrate Mus-
lim practices. Dismissive comments on the music of the Ottomans now
become a commonplace of travel writing. A notable exception was the
remarkable Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who spoke Ottoman Turkish,
and whose letters offer us many insights into the social mores of the Otto-
mans, including the life of women. Written in 171618 but published a half
century later, they do not dwell at length on music, but they do make
reference to this anti-Turkish perspective. Montague seeks to qualify it,
however, and often reveals a genuine sympathy for and understanding of
the idiom. I suppose you may have read that the Turks have no musick,
but what is shocking to the ears, she wrote from Adrianopole. [...] I can
assure you that the musick is extremely pathetick (meaning here deeply
expressive).16
Later travellers were by no means convinced by Lady Marys advo-
cacy. An anti-Turkish rhetoric informs the many late-eighteenth-century
recorded accounts coming from men affiliated to the embassies, for exam-
ple, such as Sir James Porter, whose journals and diaries include much
about the religion and customs of the Turks, (Le Comte) Choiseul-Gouff-
ier, author of Le voyage pittoresque de la Grce (1782, 1809), and even Igna-
tius Muradgea dOhsson, who distanced himself from his own Ottoman
origins but went on to write a three-volume Tableau gnral de lempire
ottoman.17 And in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, the same rhetoric
surfaces yet again in a plethora of new writings by independent travellers
to the Balkans, notably W.M. (Colonel) Leake, (especially in his Travels
in Northern Greece of 1835),18 and Edmund Spencer,19 whose description of
the singing of the Turks (meaning the Muslims of Bosnia) as wearisome
and monotonous and of their musical instruments as equally primitive is
characteristic.20 A similar prejudice is found in Victorian authors such as

16 Montague 1800, 123.

17 Porter 1854; Choiseul-Gouffier 1782, 1809; dOhsson 1787, 1798, 1820. Moving on a gen-
eration, one might also mention the diplomat Andrew Archibald Paton, who wrote about
a visit to Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia in 184647; see Paton 1945 and 1949.
18 Leake 1835. For a comment on Leakes indebtedness to Montesquieus Spirit of the
Laws (1749), see Wagstaff 2004.
19 Spencer 1851.
20Quoted in Hadiselimovi 2001, 287.
166 chapter seven

John Gardner Wilkinson, and a generation later Arthur Evans, whose trav-
elogue was based on a walking tour of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1875, the
very year of the historic uprising in those territories.21
The list of such travellers is extensive. Very striking is the prominence
of women, especially in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.22
Vesna Goldsworthy has written with insight about such women, includ-
ing Edith Durham.23 Durhams agendas were those of the Victorian age,
but she was influential, including politically. Her observations of local life
and customs, especially in Montenegro and Albania, extended to music.
In describing the music at a post-supper gathering in Skreli, Albania, she
contrasted the unequally tempered scale of Albanian traditional music
with the modern European scale, and described the vocal style as follows:
the words are incredibly drawn out over long minor turns and ups and
downs that few English throats could imitate. To the uninitiated it seems
to begin nowhere and leave off anywhere, until, after a few weeks, the
ear, accustomed as it were to a new language, recognises both tune and
rhythm, and airs that at first seemed all alike become distinct.24 (Compare
Edward Lear, for whom the Albanians make a feeble buzzing or humming
over their tinkling guitars, like dejected flies in a window-pane.)25
Elsewhere Durham described the long-drawn, melancholy cry of
funeral laments in Ni in Serbia,26 ballad singing to the accompaniment
of the tambura in Prokletije, where the singers lean fingers [plucked]
strange trills and wonderful shakes from the slim, tinkling instrument,27
as also gypsy bands in Devich, epic songs in Montenegro and even the rau-
cous wailing voices heard in the Catholic Cathedral in Scutari (Shkodr).28
For the most part her emphasis was firmly on traditional village music
of Albania and Montenegro, and she undertook some pioneering record-
ings of epic songs as early as the first decade of the twentieth century,
producing some of the earliest recordings of Albanian music still extant.29

21 Evans 1877. See also Hobhouse 1858.

22Allcock and Young 1991.
23Goldsworthy 1998. In the early twentieth century the predominant anti-Turkish stance
in this travel writing was not always politically welcome to politicians in the West.
24Durham 1985 (1909), 48.
25Edward Lears accounts of his travels in the 1840s have recently appeared in a new
edition (Destani and Elsie 2008; this quotation on 445).
26Durham 1904, 180.
27Ibid., 141.
28Ibid., 111.
29These cylinders, mainly from 1905, are housed in the Sound Archive of the British
Library. They consist of (sometimes barely audible) laments and epic songs. Compare the
 eastern recessions 167

In general, where Muslim musical practices are described, they are con-
gealed into a representation of alterity, epitomised in Durhams descrip-
tion of the long-drawn oriental yowl that means music at a Muslim Rom
wedding.30
Alongside such travel literature there had always been a body of more
scholarly writing, but this gained new impetus following the system-
atisation of academic disciplines that took place in the late nineteenth
century. Even as Durham was writing up her travels, Frederick Hasluck
was embarking on a more dispassionate scholarly study of sacred sites
in the region. Haslucks contribution to the sociology of religion under
the Ottomans was of pioneering significance. In particular, his descrip-
tions form a valuable counterweight to the travellers tales, if anything
swerving towards the kind of positivistic listing that we find in some of
elebis writings more than two centuries earlier. Indeed his systematic
enumeration of sacred sites in the early twentieth century provides us
with a fascinating comparator for elebis listings, but now undertaken
from the perspective of European scholarship.
Predictably, the comparison reveals a decline in Islamic foundations
overall, but also intriguing continuities, where lodges, sanctuaries and rit-
uals survived the centuries, and in the case of the Albanian Bektai [Bek-
tashi] a notable numerical increase, not least because the sect was closely
associated with the Albanian national movement. Haslucks agenda was
at some remove from that of Durham in every respect, and for that matter
from the agenda of Durhams arch rival Rebecca West.31 Thematic to his
work were the reciprocal interactions of Islam and Christianity in the Bal-
kans (and Anatolia), and accordingly he documented the transferences
between sacred places, a phenomenon widely recognised informally,
including by Durham.32 Music, indeed imaginative culture in general, was
never part of his programme, but by describing systematically the infra-
structure of sacred life in the region, he provided a valuable context for
the ethnographic researches of present-day scholars into music and Islam
in the Balkans.

extant recordings made by Paul Traeger in 1903. These latter are available on the CD Dis-
covering Albania, produced by the Ulysses Foundation, Tirana in 2012.
30Durham 1904, 245.
31 Wests epic account of Yugoslavia in the 1930s (West 1977) has overshadowed the very
different contributions of Durham. Haslucks redoubtable widow Margaret Hasluck also
spent several years in Albania and made her own contribution to the literature produced
by women travellers. See Goldsworthy 1998 and the essay in Allcock and Young 1991.
32Hasluck 1924. Again this is conveyed in fictional form in de Bernires 2004.
168 chapter seven

Such ethnography as has been undertaken much of it unpublished

provides us with yet another layer of description, throwing light on past
and present alike. By observing and recording contemporary practices,
and by interviewing informants whose memory of musical traditions
extends a long way back, several researchers have been able to build some
sort of picture of now and then. What seems to emerge from this is that
in most cases (though, as we shall see, not all) musical practices from the
Ottoman heartlands were not simply imported wholesale to the Balkans,
but underwent a process of gradual acclimatisation to local conditions.
And the further removed from the centre, the more tenacious was the
hold of local traditions. It may be possible to give some indication of how
this worked by looking first at core Turkish populations in Macedonia
and Bulgaria, then at Albania and Bosnia, and finally at Serbia, including
Vojvodina, where the Ottoman presence was of shorter duration.33
For some years now Aida Islam has researched the religious music of
dwindling Turkish populations in Macedonia. By interviewing prominent
spiritual leaders in Skopje and elsewhere, she has charted the develop-
ment of religious music in these regions from the late nineteenth cen-
tury to the present. In the period immediately following the Ottoman
retreat, religious services employed a wide range of forms, and enacted
them according to conventions that had been carefully maintained by a
formalised Ottoman system of music education. More recently, however,
there has been a reduction and simplification of forms, and of makam-s.
In Tetovo and Gostivar to the west, there have been attempts to improve
the quality of the ezn when performed live, and to encourage a more
rigorous approach to music in the mosque. Thus the form known as
Mihrabije is performed daily after the morning and evening prayer in
Tetovo and Gostivar, as opposed to twice per week in Skopje, Ohrid and
Struga, and not at all in eastern Macedonia. There has also been a decline
in the forms associated with spiritual holidays (notably the Tekbir, and the
Miradzhie [Miraciyye] for the Night of Lights), and in full performances
of the nativity poem Mevlid-i erif (here again Tetovo and Gostivar prove
the exceptions).
In Ohrid and Struga several forms originally associated with the mosque
have migrated to the Nakibendi tekke, including the Salavat, which was
traditionally sung daily with the afternoon prayer, and also the Temdzhid.

33This is no more than a sketch; it does not, for example, extend into Greece. For a
useful account of the legacy in Crete, see Williams 2003.
 eastern recessions 169

Yet in other parts of Macedonia the tradition of the tekke the Halvetije
order in particular is in serious decline, not least due to a crisis of leader-
ship caused by population shifts. The social and cultural role of the insti-
tution has dwindled to insignificance compared to Ottoman times, with
many of the lodges either closed altogether or turned into museums. Yet
the surviving tekke-s still provide some continuity with a vital tradition of
music-making that was once widespread across Anatolia and the eastern
Balkans. Overall, then, the story in Macedonia is one of decline or liber-
alisation, punctuated by intermittent attempts at reform. But in another
sense traditional forms of Sufi music have found new incarnations far
beyond the tekke on world music platforms. This story, again one that is
not confined to Macedonia, is for a later chapter.
Turkish communities in Bulgaria present a very different profile. They
exist only in the east of the country, and although they number almost a
million they retain some traces of a ghetto mentality; there were pogroms
in the 1980s. Margaritova Rumiana researches communities in the villages
around Kuirdzhali in southeastern Bulgaria, where there are substantial
populations of heterodox Muslims, mainly following Alevi traditions.34
From her interviews with older people it is clear that for many years the
tradition, centred on the saz, remained defiantly conservative (in a man-
ner very often characteristic of traditions displaced from their spiritual
home), and was largely unaffected by surrounding Bulgarian traditions.
This is in marked contrast to the increasing permissiveness encountered
in Macedonia. Moreover, although in very recent years the practice has
begun to change, the impetus for change has come not from Bulgaria but
from Turkey, with which the villagers maintain close contacts. The ten-
dency has been to open up the Islamic rituals to a wider public domain,
a belated response to similar developments in Turkey, and one that tends
to detach the music from ritual, and to give it something of an autonomy
character.
As we move further from the Ottoman court, to the remote edge of the
Islamic world of the Middle East, musical dependencies become rather
less apparent, particularly in the realm of secular vocal music. Among
Bektai [Bektashi] circles in Albania a secular tradition of oriental love
poetry (akin to Bosnian sevdalinka) developed at an early stage, with the

34There is an impressive publication programme sponsored by the International Cen-

tre for Minority Studies and Intercultural Relations in Sofia. Of special relevance to our
subject is Lozanova and Mikov 1999 and Gramatikova 2001. For a general discussion of the
Muslim minorities in Bulgaria, see Neuberger 2004.
170 chapter seven

Albanian language written in Arabic script. When sung, these ashiki songs
fused oriental idioms with native traditional music, again as in Bosnia, and
this fusion was also a feature of the ilhi-s that were performed not just in
tekke-s but in domestic contexts. It seems, however, that as we enter the
world of the zikr rituals such elements of local colour recede somewhat,
making space for wider Sufi practices. This emerges not least from Bahtir
Shehollis vivid and highly specific (stage by stage) evocation of the cer-
emony of Hashure in the Masjid of Helvets of Rahovec (Kosovo).35 The
intense spirituality associated with this ritual its fervour and its calm
comes over clearly in Shehollis account. It is a very long way from the
commercialised presentations of zikr rituals that are now a commonplace,
and it is striking how closely the description accords with recordings of
similar rituals in Bosnia.36
Immediate location may well be a factor in this. Ankica Petrovi tells us
that in the more remote mountainous territories of southern Bosnia even
the Koranic chanting and the call to prayer are influenced by local styles.37
In contrast, the urban centres and the more accessible rural settings of the
northern plains were more thoroughly orientalised, both in the music of
the mosque and in the ceremonies of the tekke [tekija]. Yet even here, the
institutions took on a particular character, at some remove from more
central Ottoman traditions. The Sufi orders in Sarajevo exhibited a mark-
edly syncretic character, with shared practices and cross affiliation, not
least because the orders came under considerable pressure following pro-
scriptions from the Bosnian Islamic community from 1952 onwards.38 This
situation eased in the early 1980s, but the syncretic character of the rituals
remained in place. Risto Pekka Pennanen recorded the state of play in
the Sarajevo tekije in the late 1980s and 1990s, pointing to the close links
between the Nakibendi and Mevlev orders, led by the same sheik, meet-
ing in the same tekija, and perfoming the zikr in similar ways.39 Today,

35Sheholli 2006. It is worth persevering with the atrocious translation in this publica-
tion, as it offers us an intriguing glimpse into a world of non-commercialised Sufi music-
making and its effects on participants.
36See, for example, the CD Sufi Chanting from Sarajevo (Archives Internationales de
Musique Populaire).
37Petrovi 1988. Petrovi has also collaborated with David Levin in the 1993 CD Music
from an Endangered Minority: Bosnian Muslim Music (Washington DC: Smithsonian Folk-
ways Records). See also Barali-Materne 1983.
38All tekke-s were officially closed in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1952 following these
proscriptions.
39Pennanen 1993 and 1994. For a comment on the Mevlev order in Sarajevo during
Ottoman times, see Zubovi 2001.
 eastern recessions 171

apart from the Kadiri rituals at the Hadi-Sinananova tekija, ceremonies

are often performed without instruments in Sarajevo.
The ilahije were, and are, at the heart of Sufi religious practices in both
Albania and Bosnia, and it seems that the term was used more widely and
permissively in these regions than in Turkey, from where many of the texts
and melodies originated. While it is primarily understood as a devotional
song, often praying for Gods help to stay on the right path, the ilahija can
also embrace or subsume the kasida, a eulogistic song dedicated to the
prophet. It is performed in the home as well as the mosque and tekija, and
its generic boundaries are not always clear, at times embracing lullabies as
well as devotional songs, sung either in Turkish, Bosnian or Albanian.
In Bosnia today, this genre has been appropriated as a concert or
recorded item in glitzy, explicitly political, manifestations. But we can
glimpse a more private world of Bosnian Muslim devotional music of some
five hundred years vintage through the ethnographic researches of Maja
Barali-Materne, based on recordings and interviews made with a small
group of older singers from the Nakibendi tekija. The ilahije here vary
from simple strophic songs to more melismatic arias, performed either
unaccompanied, as on special occasions in the mosque, or accompanied
by the kudm when sung at home (traditionally the ilahija should only
be accompanied by natural instruments, meaning those associated with
the Islamic tradition). There is also a hereditary dimension here. Armir
Orman, a prominent figure in Bosnian Sufi circles and himself a kudm
player, accompanies both his father and his son as they sing, or strictly
speaking learn, the improving or consolatory ilahija texts. Despite the
commercialisation of ilahije today, the traditional repertory has by no
means disappeared from Bosnian Muslim spiritual life.40
In contrast, those parts of the Balkans in which Orthodoxy and nation-
alism joined forces were quick to dismantle Ottoman infrastructures once
the empire had retreated. In Sofia, Bucharest and Athens the majority of
the mosques were speedily converted, though there remain quite a few
historic mosques, including the sixteenth-century Banya-Bashi Mosque in
Sofia.41 This was also broadly true of Belgrade and Ni (annexed by Serbia
in 1878). Boidar Jezernik tells us that from the middle of the nineteenth
century, the Balkans [looked] like a copy or even a caricature, of western

40Barali-Materne 2003.
41 This was possibly built by the Janissary Kodja Mirrat Sinan, who built over 80
mosques including the famous Selim II Mosque in Edirne.
172 chapter seven

Europe.42 Further to the west and to the north, Catholic Europe likewise
rapidly effaced the Turkish inheritance: in Osijek in Slavonia, for instance,
and even in Pcs and Buda in Hungary, though there is still a Bektai
shrine in the Hungarian capital today. These are all cities in which a once-
pervasive Ottoman culture has left relatively few visible traces today,
though all of them continue to host minority Islamic communities. As a
result we have to exercise historical imagination to register that they were
once homes to a thriving and dynamic Muslim culture.
A brief return visit to Serbia will make the point. As in Bulgaria,
canonic narratives of Serbian general history have been so focused on
the emergent nation that the Ottoman centuries tend to be presented
as an extended (and aberrant) parenthesis in the story. David Norris has
remarked on how comprehensively the Ottoman legacy was erased archi-
tecturally in the last quarter of the nineteenth century: Such was transfor-
mation that even those Westerners who did not hide their disdain for the
Balkans could not help but comment favourably on what Belgrade had
become.43 But it is worth remembering that Belgrade was once a Turkish
city, and that there are still traces of a lingering Ottoman influence. The
Bajrakli Mosque, built in the second half of the seventeenth century, may
be the only surviving mosque in the city today, but at one point there
were many, as there were of course in Ni (the surviving mosque there
is of some historic importance). There is interesting archival material
at the Bajrakli Mosque, as at several of the historic mosques in Serbia.44
But little of it helps us with music. The transience of music is part of its
joy it disappears into the ether, and leaves only vestigial traces in mate-
rial culture and part of its frustration.
It is the more frustrating when we move yet further from the impe-
rial centre to Vojvodina. The Ottoman Empire took control of this region
(not yet so named) following the Battle of Mohcs of 1526 and the fall
of Banat in 1552, though the territory was still ruled by Serbian Despots
acting as Hungarian vassals. During Ottoman rule, most of the inhabit-
ants of Vojvodina were Serbs. But the cities were populated with Mus-
lims, and for more than a century and a half, before the Habsburg Empire
took control with the treaties of Karlowitz (1699) and Passarowitz (1718),

42Jezernik 2004, 227.

43Norris 1999, 99.
44One classic example is the beautiful sixteenth-century Hussein-Pasha Mosque in
Pljevlja, now in northern Montenegro (it includes a manuscript of the Koran dating from
the sixteenth century).
 eastern recessions 173

the territory was divided into the Sandaks of Srem and Segedin, and the
Elayet of Temevar [Timooara], a Turkish province existing in Banat after
1552. So before the end of Ottoman rule dramatically changed the demo-
graphic character of the region there would have been a prominent layer
of Islamic cultural and religious forms in the towns.
Information about this is all but impossible to find, so comprehen-
sively was the Ottoman presence effaced. Musicologists do refer to the
mehterhne, but this is the only genre of Turkish music in Vojvodina on
which anything is ever written, no doubt because it was absorbed by
western culture. Naturally it is hard to say much in the absence of con-
crete sources. But we can at least allow our knowledge of the practices in
mosques, minarets and tekke-s elsewhere in the Balkans to stimulate the
imagination. There will have been local particularities, as there were (and
are) in Bosnia, and very likely the proximity to central Europe will have
been registered musically. But there will also have been the commonali-
ties imposed by the rituals of the faith. The ezn will have sounded in this
remote corner of the Ottoman Empire, before it became Austrian, then
Austro-Hungarian, and then Serbian; the Mevlid will have been sung there
too, and the sem performed.

Coffee Break

Beyond the mosques and the tekke-s, and right across the Ottoman-
controlled Balkans, an oriental secular music was performed in a variety
of settings. During the heyday of the empire, the most prestigious ven-
ues were the courts of the viziers and pashas, but in some contexts these
sites were matched by the feudal estates of native aristocracies, notably
the Romanian boyars ruling under Turkish authority. Even with the emer-
gence of newly independent Balkan nations in the nineteenth century ori-
ental music was not immediately deposed, and for a time it still found a
role in official ceremonies. Serbia is a case in point. When Prince Milo
Obrenovi became ruler of the (semi-)autonomous province in 182930,
a Turkish military band from the old regime remained in place. And even
when Milos westernising policies were instigated in 1831, they did not
immediately oust the influential band leader Mustafa, as several travellers
to Serbia at the time testified.45

45Djuri-Klajn 1972, 49.

174 chapter seven

Ottoman music also traditionally accompanied the elaborate entertain-

ments (including shadow plays) arranged for private parties given by the
social elites of the eastern Balkans. The geographical point is important,
for it was only really in the eastern Balkans that the more sophisticated
traditions of Ottoman classical music were practised extensively within
the confines of a patronal culture. These traditions were the preserve of
educated Muslims. On the other hand, as noted in the last chapter, the
boundaries between this repertory and more widespread styles of popu-
lar music-making were not always sharply drawn, and in the later stages
of the empire musicians seemed to move rather freely between classical
and popular styles. Karl Signell refers to semi-classical music to describe
some repertories in this borderline area.46
Musical entertainments were in the hands of professionals, but if the
performers were Muslim they would usually come from the lower social
orders. The Orthodox Islamic view of music, and even more of dancing,
was at best circumspect and at worst censorious. So although for many
Muslims the roles of listener and spectator were deemed acceptable, that
of practitioner was off limits. Professional music-making was a low-status
occupation, as it was within the aristocratic cultures of Western Europe,
at least until the late eighteenth century. Typically, professional musicians
would have been Jewish or Christian (Greek or Armenian), and by the late
nineteenth century they were predominantly Roma, renowned for their
capacity to move with insouciant ease from style to style, and from genre
to genre. Roma were to be found right across the empire, but they were
especially prominent in the Danubian principalities, where they partici-
pated in a tradition of urban popular music of some specificity.
Initially, in pre-unification days, they were attached to the mehterhne
at the Phanariot courts or to the musical establishments maintained by
the households of boyars and voivods, and even monasteries. But with
their political emancipation in the mid nineteenth century, many became
itinerant musicians, and these (often Romani-speaking) Roma maintained
traditions of music-making that were essentially separate from those who
settled in the towns. The town-dwellers, a mix of Turkish and Romanian
Roma, soon became the professional musicians who supplied music for
all dances and other social occasions, often joining forces with Romanian
musicians to make up the lutar ensembles, ancestors of the modern

46Signell 1977, 11.

 eastern recessions 175

taraf-s of the world music scene. Villages such as Clejani, just south of
Bucharest, became famous, and are still famous, for muzica lutreasc.47
Muzica lutreasc synthesised Turkish makam-s and performance
styles, European chordal harmony and appropriations of the melodic and
rhythmic patterns of Romanian traditional music. It was the latter ingre-
dient that provided the main distinguishing element, differentiating the
lutar ensembles from other urban popular music. Some of the Romanian
repertory was trans-regional, and known by all, including ritual wedding
music, epic songs (cntece btrneti), and traditional ballads. But there
were also songs and dance melodies drawn from specific regions, to be
used as and when the occasion demanded, as well as versions of Greek
and Turkish popular music. Somehow it all coalesced into a clearly defined
style, associated with the solo dancing of the hor igneasc [gypsy hora],
and with the popular oriental womens song-dance known as manea, com-
plete with tsifteteli rhythm. By the late nineteenth century it had become
customary to perform the repertory as suites of pieces according to con-
text and demand. It was a high-prestige popular culture, and some of the
performers became legendary figures. In listing several of these, Marian
Lupascu is anxious to stress that they were not exclusively Roma.48
Among the principal urban venues for the lutari were restaurants, and
more particularly coffee houses, in the larger cities of Romania. The cof-
fee house was an institution all over the Ottoman-occupied Balkans. It
was already installed there before it conquered Western Europe in the
eighteenth century, and when the Turks receded it remained one of their
lasting legacies. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries coffee
houses of basically oriental design (with rugs scattered on the floor and
benches with cushions around the edges of the room) were to be found
in the major towns and cities of the Balkans. They were often owned by
Jews, and were frequented exclusively by men. Characteristically they
were sites of leisure and studied inactivity of a kind frequently caricatured
as oriental, but they were also used as popular venues for political and
religious debate.
They were often organised according to ethnic group or religious affili-
ation, and in this respect a legacy can still be found today in the eastern
Balkans. In the towns of Western Thrace, Christian Roma will congregate
in one caf, while Muslim Roma can be found in another, and Pomaks

47Ciobanu 1969.
48Lupascu 2006.
176 chapter seven

in yet another. One indispensable accompaniment to the coffee was the

chibouk or narghil. Patrick Leigh Fermor was surprised to encounter the
chibouk during his sojourns in Hungary and Transylvania in the 1930s;
while staying in a rather wealthy aristocratic home in Bkscsaba (on
the Hungarian-Romanian border).49 The narghil, on the other hand, is
not just a staple of tourist shops in todays bezistan; it is an active social
practice.
The other indispensable accompaniment to coffee was music. In the
same travelogue, Fermor documented his encounter with the wild music,
and its ecstasy-inducing effects, performed in the coffee houses by Rom
ensembles.50 Given the location, the music he heard would have been
in a style hongrois, but the idiom changed with the geography. A little
further east, it might have been muzica lutreasc. A little further south,
it might have been algija. As usual, Rom musicians would assimilate the
most marketable local style. Since several were of Anatolian origin, Otto-
man forms and styles could be bequeathed rather directly. But in practice
there was much greater interactivity than this suggests. Jane Sugarman
makes the point well when she describes urban music-making in the
late Ottoman-period Balkans as characterised by multi-directional bor-
rowing or sharing of musical materials among different groups,51 and she
goes on, incidentally, to draw a telling comparison with commercial musi-
cal production in South East Europe today.
Whatever the ethnic origins of the performers, there were often ques-
tion marks about the propriety of such entertainments, especially when
they involved dancing. The sense of moral dubiety is nicely conveyed by
a French traveller in the early 1920s, as reported by Rudolf Brandl. Of a
banquet in northern Greece, our traveller remarks: The musicians made
the palace and the courts resound with the tones of their barbaric instru-
ments and their calls [...] After the meal [...] the musicians made way for
the [...] immoral gypsies who performed [...] lascivious dances in front
of these dignified Muslims [...]. Finally they served us pipes, followed by
coffee.52 Female dancers of the kind described here (known as engis
under the Ottomans) were often Roma, and they were usually organised
into guilds.53 Some commentators have suggested that it was precisely

49Fermor 1977, 79.

50Ibid., 62.
51 Sugarman 2006, 65.
52Brandl 1996.
53Silverman 2008.
 eastern recessions 177

their alienation from the status quo that invested the Rom women with a
special kind of power, enabling them to tap into the subversive potential
of female sexuality in male-dominated societies.
Undoubtedly there are potent gender issues here, and they resonate
right across the social and familial practices of the eastern Mediterranean.54
Mark Mazower tells again the familiar story of the young Roza Eskenazi,
the Jewish singer who later became one of the great exponents of rebetika.55
His account reminds us that Jewish women too were alienated from the
status quo, and it is no doubt significant that the Sephardic women sing-
ers and dancers (taadera-s) of Salonica were much in demand in the
kafe aman; indeed Eskenazi started her career as a dancer in just this way.
They were, moreover, part of a broader Jewish component in the multi-
national musical life of Salonica, a kind of public counterpart to some of
the Sephardic practices discussed in chapter 1. Before the famous Caf
Mazlum was burned in the Great Fire of 1917, Abraham Karakas Efendi
sang amanedes there before going on to lead the chant in the synagogue.
Later, in the 1920s, Maestro Sadik was hardly less famous, singing in
Ladino, as well as in Greek, Turkish and Arabic. In general, Mazowers
book offers us a vivid depiction of the musical world associated with the
smoke-filled cafs, the tavernas, the bars and the night clubs of this great
multi-cultural city, many of them sited in the red light districts and all
with broadly similar repertory. This was the world of the kafe aman.
We encountered the term kafe aman in chapter 3. Originally Turkish,
the music caf had a long history in Istanbul, but it came into its own and
was much more widely disseminated in the second half of the nineteenth
and the early years of the twentieth centuries. It was not a monolithic
institution there were various species of music caf, each with particular
clienteles but very broadly it hosted repertories based on the Ottoman
fasil ensemble, consisting mainly of instruments such as tanbr, kann
or santr, tambourine, tarabuka [darbuka], violin (or kemne) and klar-
net. In Macedonia, Thrace and Bulgaria these ensembles were known as
algija, from the Turkish algi, meaning simply instrumental group. This
should not be confused with the more recent Bulgarian pop-folk genre
chalga, though, as Dimitrina Kaufman and Claire Levy have separately

54Veronica Doubleday has addressed some of these issues, especially in relation to

women and instruments, in Doubleday 1999.
55Mazower 2005, 370.
178 chapter seven

pointed out, other genres such as wedding music and ethno-jazz in Bul-
garia took algija as a starting-point.56
It was above all in the Turkish-dominated towns of Bulgaria and Mace-
donia that algija was instituted in the nineteenth century. The ensembles
were associated initially with the entertainments particular to different
town guilds and their saints, but they quickly took on a much wider role
in weddings, fairs, dances and cafs. The Macedonian algija, linked espe-
cially with Roma and Jews, acquired its own character, differentiated from
Turkish prototypes by the incorporation of Balkan as well as Turkish rep-
ertory. It was in the nature of algija that it blended cultures in this way,
drawing on the rural music of Macedonia as well as urban popular reper-
tory. The old town tradition of algija was really an urban popular music
associated especially with the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu-
ries, and it was familiar in all the major towns of the Ottoman Balkans,
albeit not always under this name. In Albanian towns, for example, the
ensembles were known as saze. Like algija, saze represented anything
but a unified tradition. The most famous ensembles were from Permeti
in the south, with an entirely different character and instrumentation
from the distinctive, makam-based saze of Shkodr in the north. Even
in those towns in the western Balkans where the Turks had already been
expelled and political independence achieved, traditions of oriental urban
music survived.
Labels were used loosely and often interchangeably. Thus, in and
around Vranje, in that corner of southeastern Serbia geographically and
culturally closest to Bulgaria, the term sevdalinka was occasionally used to
describe characteristically oriental love songs, a particular genre of gradske
pjesme associated especially with Bosnia. In much the same way, the term
algija was used to describe the corresponding instrumental ensemble of
the Vranje region, and it was even extended to cover similar ensembles
in Belgrade. The Dardaneli coffee house, a cultural centre and meeting
place, had a resident algija right up to 1912, at which point the build-
ing was demolished. Once again the spread of these ensembles and their
music right across the Ottoman Balkans was due partly to the Roma, who
were to be found wherever there was music, and who kept pace with the
rapidly changing idioms of urban popular music, from the fasil ensemble,
to guitar and accordion, and eventually to synthesizer.

56Kaufman, D. 1990; chapter 3 of Levy 2007.

 eastern recessions 179

In Greek cities, the terminology was complicated by the fall-out from

the exchange of minorities. These days the term amanedes is often used
as a loose description of early twentieth-century Ottoman vocal pieces
performed, along with semi-improvised instrumental genres, in the music
cafs. In its strict meaning, however, it referred to a particular kind of
lament, derived from the Ottoman gazel mentioned in the last chapter.57
But these laments, when sung in Greek, were sometimes labelled rebe-
tika following the exchange of populations, thus establishing a permis-
sive usage for that term too. In reality the amanedes differed markedly
from the bouzouki-based, male-dominated Piraeus rebetika popularised
by Vamvakaris. For long enough the two genres co-existed. We find them
side-by-side in the music cafs of Salonica, at least from the late 1930s.
Certainly the charge of orientalism made against rebetika by the censors
at this time was poorly-founded so far as the Piraeus genre was concerned,
for these songs marked a stylistic departure from kafe aman traditions;
even the texts have all the marks of a counter culture increasingly directed
against a specifically Greek political establishment. They represented a
swerve towards Europe.
That swerve was part of a much more general rejection of the Ottoman
world that was apparent over most of the Balkans from the late nineteenth
century onwards: in town architecture, in interior design, and in the pat-
terns and structures of daily life. Edith Durham once remarked: Nothing
is more surprising about [the Turk] than the speed with which all visible
signs of his existence can be wiped out.58 The coffee houses were them-
selves swept up in this steady process of Europeanisation. Increasingly
they exchanged their rugs and benches for tables and chairs, just as (later)
their music-making exchanged Turkish instruments for European and
makam-s for chordal harmony. And the process was naturally accelerated
in the interwar period by the 78 rpm records that were produced in con-
siderable numbers, and had the familiar standardising effect of recorded
music everywhere.
A common misconception about the exchange of minorities is that it
brought an oriental culture into immediate contact with a western cul-
ture. In reality there already existed a western culture in Asia Minor long
before the exchange. Throughout much of the later nineteenth century

57The distinctive feature here is the repetition of the phrase aman-aman [mercy, mercy],
in part as a means of filling out the syllable count. Fermor refers to the aman interjections
in the context of klephtic singing by the Sarakatsans in Thrace (Fermor 1966, 17).
58Durham 1904, 318.
180 chapter seven

it was cultivated by Ottoman elites, and by bourgeois Greek populations

in Smyrna and Constantinople, as also in cities such as Trebizond. There
was a more cosmopolitan culture and lifestyle in some of these cities than
in mainland Greece at the time, and it ranged from elite formal culture,
including opera, to the popular culture associated with the caf chantant.
Effectively, the influence of the West began to transform the practice
of popular musicians from early in the nineteenth century, encourag-
ing them to use chordal harmony, and to add to their repertory western
dances such as polkas, waltzes and quadrilles.
In other words, a repertory of urban popular music of western orienta-
tion already had well-established roots in Asia Minor, and it was trans-
ferred to the mainland along with the oriental traditions associated with
the kafe aman. For long enough two distinct traditions of popular music
conveniently associated with the caf chantant and the kafe aman respec-
tively co-existed and even mingled in early twentieth-century Greece.
Indeed their relative merits were a debating point right through to the mid
century. So the move to European fashions already had a broader context.
There was genuine reciprocity in the exchanges between Asia Minor and
mainland Greece, as we noted in chapter 3, but the general tendency was
clear enough. As the Ottoman Empire receded politically from the Bal-
kans, its cultural forms were gradually but inexorably replaced. Even so,
they did not disappear altogether. It was in the smaller towns rather than
the major cities that they survived the longest.

Turning West

That the syncretic character of urban music percolated down to smaller

towns becomes apparent when we place particular regions of the Otto-
man Balkans under a microscope, as Athena Katsanevaki has done in her
study of communities centred on the Ottoman-Albanian (now Greek)
city of Janina [Ioannina] in Epirus.59 The social and cultural life of Janina,
especially under its Tosk Albanian Governor Ali Pasha in the late eigh-
teenth and early nineteenth centuries, found a major place for music. It
was prominent at the court of the Pashalik, with Rom and Jewish musi-
cians and dancers brought directly from Istanbul, at the carnival feast
(a Christian institution but shared with the Ottomans), at entertainments

59Katsanevaki 2006.
 eastern recessions 181

in the central square with its open garden, and of course at the coffee
houses (known as yal-kafen) and taverns. Samuel Baud-Bovy caught the
residual traces of this tradition, noting that the surviving songs about Ali
Pasha resembled the urban songs of Istanbul, and also of Moldavia and
Wallachia. He also remarked that, as sung in Janina, the songs were close
to what he labelled the Thracian amanes.60
In other words, the picture we have of music in Janina is one that fore-
grounds urban song, and musical life in general, of a distinctly oriental
character, in which Jewish coplas, Turkish ilhi-s and Greek stihoplakia
(light songs in rhyming couplets) coexisted and interpenetrated. How-
ever, the intriguing aspect of Katsanevakis research is her detailed study
of the spread of these urban songs by way of trade and military routes
to small urban islands within the local provincial musical idiom of the
area.61 The picture was clearly a differentiated one, allowing for the coex-
istence in some settlements of traditional ritual songs and urban songs,
while in other settlements especially close to what she calls cultural
poles the traditional songs were themselves urbanised by means of
Ottoman influence.
Katsanevakis work on the Janina vilayet qualifies but does not con-
tradict the basic proposition that until the incursions of modernity there
was a rather clear differentiation between orientalised urban and indig-
enous rural musical styles in this part of South East Europe. What it really
does is to make specific the fine grid of urban centres that are nested
within the larger regional map, and also to reveal significant areas of inter-
penetration between city, town and townlet. Defining a relation between
these urban traditions and surrounding indigenous musics is another
question again, and a complex one, invoking the conventional categories
of folk music and popular music. It seems necessary to explore this ter-
rain a little, and to do so I will take a brief excursion into traditional music,
a category that would later be relegated one might say downgraded to
folk music, in Greece more generally. Following that I will return to Epi-
rus, where present-day political borders are exactly that: present-day.
The rural-urban divide partly maps onto a folk-popular divide in Greece,
and that in its turn partly maps onto different vocal styles and different
instrument sets (for example, lira, laouto and gaida or tsabouna, often

60Baud-Bovy 1984, 6263; Baud-Bovy 1958, 12225. See the reference in Katsenevaki
2006, 290.
61 Ibid., 291.
182 chapter seven

home-made, tend to be associated with folk traditions, while violin, gui-

tar and klarino tend to refer us to popular idioms, though in some island
traditions a ziyia of violin and laouto, or sometimes santouri, has long pro-
vided the main instrumental accompaniment to local songs). But folk
and popular are far from stable categories. They are ideological as well as
descriptive terms, and in the end both folk music and popular music came
to be heavily implicated in musical constructions of nationhood in Greece.
Even so, it is easy to fall a prey to retrospective misreadings of Greekness
in traditional music, for it is hard not to look at this subject through the
unifying prism of modern recordings and tourist stereotypes.
In general, the Greeks have defined themselves as an ethnic nation, and
for this reason traditional Greek music has tended to refer mainly to music
by Greeks rather than music in Greece. Attempts to gather traditional cul-
tural practices into a national heritage were made initially by Spyridon
Zambelios in the late nineteenth century, followed by Nikolaos Politis and
his successor Stilpon Kyriakidis in the early twentieth.62 The very act of
collecting already involved an ideological intervention in what was really
an oral demotic tradition of poetry and song,63 and this was intensified
by a subsequent quest for commonalities. Later folklorists found these
in three areas in particular. One is prosody, with some scholars stressing
that quantitative prosody lingered on in the worded melody background
to Greek folksong long after it had been abandoned in the spoken lan-
guage.64 Another concerns the underlying dance genres that shaped the
songs, including many varieties of syrtos (and related kalamatianos) and
tsamikos, which some have been read as expressive of a national culture
avant la lettre.65 And the last is structural type, notably the skeletal pitch
structures (partly expressed by the term skopos) that underpin the orna-
mental processes found in some Greek traditional music.
In reality such common factors struggle to impose themselves on the
multiple regional differences found in the ballads and lyrical songs of

62Politiss major collection was Selections from the Songs of the Greek People (1914). The
ideological roots of Greek folklore collection have been discussed at length, notably by
Michael Herzfeld.
63Roderick Beaton uses the term demotic tradition (Beaton 1980, 23).
64This is a complex issue whose bibliography has been discussed in detail by Katsane-
vaki (Katsanevaki 1998).
65See Chianis 1967 for an account of the synergies between Albanian and Greek ver-
sions of the tsamikos, which is regarded as a national dance by both nations (likewise the
syrtos is shared with Pirin Bulgaria). For general studies of Greek dance, see Petrides 1994
and Hunt 1996.
 eastern recessions 183

Greece, whether of the mainland or the islands. Not only are traditional
music and dance invariably shaped more by regional and social than by
national impulses; we also need to factor in the transforming effects of
three very powerful external poles of attraction. First, there is Asia Minor,
influencing the eastern mainland, the northern Aegean islands (Lesbos
in particular), and also parts of Macedonia and Thrace. Second, there is
the western Mediterranean, drawing the music of the Ionian Islands and
the littoral Peloponnese in particular towards an Italian sphere of influ-
ence. And third, this time looking north, there is the Slavonic Balkans, cre-
ating musical continuities between northern Greece and Bulgaria, as also
between the Pindus mountain range and the Albanian and Dinaric Alps.
This returns us to north Pindus. We may assume that during the reign
of Ali Pasha there existed some form of the ritual songs associated with
pastoral communities in Epirus. As noted in chapter 2, the extraordinary
polyphony of Greek Epirus is in fact closely linked to rural music in south-
ern (Lab) Albania, for until the demise of the Ottomans Epirus embraced
this region too. (There was no clear political dividing-line between Albania
and Greece until the settlement following the Balkan Wars, and that set-
tlement left difficult minority issues that remain active even today, espe-
cially in relation to the Chams.)66 In truth, Epirotic polyphony whether
north Greek or south Albanian presents us with a truly indigenous
music, and it is a music that has remained almost entirely untouched by
orientalised urban idioms.
Much less autonomous were the traditions of Klephtic ballads (kleftika
tragoudhia), strongly represented in northern Greece. These melismatic
songs were usually written in an unrhymed so-called vers politique of fif-
teen syllables, possibly derived from Byzantine epics, and were charac-
teristically performed in free rhythm, albeit at times with hidden metre.
They thematised long years of warfare with the Turks by the klephts
brigands and freedom fighters of the mountains, around whom a very
particular culture developed, a culture also associated with a popular
improvised klarino repertory, and with heroic varieties of the traditional
tsamikos dance. One of the most famous of the klephtic ballad cycles, the
Saga of Suli, concerned Ali Pasha directly, describing his treacherous con-
quest of the fortress of Suli, having reneged on his promise to spare the
lives of its defenders, and telling of the subsequent suicide of a group of
women and children who supposedly hurled themselves from a cliff by

66Vickers 2006, 11214.

184 chapter seven

way of a syrtos dance. The episode is commemorated by a version of the

Zaloggos dance.
There are similar commemorations elsewhere in northern Greece,
including the Makrinitsa dance associated with Naousa in Macedonia,
where the women allegedly cast themselves over a waterfall rather than
surrender to the Turks, and the Kaggeleftos dance, still performed today,
that commemorates the 1821 rising further east in Halkidiki and the
beheadings that followed it. Such tales and customs are the stuff of folk
heroism, and they are certainly not particular to Greece. Resistance to
Turkish occupation generated a wealth of traditional songs, dances and
ceremonies all over the Balkans, and we will encounter some of them
if we follow the mountains and coastline northwest of Pindus, through
Albania and Montenegro and into Herzegovina and Croatia. There is the
annual Carnival Pageant of Lastovo, for instance, in which the burning of
the effigy represents the reputed burning at the stake of a Turkish envoy
whose demand that the island surrender to the Turks is ignored. There
is the Kumpanija dance from Blato on neighbouring Korula, represent-
ing the valiant defence of the village against Turkish (and other) pirates.
There is the Sinjska alka tournament in which the people of Sinj and the
Cetina March re-enact their victory over the Turks in a famous battle of
1715. And yet further north, there is the Robinja pageant (no longer per-
formed) at Karlobag, commemorating the battle at Krbava in 1493 that
paved the way for later Turkish conquests of northern Croatia.
It was in the nineteenth century that such ceremonies were invested
with powerful ideological significance, and in like manner nationalist
intellectuals gave new meaning to the epic poems of the region. These
heroic poems, discussed briefly in an earlier chapter, probably represent
the most famous and lasting cultural legacy of the anti-Turkish resistance,
though the tradition of epic singing certainly pre-dates the Ottomans.
Among the many heroic themes was the Battle of Kosovo, which gener-
ated both Serbian and Albanian epics, their opposing sentiments conveyed
in fictional form by Kadare through identical poetic formulae (A great fog
is covering the blackbird plains! Rise, O Serbs, the Albanians are seizing
Kosovo!; A black fog has descended! Albanians, to arms, Kosovo is fall-
ing to the pernicious Serb!).67 To this day there remains a dispute about
the historical priority of this sub-genre: Serb or Albanian? Who borrowed
what from whom? Some of the major research on Albanian traditions,

67Kadare 2000, 79.

 eastern recessions 185

fittingly enough, occurs in Kosovo, especially at the Institute of Albanol-

ogy (Anton etta, Zymer Neziri).68
Kosovo apart, the epic tradition reached beyond the Dalmatian hin-
terland to embrace the whole of the former Yugoslavia and yet further. It
was a tradition of heroic peasant poems in deseterac [ten syllable lines],
already collected in the nineteenth century by the Serb Vuk Karadi, the
Croatian Ivan Maurani, and the Bosnian Ivan Franjo Juki. These were
the men who invested the epics with national significance, with Vuk in
particular using them as evidence of the underlying unity of the South
Slavs as part of Great-Serbian or proto-Yugoslav political agendas. But
we should add to the mix a corpus of fifteen-syllable bugartice known
mainly from Dalmatian manuscripts (though of Serbian provenance).
These bugartice were really urban poems, probably degenerate forms of
earlier feudal court poetry, and they were rather different in form and
character from the peasant epics.69 Given their fifteen-syllable structure
and their subject matter, they invite at least surface comparison with the
Klephtic ballads of northern Greece, an invitation to which Samuel Baud-
Bovy responded.70
Baud-Bovy noted the parallels, but at the same time pointed to sig-
nificant musical differences between the Greek and Slavic traditions,
in particular the more complex melismatic structure of the former and
its preference for dance-based refrains.71 In fact he understated the dif-
ferences between what are really separate worlds. If we seek a bridge
between them and in more than a strictly geographical sense we might
turn to the historical epics and frontier warrior songs (kng kreshniksh)
of Albania, traditionally accompanied by lahuta, a one-stringed bowed
instrument similar to the gusle; Kadare refers to the lahuta of the Cursed
Peaks.72 There is a good cross-section of recorded repertory here. Follow-
ing the early recordings made by Paul Traeger (1903) and Edith Durham
(1905), Albert Lord went on to collect Albanian epics in 1937, and both
he and Parry commented on the commonalities between South Slavic

68See, among many publications, Neziri 2006.

69Miletich 1990.
70Baud-Bovy 1958.
71 Only poems in the deseterac (ten-syllable line) are available for musical commen-
tary, as the bugartice were no longer part of a living tradition when recording began.
72Kadare 2000, 35.
186 chapter seven

and Albanian songs.73 In the 1950s there were major collections made by
Erich and Doris Stockmann and in the 1960s by A.L. Lloyd, who estab-
lished links between Albanian and Bosnian epics.74 The historical epics
and kng kreshniksh are associated with the Gegs in northern Albania
and southern Kosovo, and they are still sung today, notably in Rugova in
Kosovo, to the accompaniment of either ifteli or lahuta. The main point
for now is that the Albanian epics establish continuities both with the
(Greek) south, and the (Montenegrin) north.75
From Montenegro, we might continue further north to Senj, one of the
oldest towns on the Croatian coastline and the heartland of the Uskoks,
who were situated on the outside of Ottoman-controlled land. The legend-
ary exploits of the Uskoks, especially their defense of the Military Frontier
and the Dalmatian coast against the Turks, constitute the subject matter
of yet another great cycle of epic songs (including The Death of Ivo and The
Captivity of Jankovi Stojan), a world of coastal oral poetry that is clearly
distinguishable in verse, style and content from the inland epics.76 Artis-
tic evocations of these epics were also common, as in Razgovor ugodni
naroda slovinskoga [Agreeable Discourse of the Slavic People] by Andrija
Kai Mioi, the subject of a detailed analytical commentary, including
a comparison with the Albanian epic Lahuta e Malcs by Gjergj Fishta, in
an essay by Stavros Skendi.77
A more specialised look at these epics would reveal an interweav-
ing of motifs and subject-matters across languages and faiths. It would
take us into details of metrics, motives and plots, as well as into disputes
about origins, borrowings and typologies. It would compare not just the
fifteen- with the more common ten-syllable verse form, but the stylistics
of northern with those of the southern traditions.78 But the main issue

73Lord 1965, xv. An agreement now exists between Harvard University and the
Prishtina Institute of Albanology to publish the Albanian epics recorded by Lord after
Parrys death.
74See his notes on the 1966 LP, The Music of Albania. For a more detailed study of
the Bosnian epics, notably those collected by Luka Marjanovi and Kosta Hrmann, see
olakovi 2007.
75See the various comparative studies in Skendi 1980, including the identification of
common themes and contrasted metres. One feature of Skendis work that was unusual at
the time was his inclusion of Greece alongside the Slavonic Balkans in studies of language
and folklore.
76See Bracewell 1992, 92. Also Bokovi-Stulli 1999.
77Skendi 1980, 10120.
78See, for example, Stolz 1969.
 eastern recessions 187

for present purposes is that the Klephtic ballads, kng kreshniksh and
Slavic epics stand as monuments to the preservation of an oral culture
in the Balkans. In this respect the importance of the Ottomans was less that
they provided the thematic focus for a culture of dissent and resistance,
than that the nature of their administration created major disincentives
for the development of those forms of literary culture that grew out of
Christian traditions. They established, in other words, ideal conditions for
the preservation of oral cultures long after these had disappeared from
other parts of Europe.
The epics represented one archetype of indigeneity in the mountain
ranges and seaboard from north Pindus to northern Croatia. An older
layer of ritual songs presents us with another. But, more broadly, we might
include within this oral culture the many site-specific dances, pageants
and ceremonies that celebrated the resistance all the way along this route.
Here, in a Croatian littoral that was prey to conflicting Turkish, Venetian
and Habsburg ambitions from the fifteenth century onwards, such ritu-
als marked out a frontier of sorts, a symbolic break on the reach of the
East, effectively an Antemurale Christianitatis in at least this part of the
Balkans. What confronted the East was of course the West, which had
a strong historical presence all along the Adriatic littoral. The Croats who
settled there had befriended but were not subject to Byzantium, but they
remained with the Western church following the schism. Latin was the
principal language of the church, of course, but the Croats cultivated a
vernacular form of the Roman rite using the Glagolitic script, and for
many years rival Slavonic (Glagolitic) and Latin liturgies were a source
of conflict.
Glagolitic chant represented, then, another strand of oral culture in the
western Balkans. There are historical data, but no musical notations, so
that what we know about the music is based on a few nineteenth-century
transcriptions, and on the researches of scholars such as Jerko Bezi and
Gorana Doliner.79 By collecting recordings from the dioceses of Krk, Senj,
Zadar and ibenik, Bezi demonstrated the sheer diversity of this ancient
and very rich tradition of singing. The earliest available recordings date
back to 1910, but there was an intensive period of collecting in the early
1950s, and fieldwork and analysis continues to this day; Gorana Doliner,
for example, has presented a detailed analysis of a corpus of melodies
collected by the nun Lujza Kozinovi over an entire church year. On the

79Among many publications, see Bezi 1970 and Doliner 1999.

188 chapter seven

evidence of the recordings, we can say that this tradition embraced many
distinctive, locally defined styles, ranging from Gregorian- and Byzantine-
influenced monody to two-voice polyphonic or heterophonic idioms that
bear a close relation to regional folksongs. Glagolitic chant functioned as
a mode of traditional Slavic culture out there on the littoral. And as such,
it coexisted with, and brushed up against, an Italianate culture that sig-
nalled the Mediterranean rather than the Balkans.
 CHAPTER EIGHT

INFRASTRUCTURES

Littoral Balkans: Venice and the Adriatic

The header littoral Balkans begs some questions. It reminds us that Bal-
kans, like Orient, is a culturally contested term. For Jovan Cviji, as for
Fernand Braudel, the Adriatic littoral was part of the Balkans. It existed
in a symbiotic relation to its mountainous hinterland so that they formed
contrasted parts of a cultural, as well as a geographical, whole.1 Yet, as
Bojan Baskar points out, this has not been a widely-held local view.2 For
cultural geographers such as Guido Miglia, the narrow strip of the eastern
Adriatic coastline, which was never secured by the Ottomans, belongs not
to the Balkans but to the Mediterranean.3 But that too is a culturally con-
tested term. Defined by Braudel and others as a culture area character-
ised by a topos of diversity within unity, the Mediterranean has come to
be understood more in symbolic or cultural than in strictly geographical
terms; indeed the quality of mediterraneit has been subject to appropria-
tions of various kinds, not least by Italian fascism. Mediterranean, then,
might join Balkans and Mitteleuropa as a term with resonance.4
Where Dalmatia is concerned, it connotes the Italianate culture of the
towns, open to the sea and cosmopolitan in character, together with an
everyday culture (cuisine, architecture, interior design, lifestyle, music)
that is removed from the colder, darker Dinaric interior (the contrast is
spelt out by Andri in Days of the Consuls). Within Dalmatia, the Istrian
peninsula is sometimes singled out as distinctive: more culturally and eth-
nically mixed, a kind of Mediterranean in microcosm, with a tendency for
(urban, maritime) Italians to cluster along the coast, and (rural) Croats
or Slovenians to favour the inland territories.5 These are stereotypes,

1 Cviji 1918; Braudel 1990.

2Baskar 1999.
3Miglia 1994.
4See Driessen 1999, and other papers in this issue of Narodna Umjetnost. For a recent
history of the Mediterranean, see Norwich 2006.
5The historical differences, and their relevance to music, are discussed in Stipevi
1992.
190 chapter eight

of course. But the key point is that a Mediterranean culture has been a
reality for many inhabitants of Dalmatia and Istria. One might indeed
go further, and suggest that the Croatian lands extend the notion of in-
betweeness that will be developed in this book, in that they mediate cul-
turally between the Mediterranean and Mitteleuropa.
For much of its history this coastal region was subject to the Venetian
Republic, and for several centuries there was an extended war of attrition
fought along the whole of the littoral, as the Ottomans pushed forward
and harassed the Venetians in all their Adriatic and Aegean territories.6
It was a relationship of mutual dependency (mercantile and cultural
exchanges between them began at an early stage), but on the coastal strip
it was Venice that held the upper hand in cultural terms, and the legacy
proved to be a lasting one.
It was not, however, without challenge. In later years, as both the Otto-
man and the Venetian empires declined, the Habsburgs exerted a more
pronounced cultural influence. They had long been a ruling presence
in the Slovenian parts of Istria, and they controlled much of northern
Croatia. But following 1815, in the wake of Napoleons Illyrian adventures,
the Habsburgs acquired the bulk of the Adriatic coastal provinces, and
much of their hinterland too. It is unnecessary to spell out the constantly
shifting political fortunes. The bigger picture is one of conflicting Vene-
tian, Turkish and Austrian (or Hungarian) interests until the late nine-
teenth century, at which point developing nationalist aspirations in both
Croatia and Slovenia came into conflict with the Habsburgs, and in
northern Dalmatia and Istria at least with the irredentism of a newly
unified Italy.
There is no neutrality in scholarship. Today this region is Croatian, and
prior to that it was Yugoslav. But the national perspective can function
as a distorting lens through which we look back at events, practices and
materials. And it has functioned in this way in Croatian music historiogra-
phy, with national labels assigned to composers and repertories as though
present-day political borders had a permanent meaning. It is instructive
to set Croatian accounts of renaissance-baroque music in Dalmatia along-
side Italian-based accounts. The Croatian scholar Josip Andreis wrote
a detailed history of Croatian music, and one that has benefited from

6For a period in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the Venetian
empire embraced much of the Peloponnese peninsula (Byzantine Morea).
 infrastructures 191

English translation.7 Yet it is not difficult to discern a wider agenda. The

objectives are first to establish the originality of what Andreis takes to be
significant music in the region, then to claim that music for the nation,
and finally to ensure that it is part of a European story.8 Music from the
littoral is discussed within the same framework as music from the north-
ern territories, which belonged culturally to the orbit of Central Europe.
Compare this with the approach of Ivano Cavallini, who regards the
eastern Adriatic, from Trieste southwards, as a more-or-less unified and
predominantly Italianate culture. Significantly, Cavallinis essays on music
and musical life in renaissance Istria were published as a monograph in the
series Studi di musica veneta,9 though they also do justice to the influence
of German Lutheranism and to the Habsburgs. Cavallinis mapping of dif-
ferent cultural strands in Istria at a particular historical moment provides
a useful antidote to the generalising trends of the national histories. And
his study tells us something too about the cultural complexity to be found
further down the Dalmatian coast; witness the linguistic history, with dia-
lects of a native Dalmatian spoken well into the early Renaissance period,
when they were assimilated by a Venetian lingua franca (Venetan).
At this time Croats represented just one population strand in the
Roman cities on the littoral (vestigial Roman Dalmatia). But they moved
in increasing numbers to these cities during the Ottoman wars, and their
akavian dialect became increasingly assertive. During the Renaissance
a rich humanistic culture developed in the bourgeois circles of the Dal-
matian cities, where an Italian tutor, or an education in Italy, was the
norm. And it was in these cities that a vernacular literature for Croatian,
influenced by church writings in Glagolitic script and by the increas-
ing use of the vernacular in official documents, was first developed. The
landmark text is usually taken to be the epic Judita (1501) by Split-born
Marko Maruli, a reworking of the Hebrew story to connote the struggle
of the Croats against the Ottomans. But the literary centre of gravity soon
passed to Dubrovnik. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, drama-
tists (Marin Dri), poets (Vladislav Meneti and Ivan Buni), and epic
poets (Dinko Zlatari and Ivan Gunduli) all elevated Dubrovnik to a level
of international significance in culture.

7Andreis 1982.
8This is a recurrent theme. See also Tuksar 1998a.
9Cavallini 1990; cf. Stipevi 1992.
192 chapter eight

Dubrovniks Golden Age as a City State on the Italian model, with gen-
eral assembly, senate and cabinet, lasted from the mid fourteenth century
to the major earthquake of 1667. Its achievements in music are less widely
recognised than those in architecture and literature. But research by
Miho Demovi, Stanislav Tuksar and others in the Historical Archives,
the Dubrovnik Museum, the Cathedral Archives and the Franciscan Mon-
astery library indicates that there was a flourishing musical life, and that
music was considered an important component of a general education.10
It is noteworthy that the Accademia dei Concordi hosted discussions on
the role of music, associated especially with the neo-Aristotelian philoso-
pher and statesman Nikola Vitov Gueti (15491610) and the mathemati-
cian and poet Miho Monaldi (15401592).
As an independent City State, Dubrovnik maintained a Capella (a resi-
dent band) for ceremonial occasions, and details of the musicians and
their instruments are extant from the late fourteenth century.11 In addi-
tion, concerts were promoted by the Duke and the city fathers (organ
music, madrigals, lute-songs); there was popular music performed by
professional musicians to accompany dances; there were processions and
carnival festivities associated with the Feast of St. Blaise; and there was
a wealth of music at the Cathedral, the Dominican and Franciscan mon-
asteries and the Church of St. Blaise. Croatian-language theatre was also
developed, with music playing a prominent role in pastorals, tragedies
(usually translations from the Greek), mystery plays and melodramas.
Opera appeared surprisingly early. A translation of Ottavia Rinuccinis
Euridice was published in 1617, and a performance of the first native opera,
Junije Palmotis Atalanta with music by Lambert Courtoys the younger,
was given in 1629.
A good deal is known about individual composers in old Dubrovnik,
and especially about the French family Courtoys, of which the composer
of Atalanta was a younger-generation member. But very little indigenous
music has survived from this period, partly due to the destruction of
Cathedral and other archives by the earthquake. In contrast, there is a
corpus of extant music from the cities further north on the Dalmatian lit-
toral and from the islands. It was associated mainly with the churches and
monasteries (codices date from the eleventh century), but in the sixteenth

10See, for example, Demovi 1981. Also Tuksar 1994, and the last chapter of Tuksar
1980a. For the archival materials, see Blaekovi 1988.
11 Demovi 1981, 37595. A legacy of the processional role of the Capella is present in
todays cultural tourism.
 infrastructures 193

and seventeenth centuries it also included secular vocal and instrumental

music, notably frottole, madrigals (to Italian texts) and lute music.
When this music was printed at all, it was invariably in Venice. Unlike
Dubrovnik, which modelled its cultural and ceremonial life on a rival
Venetian Republic, the northern Adriatic cities belonged more directly
within the orbit of that Republic. Either way, la serenissima loomed large,
both as the major centre of a developing print culture, and as a channel
to Italian humanist thought. This returns us to an earlier point: the dubi-
ous relevance of invoking nationality in the discussion of such repertories.
Croatian national histories invariably include music by Croatian-born
composers living abroad, for example. In a later age, this can often carry
the justification of diasporic transfer of elements of a national culture, but
it is hard to see how the music of Renaissance composers from Dalmatia
would have been uniquely shaped by, or would have sought to preserve,
qualities that might be considered Croatian.
Conversely, there is every reason to recognise the music composed in
Dalmatia by foreign-born composers as formative of the cultural history
of the region. It was common for Italian composers to take employment
along the coast, as we can tell just by looking at the story of music at the
Cathedral in Split, the second major cultural centre after Dubrovnik. The
Cathedral Archive in Split allows us to reconstruct a more-or-less con-
tinuous history of the maestri di capella of the cathedral from the early
years of the seventeenth century.12 We learn that quite a few were Ital-
ians, some resident for just a few years, as was the case with Gaetano
de Stephanis.13 We also learn something about the gradual installation of
music institutions, and about the beginnings of music education. Thus,
the first Cathedral organ builder Fra Ventura signed his contract as early
as 1412, undertaking teaching duties, and contributing to a tradition of
organists that would become well entrenched in Dalmatia. Likewise the
maestri di capella were required to compose, to direct the (male) Capella,
and to teach at the Cathedral Singing School. It is clear from all of this that
musical life in Split was firmly centred on the churches and monasteries.
The Split Cathedral Archive is only one of many archives located on
the littoral, including the islands.14 Thanks to them, and to international
libraries, we have extant compositions of varying quality associated with

12Grgi 1990.
13Stipevi 1982.
14For details of the major collections, see Tuksar 1992.
194 chapter eight

the organist-composers of the Dalmatian cathedrals and churches, includ-

ing a handful of surviving motets and madrigals by ibenik-born Julije
Skjaveti, probably the most distinguished sixteenth-century composer
from the region. And as we move into the seventeenth century, we begin
to find music of real artistic merit, notably by three composers who neatly
exemplify the three standard options as to nationality in the region: native,
immigrant and migr.
The first is Ivan Lukai (15741648), also from ibenik. Of the three,
he is the only one who was born in Dalmatia and worked there, taking
the post of maestro di capella at Split after an extended period in Italy.
The only surviving music is a collection of Sacrae cantiones, published
in Venice in 1620 and influenced by Venetian concertante styles.15 They
are motets for one or several voices with organ continuo, and they indi-
cate that the monody of the seconda prattica was transferred to Dalmatia
remarkably quickly. This is also clear from the music of our second com-
poser, Tomaso Cecchini (c. 15831644), who was born in Verona but spent
most of his life in Dalmatia, initially at Split Cathedral but later at Lesina
Cathedral in Hvar. His output includes some 27 published opuses, includ-
ing madrigals, canzonettas, motets, psalms, sonatas and masses; the third
book of madrigals, Amorosi concetti, has been highly praised.16 And finally
we have Vinko Jeli (1596?1636), who was born in Rijeka but spent his
entire professional life in Graz and Zabern (Alsace). His output has only
been partially preserved, but it includes spiritual concertos (motets) with
continuo in the modern Italian style, as well as instrumental ricercare.
The flowering of art music in renaissance-baroque Dalmatia was a rare
phenomenon in the Balkan peninsula, and in one sense without obvi-
ous consequence for the wider region (only in some of the larger Greek
islands, including Crete, can we find some comparable developments).
It made few incursions to the Ottoman-controlled interior, though its
ripples extended further down the coast to Boka kotorska, which was part
of the Ragusan Republic. Venetian Dalmatia, we might say, held the line
for western culture prior to the nineteenth century, and it established
some of the musical infrastructures that would later be extended under
the Habsburgs, at which point European art music really did begin to
penetrate more deeply into the interior. Yet even before the Habsburg

15See the discussion in Plamenac 1998 (Plamenac was a pioneering figure in the study
of Dalmatian repertories of the renaissance and baroque periods). A facsimile edition of
the Sacrae cantiones was published by Ennio Stipevi (Stipevi 1998).
16Buji 1993, 141622. See also Plamenac 1998.
 infrastructures 195

annexation, the aristocratic and bourgeois cultures of the littoral began to

change direction, as they responded increasingly to northern influences.
In Dubrovnik, nature intervened to mark the caesura between old and
new. It was some time before the city began to recover from the dev-
astation of the 1667 earthquake. Certainly its Golden Age was over. Yet
recover it did, and if its old glories were not restored, it was at least able to
use commercial and diplomatic connections as well as substantial histori-
cal wealth to renew its cultural life. By the second half of the eighteenth
century there was a thriving musical life associated with aristocratic and
bourgeois sociability, and a rising curve of public-music-making. As in old
Dubrovnik, the churches remained central to this, as did the theatre, and
there was the continuing round of civic ceremonies. But a bourgeois con-
cert life, of a kind developed rather earlier in Slovenia,17 also took shape
in the city, including instrumental concerts with music by native as well
as foreign composers.
Of the former, Luka Sorkoevi (173489), a nobleman and diplomat
from a distinguished Ragusan family, has special historical significance.
He was a figure of importance politically, and he was well connected in
cultural circles too: a familiar of Haydn, Gluck, Metastasio and Alberto
Fortis. But he is remembered today as the first Croatian symphonist, even
if symphony here really means three-part sinfonia heavily influenced by
Italian opera buffa.18 There are eight such symphonies, modestly scored
for strings with two oboes and two horns and somewhat akin stylistically
to the early works of Stamitz. They are skilfully crafted and attractive con-
tributions to the pre-classical repertory, and it does them no great service
to entertain higher claims.
Luka Sorkoevi met an unhappy end.19 But his name lived on. Rather as
with the Courtoys family, there was a Sorkoevi musical dynasty, includ-
ing Lukas son Antun, his daughter Marina, and Jelena Puci-Sorkoevi.
Like his father, Antun (17751841) had a distinguished career as a diplo-
mat. But he was also a man of letters, and wrote extensively about the
cultural history of Dubrovnik, and about the history and putative future
of Slavonic languages and literatures. Although generally thought to be a
less accomplished composer than his father, he amassed a considerable

17For a discussion of Slovenian musical life, including the role of the Academia Philhar-
monicorum (established in 1701), see the relevant parts of Cvetko 1981.
18Majer-Bobetko 1997.
19On 11 September 1789, he committed suicide, after it seems succumbing to a form of
mental illness. For biographical data on the family generally, see Demovi 1983.
196 chapter eight

output, including some of the earliest Croatian piano music. Closely asso-
ciated with both Luka and Antun Sorkoevi was the composer Julije
Bajamonti (17441800). He was pre-eminent among the Split circle of
composers, though he also spent a few years at Hvar and was a frequent
visitor to Dubrovnik at a time when there appears to have been grow-
ing reciprocity between the major cities on the littoral.20 A formidable
and versatile intellectual, Bajamonti composed in all the principal genres,
vocal and instrumental, and in an idiom that bridges baroque and early
classical.
Bajamontis biography testifies to the continuing importance of Split as
a cultural centre. It is clear from a study by Danica Boic-Buani that
it was hardly less active than Dubrovnik in community music-making,
and that in addition to the well-documented activities centred on the
Cathedral, there were regular visits from Venetian troupes, and perfor-
mances of esteemed contemporary music by local musicians.21 Moreover,
the wide range of music found in private collections signals the impor-
tance of music in domestic gatherings, and the catholicity of local tastes.
Indeed the sheer wealth of archival material in Split may have distorted
our picture of musical life on the littoral. Zadar was also a major centre,
and there were comparable activities in the other cities, and on the main
islands. Yet for all its vitality, cultural life in eighteenth-century Dalmatia
was cultivated in the shadow of a declining empire. The heyday of Venice
had long since passed. Her cultural glories outlived her political prestige,
but the loss of political power during the eighteenth century took its toll
on music not only in Venice itself but in her residual subject territories.
Well before the end of the republic in 1797, Habsburg and south German
influences had begun to encroach on the littoral. From that point on they
came to dominate it.

Mitteleuropa: The Reach of the Habsburgs

It would be hard to overstate the transformative influence of the French

annexation of the Adriatic littoral, following the short period of Austrian
administration that succeeded the Venetian republic. This Napoleonic

20Another interesting eighteenth-century figure was Ivan Mane Jarnovi (17401804),

born, it seems, on a ship just off Dubrovnik and with a cosmopolitan career as a performer
and composer. See Tuksar 1980b.
21 Boic-Buani 1982.
 infrastructures 197

interlude may have been of short duration (180613), but it was of key
significance. Whatever their views of the annexation itself, Croatian intel-
lectuals were brought into direct contact with the politics of liberalism
and nationalism, and this encounter with modern thought proved deci-
sive for the cultivation of a nineteenth-century Yugoslav ideal. In the
shorter term, the French annexation served to reforge the fragile links that
had previously existed between Dalmatia and northern Croatia. With the
defeat of Napoleon, a shared Austro-Hungarian bureaucracy strengthened
this sense of a common Dalmatian-Croatian culture, despite attempts to
keep the two provinces apart politically (Dalmatia was ruled directly from
Vienna rather than administered by the Croatian parliament [the Sabor]
in tandem with Hungary).
This was reflected in the structures of musical life. Some infrastruc-
tures were common to the two provinces long before the nineteenth cen-
tury, mainly through the church. A monastic culture that extended back
to medieval times was one unifying factor, and it provided a continuity
underlying both political change and cultural renovation. Moreover, the
church continued to play a key role in musical life right through the eigh-
teenth century. Partly this was due to the social instabilities of these Croa-
tian territories. The church could maintain its cultural influence, in other
words, precisely because the vacuum created by a steadily weakening aris-
tocracy was not adequately filled by the kinds of bourgeois structures that
had developed elsewhere in Europe.
Of special significance was the Jesuit order. Jesuit colleges, offering a
broadly liberal, humanist education, were established in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries in Dubrovnik, Rijeka, Varadin and Osijek (in the
northern towns they helped promote a developing kajkavian literature).22
And if we extend the geographical trajectory, we link up with our ear-
lier discussion of a Jesuit presence in Vojvodina. The theatrical activities
described there were also found in Croatia, as were the public processions
and festivities. So it follows that the suppression of the order in 1773, in
a context of developing anti-clericalism, had important consequences for
cultural life as a whole, right up to its restoration in 1814. Among other

22Kajkavian is the dialect spoken in northern Croatia, as distinct from akavian (the
coastal dialect) and tokavian (the more widely-spoken dialect that became the basis of
the written and spoken language that used to be known as Serbo-Croat). Since Croa-
tia has been an independent state, Kajkavian, which has connections with Slovenian, has
been actively cultivated as a means of distinguishing Croatian from Serbian.
198 chapter eight

things, it required the establishment of new municipal schools, though

the Franciscans took over some of these Jesuit activities.
As Dragotin Cvetko has pointed out, the suppression of the Jesuits
was only one of several measures that impeded musical life under the
Habsburgs in the late eighteenth century.23 There was also a rigorous cen-
sorship of church music stemming directly from the centralising policies
of both Maria Theresa and Joseph II. In other words, even before the 1815
settlement, those parts of Slovenia and northern Croatia already under
Austrian rule were made forcibly aware that while the Habsburg admin-
istration could undoubtedly be culturally enabling it could also impose
rigid bureaucratic controls. A high-profile casualty of this was the Slove-
nian Academia Philharmonicorum, one of the oldest in Europe. And it
hardly helped that these southern Slav territories were treated much less
favourably than Hungary, and that Hungary went on to assume control of
Croatian affairs in 1779.
It will be worth trying to clarify at this stage just how far the Habsburg
monarchy actually extended into South East Europe in the aftermath of
the Napoleonic wars. The Ottomans had long since been pushed back
from Hungary itself, but the reclaimed Habsburg territories also included
Transylvania, the Banat of Temevar and Vojvodina. In addition, Vienna
controlled most of the territories of the old Croatian kingdom, including
Slavonia, which had been returned to the monarchy following the Otto-
man defeat in 1718, and Dalmatia, which was administered directly from
Austria with the defeat of Napoleon. Then there was Bosnia, which was
occupied by the Habsburgs much later. Bosnia remained an Ottoman
territory, united with Herzegovina at the Istanbul Conference of 1876,
until the Habsburg occupation following the Berlin Treaty of 1878. The
Croatian Sabor repeatedly staked a claim to it (as did the Serbs), but it was
formally annexed by the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1908 in the wake of
the Young Turk revolution.
If we stand back from the detail of all this, we can see that from as far
back as the early eighteenth century the threat from the Ottoman empire
had been steadily reduced, enabling a period of relative stability in the Bal-
kans during the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth. As a result,
from the early nineteenth century onwards all those territories recovered
from the Ottomans were in a position to develop the kinds of bourgeois
social structures and accompanying cultures that were already familiar in

23Andreis, Cvetko and Djuri-Klajn 1962, 350.

 infrastructures 199

other parts of the Habsburg empire. The territory most resistant to this
modernisation was the Military Frontier, which remained under direct
rule from Vienna until 1881, when it was returned to native (mainly Croa-
tian) administrations. Some elements of western culture were established
there through the Jesuit orders (until 1773) and the Franciscan monaster-
ies, but of their very nature the Frontier towns were not conducive to the
development of a bourgeois culture.
Music-making contexts in these Habsburg territories could be public or
private, professional or amateur, native or foreign. Likewise, repertories
could be sacred or secular, elite or popular, conservative or modern. It is
initially tempting to line up the contexts and the repertories in matching
columns, but in reality the categories would constantly cross. Quite apart
from the mix of religions and ethnicities that was endemic to the whole
of this region, social class boundaries remained fluid on the periphery of
the empire. This was partly because there had been no real landed aris-
tocracy under the Ottomans, and only a weak bourgeoisie, so that even
under subsequent Habsburg rule, aristocracies were effectively planted,
while middle-class values on a Western model struggled to gain a secure
footing. If we add to this the endless wars, the frequent changes of politi-
cal administration, and the numerous instabilities as to demography and
settlement caused by continued migrations, we can see why structures
were far from stable, and also why it is hard to generalise about what
particular repertories might have represented in terms of social or confes-
sional groupings.
What we can say is that the transformation from a patronal to a bour-
geois musical life effectively from court to city institutions took place
more slowly on this southern frontier of the empire than in the capitals
of central Europe. In northern Croatia in the late eighteenth century
there was a professional musical life in private aristocratic settings, well
networked to the major cultural capitals. Many of the wealthiest fami-
lies in Hrvatsko Zagorje and Slavonia had been effectively transplanted
there by the Habsburgs and given parcels of land in return for military
service against the Turks. Such families were favoured by the Austrians,
and several of their courts became centres of a thriving ceremonial cul-
ture. They imported baroque archictecture to the region (whole quarters
of Osijek were transformed in appearance, for instance), as well as artists
of international reputation. By the late eighteenth century, families such
as the Hilleprand-Prandaus in Valpovo and the Pejaevis in Virovitica,
Naice and Osijek had establishments well capable of maintaining their
own Kapellen and bringing in their own composers.
200 chapter eight

A case in point would be the Erddys of Pressburg [Bratislava], relatives

of the Esterhazys, who had a seat at Varadin. They were not just able to
provide a resident Kappelmeister in the person of Juraj Karlo Wisner Mor-
genstern, an enthusiastic Illyrian, but could also attract a composer with
the reputation of the Vienna-based Johann Baptist Vanhal to Varadin,
as well as sponsoring and employing the young Ignaz Josef Pleyel. This
patronal culture was not to last. In the face of a more general decline in
aristocratic fortunes right across the empire, indeed right across Europe,
music at the Croatian courts began to lose vitality. It did persist in the
wake of the Napoleonic Wars, but the growing tendency was for court
institutions to become de facto public institutions, where the patrons
functioned increasingly as promoters rather than sponsors of musical life
(the history of successive generations of the Bombelles family in Varadin
is indicative).24 In this way, the shift to an urban-based musical culture,
one as yet barely supported by a bourgeoisie, was slowly effected.
Austria-Hungary choreographed much of this development, guiding
the moves of the more prominent citizenry as they extended the reach
of cultural activities to embrace wider audiences, for the monarchy was
well aware of the potency of formal culture as a mode of social control. Its
intervention could be enabling, promoting theatre and music, as well as
general programmes of education. But it could also be inhibiting, not only
due to censorship, but because bureaucratic and legalistic controls were
imposed on any cultural forms that entered the public domain. Urban
centres were relatively small in northern Croatia and Slavonia. Until the
nineteenth century, many of the towns were really little more than either
military fortresses or enlarged marketplaces, within which communities
of Jews and Roma acted out their customary roles. There had been too
many wars to enable these towns to develop economically. So it is hardly
surprising that as they did begin to expand, their course was increasingly
determined by the imperial powers. Political interventions, in other words,
played a very direct role in the slow formation of a bourgeois culture.
For all that, social and cultural modernisation did take place in its own
time, and music played its part. The role of aristocratic courts was steadily
taken over by theatres and music societies, while music education aside
from the boarding schools that provided musical training was chan-
nelled into state-controlled schools and academies. And throughout this
process the political unit of the monarchy, however loosely structured,

24Peri 2002.
 infrastructures 201

also functioned as a cultural unit, exercising strict control, but at the

same time enabling a constant traffic of people and ideas. Where there
was a lack of skilled labour on the peripheries, it could be brought in
from all over the empire, and that included the developing technical skills
of music printing and instrument making, as well as the entrepreneurial
skills involved in the bookshop or the music shop. Often it was simplest
just to import things, and that included music and musicians.
Emblematic of these emergent bourgeois cultures were the music soci-
eties that sprang up all over the Habsburg empire, together with associ-
ated schools of music. In Croatia they appeared in Varadin, Osijek and
above all Zagreb. The Zagreb Musikverein was founded in 1827, somewhat
on the model of societies already established not just in Vienna but in
Hungarian towns such as Pest and Kolozsvr [Cluj-Napoca in Transyl-
vania, now in Romania], as well as in Ljubljana, whose Philharmonische
Gesellschaft was one of the earliest in all the Habsburg lands (1794, with its
Music School established in 1816). Indeed the Zagreb and Ljubljana societ-
ies maintained close contacts. The activities of the Musikverein included
the organisation of concert life, both amateur and professional, and its
extensive archives are instructive, since they include continuous lists of
programmes through into the twentieth century.25
In the manner of these societies everywhere, the Musikverein opened
a school of music just two years after its foundation (1829), and its year-
book gives comprehensive details of teaching programmes and person-
nel right through to 1937.26 Later, in the 1870s, the society moved into
an impressive building with a concert hall, which was not just the site of
professional concerts by visiting soloists but home to an amateur string
orchestra. It also began its own publishing programme in 1865, offering
modest opportunities to Croatian composers to see their music in print.
By then, the Musikverein was under Croatian auspices, and had become
the Drutvo prijatelja glazbe (Society of the Friends of Music) and then the
Hrvatski glazbeni zavod [Croatian Music Institute], marking a major shift
in the all-important battle of the languages.27 This shift was also reflected

25I am grateful to Nada Bezi for her help, and for showing me the unpublished
diary of the Society prepared by Anton Gogla in 1927 (Hrvatski glazbeni zavod 18271927).
See also Miklaui-eran 2001. Canonic tendencies can be traced from the mid century
onwards (Ivan Zajc dominated at this time), and in the early twentieth century there were
ambitious operatic ventures undertaken by students at the National Theatre. By the 1920s
a modernist canon was well represented.
26Later this would become a full-scale conservatoire. See H. Pettan 1978.
27See aban 1982.
202 chapter eight

in the activities of the state-supported singing society Kolo (founded in

1862), an influential, nationalist-orientated amateur association modeled
on similar institutions in the Germanic world, but with Slavic repertory.28
The politics of language will be discussed in the next chapter, but in the
early nineteenth century German was the principal language in Zagreb
and throughout northern Croatia (in Slavonia it was Hungarian). Newspa-
pers and journals were published in German, while the permanent theatre
was modeled on a typical German Stadttheater, i.e. run by a theatre soci-
ety, which offered drama, opera and operetta in German-language pro-
ductions; like many such theatres, it had a separate music section. It was
only in the second half of the century that this situation changed. The the-
atre became officially Croatian in 1870, preparing the way for the opening
of the Croatian National Theatre in 1895. And the first music journals in
Croatian also began to appear at this time, beginning with Sv. Cecilija in
1877.29 There was, in other words, a struggle for Croatian in the public
sphere. And that returns us to some of those questions of periphery that
were raised in chapter 5.

Reciprocities: Modernising the Peripheries

To focus on peripheries means to look afresh at how cultural traditions are

shaped, supported and promoted through symbiotic processes of margin-
alisation and centralisation. General music histories tend to concentrate
their discussion in a small handful of locations, and the Habsburg cities of
central Europe are among them. The nub of it is that these cities played
a prominent role in the European march to modernity, from which the
Balkans was largely sidelined. This is the grand narrative against which
the little stories of the peripheries might be plotted. They may instanti-
ate the narrative, and even illuminate it. But equally they may revise it,
not least by rescuing historical practices from retrospective readings and
allowing us to see around the edges of familiar, canonised portraits of
music, musicians, and music-making. In the case of the Habsburg monar-
chy they invite us to critique, or at least to qualify, conventional readings
of a centralised imperial culture, and they do so above all by highlighting
reciprocities.

28Blaekovi 1985.
29Andreis 1971.
 infrastructures 203

Homi Bhabhas identification of what he calls a complex process of

minoritarian modernity a powerful counter to familiar readings
of centres and peripheries has some purchase on Habsburg culture
in the nineteenth century.30 The key to this is the recognition that the
major Habsburg capitals of the lower Danubian region were themselves
multi-cultural, multi-ethnic cities. Many of their immigrant communities
functioned as relatively self-contained units, linguistically and culturally,
but networking was active nonetheless. This means that Croats living in
Vienna participated in the social and cultural circles of the capital, and at
the same time disseminated ideas and values from those circles to their
compatriots back home. Such networking extended, moreover, to the
movement of talented young musicians from the southern towns to the
capitals, and the movement of teachers, notably from Prague, in the other
direction; it was, after all, one way to staff the newly instituted music
schools in the southern provinces.
Nor was the networking confined to Croatian territories. We noted that
a western culture also developed among the Serbs of Vojvodina, responsive
to the same modernising trends that we find in other Habsburg-controlled
territories. And at the same time the cultural capitals, including Vienna,
Trieste, Pressburg and Buda, were enriched by the presence of Serbian
artists and intellectuals. Tatjana Markovi has documented this process
in some detail, demonstrating how Serbian communities in Vienna estab-
lished choral and reading societies, founded periodicals, and promoted
music education.31 Her analysis goes beyond this, moreover, to demon-
strate how political and social discourses conditioned by this Viennese
context went on to influence the cultural ideology that we associate with
Serbian romantic nationalism.
Even in Ottoman Belgrade there had been a westernising Habsburg
moment between 1717 and 1739. However, it was almost exactly a cen-
tury later, in 1840, that Belgrade truly came into its own as the capital
of a newly independent (or semi-independent) Serbia. Following recogni-
tion of Serbia as an autonomous Ottoman province in 1831, Prince Milo
Obrenovi invited Josif lezinger (18941870) to modernise the musical
life of its first capital, Kragujevac. The result was the Band of the Serbian
Prince, as it was initially called, a military band of mainly wind instru-
ments that performed on ceremonial occasions and also at the theatre

30Bhabha 1994, xx.

31 Markovi 2005.
204 chapter eight

established by Milo in 1834; the Singspiele performed there were of a kind

characteristic of vernacular theatre all over Europe in the early nineteenth
century, a further mark of the West, but at the same time a symbol of
the nation.32 Other key institutions rapidly followed, notably in Panevo
in southern Vojvodina. Here a Serbian Church Choral Society was estab-
lished in 1838, followed by a theatre in 1844, and one might have hoped
for much more from Panevo had its cultural life not been curtailed in
the aftermath of 1848.
By then Belgrade was the new capital of Serbia, with a programme of
westernisation instigated by Alexander Karaorevi. The band and the-
atre had both been transferred there from Kragujevac in 1840, and the
Belgrade Choral Society was founded in 1853. This was much more than a
choral society in our modern sense, incorporating a private music school
run by Milan Milovuk, later converted into a Singing School in the hands
of Milovuks successor, Kornelje Stankovi (the fully-fledged Music School
of the Belgrade Choral Society was established rather later in 1899). Then,
in 1881, another major Belgrade choral society the Stankovi was
established, and it too evolved into an influential Music Society, with its
own Music School created in 1911, and with Stanislav Biniki (18721942)
as its first director (schools of music were also founded in Subotica in 1868
and Novi Sad in 1912).33
The choral societies were key components of Serbian musical life in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, partly because they formed
a bridge between Serbs from widely scattered regions, including Bosnia
and Herzegovina, Montenegro and the Habsburg cities further north. In
Habsburg territories they had special political significance as they were
among the few institutions that enabled Serbs to meet together publicly.
Thus, in addition to presenting besede [public meetings, which could
include music] and other public concerts, they could and did act as a
focus for nationalist debate. Markovi has documented the activities of
the Serbian Academic Singing Society Zora in Vienna, and her case study

32There had been other initiatives prior to this in different areas of musical life. For
example, Gyrgy Arnold, regens chori in Szabadka (now Subotica), wrote church music,
Hungarian dances and operas (Kemny Simon, 1826), published a Yugoslav songbook and
wrote a music encyclopedia.
33It would be impossible here to do justice to the growth of the choral society move-
ment in Serbia; another of considerable importance was the Obili Choral Society, founded
in 1884.
 infrastructures 205

crystallises something of the potent national symbolism carried by the

choral societies in general.34
This came into focus in one of the key events in their history, a concert
organised by Stevan Mokranjac (18561914) in 1878 to mark 25 years of the
Belgrade Choral Society. It was structured as a history of Serbian song,
beginning with epic song accompanied by gusle, and proceeding through
folksongs from Karadis collection right up to the modern school of
Josif Marinkovi (18511931) and Mokranjac. Such exercises in historicism
and local canon formation were reinforced by the curricular and practi-
cal activities of the schools of music belonging to the societies. Yet these
schools were also case studies in reciprocity, given that many of the teach-
ers were immigrants. It is a familiar paradox: the international character
of the national. And it is replicated in the history of opera in Belgrade. If
we were to single out any milestone here, it would be the founding of the
National Theatre in 1869, at which point the tradition of plays with music,
associated with earlier companies in Kragujevac, Panevo and Belgrade,
found its national home, albeit again staffed in large measure by musi-
cians from the major capitals.35
The culture of Mitteleuropa,36 to use a term that seems to have origi-
nated from the deliberations of the Congress of Vienna, was largely defined
by this reciprocity between the cultural capitals and the provincial towns,
so that there was something of an empire-wide cultural infrastructure. It
is striking too that early nineteenth-century discourses of political, social
and cultural emancipation increasingly embraced the intelligentsia of the
South-Slavic communities, whether they were located in the capitals or
the provinces. Our narratives of music history can easily miss this inclu-
sivity by focusing mainly on the capitals, and by fixating on later political
borders at the expense of a multi-national mobility whose reach was sur-
prisingly extensive. It extended eastwards beyond Vojvodina to Habsburg
Banat,37 where Austrian influences were marked (Temeswar [German
form of Timioara] was one of many towns known as little Vienna), and
from there it proceeded yet further eastwards to Transylvania.

34Markovi 2005.
35A fuller account of Serbian musical life would include the Belgrade Military Orches-
tra, established in 1899, which in due course became the Orchestra of the Kings Guard
(1903).
36Note the rather different resonance of todays revisionist term Central Europe,
which emerged partly as a rejoinder to the Eastern Europe imposed by the Cold War.
37This region was ceded to the Habsburgs in 1718.
206 chapter eight

Transylvania was united with Hungary under Habsburg rule soon after
the recapture of Buda from the Turks. As a result, the ruling aristocratic
class promoted Hungarian (or Saxon German) rather than Austrian cul-
ture, though the peasant population was largely Romanian. There is evi-
dence of a developed musical life stretching back to the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, including church music traditions that reflected
the competing faiths of this region, as well as organ and lute repertories.
Music was cultivated at the monastery schools and at the courts of princes
and governors, and it reached a high point in the achievements of Ioan
Cianu (162987). The Codex Caioni, compiled between 1652 and 1671,
is a compendium of arrangements of sacred and popular music, and it
was followed by the equally important Cantionale Catholicum (1678), an
anthology of religious songs. In general Cianus library was testimony to
the sophistication of musical taste in cultivated circles in the seventeenth
century.
Then, in the eighteenth century, an aristocratic musical culture began
to gain momentum in Transylvania, culminating in the activities of courts
and bishoprics such as Nagyvrad [Oradea], where both Michael Haydn
and Dittersdorf worked for a time. There were also the modest begin-
nings of an urban musical culture, notably in the capital Kolozsvr, and
in German towns like Kronstadt [Braov] and Hermannstadt [Sibiu],
where due partly to the Jesuits concert series, music schools and ama-
teur chamber music associations were established to promote a classical
repertory. By 1814, musical life was sufficiently robust for two consecu-
tive issues of Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung to be dedicated to music in
Transylvania.38
Most important of all, Hungarian musical theatre was cultivated. A key
stage of this history was the institutionalisation of Hungarian opera at the
National Theatre, founded in Kolozsvr in 1821. From there troupes regu-
larly visited the other major cities of Transylvania, and even on occasion
the cities of Wallachia. And it was for Kolozsvr that the then conductor
at the National Theatre, Jzsef Ruzitska (17751823), a Slovak by birth,
wrote the music for what would become an influential Singspiel, Bla
futsa [Blas escape], performed just a year after the theatre opened, in
1822. Despite its slight musical content, this work had much the same sym-
bolic significance for Hungarian vernacular opera as had Jan Stefanis Cud

38These were listed as Geschichte der Musik in Siebenbrgen in numbers 4647, on 16

and 23 November (1814), 76585.
 infrastructures 207

mniemany [The Supposed Miracle] (1794) in Poland, Frantiek kroups

Drtenik [The Tinker] (1826) in the Czech lands, and Josif lezingers
enidba cara Duana [Tsar Duans Wedding] (1840) in Serbia. All were
signals of a nationalist orientation shortly to come, and in due course they
would be joined by the Romanian Singspiel Baba Hrca [The witch Hrca],
composed in 1848 by Alexandru Flechtenmacher (182398).
It is typical of the distortions that flow from nationalist politics that
we tend to think of Kolozsvr today as part of the periphery of European
culture rather than as a centre in its own right. Yet it was a major site for
the development of Hungarian art music, and the organisation of its musi-
cal life in the nineteenth century followed patterns that were basically
identical to those in other leading Danubian capitals. In addition to the
National Theatre, there were college choirs, and there was also folksong
collection and transcription. But the most important institution was the
Music Society, founded in 1819, which not only promoted an active con-
cert life but established a music school that in due course (1825) became
a fully-fledged conservatory. In this way a modern bourgeois musical cul-
ture took shape in Kolozsvr, as it did in other cities around the southern
and eastern edges of the Habsburg Empire in the first half of the nine-
teenth century. Today Kolozsvr (as Cluj-Napoca) is a Romanian city, but
its minority Hungarian population remains.
Towards the end of the century, a bourgeois culture was instituted in
one final Habsburg location. Bosnia and Herzegovina was the last major
territory to be occupied by Austro-Hungary before the turn of the cen-
tury, and in both Sarajevo and Banja Luka the familiar institutions were
accordingly established after 1878. Reading rooms and choral societies on
the model already well entrenched in Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia were
instituted under von Kllays administration,39 and there was a sustained
attempt to promote a distinct Bosnian language that might help separate
this territory from Serbia and Croatia, a policy very much in the inter-
ests of the monarchy, though one that met with stiff resistance among
the Bosnian intelligentsia. Singspiel performances, designed mainly for
the Habsburg elites, were given by Austrian troupes, symphony concerts
were inaugurated in January 1881 for much the same public (initially given
by the army band), and private music schools were established in Banja

39The reading rooms also promoted besede or besjede [public meetings, often with
music] in all these territories. See Vucinich 1978.
208 chapter eight

Luka (1905) and Sarajevo (1908), partly under the auspices of the Serbian
national society, Prosvjeta, established in the 1902.40
The foundation of the Zemaljski muzej [Provincial Museum] in Sara-
jevo in 1888 was of some significance, not least because it attracted the
distinguished ethnologist Ludvk Kuba to Bosnia and Herzegovina, where
he undertook a major programme of collecting. Indeed, as elsewhere in
the wider region, Czech musicians played a key role in developing musical
life generally. The foundations were laid, then, but it was really only in the
post-war context of the first Yugoslavia that the essential components of a
formal musical culture were properly instituted: the District Music School
in 1920, the National Theatre in Sarajevo (with its own orchestra and an
archive of programmes) in 1921, and the Philharmonic Society in 1923.41

The Principalities and Beyond

To continue charting the structures of musical life, we need to extend

beyond this area of Habsburg influence. Our approaches to the south and
east will necessitate a flanking movement around the centre of the Bal-
kans, returning first to the Adriatic littoral. The former Venetian territo-
ries of the Adriatic preserved much of their Italian character, but at the
same time they were steadily modernised under Habsburg rule. In Split,
for example, church-dominated infrastructures made room for vocal and
instrumental academies, reflecting a more general challenge to the clerical
monopoly on education and culture. A military band was founded, along
with amateur music societies, singing associations, and a reading society:
all the familiar scenery, in other words, of an emergent bourgeois musical
culture. Similar structures could be found in the other major cities on the
littoral, extending right down the coast to Boka Kotorska. But as we drop
further southwards we leave the Habsburg lands behind, encountering
first Albania, and then Epirus. There were sporadic glimmerings of west-
ern culture in Albania in the nineteenth century the usual Jesuit and
Franciscan activities as well as bands and singing societies but the real
flowering of art music there and in Epirus awaited the twentieth century.

40These national societies were established as a reaction against the Habsburgs. There
was a similar Croatian society, Napredak, in Mostar, and a Muslim society, Gajret, in Sara-
jevo. For an account of their activities, see Milojkovi-Djuri 2002, 15679. On Gajret, see
Pinjo 2006.
41 Romani 2002.
 infrastructures 209

We will pass over these territories now, and take a short crossing to the
Ionian Islands, where the story was very different.
These islands made up yet another corner of the former Venetian
empire, though synergies between Greek refugees from Chios, Cyprus
and Crete and a native Ionian aristocracy helped preserve the Greek lan-
guage and its culture. This, combined with the influence of the Orthodox
Church, ensured a measure of independence from the dominant Italian
culture. When the islands emerged from Napoleonic rule they fell into
British rather than Habsburg hands, and it was as a British protectorate
that they developed a modern musical culture in the nineteenth century,
initially in Corfu (a prime mover was Frederick North, Earl of Guildford,
founder of the Ionian Academy),42 but soon reaching to the other islands,
and in due course to mainland Greece.
Two institutions were of special importance in the musical life of Corfu.
One was the San Giacomo theatre, which was established in the early
eighteenth century, and functioned mainly as an opera house from the
late eighteenth century onwards. Its repertory was largely Italian, but it
was for this theatre that Nikolaos Halikiopoulos Mantzaros (17951872),
father of the so-called Ionian School of composers,43 wrote the arias and
cantatas, one in the Greek language, that might be counted as among the
first significant works of modern Greek art music, unless we return to a
truncated medieval-renaissance culture associated with Crete and Cyprus.
The first opera given at San Giocomo by a Greek composer, though to
an Italian libretto, was Franciskos Domeneginis Markos Botsaris. But the
theatre would be the venue for operas and cantatas composed by sev-
eral generations of later Ionian composers, as well as for their songs and
instrumental music, until it closed in 1890 to make way for the Municipal
Theatre of Corfu.
Mantzaros was also a major player in the history of the second major
institution, the Corfu Philharmonic Society, founded in 1840 in part to
provide band musicians for the St. Spiridion processions, which had pre-
viously been accompanied by the Venetian garrison band. As so often
with such societies, the Corfu Philharmonic depended heavily on pri-
vate sponsorship, but it soon developed its own educational programme,
directed partly at wind musicians playing in the local bands. There was
also tuition in voice, piano and strings, and in rudimentary theory, for

42For an insight into this institution and its history, see Henderson 1988.
43An excellent introduction to music in the Ionian Islands is Kardamis 2007.
210 chapter eight

which Mantzaros produced a textbook (much of the teaching made use of

a partimenti method of counterpoint teaching borrowed from Southern
Italy).44 The more gifted pupils would typically move on to the Neapolitan
conservatory of San Pietro a Majella to finish their training. The minutes
of the Philharmonic Societys board meetings are preserved from October
1840, initially written in Italian, then in Greek, and they offer insights into
the developing musical culture of the island, as do the archives of the
Corfu Reading Society (a treasury of opera libretti in particular).45 Such
reading societies were common in nineteenth-century cultural life, closely
associated with the rise of national cultures.
It was in Corfu that foundations were laid for the development of a
tradition of Greek art music that later spread to the mainland and to other
islands sites. It was cultivated in domestic settings among social elites, but
increasingly it established a formal culture, details of which are still being
uncovered today. The importance of music in Syros (in the Cyclades) is
just now emerging, for example, due to research at the Ionian University.
Thanks to the retreat there of many of the 1821 veterans, a bourgeois cul-
ture, with theatre, concert life and even a music journal, was established.
As to the mainland, knowledge about the musical infrastructures of towns
and cities is still partial. It seems that Patras was influential, though Ath-
ens gradually developed a musical culture of western orientation from the
late 1830s onwards, not least because several of the Ionian-associated com-
posers moved there.46 Among them were Dimitrios Digenis (18071880),
Alexandros Katakouzenos (18241892) and the Italian Rafaele Parisini
(d.1875), some of whose correspondence with Mantzaros is extant.
These men worked at several pre-conservatory teaching and perform-
ing institutions, and in one case at the court. Then, after 1864, when the
Ionian Islands were transferred to Greece, a second generation of Ionian
musicians moved to the capital. In 1871 Rafaele Parisini founded the
Euterpe Philharmonic Society, and at the same time the Music and Drama
Association was established, with the teaching staff made up mainly of
foreign or Ionian musicians. Other amateur associations followed, includ-
ing the Athens Philharmonic Society and First Hellenic Opera, both of
1888, and the Friends of Music Association of 1893.

44Romanou 2009c.
45I am grateful to Kostas Kardamis for sharing his extensive knowledge of these tradi-
tions with me.
46Baroutas 1992.
 infrastructures 211

In the last quarter of the century music of distinction emerged from the
Ionian tradition. But a combustible blend of ideology and personal rivalry
did it irreparable damage, beginning with the appointment of Georgios
Nazos to the Directorship of the Athens Conservatory in 1891. This will be
discussed more fully in chapter 10, but in keeping with a Germanisation
of culture that grew ever more pronounced after 1889,47 Nazos dismissed
all artists who had Italianate leanings and background. There was more
to the modernisation of teaching than this, of course. It involved a shift
from pedagogy grounded in the Greek-Byzantine tradition to a Western
training modeled on the German Hochschulen. Following a second round
of campaigns against the Ionian school, this time orchestrated by Manolis
Kalomiris (18831962), the trajectory of Greek music changed in a defini-
tive way. It is no doubt significant that Kalomiris came from neither the
Ionian Islands nor the Greek mainland, but from Smyrna in Asia Minor.
And his initial training in Smyrna and in Constantinople is a further
reminder that western music was alive and well among the Greek com-
munities of Asia Minor.
To tell that story, we need to turn to the second, eastern flank sweep-
ing around the central Balkans, resuming our southeastward journey from
Transylvania. Greater Transylvania, embracing the Banat and Maramure,
is today one of the three major constituent provinces of Romania. The
other historical lands of Romania, Wallachia and Moldavia, had long been
Ottoman client states ruled by their own princes and later by Phanariot
hospodars,48 but as usual attempts to draw clean boundaries between
Habsburg and Ottoman domains meet with complications. Oltenia in
western Wallachia came under Habsburg control for a brief period in the
eighteenth century, for example, while Bukovina in northern Moldavia
(the monastic archipelago)49 remained Habsburg until 1918. In general,
as we move eastward from Transylvania we also move away from the
sphere of influence of Mitteleuropa, registering a stronger Balkan presence
in Wallachia, and elements of Polish-Russian culture in Moldavia.
The origin of the Romanian people and their language is contentious.
Lucian Boia summarises one argument succinctly by referring to three

47One factor that played into this was the wedding of crown prince Constantine to the
princess Sophia of Hohenzollern (Leotsakos 2004a, 50).
48These two Romanian provinces became Principalities as early as the thirteenth
century.
49Pascu 1999.
212 chapter eight

historical phases: Roman, Daco-Roman and Romanised Dacian.50 But

at least the anomalies create a pleasing symmetry: a Romance-language
Romania in a Greco-Slavic Orthodox space to the east; a Slavic-speaking
Croatia in a Latin Catholic space to the west. The other influences on
the Principalities are obvious enough. One was Ottoman, although the
Principalities were not actually settled by the Ottomans, and retained vari-
able measures of autonomy right up to the moment of political indepen-
dence. Another was Greek language and culture, promoted above all by
the Phanariot rulers of the eighteenth century, who were imposed on these
territories by the Sultan.51 And finally, there was Russia, self-appointed
protector of the Orthodox peoples, whose anti-Ottoman campaigns criss-
crossed Romanian territory constantly from the mid eighteenth to the
early nineteenth centuries.
This, then, was the background to the rapid modernisation of Roma-
nian culture in the early nineteenth century. Like their Turkish over-
lords, the Phanariot rulers were often resented by native populations, for
their rule could be repressive, and they were closely tied to the Sublime
Porte. This meant that Ottoman culture, including music, was a presence
at their courts, sharing space there with Greek post-Byzantine liturgical
music; Franz Joseph Sulzer referred to the music he heard in Bucharest as
Greco-Turkish.52 But the more enlightened of the Phanariots had trav-
elled widely, and were able to provide access to modern western thought
and culture. It was thus partly through Greek translations that Enlighten-
ment ideas began to circulate among native elites in the Principalities, as
indeed they did among the Greeks of Asia Minor, and European music
was also performed at their courts.53
It was a Phanariot associated with the Greek Philiki Etairia [Friendly
Society] in Odessa, Alexander Ypsilantis, who made the first moves in what
would become the Greek liberation struggle, crossing from Bessarabia
[Moldova] to Moldavia in 1821 in the hope of joining forces with a home-
grown Wallachian revolt led by Tudor Vladimerscu. Both revolts proved

50Boia 2001, 41. Others have argued that the Romanians originated as Latin-speaking
Vlachs, who migrated into present-day Romania after the late ninth century (Hupchick
and Cox 2001, Map 4).
51 The Phanariots (from Phanar [Fener], the main Greek area of Constantinople, where
the Patriarchate is located) were a prestigious and moneyed group, a kind of aristocracy
of often western-educated merchants, and they were assigned key administrative posts
within the Ottoman Empire.
52Sulzer 1781. See Plemmenos 2006.
53Plemmenos 2003.
 infrastructures 213

abortive, but they prepared the ground nonetheless for the more sustained
War of Independence. This effectively marked the end of Phanariot rule
(and the decline of Greek influence) in the Principalities, allowing native
aristocracies to emerge again as a ruling class, basically conservative but
now newly susceptible to western influence. The window to the West was
opened yet wider, moreover, when the Russians defeated the Turks a few
years later, in 182829, and Ottoman protection of the Principalities was
replaced by Russian.
Developing commercial links also created cultural ties, and it became
common for the sons of intellectual and social elites in the Principalities
to seek an education in major European capitals, from where they trans-
ported modern thinking and occasionally modern cultural forms to the
feudal estates. Some of the Phanariot rulers had already begun to model
their salons on those of western cultural capitals. But a more crucial aspect
of nineteenth-century modernisation was the rediscovery by the Roma-
nian intelligentsia of their (presumed ancient) Latinity, at the very time
when they were developing a stronger sense of nationhood. Undoubtedly
it was this that persuaded the Romanians of cultural affinities between
themselves and more distant Latin lands, and to define their own emerg-
ing national identities by way of such affinities.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, there was limited previous history of
Romanian-French cultural exchange, but from the 1830s onwards Bucha-
rest developed an enduring, and largely unrequited, love affair with Paris.
If Temeswar was a little Vienna, then Bucharest could be a little Paris;
increasingly it described itself as such, and it went on to develop archi-
tectural, artistic and literary fashions commensurate to the description.54
The everyday culture of the boyars and their circles (cuisine, dress, inte-
rior design, mores, and structures of sociability) was also in accord with
this self perception, and even the native language increasingly registered
Francophile tendencies. As a result, the entire surface layer of Romanian
urban culture was transformed from an oriental to a West European one.
Greek lost its place as the language of high culture, the Romanian lan-
guage was written in Latin script, and the urban landscape was Europe-
anised. The astonishing thing here was the speed of the transformation.
Within a generation the swerve towards Europe was all but complete, and
that included the infrastructures of musical life in Iai and Bucharest.

54Reportedly, one response to the description in France was Thank God Paris is not a
large Bucharest (Jezernik 2006, 26).
214 chapter eight

To grasp the significance of this transformation of musical life, we need

to consider the kinds of music commonly known and performed in the
Principalities prior to 1830. First, there were many layers of rural tradi-
tional music. Second, there were highly distinctive traditions of urban
popular music, associated with the lutari, and ranging stylistically from
Ottoman-influenced caf music to free adaptations of native folksong.
Third, there was the music of the Orthodox Church, originally in both
Greek and Slavonic, then increasingly in Greek, but with the Romanian
language appearing intermittently in the eighteenth century, notably in
the unpublished but widely circulated Psaltichia rumneasc by Filotei
sn Agi Jipei (1713).55 A key stage here, and an important moment in
Romanian music history generally, was the publication in the vernacular
of Macarie Ieromonahuls Theoretikon, Anastasimatarion and Irmologion
(1823).56 And finally, in official Phanariot circles and among some of the
Romanian boyars, there was Ottoman classical and mehter music.
There was no doubt a fine line dividing the urban light music performed
by Rom musicians for Turkish governors or Romanian nobles and Ottoman
classical music. But it is worth recalling that Demetrius Cantemir, edu-
cated in Istanbul and one of the great composer-theorists of the Ottoman
tradition, was from Moldavia, that he wrote one of the classic accounts
of that land (Descriptiae Moldaviae), and that for a year he was actually
its Prince, before nailing his colours to a Russian mast. It would be quite
wrong to imagine that these different repertories were supplanted by
European art music in the nineteenth century. Rather they maintained a
parallel existence alongside it, and remained in certain important respects
quite unrelated to it. In other words, the space separating European art
music from just about everything else was a considerable one.
It was this space that troubled some Romanian intellectuals in the nine-
teenth century, and especially a group of critics from 1860s Iai, associated
with the cultural society Junimea [Youth]. One strand in their argument
stated the obvious. The critics pointed out that the rejection by the elites
of existing cultural praxes created in effect a tabula rasa, and that for the
most part the response was to fill it in as rapidly as possible with copies
of the best European models. This resulted in a culture divorced from
most of the people, bearing in mind that nineteenth-century Romania

55Windows to the Latin, Catholic West were by way of Transylvania, and then Hungary
and Poland. The Romanian population of Transylvania is predominantly Greek Catholic.
56In the library of the George Enescu Academy in Iai there is a manuscript in the
vernacular dating from 1610, but without musical notation.
 infrastructures 215

was still a feudal country, agrarian in economic base, localised as to civic

law and government, and with an isolated (and insulated) court society
and higher gentry. The other strand was more nuanced. The embrace of a
modern European culture produced a collision of cultures, it was argued,
and that collision was no less forceful and disorientating because it was
eagerly sought and willingly accepted. European culture, in short, was
perceived as a kind of external skin grafted rather too quickly onto the
native body.
The principal spokesman for Junimea was the critic and politician Tito
Maiorescu (18401917). In a famous article, Direcia nou n poezia i proza
romn [New directions in Romanian poetry and prose], he made the case
that this wholesale adoption of European culture amounted to forma fr
fond [forms without substance].57 We have politics and science, Maio-
rescu argued, we have journals and academies, we have schools and lit-
erature, we have museums, conservatoires, theatre, even a constitution.
But in reality all these are dead productions, pretences without founda-
tion, ghosts without bodies, illusions without truth [...], while the abyss
which separates us from the common people becomes deeper every day.
It is an argument to which we will return when we come to consider the
music of Enescu, the canonic figure of Romanian music, and perhaps the
greatest composer to have emerged from South East Europe.
In the meantime, we may chart just a few of Maiorescus forms as they
applied to musical life. In volume 2 of his Hronicul Muzicii Romneti,
Octavian Lzar Cosma points out that already in the late eighteenth cen-
tury European music was performed in the domestic contexts of aristo-
cratic circles.58 Some of the courts had salles, and semi-formal concerts
were given there in increasing numbers as the century turned. Visits from
foreign opera troupes followed. They included a French company in Iai,
with its own orchestra amplified by local musicians (lutari), and Ital-
ian and German companies in Bucharest, where they rented halls and on
occasion gave open-air performances.59 In addition there would have been
benefit concerts from foreign musicians, though documentation is scarce
(we know that in 1806 the German cellist Bernhard Romberg visited Iai,

57Maiorescu also wrote on music, including Wagner; see Cosma 1976, 539.
58Cosma 1974.
59The troupe directed by Eduard Kreibig began its activities in Bucharest in 1830, while
that of Theodor Mller was engaged in Timioara in 1831 and Bucharest in 1833.
216 chapter eight

and was astute enough to perform, inter alia, variations on local Molda-
vian melodies; he gave concerts in Bucharest six years later).60
The growing influence of Russia, following the occupation in 1829, was
beneficial to formal culture, and it was then that military bands of the
modern type replaced the mehterhne, performing operatic potpourris,
marches and dances; they were introduced to Iai in 1830 and to Bucharest
in 1832. Then, in 1833, a Philharmonic Society was instituted in Bucharest,
with Ion Heliade Rdulescu as the prime mover. It organised amateur
concerts and produced Singspiele, but from 1835 onwards it also offered
formal instruction in its music school under the direction of Ion Andrei
Wachmann (190763). In 1834 the Russian occupation formally ended,
but from this point until the end of the Crimean War the Principalities
were under Russian protection and enjoyed greater autonomy. This was
reflected in the accelerating institutionalisation of musical life. 1836 wit-
nessed the establishment of a proto-Conservatory in Iai (it lasted three
years), the singing association Chorul cntreilor in Bucharest, and the
professional journal Gazeta Teatrului Naional, to give just a few examples.
This was in line with the early stages in the development of a bourgeois
musical culture all over Europe. It registered the growing penetration of
bourgeois (merchant) circles by western musical culture, and that included
the ubiquity of piano playing among the daughters of the wealthy.61
In the aftermath of 1848, these activities took on a more professional
aspect, and this was even more marked with the newfound status of a
united Romania (de facto in 1859, de jure in 1862). Thus, in 1860 a School
of Music and Declamation was founded in Iai with the support of the
ruler Alexandru Ioan Cuza, and in 1864 it became a Conservatory under
Gheorghe Burada. In the same year the music school of the Philharmonic
Society in Bucharest became a Conservatory, on the initiative of Alexandru
Flechtenmacher, who became its first director (he had already established a
Philharmonic Society in Craiova). Likewise the relatively informal concerte
spirituale made room for the orchestra of the Philharmonic Society, which
gave its inaugural concert under Eduard Wachmann (18361908) in 1866.62

60Breazul 1970. Traditional melodies presented by Romberg are given in Ciobanu 1978,
556.
61 The co-existence of two cultures is neatly epitomised by a description of the musi-
cian Dionysios Fotino, who settled in Romania around 1800, and who was an expert at
playing the tambura and kemne, but who also played the piano (Ciobanu 1978, 18).
62Its later venue, the Ateneul Romn, has become an architectural emblem of
Bucharest.
 infrastructures 217

Just a year later Gheorghe Stephnescu (18431925) composed the first

Romanian symphony, a work closer to classical than late-romantic idioms.
The Philharmonic concerts were subject to increasingly rigorous
reporting from the 1860s onwards, due to the onset of specialised music
journals. Such journals were usually short-lived, but at the end of the cen-
tury, in Bucharest, a more substantial and longer-lasting journal, Romnia
Muzical, was established. The last decades of the century also witnessed
several attempts to establish an Opera Romn by Stephnescu, first in
1875, and then 1885, relying in the main on personal funding. It was really
only in the aftermath of World War I that professional opera was estab-
lished on a stable basis in Bucharest and Cluj (in the inter-war period Iai
had to rely on troupes from Craiova and from overseas). Yet despite this,
operas by Mozart and Rossini, and even Weber, were given from the early
nineteenth century onwards, and the repertory was gradually expanded
to include Romanian works, several of which achieved great popularity at
the time, though they have since receded from view.
The link with Paris had the further consequence that many talented
Romanian musicians went there to study, and especially to the Scola
Cantorum. Among them was George Enescu. It is generally agreed that
it was with Enescu (18811955) that Romanian music came of age. Even
Romanian musicologists are careful not to make extravagant claims for
the music of his predecessors. Indeed, just how we should understand the
historical significance of the Kleinmeister is an issue that will be addressed
in a later chapter. Yet even prior to unification and formal independence,
Romania was able to cultivate European art music at some level, and to
develop the necessary infrastructures for its promotion. It was able to do
so because these territories retained areas of limited autonomy even while
they were Ottoman protectorates. There was no indigenous Islamised rul-
ing class in the Principalities, and no resident population of Turks.
In contrast, those Balkan territories that were subject to direct Otto-
man rule were more constrained. This we can see as we take the next step
on our journey southwards. We arrive in Bulgaria, which remained under
direct Ottoman rule, and with major repression in 1876, until the succes-
sive treaties of San Stefano and Berlin two years later. As in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, there was little in the way of a developed musical culture of
the modern European kind until after that date. Again there was a tradi-
tion of Orthodox sacred music; again there were wind bands, often with
foreign (and especially Czech) bandmasters; and again there were cultural
clubs, singing associations and school choirs in which European harmony
was appropriated. But it was all rather sporadic, and despite sustained
218 chapter eight

attempts to create an immediate break with the Ottoman inheritance,

it took some time for new Western-orientated institutions to be consoli-
dated. As in Albania and Macedonia, the history of Bulgarian art music
begins to all intents and purposes in the twentieth century.
It would be rather easy to infer from this that western music had nei-
ther presence nor prestige under the Ottomans. It is true that an Otto-
man administration inhibited the development of European music in its
Balkan subject territories. But in the centre, the picture was rather differ-
ent. For culture and fashion, the Ottomans often looked directly to the
West. Indeed this was true almost from the start; witness their love-hate
relationship with Venice. A hundred years after the peace of 1479, Vasari
commented on how the sultans were still in awe of the famous paintings
by Gentile Bellini. Whatever the fortunes of war, Western Europe could
be smug about its art.
From the eighteenth century onwards the Ottomans responded increas-
ingly to cultural innovations from Europe, beginning with the Tulip Age
(171830), during which Greek Phanariots played a major part in trans-
lating western texts into Ottoman-Turkish, but with a gear change fol-
lowing the first Tanzimat decree of 1839. As Suraiya Faroqhi argues, the
embrace of European culture at this time was motivated partly by political
expediency an attempt to salvage as much as possible from an empire in
decline and partly by straightforward cultural curiosity about the prod-
ucts of the European Enlightenment.63 The consequent secularisation of
the intelligentsia and the assimilation of European thought and art was
manifest in architecture, urban planning, the decorative arts and litera-
ture, with the latter including the beginnings of a print culture and of
the novel as a primary genre. Most striking of all was the importation of
European theatre, sitting easily alongside traditional Ottoman improvised
drama and the karagz.
This was the context for the arrival of European classical music to Ana-
tolia. A western-style military band was established in Istanbul following
the dissolution of the Janissaries, and it was directed from 1828 onwards
by Giuseppe Donizetti (18991856), brother of the well-known composer,
and by far the better paid of the two. He was the General Instructor of
Imperial Music, and he established a school for Western music as early as
1831. Under his leadership, western notation was taught in Istanbul, Ital-
ian opera was promoted at the so-called French and Italian Theatres of

63Faroqhi 2005.
 infrastructures 219

the capital (Rossini and even Verdi were given, as well as Gaetano Doni-
zetti), and Western concerts were established. And from this point the
alaturka alafranka distinction became a familiar one in debates about
music, with the latter acquiring socially elitist, fashionable connotations
that were partly fed by the descriptions of European capitals emanating
from Ottoman ambassadors and the merchant class.64
Predictably, there were those who deplored the demotion of Ottoman
music, so that even at the highest level there could be a seesaw of enthusi-
asm between the two categories. Under Sultan Abdlmecid, for example, a
new opera house was built (completed in 1859) staffed entirely by Turkish
artists; then under his successor Abdlaziz, who reigned from 1861, west-
ern music more-or-less ground to a halt; and finally, with Abdlhamit II
(from 1876), there was a renewal of European-orientated activity. Non-
Muslim communities in Asia Minor also had their alaturka alafranka
debates, bearing on popular music in the case of Jews and Armenians, but
including classical traditions in the case of Greeks (Smyrna was one of the
most cosmopolitan cities anywhere in the region in the late nineteenth
century).65 In short, Western music was a presence in Asia Minor. But it
was really only in the post-Ottoman years that extensive institutions for
its teaching and performance were established. Under the sway of influ-
ential ideologues such as Ziya Gkalp, who saw the musical future in a
synthesis of rural folk [halk] music and Western art music, Kemal Atatrk
suppressed his own fondness for Ottoman classical music in the interests
of a modern Turkish nation state.

64For a discussion of how Ottoman writers adopted the Western alaturka term in the
nineteenth century, and other things besides, see OConnell 2005.
65Milton 2008.
 CHAPTER NINE

NATIONS

The First Steps

Let us return to two cases where music acts as a bridge between different
worlds. The editors of the second edition of Albert Lords book The Singer
of Tales remind us that the tradition of South Slavic epic songs recorded
by Parry and Lord was essentially the same for both Christian and Mus-
lim communities.1 Only the viewpoint of the texts (the ethnic identity of
hero and villain, to quote Ronelle Alexander)2 was different, symbolised
by the antithetical but oddly similar Prince Marko and Alija erelez. We
may ask if there really was a divide to be bridged. The practice of sung
oral poetry in the South Slavic lands was of considerable antiquity and its
integrity as a genre was not influenced by the precise content, as distinct
from the metrical form, of the poetry. The language of the narration was
the same for Christian and Muslim singers; the performance sites were
also the same; and so too were the basic lifestyles of the guslars and their
physical and cultural contexts.3 That some of the South Slav populations
converted to the Muslim faith only assumed ideological significance for
the epic tradition when it was appropriated for nationalist propaganda
in the nineteenth century. And this held more for the appropriating
community essentially an intelligentsia than for the practitioners. It
was the intervention of political ideology, and in due course of practical
politics, that transformed religion into a mark of alterity, and Muslims
into minorities.4
In our second case the divide is linguistic rather than religious. Here we
return to music of Grecophone and Vlachophone communities in Epirus.
Again we have two communities who shared the same space, memo-
ries, occupations, customs and traditions. And whether Greek-speaking
or Vlach-speaking (or for that matter Albanian-speaking), they inherited

1 Lord 1965.
2Alexander 1985, 274.
3But see Lord 1965, 16.
4As Mark Mazower points out, religion was a principal mode of self-labelling right up
to the twentieth century (Mazower 2000).
 nations 221

common cultural forms, including music of considerable antiquity. Of

course the language difference needs to be accounted for. In brief, what
we find among the Vlachs is the legacy of a more general Latinisation of
indigenous populations; or perhaps it would be more correct to say that
they were by-passed by the more general re-Hellenisation of Greek terri-
tories that took place following direct Roman rule. Most Vlachs in Epirus
are bilingual (their romance language is an increasingly imperiled one),
but it seems that even this diglossia may have ancient roots.5 In any case,
exactly as with our South Slav epics, it was the intervention of nationalist
politics that created a minority.6
In most scholarly studies of nationhood, nation formation is taken to be
a product of the modern era. Daniele Conversi fine-tunes this by referring
to a modern re-enactment of a pre-modern idea.7 This formulation is use-
ful, not least because it accommodates the ethnosymbolism of Anthony
Smith, who sees nationalism as modern in itself, but based on deeper his-
torical foundations, and in some cases on pre-political identities, though
this thesis has its detractors.8 The issue is clarified by Bernard Yack, who
contrasts modern nationalisms with the separation of cultural and politi-
cal identities characteristic of ancient Greece.9 Yacks central point is that
the Greeks carried their ethnos with them, but that they constructed the
demos afresh in each new context. It is this separation that accounts for
what he calls the casualness of treason in the ancient Greek world.
But Yack takes this further. His intention is to emphasise not just that
the conflation of ethnos and demos is a singular product of modernity, but
that this conflation is also closely bound up with self-identity, so that polit-
ical betrayal becomes a form of self-betrayal. Modern European national-
ism, in other words, is not just about an equation of nations and states. It
also takes on the character of a belief system, albeit one entirely lacking in
transcendental properties. In the words of Liah Greenfeld, it sacralises the
secular, and substitutes the social and political relations between men
for the bond between man and God.10 In doing so, it promotes the nation
not just as a community, that meets essential and deep-seated human

5Katsenevaki 1998.

6For a discussion of Greek and Albanian claims on Epirotic polyphony, see Nitsiakos
and Mantzos 2003.

7Conversi 2007, 18.

8For a discussion, see zkirimli and Sofos 2008, 611.

9Yack 1996.
10Greenfeld 1996, 169 and 176.
222 chapter nine

needs for bonding and belonging, but as a sacred community, worthy of

self-sacrifice. The nation is in this sense a congregation.
Yacks analysis provides us with a framework for considering first the
several ethnies that developed in the eastern Mediterranean in the wake
of Greco-Roman antiquity, then the dependent paths that followed from
these, and finally the several stages by which these interacted with proto-
nations and eventually nation states. In the pre-modern world, there was
a plethora of ethnies interacting across the wider region, with both reli-
gion and language functioning as primary constituents. Smiths definition
does, after all, allow considerable room for movement, referring to self-
defined group[s] possessing a myth of common origins, shared memories
and a sense of solidarity.11 Whether or not these ethnies would be forged
into nations might then depend on the homogenising effects of emer-
gent bourgeois high cultures (resulting, as Ernest Gellner sees it, from a
strengthening industrial-technological base in European societies),12 and/
or on the influence of European ideals of popular sovereignty and egali-
tarianism (defined as core principles of nationalism by Greenfeld, though
she recognises that these ideals are bound to be compromised by the real-
ity of the nation state).13
These modernist prerequisites of the nation distinguish nineteenth-
century nationalisms from the seventeenth-century variety.14 In truth,
there are cases that confirm and cases that defy Gellners and Greenfelds
criteria, suggesting that nationalism takes many forms. What is clear
is that once ideas of nationhood become part of the ideological status
quo they take root rather quickly and easily, an indication no doubt that
nationalist imperatives resonate with key human needs and drives. And
since only a limited number of ethnies can become nation states, nation-
alism of its nature is invariably about power; it is a form of imperialism,
where success can be achieved only at someone elses expense. This may
help us to understand our two case studies a little better. In both cases
music is constitutive of a collective identity, and contributes to cultural
continuities, but at a certain point it becomes prey to modern European
state-building practices.
It would be tempting to propose the French Illyrian Provinces as the
most propitious candidate for modern nationhood, for it was here that

11 Smith 2007, 327. See also Ichijo and Uzelac 2005, 119.
12Gellner 1983.
13Greenfeld 1996.
14For a discussion of different approaches to nationalism, see Smith 1999, 13.
 nations 223

the societal and ideological conditions proposed by Gellner and Greenfeld

first obtained in South East Europe. But in the aftermath of the Napole-
onic Wars there was no real possibility to change the Habsburg status
quo in the interests of South Slavic nationalisms. Conditions were actu-
ally more promising within a weakening Ottoman empire, and with the
possibility of Great Power intervention. As it happens, the transmission
of modern ideas of nationhood to the Balkans was in large measure down
to the Greek diaspora by way of European Philhellenism, and often in the
Greek language.15 So perhaps it is not surprising that one of our two start-
ing points in chronicling the struggle for national identity in the Balkans
has to be Greece. The other is Serbia.
The birth of nations is invariably accompanied by violence. However
in both Serbia and Greece armed risings against the Ottomans did not
initially have a nationalist character. In Serbia it was the influence of the
migr communities the Habsburg Serbs that transformed local, home-
sponsored revolts into a wider nationalist movement led by Karaore. In
Greece it was the rise of a large merchant class in the eighteenth century
that strengthened a sense of common ethnicity among the elites, and this
was converted into a modern national consciousness under the influence
of western Philhellenes. In both cases initial rebellions were quashed, and
it was only after wider international wars professional wars rather than
self-sacrificing struggles that some form of national independence was
achieved around 1830.16 Serbia was recognised as an autonomous Otto-
man province governed by Milo Obrenovi. Greece became an inde-
pendent nation at a fraction of its present size, though the reality of its
independence is another question, given the controlling (protecting) role
of foreign powers. K.E. Fleming reminds us that Greece did not come into
existence overnight.17
When borders were provisionally drawn and national polities installed,
there began an appropriation of the ethnos by the nation that has con-
tinued to this day. In Serbia key constituents of the ethnos were faith,
language and epic poetry, and music played a supporting role in channel-
ling all three towards the nation. The first part of this story has already
been told; it concerns the forging of a national church music from meet-
ing points between post-Byzantine and Ukrainian traditions in Sremski

15Tsiovas 2003, 5.
16The idea of self-sacrificing warfare for the patrie as a mark of nationalism is
discussed in Hutchinson 2007.
17Fleming 2008, 29.
224 chapter nine

Karlovci. Harmonised church music became part of the repertory of the

first Serbian choral society (the one in Panevo) in the 1840s, inaugurat-
ing a national tradition that would come to fruition later in the century.
The key developments were down to Kornelije Stankovi, who spent some
years in Sremski Karlovci in the 1850s, but who had been born in Buda and
studied in Vienna. Stankovi will be discussed later, but we may note here
that while in Vienna he formed part of the circle of diaspora intellectuals
that included the highly influential writer Vuk Stefanovi Karadi [Vuk]
(17871864), though it is not certain that the two men ever met.
Vuk is widely regarded as the key player in the language reform and
folklore collection that helped forge the nation, shifting the emphasis
from Orthodoxy to language as the foundational element. His formalisa-
tion of the language began when he created a vernacular grammar in 1815
and a dictionary in 1818, but it continued in the 1830s and 1840s when
he increasingly sought to bring other South Slav dialects into the fold.
This achievement was not only of national significance in itself; it also
bolstered the formulation of a South Slav ideology, one that argued for
the unity of South Slav peoples from a slightly different perspective than
the Yugoslavism developed in Croatia, though Vuk maintained a dialogue
with this movement too.
Through his creation of a literary vernacular, Vuk contributed to the
demise of Greek as the language of learning across the Balkans. At the
same time he rendered accessible and open to manipulation a rich inher-
itance of sung poetry, both lyric and epic, that formed a crucial com-
ponent of the Serbian ethnos. Effectively he transmuted oral epic into
literature, literature into history, and history into ideology. The earliest of
his folk collections appeared in 1814, but it was in the second collection
Narodna srbska pjesnarica [Serbian Folk Songs], published in Vienna in
1815, that the familiar heroic songs and narrative histories in deseterac first
appeared in print, collected from legendary guslars such as Filip Vinji
and blind ivana, representing mens and womens songs within his own
classification.18 Later he published a four-volume collection in Leipzig
(between 1823 and 1833), and finally a definitive, amplified four-volume
version in Vienna (18421862).19 Through these collections Vuk converted
the tradition of oral poetry into an all-embracing, validating historical
epic, and one that attracted wide attention in world literature. Aside from

18For a modern take on this distinction, see Slapak 2005.

19Karadi 198688.
 nations 225

the womens songs, there are tales of Duan, of Lazar and the medieval
kingdom, of the Battle of Kosovo, of the anomalous Marko Kraljevi of
Prilep,20 and of the long years of Turkish occupation.
We may add here Njegos verse play Gorski vijenac [The Mountain
Wreath] (1847). Even more than Vuks collections, this work transformed
oral poetry into high (written) literature, while at the same time contrib-
uting to what Ivo ani has called the folklore matrix.21 Njego effectively
used the deseterac as the means to articulate a proselytising nationalism, a
defiant call to arms in the name of Kosovo. This influential text, regarded
by Andrew Baruch Wachtel as a classic case study in the canonising of
Yugoslav culture,22 continues to resonate in the national imagination,
and not always to the good. Turks were vilified in the Njego play, but its
harshest words were reserved for Slavic Muslims. Reading Gorski vijenac,
it is not hard to see why a line came to be firmly drawn between Christian
and Muslim epics, ruthlessly subordinating their musical and poetic com-
monalities to a nationalist ideology.
In this way the guslar was assigned major significance for the new
nationalism, and the rhythm of the deseterac became an element of Ser-
bian identity.23 No doubt this was facilitated by the rather specific rela-
tion between words and music that is characteristic of all long-established
traditions of oral poetry. Such was the symbiosis of words and music that,
according to Lord, some singers were either unable to dictate songs with-
out the gusle, or if they did so, would build lines that were significantly dif-
ferent from the sung versions.24 (The inseparability of meaning and music
in the related Albanian lahuta tradition is dramatised by Ismail Kadare
in the second of his Three Elegies for Kosovo.)25 It seems that within the
oral tradition there was such an integral link between metre and melody
that the thought itself would be shaped by the 4 + 6 rhythmic pattern of
the deseterac and then articulated by way of ritually recurrent melodic
formulae suitable for the openings of songs, for the endlessly repeated
phrases of their main narratives, and for their endings.

20Popovi 1988.
21 ani 2007, 22.
22Wachtel 1998, 101.
23Tim Judah argues that a key document of this new nationalism was Naertanije by
the politician Ilija Garaanin (181274), a document that sets out long-term foreign policy
objectives (Judah 1997, 5661).
24Lord 1965, 26.
25Kadare 2000.
226 chapter nine

The relation of metre to musical accent was not straightforward, how-

ever. A speech-derived musical accent, tied to long and short syllables,
was normative, but the genre allowed considerable freedom and deviation
for expressive purposes, so that prose accent and musical accent are not
always congruent. Indeed, as Parry and Lord argued, it was precisely this
flexibility that enabled the constant generation of new formulae based
on the old familiar patterns. The exact mechanisms need not concern us
here. What is crucial is that rhythm and thought [were] one, and for this
reason music was heavily implicated in the appropriation of the genre by
the ideological agenda. Lord put it well when he remarked of nineteenth-
century collecting that the chauvinism of the day, a chauvinism not inher-
ent in the tradition itself but fostered by nationalistic and political forces
outside the tradition, was unfortunately mirrored in the songs.26
In the case of Greece, music played into nation-building programmes
in similar ways. We saw that post-Byzantine liturgical repertories were
appropriated by the nation in the aftermath of independence, just as the
church itself was appropriated by the state. As Dimitris Livanios points
out, the history of the Church gave way to the history of Greece.27 There
are parallels, moreover, between ensuing attempts to preserve the chant
from foreign influence and certain high-profile moves in the linguistic
field, notably the efforts of Adamantios Korais to purify the language by
purging it of Byzantine elements and of non-Greek vocabulary; for a good
century his katharevousa was cultivated in opposition to demotic Greek,
widening the gap between the literary and the spoken language. Koraiss
project was distant from Vuks in Serbia in important respects. Vuk was
classifying existing practices, whereas Korais was constructing something
new. But they did have in common nationally motivated language reform
and a vigorously proselytising agenda.
Indeed the Greater Serbian ideology had its counterpart in i megali
idea, which shaped so much of the thinking of Greek intellectuals in the
nineteenth century,28 and which motivated those re-Hellenising linguistic
agendas of which Vlach and Muslim populations fell foul. Moreover, since
the Greek people were scattered right across the eastern Mediterranean
(their economic empire included much of the Balkans, the Middle East
and North Africa), and had validating roots in both a medieval empire and

26Lord 1965, 137.

27Livanios 2003, 82.
28The term was first used by Ioannis Kolettis in a speech to the National Assembly of
1844.
 nations 227

an ancient civilisation, the project could be one of almost limitless ambi-

tion, linking the Greeks across many lands and across many centuries;
it is also worth remembering that since the Fall of Constantinople there
had been a substantial presence of educated Greeks in Western Europe.
The failure to realise the irredentist ambitions of i megali idea in political
terms (a labyrinthine story of many parts and many parties) had major
repercussions on the cultural ambition of the Greeks.
The appropriation of klephtic ballads by Greek nationalists and Philhel-
lenes was likewise analogous to the hijacking of South Slavic epics by
Serbian romantic nationalists. These ballads were anonymous tales of
chivalric defence of the homeland set in a world of often charmingly ani-
mised nature, and like their Slavic counterparts they were associated espe-
cially with the more remote, mountainous, regions of the country. But, as
part of a more general idealisation of the klephts in the wake of the war
of independence, the klephtic ballads came to assume a national status,
forging continuities with earlier heroic traditions: the vernacular epics of
the Byzantine era (Digenis Akritas), and the epics of antiquity. Baud-Bovy
commented at length on these associations.29 Moreover, just as Njego
wrote in the manner of the South Slavic oral tradition, so poets such as
Georgios Terzetes (18061874) and Aristotle Valaorites (18241879) turned
to the vernacular of the klephtic ballads from Epirus. It was through these
ballads that some of the first steps were taken to harness components of
Greek popular culture constituents of the ethnos to the nation.
As in Serbia, defining the nation was the job of elites, and it was some
time before the national consciousness they cultivated trickled down, to
use Wachtels phrase, to the population at large.30 Faith, language and
sung poetry were once more the starting points for this process, but other
constituents of the ethnos, including urban popular music, were also
groomed for a nation-building role. And in due course, partly thanks to
so-called cultural associations, selected threads from the highly diverse
stylistic tapestry of regional music and dance from the mainland, the
islands and the Asia Minor communities were drawn out, straightened
(i.e. formalised) and woven into a simpler national design. They became
national songs and national dances, though the impulse underlying this
was no less western than the transformations of architecture and indeed
of political institutions. Indeed, it was partly thanks to the collecting

29Baud-Bovy 1958.
30Wachtel 1998, 3138.
228 chapter nine

activities of western outsiders such as Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray

(18401910) his Trente mlodies populaires de Grce et dOrient were pub-
lished in 1876 that a trail was blazed for la muse populaire.31
From this point the tempo quickened. When Bourgault-Ducoudrays
student, Maurice Emmanuel (18621938), wrote his important thesis on
Greek dance, he was one of many outsiders to engage in both scholarly
and creative ways with these repertories; they were, after all, not just exotic
but notionally linked to the wellsprings of European civilisation. The
seductive idea that there might be unified schemata (modal and rhyth-
mic) underlying ancient Greek, Byzantine and so-called folk music was
explored by Bourgault-Ducoudray in particular, and this in turn enhanced
the prestige of folk music among Greeks themselves.32 Growing numbers
of collections were published around the turn of the century, several of
them in Byzantine notation, and quite a few funded by wealthy Greeks
living overseas. Constantinos Psakhos published a collection of folksongs
notated in both Byzantine and staff notation, for example, and both he
and Ioannis Sakellarides (18531938) were instrumental in presenting folk
music on the concert platform. This activity culminated (in 1910) in the
first recordings of Greek songs using a phonograph.33 The transformation
of traditional music from a ritual practice to a prestigious object of study
and a powerful symbol of the nation was complete.

Two Nations

The intellectual elites of emergent Balkan nations subscribed to a prevail-

ing belief that nations had a clear sense of cultural identity, enabling the
cultural nation to present an image of authority that might challenge
even that of the church. It was in the realm of high rather than popu-
lar culture that this idea circulated. In the first place, it demanded the
validation of nationhood by history. Roots became all-important, and if
necessary they could be refashioned, or created afresh, to meet the task,
for myth and history were intertwined in the job of building the cultural

31 The process began much earlier, of course, notably with Claude Fauriels 182425
collection Chants populaires de la Grce moderne. For a detailed account of the history of
archives and the collection of regional music, see Katsanevaki 2008.
32Romanou 2008. Panos Vlagopoulos presented an interesting paper on the cultural
politics of Bourgault-Ducoudray at the 2009 Biennial Euro-Mediterranean Music Confer-
ence in Cyprus, unpublished at the time of writing.
33Ibid.
 nations 229

nation. We have here the necessary context for repeated Serbian reflec-
tions on Kosovo and the medieval kingdom, on Hilandar, and on the lin-
eage of language. We have too the framework for endless debates about
Greek ancestry, bearing in mind that the double-descended status of the
Greeks, ideally synthesised by i megali idea, could just as easily generate
a sense of divided identity.
In the second place, it was expressed through the attempts of elites,
including composers, to make symbolic capital out of the culture of the
folk. Traditional music had special richness and vitality in the pre-modern
rural communities of South East Europe, and it was read somewhat
spuriously as a collective expression of national (as opposed to social or
regional) identities, very much in the spirit of Herder. There was nothing
new in composers turning to such music. What was new from around the
mid century was the spirit in which it was deployed, as it came increas-
ingly under the sway of a nationalist ideology. Even when presented in
the form of simple transcriptions, folk and popular music was claimed
by the nation.
This kind of cultural nationalism exhibited a paradoxical condition. It
staked its claim on a respected contribution to a generalised high culture.
Yet at the same time it asserted its distinctiveness by drawing elements
of suitably sanitised rural folk culture into a synthetic national tradition.
In a sense, then, each nation displayed a variant of a single bourgeois
culture, while at the same time competitively elevating, asserting and
promoting the uniqueness of its particular variant. This project may have
been grounded in the cities, but its task was to sell the nation.34 Hence the
tension that developed between city and nation in the later nineteenth
century, mirroring the receding tension between city and court. The real
job in hand was to impose cohesion on the cultural nation and to invest
authority in it; and that in turn was presumed to foster some measure of
integration at the level of the socio-political nation. It is in this sense that
cultural nationalism sometimes acted as a seedbed for political national-
ism in the Balkan territories, though, as I will argue towards the end of
this book, this was not always the sequence.
When Josif lezinger arrived at the court of Milo Obrenovi in 1831
he laid the groundwork for Serbian art music, first in Kragujevac and
then (following the accession of Alexander Karaorevi) in Belgrade,

34For a broader view of how music spoke into nationalism and ethnonationalism, see
Bohlman 2004b.
230 chapter nine

where he worked at the Teatar na umruku [Theatre at the Customs].

His principal activity was to supply or arrange music for plays, many of
which mined the vein of Serbian myth-history in a spirit of national self-
definition. This is evident from the titles: San Kraljevia Marka [Kraljevi
Markos Dream], Zidanje Ravanice [The Building of Ravanica], Sraenije
Kosovom polje [The Battle of Kosovo], and above all enidba cara Duana
[Tsar Duans Wedding], which came close to exceeding the genre of play
with music. The tradition was continued by a later generation of compos-
ers, including Nikola urkovi (181275), who arrived in Belgrade from
the Adriatic in the 1840s but then moved to Panevo, where he remained
until the upheavals of 1848. In Panevo he was active in the choral society,
for which he composed harmonised church music and folksong arrange-
ments, but also in the theatre company he himself formed and for which
he composed and arranged musical numbers, including songs of explicitly
nationalist orientation such as Ustaj, ustaj, Srbine [Rise, Serb, Rise].35
This tradition of patriotic theatre with music extended right through
the century, culminating in one aspect of the work of Davorin Jenko
(18351914) at the National Theatre from the 1870s onwards. Again the
titles say it all: Markova sablja [Markos Sabre], Duan silni [Duan the
Mighty], Seoba Srbalja [The Migration of the Serbs], and so on. Again,
these are sung plays, but with Vraara [The Sorceress] of 1882 Jenko com-
posed what is often regarded as the first Serbian operetta, and with his
music for Dragutin Ilis Pribislav i Boana [Pribislav and Boana] (1894)
he came close to full-blown opera. He also laid the groundwork for Ser-
bian orchestral music, and wrote numerous choral pieces on sentimental
or patriotic themes. Jenko was Slovenian by birth, and remarkably enough
composed two pieces that would become the Slovenian and the Serbian
national anthems respectively. Several of those who turned to Serbian (in
effect South Slavic) traditional music in a new spirit of nationalism were
immigrants like Jenko. They included some of the Czech musicians who
settled in Vojvodina, and also the Austrian Alojz Kalauz, who published
volumes of Srbski napjevi [Serbian melodies] in 1850 and 1852.
However it was Kornelije Stankovi who first collected systematically.
Stankovi spent his formative years in central Europe, and it was there
rather than in the heartland of Serbia that he cultivated a nationalist
aesthetic, spurred on by the climate of Slavonic nationalism in Vienna.
His four volumes of harmonised Serbian melodies, published in Vienna

35At this point urkovi returned to Belgrade and apparently left music behind.
 nations 231

in 1858, 1859, 1862 and 1863, stand alongside his ecclesiastical music as
foundation stones for the later development of Serbian music, though
their significance is as much symbolic as artistic. Moreover, by introduc-
ing harmonised folk songs to the repertory of the Belgrade Choral Society,
Stankovi established a practice that would become emblematic of Ser-
bian music well into the twentieth century. His activities during a short
lifetime were manifold. He energised the Choral Society and founded its
preparatory choir; he proselytised for traditional and liturgical music
through his publications and performances; he gave concerts as a pianist
all over Serbia; and he laid the foundations for the first school of music in
Belgrade. In all these respects he justified his later reputation as a father
figure of Serbian music.
His achievements were consolidated and developed further by Jenko,
his successor with the Choral Society, and then by Jenkos own succes-
sor Josif Marinkovi. Marinkovi is sometimes described as the father
of Serbian romantic art song, and as this suggests he was not primarily
orientated towards folksong-based composition; in addition to the songs,
his most significant works are probably his dramatic cantatas for chorus
accompanied by piano. Nonetheless it was he who popularised the already
existing practice of grouping choral folksong arrangements into suites, or
as he termed them, kola [round dances]. He composed eleven such kola,
and they might be regarded as immediate forerunners of the important
rukoveti [garlands] by his contemporary Stevan Mokranjac. It is with these
rukoveti that Serbian music truly came of age.
From this brief summary, we can see that composers in Serbia asserted
the cultural nation through the institutions of church, theatre, and choral
society, and through the collection and adaptation of traditional music.
There are parallels in Greece, of course, but also differences. Right at the
outset, we need to confront persistent prejudices in relation to Greek
music history. I mentioned earlier the anti-Ionian campaigns of Nazos.
These were bolstered by a sustained polemic from Manolis Kalomiris,
lasting roughly between 1908 and 1912 and directed towards the establish-
ment of an influential project of national music, a project that effectively
set a new agenda for Greek music (not really to be equated with the
Germanising policies of Nazos). In brief, Kalomiris pointedly rejected
the achievements of nineteenth-century Ionian composers as derivative
of Italian models and therefore inauthentic, by which he meant insuffi-
ciently Greek.
To appreciate the bias in this position, we might compare it to dismiss-
ing Elgar as insufficiently English on the grounds that his musical style is
232 chapter nine

transparently indebted to Austro-German late-romanticism. Today we are

less censorious, and on two grounds. First, we are more inclined to follow
Carl Dahlhaus in locating the aesthetics of nationalism not so much in
musical materials as in a poetics of intention and reception.36 And sec-
ondly, from our present perspective some way beyond the exclusionist
mentality of the modernist fortress, we can accept more readily that the
value of a musical work may be separated from its aesthetic and stylistic
allegiances, and are less anxious to dismiss as derivative works that hone
to perfection an idiom established elsewhere. It now seems possible to
restore to members of the Ionian school their credentials both as deserv-
ing composers and as Greek composers, though we also need to keep their
achievements in perspective.
The Aria Greca, composed by Mantzaros in 1827, has symbolic signifi-
cance here. Written for a benefit in Corfu by the singer Elisabetta Pinotti,
its style is Rossinian, but it is the earliest-known setting of a Greek-lan-
guage text by an Ionian composer. In an informative liner note, Haris
Xanthoudakis tells us that an anonymous reviewer in the Ionian Islands
gazette, published just a few days after the premire of the work, urged
Mantzaros to continue setting Greek rather than Italian poetry, though
there were major disincentives due to the shortage of competent Greek-
speaking singers. In any case a year after the Aria Greca Mantzaros set
part of the seminal Zakynthian poet Dionysios Solomoss lengthy Hymn
to Freedom, inspired by the War of Independence and later selected as the
Greek national anthem.37 As in Serbia, theatre was of key importance in
defining Greece musically. The myths and legends of antiquity were too
much of a universal property of opera to do the job, but it soon became a
commonplace for Ionian composers to turn to more recent Greek history
to the familiar stories of the Klephts, to the tales of Ali Pasha, and to
the War of Independence as subject matter for opera, albeit initially in
the Italian language (Italian librettists also commonly turned to the War
of Independence at this time).
Many of these works are lost composers include Frangiskos Dome-
neginis (180974), himself a political activist, and the Mantzaros pupil
Iossif Liveralis (182099) but among the most significant of the extant
operas are those of the Zakynthian Pavlos Carrer (182996), includ-
ing several on national themes; thus, Markos Botsaris celebrates a

36Dahlhaus 1980.
37There are two versions of this hymn, the second fuller and more complex.
 nations 233

much-dramatised hero of the independence struggle,38 while Despo, iros

tou Souliou [Despo, Heroine of Suli]39 and I Kyra Frossyni [Lady Frossyni]
both deal with heroic deaths at the hands of Ali Pasha. Carrers musical
idiom is unambiguously Italianate, but there is also, and especially in his
final opera Marathon-Salamis, some atmospheric tone-painting that looks
beyond this stylistic framework, and some programmatic use of Greek tra-
ditional melodies set in opposition to alaturca idioms (there is also one
song O Yero Demos [Old Demos] that has attained the popularity and sta-
tus of a folksong).
In 1867, the opera O ipopsifios vouleftis [The Parliamentary Candidate]
by Spyridion Xyndas (?181296) was given at San Giacomo. Not only was
this the first opera to set a Greek text; it also employed traditional melo-
dies, albeit within a musical idiom indebted to Italian models. This was
characteristic of the approach of Ionian composers to folklore, including
the virtuoso piano work Le reveil du klepht, composed by Iossif Liveralis in
1847 and comparable in significance to Stankovis technically simpler to
se bore misli moje [Why do my thoughts torture me] in Serbia. There are
many such instances of the appropriation of traditional melodies, right
through to the early works of Samaras. But it would be easy to overstate
the significance of this. George Leotsakos, to whose painstaking research
we owe so much of our knowledge of the Ionian composers, has argued
that the recurring presence of folk elements in their music contests
Kalomiriss rejection of this music as Italianate and his monopolising of
national music.40 But when we consider this body of music as a whole,
from the pioneering works of Mantzaros, through the programmatic sym-
phonic music of Dionyssios Rodotheatos (184992)41 to the operas of the
Corfiote Spyros Samaras (18611917), folkloric elements hardly seem cru-
cial to its definition.
Samaras represented the culmination of the Ionian tradition, and dur-
ing his lifetime he was known internationally. Following studies in Athens
and Paris, where he composed some surprisingly complex piano music, he

38There are four operas by Ionian composers on this subject, by Domeneginis (unfin-
ished), Nikolaos Tzanis Metaxas (considered lost), Iossif Liveralis (1852, considered lost)
and Carrer (finished in 1858, premired in 1861).
39Carrers one-act Despo (1875), based on Antonios Manoussoss libretto in Greek was
originally intended as a showpiece for the students of the Athens Conservatory, though
it was rejected on the grounds that there were insufficient forces. It was performed in late
1882. I am grateful to Kostas Kardamis for information on this.
40Leotsakos 2005a.
41 On this, see Leotsakos 2004b.
234 chapter nine

settled in Milan in 1886, producing most of his operatic works there before
repatriating in 1911 to Greece. His reputation was staked not on nicely exe-
cuted Greek-language songs and operettas composed in these later years
in Greece, however, but on the major operas he composed in the 1890s and
beyond, all setting Italian libretti. Here he made a distinctive contribution
to the Italian operatic tradition in a musical idiom that has been justly
compared to Puccini. Only one of his operas, Rhea (1908), has a Greek
setting, and there are elements of Greek traditional music in the score
(just as in Le Martyre there is traditional music to represent Romania).
But musically Rhea still belongs clearly to the world of post-Verdian Ital-
ian opera. It absorbs elements of the earlier operas the couleur locale of
Medg (188388) and Flora mirabilis (1886), with its supernatural ballets,
the proto-verismo characterisation and leitmotivic structures of Le Martyre
(1894), and the psychological realism of Storia damore (1903) but it adds
an element of Straussian intensity and an overall dramatic coherence that
allows us to rate it as his highest achievement, and justifies some of the
claims made for his music by aficionados such as Leotsakos and Byron
Fidetzis. Given the stylistic orientation of Samarass music, it should not
surprise us that he fell foul of Kalomiris on his return to Greece, and at
some personal cost.
There is a patriotic thread running through the collective achieve-
ment of the Ionian composers, expressed in subject matter and in musi-
cal materials. And at a late stage of the tradition, a more self-conscious
Greek nationalism began to emerge, associated especially with Dionysios
Lavrangas (Greek Suites; Introduction and Fugue on Greek themes) and
Georgios Lambelet (18751945), whose polemic National Music appeared
in 1901. Olympia Frangou-Psychopedis depicts this as a transitional stage
between the Ionian and the National schools of Greek music,42 but in
reality the agendas of Lambelet and Kalomiris were in direct competi-
tion, and their musical styles, too, were poles apart. Both committed to
folksong as the basis for a national music, but the former envisaged an
idiom that would remain relatively free of foreign influence, cultivated
a cool, restrained approach to traditional materials, both demotic and
Byzantine, and went some way to exploring appropriate harmonisations
(his enthusiasm for the demotic even extended to jazz, though one might
question what he really understood by this). The latter sought rather a
symbiosis of folksong and modern European art music, taking inspiration

42Frangou-Psychopedis 1990.
 nations 235

from existing models of romantic nationalism, notably Russian, as well as

from post-Wagnerian German traditions.43 The Kalomiris formula proved
to be the winning one, not least due to his gifts of self-promotion, and the
emergence of a so-called national school centred on his entrepreneurial
activities effectively sounded the death knell of the Ionian tradition.
The attempts by some Greek musicologists to invest Ionian traditions
with more significance than they can really sustain (the appropriate
comparator would be music and musical life in certain provincial Italian
settings) are really all about integrating Greece within Europe and lift-
ing it clear of associations with the East. There is as much of an agenda
here as in the Kalomiris manifesto. It is true that the pendulum had to
swing away from the narrower definitions of national style that stemmed
from Kalomiris. But it should perhaps not swing too far. To return to an
earlier analogy, we can appreciate Vaughan Williams without dismissing
Elgar; but it should work the other way too. The Kalomiris circle a loose
assembly of individuals driven by an ambitious ideologue produced
an important and distinctive body of music, and one that was highly dif-
ferentiated stylistically (it will be discussed in chapter 12). It does their
achievement no service to allow ideology even an ideology proposed by
the composers themselves to characterise and define it in an exclusive
way. There is more than one way to be a Greek composer.

The Berlin Balkans

The quest for national identity soon became unstoppable throughout

South East Europe, and if we follow its chronicle, we will move directly
from Greece to Romania. Setting aside Transylvania, it is worth recall-
ing that Wallachia and Moldavia were politically separate provinces, and
even at times provinces at war with each other, prior to the brief and
purely strategic union of 1600 under Mihai Viteazul, Prince of Wallachia.
The broader context for the subsequent development of Romanian cul-
tural nationalism has already been discussed, and need not be elaborated
here beyond some summarising observations. As in Serbia and Greece,
stories of ethnic origins and language were orientated by the intelligentsia
towards a national narrative that was already well established by the time
of the revolutions of 1848.

43For a useful discussion, see Little 2001, 9698. Little offers a comparison of writings
by Lambelet, Kalomiris and Constantinidis.
236 chapter nine

The discovery of Latinity was crucial. Not only did Latinity invade
Orthodoxy; it invited links with elite cultures in more distant Latin places,
and served to particularise, and to claim for the nation, the popular music
of the lutari. All this was grist to the nationalist mill. But so too was a
developing interest in folksong from the early nineteenth century onwards.
In 1830 Eftimiu Murgu published an anthology of folk songs in Bucharest,
and in 1834 Franois Ruzitski published in Iai his surprisingly exotic piano
transcriptions, Muzic oriental, 42 cntece i dansuri moldoveneti, valahe,
greceti i turceti. Then in 1848 Ion Andrei Wachmann completed his
four nationally specific collections, designed in part for his private piano
teaching;44 and two years after that Henri Ehrlich published in Vienna
his Arii naionale romneti.45 These performed the same functions, and
suffered from the same limitations, as nineteenth-century collections all
over Europe. Not least, it was widely felt that such collections would help
Romanian composers create a national style.
In these ways cultural nationalism prepared the ground for unifica-
tion in advance of the political reality. Unification was not universally
welcomed there was opposition from conservative forces within the
Principalities but among its advocates the union of 1600 was seized
upon, and its historical meaning was transformed utterly as a means of
validating the would-be modern nation. One of the outstandingly popu-
lar operas of the mid century essentially a Singspiel or vaudeville was
Mihai Bravul n ajunjul btliei dela Clugreni [Michael the Brave on the
Eve of the Battle of Clugreni], composed in the revolutionary year of
1848 by Ion Andrei Wachmann. Nor was this the only opera on the topic
of Mihai Viteazul, for the union of 1600 was later treated as an originary
moment in Romanian national consciousness.46
Likewise, mythology was tapped by composers, as in the opera
Meterul Manole [The master builder Manole] by Mauriciu Cohen-Lnaru
(18491928), a pupil of Bizet and Csar Franck (the story is the familiar
one where Manole must wall up his wife as a sacrifice in order to com-
plete the Curtea de Arge Monastery in Wallachia; it is known especially
through the epic poem Monastirea Argeului [The monastery on the
Arge], and we will encounter a version of it again in our discussion of

44These were Roumania; Bouquet de mlodies valaques originales; LEcho de la Valachie;

and Les bords du Danube.
45Folksong collections continued to appear, including publications by Anton Pann,
Carol Mikuli and Alexandru Flechtenmacher.
46See Lajosi 2008, 21517.
 nations 237

the first opera by Kalomiris).47 Meterul Manole, together with his piano
sonatas and song-cycles, earned Cohen-Lnaru a place as a leading Roma-
nian composer of the late Romantic era, though its music is simple and
frankly anachronistic. He was rivalled by Ciprian Porumbescu (185383),
by Chopins pupil Carol Mikuli (182197), whose compositions include a
Missa Romena for choirs and organ (though he spent most of his work-
ing life in Lww [Lviv]), and by Eduard Caudella (18411924), best known
today as the teacher of George Enescu. All were engaged in modest ways
in the project of building a national music.
When unification was finally achieved, it was only made possible by
Great Power politics. Such has always been the way in the Balkans. In the
case of Romania it occurred in the wake of the Crimean War of 185356.
And it was also in the aftermath of Crimea that another Balkan would-be
nation began to stir. Unlike Romania, Bulgaria lay right at the heart of
the Ottoman territories in Europe, and accordingly the kind of cultural
nationalism cultivated in Romania had little opportunity to develop until
towards the end of the nineteenth century. In the aftermath of Crimea,
however, Sultan Abdlmecid I extended the reforming policies of the
Tanzimat in an attempt to stem the tide of nationalism in the Balkans.
Among other things, he called an Orthodox Church council to reorganise
the millet, and it was at this point that the Bulgarian Church Question
raised its head, as the Bulgarians, prompted by Russia, staked their claim
to an independent Church. This led to a decade of dispute between the
Bulgarians and the Greeks, culminating in the establishment in 1870 of a
Bulgarian Exarchate in Istanbul.
There were no implications for doctrine, confirming that the debate
was unambiguously about national identity. And from this point onwards,
church music in Bulgaria was vulnerable to nationalist appropriation.
There were complex demographic issues at work, as between Bulgarian
peasant populations, Greeks and gudilas (Hellenised Bulgarians).48 But in
general there was a growing sense of Bulgarian ownership of the liturgical
sources in the monasteries, including musical sources, and at the same
time there was an increasing attempt to separate the music from its Greek
parentage; the formation of the Bolgarski pevcheski tsarkoven khor [The
Bulgarian Church Choir] in 1870 had just such an aim, and the discovery

47This theme (the walled-in woman) crops up in oral culture, especially balladry, all
over the Balkans, notably in Albania and Greece. See O. Augustinos 2003.
48For a useful account of this, see Detrez 2003.
238 chapter nine

of Bolgarski rospev in Russian manuscripts (see chapter 6) was crucial.

All this was part and parcel of the national awakening, along with the
appropriations of folk culture by the Miladinov brothers, and the early
attempts, notably but not exclusively by Dobri Hristov (18751941), to lay
the foundations of a national music both through institutional work and
through compositions.
In the early 1870s there was growing ferment in the Balkans, result-
ing from three intertwined forces: social discontent at lower social levels,
national revival movements promoted by native elites, and Great Power
politics. Thus, the Herzegovina rising in 187576 had little to do with
nationalism,49 but it did provoke Serbia into a nationalist war against
the newly bankrupted Ottomans, and that in turn galvanised Russia, Brit-
ain and the Habsburgs. Soon just about everyone was involved. Bulgar-
ian nationalists took the opportunity to stage an ill-fated revolt in 1876
(brutally suppressed), Russia declared another war on the Ottomans, and
Romania joined in and declared its full independence.50 When the British
sent a fleet to prevent Russia seizing Istanbul, Russia signed the Treaty of
San Stefano with the Ottomans (March 1878), effectively creating a mas-
sive Bulgarian state that included Bulgaria proper, all of Macedonia and
most of Thrace. In the end, it was universal outrage at this treaty that led
to the Congress of Berlin in July 1878, and the result was all but a death
blow to the Ottoman Empire.
The Berlin Balkans formalised the victory of nation state over empire.
It confirmed the full independence of Serbia, Montenegro and Romania,
and it created a Bulgarian state that cut the San Stefano Bulgaria down to
a quarter of its size. So what was left for the empires? Perhaps the most
surprising part of the treaty was the license it gave for the occupation of
Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Sandak of Novi Pazar by the Habsburgs,
who would go on to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina formally thirty years
later. This left the Habsburgs in control of Croatia, Vojvodina, part of the
Banat, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Transylvania and Bukovina. The Otto-
mans were left with exiguous territories, a mere remnant of their earlier
possessions. They retained Thrace (including the autonomous province
of Eastern Rumelia, with Plovdiv [Filibe] as its capital, at least until 1885),
Macedonia (including present-day Greek territories) and Epirus/Albania.

49There is an interesting discussion of Vasa Pelagis history of the uprising in the

epilogue of Milojkovi-Djuri 1994.
50A fascinating report of Russian responses to the uprisings in the Balkans is Dostoevsky
1993.
 nations 239

Not all aspirations were fully met at Berlin. Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria
all looked hungrily at Macedonia, while Serbian claims on Bosnia and
Herzegovina were thwarted, with well-known consequences. The efforts
of Benjamin von Kllay to keep Serbian, Montenegrin and Croatian ambi-
tions for Bosnia and Herzegovina at bay failed to stave off the impending
political crisis. Moreover, a new generation of nationalists was emerging
in Albania and Macedonia. Here too there were musical manifestations,
though some of these are read somewhat after the fact. In particular, the
Albanians began a process of territorial expansion following the Serbian
migrations. They consolidated their presence in Kosovo and Metohia, and
also western Macedonia, and by augmenting already substantial popula-
tions in these regions they created one of the key elements in what Ivo
Banac called a human garland strung around the Balkan Slavs.51 The
Albanians were not represented at the Congress of Berlin, and partly
because of that they established the League of Prizren in 1878.52 It was a
key player in the Rilindja kombtare [National Revival] associated with the
Frashri family and linked to the Bektai [Bektashi] order.
In the wake of familiar nationalist moves, Albania gained an initial
independence on the eve of World War I. But the subsequent status of
the nation was far but secure, and the nationalist imperative, grounded
in language more than anything, remained a live issue, partly because the
cultures of the north and south are so distinct. In this connection Jane
Sugarman has made a suggestive link between developments at the ends
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She refers to one major prod-
uct of the heritage gathering of the late nineteenth century, the folkloric
collection of Bleta Shqyptare [Albanian Bee], published by Thimi Mitko
in 1878. This includes chronicle songs, many of them dealing with events
in and around Janina, with accounts of Ali Pasha from both sides of the
political divide.53 She then demonstrates a link between these and songs
performed by present-day Prespa Albanian villagers, sung lartr: in full
voice, at a high pitch level, in a non-metric manner, and with dense orna-
mentation. In doing so she points to a specifically musical expression of
Albanian nationalism in the late twentieth century, and one that embraces
the radically different cultures of the north and the south. The chronology

51 Banac 1984, 46.

52One can still visit the (partly reconstructed) building in Prizren where the delegates
met. It now houses a museum.
53Sugarman 1999.
240 chapter nine

here is telling. It emphasises that even after the Versailles settlement, the
task of nation building in this part of the Balkans was far from complete.
The unresolved issues in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and
Albania draw attention to the heavy price that had to be paid for all
these nation-building enterprises. Borders, which once had little mean-
ing, were now subject to dispute. The national histories constructed all
around them not only overlapped, but worked to squeeze out, margina-
lise or physically displace the various minority communities: ethnic, con-
fessional and linguistic. Such minorities characteristic components of
dissolving multinational empires typically found themselves caught up
in several national narratives simultaneously, while all the time trying to
build one of their own, and naturally looking to West European societies
for what they perceived to be successful models. In this sense displace-
ment and periphery were the invariable by-products of the rise of nation-
alism in South East Europe. And in such cases, ethnicity was not the only
marker of difference. Religion also played its part, and increasingly class
discourses, emergent in the nineteenth century, played into the national
narratives.54

Yugoslavism

A complicating factor in nineteenth-century nationalism was the strength-

ening sense of ethnic allegiance that gave rise at various times to pan-
Slavic, pan-German, pan-Hellenic, and even pan-Latin movements.55 This
intersected with nation-state nationalism, sometimes bolstering it, and
sometimes at odds with it. It was given expression in the emergent Illyri-
anism a Kollr-inspired ideology of South Slav unity that developed in
the aftermath of the Napoleonic years as a subset of the wider pan-Slavic
movement. In principle one might compare this to the drive to unifica-
tion in Italy and Germany, with the role of Serbia analogous to that of
Piedmont and Prussia respectively (it has often been observed that Italy
and Germany were conquered rather than unified). As Denison Rusinow
has pointed out, it is not always easy to distinguish Yugoslav nationalism
from the nation-specific variety, for the basic argument of Yugoslavism
that South Slavs have similar tribal origins and speak variants of the same

54On this, see Turda 2009.

55Pan-Latin movements came into prominence in the early twentieth century, and
were focused on some of the discourses associated with World War I.
 nations 241

language, ergo they are the same people was interpreted rather differ-
ently by the three major players.56
The Slovenes, historically subject to Germanisation, tended to group
themselves with more northerly Slavic nations within the Habsburg
Empire, notably the Czechs, and were initially lukewarm towards the idea
of South Slav unity. But in due course they came to view Yugoslavism
as a necessary tool in the struggle against domination, and in the end
they played a key role in unification. The Serbs, on the other hand, having
already achieved independence and carrying a strong historical sense of
national identity, were from the start irredentist, and driven above all by
an ideology of a Christian (Serbian) Yugoslavia. This too was premised on
the idea of a common people, but it was less about federalism than expan-
sionism, and its most concrete aim was to unite all Serbs within a single
state. Croatia, caught between Austrian and Hungarian ambitions, shared
with Slovenia the struggle for independence, and there were many who
sought a genuine federalism that would exclude the possibility of separate
states. But there were others who looked rather to a Greater Croatia by
analogy with a Greater Serbia.57
There were, in short, many shades of opinion as to what Yugoslavism
really represented. As to what Rusinow calls its core idea, this was first
promulgated by intellectual elites in the South Slav territories of the Hab-
sburg Empire. We can trace it to Ljudevit Gaj (180972) and the so-called
Illyrianist awakeners, who already in the 1830s cultivated the classic strat-
egies of nation building: the appropriation of language and culture, and
the invention of history. Language was crucial from the start, and here
the work of the Illyrianists converged with that of Vuk in Serbia. In both
cases, the impulse was to recover a national language, though in prac-
tice that invariably meant formalising particular dialects at the expense
of others. It was a help that the tokavian selected by Gaj was close to the
peasant dialect codified by Vuk, and this proximity enabled the Vienna
Conference of 1850 (a follow-up to the Prague Pan-Slav Congress of 1848)
to arrive at a standardisation of language that would come to be known
as Serbo-Croat.58
It was perhaps more difficult for Croatia to forge an independent cultural
voice than for Serbia, given that Croatia was so deeply embedded within

56Rusinow 2003.
57See Banac 1984, 7475 for the historical background to pan-Croatism.
58The rise and fall of Serbo-Croat will be briefly touched on in a later chapter. See
Greenberg 2004.
242 chapter nine

the Habsburg empire. Indeed the inclination of many Croatian Illyrians

was to regard South Slav affinities as a counter to the specific Magyarisa-
tion policies imposed by a Hungarian ascendancy, while still thinking in
terms of limited autonomy within the empire. Croatia had its counterpart
to Vuk in the poet Ivan Maurani, who not only collected South Slav
epics from the oral tradition, but (in 1845) penned a Montenegro-based
epic Smrt Smail-aga engia [Death of Smail-aga engi] that turned out
to be hardly less influential than Gorski vijenac. Yet it was often difficult to
separate Croatism from Yugoslavism in agendas of cultural nationalism,
and perhaps especially in music. The two often seemed interchangeable
within the nationalist rhetoric associated with Illyrian agendas.59 It is pos-
sible anyway to exaggerate these agendas in Croatian music. The principal
concern of the Croatian Music Institute was less the promotion of Illyrian-
ism than the need to raise musical standards generally, to educate.
In practice, agendas for Croatian or Illyrian nationalism tended to fol-
low much the same course that we have traced in national movements
elsewhere in South East Europe. Again music formed a natural alliance
with vernacular poetry, and here Gajs collaboration with the composer
Ferdo Livadi (17991878), resulting in a rousing patriotic anthem Jo
Hrvatska nie propala [Croatia has not yet fallen], might remind us of
Solomos and Mantzaros in Greece, or of orevi and Jenko in Serbia.
Again the theatre was an all-important forum. Livadi contributed music
to Croatian-language theatre, and notably for the popular Illyrian drama
Juran i Sofija [Juran and Sophia] by Franjo Kukuljevi (1840). Then in 1846
there was a landmark performance of what is usually taken to be the first
Croatian national opera, Ljubav i zloba [Love and malice] by the leading
composer of the Illyrian movement, Vatroslav Lisinski (181950). Lisinskis
musical style belonged in reality to European mainstreams, with an orien-
tation towards German early Romanticism, but in the context of his time
and place, Ljubav i zloba stands as an Illyrian landmark. And in Lisinskis
more highly regarded second opera Porin, which turned to the national
history (the liberation of Croatia from the Franks in the ninth century),
there are hints of a national style in the making.60
Porin was not performed at the time of its appearance in 1851, in part
because of changes in the political climate. The aftermath of the 1848

59These agendas culminated in the institution of The National Illyrian Music Society
(1839) and The First Illyrian Music Society (1840).
60Majer-Bobetko 1998, 81.
 nations 243

revolutions witnessed a period of neo-absolutism in the eastern Habs-

burg lands, with the so-called Bach system61 ensuring that the adminis-
trative structure of the empire remained centralised, highly bureaucratic
and German-dominated. The long-term effect of this return to centralist
and repressive policies explicitly anti-Slav was to sharpen a sense of
periphery and thus of national identity among the subject peoples of the
empire, but its short-term outcome was to inhibit the Illyrian movement;
indeed virtually to close it down. The leading Croatian composer of the
later nineteenth century was the internationalist Ivan Zajc (18321914).
Zajc, who was Czech-born, had made his name as a composer of operetta
in Vienna during the 1860s, and could no doubt have remained there. That
he developed a sense of obligation towards Croatian culture was partly
due to his contacts with the churchman and politician Bishop Josip Juraj
Strossmayer (18151905), the leading neo-Illyrianist of the later nineteenth
century.
Strossmayer was a key figure, and merits a brief excursus. With his motto
Everything for the faith and the homeland, his position as to religion was
broadly ecumenical, while in politics he was a passionate pan-Slavicist
and federalist, but always under the aegis of the monarchy. Together with
his fellow idealogue, the historian Franjo Raki, he was a power behind
both the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and the University of Zagreb, and
his publishing activities included not just Glagolitic missals in support of
ecumenical ideals but collections of Bulgarian folksong by the Miladinovs,
key figures in the Bulgarian national revival (though later appropriated by
Macedonian liberation movements). Just how far Zajc supported all the
many strands of this programme seems open to question, but he (Zajc)
was in any case persuaded to leave Vienna and move to Zagreb in 1870, in
the newly established context of the Dual Monarchy.
Zajcs two principal tasks in Zagreb were to take charge of the National
Music Institute, a second change of name for the old Musikverein, and to
run the (now fully Croatian) Opera. Yet his orientation was really very
different from that of the Illyrian generation. Like Samaras, he had little
interest in folk music, pinning his colours rather to the Italian mast. Like
an eighteenth-century Kappellmeister, Zajc seemed to find no difficulty
in producing an endless stream of music in all genres, despite demand-
ing roles as an administrator, teacher and conductor. This sits a little

61Alexander Bach (180667) was Minister of the Interior in the restored Habsburg
monarchy.
244 chapter nine

oddly with prevailing tendencies in late nineteenth-century music, and

the modernist generation of the first Yugoslavia rejected Zajc for ideologi-
cal as well as for purely musical reasons (here again the fate of Samaras
comes to mind). The case against him should be differently constructed
today, for the issue is not really about cosmopolitanism or nationalism,
but about quality and originality. Zajcs facility carried penalties in an
age inclined to translate excellence to greatness, craft to art. Understand-
ably, Croatian writers single out from an output of more than a thousand
works those that tell the national story, and above the opera Nikola ubi
Zrinjski (1876).
This opera is still performed today (its final aria was once a crowd
puller). It is often known as the Croatian Nabucco, and early or middle-
period Verdi is perhaps its closest stylistic referent. It recounts Zrinjskis
battles against Suleiman and his heroic death in 1566 through tuneful
melodies and stirring martial choruses, including well-worn stylisations
of the Turkish harem. Yet its Croatian credentials are not straightforward.
In a detailed discussion, John Neubauer not only discusses joint claims on
this particular hero from Croatian and Hungarian literary traditions (the
great seventeenth-century Hungarian epic by Zrinskis great-grandson
was given in a Croatian version by the poets brother), but also notes that
the libretto, by Hugo Badali, was based not directly on the epic but on
Theodor Krners anti-Napoleonic German play Zriny (1812).62 This play
in its turn was inspired by Friedrich Schlegels Vienna lectures on literary
history, lectures that effectively inaugurated a modern national view of
literature, and it came into its own a century later as a popular patriotic
inspiration to the Germans during World War I.
Surprisingly, Krners play was well received in Hungary, when in
Hungarian translation it was given at the newly established National
Theatre at Kolozsvr in 1821. As to the opera, Neubauer argues that Zajc
and Badali may have been getting round censorship by basing it on an
Austrian play, neutralising the Hungarian patriotic element, but in ways
that the Hungarians could not easily condemn. In any event, the opera
became a potent symbol of Croatian nationalism, and it opened the Croa-
tian National Theatre in 1895. In a nutshell, Neubauers dissection dem-
onstrates that Krner de-Hungarianised the epic to create a pro-German
propaganda, while Zajc and Badali re-nationalised the play in favour of

62Neubauer 2004.
 nations 245

Croatia. Thus could nationalism draw upon the widest possible range of
sources, bending them to its will.
The other dominant figure in Croatian musical life of the later nine-
teenth century represented a radically different tendency, closer to the Illy-
rianism associated with the singing societies than to Zajcs pro-European
orientation. Franjo Kuha (18341911) was a composer, but not primarily
so. First and foremost, he was a pedagogue and a musical scholar, and
one who worked in the spirit of Bishop Strossmayers larger pan-Slav pro-
gramme (there is an extensive published correspondence between the two
men).63 His pioneering significance for the later development of musical
scholarship in the Slavonic Balkans could scarcely be exaggerated. When
he arrived in Zagreb a year after Zajc in 1871, Kuha brought with him
extensive collections of folk music from all over the South Slav territories,
transcribed during a decade of extensive travels. In this, he was of course
taking the path indicated by Herder and followed by Slavonic nationalists
elsewhere.
But Kuha was also a pioneer in the systematic classification and com-
parative analysis of folk materials, even if not all of his approaches and
findings have stood the test of time. He was a serious historian of national
traditions, and the first to argue for the presence of Croatian folk melodies
in Haydn and Beethoven, though his controversial thesis about Haydns
Croatian ethnicity, widely popularised for a time, was soon discredited.64
The main fruits of his work were the four volumes of Juno-slovjenske
narodne popievke [South Slav Folksongs], published between 1878 and
1881, and provided with simple piano accompaniments. A polemicist, who
placed his Croatian nationalism in the wider Illyrian context, Kuha made
a forceful case in his teachings and voluminous historical writings for a
Croatian or South Slavic national style based on folk music, and he was
undoubtedly a prime inspiration to the younger Yugoslav composers of
the inter-war period in the twentieth century.
In his summary of the polemic between nationalist and cosmopolitan
orientations in Zagreb at the end of the century, Stanislav Tuksar placed
Zajc and Kuha at the centres of two very different circles.65 Zajc, encircled
by numerous composers of various nationalities, stood for a conservative
nineteenth-century internationalist position. Kuha was part of a smaller

63Frankovi 1978.
64One popular study which promoted Kuhas theory was Hadow 1897.
65Tuksar 1998b.
246 chapter nine

circle of Slav intellectuals, committed to the idea of a national culture,

whether conceived as narrowly Croatian or more broadly South Slavic.
Tuksar uses the debate about Eduard Hanslick, a debate that was repli-
cated just about everywhere in Europe, to focus the polemic (his point is
that Kuhas objection to the Hanslick thesis was based on a misunder-
standing of it). What one might claim is that the issue of musics expressive
potential, as foregrounded by Hanslick, came to seem especially germane
to nationalist ambitions everywhere in the late nineteenth century, even
if few composers in Croatia explored the programmatic route followed by
other East European nationalists.
In any case, with a slightly younger generation the configuration began
to change. Categories are anything but watertight, but we can speak of a
circle that promoted international contemporary idioms, including com-
posers such as Blagoje Bersa (18701954), Josip Hatze (18791959) and Dora
Pejaevi (18851923), and a circle that stood for a nationally-orientated
composition, centred mainly on Antun Dobroni (18781955), but given a
genuinely modernist character by Josip tolcer Slavenski (18961955). It
was this latter group, working mainly between the two world wars, that
followed Kuhas lead. Like several Serbian composers of the same genera-
tion, these composers began to find creative potential in an engagement
with South Slav music more generally, suggesting that there might indeed
be a music of Yugoslavia.
It was through the Yugoslav ideal that Slovenia was drawn for a time
into the Balkans. Subject to a mix of Italian and German influences,
largely free of Ottoman interference, and supported by a bourgeoisie that
emerged relatively early, Slovenian elite culture was quickly brought within
the orbit of West European traditions. Much of this culture belonged to
Italian- or German-speaking rather than Slovenian-speaking populations,
however, and it is hardly surprising that the growing strength of Slovene
nationalism resulted in a sharp division in the organisation of musical life.
Performing forces and venues were increasingly segregated along national
lines, right down to the separation of the Philharmonische Gesellschaft
and the Glasbena Matica, established for native populations in 1872, some-
what on the model of the Dramatic Society founded in 1867; its school of
music followed in 1882 and its choir in 1891. In the late nineteenth century,
then, there was developing intellectual support for nationalist activity, ini-
tially conceived within a Habsburg framework as a kind of Austro-Slavism,
but later directed towards a full-scale independence movement.
Although always concerned to protect specificities of language and cul-
ture, Slovene intellectuals (for example the leading writer Ivan Cankar,
 nations 247

whose 1907 lecture The Slovene People and Slovene Culture was influ-
ential) came to view solidarity with other South Slav peoples as the only
realistic way to fulfill their nationalist goals. Yet there was little in the
music of nineteenth-century Slovenian composers that betrayed any real
enthusiasm for national styles of the kind we noted in Serbia and Croatia.
Composers such as Benjamin Ipavec (18291908), Fran Gerbi (18401917)
and Anton Foerster (18731926) developed a cosmopolitan late-Romantic
idiom influenced by Brahms and Dvok, with occasional nods (as in
Risto Savins opera Lepa Vida [Lovely Vida] of 1907) towards Wagner. It
was really only in the early twentieth century, and especially during the
inter-war period in a newly independent federal state, that some Slove-
nian composers joined forces with Serbs and Croatians in the movement
known as Yugoslav moderna.
The ambivalence at the heart of the various attempts to create national
cultures were they working for narrow nationalist goals or for some form
of genuinely communal South Slav culture? also pervaded the political
sphere, with Belgrade and Zagreb in very obvious competition over the
leadership of an avowedly integralist South Slav movement. In the end
it was the larger political map that orientated the players towards some
kind of unification scheme. There was of course no logical reason that
Bulgaria should not have been included in discussions of the unification
of South Slav Christian lands. Indeed in intellectual circles it often was.
As Ljubinka Trgovevi reminds us, there were several meetings of writ-
ers and journalists from Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Bulgaria between
1904 and 1906, and at the Second Congress held in Sofia in August 1906
the declared aim was to work towards unification of South Slavs in the
cultural field, and that included Bulgaria.66 Likewise the Association of
South Slav Artists, Lada, included Bulgaria.
It was really the Macedonian question that drove a wedge between Bul-
garia and the rest. Despite the temporary alliance of Balkan states that
produced the First Balkan War (1912), effectively expelling the Ottomans
from Europe, Serbia and Bulgaria remained at odds over Macedonia, and
Greece too maintained its claim. The Second Balkan War (1913) resulted
in a further loss of Bulgarian territory and effectively a carving up of most
of Macedonia between Serbia and Greece, establishing borders that have
remained more-or-less intact until today. The history was involved, but
in the end the Balkan wars laid the foundation for a modern Yugoslavia,

66Trgovevi 2003.
248 chapter nine

though it could never have become a reality without the Great War. Bul-
garia found itself on the side of the Central Powers rather than the Entente
in that war, and paid a heavy price at Versailles. Serbia, on the other hand,
had entered the war on a Yugoslav prospectus, and emerged from it as the
acknowledged leader of a new South Slav State, known as the Kingdom of
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.67 With this, the first Yugoslavia was born.

67Unification was based on the so-called Corfu Declaration of July 1917 in which the
Serbian government on Corfu and the London Yugoslav Committee called for the unifica-
tion of the South Slavs in order to preempt any attempt at unification from within the
Habsburg Empire.
 CHAPTER TEN

INSPIRERS

Building the Pyramids: Reflections on High Culture

The national awakenings in the nineteenth century led to a growing pre-

occupation with territorial borders in the Balkans. The babble of many
languages was to be replaced by the languages of nations. Music was to
be Greek or Romanian; it was to be Serbian or Croatian; later it might be
Yugoslav. Earlier cultural borders had been more obviously aligned either
to religious or to social communities. Such borders were never rigid. But
formal culture could firm them up in various ways, even if this sometimes
flew in the face of lived experience. We might draw a rough line between
the formal musical cultures of Islam and Christianity, for example, as
also between Orthodoxy and Catholicism. And we might also draw lines
between the musical practices of different social groups, contrasting Otto-
man music-making associated with Muslim social elites in the eastern
Balkans (bearing in mind that Ottoman society did not have a hereditary
aristocracy) with the transplanted European music associated with aris-
tocratic, and later bourgeois, cultures further west. We might then draw
further lines separating these practices from urban popular music, dis-
tinguishing eastern and western varieties of this, and differentiating both
these varieties from rural traditional music. By this time our map will look
fairly complicated.
It is a comment on the power of nationalism that the borders surround-
ing the nation state eventually came not just to supersede faith-based and
socially determined borders, but to cut across them and even to make
use of them, controlling cultural perceptions to a marked degree, even
in the face of blatant contraries. This simplifies the map, but at quite a
cost. National borders could separate cultures that were essentially the
same, just as they could gather cultures that were essentially different.
This is most apparent with traditional and popular musical repertories.
But even with elite cultures, fact-finding missions on concert programmes
have reinforced the message that surprisingly similar music was heard in
250 chapter ten

provincial towns right across Europe as a whole.1 In other words, we learn

that just as cultural capitals were multi-national, so provincial venues
were uni-repertorial.
How are we to account for the capacity of nationalism to override these
basic realities? The point was made in the last chapter. Modern national-
ism may have been an ideology created by bourgeois intellectual elites, but
its longer-term success was due to its appropriation of social and cultural
practices that were already firmly in place. Emergent nations were not
exactly reclaiming a culture when they looked to the past, then. Rather
they were promoting as a national culture what had previously been self-
defined, and in doing so they harnessed universal human instincts (to form
groups, to belong, to compete). This was a wider European development,
by no means just a Balkan one, and the alliance of culture and politics that
it represented was never really a benign one. During the interwar period
it came to assume an even darker significance, when an ethos of cultural
purity was allied to political fascism with consequences known to all.
In South East Europe, the triumph of the nation state was already
signalled by the outcome of the Balkan Wars, but it was formalised by
the Treaty of Versailles. Immediately following the Second Balkan War,
the picture looked roughly as follows: Greece was as it is today, having
secured southern Epirus and southern Macedonia; Bulgaria and Romania
were more-or-less as today; a newly independent nation state of Albania
had been created, with contested borders; Serbia included much of north-
ern Macedonia; Montenegro was an independent state, though soon to
be welded to Serbia; and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia
were under Habsburg rule. Following the Treaty of Versailles and the col-
lapse of the Habsburg Empire, the major alteration to this picture was
the establishment of the first Yugoslavia, which incorporated Macedonia,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, and much of Slovenia.
This outcome effectively resolved a conflict at the heart of Balkan
politics indeed European politics during the nineteenth century: a
conflict between dynastic government and the nation state. In the end
the nation state prevailed, as the Ottoman, Habsburg, Hohenzollern and
Romanov dynasties crumbled one by one. The new nations had an arbi-
trary enough character, formed as much from expedient alliances as from

1Helmut Loos is engaged in such a collaborative project involving Music and the City.
His published work on Central and Eastern Europe includes Loos and Mller 2005. For a
specific comment on programmes and repertories, see Loos 2008.
 inspirers 251

any genuine ethnic or geographical rationalisation. Indeed I highlighted

some of the exclusions, and the refusals, that resulted from a national-
ist ideology earlier, and in particular the creation of so-called minorities.
But it was a resolution of sorts, even if a temporary one. The triumph of
nationalism was hard-won in the Balkans, and how could it have been
otherwise given the ethic diversity of these territories? It was also inse-
cure, since it lacked the social underpinnings that held it fast in Western
Europe.
Increasingly, a professionalised high culture, under construction in the
Balkans in the second half of the nineteenth century, became synonymous
with a series of national cultures promoted by ruling social elites. That was
the rhetoric, and indeed the creative project, of the awakeners. Another
way of saying this is that while elite national cultures presented them-
selves as affirmative of distinctive, ethnically determined, world views,
they were in reality species of a common European high culture, and had
only limited success in percolating down through the social layers to the
ordinary people. This anomaly exposes the utopianism of the culture-
builders, who liked to believe that they spoke on behalf of all. Indeed the
whole enterprise of culture-building was essentially top-down; the values
of social and intellectual elites were represented as aspirational values.
We are reminded of Matthew Arnolds remarks in Culture and Anarchy
(1869), unlikely though such a leap may appear.2 A high culture in the
fullest sense the study and pursuit of perfection, as Arnold described it,
with a glance towards Hellenism could develop only when the general
standard of education had been raised to an acceptable level in a process
of progressive enlightenment. In practice this democratisation of culture
could proceed only so far, however, such were the barriers of social class
in nineteenth-century Europe, and the idealism of the liberal intelligen-
tsia could quickly turn to an intolerant elitism when the populace seemed
unworthy of their efforts. Setting that aside, Arnolds point was that a high
culture could only flourish when it rested on a strong institutional founda-
tion. He was a poet, of course, not a musician, and that makes an impor-
tant difference. Both arts need institutional development, but music has
transparently the greater need. On Arnolds analysis, then, the odds were
firmly stacked against significant music in the Balkans until the twentieth
century.

2Arnold 1993.
252 chapter ten

Given the under-developed state of nineteenth-century musical institu-

tions in the Balkans, it is no surprise that leading composers felt little incli-
nation to compose musically challenging works. They knew that if they did
so, they would have little opportunity to hear the results, at least in service-
able performances. For this reason it is hardly to the point to remove them
from local contexts and evaluate their achievements on some absolute scale
of values. They were for the most part exceptional men (invariably men),
but they were in the business of building local cultures. They worked to
create professional standards, to educate, to proselytise, and to shape local
tastes, and their compositional activities served these aims. In other words,
our interest in these figures lies in their careers as composers rather more
than in their music. If we widen the lens, we will conclude that the music
remained for the most part in imitative mode throughout the nineteenth
century. New research may change the picture slightly, but it is unlikely to
sweep many reputations to new heights in a surge of critical acclaim.
It is better to accept this than to make unreasonable claims. Most
nineteenth-century composers in the Balkans were in reality Kleinmeister
local geniuses, to misuse a term that will be explored more fully later posi-
tioned at the summits of small, regionally constructed pinnacles of culture.
The term culture might even incorporate such pinnacles within some of its
numerous meanings. Vjera Katalini has suggested as much, arguing that a
musical culture consists of the activities of both major and minor masters,
forming a pyramidal system where the great pyramids, peaked by the great
composers, rest on a mosaic of smaller pyramids.3 There are echoes here
of the Arnoldian philosophy. And we should note that culture here means
high culture, a monadic construct of highly developed practices, sophisti-
cated institutions and refined tastes, assumed to be superior to low culture,
and for that very reason much sought after by aspiring nations.
The basic premise is not dependent on the particular values attached
by Arnold, and by the pyramid builders themselves (and the term build-
ers has the right resonance), to high culture. In other words, we may
take a more relativistic view, but still accept that cultural practices need
an institutional foundation, and that significant artistic achievements
within so-called high culture are unlikely to be possible until this has
been established. The slow start to culture-building in the Balkans partly
explains, then, why this region played very little part in one of the central
tendencies of nineteenth-century musical life, the increasing separation

3Katalini 1995.
 inspirers 253

of the work-as-text from the work-as-performance. This tendency was

registered in the structures of concert life, in publishing enterprises and
in pedagogy, and it really amounted to a gradual shift from a genre- and
performance-orientated culture to a work-oriented culture.
Such moves were considerably delayed in the Balkans, where by and
large musical life remained focused on events (performances) rather than
on objects and concepts (works and their interpretations) until well into
the twentieth century. Another way of saying this is that in this region
the profiles of individual works took longer to emerge sharply from music
as a whole, and specifically from larger generic groupings. It also follows
that a differentiation of popular and significant (formulaic and original)
repertories was much less marked in the Balkans. It seems important to
view the achievements of individual composers against this background,
a background in which elite cultures were still in the making.
There is, however, a corollary to this. Precisely because these cultures
were at the planning stage in the nineteenth century, they depended on
strong personalities to energise them, and were at the same time subject
to the individual agendas, including the political agendas, of those per-
sonalities. It is a phenomenon that one can still see today in those parts
of South East Europe where modernisation has been slowest to arrive.
Present-day musical life in Macedonia and Albania, for example, owes
an enormous amount to a small handful of dynamic personalities, men
(again, invariably men) who have the charisma and energy, and almost
by definition the ego, that enable them to motivate others and to make
things happen. Such men are the inspirers, and it is they who set the agen-
das for change and development.
The inspirers are not without vested interests. Typically, they will
be encircled by younger colleagues, who work under clear instruction,
and derive enormous benefit from so doing, but who have little opportu-
nity to influence the general direction of change and to develop a capacity
for independent thought and action. There are pros and cons. But in any
case, our observation of present-day culture building ab initio can teach us
something about the role and importance of individual agency in shaping
nineteenth-century practices. Vested interests, egos and personal rivalries
are in plentiful supply wherever we look, but in more established cul-
tures they are at least partly held in check by the constraints of history
and tradition. Such constraints are in short supply in the Balkans. Tradi-
tions there have shallow roots, and for that reason cultural life is more
than usually susceptible to new directions, alternative visions, and trans-
formative innovations.
254 chapter ten

Greeks...

We can locate music history within a larger history of human conscious-

ness, where it unfolds in intangible places lying beyond the direct control
of individuals. It is marked by epochs and periods, and driven by what
Adorno described as the inherent tendencies of the musical material.
Arguably this approach, which generates our pedigreed grand narratives,
fetishises history in the ways Hayden White has written about, so that
the events seem to tell themselves.4 An alternative approach is to locate
music history within a history of human communication.5 If we do that,
we will see it in a rather different light. Focusing on agency, and on the
many and varied uses made of repertories in different places and at differ-
ent times, we will gravitate towards local contexts and little stories. And
the little stories of music history in the Balkans are replete with intriguing
characters.
I will revisit three moments of change in Greek music history, and
then introduce a fourth. Any whistle-stop tour through that history
will highlight the importance of agency. There are many players in the
drama: composers and performers, entrepreneurs, financial backers and
politicians. These individuals were not passive products of the inexorable
sweep of historical forces; they intervened directly. Earlier I drew atten-
tion to certain prejudices at work in the discourses of Greek music history.
But prejudices do not amount to a malfunction in the history, as some
have claimed; there is no ideal path to be followed, from which real his-
tory may be in some sense diverted.6 To see history in this way is to give
it moral force, and even to link it to something akin to destiny. In reality,
Greek music history is no different from any other. It has been shaped
alike by larger collective movements of politics, society and ideas and
by individual agents with their personal agendas and beliefs.
Like its political history, Greek music history has been marked by
abrupt changes of direction, often highly charged ideologically. 1815 is a
possible starting-point. We return to the twenty-year-old Nikolaos Haliki-
opoulos Mantzaros, who in that year composed a cluster of works (three
insert arias and the one-act opera Don Crepuscolo) for the San Giacomo
theatre in Corfu, bequeathing us some of the earliest extant manuscripts

4White 1987, 3.
5See, for example, Chartier 1988.
6Leotsakis 2004a, 58. Highly polemical readings of music history are characteristic of
even the most recent Greek scholarship. See Tsetsos 2011.
 inspirers 255

of modern Greek art music.7 They are essays in the pre-Rossinian idiom
of Italian opera associated with composers such as Cimarosa, Paisiello,
Zingarelli and Mayr. Mantzaros never became a professional musician;
indeed it was not really an option, as he was from a noble family. In a way,
this released him to become one of the inspirers. A decade after these early
compositions, he had transformed his home into a philanthropic conser-
vatory where local musicians were trained, and a little later (as noted in
chapter 8) he became a prime mover in the Philharmonic Society, itself a
monument to philanthropic agency. Nineteenth-century musical and the-
atrical institutions (including opera houses) were still funded more from
private donations than from the state.
Compositionally, Mantzaros remained locked in an idiom akin to that
of his teacher Niccol Antonio Zingarelli in Naples.8 We might expect
that of operatically conceived works. But it was no less the case when he
turned to sacred and instrumental music. His one-movement symphonies
(surviving in piano score, and written only in that form) are really Italian
sinfonias modeled on those of his mentor, while his partimenti for string
quartet adopt the neo-baroque contrapuntal methods also employed by
Zingarelli in this semi-pedagogical genre. As all of this suggests, there is
little Mantzaros that will hold the attention of international audiences
today, but he served nonetheless as a model for a later generation of
Greek composers, and as a figure of major pioneering significance.
He was one of the pyramid builders, and it was partly his inspired
teaching that made possible the subsequent flowering of Greek art music
in the nineteenth century. The climate of ideas may have been conducive,
but it needed a Mantzaros to galvanise musical life, and the trajectory he
established remained constant for a century in which Greek music was
dominated by heptanesian (Ionian) traditions. One crucial point here is
that the Italian foundations of Ionian music, and the subsequent Ionian
presence in mainland Greek music, ensured that for most of the nine-
teenth century Greece did not have extensive contacts with developments
in other European musical centres, notably in France and Germany.
Despite some attempts to argue otherwise, and a few exceptions such as

7The extant sources for these works are the autographs currently held by the Benaki
Museum in Athens. A modern critical edition appeared in 2006, published by the Hellenic
Music Research Laboratory of the Ionian University, Corfu. The most detailed study of
Mantzaros is Kardamis 2008.
8His populist, patriotic music written for local people belongs to a rather different
tradition again.
256 chapter ten

Dionysios Rodotheatos, those familiar features of nineteenth-century

music that we associate with the German tradition including cyclic
symphonism, highly developed orchestral styles, sophisticated piano and
chamber music repertories, and ideas of unity, inspiration, originality and
even genius were largely absent from Greek musical life until the end of
the century. This was reflected both in the activities of Greek composers
and in the basic structures of concert life and education.
Significantly, when a major change of direction came in the early
twentieth century, it was again associated with a powerful personality, an
inspirer. This second turning-point was marked symbolically by an event
of 1908, a concert of music by Manolis Kalomiris at the Athens Conserva-
tory organised by the composer himself, and with a programme note that
effectively announced a Greek national school. But if we look backstage,
we find an evental site with its own mini-histories. The appointment of
the German-trained Georgios Nazos to the Directorship of the Athens
Conservatoire in 1891 has already been noted. Nazos undoubtedly went
about the job in a ruthless and prejudiced fashion, and he has been duly
castigated by those who are anxious to give due measure to the Ionians.
Yet he did undertake major reforms at the Conservatory, raising it to a
level that was capable of nurturing significant talents, mainly by following
European models. Thus, he introduced music theory (as distinct from the
pragmatically-based teaching familiar in Ionian institutions) and mod-
ern piano pedagogy, established a symphony orchestra, and ensured that
canonic works were heard in Athens.9
Nazos was not the prime mover. He was himself a fairly mediocre musi-
cian, but he was a member of an influential family, and he had the back-
ing of a more powerful player. When the wealthy banker Andreas Syngros,
one of the founders of the Bank of Constantinople, moved to Athens in
1871 he engaged in numerous works of public philanthropy, of which the
most famous was the completion of the Corinth Canal. And it was really
Syngross internationalist agenda backed by his money that changed
the direction of the Conservatory. He appears to have insisted on the
appointment of Nazos, and on the replacement of the entire administra-
tive board of the institution. This needs to be viewed in the context of a
much wider debate about the anti-clerical modernisation of Greece, and

9For the transformation of repertory, see Romanou 1996. For an account of the severely
limited standards of instrumental pedagogy, see Leotsakos 2004a, 59.
 inspirers 257

about Germany as a role model, widely regarded (and regarding itself) as

a kind of neo-Hellenic incarnation in the modern world.
An anti-Ionian bias was thus already well established at the Athens
Conservatory prior to the Kalomiris concert of 1908. At the time, Kalomiris
was employed at the Obolensky Lyceum in Kharkov, Russia [now Kharkiv,
Ukraine], and he returned to Athens specifically for the concert. In the
years that followed, prior to and immediately following his appointment
as a professor at the Conservatory (1911), he followed up the manifesto of
the concert with a concerted press campaign mainly in the weekly liter-
ary magazine Noumas against the Ionian composers and in favour of a
nationalist orientation that he contextualised within the larger demoticist
movement in Greek letters at the time.10 His aim was the familiar one
of linking traditional music (music of the ethnic nation) with modern-
ist art music, somewhat on the model of Russian composers in the 1860s
(to whom Kalomiris made reference in his 1908 note), and with the same
division into power bases, the same rhetoric, the same personal rivalries,
and the same intolerance of the other point of view. I might add that he
was even accused by hostile critics of working to a Russian (anti-Greek)
agenda.
Kalomiris was a canny politician, and in his role as a critic he played a
key opinion-forming role, invariably to his own benefit. Unlike Mantzaross
philanthropic agency, we see here a more hard-edged political agency,
where personal ambition, idealism and political instinct combined to
produce major collateral benefits. By 1919 Kalomiris had consolidated
his position to the point where he could wage war on Nazos, resign from
his post and found his own Hellenic Conservatory. Then, in 1926, he left
that to found the National Conservatory, of which he remained Direc-
tor until 1948. But most important of all, he was a gifted composer and
an inspirational teacher, and in a short time he had gathered together a
diverse group of exceptionally talented composers working to his agenda.
No less than Mantzaros, he set a new compass reading for Greek music,
ensuring that it was his national school, rather than either the established
Ionian or abortive modern schools (his own classification), that counted.
Kalomiriss project cut right across the catastrophe of 1922, which put
an end to any real political hopes for a Greek irredentist programme. The

10Noumas was closely associated with Kostis Palamas and the demoticist movement
generally in Greek letters, a movement for which the Memoirs of Yannis Makriyannis
served as an almost cultish originary text.
258 chapter ten

performance of his Levendia Symphony in 1920 at the Herodos Atticus

Theatre in Athens was of major significance here and was read by all as
a celebration of irredentism. With the destruction of Smyrna (his birth-
place), however, it was immediately clear that the national school could
have little meaning as cultural propaganda for political goals, and from
this point on it assumed rather a symbolic character. As such, it sur-
vived the right-wing dictatorship of the thirties, but not the occupation
and the civil war that followed it. In the post-war years the national school
lost both status and contemporary relevance in Greek music, though
Kalomiris went on to compose some of his finest music right up to the
early 1960s and other composers continued into the 1970s. It is probably
true to say that the Kalomiris era was effectively over in the 1950s; indeed
such movements were widely regarded as anachronistic all over Europe at
this time.
Panos Vlagolopoulos has an intriguing way of contextualising the
change of direction that followed in the 1950s, relating some of the music
of that era to the so-called thirties generation of modernist writers. In
analysing the response of intellectuals to the crisis of post-catastrophe
Greek identity, he argues that the key was a double continuity; in addi-
tion to the diachronic continuity of three historical eras (i megali idea), in
which there was now a major loss of faith, he proposes a synchronic conti-
nuity that linked popular culture to elite culture. This he sees as informing
the response of the thirties generation of writers to dilemmas of Greek
identity, not least in their reception of the classic nationalist cults of
Makriyannis and Theophilis. It was only through the establishment of this
second continuity, enabling what Dimitris Tziovas described as a middle
way between ultra-nationalistic helleno-centrism and mimetic European-
ism, that the present could remain in the positive light provided by the
first continuity.11 And it is against this background that we may consider
the third turning-point in Greek music history, associated with the post-
Civil War years.
Again the focus was an event, or rather a pair of events, and again they
were associated with powerful personalities. The first was the 1949 lecture
by Manos Hadjidakis (192594) on rebetika, and the second the 1958 song
cycle Epitaphios by Mikis Theodorakis (b.1925), settings of the leftwing
writer Yannis Ritsos. Again there was an evental site, taking us from the
proscriptions of the Metaxas years, through the partisan movements of

11Vlagopoulos 2008.
 inspirers 259

World War II and into the political instabilities of the immediate post-
war years. This will be explored more fully later, but we may note here
that, according to the testimonies of Yannis Constantinides (190384) and
Alekos Xenos (191295), the propagation of rebetika by the radio in the
aftermath of the Second World War was a response to direct interven-
tion from the ultra-conservative military forces that backed a succession
of weak governments just prior to the Civil War. Rebetika, it needs to be
recalled, were denounced not just by the right-wing Metaxas dictatorship
but also by the Communist National Liberation Front.12 And it was against
this background that the Hadjidakis lecture took place in 1949, coinciding
with the military defeat of the Left.
The effect was to validate a new, cleaned-up image of rebetika by treat-
ing them with intellectual seriousness, downplaying their lowlife conno-
tations and stressing instead the expressive power, technical skill and
emotional authenticity of musicians such as Markos Vamvakaris (190572)
and Vassilis Tsitsanis (191584). This marked the beginning of an appro-
priation of rebetika by a bourgeois public that was confirmed by Hadjida-
kiss own adaptation of well-known rebetika in his Eksi laikes zografies
[Six Portraits from Folklore] of 1951. And it was thanks to this new status
that so-called popular art songs could become associated once more with
the politics of protest. This was above all the achievement of Theodorakis
in his settings of Ritsos. His take was very different from that of Hadjida-
kis, but the combined achievement of both men was to transform this
classicised popular music into the true successor of Kalomiriss national
school, and to define for years to come the musical image of Greece in
the eyes of the world. Like Mantzaros and Kalomiris, they changed the
direction of Greek music. And for Theodorakis in particular, agency was
closely tied to propaganda.
A fourth turning-point might be briefly mentioned at this point. The
event was the formation of the Hellenic Association for Contemporary
Music (and, related to this, the Greek Section of the ISCM) in 1965, and
the powers behind it were two men sharing the name Yiannis Papaioan-
nou, one a musicologist and one a composer. Both may be justly termed
the inspirers of a whole new chapter of Greek modernist music. They
provided an alternative response to the demise of the National School,
this time at the elitist end of Vlagolopouloss second continuity. There
had been earlier ventures into musical modernism in Greece, associated

12Leotsakos 2004a, 634.

260 chapter ten

especially with Dimitri Mitropoulos and Nikos Skalkottas. But neither

composer made real inroads to musical life in Greece itself. Mitropoulos
more-or-less gave up composing around 1930 to follow a successful con-
ducting career in North America. Skalkottas returned to Athens in 1933,
but spent his later life in obscurity, and achieved wider recogition as a
composer mainly posthumously. The musical establishment in Athens
greeted his music with neither sympathy nor comprehension during an
era dominated by the national school and by an imposed Kulturbolschewis-
mus. That he was highly rated by his teacher Schoenberg would have been
no recommendation at all.
It was in the 1950s that a new wave of Greek modernists emerged. Of
the three major composers associated with this development, Jani Chris-
tou (192670), who spent only the last decade of his short life in Greece,
remained an isolated figure, while Iannis Xenakis (19222001) went on to
forge his reputation abroad. It was the third of the modernists, Papaioan-
nou (191089), who led the way in Greece, as a composer of course, but no
less importantly, as a teacher and administrator. The political climate was
newly receptive to such ventures, and they were supported by American
and German money and effort. Papaioannous own music moved through
several phases, but it was in the 1950s really from his Third Symphony
(1953) onwards that he began to make systematic use of Schoenbergs
methods, and it was in the 1960s that he came into his own as one of
the inspirers. He was known simply as the teacher, and his influence
on several generations of composers at the Hellenic Conservatoire was
immense. Haris Xanthoudakis tells me that he was for some time the only
Greek teacher who taught modern techniques of composition efficiently
and with real inside knowledge.
The real significance of the establishment of the Association for Con-
temporary Music in 1965 was that for the first time modernism was insti-
tutionalised in Greece, and to that extent there was some conformity with
the official sanctioning of new music elsewhere in Europe. This matter will
be discussed in greater detail in chapter 20, and something of its relation-
ship to Cold War politics will be probed at that point. But I want to stress
here the role of the other Papaioannou, the musicologist (usually known
as John G. Papaioannou). Under his direction, the Association organised the
so-called weeks of contemporary music, in which local and international
composers were placed side by side, rather on the model of the better-
known Warsaw Autumn festival, and he (along with Manos Hadjidakis)
was a prime mover too in the composition competition that was estab-
lished at the Technological Institute of Athens. As with our other three
 inspirers 261

turning points, we can justifiably argue that the time was ripe for these
developments. We can show that a failed project of musical modernism
in Greece became a success story in the end primarily because of a major
change in politics. But this does not diminish the importance of agency.
Without the pioneering and tireless efforts of the Papaioannous, it is hard
to imagine that Greek music could have entered the modern age.

...and other Agents

I will discuss here the role and importance of inspirers at the birth and
during the adolescence of two further national traditions, in Serbia and
Romania respectively. Like Greece, these nations or would-be nations built
their western culture ab initio in the nineteenth century, and again they
depended heavily on the initiatives of a small group of enablers. In Serbia
the key figure was Josif lezinger. Born in 1894 in Sombor (Vojvodina),
lezinger was a versatile musician trained in a practical way by playing in
the orchestras attached to Central European aristocratic courts, and prior
to his arrival in Kragujevac in 1831 he had already gained a reputation as
a teacher and entrepreneur, working both in abac and in Novi Sad. But it
was his pioneering work in Serbia proper, first in Kragujevac and then in
Belgrade, that jump-started a national tradition of art music. Both at the
theatre and with his Band of the Serbian Prince, lezinger had the flair,
enterprise and managerial skills necessary to meet the challenges associ-
ated with culture building. And for this reason his contribution to Serbian
culture was out of all proportion to the quality of his surviving music.
To grasp something of his pioneering significance we need some sense
of the base line for his initiatives. Just what were the conditions facing
lezinger as he set out to modernise and westernise musical practices
at the behest of Milo Obrenovi? We may turn first to the Band of the
Prince. Ostensibly there were two separate orchestras at the court, mili-
tary and theatre, but the former was really a wind band, and in prac-
tice the two groups had to join forces for any concerts involving even a
modestly ambitious repertoire. The general level of performance was low,
for there were relatively few musicians with a solid professional training.
Local performers either relied on foreign teachers, who might not stay, or
else they studied abroad, and might not return. Add to this the low quality
instruments, and the poor social status of musicians, and you gain some
impression of the major obstacles to the presentation of serious reper-
toire, let alone to the composition of demanding new works.
262 chapter ten

As to the theatre, it faced all these, and yet greater, difficulties. Of its
nature, theatre relies on entrepreneurial acumen, and in the nineteenth
century it was a site where money could be made. If anything it could
be made all the more easily where infrastructures were inadequate; the
less rigid the structures, the more room there was for opportunity. But,
as lezinger quickly discovered, the problems were daunting. First there
were the technical and administrative demands placed upon him, com-
bined with the antagonism of the drama section, which tended to view
musical fare as a distraction from serious literature. Then there were the
audiences. In the early days of the theatre these consisted mainly of clerks
and officials of the Principality, and of course the royal family. Aside from
the prevailing conservative tastes, both lezinger and his poet collabo-
rator Joakim Vuji, so-called father of Serbian theatre, were constantly
constrained by the demands of Prince Milo Obrenovi, who disliked
instrumental numbers, and insisted on hearing his favourite songs regard-
less of the content of the play.13
lezinger witnessed abrupt political changes during his lifetime: the
demise of one world, and the enabling of another. But in keeping with
other men of the theatre, he knew how best to use the institution to
transform the cultural world in accordance with changing political
imperatives. At the heart of this transformation was the triumph of the
vernacular. The theatre played a major part in that triumph, but it is per-
haps too simple to tell its story, or at least to tell it exclusively, as one of
national identities and the cultural expression of those identities. Theatre
prioritises communicative immediacy, and accordingly the ascendancy of
vernacular theatre in Serbia, as elsewhere in Europe in the nineteenth
century, was as much about the democratisation and enlargement of the
audience in other words, about accessibility and communication as it
was about nationalism. In the pragmatic world of the theatre, agendas can
seldom be monolithic. At the same time, as a prominent part of the public
sphere, the theatre was undoubtedly an ideal forum for the dissemination
of nationalist ideals.14

13As Katarina Tomaevi remarks, the audience in the first part of the century
expressed openly and aloud their dissatisfaction or approval regarding the activities on the
scene, identifying dramatic persons with people around them and seeking the very life of
the people inside the theatre. For the audience, the theatre represented a direct transposi-
tion of real life, of life itself divested of all illusions. Quoted in Milanovi 2009, 18.
14Habermas 1989.
 inspirers 263

Initially, music was assigned an ancillary role in an emergent Ser-

bian theatre, and the exact moment at which popular vaudevilles were
transmuted into opera is one that might be debated. Conventionally,
lezingers enidba cara Duana is frequently cited, but this stretches a
(generic) point. The work did at least represent a moment of symbolic
importance, paving the way to a definable genre of national opera, with
librettos in the vernacular, subject matter drawn from native history and
myth, and material either recognisably indebted to native musical tradi-
tions, or participating in the construction of such traditions. The shift that
took place here was rather fundamental, amounting to a revision of the
means by which opera might model society. By turning to the vernacular,
and treating folk and popular cultures with new-found dignity, compos-
ers and librettists transformed class-based into nation-based paradigms.
National operas, in other words, came to be regarded as important con-
tributory factors in the national awakening more commonly associated
with linguistic and literary initiatives, and a close collaboration between
composers and national poets was entirely symptomatic.
Not least because of the collaborative nature of theatre, the written
trace of lezingers music hardly does justice to his role and influence. It is
thanks to the archiving instincts of Franjo Kuha that any of his music sur-
vives, and a collection of his scores is preserved in the Archive of the Ser-
bian Academy of Sciences. They are sketches rather than scores, designed
for lezingers own use in his role as a conductor dealing with amateur
performers who were semi-literate musically. It is only through recon-
struction that any impression at all can be gained of this repertory, which
consists mainly of popular theatre songs that would have been inserted
into the popular plays (mainly comedies) of the time. The reconstructions
made by Katarina Tomaevi and published by the National Theatre in
Belgrade give us some sense of these early stages in the development of
an art music tradition in Serbia.15 They remind us too that composers
were very far from the centre of things in the theatrical world. They took
their place within a cooperative system of mutually dependent agents,

15In 2001, the National Theatre in Belgrade produced Komendijai. Medaljoni iz starih
srpskih komedija [Comedians. Medallions from Old Serbian Comedies], which included
part of Joakim Vujis play najderski kalfa [The Taylors apprentice]. lezinger had com-
posed music for this play (still in manuscript), though this amounts to little more than
sketches for his own use as conductor. Katarina Tomaovi reconstructed several of the
songs for the production. See Tomaevi 2001.
264 chapter ten

including actors, performers, directors and impresarios, and within that

system they had to fight their corner.
lezinger merits his prominent place in Serbian music history. It was
from his modest arrangements for the Band of the Serbian Prince that
a tradition of orchestral music grew. And it was from his simple theatre
songs that a tradition of opera developed. The institutional basis for this
has been touched upon, but we might note that the National Theatre at
Novi Sad was of some importance, not least because its visits to Belgrade
helped create the momentum for a National Theatre in the capital. As for
composers, the mantle of lezinger passed above all to Davorin Jenko,
whose entrepreneurial work was in much the same spirit. It was only in
the early twentieth century that plays with music began to translate into
works that might be legitimately called operas. Serbian national opera (as
distinct from operetta) really dates from those years, and as elsewhere in
the region it drew eclectically on existing traditions: Italian opera buffa,
German Singspiel and French grand opra. Very few of these early operas
are known today. Biljana Milanovi cites works on national themes by
Boidar Joksimovi and Vaclav Vedral. But it is only with Na uranku [At
Dawn] (1903) by Stanislav Biniki that Serbian opera came of age.16
The significance of Alexandru Flechtenmacher to vernacular theatre in
the Principalities was analogous to that of lezinger, though he was born (in
Iai) some twenty-nine years later. Like lezinger, Flechtenmacher clearly
had the dedication and flair essential to a successful man of the theatre;
Rodica Oan-Pop tells us that Joseph Bhm, his distinguished violin teacher,
was struck by his capacity for self-discipline and organisation even in stu-
dent days.17 And again like lezinger, he trained abroad; indeed he was of
German descent. Having received his first musical training in Iai, he then
moved to Vienna where he became Konzertmeister of a theatre orchestra.
Subsequently, back in Romania, he was made orchestral conductor at the
National Theatre in Iai, and later at the National Theatres of Bucharest and
Craiova, where (as noted in chapter 8) he founded a Philharmonic Society.
It was in these capacities that his compositional activities began in earnest,
including overtures and incidental music to plays and operettas, but also
operatic fantasies for solo violin and orchestra and several arrangements of
Romanian songs, some specified as Moldavian (compare Ion Andrei Wach-
manns collections of Wallachian songs).

16Milanovi 2009.
17Oan-Pop 1964, 11.
 inspirers 265

Flechtenmacher was another man of the theatre, and he began his

compositional career writing vaudevilles for the Iai theatre in the late
1840s. Several of these were by the prominent revolutionary and roman-
tic poet Vasile Alecsandri, who later remarked: I became a poet in the
eyes of the Romanians only the day that my verses were set to music by
Flechtenmacher.18 No fewer that twelve of these vaudevilles were pro-
duced between 1844 and 1848, at which point Flechtenmacher wrote Baba
Hrca [The Witch Hrca], the work with which he is most associated today,
and which has the same significance for Romania as does lezingers
enidba cara Duana for Serbia. Like lezinger, he knew how to capital-
ise on the prevailing political tendencies of the time. A year before Baba
Hrca he had composed his Uvertura naional Moldav (1847). And later
key dates in Romanian political history were similarly marked: his Adio
Moldovei: romans naional in 1859, and his Libertatea naional in 1877.
These works, together with his patriotic choruses and solo songs, earned
him a place as a pioneer of Romanian music, and works such as Hora
unirii [Hora of Unity] achieved the status of a patriotic symbol.
Yet neither lezinger nor Flechtenmacher can really be described as
national composers. Both were involved in culture building, and both
were key protagonists in the struggle for European rather than oriental
music. Much the same was true of the other key figure in the early stages
of musical theatre in Romania, Ion Andrei Wachmann, though Wach-
mann did produce one work that was assigned national significance. It is
noteworthy that he was ethnically German and had been born and raised
in Budapest (just as lezinger was by origin a German Jew, and Jenko was
Slovenian). The early stages of culture-building were in some measure
the achievement of adopted composers, for whom nationalist agendas
were born more of expediency than conviction. It would be left to others
to cultivate more self-consciously national styles in a spirit of Herderian
authenticity. But this did not preclude the appropriation of vaudevilles by
nationalist agendas, as in the case of Wachmanns opera on the theme of
Mihai Viteazul. Krisztina Lajosi has tracked the transformation of Mihais
image in Romanian historiography of the 1840s, and also the representa-
tion of this figure in what she calls the Romanian literary and artistic
conscience, including a play by Gheorghe Asachi, and one by the major
poet and Latiniser Ion Heliade Rdulescu.19

18Cosma 1962, 68.

19Lajosi 2008, 20620.
266 chapter ten

The Rdulescu drama formed the basis of Wachmanns opera, Mihai

Bravul n ajunjul btliei dela Clugreni [Michael the Brave on the Eve of
the Battle of Clugreni], which some regard as the first Romanian national
opera. As with Flechtenmacher, the dates are significant. The first version
was produced in 1848, and the second in 1859. However, Lajosi also tells
us that this was very far from a national opera in the normally understood
sense. The music consists of just three numbers, and the musical idiom
has relatively little to do with anything that could be called Romanian.
She also points out the importance of the chorus, representative of a mili-
tant Romanian people as they await the Ottoman attack, and she notes
that in the political context of its performances this might well have been
viewed as an attack not just on the Ottoman invader but on Romanian
aristocratic society of the time. There is an emancipatory dimension to
this choral presence, linking national propaganda with a wider democrat-
ising mission. Moreover it keys in to Wachmanns characteristic role as a
pyramid builder, for he was an educator and conductor as well as a com-
poser. Like the other players in our story, he paved the way for others.

Either/Or: Reflections on Modernism

With very few exceptions, the music composed by nineteenth-century

Kleinmeister in the Balkans is rarely performed nowadays. It is not just
that it exports badly; it is given few outings even in native settings. Most
of this music is of limited artistic merit, and where the composers have
their names inscribed in the history books it is thanks to their status as
pioneers. If our primary interest is in the music of this region as distinct
from its musical culture we are likely to prick up our ears only when
we encounter twentieth-century repertories. And at that point we might
well feel that there is some justice in local complaints that these reper-
tories are scarcely given their due either on international platforms or in
scholarly debates.
If we need a label for this twentieth-century repertory, we might
describe at least some of it as modernist, but with the cautionary note
that most Balkan countries have understood modernism in music rather
narrowly, usually referring to a well-defined movement in music history,
a so-called moderna that remains distant from the wider connotations of
the term within more recent Critical Theory. If it was with the moderna
of the early twentieth century that significant art music began to be com-
posed in the Balkans, we are obliged to ask just what conditions made this
 inspirers 267

possible. At the beginning of this chapter, I turned to Matthew Arnold for

one view of the prerequisites for a flourishing high culture, and for indi-
vidual achievements of distinction. Let us turn now to another English-
speaking poet and critic no less concerned with the diagnosis of culture.
This one, however, belonged to a later generation, and that made all the
difference.
Nearly forty years after Arnold wrote Culture and Anarchy, T.S. Eliot
penned his famous 1919 essay, Tradition and the Individual Talent.20 He
was making a point about the nature and value of self-expression in art,
but his essay also articulates what we would now recognise as a modernist
symbiosis between the necessity of the new and the claims of tradition.
Implicit throughout is the idea that significant art is not just new (in the
sense that it does not repeat what has been said) but also refashions the
living tradition of which it is a part. Eliots anatomy of, and prescription
for, a thriving high culture differs from Arnolds, however, in that he wrote
from within the modernist citadel; indeed, we could argue that his analysis
was in a sense imprisoned within the walls of that citadel, trapped within
what Peter Brger would later describe as a bourgeois institution of art.21
There is no reference to the political world that figures so prominently
in Arnolds essay, nor indeed to Arnolds social classes and institutions.
Eliot leaves out of account any hint that the tradition of his title might be
dependent on anything outside the world of ideas.
That said, he recognises the evolving, and essentially organic, nature
of tradition. The essay is careful throughout to differentiate a tradition,
which lives and breathes, from a canon (though the term is not used),
which has become reified into something akin to a syllabus. And most
important of all, Eliot argues for the indispensability of tradition to cre-
ativity, and therefore to significant art; indeed for him it is the decline of
tradition (not of a canon) that has resulted in the decline of high culture.
The relevance of all this to present purposes is that if we apply to music
Eliots modernist symbiosis of the imperative of the new and the claims
of tradition, we might argue that, no less than with Arnolds socially
grounded analysis, the prerequisites for significant music simply did not
exist in the Balkans at least until the early twentieth century, coinciding
with the climactic years of European cultural modernism.

20Eliot 1920.
21 Brger 1984.
268 chapter ten

It seems necessary to say more about that larger European narrative,

before returning to the Balkans. Modernism is not the same as modernity.
Where Western Europe is concerned, modernity conventionally refers to
political, social and intellectual transformations that took place mainly in
the seventeenth century, and reached a crucial defining stage a kind of
gear change in the late eighteenth century. In addition to social mod-
ernisation, they included transformations of the idea of the past and the
invention of the autonomous subject. It is in this sense that Karol Berger
proposes that modern music began with Mozart, based on a shift in the
perception of time that was simultaneously occurring in philosophy and
historiography at that time;22 and it is also in this sense that it has been
argued by John Butt that the whole orientation of what we have come
to call western Classical music (something distinct from so-called Early
Music, and something marked by its self-aware exceptionalism), is a prod-
uct of modernity.23
Modernism, on the other hand, tends to refer to cultural praxes that
responded to modernity in a self-conscious way by negotiating between
what I earlier called the imperative of the new and the claims of tradi-
tion. Modernism, in other words, is an ideology of the modern, and if we
have to put dates on it for music history we will probably track it back to
the 1850s. It was marked by a firming-up of borders that translated dif-
ference into alterity; in a word, by the formalisation of an either-or men-
tality proposed by Enlightenment thought. Bernard Yack comes close
to describing this in his book The Fetishism of Modernities,24 reminding
us that the ideology of the modern reduced human states to notionally
coherent and integrated wholes, even when it seemed to be arguing just
the opposite. As a result, identities were created through mechanisms of
contrast or opposition rather than of interrelation, while the competition
inherent in this created winners and losers.
Arguably, modernism represented the final celebration, if not the last
gasp, of the idea of creative genius. The formation of Brgers institution
of art brought with it a newly privileged status for the artwork, and that
status produced ideal conditions for the flourishing of creative genius.
Indeed the very idea of genius became institutionalised. The affirmative
or celebratory function of music within host institutions such as church

22Berger 2007.
23Butt 2008.
24Yack 1997.
 inspirers 269

and court was not abandoned, but it was increasingly subject to individua-
tion (Laurence Dreyfus is illuminating on this in relation to Bach).25 Later,
when transferred to the public arena, that affirmative function tended to
equate either with a developing canon (a middle-class badge of identity),
with Kunstreligion (art as a kind of belief system), or with developing
ideas of the nation. But in the context of a developing culture industry,
this same process of individuation allowed each of these categories either
to provoke or to become a model of dissent, a form of culture critique or
avant-garde. An avant-garde may be at odds with the institution of art, but
it also depends on it; even iconoclasm needs structures of dissemination.
In the end, creative genius could be harnessed by any of these several
options, or any combination of them, once an institution of art had been
fully established. Each of them might be understood as the ground for a
significant music.
The point here is that what we have come to think of as great music, a
product of creative genius, is a construction that depends on much more
than exceptional talent, even if we allow the notion of talent in the first
place, and many psychologists do not. Exceptional talent, whether innate
or acquired, is ever-present in human history, whereas creative genius only
seems to appear at particular times and in particular places; the issue is
brought into very sharp focus through Harry Limes celebrated reference
to the Swiss and the cuckoo clock in Graham Greenes screenplay for the
Carol Reed film The Third Man. Creative genius, in other words, is not just
the successful projection of a strong creative personality; nor, conversely,
is it solely contingent on a particular ecology or set of agencies. There
are quite simply too many exceptions that prove the rule when we try to
analyse it in these terms.
If we are to probe the historical nature of creative genius as a perceived
category from its rise in Early Modern Europe, through its flowering in
the age of Romanticism and culmination in the Modernism of the early
twentieth century, to its decline in our own age we may note that it
depends on a convergence of exceptional talent with the kind of signifi-
cant project, uniquely defining of both its time and its place (in other
words, rooted), that is enabled by an institution of art.26 All three com-
ponents talent, project, institution are necessary constituents, and it

25Dreyfus 1996. I am thinking especially of Dreyfuss references to Bach composing

against the grain.
26Brgers institution of art signifies the disengagement of art from other social insti-
tutions and the subsequent and consequent development of its own institution. Of its
270 chapter ten

is only at particular times and in particular places that all three come
together. This, then, might be one reading of the background to that final
flowering of creative genius in the age of Modernism. It was given its
most single-minded formulation in the music of Schoenberg, and in the
thought of Adorno.
Schoenberg paid lip service to future significant music in C major, but
in practice he was ruthless in his dismissal of conservative repertories.
We are back to an either-or mentality, which of its very nature promotes
definite views about value and authenticity. Art in this modernist climate
should be constructed according to certain principles rather than others,
and it should remain in close agreement with the material of which it is
made; this was the Schoenbergian and Adornian view, and we can rec-
ognise in it a distinct continuity with the ideas expressed in the Weimar
debates of the 1850s. Already in those debates we have a discourse that
separates repertories into mutually exclusive and mutually defining
categories in a manner that would characterise modernist thought, and
expressed by way of a distinctly modernist rhetoric. Moreover, the catego-
ries themselves we might label them respectively modernist, classical
and commercial remind us that modernist music was from the start
understood in a relational way. One corollary of this is that attempts to
rethink modernism are also an implicit rethinking of conservatism.
How, then, do the little stories of the Balkans speak into this grand
narrative? In one respect they conform. I refer here to musical discourses
centred on nationhood and ethnicity. What really happened here is that
the music of pre-modern peasant societies became part of the idealised
past created by modernism from the mid nineteenth century onwards.
It goes without saying that the peasant societies themselves were largely
unaffected by this. An either-or mentality cannot exist where choice
does not exist, or barely exists. And that, as has often been argued, was
precisely the condition of the pre-modern rural societies of South East
Europe until well into the twentieth century. Social modernity, in other
words, arrived belatedly to these societies. Indeed it was profoundly disil-
lusioning to many Yugoslav-watchers from the west that with the advent
of modernisation, and the possibility of choice that accompanied it, the
peasant population made the wrong choices (to place it on a trivial level,

nature, an institution of art will promote those qualities that refuse to yield to contingent
explanation (Brger 1984).
 inspirers 271

they preferred machine-made kitsch to exquisitely-designed hand-made

costumes).
It was disillusioning precisely because those peasant societies had
been constructed by the modern world as uncontaminated and suppos-
edly natural. And it is on this level the level of appropriation by an
intelligentsia that what I have called the modernist either-or mentality
operated. It provides us with a further explanatory frame for the tendency
to force popular repertories either side of a line demarcating progress and
degeneracy.27 To reiterate an earlier discussion, rural folk music had to
be cleanly separated from, and opposed to, urban popular music, which
was thought to be hybrid in a negative sense. In the end, folksong was
imbued with a kind of authenticity, and it was not so different from the
authenticity attributed to the modernist artwork. This was a powerful
conjunction, and it would influence not only discourses about music in
South East Europe, but eventually the compositional praxes of modernist
composers too.
Here we come close to identifying the significant project that would
in due course enable significant music in the Balkans, though the proj-
ect had greater specificity was more definitive of its time and place
than simply a conjunction of peasant music and modernist music. It was
delayed by the belated establishment of an institution of art in South East
Europe, a delay that accounts in some measure for the failure to develop
robust schools of national music in the region, as also for the fact that in
the early twentieth century even composers who embraced the rhetoric
of modernism often seemed stranded stylistically in an earlier age. Typi-
cally we are left with local forms of movements bearing labels such as
impressionist, expressionist or even avant-garde. In some cases these
tendencies really signal nothing more than the willingness of composers
in the Balkans to mimic the larger European narrative in creating their
modernisms, even as they were sidelined by it.
But this is not the whole story. There was a body of music composed
in the Balkans in the inter-war period that amounts to the closest thing
to a canonic repertory to have emerged from the region. It took many
forms, but there is nonetheless an underlying unity that is grounded in
its time and place in just the ways I have been trying to express here.
This music articulates precisely that quality of transition that, for some

27Daniel Pick (Pick 1989) provides a context for this. His thesis will be discussed in the
final chapters of the book.
272 chapter ten

commentators at least, more than anything else defines this region. For
Maria Todorova, and for some other students of the cultural history of
South East Europe, transition is one of the constituent categories that can
distinguish Balkanism from Orientalism.28 At the very least, this invites us
to open up for investigation the question of transition, and to consider the
true nature of transitional states. It suggests that we should perhaps try to
give these states their due, viewing them as something more than sites of
theoretical transformation which contain elements of two worlds, though
they are that of course. We might, in other words, consider their value as
states in themselves. We might explore their ontology.

28Todorova 1997.
 PART THREE

MUSIC IN TRANSITION
 CHAPTER ELEVEN

MIXING IT

Discourses of Transition

In The Location of Culture, Homi Bhabha explores the interstices within

and between primary categories of cultural identity (race, class, gender,
nation).1 The categories themselves are not so much splintered and frag-
mented as opened up to negotiation across a range of differences. Sub-
jects are formed in-between, or in excess of, the sum of the parts of
difference.2 The point of transit and the liminal space, products of cul-
tural displacement, are what interest Bhabha, and the bridge is an inevi-
table metaphor. He quotes Heidegger on the bridge: The bridge gathers
as a passage that crosses, a phrase that invites us to invest in transition.3
Yet Bhabha, post-colonialist that he is, would balk at anything quite so
crude as a transition between East and West. That has all the mark of
the modernist script. The post in his post-colonialism is not just about
sequence it is also about reaching beyond boundaries but there is an
element of chronicle to it all the same. As he puts it: beginnings and end-
ings [are] the sustaining myths of the middle years.4
Bhabhas in-between identities take a step beyond those sustaining
myths, beyond the either-or mentality of modernist discourses. They are
post those discourses; they deconstruct them; and they illuminate aspects
of lived experience on the edges of things that are obscured by them.
His restless identities are worldwide products of a post-colonial age. But
his investment in transition, in the passage that crosses, has a direct bear-
ing on discourses of Balkanism, a loosely related set of ideas about South
East Europe that sits somewhere between the myths of the middle years
and the complexities that lie beyond those myths. Transition, whether as
an intransitive condition or as a cultural project, lies close to the heart of
these discourses.

1 Bhabha 1994.
2Ibid., 2.
3Ibid., 7.
4Ibid., 2.
276 chapter eleven

Two obvious reference points for a symbolic geography of the Balkans

are Saids Orientalism and Wolffs invented Eastern Europe.5 Both for-
mulate geographies of alterity in relation to western post-Enlightenment
norms of progress and rationality. They take separate paths, with the for-
mer converting imperial domination and exploitation into a compensa-
tory oneiros, while the latter translates marginalisation into a paradigm
of backwardness. But they have in common a sense that the West has
constructed their respective places to its own specifications. One way of
locating the Balkans in relation to these discourses would be to invoke
Milica Baki-Haydens concept of nesting orientalisms, which is really
about relativising the East.6 Some Easts are more east than other Easts.
The East, as Baki-Hayden puts it, is a project rather than a place.
And this accords with familiar, historically evolving understandings of it;
the Near East began with the Ottoman Balkans in the nineteenth cen-
tury, shifted to the Levant in the 1920s, and disappeared altogether in the
1950s, at which point a tripartite division of Asia (Near, Middle and Far)
yielded to a bipartite division (Middle and Far). Such readings were first
elaborated in an account of orientalist variations by Baki-Hayden and
Hayden,7 in which the rhetoric of Orientalism was shown to have a kind
of afterlife in both East and West, thus dissolving the boundaries between
them (there is a west in the East; and an east in the West), and they have
informed studies of Balkan historiography and criticism ever since, culmi-
nating in the collection Balkan as Metaphor.8
Maria Todorovas Imagining the Balkans is related to this tradition, yet
sits at a slight angle to it. Todorova attempted something rather distinctive
in this landmark book.9 She carved out a unique discursive space for Bal-
kanism, which she regards as something more than a subset or variation
of Orientalism. For Todorova, Balkanism is distinguished not just by the
relative proximity and (starkly negative, dangerous) concreteness of the
Balkans, as opposed to the remoteness and (oneiric, fantasy-like) intan-
gibility of the Orient, but also because it deals with differences within a
type rather than differences between types, because it has no discursive
pre-history comparable to that of Orientalism, and because the Balkans is
predominantly Christian, and as such inextricably linked to certain core

5Said 1978; Wolff 1996.

6Baki-Hayden 1995.
7Baki-Hayden and Hayden 1992.
8Bjeli and Savi 2002.
9Todorova 1997.
 mixing it 277

European values. But above all, it is marked off from Orientalism by its
character as transition: it is not quite Europe, not quite non-Europe, but
a place of crossroads, where very specific identities have been structured
and restructured on a fragile ground of liminality.
It is this quality of liminality that is stressed in another wide-ranging
study.10 Like Todorova, K.E. Fleming is keen to separate Balkanism from
Orientalism, but she argues that the liminal status of the Balkans is tanta-
mount not so much to marginality as to a sort of centrality, and not just
in the obvious geographical sense that if you are between two worlds you
are at the centre. Fleming, in other words, holds on to, and gives posi-
tive value to, Todorovas transition to the inbetween, the interstices
between worlds, histories, and continents as the ground for a unique
identity for the Balkans. It is, in her compelling reading of it, neither one
thing nor the other, but something else.
It is no doubt ironic that Fleming commits to transition just as Todo-
rova herself in recent work seems to want to release it in favour of a more
complex network of path dependencies, moving closer to the position
adopted by several of the authors in Balkan as Metaphor. These authors
resist monolithic readings of the Balkans, especially the Balkans of today,
preferring to analyse real situations in all their diversity than to identify
reductive explanatory categories. They seek, with Homi Bhabha, to do jus-
tice to the complexity, infinite variety, and multiple transitions of minori-
tarian identities on shifting sands of history and culture.
Fleming, on the other hand, is loath to ignore the active legacy of those
collective identities that have marked a division of East and West in the
past; the history, after all, is a long one, and it is rooted in empire (Holy
Roman-Byzantine; Habsburg-Ottoman), in religion (Christian-Muslim;
Catholic-Orthodox) and in political ideology (Capitalist-Communist). It
is, Fleming rightly implies, an evasion to exclude such collectivities from
the picture. They characterise what we may call a middleground level of
Balkan identities, which is what renders them distinctive to the outside
observer. For it is the profusion of possible allegiances bequeathed by
these overlapping historical dichotomies that gives this region its homo-
geneity, resulting in a unity of small differences; as Fleming puts it, dis-
course on the Balkans is one both of sameness and of difference.11 At the
same time it is these same dichotomies that help define the self-perception

10Fleming 2000.
11 Ibid., 1219.
278 chapter eleven

of the region, for it is in relation to collectivities that individual choices

are made.
Transition, then, may operate at foreground levels, where Balkan iden-
tities are uncertain and anxiety-ridden, even when most forcefully articu-
lated. They lurk between multiple lines of difference. But it may operate
too at a middleground level, where identities are given substance in a
domain of betwixt and between, where new centres of orientation are
established on the edges of those clearly marked, tried-and-tested, and
discursively privileged spaces that have represented East and West in the
past. Inevitably we return to the bridge, which is, of its nature, against the
status quo, but which, to reiterate, gathers as a passage which crosses.
Todorova even extends the metaphor to refer to a bridge between differ-
ent stages of growth as well as between different centres of power, and
in doing so she briefly invokes an anthropological and psychoanalytical
literature of transition stemming from Arnold van Gennep in the early
twentieth century.12
In The Rites of Passage, van Gennep identifies territorial passages the
crossing of thresholds but also birth and childhood (and later initiation)
passages, involving rites of separation, transition and incorporation. Both
categories of passage have rich metaphorical potential for Balkan identity
formation. The former can model underprivileged, outsider or marginal
states, existing somewhere on the edges of, or somewhere between, status
positions; one thinks of Roma communities or of transits from home to
abroad or from rural to urban settings. The latter can model modernis-
ing processes, where identities are incomplete, not (yet) fully realised;
the identities are not mother or self, although feelings of mother and
self are invested in them. They are something else something other
than mother or me, although filled with the latter two.13 Both transits
of space and of time describe a state of ambiguity, a liminal, unbound,
prop-less region, where there is a loss of previous status and not yet an
incorporation of the new.
There is a conceptual difficulty with temporal transition that requires
us to fine-tune the concept. The new to be incorporated has to be an oxy-
moronic known new to justify the term transition. Otherwise transition
is really a misnomer for a process better labelled development or evolu-
tion. This has a distinct bearing on music history. Music, one might argue,

12Van Gennep 1960.

13Jeffrey Miller, quoting Michael Eigen (Miller 2004, 86).
 mixing it 279

is either never or always in transition, and it is an abuse of the term to

single out a particular period (as I once did myself) as transitional.14 What
one can call transition is a passage between two stable states, whether
they are representations of place or known stages of growth. In the latter
case, a modernising process is transitional to the extent that there is an
already existing modern, for example in the shape of a developed, and
sought-after, western culture.
With this in mind, I will review three categories of music in the Bal-
kans. The first, traditional or folk music, presents so many commonalities
between Balkan and Anatolian repertories that it is unrealistic to condense
its multiple spatial transitions into the simple binary East West. As to
modernisation, this process more often than not eschewed or bypassed
transition altogether. Either the repertory would die out completely, exist-
ing only in self-conscious revival by activists; or it would be appropriated
for ideological purposes, as with Communist folkorisation; or it would be
reinvented, as in the newly composed folk music that developed in Yugo-
slavia following the transfer of rural populations to the towns. In none
of these cases, which will be reviewed in Part 4, can we truly speak of a
moment of transit.
With the second category, urban popular repertories, there often existed
that symbiotic relation between two states spatial and/or temporal
that is a precondition of transition. There was a crossing-over, a transfer
of elements, from one known state to another, and there could also be
return journeys. Much of the professional or semi-professional popular
music performed in the Balkans, especially in partially Islamised territo-
ries, see-sawed in just this way between idioms that came to be described
(notably following the incursion of European music into Asia Minor in
the nineteenth century) as alaturca and alafranca. Such music transferred
materials and meanings from one category to the other, and as it did so
the places of transit places of partial loss and partial incorporation
gave rise to a new identity status.
As is often the case, the best fiction can get to the heart of the matter.
To labour our metaphor, it was the bridge itself in Ivo Andris The Bridge
on the Drina that served as the gathering place for the people; it was both
outside the centres of power and itself a centre for orientation. It is an
apt metaphor to illuminate a corpus of distinctive popular music in the
Balkans. The music in question occupied its own territory; it constituted

14Samson 1977.
280 chapter eleven

in effect a kind of third state, a state-in-itself that contained elements of

the other two states, but remained independent of both. This in-between
status of urban popular music will be the subject of the remainder of this
chapter, and there will be an attempt to introduce in summary form some
of the technical issues involved.
In subsequent chapters, I will pick up a thread from the last chapter,
where it was suggested that transition also informs significant art music
from the Balkans in the early twentieth century. With this third category
of music, we might indeed speak of a project of transition, by means of
which modernist composers from South East Europe tried to make sense
of their time and place. It is possible to understand much of this music in
nationalist terms, but this hardly does full justice to the major figures we
will discuss here, for they were as much preoccupied by a Balkan identity
as by a national one. Indeed the two identities are connected, since the
rise of nationalism served to highlight the peripheral status of the Balkans,
in relation to both East and West. In The Days of the Consuls, Andri, in
the persona of the physician Cologna, described what it meant to have
two homelands, and yet have none [....] drifting painfully between East
and West, belonging to neither and beaten by both.15
This describes dilemmas of identity that were already characteristic of
the region during the Napoleonic era, the days of the [Bosnian] consuls,
but were yet more defining a century later. The early twentieth century,
a time when political unrest and violence in the Balkans coincided with
maximal superiority complexes on the part of western imperial powers,
represented a key stage in the portrayal of the region as an embodiment
of liminality. For Manolis Kalomiris and the national school in Greece,
for George Enescu in Romania, and for several of the composers of Yugo-
slav moderna between the wars, the quest for voice was closely linked
to the symbolic geography of the Balkans. So-called folk music and so-
called popular music could carry all the usual connotations associated
with elite appropriations, but in addition these categories had a power-
ful spectral significance. There were two myths here, and two bridges to
cross. One spanned the gulf between elite culture and the notional purity
of a peasant culture. The other reached to the East.

15Andri 2003c, 240. See also several essays in Mardin 1994.

 mixing it 281

Nuts and Bolts: Elements of Popular Music

Makam, as taught in Turkey today, is presented as a system, albeit trans-

mitted orally for the most part, subject to transformation as it passed
from generation to generation (in general in the direction of modal open-
endedness),16 and variously notated and theorised.17 The most commonly
used theoretical description of the repertory of Turkish classical (sanat)
music is the one usually known as the Arel-Ezgi system, briefly mentioned
in chapter 6.18 Arel and Ezgi, taking their cue from a pioneering study by
Rauf Yetka,19 attempted to theorise an existing practice in ways that were
rooted in traditional understandings of makam while at the same time
enabling both pedagogical efficiency and some degree of alignment with
Western conventions and Western notation.
One English-language introduction to this method is Karl Signells
book,20 though Signell also advances independent theory, and is alive to
the points at which theory remains inadequate to practice. As he points
out, Arel and Ezgi proposed a division of the octave into twenty-four
intervals, and by working with derived combinations of tetrachords and
pentachords (on the Systematist model) they were able to generate basic
makam scales, together with possible extensions, and to define the rela-
tions between these scales. Signell discusses other qualities of makam-s,
including their distinctive seyir [progression], articulated by the hierar-
chical functions of specific pitches within the scale, by tessitura, and by
archetypes of melodic direction, together with formulaic motives. Some,
but not all, of this discussion is present in Yetka and Arel-Ezgi. Signell
also summarises the Arel-Ezgi theory of modulation, a sophisticated
process within modern Turkish classical music, allowing the common-
alities between tetrachords and pentachords to create roads between
makam-s.
The Arel-Ezgi system rationalises a practice that appears to extend back
only to the late eighteenth century. If we seek a more historically attuned

16 Walter Feldman, referring to Powerss terminology, in Feldman 1996, 299.

17 For a discussion of earlier Ottoman theory, see Feldman 1996, 195299; also Signell
1977, and Zannos 1994. A good general account of maqm theory in the Arab rather than
the Ottoman world is Marcus 1989.
18 Turkish theorists have distinguished the makam-s employed in classical music from
the ayak-s found in folk music, though in practice matters are not so straightforward.
19 Yetka 1921.
20Signell 1977.
282 chapter eleven

understanding of the evolution of makam theory as well as practice, and

one that takes due account of traditional mek pedagogy, we need to
turn to scholars such as Owen Wright and Walter Feldman.21 Feldmans
book in particular is a magisterial, and formidably documented, synthe-
sis. Cantemir looms large in the theoretical section, but his notations and
writings are placed in a much wider context within the early history of
Ottoman theory, and in ways that enable well-informed understandings
of historical practice.
It is clear from these accounts by Feldman and Wright that in Cantemir
the elements of music, characteristically identified in relation to a Turco-
Arabic general scale of two octaves mapped onto the tanbr fingerboard,
differ from those of modern practice. The arrangement of these elements
(the makam-s) is also somewhat different, and the Systematist-derived
genera of Yetka and Arel-Ezgi are absent altogether, as apparently they
are in all earlier Ottoman theory. Feldman also looks into the historical
evolution of the concept of seyir, and he includes an extended discussion
of the improvisational taksm, which more than anything gave the mea-
sure of a musician, as a means of differentiating the concepts of modula-
tion employed in the early history of Ottoman music from modern theory
and practice.
While Feldmans primary concern is with early Ottoman repertory, his
exposition allows us more general insights into how makam was taught
and understood by musicians right up to the early twentieth century.
The balance between core uniformities and local particularities within
a memory-based mek system is hard to gauge, but one might surmise
greater uniformity in rhythmic, formal and generic processes than in pitch
organisation. As to genre, the centre of the tradition was the fasil, which
had arrived at its modern arrangement by the late eighteenth century,
and whose instrumental type [fasil-i szende] represented something
akin to an emancipation of instrumental music. As noted in chapter 6,
the counterpart to the fasil within the tekke was the Mevlev yn, which
encloses the four selm-s [salutations], usually preceded by a taksm on
ney and a perev, and followed by another taksm and then a son [conclud-
ing] perev and yrk sem (in a six-beat usl, like a 6/8 metre).
It is not easy to assess just how far these genres penetrated the Balkans.
Mevlev orders were found in several parts of the wider region, and the
full yn would have been performed in Islamised areas (among Turkish

21Wright 1988; Feldman 1996.

 mixing it 283

communities in Macedonia, for example, and among certain Dervish

communities in Albania and Bosnia). Likewise, Ottoman classical music
was certainly performed at the courts of Pashas right across the empire
(and in the eighteenth century at Phanariot courts of the Romanian Prin-
cipalities), and it would have been familiar in the circles of Turkish social
elites elsewhere in the eastern Balkans. But the fasil, at least as part of an
art music tradition, would not have been so familiar among indigenous
populations.
On the other hand, the tradition left a very clear imprint on the Bal-
kans in the form of semi-classical fasil ensembles, dominated by Roma,
for these performed in nightclubs and cafs right across the region. Here
makam and usl remained alive and well in the twentieth century. This
was an oriental style that co-existed with western popular styles, and in
this sense oriental music was perceived to be a distinctive genre; indeed
to this day Rom musicians, performing at weddings and festivals, speak
of oriental music in just this way, distinguishing it generically from, for
example, jazz or rock. At the same time the music of the fasil ensemble
took on a rather different character when it migrated to the Balkans. Influ-
enced by indigenous traditions, it came to occupy a kind of middle ground
between Ottoman traditions and Europe: a transitional territory.
We may add to this transitional category the other genres of syncretic
popular music that arose from contact between East and West, includ-
ing traditions that have already been discussed in general terms: muzica
lutreasc, algija, rebetika, sevdalinka, saze. All of them register an Otto-
man legacy. With varying degrees of theoretical understanding, the musi-
cians worked with makam-s rather than western tempered scales, though,
as Signell points out, Rom performance practices tended to alter the clas-
sical intonations.22 Likewise, the many usl-s, which included extended
forms such as usl muzaaf devr-i kebr (56/4) with complex patterns of
light and heavy beats, were winnowed down to a handful of simpler pat-
terns, which could be treated more as metre (even if asymmetrical, as in
the Aksak usl [9/4]) than as cycle.
We are helped in our understanding of this middle ground by the work
of Risto Pekka Pennanen, who has presented analyses of Greek popular
music in his published thesis and elsewhere.23 This work was pioneer-
ing in its attempt to make technical sense of processes of westernisation

22Signell 1977, 45.

23Pennanen 1999.
284 chapter eleven

in Greek music, and in its nuanced understanding of the intertwining of

different systems of musical thought. In tracing the transition to Europe,
Pennanen is anxious to avoid any suggestion that makam-s were replaced
in a straightforward way by a major-minor key system. At the exposi-
tory level of discussion appropriate here, it is enough to point out that
makam-s were able to retain many of their defining characteristics (their
seyir, tessitura and melodic formulae) even when equal temperament was
adopted, and that they did so in many rebetika. Pennanen also discusses
the relation between Ottoman makam-s and Greek dromoi (his paradigm
is makam Segh dromos Houzam), and he goes on to analyse the formu-
lae associated with dromoi in rebetika. His fieldwork confirms that many
of the leading rebetika performers, far from abandoning the older models,
made deliberate play on the co-existence of two systems in a spirit of
transition.
In a subsequent study incorporated into his book, he examines differ-
ent modes of interrelation between makam-s and chordal harmony. In
much of this music classical tonal functions appear to be present, but in
reality they form an independent layer that is non-congruent with the
melodic composing-out of the makam or dromos. At its simplest this is
because chords built on a makam do not necessarily map onto the tonal
centres dictated by the seyir in a conventional way, to say nothing of the
fact that in makam the upper octave may not be equivalent to the lower.
In other words, the conventions informing melodic structure are not sub-
ordinated to western-influenced chordal harmonies; more often the latter
are obliged to adapt to the former, so that the chordal harmonies take
on a fresh meaning. Pennanens conclusions in his case study of dromos
Sabah strikingly articulate the resulting transitional state, and in terms
that confirm the in-betweeness discussed earlier. Music analysis of rebe-
tika calls for elements from the theories of Ottoman and Western music,
and ultimately a special rebetika theory that remains to be constructed.24
In the later sections of this study Pennanen makes a start on just such
a theory, using dromos Sabah and makam Karciar. It is impossible to do
justice here to his analysis. But it should at least be stressed that in addi-
tion to unpicking the technical processes at work in rebetika, he traces an
historical chronicle, taking us from the earliest recordings right through to
the tourist music of the 1960s. And in the course of this he demonstrates
that the direction of transfer was not exclusively towards the West. As

24Ibid., 81.
 mixing it 285

we noted earlier, the oriental surge was an active impulse in popular

musics in the Balkans generally. Rebetika, we are reminded by Pennanen,
embody a mixture of Eastern and Western elements, and sometimes it is
difficult to say if the fusion is more Eastern than Western, or vice versa.25
There is a large corpus of recorded rebetika, taking us from the earliest
acoustical recordings, including Fred Gainsbergs recordings of amanedes
made in Smyrna for the Gramophone Company, through to the era of
electric recording introduced in the mid 1920s, at which point a gramo-
phone industry was established in Athens-Piraeus, and beyond that to the
caesura that resulted from the occupation in 1941. Moreover, a parallel
industry was established in North America in the 1920s (notably Colum-
bia and RCA Victor). The recording industry was of course a product of
the West. It was a triumph of technology, and it carried its own western
values with it into the realm of betwixt and between. Nevertheless, in its
earliest stages in Greece (Panhellion, and then the Greek Record Com-
pany) it was mainly the oriental tradition that featured, partly because
professional musicians from Asia Minor were better organised and often
better educated than their native (predominantly amateur) counterparts;
they quickly set about forming musicians unions and establishing music
cafs on the model of Smyrna and Constantinople.
I noted in chapter 3 that western influences on Greek repertories were
not a direct result of the exchange of minorities, since they were at work
in Ottoman popular traditions much more widely. Indeed many of the
early recordings by Greek musicians following the catastrophe are dis-
tinguishable within a generic Ottoman popular music only through the
Greek language. This is true of amanedes recorded by Dimitris Atriadis
(from Constantinople), Kostas Nouras (from Smyrna), and many others in
the late 1920s and 1930s, where the idiom is close to that of the Ottoman
gazel, itself relatable to other lyric forms from the wider Middle East.26
There is very little, in short, to distinguish pre-catastrophe recordings
from Smyrna from post-catastrophe recordings from Athens.
By the early thirties, however, the Piraeus school had also begun
to engage with the commercial world and with what we might call an
ethos of professionalism. This transformation could sustain a separate
monograph, as a case study in the meeting-point between do-it-yourself

25Ibid., 65.
26Among the CD collections of these oriental rebetika, one might cite Greek-Oriental
Rebetica: Songs and Dances in the Asia Minor Style. The Golden Years: 19111937. Folklyric
CD 7005.
286 chapter eleven

countercultural music and the world of hard-headed managers and musi-

cal directors (there are parallels in the morphing of British skiffle groups
into a rock culture in the fifties and sixties). The developing professional-
ism came at some cost, but the result was that the bouzouki school began
recording in Greece at this time (notably with Vamvakariss Piraeus
Quartet), shortly after similar recordings had made their appearance in
the United States. And it was partly due to the recording industry that
stylistic boundaries between the two schools of rebetika were increasingly
blurred. They did after all share a common grounding in traditional dance
genres that belong to a wider Balkan-Anatolian region. Indeed at this level
of basic form and genre, it is more realistic to speak of many local varieties
of a shared culture than to identify a clean East-West divide.
Thus, the many hundreds of recordings made by performers such as
Rita Abatzi, Marika Papaghika, Giorgos Vidalis, Kostas Roukounas and
Antonis Dalkas, either on the Greek mainland or in North America, are
invariably identified by means of dance genres that have already been
cited in this book, and may be summarised here. They include the ballos
(a couples dance originally from the islands of the eastern Aegean),
zeibekiko [zeybek] (a 9/4 male solo warriors dance, originally from west-
ern Anatolia), tsifteteli (the musical genre most closely associated with
modern belly dancing), Karsilama (a 9-beat couples dance from Asia
Minor), hasapiko (the so-called butchers dance in fast tempo, and often
with Jewish associations), sirto (a category of couples dances in 3/4) and
kalamatianos (another couples dance in 7/8). Very often in these record-
ings the dance itself is preceded by an improvised taximi [taksm], which
might also appear as a ritornello between verses and at the end.
On a common ground of such Balkan-Anatolian dance genres, we find
a mlange of stylistic features drawn from Ottoman semi-classical tradi-
tions, from Balkan folk music, and from European popular music. As such,
the many extant Greek and Greek-American recordings constitute a labo-
ratory for studying the middle ground between oriental and western tra-
ditions, especially as they include multiple recordings of the same songs.
Discographical studies have begun to create some order in this chronolog-
ically wayward corpus.27 But it need hardly be said that such fine-tuning is
far beyond the scope of an exposition such as this. My aim in what follows
is illustrative rather than synthetic. The intention is to open a window on
to the transitional status of a cross-section of urban popular music, as we

27Pennanen discusses this in Pennanen 1999 and elsewhere.

 mixing it 287

know it today from a recorded legacy that may be fairly easily consulted
by anyone interested in venturing further.
Most of the other traditions I will consider were not taken up by the
early recording industry in the manner of rebetika. Where early recordings
exist at all, they are usually the product of ethnological research and of a
more general impulse towards culture conservation. This is certainly the
case for the zurla-tapan ensemble of the Roma, which never really entered
the commercial world. As for Macedonian algija, this was partly taken up
by a later recording industry (unlike, for example, a parallel tradition of
Albanian saze), but in a reconstructed form that is often hard to separate
out from so-called Macedonian folk music. The other repertories Sep-
hardic music, muzica lutreasc and sevdalinka were more compre-
hensively appropriated by the culture industry of the late twentieth and
early twenty-first centuries, and that resulted in further transformations
both of their musical materials and of the patterns of their reception.

On the Record: Surveying the Legacy

A small sample of rebetika recordings, all made in Athens during the

1930s, is indicative of Pennanens mixture of Eastern and Western ele-
ments. We might start at the eastern end with two amanedes, both in
makam Sabah.28 The first is Aniksete ta mnimata [Open the tombs], sung
by Stratos Payumdzis (from Ayvalik in Asia Minor) accompanied by Spiros
Peristeris on bouzouki. The text, reminding us that we cannot tell from
their bones who is rich and who is poor, is preceded by an improvised tax-
imi in Sabah. This recording undermines the stereotypes, in that a singer
known for Piraeus rebetika is here at home with the oriental manner,
just as Peristeriss bouzouki can mimic a style associated with the outi.
Without elaborating technically, we may note that the tonal framework
is similar in the second recording, this time in makam Neva Sabah. Tin
ora tu thanatu [The hour of death] is sung by Rita Abatzi with Lambros
Savaihis on kanonaki and Dimitris Semsis (Salonikios) on violin. Its theme
is transience, and the underlying dance rhythm, as often with amanedes,
is tsifteteli. This is unassertive initially, but it becomes explicit in the clos-
ing taximi (son taksm), a short, lively dance on violin, as though to lift the
mood. This gesture is typical of the style.

28Both can be found on Folklyric CD 7005.

288 chapter eleven

At the other pole we might place two zeibekiko songs, Alana Pireotissa
[Piraeus tramp woman] and Otan me vlepis na perno [When you see me
go by], recorded by Vamvakaris, where the makam-s are smoothed out
into equal temperament, and the bouzouki has a ritornello function.29 The
structure in both songs is formalised, alternating vocal stanzas (unvaried
in the first song, varied in the second) with ritornelli (regular 9/4 phrases
in the first song, irregular and progressively lengthening phrases in the
second). As to harmony, Alana Pireotissa maintains a single harmony,
dominant-quality in classical terms, for the entire song, allowing tonicisa-
tion only at the end of each ritornello and each stanza. In Otan me vlepis
na perno the pattern is more diversified, though the underlying schema
in classical terms, we might describe it as [i III V i] is consistent
across both ritornelli and stanzas.
Somewhere between these two styles we might locate two recordings
made by Roza Eskenazi, also in the 1930s. In the first, a composition by
Dimitris Semsis whose title Min orkizesai vre pseftra is usually translated
as Dont swear to me, you liar, the makam is Husseini, and the song itself
is enclosed within an improvised taximi on outi, in the extempore, orien-
tal style.30 There is also a central taximi and a rather more regular clos-
ing taximi [son taksm] on violin. The two stanzas are makam-based, and
chordal harmonies are conspicuous by their absence. In the second song,
Yati fumaro kokaini [Why I smoke cocaine], by Panayiotas Toundas, on
the other hand, we find the same negotiation between makam and dia-
tonic minor that characterised the Vamvakaris recordings. This song, a
cautionary tale, consists of two stanzas, each bi-partite, and as in the first
Vamvakaris recording the melodic structure encourages the sense of an
underlying dominant function. What greatly strengthens this function in
the Eskenazi recording is the brief appearance of a sub-dominant in each
stanza. It may not be classical harmony, but the orientation to the west is
stronger nonetheless than in Min orkizesai vre pseftra.
The story of Eskenazi, a Sephardic Jew who was born in Istanbul and
spent her early life in Salonika and Komotini before heading for the
recording studios of Athens and Piraeus, is emblematic of the intersec-
tion of Ottoman-Greek and Ottoman-Jewish musical cultures in the early
twentieth century.31 Her recorded output is mainly in the Greek language,

29Both are on The Rough Guide to Greek Music. Hellenic Records TGR 207.
30See the CD The Rebetiko Song in America Vol. 1 19201940. FM Records: The Greek
Archives 627.
31 Commonalities between Sephardic and Greek repertories are explored in Dragoumis
2007, which also demonstrates the antiquity of some of the rebetika.
 mixing it 289

but she also sang in Ladino and in the 1950s she revisited Istanbul and
recorded several songs in Turkish. Borrowing across the communities in
this way was fundamental to late- and post-Ottoman music. Given the
same melody, all kinds of adaptations were possible. Changes of language
and song text could convert Ottoman-Turkish popular songs into rebetika
on one hand and Jewish copla-s on the other, just as changes of perfor-
mance site and function could transform Ottoman classical repertory into
Jewish liturgical repertory.32 Cross-cultural commonalities of this kind
are much in evidence in the vast archive of recordings made in Anatolia,
Greece and North America during the first half of the twentieth century, a
substantial corpus of them now reproduced in modern CD format.
In later dissemination, on the other hand, the repertories were sepa-
rated out in ways that reflected much wider political and cultural percep-
tions (the cataloguing in Sound Archives can be instructive). Very crudely,
the tendency was to draw a line between Turkish and Greek repertories,
and to assign the former to the East and the latter to the West. Jewish
culture was a different matter. Jews were widely regarded as a people that
dwells alone, and constituted a convenient Other not only for developing
national identities, but also for a developing European identity. The Jew-
ish expulsions from Europe in the Middle Ages (like their Muslim equiva-
lents) were primarily about religion, but they were also about perceived
ethnicity, and they tapped into a widespread and longstanding European
perception of the Jews as oriental. No less than Greek popular music,
Jewish secular music, especially of the eastern Mediterranean area, occu-
pied a world of betwixt and between.
If we were to understand that transitional world in the terms of a
forcefield, we might inspect its poles by considering two very different
approaches to a single Sephardic song. They are associated with two musi-
cians who came from the same corner of Asia Minor, in the vicinity of
Smyrna, a centre of Jewish as well as Greek culture at the turn of the
century. Tres hermenicas exists in numerous versions, collected by Man-
rique de Lara and Isaac Levy among others.33 In addition to significantly
different versions of the poetic text, there are two principal recorded mel-
odies, or tune-families, as Judith Maulen-Berlowitz describes them, and

32Pamela Dorn has discussed the association of these two in Turkey, an association
that survived westernising tendencies and was largely untouched by questions of personal
taste (Dorn 1991b).
33See also the collections made by Rina Benmayor in Los Angeles and Seattle, dis-
cussed in Benmayor 1979, 4857. Benmayor examines at length the different manifesta-
tions of the Hero and Leander myth in serious and popular literature.
290 chapter eleven

they are of sharply contrasted character.34 It is the slow, expressive (rather

than the triple-time folk-like) melody that concerns us here.
When Alberto Hemsi noted down a version of Tres hermenicas sung
by his aunt in 1921 in the family home in Cassaba [Turgutlu], some sev-
enty kilometers east of Smyrna, this was the melody he heard. Already
by then Hemsi had studied western music, first at the school of the Alli-
ance Isralite Universelle in Smyrna and then at the Milan Conservatory,
where his studies were curtailed by the war.35 When he later set the song
for voice and piano, including it in his Coplas sefardies, he returned it to
Europe, and specifically to Spain (the pianistic idiom has affinities with
Granados or Albniz).36 Hemsis version is not simply an accompanied
folksong, then; the piano accompaniment transforms it into an art song,
with intricate voice-leading, subtle motivic working and long-range har-
monic thinking. In La musique orientale en Egypte, he spoke of a harmoni-
ous rapprochement between Eastern and Western musical thought.37 This
perfectly articulates a project of transition, but in the hands of a com-
poser whose true cultural orientation was towards the West. Technically
speaking, it is the subdominant in these bars that closes off any possible
ambiguities between makam and key, ensuring that chord V functions as
a real dominant.
The second interpretation of Tres hermenicas is a recording made in
1984 in Lodd (Israel) by Josepo Burgana, currently lodged in the National
Sound Archives in Jerusalem.38 An immigrant to Israel, Burgana was a
native of Smyrna, but unlike Hemsi he remained steeped in the traditions
of Turkish classical music. Typically, as in this recording, he accompanied
himself on the cmb, a kind of cross between oud and banjo, popular
for a while among Turkish Roma and in some rebetika recordings. Bur-
ganas recording of Tres hermenicas is unambiguously oriental music. The
melody is the same as in Hemsis notated version, but Burgana performs
it in micro- and macrotonal temperament and within a heterophonic

34Maulen-Berlowitz 1995.
35With the declaration of war Hemsi was enlisted in the Italian army.
36Tres hermenicas is to be found in the sixth volume of the series of ten, published as
Coplas sefardies (Hemsi 193273). Hemsis work on this volume and on volume 7 dated
from the 1960s. In his Authors Note, he discusses the extensive Jewish community of
Smyrna.
37See the reference in Hemsi 1995, 2930, along with a discussion of possible reconcili-
ations of makam-s and western polyphony (compare Erlanger 193059).
38The recording can be found on a CD produced by Susana Weich-Shahak, Cantares y
romances tradicionales sefardes de oriente Vol. 2 (Saga: KPD 10.906).
 mixing it 291

rather than a chordal setting. Moreover, the vocal style is ornamental

in character, and employs the wide vibrato and nasal-centred voice pro-
duction associated with Turkish music. In all these respects, Burganas
performance might be compared with recordings by other Anatolian Jew-
ish singers, including those (made by Rina Benmayor) of Sultana Levy in
1970s Los Angeles. Indeed, partly for political reasons, an alaturka idiom
for Sephardic secular music is more prevalent in Israel and North America
than in Turkey itself.
It may be interesting to reflect a little on this sequence. A song familiar
to the Jewish community of Smyrna in the early twentieth century, and
probably performed mainly by women in a simple a capella manner,39 is
drawn by Josepo Burgana into the world of Turkish semi-classical music,
with an elaborate cmb accompaniment. Conversely, it is pulled by
Alberto Hemsi towards the world of European art music, marked by
sophisticated harmonic and textural contexts. Even the Spanish tinge in
Hemsis setting belongs to a stylised oriental idiom that is recognisably
European in character and inception, and traceable stylistically as much
to French as to Spanish composers. These two versions, oral and notated,
stand in a way for East and West in the representation of Sephardic song,
and there are countless recorded performances that negotiate the terri-
tory in between.
Yet musical performance can wreak havoc with any such hard-and-fast
categories. The chasm separating geo-cultural worlds can be crossed by
music with surprising facility. When the singer Pedro Aledo, a specialist in
the popular musics of the Mediterranean, recorded a selection of Hemsis
Coplas sefardies, including Tres hermenicas, his performance promoted
that harmonious rapprochement between Eastern and Western musical
thought to which Hemsi aspired.40 Aledos vocal style, rooted in Andalu-
sian popular traditions, is Spanish in a more fundamental sense than
Hemsis stylisations, and it sits interestingly with the sophisticated accom-
paniments of the Coplas sefardies, returning an elitist idiom to something
a bit closer to the origins of the repertoire in popular song. In this way
the traces left by oral traditions can shade and inflect musical meanings,
opening them up to suggestive cross-references and fragile alliances, and
resisting the fixities of the notated text.

39See the recordings of Sephardic music made in Istanbul in 1906, probably the earliest
recordings of this repertory. I am grateful to Joel Bresler for information on this.
40This recording, part of the Collection patrimonies musicaux des juifs de France, is
listed as SOCADISC 860109.
292 chapter eleven

Aside from the Jews, one other group has been treated as an oriental
import to Europe. The epic migrations of the Roma from northwestern
India have been tracked to around the middle of the first millennium,
after which they settled (in a limited sense of the term) in numerous
regions across the Middle East (especially Persia, as reflected in dialects
of Romani) and North Africa. They enter our story with the Ottomans
in the fourteenth century, first escaping from, and then accompanying,
Ottoman armies into Europe. A second wave of migration then followed
during the second half of the nineteenth century after the release of the
Roma in 1856 from what really amounted to centuries of enslavement
in Romania. Recent scholarship qualifies a view of the Roma as a single
people in diaspora, a view promoted above all by the eighteenth-century
scholarship of Heinrich Grellmann and subsequently much loved of
nineteenth-century racial theory. Rather it is argued by some that stig-
matisation (much more than ethnicity) has been the key determinant of
their group identity.41
However we account for it, Rom communities have consistently
maintained different values from those of the gade (non-gypsies)
against whom they define themselves. Responses to those differences
by host communities have ranged from an initial fascination with alter-
ity (nineteenth-century cultural appropriations) through persecution
(culminating in the Third Reich) to attempted assimilation (notably by
East European Communist regimes, especially in Bulgaria and Romania).
Only through music and dance have the Roma been valued, bringing atten-
dant privileges to esteemed performers, but exclusively in relation to their
professional roles (there are obvious analogies here with Black musicians
in Britain and America today). The seminal contribution of the Roma to
music history transforming, disseminating, blending and conserving
has already been noted. Yet documentation of that contribution prior to
the age of recording is exiguous. What we do have is an abundance of
testimony as to their musical prowess, and from sources as widely dis-
persed as eleventh-century Persia, Renaissance Italy, Restoration England,
eighteenth-century Russia, and the nineteenth-century Balkans.
Rather than subscribing to some mystical sense of special powers, it
is more reasonable to understand Rom virtuosity in terms akin to the

41A key revisionist text here, challenging not just Grellmann but more recent scholars
such as Angus Fraser (Fraser 1992), is Lucassen, Willems and Cottaar 1998. This confronts
some of the myths about origins, language and culture associated with the Roma; see also
Willems 1997.
 mixing it 293

task-specific training associated with trades and their guilds. For the
Roma, music was an itinerant, and increasingly specialised, profession. It
was associated with particular families the children would learn several
instruments from an early age and even with particular villages, and
building, repairing and selling instruments were all part of the package
(there are very clear parallels here with the klezmorim of Eastern Europe).
Once professional ensembles began to appear in the late nineteenth and
especially the early twentieth centuries, an increasingly cosmopolitan
idiom was adopted. It is something of a paradox, then, that in Hungary
and Spain this came to be identified by some as a kind of national style.
For the more successful and well-organised musicians, it made sense to
settle in the cities, where there was a greater demand for their craft, but
even in village communities Rom musicians in the Balkans acquired a
very clear social function as the providers of ritual and entertainment
music for dances, weddings, funerals and the rest.
It is no adverse criticism to suggest that the Roma do not possess a
music of their own.42 Quite apart from the distinction drawn by some
Rom musicians between music for themselves and music for others (just
as some will de-exoticise in private the stereotyped images they subscribe
to in public), their entire ethos as entertainers has always depended on
the appropriation of what is local and therefore marketable and its
transformation in performance into something unique. As Liszt recogn-
ised at an early stage, and as we noted in chapter 4, the distinctive identity
of Rom music has less to do with repertories than with practices.43 The
Roma traditionally carried styles from A to B, and when they settled in
B they infused the surface styles of B with trace elements from A, often
resulting in a form of urbanisation, and one might say orientalisation, of
village idioms. Partly this describes a transit between East and West.44
The stages of that transit might be represented symbolically by way
of three repertories associated with the Roma. All have been discussed
in general terms, but the last of them will be given more detailed treat-
ment here. First there is the zurla-tapan ensemble, which seems to vary
little from region to region and exists today in a form that has changed
little over the years. This can be demonstrated by comparing recordings

42On this, see Hemetek 2007.

43Liszt 1859.
44A recent detailed study, based on many years of ethnography with Macedonian
Roma both at home and in diaspora (mainly New York), is Silverman 2012.
294 chapter eleven

made by Columbia Records in Turkey in the 1920s45 with ones made some
fifty years later by Wolf Dietrich in gypsy camps in Greek Macedonia
and western Thrace (Xanthi and Komotini).46 The continuity is striking,
despite the fact that the dance in the Turkish field recording is particular
to the specific locality. Moreover recordings made by Dietrich in Albania,
A.L. Lloyd in Macedonia, and more recently Lozanka Peycheva and Ven-
tsislav Dimov in Bulgaria (Pirin Macedonia), Svanibor Pettan in Kosovo,
and Ankica Petrovi in Bosnia and Herzegovina all confirm that this has
been a genre stubbornly resistant to change.47
Secondly, there is algija, an urban (old town) music associated espe-
cially with the central and eastern Balkans, and with a notable tradition in
towns such as Veles, Ohrid and Bitola. In the course of time, Macedonian
algija, whether performed by Macedonian or Rom musicians, developed
its own specific tonal dialect and expression, and with a pronounced ori-
ental influence. Dating from the second half of the nineteenth century,
it was never really a unified tradition each city in Macedonia had its
own type of algija in the past but in general it negotiated a territory
somewhere between the music associated with the Turkish fasil ensemble
and the traditional village music of the eastern Balkans. This is evidenced
above all by the prominence of many varieties of the fast (lake) circle
dance (oro) and the Rom oek. It is characteristic that algija repertory is
often couched in asymmetrical rhythms.
There are parallels between Macedonian algija and some of the instru-
mental music performed by Asia Minor Greeks in the kafe aman and
elsewhere. However, the Macedonian and Rom musicians who cultivated
algija were less shrewd than their Greek counterparts when it came to
making the most of a burgeoning recording industry. There is no Macedo-
nian equivalent to the plethora of recorded rebetika produced in the early
part of the century. Some early field recordings can be found in the sound
archive of the Folklore Institute Marko Cepenkov in Skopje, and there
are professional recordings in the archive of MRT (Macedonian Radio and
Television), dating from the mid-1940s. Unhappily there are difficulties

45Matrix Number CTZ 5704.

46TOPIC TSCD 914.
47The Dietrich and Lloyd recordings are all available in the Sound Archive of the
British Library. For the Bulgarian recordings, see Peycheva and Dimov 2002; among the
Kosovo recordings are those in Pettans video Kosovo through the Eyes of Local Rom (Gypsy)
Musicians. Krko, Slovenia (1999); for Bosnia and Herzegovina, see the relevant tracks of
the 1993 CD Music from an Endangered Minority: Bosnian Muslim Music (Washington DC:
Smithsonian Folkways Records: SF40407).
 mixing it 295

of accessibility for external researchers. Some older musicians above

all Petre Vasilev (Pece) Atanasovski maintained a point of contact
with older performances of algija in some of their recordings. But at the
same time they were happy to forge a link between this sound world and
the reconstructive practices of national ensembles such as Tanec (which
Atanasovski joined in the early 1950s just when it was in the process of
formation), the Orchestra of Folk Instruments of Radio-Televizia-Skopje,
developed by ivko Firfov, and the Makedonija Folk Ensemble.
Recordings made by these secondary ensembles, as also by current
groups performing on traditional instruments such as the folk orchestra
of the Macedonian Academy of Music or the Australian-based Tsrvena
Kniga, are really much closer to a modern form of Macedonian folk music
than to traditional algija. For the most part, they perform a hybrid music
akin to that developed by similar ensembles in Bulgaria. It is really an
orchestrated form of village music, a product of todays (or, more specifi-
cally, yesterdays Communist) world. On the other hand, there are more
conscientiously reconstructive recordings of algija, such as those made
by Wouter Swets. Of one song from Lazarapole, Swets remarks: Possibly
it sounded like this in the Ottoman Macedonian towns.48
algija is the term used to describe this urban repertory in Macedonia.
But the phenomenon itself was much wider. There are similar urban rep-
ertories in Albania, for instance, where they are known as ahengu in the
north or saze in the south (see chapter 7), and again there was very signifi-
cant variation from town to town. An ensemble in the Italian-orientated
Kora, better known for its mandolin ensembles, was very different
from one in Shkodr in the north of the country. This latter, the ahengu
shkodran, had a more oriental, makam-based idiom, again typically per-
formed by Roma (early recordings can be heard at the Institute of Folkore
in Tirana).49 But among the earliest of all are Odeon recordings dating
from around 1920 of saze from Kora and Permeti, performing dance
music and accompanying male polyphonic singing groups. Characteristi-
cally the instrumentation is clarinet, violin and lahuto, and it is common
to find a highly ornamental weeping clarinet (or wailing glissando vocal

48See the liner notes to Swetss CD algija: Music of the Balkans and Anatolia 2 (PAN
2007CD).
49For an historical perspective on this, see Zadeja 2006. It is worth noting here that
the strong pentatonic basis of southern Albanian traditional music may well have acted
as a kind of bulwark against the incursion of the makam-based idiom found in the north
of the country. This point is made in Koo 2004.
296 chapter eleven

lines) over a strumming background and culminating in a lively dance.

Many of these recordings are associated with Leskovik in southeastern
Albania. Pirro Miso, in a wide-ranging account of the different traditions
of saze, tells us that the influence of the Leskovik musicians was immense
and geographically widespread.50
The third repertory associated with Rom musicians is muzica lutreasc.
As Robert Garfias has pointed out,51 it was Roma above all who played the
key role in preserving Turkish elements in Romanian music, grafting these
on to a wide range of highly specific regional styles that were centred on
the violin and/or nai (panpipes), accompanied originally by cozb (short-
necked lute) and later by tambal (dulcimer) and/or accordion. Tacm-s
(later taraf-s) were widespread in the Romanian world, including Mol-
dova in the east and Wallachian villages such as Miro and Radujevac
in eastern Serbia. Yet for all the very wide regional variation, there was
a clearly recognisable common framework of songs and dances based on
traditional rural repertory. These included lyric songs (notably the cntec
doina and cntec de dragoste), ballads and epic songs (cntece btrneti
[literally, old peoples songs]), as well as dances such as the hora, srba
(a mixed circle dance), brul (a belt dance) and btuta. They were, and
are, often presented as a suite of songs and dances, adapted to individual
needs for performance at village celebrations, dominical feasts, weddings
and the like.
As to performance style, the technique of the lead violin is semi-impro-
vised, with elaborate melodic floricele, wide vibrati and extensive glis-
sandi. To present-day ears, this idiom probably sounds closer to western
traditions than either the zurla-tapan repertory or Macedonian algija.
We are likely to hear it as a species of something we can recognise as
Romanian folk music. Yet, despite the equal temperament, the melodic
basis of the music is rooted in makam, as Garfias demonstrates, and much
of the ornamentation has origins in Ottoman traditions. A good introduc-
tion to the idiom is the 1988 Ocora disc, Roumanie: musique des tsiganes de
Valachie. Les lutari de Clejani.52 Here the musicians of this now-famous
village are presented in a series of lovesongs, dance suites and ballads.

50Miso 2006.
51 Garfias 1981.
52Ocora C 559036. See also the last track of the LP Rumania. Traditional Folk Music
(UNESCO Musical Atlas Collection: EMI Odeon C 064 18120). For a more recent CD of
the Clejani musicians, but one that preserves traditional conventions, see Outlaws of Yore
(CD 003), recorded mainly in 1991, before they became internationally famous as the Taraf
de Haidouks.
 mixing it 297

Compilation is the typical mode of presentation. Even the cntec de dra-

goste, speaking of love and its vicissitudes, is made up of two separate
parts, one in peasant style, and one oriental, and characteristically it ends
with a binary circle dance (hora). The suites are elaborate. One consists of
a cntec doina using horsehair technique, followed by another cntec, an
hora, a doina of the Haidouks, another hora, and a closing srba. Another
rind de hore (suite of dances) has a srba followed by hora followed by
srba followed by brul.53
These, then, are some of the distinctive repertories of urban popular
music in the Balkans, all closely associated with Roma. But one might also
cite the widespread cultivation of sung oriental poetry with texts in local
vernaculars (in some cases, as in the ashiki songs of Bektai [Bektashi]
circles in Albania, they may be written in Arabic script). Of the many
meeting-points between Turkish and South Slavic traditions of this kind,
special interest attaches to Bosnia. The tradition of sevdalinka, briefly
introduced earlier, represents one of the most expressive of the transi-
tional urban genres of the Balkans. These love poems usually short, with
8- or 10-syllable lines, and drawing on both Turkish and native sources
can be traced back to at least the seventeenth century. Indeed there are
references to such poems in travellers diaries from a century before that,
and there are specific texts (without music) in the otherwise Turkish-
language Sarajevo Chronicles that appeared annually from the eighteenth
century onwards (lodged in the Gazi Hsrev Medresa). Likewise there are
lyrics included in private letters from the nineteenth century, prior to the
more extensive collections that appeared later in the century following
the change of administration in 1878.
Typically, sevdalinkas are songs of love, and they either celebrate
womens beauty in the abstract or address the beauty of particular per-
sons in an idealised, elevated manner, often with a tragic or melancholy
tone (Martin Stokes, writing of Turkish arabesk, refers to discourses of
sentiment).54 But there are also public songs, sometimes patriotic in char-
acter, or describing particular towns and regions, or (and especially when
the genre migrated to the hans in the nineteenth century) adopting a
coarsely erotic tone (traditionally there was a separation between womens
and mens songs). It seems that sevdalinka remained an unaccompanied

53On the track Dragoste [Love] the doina is performed by lutari. Although the metre
is regular, the recitative style is characteristic of the doina.
54Stokes 1992, 1114.
298 chapter eleven

genre until the nineteenth century, at which point there was some diver-
sification in performance practice, just as there was a widening public
for the songs, among Serbs as well as Bosnian Muslims. In addition to
unaccompanied solo singing, male choruses were used, and instrumen-
tal accompaniments began, initially with saz, but later with accordion. It
was also in the nineteenth century that serious collecting began, notably
by Ludvk Kuba and Franjo Kuha, and in the early twentieth century by
Gerhard Gesemann.55 Gesemann was among the first to address the genre
in a scholarly way, though his understanding of it as primarily a product of
the higher social classes presents a highly partial view of its origins.
In a later monograph, Vlado Miloevi suggested prototypes in so-
called flat songs [ravne piesme]), and went on to discuss the syncretic
nature of the genre (including influences from Sephardic repertories),
but he too subscribed to the values of his time and place, favouring inti-
mate, domestic songs and regarding the more heavily ornamented songs
associated with the han as degenerate.56 All this raises questions about
the specifications and limits of sevdalinka. The genre title itself (sevdah
is love or ecstasy in Turkish) belongs to relatively recent times. Tradi-
tionally these songs were known simply as Turkish songs, and this is how
they are still described in eastern Serbia. More crucially, the term sevd-
alinka has itself been broadened out in recent years to cover a wide range
of popular styles, including some newly-composed folk music, so that
its use is now permissive. Even traditional sevdalinkas are adapted these
days to contemporary tastes, through jazz fusions, classical arrangements
and electronics.
Historically, the turning point in the evolution of the genre came with
the introduction of European instruments, at which point the intimate
soundscape of voice and saz gave way to the louder and more open sound
associated with an accordion-based ensemble. It is ironic, then, that some
of the earliest extant recordings of sevdalinka, dating from 19078, are
with accordion-dominated ensemble rather than saz. However the use of
the ensemble here is very far removed from the familiar folkloric sound
world. A comparison of two performances of Kad ja podjoh na Benbau
[When I went to Benbassa], one recorded by the Trio Mustafa Suduka i
Merku in 1908 and the other by Nada Mamula and the orchestra of RTV

55Gesemann made a number of recordings in 1937 (Gesemann 1937). His fieldwork

incidentally was an influence on Parry and Lord.
56Miloevi 1964.
 mixing it 299

Sarajevo in 19845 is revealing, not just because the early recording uses
a different tune family, but because the accordion avoids conventional
chordal harmony and joins voice and clarinet in a heterophonic presenta-
tion of the melody (with harmonic thickening) over a regular pulse on
def frame drum.57 There is a space separating this performance, which
no doubt conveys something of a nineteenth-century tradition of perfor-
mance practice, from the conventional folklorism cultivated by the Radio
Sarajevo recording in the post-war years of Communist Yugoslavia.
Even the older generation of sevdah singers contributed to this kind
of folklorism, about which I will say more in chapter 19. But several of
these singers were also committed to safeguarding the tradition of per-
forming sevdalinkas with saz, complete with unequal temperament and
makam-s. The ethnomusicologist Tamara Karaa-Beljak has transcribed
performances by six such musicians over a period of some fifteen years,
including Selim Salihovi, the Rom musician Sofka Nikoli, and the diva
of the genre Emina Zeaj, the only one of the six who is still alive, and still
performing, today.58 It would be wrong to suggest that such performers
are involved in historically informed reconstructions. Rather they repre-
sent the continuation of a largely unbroken tradition, and because of this
they can offer us real insight into the transitional status of the genre. It
is not uncommon for the texts of sevdalinkas to make specific reference
to the saz, or nacre (pearl-inlaid) tambura, prompting reflections on the
reciprocral relations of voice and instrument historically. The saz would
only have been played by a man, and the later meeting-points between
its highly ornamental performance style, surrounding the key notes of the
makam with improvised embellishments, and the intimate, interior style
of womens singing undoubtedly resulted in a uniquely poetic synergy.
A perfect illustration is Emina Zeajs recording of the evocative, highly
expressive sevdalinka Il je vedro, il oblano [Is it clear, is it cloudy?]
with Mehmed Gribajevi accompanying on saz.59 Aside from its tonal
and mood-setting functions establishing the ison, defining the scale
and creating the appropriate melancholy Affekt the saz weaves a deli-
cate web of melodic tracery around the voice, conforming to the general
melodic direction (seyir) of the song, but at certain times anticipating
and at other times reacting to the inflections of the vocal line. Something

57Piranha CD-PIR 2113.

58See Karaa-Beljak 2005 for an account of the evolution of the genre.
59Gramofon GCD 2001.
300 chapter eleven

of the subtlety and expressive nature of this vocal-instrumental dialogue

can be gauged by comparing Zeajs recording with Alma Bandis perfor-
mance, this time unaccompanied.60 Bandi too sings in the ornamental
idiom, but in her recording the absence of saz changes the character of
the song into a more conventional kind of folksong.61 And in any case,
what both recordings tell us is that this is a tradition utterly dependent on
unwritten conventions of performativity. There are notations of sevdalin-
kas, made of course after the event, and they include Il je vedro.62 But
these underdetermine the music to such an extent that they tell us little.
It is widely felt by aficionados of sevdalinka that, rather as with rebe-
tika, the quality of a sevdah performance depends heavily on the emo-
tional authenticity conveyed by the singer. The word soul is much used,
and in some recent performance traditions, the grainy, bluesy quality of
the performance becomes almost fetishised. The most familiar case is the
multi-ethnic band Mostar Sevdah Reunion, the central protagonists of
the film Sevdah: the Bridge that Survived, which describes the reunion of
the musicians ten years after the destruction of the famous bridge. In the
liner note to their album A Secret Gate, a local journalist writes about the
singer Ilijaz Deli: With every song he loses five minutes of his life.63 This
is symptomatic of the mystique of suffering that surrounds this music,
intended to catch something of the resonance of Mostars pain and that
of former Yugoslavia more generally in the aftermath of the wars of suc-
cession (one might almost transfer Martin Stokess description of arabesk
as no longer [...] just a form of music, but [...] a form of social and cul-
tural existence).64 Here the sevdalinka idiom merges with the earthi-
ness associated with some Rom traditions, and it is notable that Mostar
Sevdah Reunion has collaborated with both Ljiljana Buttler and aban
Bajramovi.
It is all a very long way from the sophisticated but entirely unaffected
melancholy of Emina Zeaj in her discreet dialogues with the saz, and it is
an equally long way from the more sanitised performances of sevdalinka
promoted by RTV Sarajevo in the time of Communist Yugoslavia. Again a
direct comparison makes the latter point. In her earlier years Zeaj could

60This recording, made in 19845, is on the Smithsonian Folkways recording, CD Music

from an Endangered Minority: Bosnian Muslim Music SF40407.
61 Of the next generation of singers, Hanka Paldum has an outstanding reputation, with
a room dedicated to her in the museum of sevdah in Sarajevo.
62See, for example, ero 1995. Il je vedro is No. 87.
63Snail Records CC50014.
64Stokes 1992, 91.
 mixing it 301

be heard (and seen) performing with other sevdah stars accompanied by

the National Tamburica Orchestra of Sarajevo. Her brisk, restrained, almost
coy, performance of to li mi se Radobolja muti [Why is the Radobolja
River so Troubled?], really belongs to the world of professional, classicised
folklore that was familiar fare in the eastern bloc at that time, and it bears
not the slightest relation to the pain-filled rendition of this same song
by Mostar Sevdah Reunion on the first track of The Secret Gate.65 The
recorded heritage allows us, then, to follow the fortunes of a single genre
as it makes its way through different social and political settings, trans-
forming its performance styles to meet the changing needs of particular
institutions and the desires of particular taste publics. Sevdalinka can be
an oriental lyric; it can be a Bosnian folksong; it can be an urban blues. It
can be the national music of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

65The Zeaj performance is available on a DVD anthology of sevdalinke. See Antologia

BiH sevdalinke Vol. 1. DVD003.
 CHAPTER TWELVE

JOIN THE CLUB

Following the Leader: Manolis Kalomiris

That a bridge between East and West between Asia and Europe might
assume a concrete political form was considered a realistic possibility
by many Greeks in the aftermath of World War I. The Balkan Wars had
already resulted in territorial expansion for Greece opposed incidentally
by a strengthening Communist Party and a corresponding contraction
for the Ottomans. During World War I, the promise of a further step,
allowing Greece to turn some of its Asia Minor settlements into territorial
acquisitions, was apparently dangled by the Entente Powers before the
then Prime Minister, Eleftherios Venizelos. And when the Treaty of Svres
(1920) licensed the provisional occupation of Smyrna by Greece (as well
as eastern Thrace and the islands of Tenedos and Imvros), the great idea
of Greek irredentism seemed at last within reach. Richard Clogg reminds
us that Venizeloss supporters spoke openly at the time of a Greece of the
two continents and five seas.1
A greater Greece had been a long-standing dream, but it was only when
Venizelos came to power in 1910 in the wake of the Young Turk revolu-
tion (which generally sharpened the focus of Balkan nationalisms) and the
Goudi coup of the Military League that it was placed on the political
agenda. The Venizelos ascendancy initially energised the political nation
through a twin programme of domestic reform and territorial expansion-
ism. But in due course his agenda proved divisive (the Royalists, as well
as the Communists, took a negative view of his expansionist plans), and it
was increasingly prey to the manoeuvres of Great Power politics and the
unforeseeable events of war. It ended in the catastrophe of 1922, as the
forces of Turkish nationalism destroyed Smyrna and routed the Greeks of
Asia Minor.
This was the political background to the rise of the national school of
Greek composers, so labelled by Kalomiris in his manifesto of 1908. Kalo-
miriss return to Athens from Kharkov [Kharkiv] in 1910 coincided with

1Clogg 1992, 95.

 join the club 303

the rise to power of Venizelos. He began teaching at the Conservatoire

shortly after, and his ambitions for Greek music formed in many respects
a cultural counterpart to Venizelian goals.2 It is likely that the support of
Venizelos was crucial in promoting his career in Athens, though it was
equally a guarantee of later hostility from anti-Venizelian circles. If we
bear in mind, too, that Kalomiris was from Smyrna, we can see that the
Greek nation for which he offered such powerful cultural propaganda
in his polemical writings and activities from 1910 onwards was indeed a
nation of the two continents.
The mix of idealism and power-broking involved in his anti-Ionian cam-
paigns might stand as an object lesson in the politics of culture. It was a
strategic alliance between Kalomiris and Nazos that blocked the appoint-
ment of Spiros Samaras, the leading figure in Greek music at the time,
to the Directorship of the Conservatory in succession to Nazos. It hardly
helped that Samaras was a royalist rather than a Venizelist. Yet none of
these allegiances would prove permanent. Samaras fell out of favour with
the Royals due to the perceived ideology of his only Greek opera Rhea,3
and, as we noted in chapter 9, the harmony between Kalomiris and Nazos
also turned out to be short-lived. Their true interests had never really coin-
cided, and the gulf between them as musicians could have been measured
in light years. When Kalomiris consolidated his position he lost no time in
dissociating himself from Nazos.
There was another dimension of cultural politics involved in Kalo-
miriss campaign. Already prior to his engagement with Venizelian ideals,
he had committed to the (demoticist) anti-katharevousa language reform
associated with a progressive intelligentsia.4 Although they were not all in
sympathy with his Venizelian views, the demoticists adopted Kalomiris as
a powerful representative in the musical world, and he in turn valued his
association with them, especially with Kostis Palamas (whose text for the
Olympic Hymn, ironically enough, was set by Samaras).5 Demoticist ideals
had a particular context within Greek history, but they also harmonised
with wider programmes of cultural nationalism. Within such programmes

2Frangou-Psychopedis 1990; Belonis 2009.

3Belonis 2009.
4This commitment was strengthened by his reading of Yiannis Psychariss seminal
autobiography, To taxidi mou [My Journey], published in 1888, while a student in Vienna.
Note that the demotic was a construction with some capacity to unify the different
regions of Greece.
5Other younger figures included Nikos Kazantzakis (18831957) and Angelos Sikelianos
(18841951).
304 chapter twelve

traditional music was typically viewed as both analogous to, and a poten-
tial ally of, the vernacular language, and in this sense Kalomiriss vision a
Greek national school built on demotic ideals conformed.
Two genres of music were usually taken to represent Greece in this
construction, and it is typical of the anomalies of cultural nationalism
that neither was, in any exclusive sense, Greek. First, there was the post-
Byzantine repertory of sacred music shared by several cultures in the
Orthodox world, but to which Greece staked a special claim. And second,
there was Balkan-Anatolian traditional music, of which the many varieties
of Greek demotic music might be regarded as regional species. My child-
hood was haunted by our folk songs, by the melodies and rhythms of our
people, by our legends and traditions, by Byzantium, its mythical Kings
and its haunted monasteries. Along with them, by Greek poetry [....], he
remarked in old age, perhaps with a little rose tinting.6
There was a space separating both these Greek genres from the styles
and conventions of European art music. And it is for this reason that
Kalomiriss project was one of transition, albeit undertaken from the
perspective of a western-trained composer. There was no insincerity, let
alone hypocrisy, in this; it was the way of nationalist composers every-
where to reach out from their turrets of enlightenment to make contact
with ahistorical, natural communities (or alternatively atemporal, spiri-
tual communities) that were supposedly at some remove from western
rationality. But there was more to the transition in Kalomiriss case. The
double-descended identity associated with the Greeks has already been
discussed, and is indeed a commonplace of historiography and criticism.
Against this background, the agenda of the demoticist poets was in part
to reclaim something of the world view of the Romaioi, representing the
East of the Byzantines as against the West of enlightened Hellenism.
Yet, and again the ironies abound, this act of reclamation was itself
the work of western-educated intellectuals, constructing a vernacular
(demotike) in the manner of cultural nationalists everywhere. Kalomiriss
enterprise was analogous, and he fell easily into step with this demoticist
understanding of national identity. Like the poets, and in sharp contrast
to Georgios Lambelet, he wanted to release the Greeks from the burden of
their distant Hellenic tradition, a tradition whose contemporary relevance
was above all the preoccupation of Western Europe, and at the same time
to restore something of the ethos of the Romaioi to the modern nation. In

6See Kalomiris 1988, 1618 for this account of his early encounters with folksong.
 join the club 305

this way a musically sophisticated composer from a cosmopolitan back-

ground could embrace the East from a secure footing in the West: as Kalo-
miris expressed it himself, he could forge a national style by cultivating a
distinctive Greek-oriental colour with related harmonic formations.7
Nationalist composers do not have to be political activists. Chopin com-
posed what is probably the first canonic repertory of European national-
ism, yet he was hardly politically engaged; if there were guns, they were
indeed smothered in flowers. All the same, from the mid nineteenth
century onwards it was common for composers to enter the reforming
fray and to lend a practical hand in nation-building through music. For
some Smetana, for example such institutional work was defining of
nationalist commitments. And in the early twentieth century, that same
sense of social responsibility attached to the conversion of a figure such
as Karol Szymanowski, who rejected his splendid isolation (his phrase)
to engage with the (often nasty) politics of national renewal.
This was Kalomiriss way, too. He claimed for music a special place
within the social order, and argued for the need to harness its unifying,
organisational, and above all redemptive, power through education. He
attacked the casual attitude adopted towards the arts in Greece, and
sought actively to rally the next generation of composers to the national
cause. He was well placed to campaign on behalf of this vision, and did so
tirelessly during the 1910s, in his teaching, his fund-raising, his polemical
articles, his lectures, and his compositions. Indeed his success was such
that he was soon to be surrounded by like-minded, though stylistically
very different, composers, all happy to be identified as part of a national
school. His outlook was inevitably changed by the catastrophe, but he
played if anything an even greater proselytising and educational role in
the decades following it, dominating music and musical life to World
War II and beyond.8
Prior to settling in Athens, Kalomiris had been exposed to three dif-
ferent cultural climates. First there was his early life in Smyrna, Athens
and Istanbul. His musical education was centred on the piano, but during
these years he also became aware of demotic ideals in literature. And it
was also while a student in Asia Minor that he came to know Greek tra-
ditional music, which was to form one reference point for his developing

7Kalomiris 1988, 94.

8His role as an educator was of seminal importance, and that included writing a
harmony textbook, one of whose chapters is devoted to the problems of harmonising
folksong.
306 chapter twelve

musical style. Second there were his years as a student at the Vienna
Conservatoire (190106). These were crucial not only for acquiring basic
professional skills, but for expanding his repertorial knowledge and deep-
ening his musical understanding. It was in Vienna that he first heard Wag-
ner and the New Germans, an encounter that had consequences for his
later operas, and for his entire approach to music and the poetic.
The third context was Kharkov, where Kalomiris accepted his first
employment in 1906, and where he remained for a further four years. The
Kharkov years introduced him to the philosophy and some of the music
of the Balakirev circle, his models for the creation of a modern national
school in Greece (in particular the highly structured concert series in
Kharkov, privileging the national and the local, was revelatory). Not the
least interesting aspect of this was the sleight-of-hand with which he could
convert Russian exoticism into something closer to a Greek homeland. It
was also while in Kharkov that he began corresponding with Psycharis
and Palamas, among other demoticists, and it was here that he began his
polemical writings for Noumas. The famous concert in Athens, with its
accompanying and divisive manifesto, took place right in the middle of
the Kharkov years.
The programme included several of his early piano works. These have
an assurance, a command of mtier and a formal control that took Greek
music to a new level.9 Some of the titles evoke Chopin (ballade, noc-
turne, later prelude), and it is interesting that in the two extant pro-
grammes for concerts given by Kalomiris in Kharkov, Chopin took pride
of place.10 He would have known Chopin from his early student days, for
the music had been performed in well-off domestic circles in Greece for
some time, and following the Nazos reforms it migrated to the public
platforms.11 But while in Kharkov Kalomiris may have picked up on the
special significance Chopin held for the Balakirev circle. Interestingly, the

9This is not the place to discuss in detail matters of musical text, but it should be
noted that several of these early pieces were subject to later revision.
10In the first of these concerts he was a participant. In the second he was sole per-
former, and he gives an account in his Memoirs (Kalomiris 1988) of the agonies of nerves
he endured. It was this concert that decided Kalomiris against any thoughts of a perform-
ing career.
11 Romanou 1996. Chopin was second only to Beethoven in popularity in Athens dur-
ing these years.
 join the club 307

work that is common to both Kharkov programmes is the Fantasy Op. 49,
which is often viewed in nationalist terms.12
As for his early ballades, Kalomiris, like many before him, would have
read the genre title as connoting the vernacular and the nation. Yet the
musical style is closer to Liszt than to Chopin, belonging to European high
romanticism, and only slightly inflected by native elements. That the first
of them (1905) was inspired by a poem from Victor Hugos celebrated
Les orientales might be taken as symbolic of the transition between East
and West,13 and it is fitting that aside from obvious textural affinities
with Liszt, the oriental moments here make explicit reference to Liszts
so-called gypsy scale. The second of the Ballades was a response to a
Palamas poem, while the third (1906) Mazeppa-like draws on a popu-
lar folksong about the wild ride of Death. Here the oriental material is
enclosed within the sound and fury, and in a curiously fragmentary coun-
terpoint. Later, as in the more atmospheric and poetic Second Rhapsody
of 1921, Kalomiris succeeded especially in the quiet middle section in
creating oriental constructions of a more integral character.
In his early songs, Kalomiris could assert more clearly the link between
the demoticist agenda and his own programme of musical nationalism.
For some he wrote his own texts, but he also turned to demoticists such
as Alexandros Pallis, Miltiadis Malakasis and of course Palamas. Palamass
Iambs and Anapests, a collection of poems first published in Athens in
1897 and probably encountered by Kalomiris in 1905, was the basis for a
two-part cycle for voice and orchestra, the first Sagapo [I love you] and
the second Magiovotana [Magic Herbs]. The chronology is confused here,
with Magiovotana completed before SAgapo and given its first perfor-
mance in 1914 (individual songs were composed between 1905 and 1914).
But in any case this is one of Kalomiriss most persuasive compositions,
responding to the mix of fairy-tale, oriental fable and classical myth with a
score that achieves a delicacy and restraint that are not always hallmarks
of his music.
At times it occupies a musical world not unlike that of Plleas et
Melisande. There is a similar blend of Russian and Wagnerian elements,
but the arioso is closer to aria than in the Debussy work, and the gendering

12Goldberg 2004. Even Adorno remarked that one would have to have ones ears well
plugged not to hear in Chopins F minor Fantasy a certain kind of tragically elevated tri-
umphant music speaking of how Poland has not perished and [...] that one day she will
rise again. (Adorno 1976, 174).
13Samson 2006.
308 chapter twelve

is more blatant (the masculine-heroic element is a constant, but the

feminine-seductive element may be in turn destructive or redemptive).
The cycle consists of a Prelude (Wagnerian at times) followed by eight
songs, of which the second, Old Mother Life, was the earliest to be
composed. Wagner lurks in the wings, especially in the third song. But
Russian-oriental styles constitute a more prominent background both to
the supernatural elements in the songs and to the depiction of the erotic,
which comes to the fore in songs 57. These influences are not obtrusive,
and the truly striking feature of the music is the sense of flow and con-
tinuity that somehow binds together such a diverse collection of images
and narratives. Even the final peroration, with its explicit affirmation of
national pride, is held in check.
After settling in Athens, Kalomiris tackled his first music drama O proto-
mastoras [The Masterbuilder], the earliest version of which was completed
in 1915. The libretto draws on an early play by the eminent poet-politician
Nikos Kazantzakis, after the familiar Greek (Akritic) folk tale about the
bridge over the Arta demanding a human sacrifice. Kalomiris worked the
story into a powerful drama with explicit symbolic resonance. He himself
supplied a leitmotivic index, and the technique is informally Wagnerian,
with an evolving arioso that can also incorporate periodic song. Further
to the Leitmotiven, the composer employed a type of stylistic characterisa-
tion that had a long history in opera. Thus, according to context, literal
and stylised folksong and dance sit alongside oriental pastiche, seamless
late-romantic recitative (supported by open-ended motive working in the
orchestra), and full-scale arias. And throughout Kalomiris reveals the true
dramatists instinct for pacing and continuity, for the bold stroke, for the
timeless lyrical moment (The sun, the sun), and for the impassioned cli-
max (Smaragdas confession of love and her subsequent love-death).
It is no criticism of the work to note that stylistic categories remain
conventional in semiotic terms (harvesters, gypsies, lovers and sages are
musically differentiated in predictable ways), but it does raise a question
about Kalomiriss wider claims. It is only in certain parts of the work
notably when Mana [Mother], the voice of intuitive wisdom rather than
rational knowledge, prescribes the necessary sacrifice that we approach
that more integral Greek-oriental colour with related harmonic forma-
tions Kalomiris identified with a Greek national style. O protomastoras is
an opera of considerable dramatic power, but it depends more heavily on
existing Russian and German operatic conventions than the composers
rhetoric might lead us to expect. As to rhetoric, the initial dedication of
the work, To the Masterbuilder of a Greater Greece, Eleftherios Venizelos,
 join the club 309

seems to leave no doubt about one aspect of the symbolism of the bridge,
though in later reception Kalomiris distanced the work somewhat from
the association with Venizelos.
He had good reason to do so. It has been suggested that the subsequent
neglect of O Protomastoras in Greece was due to the link with Venizelos
and i megali idea.14 Certainly it never matched the success of his second
opera, Dahtylidi tis manas [Mothers Ring], which was completed two
years later in 1917. The epic quality of O protomastoras is replaced here by
lyrical restraint blended with fantasy, including a fairy-tale second act in
the form of a dream. Here the dying singer, an Orphic figure represent-
ing the aspiring artist, tries to reach an unattainable mountain peak in
the company of the Mountain Nereid (in effect Erofili, his lover) who has
stolen the ring, the object of a symbolic tug-of-love between mother and
lover. Katy Romanou has written about a stylistic genealogy that takes us
from the discreet orientalism of this second act back through the incom-
plete opera Mavrianos to Rimsky-Korsakovs The Golden Cockerel.15 In
truth, the juxtaposition of a diatonic or pan-diatonic reality, grounded in
folk music, with a world of orientalised fantasy, often based on chromatic
symmetries, is fundamentally Russian.
Yet the oriental elements take on a new meaning in the context of
Dahtylidi tis manas, as a quality hovering somewhere between exoticism
and indigeneity (the traditional 5/4 dance used for the nymphs is a case in
point). Along with the greater preponderance of traditional music, asso-
ciated with ordinary people such as Sotiris, with story-telling, and with
Christmas festivities, as well as of Byzantine music (the Christmas hymn
I Parthenos Simeron), this ensures that the tone of Dahtylidi tis manas is
closer to Kalomiriss ideal of a Greek-oriental colour than anything in
O protomastoras. The real triumph of the opera lies in its art of transition.
The different musical worlds the three acts present in some ways sepa-
rate stylistic tableaux retain their semiotic distinctness, but they emerge
in the end as compatible worlds, in effect part of a single larger world. The
Leitmotiven help achieve this, but there is more to it than that.
If Dahtylidi tis manas took a step away from Wagner towards Russian
music and a more generic national style, the Levendia Symphony (1918
20) returned to a decidedly heroic tone. In common with other sym-
phonists around the edges of Europe, Kalomiris clearly felt comfortable

14See the note by Haris Politopoulos accompanying the Lyra recording of the opera.
15Romanou 2005.
310 chapter twelve

with the lofty idealism and humanism of the Beethoven archetype, easily
adopting a tone that no longer seemed available to composers in cen-
tral Europe. This is a programme symphony, dedicated to Palamas and
celebrating Greek levendia [valour or manliness] in several manifesta-
tions. In the manner of the New Germans, Kalomiris was committed to
the poetic as a shaping force in music. Elsewhere I have discussed the
tortuous reasoning in Weimar polemics by which music, an instrument
of liberation from language-based understanding, was deemed to achieve
the status of a higher poetic (superseding language) only through associa-
tion with a poetic idea.16 The goal was a new and higher unity, a fusion
of sister arts, not just in music drama but in programme symphony and
symphonic poem.
This was the Kalomiris aesthetic. He had already composed several
chamber works with a programmatic basis prior to the Levendia Sym-
phony. Indeed works without some acknowledged external source of
inspiration are few and far between. In this first symphony the quality of
levendia is portrayed through nature and character painting in the first
movement, an evocation of the dead but immortal heroes in the second,
a soldiers feast in the third, and religious devotion in the last. There are
folk-based episodes, for example in the development section of the first
movement and in the scherzo, and there is a choral Byzantine hymn to
the virgin in the finale. But in essence this is a cyclic symphony in the late-
Romantic European manner. Its affirmation will sound heroic to some,
vulgar to others.
With powerful symbolism, the symphony was given its first perfor-
mance on the occasion of the liberation of Smyrna by the Greek army
in 1920. Two years later the Venizelian dream was over, and it is hardly
surprising that the national school, as conceived by Kalomiris, took a
knock (there was a personal dimension to the tragedy for Kalomiris with
the destruction caused to his home town Smyrna, followed a year later
by the death of his son). The flow of compositions accordingly slowed in
the 1920s. He occupied himself with his many public roles at this time,
but compositionally he dealt mainly with revisions and occasional pieces.
Then, in the 1930s, major works began to appear again: orchestral songs
to poetry by the nationalist poet Sikelianos, the Symphony of the Simple
and Good People, the Preludes for Piano, Tryptych for Orchestra and Sym-
phonic Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. And from the 1940s onwards he

16Samson 2003, 1927.

 join the club 311

composed a further three operas, a substantial corpus of vocal music, two

symphonic poems, and a Third Symphony (Palamiki).
It is hard to generalise about this second phase of creativity, which takes
us right up to 1961. But several points can be made. Some commentators
detect a new inwardness in the post-catastrophe music.17 The heroic tone
was moderated, and there was a muted response to selected modern idi-
oms, especially those of French music. Indeed for Kalomiris, as for several
East European composers, early twentieth-century French music enabled
a more integral approach to native traditions due to the meeting-points
between French and Greek-oriental modalities. In later years he was less
prescriptive about what qualified as Greek music, but fundamentally his
colours were still nailed to the mast of his national school, and at a time
when this aesthetic had lost favour elsewhere. It is tempting to compare
him with Vaughan Williams in England, another composer who blazed a
national, indeed a modern, trail in youth, but in the post-war era came to
seem not just a conservative figure but a culturally restrictive one.
If we now leap to the end of Kalomiriss musical journey, it is not
because the compositions of the 1930s and 1940s lack interest. On the
contrary, some of his finest music appeared during these years, and key
incremental changes took place in his musical language. Indeed it was
these changes that made possible his final opera, Constantine Palaeolo-
gus, which he himself regarded as his finest achievement and which was
completed as late as 1961. In purely musical terms, he was probably right,
but the undiluted nationalism of the work is hard to take these days. This
opera, which turns again to Nikos Kazantzakis and takes as its subject
matter nothing less than the fall of Constantinople, represents the sum-
mation, or obituary, of the Greek national school.
It is instructive to set Constantine Palaeologus alongside the two early
operas. Two things are immediately apparent, and they are related. First,
the juxtaposition of styles characteristic of the early works has been
replaced by a more seamless and integrated musical flow which goes a
long way towards realising Kalomiriss aim: to combine Western Music
with Byzantine chants and modes into a unified artistic whole.18 And sec-
ondly, both the harmonic language and the orchestral texture are more
complex than in the early operas. Indeed it is because conventional triadic

17Belonis 2009.
18In the preface to the piano version of the opera, quoted by Markos Tsetsos in Svolos
2004, 142.
312 chapter twelve

harmony is used more sparingly that modal and polymodal structures are
able to permeate the musical texture in a more integral way, resulting in
a sophisticated, multi-layered soundscape. One result is that we lose some
of the more accessible (stirring, colourful or seductive) moments associ-
ated with O protomastoras and Dahtylidi tis manas. But we gain in their
place a new coherence, in which the several constitutive elements of the
musical style are closely welded together. It is no exaggeration to claim
that in this work the bridge to the east stands firm. It is perhaps the clos-
est Kalomiris came to music of transition.
How we read the transition is another question. Markos Tsetsos reminds
us that for the Greeks the double threat to the City from East and West
promoted cultural isolation as a source of power.19 The relevance of this
reading to the twentieth-century catastrophe would have seemed obvious
to Kazantzakis and Kalomiris. It chimes too with our earlier observations
on church chant again an impulse to protect Greek identity from pollut-
ing influences from both directions and even with our comments on the
equivocal status of popular music. The Greek nation, in all these cultural
manifestations, found its centre of orientation in a place of in-between.
For Kalomiris, that centre absorbed a particular East and claimed it, as a
spiritual if no longer as a political property. The final words of the opera
In years to come, in times to come, they shall be ours anew! had better
be understood on these spiritual and allegorical levels. It is, we hope, the
Greek spirit embodied in the immortal Mothers, the Archangel and
the dead heroes guarding the holy Chalice, watched over by the protec-
tive Virgin, Our Lady of Constantinople that will survive, whatever the
catastrophe.
The contemporary allegory has additional layers, of course. The opera
speaks of self-seeking politicians, of a church hierarchy caught between
religious and political imperatives, of the populace as a collective victim,
and even of a commentator-seer, in the form of a firewalker (the mystical
power of the anastenarides). But the idealism is there too: in Anna, an
embodiment of self-sacrificing love whose allegorical link with the Vir-
gin is made explicit, and in Constantine himself, a Greek hero at once
traditional and modern. Kazantzakis was influenced by Nietzsche, and
it is easy to see Constantine here as an archetype of Nietzschean man,
overcoming the seductions of love to emerge strong enough for free-
dom. He is perhaps the last of the Nietzschean heroes to issue from the

19Ibid., 143.
 join the club 313

operatic traditions of Eastern Europe, his voice a distant echo of those of

Szymanowskis King Roger and Enescus Oedipe. Like the voice of Kalomiris
himself, it is heroic, but no longer of its time.

Drawing the Circle: The Greek National School

In his 1908 manifesto Kalomiris argued that an authentic national school

should be based on the music of our unspoiled, authentic folksongs [...]
embellished with all the technical means [...] of the musically advanced
peoples.20 Two constitutive interactive elements are proposed: so-called
folk music, which is supposedly natural and national, and the techniques
of contemporary art music. Note too the proposed relation between them:
base and embellishment. Words are one thing, notes another, and it is not
always easy to map this prospectus onto the reality. Sometimes it seems
that the principal entrance test for the national school, aside of course
from professing verbal allegiance to its ideals, was to admit the right sort
of foreign influences. Positioning oneself correctly in relation to contem-
porary music seemed in practice more important that basing ones music
on our unspoiled, authentic folksongs.
Indeed conservative, minimally processed, pastiche folksongs were not
considered appropriate. At the end of his life, in the Preface to the score
of Constantine Palaeologus, Kalomiris argued that Greek music is much
more than a simplistic imitation of Greek folk songs [...] much more
than an imitation of bouzouki music. It is familiar rhetoric for latter-day
nationalists compare Szymanowski, our national music is more than the
stiffened ghost of the polonaise or the mazurka and no doubt Kalomiris
had specific targets in mind, notably Georgios Lambelet.21 According to
Kalomiris, the imperative was to explore the transformative potential of
traditional music, its capacity to reshape musical syntax in alliance with
the technical means of the musically advanced peoples. This would be a
reasonable description of some of his music, but only some of it.
Where other composers are concerned, we face yet greater anomalies.
Consider two composers from different generations, Marios Varvoglis
(18851967) and Yannis Constantinidis (19031984). Ioannis Belonis
reminds us that Varvoglis began writing for Noumas around the same time

20Little 2001, 968.

21 There is comparative discussion of Kalomiriss and Lambelets views on folk music
in Little 2001.
314 chapter twelve

as Kalomiris, that he participated in the debate surrounding Kalomiriss

Athens concert, and that in general he lent his voice to the demoticist
cause and to the strengthening call for a national school in music.22 How-
ever, this is not obvious from his music. Based mainly in Paris in his for-
mative years, he was by no means the only Greek composer to succumb
to modern French music as an alternative to German symphonism; even
Kalomiris dabbled with this music, widely regarded as prestigious. Indeed
in Varvogliss case Parisian influences extended beyond music to include
the (then) neo-classical tendencies of the poet Jean Moras.
In any event, he remained in Paris right up to 1920, the eve of the
catastrophe, and some Greek commentators like to say that the music
he composed there found a happy meeting-point between some of the
more conservative French idioms and native Greek traditions. If this is
so, it is at least clear which of the two ingredients is the more prominent.
In practice Varvogliss music is anchored to a moderately toned French
neo-classical style of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
to which Greek dance rhythms and references to demotic music added
something of the couleur locale to which Paris in particular was highly
receptive. Even on his return to Athens, where he became an influen-
tial teacher (though in later years somewhat on the edge of things due
to his leftist political views), this remained Varvogliss way, though he
was patronised by Kalomiris and professed his support for the nationalist
agenda.
The lyrical neo-classicism of the Suite pastorale for string orchestra
closer to Faur than to Ravel is characteristic. It is the landscape of
Watteau that is recalled in this pastorale, ordered and elegant and not at
all suggestive of the harsher climes of the eastern Mediterranean. Even
when the intonation appears to point towards Greece (as in the theme of
the second movement, with its augmented second in the head motive, or
in the dance rhythm of the finale), the contexts and settings are so influ-
enced by French music that these moments will tend to be heard as exoti-
cisms. This is characteristic of Varvogliss music more generally, and it was
recognised by some Greek critics. Reviewing the Suite pastorale, Minos
Dounias remarked: If we also take into account the harmonic labyrinths,
we wonder again: what is left here that is Greek? Only the composers
good intentions. The means of expression: form, technique, harmony, all

22Belonis 2009.
 join the club 315

the spirit of this music, is the product of centuries of western civilisation.23

The 7/8 kalamatianos dance in the finale of his Piano Sonatina (1927)
and the fragmentary reference to a folk-like melody enclosed within his
Meditation for string ensemble provide further examples of Greek tokens
in a French landscape.
Interestingly, it was in some of his Piano Pieces for Children, which span
several decades of his creative life, that he ventured into more exploratory
worlds of harmony and texture (compare Bartks Microkosmos), seeking
out genuinely novel settings for melodies that were either based on or
inspired by Greek sources.24 But these little pieces are not entirely char-
acteristic. Even works that signal their Greek orientation more explicitly,
such as his Greek Rhapsody for piano, seldom really escape established
frames of stylistic reference, in this case derived essentially from Liszt.
Returning to Kalomiriss original manifesto calling for music based on
folksongs, and embellished with advanced methods, we would need to
invert the terms based on and embellished with. None of this is to criti-
cise Varvoglis. What is at issue is the reality of a Greek national style, as
Kalomiris conceived it.
In Constantinidis, one of the last composers with some claim to mem-
bership of the national school, base and embellishment really do align
with Kalomiriss prescription. He based more-or-less his entire modest
output of art music (as Kostas Yannidis he was also a composer of theatre
music and popular song) on traditional music, and especially the tradi-
tional music of his Asia Minor homeland. In his orchestral music (much of
it written in the late 1940s), including the Dodecanese Suites,25 the Three
Greek Dances, and the Asia Minor Rhapsody, he presented original melo-
dies relatively unchanged but in charming harmonic and orchestral set-
tings, and including nicely crafted contrapuntal working and subtle modal
interplay. He gave voice in this way to songs and dances from the Black
Sea, Cappadocia, Smyrna and the western coast generally. There was no
chauvinism in this. Constantinidis wrote music that is as unpretentious as
it is inclusive, incorporating Turkish as well as Greek melodies, and at no

23See Minos Douniass review of three chamber music concerts in Neoellinika Gram-
mata (18.3.1939), reprinted in Dounias 1963, 3435.
24Compare the two series of easy pieces by Kalomiris, 190612 and 1939 respectively.
There are also contributions to this genre by Yannis Constantinidis (44 Childrens Pieces).
It seems that Dounias was instrumental in promoting a native pedagogical music.
25The first of these suites, composed in 1948, was dedicated to Samuel Baud-Bovy, who
conducted its first performance in Geneva in 1949. For an English-language commentary
on Constantinidiss life and music, see Little 2001, 168243.
316 chapter twelve

point seeking to convert indigenous elements into anything resembling a

national epos.
So how does Constantinidis fare in relation to Kalomiriss ideal? Ironi-
cally, given that his music is imbued with native songs and dances, he
does less well than Varvoglis. Like all nationalist composers, Kalomiris
wanted most of all to be taken seriously in an international arena, and
to that end indigenous materials had to be charged with ambition; they
needed to participate in a discourse of the musically advanced peoples.
On the other hand the modernisms should be compatible with the native
materials, and in practice this meant one could proceed so far and no
further. All this was very far removed from the easy listening offered by
Constandinidis in works that are more subtly composed than they may
seem. He too had studied in Germany, had responded to French influ-
ences, and had been genuinely close to an acknowledged Greek modern-
ist, Nikos Skalkottas. But his way was different.
It seems that for Kalomiris the technical means [...] of the musically
advanced peoples could refer to anything beyond the Italian styles of the
Ionians but falling short of Schoenbergian atonality. The national school
was more about rhetoric than style, and the composers associated with
it made up a broad church, some leaning to French, others to German,
and yet others to Russian styles. Most could claim that indigenous tradi-
tions formed a reference point in their music (at least in vocal settings
and explicit folksong arrangements), though it is possible to attach more
importance to the shaping role of these traditions than the musical evi-
dence can support. If we listen to a good cross-section of this music, we
will be struck first by the high professional level of many of the compo-
sitions, and second by how amorphous is any quality of Greekness we
might attach to it.
Antiochos Evanghelatos (19041981), despite his Cephalonian origins,
was one of Kalomiriss closest disciples. His music travels from the (at
times) Hindemithian neo-classicism of the Sinfonietta (1927) and Suite in
D minor (1934), through the Overture for a Drama (1937), not the occasional
piece its title suggests, to the symphonic poem Coasts and Mountains of
Atticus (1953), composed in a late-Romantic idiom that allows delicate,
impressionistic tone-painting to sit alongside big, full-blooded cinematic
climaxes. On another route it takes us to the symphonic ballad Death and
the Maiden to verses by Politis (1941) and the Four Cavafy Songs (1961).
There are works with explicit Greek themes (Byzantine Melody; Variations
and Fugue of a Greek Folksong), but Evanghelatoss music tells us that
he belongs right to the end; observe his dates to the same German
 join the club 317

late-Romantic tradition that had formed Kalomiriss own starting-point

as a composer. This raises an issue that will be appear in relation to other
repertories in South East Europe. Styles sit oddly with dates.
For others, the post World War II years represented a moment of
change, the point at which they responded to the climate of the new
in European music. One such was Leonidas Zoras (19051987), a stu-
dent of Kalomiris in Athens before he went on to study in Berlin in 1938
(specifically as preparation for a position as Director of the proposed
State Opera in Athens). His early music songs and piano pieces in the
main moved between French and German styles, with occasional refer-
ence to the idioms of traditional music. Arguably his best work is to be
found in songs and song cycles, of which the earliest of significance were
the Ten Sketches for voice and piano composed in the late 1920s, with a
moderately progressive harmonic language, including whole-tone clusters
and polymodality. Other works composed prior to Berlin included a set
of Greek Dances for Orchestra and the evocative orchestral piece Thrilos
[Legend] of 1936, given its first performance in Berlin in 1939.
Before returning to Athens in July 1940, Zoras was involved in an event
of some significance. He it was who encouraged his teacher (and then
father-in-law) Kalomiris to stage Dahtylidi tis manas in Berlin in February
1940, rehearsing the work and conducting one of the four performances
himself.26 This opera, with its folk-legendary ethos, was actually perfectly
suited to the official requisites of post-1933 Germany, and it was appar-
ently appreciated. But the whole event invites an excursus on the tricky
question of political affiliation in the 1930s, when governments in South
East Europe veered sharply to the right in response to the Great Depres-
sion, even as Communism was on the rise.27 It is a question we will also
address briefly in relation to Croatia and Bulgaria.
Zoras must have known something of the political realities inside Ger-
many. He was more interested in art than politics, though some might ask
if it was an option to be apolitical. As for Kalomiris, he moved with the
tide on these matters. As Katy Romanou has pointed out,28 he and other
musicians, interested in the successes for themselves and for Greek music
that came with performances in Germany, made little effort to find out

26The production was supposed to run for six performances, but it was curtailed after
four.
27In Greece, some of the more disadvantaged refugee populations from Asia Minor
were especially susceptible to this rightward political swing.
28Romanou 2009a.
318 chapter twelve

what was really happening there. During the Metaxas years, cultural links
with Germany were strong (Frankfurt Opera performed Wagners Ring in
Athens in November 1938), and the interest shown by the regime and by
successive puppet governments in musical institutions was welcome. A
key figure was the writer Kostis Bastias, a close associate of Metaxas, and
the power behind the formation of the State Opera. Bastias was much
lauded by Kalomiris, and so too were ministers of the Reich, not least
Goebbels. It was also during the occupation that the State Orchestra was
founded, with Kalomiris conducting its first concert in February 1943, per-
forming his Triptych for Orchestra a tribute to Venizelos on the very
day that Palamass funeral prompted massive anti-Nazi demonstrations
in Athens.
In the aftermath of the war, Kalomiris was not called to account. But
the Kalomiris Archive does possess an apology prepared in advance by
the composer, in which he not only spelt out that many Greek composers
were in the same boat, but revealed all too clearly his failure to under-
stand the real motives of the Nazis in promoting his and other music from
South East Europe.29 Zoras meanwhile was taken into custody in 1945,
but released shortly after. There was little appetite for witch-hunts against
collaborators in Greece at a time when energies (partly under external
pressure) were directed towards what was perceived to be a major Com-
munist threat. In this climate, composers such as Alekos Xenos, a Com-
munist from the pre-war years and active in the wartime resistance, were
the ones in the firing line.
All this provides a context for the stylistic departures of the immediate
post-war years. Zoras himself began to look in new directions following
his Symphony of 1947, notably in three works of the early 1950s: the Con-
certino for Violin and Eleven Woodwinds, which explores sound colours
in interesting ways, and the song-cycles Instantaneous, six aphoristic and
barely tonal settings of haiku texts by Seferis, and Prosfora [Offering], a
set of laments alternating Sprechgesang and Byzantine-inspired legato
melody against sparse, often organum-like accompaniments. All three
works were performed to a mixed critical reception at the American con-
certs in Athens in 1952, of which more later. And they paved the way to a
decade of radical and interesting music by Zoras, including the song-cycles
I psihi [The Spirit] (angular vocal lines against dissonant backcloths) and
14 Cavafy Songs (freely atonal and non-metred), the Piano Sonata and the

29Ibid.
 join the club 319

choral composition Ta dhora [The Gifts], where traditional idioms find

new energies in complex harmonies.
Nor was Zoras the only composer who responded to these winds of
change. Georgios Poniridis (18871982), whose early works include a Byz-
antine Chant for choir and orchestra (1924), was one of several to have
explored the transitions between post-Byzantine sacred music and con-
temporary European idioms. But he too turned to a more radical, explor-
atory idiom in later works, including his three piano trios and his Concerto
for Cello, Strings and Crotales.30 Like Kalomiris and many others, he was
an immigrant from Asia Minor. And one might add here a further group
who arrived from Russia, including Aristotelis Kundurov (18971969), who
reached Athens in 1930 (for a brief period he was the teacher of Xenakis).
Even in later works, such as the symphonic poem Orpheus and Eurydice
(1962), Kundurovs stylistic ancestry in Russian music remains clear. The
shadow of Borodin falls over the opening gestures of this work, and the
subsequent repetitions and formal intercutting strengthens such associa-
tions. The Lisztian thematic transformations that unite the extended outer
sections in slow tempo with the central episodes also link this music rather
specifically to Russian traditions of programmatic symphonic music.
When he first arrived in Greece Kundurovs first move was to compose
a Suite-fantaisie sur les thmes populaires grecs. This was an astute move,
and other immigrant composers staked their claim to Greek identity
in a similar way. There were good reasons for them to do so. Such compos-
ers were not easily integrated within the close-knit communities of Greek
musicians, whose world had been badly shaken in the aftermath of the
catastrophe. It was a context in which mainland-born Greeks were keen
to hold on to positions of influence. On the other hand, some of those
arriving from Asia Minor or Russia had already established international
reputations abroad, and of these the most significant was Petros Petridis
(18921977), an important figure in Greek art music, and one who worked
hard to present himself to the West as an alternative to Kalomiris as the
leading Greek composer of the day.31
Like Poniridis, Petridis was interested in transitions between a Byz-
antine inheritance and Western traditions. Born in Cappadoccia, where
the Byzantine world loomed large, and spending his formative years in

30One might also mention here Iakovos Halliassas (b. 1920).

31 Petridiss lectures on Greek Folklore and Greek Music, given to Kings College, Lon-
don in 191819, are discussed in Little 2001, 1005.
320 chapter twelve

Constantinople, he continued his musical studies in Paris. He was a man

of real intellectual breadth, working not only as a musician, but as a jour-
nalist for the foreign as well as the Greek press, as an administrator, and as
a part-time academic teaching Greek philology at the Sorbonne. His first
major orchestral composition was a lively (mainly 5/8) Klephtic Dance,
composed in 1922. It was one of the very few works he did not destroy in
1926, and it stands as a stylistic reference point in his music, echoed in
several later works, notably the first movement of his Piano Concerto. As
the purgation of 1926 indicates, Petridis entered a new creative phase at
that time, beginning with his First Symphony (192628). The broadly neo-
classical, contrapuntally driven, and modally shaped idiom of this work
is characteristic of much of his inter-war music, closer to Roussel than to
Stravinsky.
From this point onwards Petridis made a distinctive contribution to
the national school, allowing his engagement with post-Byzantine reper-
tories to extend beyond the apotheotic references we can find in numer-
ous Greek compositions (especially in finales) to the point where it could
influence harmonic structure at deeper levels, partly based on a personal
systematisation of Greek modes. This is evident in the modalities (com-
plete with ison) used in sacred works such as the Byzantine Sacrifice and
oratorio Saint Paul, and in epic symphonic compositions. A good example
is his Fourth (Dorian) Symphony, composed during the 1940s. This work
really does represent a kind of synthesis of traditions, and it is the more
persuasive because it effects the transition in precise technical ways. In
other words, the middle ground between two different worlds Byzantine
and European is explored by means of transformational procedures that
are built into the substance of the musical argument.
It is tempting to set Petridiss Fourth Symphony alongside Kalomiriss
earlier Levendia Symphony. Again there is a political resonance it is
avowedly a musical response to the years of occupation and resistance
and again the tone is heroic; in a note on the work, Petridis actually used
the term levendia in relation to the first movement. Moreover both sym-
phonies culminate in a Byzantine hymn. But the comparison is revealing
only of surfaces. In the Dorian Symphony, as elsewhere, Petridis avoided
the big, gestural writing characteristic of Kalomiris. He preferred to build
intensity curves by controlling the density of information in a work, nota-
bly through the rigorous contrapuntal working that seems to have repre-
sented his most natural expressive mode. His love of counterpoint (the
fully worked fugue in the scherzo of the symphony), taken together with
variation technique (the finale) and cathartic chorales (again the finale),
 join the club 321

suggests an affinity with Reger (he studied in Leipzig), and this is rein-
forced by works such as the two Chorales and Variations on Byzantine
Themes.
Yet Petridis stood apart from this world too. Partly due to its Byzan-
tine inflection, his voice remained a distinctive one in the chorus of the
national school. It is an obvious irony attaching to schools of any kind
that they are usually defined by one or two distinctive voices. The com-
posers who determine the collective category, in short, also transcend it.
The lasting importance of Kalomiris, and perhaps also of Petridis, has in
the end little to do with their allegiance to a national school whose foun-
dations were anything but firm, and everything to do with their artistic
individuality and quality. And in this respect one other composer can
stand alongside them.
The music of Emilios Riadis (18851935) may indeed be the strongest
of all, though it has come down to us in such a confused state that much
of it is only available in reconstructions. Riadis stands apart for another
reason. He was the one composer linked to the national school who hailed
from what would become the northern Greek territories. He was born into
the Greek community of Ottoman Salonica, and from an early age was
involved with the nationalist struggle there. Mark Mazower has noted that
European fashions and ethnonational tensions developed simultaneously
among the Salonican bourgeoisie in the last quarter of the nineteenth
century.32 The multiple languages came to be freighted with ideology, and
the city became a focus for both religious and ethnic struggle, before it
became Greek Salonica in the wake of the Balkan Wars. The subsequent
Muslim exodus and the population exchange a decade later completed
that task (and the uprooting of the Jews from the city centre following the
Great Fire of 1917 is another part of the story).
The city, in a word, was hellenised. Already in the late nineteenth cen-
tury initiatives from the Greek community had contributed to the gradual
development of a formal musical culture. Ioannis Belonis has summarised
some of the institutions involved at the turn of the century, includ-
ing cultural societies and related educational programmes.33 The most
important was the Papafeio Orphanage, founded in 1903, but during the
second decade several private conservatories were also founded. Venize-
los, whose provisional government was established in Salonica in 1916 in

32Mazower 2005.
33Belonis 2009.
322 chapter twelve

opposition to Old Greece and the Royals, was himself supportive of these
developments, recognising the importance of raising the cultural level of
the northern territories. And we might add that following the catastrophe
the influx of refugees, traumatic as it was, brought a new potential taste
public in the form of middle-class, educated Greeks from Asia Minor.
In 1915 Riadis returned to Salonica, where he had originally studied
with Dimitrios Lalas a one-time associate of Wagner after seven years
study abroad, first in Munich (190810) and then in Paris (191015).34 He
became a professor of piano at the newly established State Conserva-
tory, but that aside, relatively little is known of his life. His erudition was
considerable an interest in oriental cultures enabled him to give lec-
tures on Chinese music, ancient Egyptian music, Japanese poetry and the
like and his credentials as a published poet were high too. It seems
that he rather promoted the aura of mystery that surrounded him, and it
may well be that his singular personality, narcissistic but deeply insecure,
not only shaped his music, but was partly responsible for the chaos of
the manuscript legacy.35 It seems possible that for Riadis an exotic vie
intrieure of mainly oriental provenance was primarily a means of distanc-
ing the immediacy of life.
That inner world was given expression in both the imagery and the
musical language of many of his songs, but it also permeated the chamber
works, whose qualities are becoming increasingly clear to us thanks to
the discoveries of Leotsakos, together with the reconstructive surgery of
Fivos Anoyanakis, Byron Fidetzis and Nikos Christodoulou.36 The prob-
lem here is that there is often no single fair copy of a work, but rather a
plethora of versions, whose chronology is not always clear.37 For Riadis, a
perfectionist and an intensely self-critical musician, composition did not
come easily.
We may begin with the songs, which were admired by Kalomiris himself,
and which occupy a very special corner of Greek art music. Even a glance

34Lalas is an intriguing figure, not least because much of his music was destroyed by
a torpedo in 1917. There are references to his words with Wagner in Cosima Wagners
diaries, notably on the relationship between ancient and modern Greeks.
35George Leotsakos presents a finely balanced and instructive essay on the composer
in Leotsakos 2005b.
36Ibid. See also the notes by Leotsakis and Byron Fidetzis on the Lyra CDs of Riadiss
music, notably Lyra CD 0718 and Lyra CD 0116.
37Much of this material has now been digitised and is available to view online at the
Lilian Voudouris Music Library of Greece at the Megaron in Athens. It includes manu-
script material related to the three string quartets and the cello sonata.
 join the club 323

at the titles of some of the published songs indicates synergies between

east and west: Chansonette orientale; Jasmins et minarets; Cinq chansons
macdoniennes; Treize petites mlodies grecques; Nine Short Greek Songs,
which include portraits of Turkish, Egyptian, Albanian and Patras women
(four texts by Pallis), as well as a song to Kambyssiss Erofili. Musically,
too, Riadis draws together more successfully, I believe, than any other
Greek composer elements from demotic, oriental and Byzantine tradi-
tions, forging them into a musical language that can signify diverse cul-
tural landscapes while remaining essentially unified.
Riadis has been described as a Greek Musorgsky, but if we are to invoke
a Russian aesthetic at all, this can only be half the story.38 It is true that
the harmonic opacities, and the realistic musical mapping of speech
rhythms and inflections, do echo Musorgsky, and in some songs there
is a comparably dark tone of psychological realism, making strange the
conventional gesture. Yet another side of Russian music, represented by
Rimsky-Korsakov, also casts a shadow, especially on those songs where
the real serves as a foil for a world of fantasy and imagination, a non-
reality encapsulated in oriental themes and treatments. Debussy likewise
inherited these two very different facets of the Russian tradition, and
there are good arguments for situating Riadis in relation to a Debussyan
aesthetic. When Debussy lost faith in his own interior landscape, neces-
sary though it was to his creativity, he went on to treat it ironically. It is
distinctly possible that Riadis was tortured by a similar loss of faith in the
exotic in the face of impinging realities, though perhaps without finding
any resolution. This would go some way towards explaining why composi-
tion remained for him a deeply problematic activity.
In his Nine Short Greek Songs, a folksong-derived idiom forms a refer-
ence point, but it never becomes the sole or dominant character. Like-
wise oriental inflections are often present, but they are integrated within
the musical flow, accommodated rather than set apart. A case in point is
the last song, Maid going to the fountain to a text by Riadis, where a folk-
song idiom depicts the maiden and restrained oriental roulades are asso-
ciated with the seduction. Contrasted modalities are employed, but in the
end the two worlds are subordinated to the continuity provided first by
realistic speech rhythms in the vocal line and then by a stratified piano
accompaniment, with stable pedal-note platforms, an intricate, diversified

38In some pieces, notably his Five Dance Songs, Riadis almost approaches the Stravin-
sky of works such as Pribaoutki.
324 chapter twelve

harmonic layer, and a fragmentary melodic layer echoing vocal motives.

There are moments of periodicity in the song, but equally moments where
the main shaping element is an expressive imperative linked to speech
inflection and mood.
Other songs work with similar ingredients in variations on a realist
theme. If the first song, Widow, intensifies the dramatic realism, the
four settings of Pallis, all genre portraits of women, add a lighter element
of pictorial realism. The first two of these, Turkish woman and Egyp-
tian woman, have oriental settings, but are no more explicitly oriental
in musical idiom than Albanian woman and Girl from Patras (note the
aman aman of popular song in this sophisticated harmonic context).
Intertexts are intriguing. To compare Riadiss setting of Albanian woman
with the one by Napoleon Lambelet is to glimpse in an instant the con-
trasted geo-musical worlds that lie behind these two composers. But even
more interesting is a comparison between Riadiss delicately orientalised,
parlando setting of Yannakiss final song to Erofili and the more sustained,
conventionally expressive, but no less beautiful, version of the same text
at the end of Kalomiriss Dahtylidi tis manas. To listen to both is to hear
the very best of Greek art music.
Riadis is slowly emerging from the mists. Like the best of Kalomiris,
but without the high-flown, overwrought qualities that can make some of
Kalomiris rather unfashionable today, his chamber music gives authentic
expression to the project of transition that enabled significant music in
South East Europe in a modernist age. The harmonic world of Ombres
macdoniennes [Macedonian Shadows] for two pianos (1912) is truly unlike
any other. This is apparent right from its opening bars, which announce
that world but at the same time contain it in compressed form. But it is
the slow movement that is the real kernel of this work. The harmonisation
of its folk-like melody welds the Hicz tetrachord firmly to European mod-
ernist harmony, transcending the exotic and generating its unique har-
monic world on a territory of in-between, a territory further explored and
amplified in the outer movements. As George Leotsakos aptly remarks,
Riadis explores [this] harmonic climate as if he wishes to transcend the
inherent impossibility of a tempered instrument such as the piano to
perform micro-intervals.39
Of the other works, we might single out the First String Quartet, like-
wise exploring folk motives and modalities, and in a context that is both

39In the liner note to Lyra CD 0116.

 join the club 325

expansive (the work lasts forty minutes) and compressed (the motivic
material is taut and economical, with accompaniments part of the
motivic substance of the music). The influence of modern French music
(Ravel) is more apparent here, but it should not be over-stressed, for it is
transformed by its contact with traditional Greek-oriental materials. Even
where the vocabulary is familiar, the syntax is new, so that we look afresh
at the conventional triad and the pedigreed accompaniment figure. There
is a unity of thematic substance that crosses the boundaries of individual
movements, but this alone cannot account for the capacity of this music
to engage us to the end. Every detail is arresting, and those points where
the idioms of traditional music emerge into the foreground the closing
sections of both the second movement and the finale are invested with
the power of an apotheosis.

Another Way: The Failure of Greek Modernism

It feels entirely appropriate to discuss Riadis alongside the canonic fig-

ures of European modernism. Along with the songs and at least two of
the operas by Kalomiris, his best music stands on a par with the more
highly-valued achievements of a small cluster of early twentieth-century
composers usually associated with a nationalist aesthetic in East Central
Europe. Yet and this strengthens the parallel it stakes its claim on us
today precisely because the nationalism was subsumed by aesthetic proj-
ects we might more easily describe as modernist. Riadiss achievement
established points of contact with the realism of Janek, for example,
as also with the conquest of the exotic we associate with Szymanowski,
and with the East-West synthesis characteristic of Enescu and of Bartk
himself.
Nationalism was the trigger for a musical awakening all over Eastern
Europe (including Greece) at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. But in the end it was not nationalism but its legacy that gave
to the music of this region its very particular character. This is appar-
ent in the attitude of all these composers, including Riadis, to traditional
music. For Riadis, the demotic music of Greece and Asia Minor was not
an agent of romantic nostalgia, nor yet a musical symbol of national heri-
tage gathering. Rather it played a role not unlike that of multiple agrarian
musics in Bartk, effecting a transition between different cultural worlds,
and forging on the territory of transition a new and integrated musical
language. Moreover, whether or not he thought in these terms, Riadiss
326 chapter twelve

music achieved a synthesis that did not hide the fractured character of
its components. In short, the modernist credentials of his music are not
really in doubt.
There is a more prosaic dimension to this. The national school was a
chimera in musical terms. Nevertheless, the Kalomiris ideal and the poli-
tics it engendered were powerfully controlling, and it was very difficult for
a Greek composer to make any impact from outside the charmed circle.
There were of course dissenting voices.40 Indeed the polemic was stri-
dent. But the arguments were mainly about opposing models of Greek-
ness, with Lambelets elegant articles in Mousika chronika proposing a
purer, un-Germanised Greek lyric idiom. With a few exceptions, what
we do not get are the polemics about the new found in Yugoslav journals
at the time. Kalomiriss nationalism was essentially a nineteenth-century
brand, remaining at some distance from the kind of Greekness identified
by the thirties generation of writers and artists, for example. But there
was in any case no doubt about where the power lay.
The classic case of the outsider was Nikos Skalkottas, who studied in
Berlin with Weill, Jarnach and Schoenberg, and attacked the Kalomiris
agenda during his last years there in Mousiki zoi [Musical Life]. Mainly
this followed a concert in Athens in 1930 at which his Concerto for Wind
Orchestra (now lost) was performed to a hostile reception, and when he
returned to Greece in 1933 he was either ignored or reviled. Kalomiris
wrote disparagingly about Skalkottas in Ethnos, though later he would
express posthumous appreciation.41 The highest praise accorded Skalkot-
tas was for works such as the 36 Greek Dances. And it is true that he not
only wrote about demotic music with enthusiasm, but also transcribed it
for the folklorist Melpo Merlier, and appropriated it in several composi-
tions. Aside from the dances, conceived in Berlin in 1931, several of his bal-
let scores and some of his piano pieces incorporate traditional songs and

40See Parpara 2007.

41 Music criticism in Greece is a subject arcane to most. The major journal was Phorm-
inx, inaugurated in 1901, with Psakhos as the main critic, and ending in 1912. Later Nea
phorminx was established, dealing mainly with Byzantine issues. We might mention also
Apollon, with its western orientation, and also Pachtikoss Mousiki (191215), which dealt
with all kinds of music, including Byzantine. In the inter-war period a major journal was
Mousika chronika, with Lambelets agenda to the fore. Mousiki zoi was also active at this
time, with Kalomiris, Mitropoulos and Varvoglis all writing. In addition to special music
journals, music was discussed in the literary journal Noumas and in the daily newspaper
Ethnos. Nea estia [New Hearth] was inaugurated in 1927, with a principal focus on litera-
ture but including reviews of music.
 join the club 327

dances. But with a few exceptions his major instrumental works, whether
tonal or atonal, avoid such references. For the difficult modernist works
there was no sympathetic ear in Greece. Skalkottas chose another way,
and was forced into isolation, though it is possible to overstate this; he
was certainly not the only Greek composer to encounter difficulties in
securing performances.
He had been preceded in Berlin by the slightly older Dimitri Mitrop-
oulos, whose own creative activities, eclipsed by his later reputation as a
conductor, were of major significance. The bulk of Mitropouloss music
was composed during the 1920s, while Skalkottas did his most productive
work in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and it is usual to consider them
together. However, it is over-simple to represent them as a unified opposi-
tion to the aesthetics of the National School. Mitropoulos was involved in
pro-nationalist polemics while in Athens, and several of his early works
might well be regarded as among the finest products of Greek national-
ism in just the sense that Kalomiris understood it. It was when he arrived
in Berlin in 1921 that he found a new orientation, thanks mainly to his
contact with Busoni. It is often claimed that Busonis unflattering remarks
on the Greek Sonata, composed in 1920, proved so devastating to Mitro-
poulos that he was unable to compose until his return to Athens in 1924.
Whatever the truth of that, it was the neo-Baroque atonal idiom he devel-
oped at that time that invites an association with Skalkottas.
These two composers, taken together, produced a corpus of modernist
music that had little or no impact in Greece until after World War II. The
story is of course different today. Partly in the wake of a more general
post-war rehabilitation of serial music and a corresponding rejection of
the national school, Skalkottas started to gain posthumous support among
small groups of Greek critics (the very same critics who had damned him
during his lifetime) and scholars (the musicologist John G. Papaioan-
nou was key) as well with expatriate Greeks and those with a particular
interest in the Schoenberg legacy (there are some parallels with the rein-
vestigation of Bartk in Hungary and of Enescu in Romania, despite the
different political contexts). The result was that as Kalomiriss star faded,
that of Skalkottas shone more brightly, and Greek musicologists weaved
him into the national history. The tables had turned, and the balance was
lost again, with the national school now denigrated for its aesthetic defi-
ciencies and anachronism.42

42Konstantinou 2004.
328 chapter twelve

As for Mitropoulos, his more modest output is just now undergoing

re-evaluation. Some of his early piano compositions, especially the
Scherzo Fte Crtoise (1919) and the Greek Sonata, are really highly
accomplished pieces in the idiom of turn-of-the-century pianism. How-
ever, a new stage in Mitropouloss creative life was reached with his
Passacaglia Intermezzo e Fuga of 1924. Here there was a marked shift in
harmonic language, a new departure, largely a result of his engagement
with Busonis music in Berlin. From the austere, relentless tread of the
Passacaglia (7/4 metre), on which are built dissonant strata of ever greater
complexity, through the mercurial will-o-the-wisp of the Intermezzo to the
angular Fuga, whose three intertwining voices have all but lost touch with
any stable tonal foundation, this work establishes textures of a remarkable
density of information and articulates gestures of considerable rhetori-
cal power. The dissonant counterpoint here stems from Busoni, but there
are affinities too with Bartk Bagatelles and even explicit intertexts with
Schoenbergs Op.11 Piano Pieces.
In 1927 Mikropoulos turned (in one work only) to a primitive form of
twelve-note technique. He had returned to Greece in 1924, and his Osti-
nata in tre parti for violin and piano was composed in 1927, two years after
Schoenbergs first completely twelve-note composition, the Suite, Op. 25.
Skalkottas, in contrast, was just beginning to find his way as a composer
at this time. In the early Berlin years he had composed a few piano and
chamber works in a loosely tonal style. The Solo Violin Sonata of 1925 and
the Sonatina for Piano of 1927 represented culminating points of this early
development. It was also in 1927 that he began his studies with Schoen-
berg after two years with Philipp Jarnach, and his own early proto-serial
composition, the 15 Little Variations for Piano, dates from the same year.43
1927 thus represents a point of convergence for the two composers, as the
Ostinata and the Variations both explore very simple forms of proto-serial
writing in a neo-baroque formal context.
Before composing the Ostinata Mitropoulos had already completed his
Ten Inventions on Poems of Cavafy, and he went on to tackle his Concerto
Grosso a year later in 1928.44 This was his only orchestral composition
apart from the very early programmatic piece Tafi [Burial] (1915). It reno-
vates the baroque genre by using different instruments as the concertino

43One other Greek composer, Harilaos Perpessas (190795), studied with Schoenberg
at this time; his music is in an expanded tonal idiom somewhat akin to Skryabin.
44For an excellent discussion of the Inventions, see Haris Xanthoudakiss introduction
to Mitropoulos 2010.
 join the club 329

in each of the four movements, while the strings function as the ripieno
throughout, and also by investing the gestures associated with the formal
archetypes with fresh meaning. Thus the rhythmic profile of the French
Overture is unmistakable in the opening Largo movement, while the sec-
ond movement uses a fugato technique in a predominantly 7/8 rhythm,
and the third is an extended chorale animated by contrapuntal working.
In the finale, the sound world changes, as piano and percussion enter for
the first time. Here Mitropoulos turns to traditional music, using a dance
melody from Kythera as the basis of a fugue. This, however, is anything
but conventional pastiche. The presentation of the theme in cluster for-
mations may seem an alienating device, but it is in fact a logical conclu-
sion of the intervallic argument of the work, where parallelism is applied
to progressively diminishing intervals from movement to movement.
The Concerto Grosso was performed in Berlin in 1930, at a concert in
which Mitropoulos also performed Prokofievs Third Piano Concerto as a
last-minute replacement for Egon Petri. His success as a conductor and
pianist eclipsed his compositional achievement on that occasion, and
while the Concerto Grosso was not quite the end of his activity as a com-
poser, it was his last major composition before he embarked on his career
as an eminent conductor. In contrast, Skalkottass 1930 concert, at which
his Concerto for Winds was introduced to Athens, marked just the begin-
ning of an arduous compositional road, on which the next major land-
mark was his First Piano Concerto (1931). This was followed by several
years of creative silence during which he endured a personal as well as
a creative crisis. But when the deadlock was released in 1935, two years
after his return to Athens, Skalkottas produced an unending stream of
music for the remainder of his short life, in difficult circumstances and in
the knowledge that he would almost certainly never hear the more com-
plex and technically difficult music. William Trotter quotes Mitropoulos
on this climate and its impact on Skalkottas: They killed him, you know,
Skalkottas, they killed him. And if I hadnt left, they would have killed
me too.45
The commitment and determination shown by Skalkottas the sense
of creative necessity may be reminiscent of Schoenberg, but Skalkottas
was not on an exclusively serial road. Throughout his mature years as a
composer, he wrote tonal, atonal and serial music, and without any sense
that he valued any one type more highly than the others. That said, it was

45Trotter 1995, 75.

330 chapter twelve

the modernist music that defined him in Greek eyes and ears, not least
because his primary posthumous advocate, the musicologist John G. Papa-
ioannou, sought to project him exclusively as a modern European figure.
Much of the modernist music is missing, but beginning with the third and
fourth sonatinas for violin and piano of 1935 there is a substantial corpus
of major chamber works (string quartets, piano trios, solo piano works),
orchestral music (suites, concertos, and overtures), stage music and songs.
In 193536 alone he produced the two sonatinas, the Third String Quartet
and String Trio, the Concertino for Two Pianos, the Suite No. 1 for Piano,
and the Piano Trio. In addition he completed the 36 Greek Dances. One is
reminded of the prolixity of Schoenbergs first atonal year (190809).
There are several analytical commentaries on Skalkottass dodecaphonic
music.46 But it might be noted here that right from its inception, dode-
caphony served any number of creative needs. Even the Viennese trin-
ity employed the method to radically different ends, and later composers
drew on these primary models and extended them in diverse ways. In the
case of most middle-generation serialists we can detect a clear evolution
of style and technique, and to a large extent this was true for Skalkottas
too. However, the lifelong inspiration was Schoenberg, and specifically the
Schoenberg of the late 1920s. This is not so much a matter of serial tech-
nique as of style and aesthetic. The nuts and bolts of Skalkottass serialism
were in fact quite different from Schoenbergs. He employed his rows in a
distinctive manner, working with multiple, motivically related rows, and
often reserving transformations (notably retrogrades; he rarely used trans-
positions or inversions) for formal functions where the effect is distinctly
audible. But on a deeper level he remained committed to the Schoen-
bergian ideal of dodecaphony as a mode of neo-classicism, a means of
renewing the classical past. In a way the world of early serial Schoenberg
entered a kind of time capsule in a culturally isolated Athens.
We might take the First Piano Suite as a starting point, since it was
one of the works associated with his renewed creative activity in 1935
36. Inevitably it evokes Schoenbergs Op. 25. Consider the two Preludes.
Skalkottass way is to expose no fewer than eight separate twelve-note
rows at the outset, a prolixity that replaces the more conventional trans-
formations of a single row that we associate with Schoenberg. But beyond
this essential difference, we may note that the processes of segmentation

46See the relevant studies in Katy Romanous bibliography (Romanou 2009b). The
major work in English is Mantzourani 2011.
 join the club 331

and the neo-baroque contrapuntal layering of segments are strikingly

similar in both movements. It is interesting to pursue these analogies.
Just like Schoenberg in the mid 1920s, Skalkottas in the mid 1930s moved
between neo-baroque suites and chamber works that attempt to restate
in serial terms the basic elements of the three- or four-movement classi-
cal sonata cycle. Thus the Third String Quartet, not unlike Schoenbergs
own Third Quartet, presents a serial reworking of sonata form and rondo
in its outer movements, and displays a panoply of broadly neo-classical
gestures, textures and phraseologies. And much the same might be said of
the Piano Trio, though the slow movement of this work foreshadows the
expressive power we associate with some of Skalkottass final works.
If we continue mapping Skalkottas works onto corresponding Schoen-
berg works, the Violin Concertos and Fourth String Quartets would offer
easy pickings; the Skalkottas quartet (1940) in particular seems to follow
rather closely the Schoenbergian model, especially in the slow move-
ment variations and in the finale, one of the most exciting movements
he had written until that point. These two works marked a step change
in the evolution of Skalkottass music, just as the corresponding works
did for Schoenberg. There is an enhanced expressive lyricism in both
the Schoenberg and the Skalkottas concertos, as there is a fiercer goal-
directed momentum in their two quartets. Both Skalkottas works achieve
an architectural breadth and a supra-serial thematic (and contrapuntal)
coherence that was not always so apparent in earlier works. And in this
respect they look ahead to the major orchestral pieces of his final years,
the Largo Sinfonica and The Return of Ulysses, whose final form as an
extended, quasi-symphonic overture is perhaps his masterpiece. The angu-
lar, spiky neo-classicism of the early dodecaphonic works is here replaced
by the more cumulative, sweeping progressions that we associate with
symphonic breadth and mastery. It seems almost incredible that Skalkot-
tas heard not a note of these or other major modernist works. Right to the
end, he embodied for Greek critics the invasion of the barbarians.47 We
will be reminded of Cavafy. Greek music needed its barbarians.

47This was the highly influential critic Sophia Spanoudi, writing anonymously in
response to the 1930 concert in Athens (Belonis 2009).
 CHAPTER THIRTEEN

MODERNA

Garlands: Stevan Mokranjac

There are several reasons to give Stevan Stojanovi Mokranjac pride of

place in any narrative we might construct of Serbian music history. First
there was his role in consolidating a distinctive tradition of Serbian church
music, a tradition that already during his lifetime signified the spiritual
nation. His first book of church melodies (Octoechos) was published in
1908, and subsequent notations were published posthumously.1 Most were
drawn from the oral tradition, and whatever view we take of Mokranjacs
understanding of the modal structure of the chants and of the ornamental
practice of rural traditions, we can be in no doubt of the symbolic signifi-
cance of these notations for the nation. In addition, Mokranjac composed
a corpus of original sacred music in a polyphonic style somewhat indebted
to Cecilian traditions (he was known as the Serbian Palestrina).
Second there was his elevation of the traditional agrarian music of
Serbian people wherever they might be found, partly through collecting
activities (notably in Leva and Kosovo),2 and partly through the compo-
sition of the fifteen choral suites to which he gave the name rukoveti [gar-
lands], comprising a total of eighty-two songs. Stana Djuri-Klajn reminds
us of the associations of this title with agrarian communities (that which
can be grasped by one hand at harvest), but it also forges links with choral
traditions beyond Serbia.3 And that leads to the third point, which under-
lies the other two. Mokranjac was committed to choral music, both com-
positionally and through his work as conductor of the trademark Belgrade
Choral Society, with which he undertook numerous tours both within Ser-
bia and beyond its frontiers. As noted earlier, in 1878 he gave a historical
concert to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Society, with the title
Istorija Srpske pesme [The History of Serbian Song].

1 See the chapters by Ivana Perkovi-Radak, Vesna Peno and Nataa Dimi in Popovi-
Mlaenovi and Perkovi-Radak 2006.
2Konjovi 1984, 4447.
3See, for example, Karnes 2005.
 moderna 333

In sustaining our historical narrative we might draw a line backwards

from Mokranjac to Kornelije Stankovi, a composer whose pioneering
work in these same three fields has already been discussed. That Mokranjac
marked an advance in artistic quality was partly due to the different evolu-
tionary stages of a national musical culture in the making, but it was also
because he was, quite simply, a more gifted composer. It is true that he
worked within a limited generic and expressive range, seldom venturing
beyond choral music, and restricting his folksong treatments to refined
but hardly adventurous harmonisations. But his settings were invariably
sensitive to the latent properties of the originals, and he developed an
original approach to formal design based on the juxtaposition of textural
and expressive contrasts. Although the rukoveti are really pot-pourris, the
best of them and commentators seem agreed that the tenth has special
qualities have an architectural logic and an expressive variety that tran-
scend the usual limitations of this genre.
There were other factors separating Mokranjac from his predecessor,
stemming directly from the difference in generations. The career profile of
Stankovi was typical of the Serbian intelligentsia of the mid nineteenth
century, in that he was a product of the cultural capitals of central Europe.
Born in Buda, he studied in Vienna and lived among the pan-Slavic com-
munity there, though travelling extensively within the Serbian lands. Only
in the later years of his short life did he settle in Belgrade. Mokranjac,
on the other hand, was born in Negotin in central Serbia, and his early
years were spent there, in nearby Zajear, and in Belgrade. In his twenties
he studied abroad, with brief stays in Munich and Rome, and a two-year
period in Leipzig, but otherwise he was rooted in Serbia.
We might draw a different line, this time across political borders to
connect up with another South Slav tradition. There are parallels between
Mokranjacs achievements and those of Dobri Hristov (18751941) in Bul-
garia. Like Mokranjac, Hristov turned to the music of Orthodoxy, and
was exercised by just how far one might speak of a distinctive Bulgar-
ian chant, seizing on the so-named Bolgarski rospev discovered among
Russian manuscripts (see chapter 9), and establishing through his own
harmonisations (notably his Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom) a prototype
for a national church music. Like Mokranjac, moreover, he made creative
use of traditional music. His two choral potpourris of the late 1890s (Lili-
yana moma hubava [Beautiful Liliyana] and Pusti momi jeravnenki [The
Girls from Jeravna]) are analogous to the rukoveti, and they were followed
by his Balkanski pesni [Balkan Songs] in 1913, and by numerous arrange-
ments of songs from Macedonia, the Rhodopes and central Bulgaria in the
334 chapter thirteen

post-war years. They included the anthem of Bulgarian choirs Rodna pesen
nas navek ni svarzva [Native Song forever binds us together].
Several of these songs employ the signature asymmetrical rhythms
so often associated with Bulgarian-Macedonian traditional music; and,
again like Mokranjac, Hristov was a scholar of this music as well as a
composer,4 believing that only music steeped in national traditions could
achieve international stature. A more immediate political context was
also invoked of course, and the date of the Balkanski pesni is significant,
given the fate of Bulgaria after the Balkan Wars, just as the collections of
the 1920s might be linked to its fate during World War I. Finally, Hristov
was as committed as Mokranjac to choral music as a medium for both
church- and folk-based composition, and no less active in promoting the
choral tradition on institutional levels; it was due to his initiative that the
Union of Bulgarian Choirs was established in 1926. There was more to
Hristov than this brief summary suggests. But my purpose is to establish
a parallel.
That parallel can lead us to other reflections. When Serbs looked east
they saw a people speaking a different language and with divergent political
interests, but with the same script, the same Orthodox faith and orientation
to Russia, and a shared cultural history stemming from several centuries
of Ottoman rule. When they looked west they saw a people with similar
origins and language, but separated by script, faith, and a cultural history
plugged in to the larger narratives of the Venetian or the Habsburg empires.
A counterfactual could be tempting here: in a word, a different Yugoslavia.5
Such an exercise helps us to see just how far cultural alignments were sub-
ordinate to political expediency in South East Europe, and that in turn may
suggest one reason why the real Yugoslavia failed to take in the way that
Germany did, or Italy.6
Culturally, the Yugoslav idea was both amorphous and ambitious, given
the mix of cultures, ethnicities and faiths that were to be embraced. Yet
it was an idea to which many artists were sympathetic. In the end some
form of South Slav unification (excluding Bulgaria)7 became a political

4The major texts are Hristov 1913 and 1928.

5Already in 1804 Jovan Jovanovi, the Serbian bishop of Novi Sad, advanced a peti-
tion for a so-called Serbo-Bulgarian state, embracing much of the Ottoman territory in
the Balkans.
6Ironically, as Wachtel points out (Wachtel 1998), the proto-Yugoslavs saw Italy as so
disunited that there seemed a good chance for Yugoslavia.
7Hopes of including Bulgaria were already diminished when Serbia, encouraged by
Austro-Hungary, declared war on Bulgaria in 1885; any remaining hope was shattered of
 moderna 335

necessity in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars and the events of World
War I. If these territories were not to be gobbled up by greater powers,
they had better get together. And, as we saw in chapter 9, that included
Slovenia, whose cultural traditions were yet further removed from those
of Serbia. It is little wonder that the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slo-
venes, later the first Yugoslavia, was rife with tensions from the start, with
Belgrade and Zagreb centralists and federalists, respectively in overt
competition. But who is to say that it would not have gelled finally, had its
fate not been sealed by the events of World War II?8 Political federations
of culturally disparate peoples can work. We have the evidence.
Mokranjacs rukoveti were composed during the Kingdom of Serbia, but
the fall-out from these pieces their reception, impact and immediate
effective history, to use the language of Gadamer belonged not to Ser-
bia but to the first Yugoslavia. Then, in the post-war years, the rukoveti
took on additional layers of meaning as they entered the very different
world of Titos Communist state. And finally, in more recent times, they
were made available again to an independent Serbia. It would be hard to
find a better case study in the poetics of reception history, as we track the
shifting dialogues that are enacted between a fixed historical moment of
inception and a later sequence of changing receptions.
Biljana Milanovi has written perceptively about this.9 We learn how
inter-war essays by Serbian authors reformulated Mokranjacs ideological
position first in terms of the nationalism of the United Serbian Youth,
then in accordance with a dual identity model (Serbia-Yugoslavia), and
finally in relation to a Marxist-inspired shift of emphasis from the nation
to the folk. These latter two readings became in turn the paradigms
for post-World War II monographs on Mokranjac, where it was expedi-
ent to stress both a unified Yugoslav nation and an ideology of folklore
allied to an aesthetic of realism. Then, in more recent writings (from 1990
onwards), there were attempts to re-define the national elements in his
music yet again, including a proposal that the national should be under-
stood in purely musical terms. In this way the rukoveti have threaded their
way through changing political, social and cultural formations, attaching

course by the Second Balkan War. However, as late as 1912 the influential composer Miloje
Milojevi argued for a Yugoslavia that included Bulgaria.
8Lampe 2000, 46.
9In an as yet unpublished text, Past Musicological Discourses regarding National Iden-
tification of Mokranjacs Work, read at the conference The Composer and his Environment.
On the occasion of the 175th anniversary of Kornelije Stankovi and 150th anniversary of Ste-
van St. Mokranjac, Belgrade 911 November, 2006.
336 chapter thirteen

themselves to these formations in different ways, and adapting their own

semblance as they did so. They have been heard with different ears.
Modern reception histories often imply that contemporary readings
have no particular privilege, and that the meaning of the work is some-
thing that unfolds and develops throughout its subsequent reception right
down to the present. Milanovi, however, prefers to close the hermeneu-
tic circle, mapping these later receptions against some sense of a recov-
ered past. In another text, she makes some telling observations about the
selection of traditional melodies in the rukoveti, and about the itineraries
and associated repertory of the composers tours with the Belgrade Choral
Society.10 Each of these describes a particular symbolic geography. Con-
sider first the selection of traditional melodies. Milanovi observes that
the first of the rukoveti, Iz moje domovine [From my Homeland] of 1884,
makes use of melodies from the Kingdom of Serbia as it existed during
the composers lifetime, while in the cycles that followed the music was
drawn rather from diaspora Serbian populations in Kosovo and Macedo-
nia, in independent Montenegro and in a Bosnia and Herzegovina that
was at the time annexed by the Habsburgs.
What this amounts to is that the rukoveti defined imaginary borders,
at least some of which would in due course become real. Even the dates
of the respective rukoveti coincide neatly with strategic moves in Serbian
politics in relation to these territories. But if the rukoveti signify Serbian
nationalism in this way, the tours point directly to a future Yugoslavia.
The repertory selected for these tours (including Mokranjacs own Primor-
ski napevi [Songs from the Littoral]) seems designed expressly to confirm
a symbolic geography that opens out to embrace Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Montenegro, Croatia-Dalmatia and Slovenia, uniting the country before
it was created. Taken together, the rukoveti and the tours represent two
ideological positions that for Mokranjac, as for many Serbian artists at the
time, were complementary rather than contradictory.
We are presented with a kind of slippage between the political and
cultural dimensions of Yugoslavia. Mokranjac was regarded during his
lifetime as a leading Serbian proponent of the South Slav cultural move-
ment. His collection and appropriation of folksong was part of that wider
movement, for since at least the mid nineteenth century folksong was
hardly less important than linguistic reform in promoting the Yugoslav
idea. Andrew Wachtel has demonstrated this, and has further documented

10Milanovi 2006.
 moderna 337

how cultural collaborations laid some of the foundations for political uni-
fication in the years leading up to World War I.11 In the visual arts, there
was the Lada Federation (which included Bulgaria) and the First Yugoslav
Colony, while in literature there was the South Slavic Literary Association,
with seats in Belgrade and Sofia, and the Srpski knjievni glasnik [Serbian
Literary Herald], which despite its title worked for South Slav collabo-
ration. Moreover, as Jelena Milojkovi-Djuri points out, the Sarajevo-
based Bosanska vila [Bosnian Fairy] also played its part in promoting the
Yugoslav idea.12
Wachtel also writes about the symbolic role of the Croatian sculptor
Ivan Metrovi for Yugoslavism, notably at the Rome Exposition of 1911.
However, such ideas of a common culture were sufficiently vague and
catch all to serve more than one political programme. In the end, it was
a Serbian centralist agenda, validated by the influential theories of Jovan
Cviji,13 that came to dominate the politics, and it was often Belgrade that
played the leading role in promoting cultural reciprocity too, including
music. A symbolic moment was the concert, A Yugoslav Evening, held in
1904 at the Belgrade National Theatre on the centenary of the uprising,
with Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Bulgaria all represented either by com-
posers or performers, but with Serbia taking the lead. Mokranjac was not
performed on that occasion, but his contemporary Josip Marinkovi had
two works played, including a choral piece Slavija that signified the wider
Yugoslav idea.
The concert opened with the overture Ljiljan i omorika [The Lily and
the Pine], composed by Stanislav Biniki (18721942) and conducted by
Petar Krsti (18771957). These two were the leading Serbian composers
of the generation of the 1870s, and both were active in the modernisation
of Belgrades musical life in the immediate pre-war years.14 In addition
to institutional development including the establishment of the second
(Stankovi) Music School and a prominent role assigned to music in the
National Theatre there were debates in the journals and at specially
convened conferences about the future of opera, the correct attitude to
folk music, the dialogue with Europe, and the place of the new. Krsti in

11Wachtel 1998.
12Milojkovi-Djuri 1988, 5166. The translation of vila as fairy scarcely does justice
to the resonance of this word in history, folklore and mythology.
13Cviji 1918.
14Binickis Mar na drinu [March to the Drina] was for a time widely popular; it is pres-
ent in numerous arrangements in the catalogues of every sound archive.
338 chapter thirteen

particular was active in these debates, which would become a marked

feature of the musical culture of the first Yugoslavia.
Yet there is a space separating the entrepreneurial activity and polemics
of Biniki and Krsti from their compositional styles and legacies. Stana
Djuri-Klajn classified these composers as part of a Belgrade School, by
analogy with the literary movement, partly because they appropriated the
sevdah and Rom styles of the city. This classification, which also separates
them from the Vienna-based Petar Stojanovi (18771957) and the Vojvo-
dina composer Isidor Baji (18781915), may seem a little crude today,
especially as there can be purposeful ambiguities in their representation
of Serbian and Turkish themes (this is true especially of Bajis Knez Ivo od
Semberije [Prince Ivo of Semberia], but also, to a lesser extent, of Binikis
Na uranku [At Dawn] and Krstis Zulumar). In truth, posterity has not
been kind to any of the composers from the generation of the 1870s,
though current musicological work might just do more than amplify the
footnotes, and their symbolic importance to a Serbian vision of Christian
Yugoslavia is not in question.15 Nonetheless, the consensus is that it was
left to a younger generation of composers, already active before the war,
to translate Belgrades cultural energy into a durable musical legacy.

One People, Three Names: The First Yugoslavia

From the start, the one people thesis was more sympathetic to Serbs
than to Croats and Slovenes (very crudely, the Yugoslav idea translated
into federalism in Zagreb and Ljubljana, and into centralism in Belgrade).
Zagreb and Ljubljana continued their own cultural activities unabated,
maintaining distinctive profiles within the larger Yugoslav frame. There
were indeed major differences of orientation underlying the attempts by
artists and critics to create a synthetic Yugoslav culture following the birth
of the post-war state. In his documentation of canon formation, collabora-
tion and bridge building in literature, the visual arts and cultural politics
generally, Wachtel is sensitive to these differences, and he is careful not to
underestimate the strength of Croatian and Slovenian cultural identities.16
The one difficulty with his book is its neglect of music, where it often
seems futile to try to pin down subject matter and style as Yugoslav, as
opposed to Serbian, Croatian or Slovenian.

15See, for example, the thesis on Stojanovi (Cvetkovi 2006).

16Wachtel 1998.
 moderna 339

Institutionally, there was a major impetus towards Yugoslav music.

One example was the unification of choral societies from all three nations
into a Yugoslav Choral Union in 1924, with the Mokranjac student Kosta
Manojlovi (18901949) as executive secretary.17 The first concert of Yugo-
slav choral music took place in 1926 and the first meeting of choral societies
from all over Yugoslavia was in 1929. These gestures were politically driven.
And in the same spirit the newly founded Belgrade Opera (1920) and
Belgrade Philharmonic (1923) fulfilled their obligations, with staffing and
programming policies nodding towards Croatia and Slovenia (in the 1930s
the Zagreb String Quartet visited Belgrade, and Croatian opera was per-
formed more often than Serbian).18 Zagreb also did its bit. It had its own
Opera, of course, and the Zagreb Philharmonic was founded in 1920 before
its Belgrade counterpart. Likewise, the Croatian Music Institute survived,
and its school of music became an independent Academy of Music with
university status in 1920. It also promoted a series of Intimne muzike
veeri [Intimate Musical Evenings] designed to promote Yugoslav music.19
There was a similar story in Ljubljana. We noted in chapter 9 the activi-
ties of the Glasbena Matica, founded as a Slovenian counterpart to the
Philharmonische Gesellschaft in 1872.20 Its Conservatory was established
in 1919 and became a State Conservatory in 1926. There was also the Slo-
vene (later Ljubljana) Philharmonic Orchestra, and a thriving Opera at the
Slovene Provincial Theatre, where native opera was performed. Under the
first Yugoslavia, not only did the Opera offer some of the most progressive
programmes in Yugoslavia; it also made a real attempt to represent com-
posers from Serbia and Croatia (Kotana by Petar Konjovi (18831970)
was staged in Ljubljana, for instance; likewise Adel i Mara by Josip Hatze
(18791959) and Morana by Jakov Gotovac (18951982)), as well as Slove-
nian operas by Risto Savin (18591948) (Lepa vida and Gosposvetski sen)
and Maciej Kogoj (18921956) (rne maske [Black Masks]).
All three cities had a developed musical culture, in other words. And all
three engaged in conversations about music through the several journals
that either survived from pre-war years or made their first appearances
during the inter-war period. In pre-World War II Serbia there was Srpski
knjievni glasnik [Serbian Literary Herald] (190114 and 192041), Muziki

17See Milojkovi-Djuri 1984, 3839.

18Milanovi 1998.
19With a more continuous history of music-making than Belgrade, Zagreb was regarded
by many as the musical centre of the new state (Dobroni 1926).
20It was formally disbanded in 1947 and re-opened only in 2004.
340 chapter thirteen

glasnik [Musical Herald] (1922), Muzika (192829), and then in the 1930s
Zvuk [Sound] (193236) and Slovenska muzika [Slavic Music] (193941).
In Zagreb there was the long-standing Sv. Cecilija (inaugurated in 1877),
Jugoslavenski muziar [Yugoslav Music] (1923 and 192841, as Muziar),
Glazbeni vjesnik [Musical Courier] (192731), the Marxist Muzika revija
[Music Review] (1932), and Sklad [Concord] (193245).21 And in Ljubljana
there were Novi akordi [New Chords] (19011914) and Nova muzika [New
Music] (192829), as well as specialist magazines such as Cerkveni glasbe-
nik [Church musician] (18781945).22
Leading composers took part in these polemics. As the music critic of
Srpski knjievni glasnik, and also of the daily Politika, Miloje Milojevi
(18841946) was prominent in Serbia, but Konjovi also participated, and
so did Manojlovi, Vojislav Vukovi (191042), and Stevan Hristi (1885
1958). In Croatia the key figures were Antun Dobroni (18781955) and
Boidar irola (18891956), along with the critics Rudolf Matz (190188),
Lujo afranek-Kavi (18821940) and Pavao Markovac (190341). In Slove-
nia, Anton Lajovic (18781960), Slavko Osterc and Marij Kogoj entered the
debate, as did the editor of Novi akordi, Gojmir Krek (18751942). Cultural
and political orientations among critics embraced conservative national-
ism, cosmopolitan eclecticism, modernism, and in due course committed
Marxism, the latter associated especially with the idealogues Vukovi
and Markovac. These two, Serbian and Croatian respectively, were unhap-
pily linked by the manner of their deaths. Vukovi, imprisoned in the
mid 1930s as a Communist, was murdered by the fascist police in Belgrade
in 1942 while in hiding; Markovac, a Jewish student of Guido Adler, was
killed by the Ustae while trying to escape from a concentration camp a
year earlier.
It is through debates in the press that we can most easily take the tem-
perature of musical life in the early days of the state, though the rise of
radio played a part in promoting Yugoslavism among the wider popu-
lation.23 The most immediately striking feature is the sense of urgency
attending the polemic, no doubt in recognition that the post-war settle-
ment represented a moment of political opportunity, and that music, like
the rest of the cultural world, had some obligation to respond. Composers

21For a full listing in Croatia, see Blaekovi 2002; also Majer-Bobotko 1992.
22A more comprehensive listing would include Laibacher Zeitung (17781914), Sloven-
ski narod (18681914), Slovenec (18731914), Ljubljanski zvon (18811914) and Dom in svet
(18881914). See OLaughlin 1978.
23iri 2004.
 moderna 341

and critics alike were concerned to find a way forward for Yugoslav music,
and as a result ideological questions loomed large. There was much dis-
cussion of nationalism, and of the particular qualities of Slavonic music,
with Russia and Prague (rather than Germany and Italy) held up as the
most suitable models for a Yugoslav music; the sense that music based on
Slavonic folk music might offer an alternative to West European models
was palpable.
It seems clear that while the majority of composers and critics were
comfortable with an ethnic identification as Slavonic in general and
Yugoslav in particular, they were not anxious to subordinate their sepa-
rate identities as Serbs, Croats or Slovenes. Invariably local nationalisms
raised their heads, and often in an explicitly competitive fashion. With
perfect irony, cultural competition between the three nations extended
even to an argument in the pages of Zvuk about who was doing most to
promote Yugoslavia by programming music from all three nations (we
are all Slavonic, but we are more Yugoslav than you!). According to one
Slovene, it was the weakest brother (i.e. the Slovene) who knock[ed]
hardest on the door of assimilation.24
Zvuk is of particular importance in tracking the polemic of the interwar
years, partly because, as Melita Milin has pointed out, it drew its author-
ship from all over the new state.25 As a result, the debates crossed borders,
and we can gain some impression of the leading concerns of composers,
performers and scholars from all three nations. One such concern was
a widely perceived crisis of opera, continuing a debate that had already
been active in the pre-war press. The symbolic value to the nation(s) of
this genre was not in question, especially when it turned to historical
or folkloric, or increasingly socialist-realist, themes. But there were real
questions about how the genre should be developed so that it might pay
its way and attract wider audiences. These questions gained a particular
urgency in the new state, which was concerned to build or consolidate
its cultural institutions at a time when the social function of music was
increasingly on the critical agenda.
The other major topics debated in Zvuk, and they are linked, were the
musical nation(s) and ideas of the new. Here the debates were revealing
of dilemmas of identity facing a younger generation of composers. Some

24Milin 2006.
25Ibid. Zvuk had a later incarnation as the quarterly periodical of the Yugoslav Union
of Composers published in Belgrade until 1967, and then in Sarajevo.
342 chapter thirteen

composers and critics opted for a conservative nationalism. This tendency

was favoured in Croatia, where composers were inclined to respond to
liberation by rejecting their central European inheritance (Ivan Zajc) in
favour of a neo-Illyrian idiom rooted in folk music, with Franjo Kuha as
a source of inspiration (but note that Kuha was as important for Serbs,
with whom he was in dialogue, as for Croats). Others favoured a more
cosmopolitan idiom, in the main conservative, but for a few composers
distinctly modernist in character. This broadly describes Slovenian music,
and some Croatian composers too. For those with Modernist leanings, the
imperative was not to hang on to an old (folkloric) picture, but to draw
a new picture; in other words to bring Yugoslav music up to date with a
European avant-garde. And finally there were those who straddled both
the nationalist and the modernist positions. This was especially true in
Serbia, where some composers adopted a nationalist, folk-based aesthetic,
others looked to European modernists, and yet others attempted to inte-
grate the two.
All these options were aired in the pages of Zvuk. Thus, the Slovenian
composer Slavko Osterc, in a review of operas by Konjovi and Gotovac,
distinguished between composers who turned to folk music in a natu-
ral, organic way, as an expression of true creativity (he counted Konjovi,
Anton Lajovic and Anton Dobroni among them), and those who merely
used it as a tool (and here he condemned Manojlovi, Matija Bravniar
(18971977) and Hatze). And in a separate communication he linked this
issue with modernity, criticising Croatian composers for allowing their
involvement with folk music to stand in the way of the new; they lacked,
as he saw it, the will to export. This elicited a long response from Antun
Dobroni, spread over two issues of the journal. Of all Yugoslav composers,
Dobroni was surely the one most committed to a unitarist Yugoslav
ideal. According to Dobroni it was necessary to bring into harmony [...]
two seemingly opposite elements: European musical skill and our musical
primitivism: European intellectualism and our sensibility.26 Whether he
achieved this ideal in his own music is of course another question. But in
light of this formulation, it is easy to see that he would have taken Ostercs
criticism badly.
In response he launched an attack on the cosmopolitan tendency in
some contemporary Yugoslav music, and proposed that only Croatians were
creating an authentically Yugoslav musical expression. The Slovenians, he
argued, ignored true Slavic sources and treated folk music in a manner too

26Dobroni 1933.
 moderna 343

close to the Austrians for comfort, while the Serbs ignored the true legacy
of Mokranjac (there was, incidentally, a separate debate published in part
in Slovenska muzika, in which Milojevi and Vukovi took opposing posi-
tions on the Mokranjac legacy).27 Among the most interesting remarks in
all these exchanges was one by Dobroni himself right at the end of his
communication, in which he claimed that there remained three separate
musical ideologies in Yugoslavia. Here, writing in the early 1930s, a lead-
ing proponent of the Yugoslav idea acknowledged that, in music at least,
there were still three peoples, not one people with three names. The musi-
cal nations were still divided, Dobroni claimed, and he was specific about
the nature of the divide. Only in Zagreb did he hear the authentic musi-
cal voice of Yugoslavia; Belgrade had lost its way by imitating the world
beyond, while Ljubljana wandered aimlessly.
There was further evidence of this divide in the daily press. Stanislav
Tuksar has trawled the newspapers for reviews of Josip Hatzes opera Adel
i Mara, which was given in rapid succession in Ljubljana, Belgrade and
Zagreb between November 1832 and March 1933, with a further perfor-
mance in Split in May.28 The sharpest opposition was between Ljubljana
and Belgrade. The Slovenian critics, recognising the conservative idiom
of the work, were nonetheless supportive, with one critic in particular
anxious to identify the style as ours, meaning Yugoslav. Interestingly,
he included those Mohammedans, [...] Yugoslav and very attractive,
referring here to Hatzes portrayal of the Bosnian Muslims by means of
the usual signifiers (Jerko Bezi remarked elsewhere that Adels song is
studded with augmented seconds).29 Among the Serbian critiques were
accounts by Manojlovi and Milojevi, both dismissive of the opera on
several grounds: its orchestration, its dramatic characterisation, and its
conservative orientation (Mr Hatze represents all that is accepted and
traditional, bringing nothing new).
But most interesting of all was the reaction in Zagreb and Split, where
the old-fashioned nature of the musical idiom was praised in some quar-
ters and condemned in others (one critic objected to a patronising ten-
dency to support native artists just because they are native). Even irola
damned with faint praise: Harmonically, Hatze offers nearly nothing new,
but he tastefully arranges melodies filled with the sunshine of the true

27These positions might be described as romantic and realist respectively. See

Milojkovic-Djuric 1984, 5460.
28Tuksar 1982.
29Bezi 1982.
344 chapter thirteen

vocal cantilena..... In summary, and this tells us more about the recep-
tional communities than about the opera, the Slovenes were tolerant of
Adel i Mara, the Serbs dismissive of it, and the Croats worried by it. But
they were all agreed about one thing; it was out of step with its time.

Late Arrivals: Croatian Modernisms

The debate between Dobroni and Osterc throws into relief the compet-
ing claims of the nation and the new. Yet even Osterc acknowledged that
in the right hands the two might be compatible. Close scrutiny of the
debates reveals that, exactly as in Greece, the issue was not just about
folk music but about defining a correct relationship to music beyond the
frontiers. The controlling assumption in Yugoslavia was that their music
had to catch up with developments elsewhere in Europe, with the strong
implication that value should be attached to the modern, the advanced,
the new. A modernist aesthetic, in other words, was the principal ref-
erence point for music in the inter-war years. Notions of lateness and
anachronism (a denial of coevalness) were accordingly prominent in the
discourses of Yugoslav critics and composers. The credo of several younger
composers was that in another place there was a progressive music spear-
heading musical culture into the future, and that they should be heading
rapidly in that direction, if not getting themselves to the front line.
Shortly I will argue that because of this attitude Yugoslav moderna was
literally a music in transition a transit to a known new is the language
I used in chapter 11 but prior to that it may be worth reflecting a little
on the inter-war debates from the perspective of today. In our present
intellectual climate, modernism is often identified as a closed, contingent,
historical moment. For this reason there may be options to rehabilitate
repertory that was considered unfashionably conservative in a modern-
ist age. In other words, we might accept more readily that the value of a
musical work can be separated from its aesthetic and stylistic allegiances.
If a composer is to interest us so the argument might run he/she must
have a voice that is distinctive, a voice of his/her own. But it may be a
conservative voice.
Eva Sedak, arguing for a more flexible understanding of periodisation
and style in Croatian music of the first half of the twentieth century, has
made two proposals that fall into line with this reading.30 One is that signs

30Sedak 2004.
 moderna 345

of the moderne were present in Croatian music of the inter-war period, but
not as a period style, nor even in association with a particular composer;
rather they took the form of particular manifestations scattered across
different composers and different aesthetic positions. I will return to this
later. Sedaks second proposal is that the broadly conservative orientation
of Croatian music allows for certain continuities between early twentieth-
century composers and our own age; it is the critical stance that changes,
from one of modernist opposition to one of postmodern acceptance.
This opens up the possibility that we might re-assess Croatian music of
the modernist era, and not just Croatian. The composers classified as the
generation of the 1870s in Serbia, briefly discussed earlier, are plausible
candidates. And in Slovenia there was a comparable generation, includ-
ing Gojmir Krek, Anton Lajovic, and Emil Adami (18771936), as well as
younger composers such as Lucijan Marija kerjanc (190073), whose five
symphonies (echoes of Tchaikovsky and Franck) were composed in the
thirties and forties, the Bruckner-influenced Bla Arni (190170), and
though this needs qualification the rather more individual Marjan Kozina
(190766). The qualification is that, having studied in Prague and Vienna,
Kozina tempered his innate conservatism with tendencies towards what
some scholars from the region like to call moderate modernism.31
The issue of anachronism, in short, is not confined to Croatia. But in
Croatia, with one distinguished exception, there were few counterweights
to the conservative voice. In looking back at these repertories today, we
risk conflating the roles of historian and critic. In his study of Croatian
music, Josip Andreis discusses more than fifty composers whose main out-
put dates from the inter-war period. From these, he singles out a small
handful for more sustained treatment. There are questions to be asked
about how and why certain composers rise to the surface in this way.
They are really questions about the mechanisms of canon formation, for
there are local as well as global canons, and they invoke politics (of the
ethnic nation, the fascist ideology, and the Communist state), musical
scholarship, and more prosaic matters such as the battles to be fought
in getting music to the public platform. There are no absolutes in any of
this, and even the winnowing effects of time are crude at best. Yet there
is the greatest interest in looking back at little-known repertory from the

31See the titles of Miki 2008 and Medi 2008. As to Kozina, modernist tendencies were
already apparent in early works such as Balada Petrice Kerempuha, for bass soloist and
orchestra, with surprisingly dissonant harmonic formations, even in its final bars, and to a
lesser extent in the orchestral Proti morju [To the Sea].
346 chapter thirteen

perspective of several generations, bypassing ideologies and seeking, with

George Steiner, certified, plainly-lit excellence.32
If we consider the careers of Blagoje Bersa and Josip Hatze, we can
extend our controlling figure of transition in another direction, proposing
a bridge not between East and West but between the Mediterranean and
Central Europe. Both composers were from the littoral (Dubrovnik and
Split respectively). But whereas Bersa looked to Central Europe, studying
in Vienna and remaining there until the end of the war, Hatze turned to
Italy, studying with Mascagni in Pesaro before returning to Split (compare
Ivo Para (18901954), whose Adelova pjesma [Adels Song] (1941) tells the
same story as Adel i Mara). Their music reflects these different orienta-
tions. Bersas realistic opera Oganj [Fire] is often regarded as seminal
in the story of Croatian opera, but more telling musically is a series of
orchestral tone poems, of which one, Sunana polja [Sunny Fields] (1919),
a pastoral portrait of Dalmatia, achieved international success. Hatze, in
contrast, avoided instrumental music, and devoted his energies to song and
opera. The reception of Adel i Mara has been discussed, but one observation
of the critics might be added here. Several compared this opera, completed
in 1932, with its predecessor Povratak [The Return], whose first performance
was in 1911. Their point was that Hatzes music had changed not a whit over
a period of more than twenty years.
Dora Pejaevi, in contrast, belonged unambiguously to a Central Euro-
pean orbit from the start. Born in Budapest into an aristocratic family from
Naice near Osijek, she studied in Dresden and Munich and lived most of
her short life in Germany, though with constant visits to Naice where
she immersed herself in composition. Her music belongs to the twilight of
Romanticism, and it represents a significant contribution to chamber and
orchestral composition in Croatia, two media that had been only mod-
estly served until then. It was only really in her later compositions, dating
from around 1916, that Pejaevis professionalism began to show through.
These include piano works such as the Zwei Klavierstcke, Op. 44 (1918)
and Piano Sonata, the Nietzsche settings Drei Gesnge, Op. 53 (1920), the
Slavic Sonata for Violin and Piano (1917), and two major orchestral com-
positions. Of these latter, the Symphony (191617) is widely regarded as
her most important orchestral work, but the Phantasie Concertante (1919)
is perhaps more successful, less epic in conception, but more rounded and

32Steiner 1989.
 moderna 347

accomplished. Along with some of the miniatures, it represents the best

of Pejaevi, and her best does have a distinctive quality.
Yet it is hard not to hear echoes of Russian and European music of the
late Romantic era in this music, and they can be so insistent that they
drown out the composers voice. They remind us that Pejaevis musical
activities belonged almost entirely to circles outside Croatia, and that her
music was mainly performed in those circles; this indeed was the crux of
a critique by Petar Konjovi.33 Nonetheless, at the landmark concert given
at the Croatian National Theatre in 1916, generally regarded as symbolic
of the renewal of Croatian music, Pejaevis Piano Concerto of 1913 was
performed. It was the penultimate piece in the programme. The final piece
was Karneval, a folksong-based symphonic portrait composed in the
same year by Antun Dobroni, a composer who was much more deeply
concerned than Pejaevi that his music might speak for the nation.
That Dobroni was a polemicist for Yugoslav music is obvious. Taking
his stand on a rejection of the Zajc era, he seemed a progressive figure
at the time. Yet his brand of nationalism was grounded in nineteenth-
century models, as we can immediately see from the article he published in
Musical Quarterly in 1926. There he claimed in the tradition of nineteenth-
century Slavic messianism that history had assigned a special duty [...] to
the Yugoslav nation among all the other nations on earth.34 He became,
in short, the spokesman for the neo-Illyrianism that dominated musical
composition and criticism in inter-war Croatia. This Kuha-inspired ide-
ology was indeed so prevalent that there was very little opportunity for
composers to work outside its constraints.
Dobroni dominated Croatian music, due to his assertive personality
and his industry. His work list is remarkable, including operas (not always
so labelled), ballets, masses, cantatas and other choral compositions (his
Kraljevi Marko [Prince Marko] of 1927 was among the best known), eight
symphonies, and a wealth of chamber works, piano pieces and songs. Yet
in the reference to his own music in his survey of Yugoslav music, he listed
folksong arrangements and vocal pieces first, and only later came to cham-
ber and orchestral compositions. Folk music was at the heart of everything
he did, and his most successful music avoids epic pretension in favour of
colourful evocations of place. Karneval is one such piece, but equally
popular were his Jelonaki tonci [Jelsa Dances] (1938) for string orchestra.

33Quoted in Kos 1994. For a fuller profile of the composer, see Kos 1998b.
34Dobroni 1926.
348 chapter thirteen

Aside from a small handful of such pieces, few of Dobronis compositions

have stayed in the repertory, despite some genuinely interesting ideas on
symphonic drama (Dobroni rejected the term opera), which he con-
ceived as a kind of fusion of absolute and programme music. A key work
was Dubrovaki diptihon [Dubrovnik Diptych] of 1917, for which he pub-
lished a kind of apologia, explaining and justifying his aesthetic.35
The folk music at the heart of his project was not exclusively Croa-
tian. His cycle of Jugoslovenske narodne popjevke [Yugoslav Folksongs],
for instance, consisted of melodies from all over the new state. It was
common for composers either to transcend the older borders in this way or
to home in on smaller regions, as in Hrvatske puke popjevke iz Meimurja
[Croatian Popular Songs from Meimurje] by Vinko ganec (18901976).
This was true of larger genres too. Compare Jakov Gotovacs popular
comic opera Ero s onoga svijeta [Ero from Another World] (1935), which
draws on folk music from all over Yugoslavia, with Dorica plee [Dorica
Dances] of 1934 by Krsto Odak (18881965), which again turns to folk
music from Meimurje (a happy hunting ground for Croatian composers;
see also irolas Meimurje Quartet, and several works by Slavenski).36 Of
the two, the Gotovac was the more popular and the more polished, but the
Odak arguably tells us more about the conflicting demands made on Croa-
tian composers at this time, and about resulting stylistic tensions. As Bojan
Buji put it, modernity sits uncomfortably alongside a folk-inspired style.37
Gotovac had no such anxieties, and the pastiche folklorism of Ero s
onoga svijeta captures to perfection the atmosphere of Milan Begovis
reworking of a well-known tale. Croatian commentators tell us that Goto-
vac never [shirked] from harsh dissonances when required, but this is
disingenuous.38 Ero is as close to operetta as to opera, with simple formal
designs, singable folk-based melodies, lively folk dances (the inevitable
kolo) and lucid diatonic harmonies. Gotovac was a consummate pro-
fessional, and in many ways might stand as the paragon of Dobronis
Yugoslav nationalism. Yet there is a paradox here. Dressing folk melodies
in smart orchestral clothes, as in the Simfonijsko kolo [Symphonic Kolo]
of 1926, his first major orchestral composition, may make for an exhilarat-
ing concert work, but it removes us even further from the village than

35Dobroni 1922.
36Majer-Bobetko 1998. Meimurje is a region in the northernmost part of modern
Croatia.
37Buji 2000, 336.
38Andreis 1982, 231.
 moderna 349

modernist appropriations, where traditional materials can at least pre-

serve something of their original ethos by virtue of critical difference.
This also holds for Gotovacs later symphonic poems Orai [The Plow-
men] and Guslar [the Fiddler]. Both are more ambitiously conceived than
Simfonijsko kolo. But the Dinaric elements of the one and epic motives of
the other are painted in the hues of a late-Romantic idiom that speaks of
an idealised folk and an idealised past. The sheen of Gotovacs orchestra
deprives the folk material of energy, authenticity, and from a modernist
perspective, at least contemporary relevance.
Josip Slavenski (18961955) apart, Jakov Gotovac was the most success-
ful of the Croatians working between the two wars. For the rest, it seems
rather artificial to construct a hierarchy. The levelness is almost defining.
Individual pieces were highly valued, and some were performed widely
across Europe; to that extent there was indeed a Croatian canon, but it
was drawn from a wide range of composers and styles. In the theatre,
Zajcs Nikola ubi Zrinski was foundational, followed by Bersas Oganj,
Hatzes Adel i Mara, irolas Citara i bubanj [Cithara and Drum] (1930),
and of course Gotovacs Ero s onoga svijeta. In addition there were often-
performed ballets, including Fran Lhotkas avo u selu [The Devil in the
Village] (1935) and Kreimir Baranovis Licitarsko srce [The Gingerbread
Heart] (1924). Among the orchestral works rendered to acclaim were Bersas
Sunana polja, Dobronis Karneval, Baranovis Symphonic Scherzo (1921),
the Sinfonietta (1938) by Boris Papandopulo,39 and Odaks Simfonija jad-
rana [Adriatic Symphony] (1940); the Bersa and Gotovac pieces became
standard repertoire for a time.
In many of these pieces there was a real attempt to convey a sense
of place, as in the portraits of Dalmatia in the Hatze, irola and Goto-
vac operas, or of Croatian Zagorje in the Baranovi ballet score; compare
Odaks Meimurje in Dorica plee. This regionalism was part and parcel
of Yugoslavism, but even at the time there were those (we cited Osterc)
who saw it as a restrictive influence on the national music. Of course,
precisely this celebration of the Volk, and in an accessible, conservative
language, was the passport to performances and publishing contracts
in post-1933 Germany, whether or not one bought into the association of
cultural nationalism and political fascism. For several Croatian composers,
including Gotovac, Germany was still regarded as a window to the wider

39Papandopulo was a major figure, and his Passion of 1936, making use of Glagolitic
traditions, is a work of some significance.
350 chapter thirteen

world, and at the very least it would have been tempting to tailor the
product to the market. Indeed Ero was in many ways the ideal of a Nazi-
approved opera, and it is no surprise that it was widely performed in
Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.
Contrast this with Gotovacs compatriot Josip Slavenski, whose leftist
orientation made him persona non grata in Germany, to see how musical
life was becoming politically polarised at the time.40 Naturally, this whole
issue became even more sensitive during the war years, when a Ustae
regime governed much of Yugoslavia under Nazi protection. I will return
to this later, but we may note here Sanja Majer-Bobetkos discussion of
the disquieting role of the Glavni ustaki stan [Main Ustaa Headquar-
ters) in publishing an extensive two-volume account of Croatian music
Naa domovina [Our Homeland], with contributions by Andreis, Dugan
and irola, among others.41
It would be wrong to suggest that modernism passed Croatia by. Lip
service was paid to the imperative of the new, with Debussy in particular
riding high.42 One result was a tendency to overlay conventional styles
with momentary and intermittent modernisms, and here Antun Dobroni
might be taken as symptomatic of a wider tendency. This is no doubt why
Sedak sees dispersed signs of moderne in Croatian music, and why Buji
speaks of modernity sitting uncomfortably with a folk-based style. Of
course, gentler language can be used, as in Andreiss comments on disso-
nance in Dobroni and Gotovac.43 But it was really only in Slavenski that
there was anything like a successful integration of traditional music and
modernist techniques, and his project was an altogether larger one, carried
on for the most part outside Croatia. Elsewhere the waters were calmer.
Individual pieces might stand out as excellentobjects well made but
there were few attempts to re-make the conventions, to re-set the terms
on which future evaluations would be made.
I come back to an earlier point. The exceptional talent (however arrived
at) was certainly there. But there is more to the conventional category
great music than exceptional talent. Slavenski apart, Croatian composers
seemed to lack the kind of significant project that uniquely defines both
its time and its place. There was little hint of the disruptive force of origi-
nality (not to be equated with mere innovation; I repeat that the original

40Slavenskis music was not published in Germany after 1933.

41 Majer-Bobetko 2004.
42Weber 1995.
43Andreis 1982.
 moderna 351

voice may be both conservative and of its time) that would impose itself
on the world and in doing so might assume an exemplary status. This need
not be an adverse criticism, of course. It only becomes so if we take our
stand on genius and modernity, valuing projects of greatness rather than
projects of excellence. And in our own time projects of greatness have a dis-
tinctly twentieth-century feel to them. It may well be the great composer
who turns out to be the anachronism, for genius is out of fashion today.44

Parallel Tracks: Bulgarian Advances

Let us replay these themes, but with variations. Earlier I established a par-
allel between Mokranjac and Dobri Hristov. Hristov was a key player in
the quest for a national identity in Bulgarian music, but he was not alone.
Following liberation, an imperative for Bulgarian musicians was to stake
out a unique territory for a national church music and a national folk
music. In both respects the demands of a newly established nationhood
distorted the picture, and in familiar ways. But in fairness to Hristov and
compatriots such as Vasil Stoin (18801928),45 there were equally distorted
claims emanating from without, and especially from the influential schol-
ars Ludvk Kuba and Franjo Kuha. Just as the Greek Church remained
sceptical of claims to an independent Bulgarian chant, so Kuba and Kuha
argued that Bulgarian traditional music was really just a derivative of the
music of the western Yugoslavs.
The reality lies somewhere between these positions. Political borders
seldom carry real privilege in classifications of music, and Bulgaria is no
exception. Where traditional music is concerned, there are commonalities
with Serbian, as there are with Russian, traditions; and in the case of epic
song the affinities extend much further afield. But at the same time there
are features of some Bulgarian music that link it more easily and naturally
to Macedonia, northern Greece and Anatolia, most obviously its rhythmic
and metric asymmetries. These non-Slavonic characteristics were among
the very first to engage the attention of Hristov and his successors, as
they attempted to define what was truly Bulgarian about Bulgarian music,
and sought to separate the national tradition off from other South Slav

44That this remark was made in the late nineteenth century (Villiers de lIsle-Adam
1985) emphasises that such thoughts are not unique to our own age.
45For the story of this great collector, see Todorov 2002.
352 chapter thirteen

musics.46 And once it had been identified with the nation in this way, folk
music could be appropriated by art music in all the usual ways.
As in Serbia, a strong choral tradition served as a mediator between
popular music and art music. All major composers contributed to this
medium, with arrangements of, and original compositions based on,
agrarian and urban songs. Potpourris of folksongs were common, as were
patriotic hymns, marching songs, and choral ballads. Solo songs with
piano also tapped these reservoirs, with Haidouk songs many of them
dealing with the 1876 uprising highly characteristic. Composers in Bul-
garia seemed able to switch rather easily between popular choral and elite
orchestral repertories, and while this is no doubt a comment on anachro-
nism and periphery, it made for interesting continuities, given the orien-
tation of musical composition following World War II. It might be argued
that the strength of the choral tradition was a constraining influence on
any impulse to change and innovation, but in any case the tradition was
a genuinely original phenomenon.
In the second half of the twentieth century choral music found ideal
exponents in the womens voices of the Koutev School at Kotel, founded
in 1967, and the Lyubomir Pipkov Choir under Vassil Arnaoudov, to name
just two such choirs. In its later development the distinctive sound of such
choirs became somewhat fetishised outside Bulgaria. Most famous of all,
in recent years, is Le mystre des voix bulgares, modelled by director
Dora Hristova on the Koutev tradition, and performing not just Bulgar-
ian folksongs, but settings of minority Sephardic and Muslim repertories
(notably in arrangements by Nikolay Kaufman). The sound quality culti-
vated by choirs such as Le mystre is unique, with soloists developing an
edge in chest register that allows the harmonics to ring out. The fluctuat-
ing fortunes of the choirs will be discussed in a later chapter. The point for
now is that the roots of the Bulgarian voices were in the choral traditions
of the first half of the century.
Reverting to that earlier period, the early twentieth century, we may
note that there was a general professionalisation of musical life of all
kinds in Bulgaria. Thus we have the beginnings of an operatic tradition
(the National Theatre was opened in 1906), a proliferation of caf orches-
tras, and eventually (in 1921) the foundation of a State Academy of Music
and (in 1928) an Academy Symphony Orchestra. Much of the pattern here
was similar to that in Yugoslavia, and that included the familiar tendency

46Hristov 1913 and 1928.

 moderna 353

for more talented composers either to study abroad or with Czech teachers
at home.
Again as in Yugoslavia, native operas notably by Emanuil Manolov
(18601902) and Georgi Atanasov (18821931) tried for size the avail-
able stylistic options, which usually meant choosing between pedigreed
Italian styles and a more obviously folk-based idiom. The second opera
of Atanasov, Borislav, dating from 1911, is characteristic of the second of
these options, with its Bulgarian-Turkish symbols (Haidouk songs versus
orientalisms) and its appropriation of the popular Bulgarian 7-beat dance
genre raichenitsa, one of the most characteristic cultural symbols of the
nation. With the earliest orchestral compositions overtures and rhapso-
dies by Hristov, Manolov and Panayot Pipkov (18711942), culminating in
Atanasovs First Symphony of 1912 a further step towards an indepen-
dent Bulgarian repertory was duly taken.
There was a gear change as a younger generation of Bulgarian compos-
ers came to maturity. Again the parallels with Yugoslavia are inescapable,
with the claims of the nation often thought to be at odds with the claims
of the new. Forging a national identity was a priority, privileging folk
music and church music as sources of inspiration, but the perceived need
to catch up with Western Europe was hardly less strong. Again the key
issues were debated in the journals and in independent writings: national
music, international music, and (increasingly) realist music, in the elu-
sive socialist sense of that term. There was an embryonic specialist press,
notably Musikalen vestnik [Musical Journal], edited by the composer Dim-
iter Hadjigeorgiev (18731932), Musikalen pregled [Musical Review], and
the short-lived Gusla, but music was also covered by the daily press and by
new socialist journals such as Zlatorog [Golden Way]. In addition to Had-
jigeorgiev, there were contributions from Georgi Baidanov (18531927),
Alexander Krustev (18791945), and Dobri Hristov himself.
At the centre of the debates were developing dilemmas of identity
among composers, and in particular a preoccupation with their social
and educational roles. This culminated in the foundation by Ljubomir
Pipkov, among others of the Association of Bulgarian Composers Savre-
menna muzika [Contemporary Music], which published its own journal, in
1933. That journal also called Savremenna muzika quickly became the
chief outlet for polemics about the future directions of Bulgarian music,
but now involving younger composers such as Petko Stainov (18961977),
Pipkov (190474) and Svetoslav Obretenov (190955).47

47Much of this criticism is published in Balareva 1968.

354 chapter thirteen

The debates were coloured by the politics of the inter-war years, as

Bulgaria digested both the Russian Revolution and the Versailles settle-
ment. By the 1930s there was a division of sympathies in the country, as
Russian-inspired socialist doctrines (including direct action)48 vied with
an orientation to the new Germany on the part of the royalist political
establishment. The positioning of composers within this forcefield is of
some interest. At one extreme there was a figure such as Kosta Todorov,
who was born in Varna in 1886, studied in Wrzburg, and on his return to
Varna founded a symphony orchestra in 1912. In 1934 he brought the choir
Rodina to Salzburg, and later founded the Bulgarisch-Deutschen Gesell-
schaften in Varna and Sofia, promoting evenings of Bulgarian and German
music. He was written up with approval in Wiener Figaro in 1943, but has
since disappeared from Bulgarian histories of music, including the most
recent encyclopaedia.49 At the other extreme was Svetoslav Obretenov,
who was commissioned by the Communist Party (along with the poet
Nikolai Hrelkov) to compile a volume of 20 trudovi pesni [20 Workers
Songs] in 1934, only to have the volume confiscated by the police, and
who also wrote numerous choral songs and cantatas to proletarian texts.
Between these extremes there were many shades. Pancho Vladigerov
(18991978), probably the most successful composer of the younger gen-
eration, was based in Berlin between 1912 and 1932 (working as a musical
assistant to Max Reinhardt), and even after 1933 his music continued to
be performed there with approval. But it would be quite wrong to draw
political conclusions from this. Like Gotovac and Kalomiris, Vladigerov
was interested in performance platforms more than politics. Likewise, on
the other side of the divide, deep-rooted sympathies for Russia (protec-
tor and saviour of the nation) were common among composers, but did
not always equate with support for socialism. And where there were clear
socialist sympathies, as with Lyubomir Pipkov, they usually fell short of
embracing Obretenovs radicalism. Nor should a commitment to social
meliorism through music be equated with republicanism; Dobri Hristov
himself was active in the promotion of a socially progressive choral move-
ment, but he also composed a hymn to the Tsar.50

48I have in mind the Uprising of 1923, and also the destruction of churches by the
Communists in 1925.
49Wiener Figaro, Jan.Feb. 1943, 1617.
50It hardly helps that the very few English-language studies come from Communist era.
Venelin Krustev, author of the only translated history, was the son-in-law of Obretenov
(Krustev 1978).
 moderna 355

With this younger generation, musical compositions appeared that for

the first time in Bulgaria attained a high level of professionalism and have
since become local classics. Symptomatic of this professionalism was the
formation of the Contemporary Music Society in 1933 by Vladigerov, Pip-
kov and other members of a so-called national school; indeed the statutes
of the society spell out something of that mission. The national school
had been inaugurated in the 1920s by two works. In 1922 Vladigerov com-
posed his orchestral Rhapsody Vardar, and four years later Petko Stainov
completed his Trakiyski tantsi [Thracian Dances]. Already an established
composer by the time he composed Vardar, Vladigerov now turned to
Bulgarian themes, signalled by his use of a well-known hymn by Dobri
Hristov, and by successive episodes based on native dance melodies. The
effect of this orientation was to direct the composer to Russian rather
than to German styles. This extends beyond the transparent textures
and colourful orchestration to modes of thematic transformation (the
first theme), a central Cossack-like dance section that intercuts between
sharply characterised episodes, and a Great Gate of Kiev-like apotheosis
of Hristovs theme.
While the result is exhilarating and slick, it lacks the originality of the
Stainov work, which marked a significant step forward in its symphonic
treatment of the kinds of material formerly (as in Hristov) presented as
pot-pourris. There are echoes of nineteenth-century Russian music in
this work too, but the contexts are original and the composers voice
distinctive. It was no doubt natural for Bulgarians to look to Russia as a
source of inspiration in this way, especially when they were concerned
with the artistic appropriation of folk music, and it positions these two
related works rather clearly in the tradition of nineteenth-century roman-
tic nationalisms. Neither Vladigerov nor Stainov really picked up on the
innovatory potential of Russian music in the way that modern French
composers did, or for that matter Janek and some Yugoslav composers.
Their preoccupation was with the creation largely ex nihili of a Bulgar-
ian national style.
The subsequent paths taken by Vladigerov and Stainov diverged. Vladi-
gerov continued to work with Bulgarian materials, notably in his Blgarska
syuita [Bulgarian Suite] and Sedem simfonini tantsa [Seven Symphonic
Dances], but when he turned to the traditional instrumental genres, Bul-
garia receded again. Thus, his Sonatina Concertante, Op. 28, composed in
the mid 1930s, is a neo-classical design, looking occasionally to Ravel, but
also to nineteenth-century pianism. His Third Piano Concerto meanwhile
is so uncannily close to Rachmaninoff that it rivals the real thing at times.
356 chapter thirteen

Among the most persuasive of the works from this period was Improvizat-
sia i tokata [Improvisation and Toccata], composed in 1941 as part of a
larger cycle. The blend of late Romanticism and impressionistic textures
in the Improvisation (more obvious in the piano than in the orchestral
version), is reminiscent of some Croatian music from the inter-war period,
and it poses some of the same questions. As with Dora Pejaevi, we rec-
ognise a poetic quality to Vladigerovs best music, but we struggle to find
the composers voice. What he brought to Bulgarian music above all was
professionalism.
Stainov, on the other hand, continued to build on the world of the
Trakiyski tantsi, notably in a sequence of programmatic orchestral pieces.
Although conservative in idiom by the general standards of European
music of the 1930s, these exhibit a clear musical personality. They include
the Symphonic Suite Prikazka [Fairy-Tale] (1930), whose five movements
depict characters from folklore through a Russian-inspired alternation of
brittle fantasy, gnomic grotesquerie and romantic melody. A culminat-
ing stage in Stainovs work was reached with his symphonic poem Thrace
(1937), based on a Nikola Fournadjiev poem. This is music of power and
originality, again rooted in Russian traditions, but with a Sibelian capacity
to pace and modulate sections of contrasted tempi such that the entire
work unfolds with an inexorable, goal-directed logic.
A number of other composers have traditionally been grouped with
this national school. We may single out Lyubomir Pipkov, whose opera
Yaninite devet bratya [Yanas Nine Brothers] (1937), to a libretto by Ves-
selinov, is widely thought to have lifted Bulgarian opera to a new level,
and whose First Symphony (1940) is said to be a powerful, if traditionally
conceived, work.51 Also important was Philip Koutev (190382), who at
this stage of his life was active as a composer, and who in the 1930s con-
tributed orchestral and vocal suites based on the folk music he would later
make famous with his State Folksong and Dance Company. A more ambi-
tious creative profile was that of Vessilin Stoyanov (190269), best known
for his opera Salambo (1940) and his Bai Ganyu (1941), based on the Aleko
Konstantinov character. Much of Stoyanovs music sounds uncomfortably
grandiose today, but Bai Ganyu is genuinely colourful. A character sketch
in the tradition of Till Eulenspiegel, it is deftly scored and has some nice
parodistic touches, such as the oriental moments on clarinet during Bai
Ganyus travels in the first movement, the solo violin in Viennese waltz

51I have been unable to access this work.

 moderna 357

mode in the second, and the vulgarities of Bai Ganyu at the public baths
in the third.
The early music of Marin Goleminov (19082000), including his bal-
let Nestinarka [The Fire-Dancer] (1940), his Symphonic Variations on a
Theme of Dobri Hristov (1942), and his Third String Quartet, can also
be associated with the national school. Of these early works, the ballet
score, based on a Konstantin Petkanov story about the fire-walking ritu-
als associated with St. Constantine and St. Elena (compare chapter 4 on
the anastenaria in northern Greece), has been justly popular for its lively
and strikingly original appropriations of folk dance elements, as well as
for more delicate, poetic moments (notably in the epilogue). Other com-
posers could be cited, but in general the music of this generation might
be characterised in terms of a late-romantic, folk-based nationalist idiom.
Only one composer seemed to look beyond this.
Dimitar Nenov (190253) was one of the most troubled, and at the same
time most adventurous, musical personalities of the first half of the cen-
tury in Bulgaria. It would be inadequate to characterise his music as late-
Romantic; though in one sense it is that. Hyper-Romantic might be a
better description, for Nenov achieves at times a tone of sustained ecstasy
that links him to composers such as Skryabin and Szymanowski, though
the affinity is more of tone than technique. His was a truly original voice,
even if not in strictu sensu a modernist one. Between the wars, he com-
posed a cluster of major works, beginning with his Violin Sonata (1921),
and continuing through his symphony (1922), first Ballad for orchestra
with organ (1924), and Four Sketches (192425), to the massive Concerto
for Piano and Large Orchestra (193236).
This latter is a single-movement work lasting some forty minutes,
structured around two motives that also determine much of its harmonic
language. Much of the rhetoric of the music derives from late-Romantic
pianism, but the harmonic complexity and density of counterpoint make
for a distinctive sound world, where the flow of ideas is unpredictable but
coherent. Unlike the Vladigerov Third Concerto, composed around the
same time, this work makes its own statement, and its final apotheosis
of the two motives is genuinely hard-won. Here, as elsewhere in Nenov,
fashionable sallies into folk music are eschewed, and this was symptom-
atic of a non-conformity in life and art that resulted in political difficulties
following the establishment of the Communist state in 1944, including his
temporary dismissal from the Academy of Music and (in the early 1950s)
the destruction of his recordings. Nenovs was the closest to a truly icono-
clastic musical voice in Bulgaria in the inter-war period. He was the only
358 chapter thirteen

Bulgarian composer to register at anything other than surface levels some-

thing of the impact of European modernism that was so marked at the
time in Yugoslavia.

Transit to Prague

It had long been the norm for young composers in South East Europe to
study abroad. Not all looked on this as a passport to modern styles, of
course. But for those with modernist leanings, the known new to which
they aspired was invariably located in the major cities of Central and
Western Europe, and the transit to modernism was naturally helped by
a period of study in those cities. Germany was an obvious destination for
Bulgarian and Yugoslav (as also Greek) composers. Of the student com-
posers, Vladigerov lived in Berlin, Stainov and Nenov travelled to Dresden
(the latter mainly studying architecture), Milojevi studied in Munich for
a time, and Milenko Paunovi (18891924) and Stevan Hristi both went
to Leipzig (in the latter case after spending several years in Vienna).
Yet Milojevi aside, none of these with the qualified exceptions of
Nenov and Hristi can really be described as modernist figures. Paunovi
was especially noted for his two symphonies and for his Wagner-inspired
operas, Divina tragoedia (1912) and engi-aga (1923). As Biljana Milanovi
has noted, there are some affinities between the latter work and Hristis
opera Suton [Dusk], composed two years later in 1925.52 But Suton also
registered both dramaturgical and musical influences from Debussy, and
this reflected Hristis greater eclecticism. When he finally settled in Bel-
grade after the war (following some time in Moscow, Rome and Paris), he
became a key figure in musical life there, founding the Belgrade Philhar-
monic, directing the Belgrade Opera in late 1920s and much of the 1930s,
and teaching at the Musical Academy, where he was Rector for a short
period in the 1940s.
Prior to Suton, Hristi had composed an oratorio Vaskrsenje [Resurrec-
tion] (1912), and the premire of this work along with the composition of
Paunovis Divina tragoedia, completed just prior to the Hristi premire,
represented a new stage in the development of Serbian music, a coming-
of-age, right on the cusp of World War I. Danijela Spiri-Beard, drawing
partly on writings by Tomaevi and Milanovi, has discussed the two

52Milanovi 2009.
 moderna 359

works together, gauging through their critical reception something of pre-

war attitudes to European modernism.53 Both works cut against the grain
of existing traditions, with Hristi challenging existing concepts of sacred
music within an Orthodox tradition, and Paunovi breaking through the
constraints of a long-established tradition of Singspiele with a full-scale
German-influenced music drama.
The response to Vaskrsenje was especially contentious. By the standards
of European modernism in 1912, it was relatively mild-mannered, but in
the context of pre-war Belgrade it represented something new, and there
was censure from several critics, including Milojevi in Srpski knjievni
glasnik. Milojevi argued that Hristi needed to return to the more con-
servative nationalism of some of his earlier works, on the face of it an odd
stance for this particular critic. And Hristi responded with an unflatter-
ing anatomy of Serbian music (the Singspiele in particular), and with a
defence of his own species of modernism. As Spiri-Beard remarks, the
fortunes of Vaskrsenje, and also of Divina tragoedia, tell us much about the
tension that existed for composers in balancing the imperatives of new
music with the inadequacies of performing forces and the conservatism
of critics and public.
Hristi also composed several orchestral pieces,54 but in the end, he
secured his place in Yugoslav music mainly through his popular ballet
score Ohridska legenda [The Legend of Ohrid]. He began work on this in
the late 1920s and an early version was performed in the 1930s, but Ohrid-
ska legenda is known to us today in a four-act version completed after the
war in 1947. As Djuri-Klajn has suggested, it is hard to hear much direct
evidence of his Germanic training (190408) in this picturesque evoca-
tion of a folk tale about the love and adventures of Marko and Biljana,
with its dramatic representation of the Janissaries, its magic lake inhab-
ited by water nymphs, and its Romanian, Bulgarian and Greek slave girls
at the Sultans palace. The sound world is essentially late Romantic, but it
is energised by folk rhythms from the wider Yugoslavia as well as by the
primitive rhythmic asymmetries that accompany the dance of the Janis-
saries. It is further exoticised by the orientalism of the Sultans palace, the
ornamental melodies associated with the Greek slave girl and the muzica

53Spiri-Beard 2012, Vol. I, 16774.

54The Fantaisie Symphonique for Violin and orchestra is characteristic in its folk-based
lyricism.
360 chapter thirteen

lutreasc of the Romanian dance, and it is softened by the impressionist

textures that depict the magic lake.
At the same time there is a symphonic dimension to the music, espe-
cially apparent in the second of the four suites drawn from the ballet,
and there is also an explicit link to an earlier Serbian national tradition in
the reference to the two Biljana themes drawn from Mokranjacs tenth
rukovet.55 The attractiveness and immediate appeal of Hristis score have
guaranteed its enduring popularity, but the work also has symbolic inter-
est through its evocation of traditional music not just from Serbia, nor
even Yugoslavia, but from the Balkans more generally, including Roma-
nia, Bulgaria and Greece. The score may lack modernist pretension, but
its clean lines and bright colours have been so beautifully realised that
Ohridska legenda stands today as one of the significant achievements of
Yugoslav music.
Vienna was likewise a popular destination for South Slavic composers,
and had been right through the nineteenth century. Some of the older gen-
eration, such as Bersa and Stoyanov, studied there, but so too did younger
figures of traditional orientation, such as the Slovenians kerjanc, Arni
and Kozina. Boidar irola also studied in Vienna, though his work there
was mainly musicological.56 But none of these composers really picked up
on the more radical musical tendencies of the Habsburg capital. Caught
between the German and the Slavonic worlds, and marginalised from
the nationalist ambitions of both, Vienna was a crucible of modernism,
not only chronicling a much wider crisis in liberal bourgeois society, but
also giving voice to highly specific forms of exclusion and dispossession.
In retrospect the major composer was Schoenberg, in whom the crisis of
modern culture took the form of an inward-looking crisis of expression,
jealous of the integrity of art, protective of its truthfulness, and fearful of
its debasement.
But Schoenberg was a marginal figure at the time, and less influential
as a composer and teacher than Franz Schreker, whose opera Der Ferne
Klang had made a major impact. One Yugoslav composer who studied
with both men was the strange, and ultimately tragic, Marij Kogoj. A
Slovenian, Kogoj completed his studies in Vienna in 1918 and arranged
a public concert of his music there before he returned to Yugoslavia. In

55Mosusova 2002.
56Following the expulsion of students from Zagreb University after unrest in 1895, some
moved to Vienna and others to Prague, thus creating two separate groups. See Nemec and
Bobinac 1997.
 moderna 361

the 1920s he worked at the National Theatre in Ljubljana, as a teacher at

the Glasbena Matica and as conductor of the Slavec Choral Society. His
early songs, piano pieces and chamber works would not have led anyone
to expect the opera rne maske [Black Masks] (19247), which took Lju-
bljana by storm in 1929, and which is the closest music in Yugoslavia came
to the operatic climate of German expressionism.
It was the subject matter as much as the musical language that attracted
attention. Based on the Russian play Chornye maski (1908) by Leonid
Andreyev, this work imported to Yugoslavia some of the exploratory
psychological themes, overlaid by symbolism, that were associated with
operatic subjects such as Der Ferne Klang, Erwartung, and Wozzeck. The
protagonist of Kogojs drama, Duke Lorenzo, is an abstract figure removed
from the everyday and the commonplace, and the drama, using the con-
ceit of the masked ball, is a projection of conflicts within his psyche. This
is no Faustian surrender to dark forces, with the possibility of a Nietz-
schean overcoming through self-knowledge, but something altogether
more disturbing, where truth and deceit can no longer be distinguished,
and where Lorenzo has neither certainty about his identity nor control
over his actions. In a truly schizoid moment, he murders his own double,
and is the chief mourner at the funeral.
It is too easy a game to read into this a premonitory sign, but Kogoj
was declared clinically insane in 1932, just after composing a handful of
harmonically exploratory miniatures (Bagatelles for piano; Polednji spevi
[last songs]). As to the music of rne maske, it is a long way off Schoen-
berg, but is strikingly modern in the context of Yugoslavia at this time, and
makes a genuinely powerful impact. The closest point of contact is prob-
ably with Salom and Elektra: a heightened recitative-arioso, an intricate
leitmotivic web, and a truly virtuosic orchestra. But the key point is that
Kogoj is one of the very few Yugoslav composers for whom Wagnerian
influence extended beyond a surface gloss on traditional operatic methods.
There are set numbers in rne maske, but they have a diegetic role, as
in the minstrels song in Act 1 Scene 1, or the requiem in Act 2 Scene 4.
Harmonically and again parallels with Salom and Elektra are to the
point there is a mix of complex dissonance (fourth chords, hints of bito-
nality, whole-tonality) and diatonic simplicities.
With the fall of the Habsburgs, Vienna lost some of its attraction. For
several composers, Paris seemed a livelier option. In contrast to Vienna,
modernism in Paris was eclectic, understated, and detached, and it ranged
from the legacy of a Debussyan symbolist-impressionist aesthetic to the
more experimental anti-Romanticism of Erik Satie. Among those who
362 chapter thirteen

worked there was the eclectic Milojevi, responsive to the new wher-
ever he found it. His years in Munich had seen him captivated by Richard
Strauss (songs like Nymph, Japan, and Hercegovaka uspavanka [Herze-
govina Lullaby]),57 but in the songs and piano pieces composed during
the war years in Paris he adopted the surface mannerisms, and the cool,
detached tone that we tend to associate with an impressionist sound
world. They included solo songs to French texts (Berceuse triste, Lheure
exquise), as well as piano pieces such as the Quatre morceaux (Stara pria
[The Old Tale]; Melanholino vee [A Melancholy Evening]; U suton je
ljiljan snevno [The Lily was Dreaming in the Twilight]; U vrtu [In the Gar-
den]). Impressionist influences re-surfaced, moreover, in the later inter-
war works, including the Kameje, impresije za klavir [Cameos, Impressions
for the Piano] of 193742.
In one extraordinary work, le balai du valet of 1923, Milojevi produced
the only Yugoslav composition to turn in the direction of Satie and the
defiantly deconstructionist world of pieces like Parade. To a surrealist text
by Marko Risti, Milojevi produced a so-called ballet-grotesque, whose
score comprises a parodistic collage of popular dance pieces (foxtrot and
waltz), quotations from Wagner and Strauss, well-known Serbian songs,
and even concrete effects such as a pistol shot. This was a one-off, but
it does say something about the contact between Milojevi and his mod-
els, and perhaps even something about the contact between Yugoslav
moderna and its models. Where traditions have shallow roots, contacts
with the new are likely to produce unstable results. There may be whole-
sale rejection or unprocessed imitation, or (and this is the most common
mode) there may be a fascination with external surfaces.
This latter condition, where modern surfaces are grafted onto more con-
ventional modes of thought, describes well some of the music composed
by Milojevi. The piano piece U suton je ljiljan snevao is peppered with
expressive directions that evoke Debussy, and its texture and compound
triple metre strengthens the suggestion. This music looks on the page
uncannily like Debussy. But it falls some way short of the more radical
stratification of texture we find in Debussy; there is still a single harmonic
layer that retains a background link with the harmonically directed idioms
of late-Romantic pianism. In a small handful of works, notably Jedan san

57For an account of Milojevis dialogues with western Europe, see Tomaevi 1998. See
also several chapters in Simi 1986.
 moderna 363

[A Dream] from the Visions Op. 65, the textural intricacy and opaque
sonorities seem closer to Skryabin than to either Debussy or Ravel, espe-
cially in the cultivation of a particular kind of languorous melodic style,
accompanied by gently pulsating dissonant harmonies. As a body of work,
these songs and piano pieces do represent a significant achievement,
probably the closest Yugoslav music comes to an impressionist corpus.
Milojevis journeys literal and stylistic were not yet over. In the post-
war years he spent two years in Prague (192425), where he responded to
an artistic climate that might be loosely characterised as expressionist.
I will come to this in a moment. But first it is worth noting that as a musi-
cal capital of the Habsburgs, Prague had long been a magnet for young
composers from the South Slav lands. In 1904, twenty years before Milojevi
studied there, Petar Konjovi, was among their ranks. That twenty-year
difference, all-important in terms of what was on offer in Prague, can
nonetheless be misleading, for Milojevi and Konjovi were almost exact
contemporaries. Their philosophies, all the same, were very different.
Where Milojevi grouped himself with the Europeans among the Serbian
intelligentsia, Konjovi saw himself from the start as a composer in the
Mokranjac tradition. Along with Slavenski and the rather younger Marko
Tajevi (190084), whose Seven Balkan Dances for piano (1927) are still
highly valued today, he set out to achieve the kind of alliance between
traditional music and modernism that he identified in composers such
as Musorgsky and Janek.58 Moreover he aspired to the kind of psycho-
logical realism that is associated with those composers, achieved though
intonational fidelity to everyday speech.
It remains an intriguing and suggestive fact that these three Yugoslav
composers, the three who came closest to a Bartkian model of modern
musical nationalism, each followed career paths that were split between
Belgrade and Zagreb. Thus the two Serbs, Konjovi and Tajevi, were
employed in Zagreb for much of the inter-war period, while the Croat,
Slavenski, settled in Belgrade in the 1920s. It seems, too, that the larger
project of all three composers might be understood, at least in part, as a
modernist extension of a pan-Slavist ideology. This was true of Konjovi
especially. He himself made a distinction between eastern and western
orientations among Slav composers, explicitly favouring the former (by

58We need to keep the chronology in mind here. Janek had only just achieved a
belated recognition when Konjovi arrived in Prague.
364 chapter thirteen

which he meant Russian), and his commitment to Yugoslavia needs to be

viewed in this light; this rather than a narrower Serbian nationalism.59
As a body of work, Konjovis music has an authority that eludes the
more exploratory, yet mercurial, output of Milojevi. The turning point
in his career was a concert of his music given in Zagreb in 1917, together
with a Zagreb staging of his early opera Vilin veo [The Fairys Veil] (the
title imposed by the censors for enidba Miloa Obilia [The Wedding of
Milo Obili]). These were key events, rivaling in their symbolic value the
Zagreb concert of the previous year. But already prior to that, Konjovi
had proclaimed his lineage by dedicating his symphonic variations Na
selu [In the Village] (first version, 1915) to Mokranjac, and basing the varia-
tions themselves on a Macedonian theme from Mokranjacs tenth rukovet.
Like Mokranjac, he drew on songs from all over Yugoslavia in his collec-
tion Moja zemlja [My Country] (190525), with piano accompaniments
in the modern style, and he also turned to church chant for works such as
his Three Psalms for String Orchestra (1917). And there were other major
instrumental works, including an early Symphony (1907), a Violin Con-
certo (Jadranski kaprio [Adriatic Capriccio] (1936), and a Second String
Quartet (1937) that again draws on a theme from Mokranjacs rukoveti,
transforming it imaginatively in the slow movement quasi una legenda
and in the increasingly frenetic finale.
It was through opera that Konjovi made his most significant contri-
bution to Yugoslav music, and again his mentors were Musorgsky and
Janek. Following Vilin veo, there were four further operas, and of these
Knez od Zete [The Prince of Zeta] (1927), and Kotana (1931) were com-
pleted in the inter-war period. Kotana is his triumph, and it has been per-
formed to great acclaim both within and beyond Yugoslavia. Konjovi had
already demonstrated his acumen in the composition of sevdalinka-like
songs, and the central role of Kotana, a young gypsy girl, together with
the setting in Vranje, allowed this aspect of his music full rein (the asso-
ciation with Carmen was not lost on contemporary critics). The opera was
popular with the public, and in some quarters with the critics too. Even
the adversely critical trope that the music was too European and lacked
a clear basis in Yugoslav folk music implicitly recognised the capacity of
this opera to take Yugoslav music to another level, where it might take its

59As Eva Sedak points out (Sedak 1989), Konjovi was criticised in the Croatian press
as either too nationalist or too European.
 moderna 365

place alongside other major works of European modernism. For some it

remains the highest operatic expression of a Yugoslav national culture.
The Prague encountered by Milojevi in 1924 was very different from
the Prague that had shaped Konjovi. In the post-war years, the newly
independent city was culturally open, a crossroads of cultural pathways
that imported ideas from the German cities, but was at the same time
receptive to avant-garde influences from France. In many ways Paris-
Prague replaced Paris-Vienna as the axis of musical modernism. This was
true in all the arts, but in music it was associated in particular with the
teaching of Karel Boleslav Jirk and the experimental techniques devel-
oped by Alois Hba. It was no doubt because of this diversity and open-
ness that Prague took on a special significance for Yugoslav composers in
the inter-war years. Not all were modernists. If we accept a rather crude
division, we have on the conservative side Franz Lhotka (Czech by origin),
Dobroni and Odak, and on the modernist side Slavenski, who arrived
there in 1920, Tajevi (also 1920), and Osterc (1925). And then of course
there was Milojevi himself.
In some ways Milojevi embodies in a single figure a threefold division
among Yugoslav composers. At risk of caricature, one might describe it
as a division between German-Viennese aestheticism, Parisian decadence
and Prague progressivism. Thus, it was entirely characteristic of Milojevi
that he slipped quickly and easily into another musical world on arrival
in Prague. Symptomatic was his cycle of choral compositions to Miroslav
Krleas poems Pir iluzije [The Feast of Illusion], where the advanced har-
monies and raw energy are expressionist in character, and a very long
way from the world of his French-influenced music. One might add here
his solo song Sehr heisser Tag, and his tougher-grained, ambitious Violin
Sonata Op. 36. Exactly as with Paris, moreover, the Prague influence sur-
faced again in some of his later compositions. Perhaps the most blatant of
these is Ritmike grimase [Rhythmic Grimaces] for piano of 1936, whose
harmonic distortions, percussive piano writing and aggressive dissonance
recall some other better-known manifestations of grotesquerie in twenti-
eth-century pianism, including those by Prokofiev and Bartk.
It was as a source of new ideas, then, that Prague took on its historic
significance for Yugoslav music. Slavenski and Milojevi both befriended
Hba in the 1920s, and in the pages of Zvuk Hba himself acknowledged
their support. But Hba also influenced the young Slavko Osterc, who
arrived at the Conservatory around the same time as himself. Osterc had
begun on traditional ground as a self-taught composer in Slovenia, but
already before setting off for Prague he demonstrated that he had more
366 chapter thirteen

exploratory inclinations, notably in songs such as Sonce v zavesah [the Sun

on the Curtain].60 It was the Prague environment that nurtured these and
brought them to fruition. It provoked him to new adventures, and that
even included a brief flirtation with quarter-tone composition in his Three
Pieces for Quarter-Tone Piano of 1926. As Andrej Rijavec has pointed out,
it was above all with his First String Quartet that Osterc found his way to
a distinctive modern style, one in which tonality receded, a compensatory
thematic-contrapuntal logic emerged, and baroque and classical formal
archetypes ensured an underlying coherence.61
Ostercs first major work on his return to Yugoslavia was a Concerto for
Violin and Seven Instruments, and this, together with other instrumen-
tal compositions such as the Hindemithian Suite for Orchestra of 1929,
the Wind Quintet of 1932, and the Concerto for Piano and Wind of 1933,
nailed his colours firmly to a modern, internationalist idiom, neo-classical
in manner, and sharply contrasted with the expressionism of his talented
compatriot, Marij Kogoj. The very fact that his most successful works were
instrumental in this way (the Second String Quartet of 1934 and close-
knit, single-movement Mouvement Symphonique of 1936 are among his
most significant achievements) removed him from the orbit of more con-
ventional Yugoslav nationalist circles, though he did also compose stage
works and cantatas.
When he returned to Ljubljana in 1927, Osterc immediately joined, and
was soon a power behind, the Yugoslav branch of the International Soci-
ety for Contemporary Music, with which Slavenski had been associated
since its foundation in 1922. From the correspondence between the two
composers (of which only Slavenskis side has survived) we can see just
how important it was for them that Yugoslavia should find a recognised
place on the musical map of Europe.62 And this was also the priority for a
group of younger (mainly Serbian) composers, who became known as the
Prague Group to signify not just that they all studied there, but that they
adopted a very particular modernist position conspicuous for its rejection
of folklore, and thus of any point of contact with national musical tra-
ditions. The forerunner was the Slovene Mihovil Logar (190298), whose
Sonata quasi uno scherzo for piano (1929) inaugurated a new phase in Yugo-
slav music, but he was quickly followed by the Serbs Predrag Miloevi

60Rijavec 1969a.
61 Rijavec 1969b.
62Cvetko 1972.
 moderna 367

(190487), Dragutin oli (190790), Ljubica Mari (19092003), Milan

Risti (190882), Stanojlo Rajii (19102000) and Vojislav Vukovi.
I will return to at least some of these composers in Part 4, but it will
be enough to remark here on the experimental profile of the music they
wrote in Prague in the early 1930s. Inter alia, the Prague Group explored
Hindemithian constructivism (Logars Two Toccatas; Miloevis Sona-
tina, third movement), Schoenbergian twelve-note composition (Ristis
First String Quartet, Maris Music for Orchestra) and Hbas quarter-tone
methods (olis Concertino for Quarter-Tone Piano, Ristis Suite for four
Trombones, Vukovis Quarter-Tone Trio). It will be clear from even a
highly generalised description such as this that the Prague Group epito-
mised the transition to a known new. For the first time Yugoslav music
was up to speed with modernist developments elsewhere in Europe. How-
ever, this was not to be the last word on the inter-war period. It was one
thing to produce music like this in Prague. It was quite another to bring
it back to Belgrade.
When these composers returned to Yugoslavia with portfolios of mod-
ernist instrumental works, they were greeted with a chorus of hostility
from audiences and performers alike.63 It became clear that they had not
only created a division between old and new Serbian music; they had also
driven a wedge into the centre of Yugoslav music, with Osterc and the
younger Serbs on one side, Dobroni and the Croats on the other. Perhaps
the divisions were simply not sustainable, whether we speak of the tem-
poral break in the Serbian story, or the spatial separation in the Yugoslav
story. In any case the obvious lack of comprehension must have been a
motivating factor in the retreat from modernism that became apparent in
the later 1930s. But the wider climate of ideas was also shifting during these
years. As we noted in Bulgaria, there was a treacherous course to steer
between the Scylla and Charybdis of the Soviet Union and the German
Reich, and this time transition was no option. A new conformity began
to appear in Yugoslavia, a back to the roots movement that responded
to Soviet aesthetics, though it was already in place before 1945 and thus
before it could be officially prescribed by the Communist state.64
Even Milojevi found himself moving onto this territory, reinstating
folk music at the centre of his compositions, as in his piano cycle Melodies

63Tomaevi 2007.
64A publication by Miroslav Krlea was of seminal importance here. His Predgovor
mapi crtea Krste Hegeduia Podravski motivi of 1933 instigated a debate on social art
that quickly found its way into the pages of Zvuk (see Krlea 1973).
368 chapter thirteen

and Rhythms from the Balkans, Op. 69 of 1942, though harmonically these
pieces are often exploratory (No. 16, for example), and also rhythmically
(No. 3 alternates 10/8 and 11/8 sections). Perhaps an even more interest-
ing case was Vukovi, a composer-critic who, like Milojevi, began as a
fervent advocate of everything new but in the end joined the clamour
for roots, for social function, for realism. While in Prague, Vukovi had
joined Matija Gubec, a revolutionary student movement, and on his
return to Yugoslavia he became involved with the Communist struggle,
with consequences that have already been described. His first rukovet of
1941, the very year in which Yugoslavia was attacked, occupied and broken
up, was thus a symbolic gesture of return: to Mokranjac, to Serbia, and to
Yugoslavia.
If we take the longer view through into the Communist state, we might
say that Croatia provided the continuity and Serbia the novelty, while Slo-
venia kept a foot in both camps. Such a characterisation is crude, but it
is along the right lines, and it calls into question the Yugoslavism that
continued to play in official cultural pronouncements in the reincarna-
tion of the state. Of course, my characterisation leaves out of the picture
altogether three of the republics that would form part of Titos Yugoslavia.
It was mainly under Tito that Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and
Montenegro were modernised and began to build and consolidate a for-
mal musical culture. And in this respect the differences between genera-
tions proved to be more significant than those questions of nationalism
or socialism that were so much debated by composers and critics in the
inter-war years. Meanwhile, one major composer transcended all these
categories generation, nationality and political orientation in the way
that major composers do.
 CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SERBO-CROAT

Who Owns Slavenski?

Europes fluid borders and unstable politics can wreak havoc with
composers nationalities. Hugo Wolf was born into a German culture in
what is now Slovenia, Karol Szymanowski into a Polish culture in a now-
independent Ukraine. In former Yugoslavia, where, as the Macedonian
writer Goran Stefanovski put it, you cant be born and die in the same
country, these questions have become sensitive. Consider the difficulties fac-
ing the editors of the second edition of The New Grove. All those entries that
had been happily lumped together as Yugoslav in 1980 had to be carefully
unpicked in 2001. It is not always easy to assign a cast-iron national identity
to a composer in contexts that are politically volatile. Legalistic definitions
may well be out of sync not just with composers subjective constructions of
nationality, but with the consensus adopted by host communities.
There was a whole generation of composers born in Serbia, or in the
Croatian and Slovenian territories of the Habsburg Empire, who lived out
their adult lives in Yugoslavia, and died as citizens of the federal state.
How we label them today is moot. Most of them felt more Serbian, or
Croatian, or Slovenian than Yugoslav, though for some of them the terms
were more-or-less synonymous. As to the view from without, it was cus-
tomary until the break-up of the state to label such composers Yugoslavs.
But these days we think of them as Serbs, or Croats or Slovenes. Language
is a powerful metaphor for these shifts. We no longer speak of Serbo-
Croat, and the language is indeed separating out Dubravka Ugrei
describes it as split, tortured1 with contrived differentiation between
Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian (and more recently Montenegrin) variet-
ies. But for many years it was basically one, and its success was hailed as
a triumph of Yugoslavism.
Career paths further confuse the issue. As noted in chapter 13, Petar
Konjovi and Marko Tajevi were Serbs who lived for much of their lives
in Zagreb. Likewise, Kreimir Baranovi (18941975) and Josip tolcer

1In a profile, Balkan Warrior, in The Guardian 23.02.08, 11.

370 chapter fourteen

Slavenski were Croats who made their later careers in Belgrade. Slavenski
brings the issue into sharpest focus precisely because he is widely regarded
as the most significant composer working in the former Yugoslavia during
his lifetime. He was someone worth claiming. Scholarship on his music
has been more-or-less evenly divided between Zagreb and Belgrade.2 In
the 1970s and 1980s, there were contributions from the Croat Eva Sedak
and the Serb Mirjana ivkovi, with Sedaks 1984 monograph, reflecting
analytical approaches that were current at the time, still regarded as a
landmark publication (it contains a thematic catalogue jointly authored
by Sedak and ivkovi).3 Then, more recently, ivkovis edited collection
(2006), based on a conference marking the fiftieth anniversary of the com-
posers death, brought Slavenski scholarship into the modern age.4
Unhappily, the wars of succession put paid to collaborative projects
between Belgrade and Zagreb. The jointly organised publication of Slaven-
skis collected works was suspended in the early 1990s and has not been
revived. Likewise, the Belgrade conference in 2005 the source of that
ivkovi publication was conspicuous for the absence of leading players
from Croatia. It is unfortunate that such attitudes linger in the scholarly
arena. And they are not the preserve of any one party. Croats may have
refused invitations to the Slavenski conference in Belgrade (were they
blacklisting Serbian musicology, or blaming Slavenski for having settled
in Belgrade?), but at another recent conference one Serbian scholar was
heard to chastise another for describing Slavenski as a Croatian composer.
Slavenski himself would not have recognised any rationale for this com-
petition. Born in (Habsburg) Croatia, fostered by Serbia, he was owned by
neither. He was Serbo-Croat, Yugoslav, Balkan. And he was Meimurjean.
It is of some interest that he studied in Budapest, moving there from
akovec and Varadin in 1913. Budapest helped shape him as a composer,
even if his music from these early years lacked maturity, though not enter-
prise (some of the music in his early suite Sa Balkana [From the Balkans]
is both harmonically bold and metrically complex). While in Budapest he
worked for both Bartk and Kodly, studying composition with Kodly
and transcribing field notes for both men. In other words, he had the best
of models for a modernism forged from traditional agrarian repertories.
In the later war years he engaged in his own collecting activities while
serving in the military (mainly along the borders with Romania), but

2The State-funded Slavenski Archive (Legat Josip Slavenskog), located in Belgrade, has
now apparently been closed.
3Sedak 1984.
4ivkovi 2006.
 serbo-croat 371

this hands-on approach to traditional music was never really of central

importance to him. In any case, by the end of the war he had decided
on a career as a composer if not on how to fund it and had already a
determinate aesthetic orientation.
It was also in the immediate post-war years that he became politi-
cally active as a left-orientated Young Meimurjean (Meimurje was
not immediately included in the post-war Yugoslav Kingdom), and it was
then under the influence of the activist lawyer Ernest Krajanski and
his circle that he started adding Slavenski to his surname tolcer, in
an assertion of a Slavic identity that seemed under threat in Meimurje
at the time (eventually Slavenski replaced tolcer Slavenski). Then, in
December 1920, he took the step that lifted his music to a new level of
professionalism while at the same time ensuring that his compositional
colours would be nailed firmly to the modernist mast. Like so many
Yugoslav composers, he entered the Prague Conservatoire, working with
both Novk and Suk, and associating with compatriots such as Odak
and Dobroni, with Czech composers such as Emil Frantiek Burian and
Alois Hba, and with forward-thinking artists in other fields, such as the
young Varadin painter Ivo Reek, with whom he shared an apartment for
a time.
Slavenski remained in Prague for three productive years. It was there
(in 1922) that he joined the newly founded International Society for Con-
temporary Music, of whose later Yugoslav section he would become an
active member. And it was also during these years that he brought to frui-
tion several major compositional projects (Jugoslovenska svita [Yugosla-
vian Suite]; Iz Jugoslavije [From Yugoslavia]; First String Quartet), and saw
his music publicly performed at concerts both in Prague and in Zagreb.
Yet, as Eva Sedak has emphasised, several of his major creative achieve-
ments were already present in embryonic form before he left for Prague.
He had been working on a large Latin mass that was probably an early
form of the Misa za muki zbor a cappella [Mass for Unaccompanied Male
Voices], and also on a symphonic opera Stvaranje [The Creation] that
seems to have been a conceptual source for the ambitious enterprise
collectively known as Misterij [Mystery], though of the several projected
works only Religiofonija [Symphony of Religions] and Haos [Chaos] were
completed.5

5Other constituent parts were the Prasimfonija [Symphony of Ancient Times], Koz-
mogonija [Symphony of the Cosmos], and Heliofonija [Symphony of the Sun]. Materials
from these projected pieces found their way into other works by Slavenski.
372 chapter fourteen

The major achievement of the Prague years was the First String Quartet,
which exists in several versions sharing similar musical materials. It was
completed in 1923, and it was the work that more than any other brought
him to international attention when performed at Donaueschingen a year
after its composition. Its selection by a committee that included Schoen-
berg and Schreker augured well for Slavenskis career as a composer (he
was taken on by Schotts), but he had difficulty maintaining this visibility in
later years, and was largely neglected after World War II, though still with
some success (performances of the Violin Concerto and positive reviews
for a performance of the Sinfonija orijenta) in 1950s Belgrade. By the time
of the Donaueschingen performance, Slavenski had already returned to
Yugoslavia. He had been obliged to cut short his time in Prague, and took
a modest teaching post at the Zagreb Academy in September 1923. Then,
less than a year later, he moved to Belgrade, where, apart from an eight-
month period spent in Paris in 192526, he remained until his death.
The move to Belgrade was not about nationality; any more than was
Konjovis move in the other direction. The brief period in Zagreb was
an intensely creative one (the piano sonata; the Slavenska sonata [Slavic
Sonata] for violin and piano), and during it he established or affirmed
musical friendships that would prove to be lasting. The immediate cause
of his departure was his removal from the Academy due to major cutbacks
at the end of 1923. In contrast, he had a firm offer from the Belgrade Music
School. But there are suggestions, too, that the atmosphere in Zagreb was
not entirely conducive, especially given his Meimurjean roots. Milana
Slavenski, who would marry the composer a few years later, commented
not just on the conservative influences prevailing in musical circles in
Zagreb, but on a certain snobbishness towards provincial Meimurjeans
(Slavenski was always keen to parade his credentials as a bakers son who
had turned his hand to the trade).6
Belgrade, on the other hand, was an open city, a newly minted capital,
and a blank sheet on which new stories were being written in all the
arts, with the Grupa umetnika [Artists Group], established in 1919, play-
ing a key role in expanding the cultural horizons of the city. Slavenskis
productivity remained undiminished during his first year in Belgrade. He
completed several major works, including his quintet Sa sela [From the
Village], Sonata religiosa [Religious Sonata] for violin and organ, Piano
Suite Iz Srbije [From Serbia] and symphonic Sketches Mladost [Youth],

6M. Slavenski 2006.

 serbo-croat 373

though during the following winter sojourn in Paris he seems to have con-
tented himself mainly with revisions. All the same, Paris may have played
a role in introducing him to more radical tendencies in art. And it was in
Paris that he developed an interest in the avant-garde movement known
as Zenitism, around the time when Ljubomir Micis controversial journal
Zenit was finally proscribed by the Yugoslav authorities.
Milana Slavenski downplays the significance of Zenitism in her hus-
bands creative development.7 She does, however, discuss his encounter
in Paris with the ardent Zenitist artist Branko V. Poljanski, the pseudonym
used by Micis brother. It seems that Slavenski took Poljanski in and
helped him financially, and that Poljanski in turn introduced the com-
poser to several artists associated with the Parisian avant-garde, including
Pablo Picasso. Milana was not entirely wrong to dissociate her husband
from the Zenitists. It is true that he did not subscribe to their more subver-
sive agendas, that he tired of the Mici brothers, and that his own brand of
Balkan vehemence was different from theirs. But this is to minimise what
are very real connections.
At the outset, Zenitism was influenced by European avant-garde move-
ments, but ultimately it took its stand on an opposition between the Bal-
kans and Western Europe, and on a view of the former as a potential
source of the latters renewal. Its tone was militant in the manner of
avant-garde manifestos in the 1920s and its agenda was ambitious: noth-
ing less than to transform modern life by means of radical art. What was
needed and it is an intriguing reversal of the customary flow of ideas
was a purifying and energising Balkanisation of Europe, through the
power of the Balkan barbaro-genius, a local variation on a Nietzschean
theme. It is hard not to see an element of this in at least one dimension of
Slavenskis music, including its references to the eastern orientation of the
Balkans. Certainly it is telling that the score of Zagorski tamburai, the
second movement of his suite Sa Balkana, was given in an issue of Zenit
dated October 1925. I will return to Zagorski tamburai shortly.
By the time Slavenski returned to Belgrade from Paris in July 1926 to
take up a teaching appointment at an all boys Gimnazija, he already had
an impressive portfolio of compositions. It is time to take a brief look at
some of them. Consider first two pieces composed in Prague, both signal-
ling Yugoslavia. The suite Iz Jugoslavije exists in several versions, vocal
and instrumental. It is based on traditional music, including songs from

7Ibid.
374 chapter fourteen

umadija and Croatian Zagorje, and the treatments are characteristically

modern, with Slavenski eschewing diatonic functions in favour of stable
harmonic platforms that create bimodal relations with the melody. This is
also the technique of the final movement of the Jugoslovenska svita (piano
version). But the other movements of the suite are free compositions,
taking us from the harmonically thickened melody of the opening tema
con improvisazioni (polychordal writing), through the high-energy disso-
nance of the scherzo balcanico, to the polymetric improvisational flow and
dissonant counterpoint of the third movement, adagio religioso.
The alternation pjevanje-igranje [singing-dancing] here is an early
instance of a structuring device in many of Slavenskis later works based
on traditional music. The movements of the first version of the First String
Quartet are so labelled, and the two terms, suggestive of contrasted pri-
mal elements in traditional Balkan music (the melancholy song; the wild
dance), are frequently used as expressive indicators throughout his music.
In its final form, this quartet stands as one of Slavenskis most important
early works. Its thematic substance is relatable to folk models. The opening
melody, for instance, is based on a type of pentatonic Meimurjean song,
and it would later become the basis of the sixth movement of Balkanofo-
nija, personalised as Moja pjesma [My Song]. Indeed it assumes the quality
of a signature in Slavenskis music as a whole. But the quartet takes this
material into an area of contrapuntal abstraction, including fugal devices,
and the dense, concentrated motive working of the work marks it off as
one of the composers most rigorous, thought-through compositions.8
As its title suggests, the Slavenska Sonata also takes its inspiration from
traditional music, but here it is transformed into a sound world that is
more uncompromisingly modernist than anything in the First String Quar-
tet. The style is a unique one. In trying to capture it, we may choose refer-
ence points in Bartk, Janek and Stravinsky, but only because as known
quantities these can act as useful pointers. The Slavenska Sonata does not
in the end sound like any of them. Its motive working and counterpoint,
and the relation it establishes between an intensely expressive melos and
an often aggressively dissonant harmonic accompaniment, have some-
thing in common with Bartk. Yet its processive discontinuities, its circu-
lar ostinati and its expressive immediacy are closer to Janek, and so too
is the tendency for accompaniments to transcend the usual connotations
of this label. Stravinsky may seem a more unlikely comparator, but there

8Buji 1978.
 serbo-croat 375

is an element of tonal distortion in this music that is similar in technique,

though not in sound, to the Russian composer, with melody and harmony
alike subject to tonal interferences.
Overall, though, the most striking feature is the sheer expressive range
of this music within a relatively short, single-movement work. It encom-
passes tender moments of folk-based melody and violent explosions of
dissonance, with little attempt to mediate between the two. And it is
exactly this Expressionslogik that allows us to characterise the sonata as
a particularly fierce kind of expressionism. It is not out of place to relate
it to Zenitist thinking. When Slavenski writes the words sauvage extasie
des Balkaniques into the score of the Slavenska Sonata at one wildly dis-
sonant moment, he surely invokes those cleansing Balkan energies, with
their capacity to counter western decadence, that would in due course be
immortalised by Ljubomir Mici in his Barbarogenije decivilizator.9 This
too is a trope that recurs periodically in the later music.
In the Sonata religiosa for violin and organ, composed shortly after his
arrival in Belgrade, Slavenski moved yet further from traditional music. It
still informs the expressive melos of the violin part, unfolding over circling,
non-teleological ostinati in the organ, but it is juxtaposed with sonoristic
fields on organ alone, built up in separate strata and activated by rapid
internal pulsations or divisions. Here we can scarcely avoid adding another
reference point in the music of the last century. Like Messiaen, Slavenski
was alive to the potential of the organ to create a kind of religious ecstasy
through the sheer power of sonority, allied to a refusal of developmental
energies. The opening sections of the Sonata religiosa present an alterna-
tive to the pjevanje-igranje juxtaposition, where the sauvage extasie of
the Slavenska Sonata is replaced by an extasie religieuse.
In both cases there is a dialogue between individual expression and de-
personalised ritual forms, the surrender to the collective that is expressed
in dance, but equally in religious ritual. In the Sonata religiosa the indi-
vidual meditation of the violin melody is juxtaposed at the outset with the
collective religious awe depicted by the organ, and the remainder of the
piece can be understood as a mediation of these two positions. However,
the sonic explorations of the Sonata religiosa took on an autonomous
quality in some later works, representing one pole of Slavenskis creativ-
ity, where folk-based motive working represents the other. The trajectory

9For a discussion of Micis zenitist manifesto and his idea of the barbarogenius, see
imii 2003.
376 chapter fourteen

of these early works then from Iz Jugoslavije to the Sonata religiosa

describes a journey from one species of Yugoslav modernism to another:
to put it over-glibly, from the modernism of Konjovi to the modernism
of Osterc.

From the Balkans...

To describe Slavenski as Serbo-Croat is already to invoke transition. But

his music is about transition in two other senses, both already introduced
in our discussion of Yugoslav music between the wars. I will address the
first of them here and the second in the next section. When Slavenski
remarked that he sought inspiration in the folk music of all those peoples
that have not yet been spoiled by civilisation, he aligned himself to a Bar-
tkian aesthetic, though he was not without his criticism of Bartk.10 What
he called folk music in this quotation was no mere symbolic adjunct to
nationalism, but an essential ingredient of modernism, in the terms of
Adornos classic formulation of Bartks modernist credentials. Unlike
the rationalised folk and popular music of romantic nationalism, agrarian
traditions were valued precisely because they had fallen largely outside
the dominant Western processes of rationalisation, and could therefore
be used critically to radical, progressive ends.
Something of the symbolic value associated with folk music remained,
of course, in particular its identification with a collective natural com-
munity, one that had not been spoiled by civilisation. But it was no
longer a narrowly national community that was evoked. And that is why
Slavenskis project, no less than Bartks, was less a nationalist than an
authentically modernist one: to span the gulf between a putative ahistori-
cal community, where the individual might be thought to speak for, or
with, the community, and the contemporary world of Western modernity,
where the individual is deemed to be alienated. Of all composers work-
ing in Yugoslavia, Slavenski is the one who came closest to an essentially
Bartkian project. And in doing so, he articulated precisely the quality of
transition that enabled significant music in the Balkans. Far from inhibiting
his modernist tendencies, as Bojan Buji has argued, folkloric elements had
a capacity actually to liberate those tendencies.11

10In his article, Muziki folklor kao politiko oruje (Knjievne novine, 1 April 1955),
Slavenski criticised Bartk for Magyarising the folk music of neighbouring countries,
including that of Meimurje. See Sedak 1984, i, 235.
11 Buji 1978.
 serbo-croat 377

That Slavenski transcended narrow nationalisms is further suggested

by the symbolic geographies traced by his titles. He was initially a com-
mitted Yugoslav, regarding the new state as a political expression of both
Slavic and Balkan (Zenitist) identities, at once part of Europe and resis-
tant to Europe. As we have seen, his titles did for a time invoke Yugoslavia
(in addition to Jugoslovenska svita and Iz Jugoslavije, there was the Danse
Yugoslave from the First String Quartet and the Jugoslavenska pesma i
igra [Yugoslav Songs and Dances]), but this practice all but disappeared
after he settled in Belgrade in 1926. The later titles refer either to specific
locales (Rasina, Zagorje, and especially Meimurje), to nations within the
wider Balkans (Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria,
Romania, Greece), or simply to the Balkans. This was a significant shift.
Slavenski identified not just with Yugoslavia but with particular regions
such as Meimurje, and with the Balkans. Indeed, by embracing the Mus-
lim regions of the Balkans the most obvious markers of the Ottoman
legacy he ran counter to the rhetoric traditionally associated with Yugo-
slav nation-building. This reorientation, shared by others (Tajevi), was
indicative of a future shift in the positioning of Muslims, a suggestion that
they might be integrated, rather than othered, within Yugoslavia.
Slavenski commonly used the term Balkan, but in two distinct senses.
It could be a Zenitist expressive indicator, as in Scherzo balcanico from
the Jugoslavenska svita, Allegro barbaro balkanico from apljanski tatari
or Presto balcanico, furioso from Sa Sela [From the Village]. I have already
discussed his links with Zenitism, but it is possible to argue that the ethos
conveyed by these descriptors is at least as close to later writers such as
Rgis Debray as to Ljubomir Mici.12 It is a distinctly masculine ethos, in
which the primitive and the warlike are assigned a positive value, in direct
opposition to an over-civilised West, which increasingly fights its wars by
proxy (and sometimes in the Balkans). To quote and then paraphrase
Debray, the Balkans are closer to the laboratories of truth, a site where
hunger, insecurity, conquering faith and war can be studied daily and
peace can be recognised for what it truly is: an interlude between states
of hostility. This is close to one meaning the term carried for Slavenski.
But Balkan was also understood as a unifying descriptor, and in more
than a purely geographical sense. This is how it was used in the youthful
Sa Balkana, in the Pesme i igre sa Balkana [Songs and Dances from the Bal-
kans] (1927), which formed the basis of the Balkanska Svita [Balkan Suite]
and the major orchestral composition Balkanofonija, and in the orchestral

12Debray 2007.
378 chapter fourteen

etiri balkanske igre [Four Balkan Dances]. Completed in 1938 on the eve of
World War II, etiri balkanske igre was the last major composition whose
title points specifically to the Balkans in this way. Of all these works, Bal-
kanofonija was, and is, the most popular. It was first performed in Belgrade
in 1928, then in Berlin in 1929, and subsequently all over Europe. Along
with the Second String Quartet [Lirski kvartet] of 1928, it represented the
high point of what some have considered a second creative period in his
work, and its panorama of Balkan nations and regions neatly epitomises
the inclusivity of his aesthetic. Compare the Simfonija orijenta (the name
given to Religiofonija when that term was deemed politically unaccept-
able) of 1934, which speaks of inclusivity in a different way.
From the start, the creativity with which Slavenski appropriated origi-
nal and imagined traditional music and aligned it to modernist idioms
lifted his music clear of the more conventional approaches of Dobroni
and his circle. In the little choral piece Voda zvira [Water Springs Out],
composed as early as 1916, this originality was already apparent, not least
through the succession of alternative harmonisations of a pentatonic
melodic fragment reminiscent of traditional Meimurjean idioms. This
changing background technique, familiar in appropriations of traditional
music from Glinka onwards, recurred frequently in his later music, as in
Bulgarska igra, the last movement of Balkanofonija. Also typical of Slaven-
ski was the re-cycling of the melody of Voda zvira in one version of the First
String Quartet and in the Pesme i igre sa Balkana.
Such re-cycling was especially common in folk-inspired pieces, and we
find it again in the piano suite Sa Balkana, completed a year after Voda
zvira in 1917. Not only was this based mainly on existing materials for
other instrumental combinations; in the same year the first piece became
a song for voice and piano, while the last piece was arranged for chamber
ensemble. Later (1930), the entire suite was arranged for chamber orches-
tra, and in the early war years for full orchestra.13 These are much more
than arrangements. Rather like Liszt, Slavenski allowed his ideas to spread
out into multiple media, genres and forms, and new versions often have
the effect of commenting on earlier versions. In other words, the same
folk-inspired material generates a diversity of pieces that are at once inde-
pendent and mutually dependent: a series of intertexts where significance
can reside in the play of echoes, of memories and correspondences, of

13This was also the time when Slavenski arranged his Piano Sonata and Iz Jugoslavije
for orchestra.
 serbo-croat 379

recognitions and differences. This is even true where there are relatively
few changes to musical substance, as in the second movement of Sa
Balkana, Zagorski tamburai. There is a world of difference between the
piano and orchestral versions of this piece, to say nothing of the earliest
form of all (1912), where the scoring is for two citterns.
The piano version, with its percussive clusters (feroce pesante) and
relentless rhythms, reminds us again of that connection with Bartk, here
the Bartk of Allegro barbaro. Yet such comparisons need to be handled
carefully. One by-product of modernist canon formation was the parallel
formation of a scholarly canon for the analysis of modernist music: pitch-
class set analysis following Schoenberg, octatonic theory following Strav-
insky. For musicologists from South East Europe, it has been hard to resist
using such tools in the analysis of native repertories, but the effects are not
always as intended. We may appear to dignify lesser-known composers by
using analytical methods derived from the music of major canonic figures.
But there is some danger that we inadvertently marginalise them further
if the fit between music and method is not adequate. In a word, they may
be deemed to fall short of achievements that were never in their sights.
Eva Sedaks study of Slavenski is not without difficulties in this regard.
It is tempting all the same to explore Slavenskis affinities with Bartk
in analytical terms. In the case of Bartk, two approaches in particular,
coming from very different theoretical traditions, have systematised the
common ground between traditional music and modernist art music, one
transforming traditional modalities into abstract inversional symmetries,
and the other proposing an integration of (organic, eastern) golden sec-
tion and (inorganic, western) acoustic systems.14 It does seem possible that
comparable theoretical systems might be developed for Slavenskis music,
which is likewise concerned with modernist transformations of melodic-
linear (often pentatonic) structures. But one thing is certain. They would
not be identical systems.15 Despite their similar aims, the music of the
two composers is really quite different. To use the language of Adorno, we
need to allow Slavenski something in advance.16
For one thing, folk or folk-inspired materials do not play a single, self-
consistent role in Slavenskis music. This is already apparent in the music
he composed before settling in Belgrade in 1926. Sa Balkana is one of

14Antokoletz 1984; Lendvai 1983.

15Hugues Seress has made systematic efforts to conduct a comparative harmonic analy-
sis of pentatonic melodies in the compositions of Bartk and Slavenski (see Seress 2006).
16Adorno 1982.
380 chapter fourteen

several works that remain fairly close to their folk models, though the four
pieces alternating songs and dances are certainly much more than
mere transcriptions; this group would also include the song-cycle Iz Yugo-
slavije. Slavenski made a close study of the scale and interval structures of
traditional music, and his aim in such pieces was to allow harmonisations
to emerge naturally from those structures, whether the melody was an
authentic folk song or a folk-like melody of his own invention. Bimodal
accompaniments, often based on ostinato patterns, are characteristic, but
the range of harmonic genera is actually extraordinarily wide, taking us all
the way from archetypal bourdon fifths to dense clusters.
In contrast, the First String Quartet exhibits a much more closely inte-
grated thematicism, so that concrete folkloristic elements are much less
immediate. Folk models do still inform the linear-melodic elements, but
the models are now processed and transformed to the point where they
can achieve a measure of abstraction similar to that found in the Bartk
quartets. Then, somewhere between these two extremes, we have works
such as the Piano Sonata and the Slavenska sonata, where folk or folk-
inspired materials are often foregrounded in a raw state, but where they
are disrupted in various ways, partly through tonal interferences and
partly through abrupt juxtapositions with radical modernist devices, rup-
turing continuities but at the same time lighting up the simple melodies
in new ways. The effect of this is to give the music a visceral, gestural
quality, common to a good deal of Slavenskis music. It is highly distinc-
tive, and it separates him off from his most obvious models. For better or
worse mainly better there is no other music quite like Slavenskis.
When he arrived in Belgrade, following his Parisian interlude, one of his
first compositions was Pesme i igre sa Balkana, and the symbolic geogra-
phy is reinforced by later works based on these pieces: the Balkanska svita
and Balkanofonija. The three works are by no means identical in their
musical materials. The two volumes of Pesme i igre sa Balkana contain
quite a few pieces that do not appear in the later works, including songs or
dances from Croatia, Macedonia and Slovenia, the latter an arrangement
of an early choral work. There are also regional pieces from Rasina and
Meimurje (the Meimurjean one is based on Voda zvira), additional Ser-
bian pieces, a Dervish dance, and a Slavonic dance. Finally, the Roma-
nian dance is different from the one composed for Balkanofonija. In the
five-movement Balkanska svita for String Orchestra Slavenski renamed
the opening national dance a Serbian dance and kept the Albanian,
Macedonian and Bulgarian pieces. He also added Moja pjesma [My Song]
to the Suite, based on the Meimurjean-influenced slow movement of the
 serbo-croat 381

First String Quartet. In Balkanofonija, which is in seven movements, he

retained the Serbian Dance, Albanian Song, Greek Song and Bulgar-
ian Dance from the original work, and included Moja pjesma from the
Balkanska svita. He also replaced the Romanian Dance with a different
piece, and added another new movement called Turkish Dance.
Taken together, then, these three works present us with a panorama of
the Balkans, and they carry a rather blatant political message: a sermon on
nationalism. By uniting the region musically, Slavenski sought to empha-
sise what he saw as a special kind of power, closely linked to his visions of
the primeval, the oriental, and even (as we shall see) the cosmic. It was a
universal message, but at some remove from the hegemonic universalism
embodied in the Western canon. Indeed, as someone whose politics were
decidedly of the left, Slavenski resisted any imperialist suggestion that a
Western bourgeois culture might speak on behalf of all. Idealistically no
doubt, and here he echoed the Zenitists, Slavenski regarded the Balkans,
incorporating its Islamic East, as a privileged site of cultural renewal.
The Balkanofonija pieces illustrate well my earlier point about inter-
texts. The three versions of the opening movement, Serbian Dance are all
different. In Pesme i igre we launch straight into the jaunty dance melody;
in the Suite there is a two-bar dissonant prelude; and in Balkanofonija
itself there is a more extended introduction based on an entirely differ-
ent dissonance (a complete Aeolian aggregate), marked feroce agitato.
This is so far from the dance melody that it acts as an alienating device,
establishing an opposition, a formal dislocation of a kind characteristic
of Slavenski. The melody itself retains its folk-like character in Balkano-
fonija, but it is harmonised pan-diatonically rather than by an open-fifth
bourdon, as in the earlier versions, and when it returns in the reprise it
takes on a more ominous character through tonal interferences, reflecting
the experience of a much darker middle section, and ultimately making
sense of the opening dislocation. The middle section is characterised by a
circular melody in Istrian mode projected against layered dissonant har-
monic backcloths animated by oriental elements. The movement is more
character piece than dance piece, a portrait of a melody as it interacts
poetically and dramatically with its surroundings. Moreover the harmo-
nies do not really drive the music. Characteristically they either provide
static backcloths or emerge from rotating patterns of ostinato-like linear
fragments.
These techniques are extended in the Albanian and Greek movements.
In the Albanian Song yet another dissonant opening harmony thins out
to the octave As that accompany the repeated modal melody in ways
382 chapter fourteen

that recall Borodins Steppes of Central Asia. But again the simplicities are
lost, as the parallel fourths of the second cycle give way to the complex
sustained dissonances of the third. The Greek Song, meanwhile, allows its
oriental mode to unfold in tight repeating circles that are bound yet closer
by strict canonic treatments, making space for arabesque-like ornamen-
tal counterpoints towards the end. Most remarkable of all is the Turkish
dance, where wisps of melody and high-tessitura figures interweave in
unpredictable ways, all overlaid on a recurring percussion ground. Again
there is no real hint of teleology here; and this is also true of the Romanian
dance song, which activates its modal field contrapuntally, but avoids any
sense that harmony might shape the phrase.
This is one of the keys to Slavenskis treatment of traditional music. He
preserves the principle of the ison, but replaces a single tone or bourdon
with an harmonic field that may be animated by counterpoint and is sub-
ject to tonal interferences. The melody retains its integrity, but it takes on
fresh meanings from unusual harmonic settings and from unexpected jux-
tapositions with those raw, seemingly unmotivated dissonant events that
occasionally interrupt its flow and may even act as framing devices. Inter-
estingly, the one piece in Balkanofonija that works on more traditional
lines is Moja pjesma. As noted earlier, this is based on material from the
First String Quartet, and the more conventional voice leading and warmer
harmonies somehow intensify the nostalgia that is no doubt intended in
this portrait of Slavenskis Meimurjean homeland. As to the finale, this is
the Bulgarian dance that rounded off the first book of Pesme i igre, as well
as the Suite, though it is here transformed by a thicker harmonic layer, by
changing orchestrations, and by a newly-composed figurative tracery. The
augmentation of the theme in its final cycle is characteristically presented
against a complex dissonant background. Balkanofonija is Slavenskis trib-
ute to the Balkans, a region where, in his own words, different national
cultures of natives, migrs and invaders intermingled, merged [and] cre-
ated new and often extraordinarily beautiful and interesting forms.17
Two other major instrumental works from these years, the Violin Con-
certo (1927) and the Second Lyric String Quartet (1928), are likewise based
on either authentic or imagined folksong melodies. The Lyric Quartet in
particular can stand with Balkanofonija as a major achievement of this
creative period, and through its use of a kind of changing background
technique in all three movements it has parallels with the orchestral work.

17J. Slavenski 1946, 1.

 serbo-croat 383

The first movement is a powerful instance of the marriage of traditional

music and classical formal archetypes. The opening (Macedonian) folk
melody is typically preceded by an alienating device a tonally foreign
frame in octaves before it is presented against changing backgrounds,
while the second theme on viola is more developmental in character and
is elaborated contrapuntally. The development section is a kind of fan-
tasy, dominated by the contour and rhythmic profile of the Macedonian
song, but subject to dramatic discontinuities of a kind that remind one
of Janek, not least through the illusion they create that time has been
temporarily suspended.
In the slow movement an authentic, deeply expressive folk melody is
again repeated against changing backgrounds, first a single ison, then a
bourdon fifth, then a quite different harmonisation that finds new quali-
ties in the melody. As the movement builds to a peak of intensity, the
melody is developed and fragmented, with the fragments treated contra-
puntally, and then the reprise presents the melody for a final time in a
quite new setting. But the real triumph of the work is its powerful mono-
thematic finale, its theme endlessly projected against new backgrounds
that pick out different qualities embedded in it. From the start the tech-
nique is contrapuntal, and dense polyphonic complexes are characteris-
tically built into major climaxes. Only in the closing section is there a
moment of repose, allowing for the return of the second subject of the
first movement in new expressive transformations. This music is distant
from Bartk, but it is hardly less successful in building a musical world on
the transition between the traditional idioms of the East and the modern-
ism of the West.

...to the Cosmos

In a handful of works composed by Slavenski during the 1930s the folk-

inspired modernisms of Balkanofonija gave way to more experimental tech-
niques, of the kind we observed in the Sonata religiosa. We will approach
these works by way of a composition with a foot in both camps, and one
that stands as a counterpart to Balkanofonija. Slavenski began work on the
choral Sinfonija orijenta in 1926, and completed it in 1934, though initially
the piece carried the title Religiofonija (the title was changed after the war,
at which point religious themes were proscribed). It was performed twice
in the 1930s, in Belgrade and Bratislava, but was not accepted for publica-
tion by Schotts, mainly because of its Jewish movement. The work was
384 chapter fourteen

widely perceived to have a leftish orientation, reinforced by ideological

readings of the final movement (this movement, a hymn to work, was
added after the war, and could be read as an identification of Communism
with a kind of religion). In any event the work languished before gaining
another Belgrade performance in 1954, the year before Slavenskis death.
The 1926 plan, in which the order of the last two movements is reversed,
is more specific in description than the conception of 193334, referring to
geographical regions as well as to faiths, and thus strengthening the sense
of a universalist mission.18
The following outline is composite, in that it adheres to the later
sequence but adds the geographical descriptions used in the earlier plan,
as well as the technical subtitles from the final score. We arrive at this
scheme:

1. Pagani [Pagans] Afrika musica rhytmica musika prethistorije;

2. Jevreji [Jews] Levant musica coloristica;
3. Budisti [Buddhists] Tibet, China, India musica arhitectonica;
4.Hriani [Christians] the Byzantine world musica melodica;
5. Muslimani [Muslims] Arabia musica articulatia;
6. Muzika [Music] Europe musica dinamica;
7. Pjesma ivotu i radu [Songs of Life and Work] the Balkan Slavs
musica vitalica.

Note that there is a broadly sequential chronicle of cultures and faiths

here, that Slavenski identified Christianity with Orthodoxy (though he
himself converted to the Orthodox faith only rather later), that he sepa-
rated Europe from the Balkan Slavs, and that he associated the former
with high culture (arguably linked to religion through Kunstreligion), and
the latter with labour and with Zenitist vitality.
The musical identifications here are intended to function on a symbolic
level. Authenticity was never really part of the plan. All the same, the pas-
tiche at the heart of the work makes for an odd mix of styles. Pesma radu,
with its hints of a mass song idiom, hardly seems to belong at all. Of the
remainder, it is perhaps not surprising that the most traditional is Hriani,
the first to be composed (1926), and the more so because it makes no real
attempt to approach the Orthodox musical traditions invoked by Slavenskis

18Nothing could distort Slavenskis intentions more completely than the extraction of the
Muslimani movement for a Bosnian recording representing the Sarajevo Renaissance.
 serbo-croat 385

subtitle. The imitative points and arc-like phrases of this piece belong to
familiar traditions of choral polyphony, with sideways Cecilian glances.
Only the final epilogue looks beyond this world. Muzika is more explor-
atory in tone, but it likewise constructs its web of contrapuntal strands
into powerfully expressive climaxes driven by insistent throbbing pulses
on timpani. Like Hriani, this is goal-directed music. However, towards
the end of the movement, the pulses and repetition structures begin to
approach the condition of directionless ostinati of a kind more character-
istic of the other movements of this extraordinary work.
Indeed the remainder of the Sinfonija orijenta is almost a study in osti-
nato. In the first movement, Pagani, rhythmic ostinati (xylophone and
timpani) are presented in canonically ordered overlapping layers, accom-
panied by exclamatory vocal cries (as yet without speech), but building
into ever more complex rhythmic patterns and generating high levels of
dissonance. It is a novel soundscape, but at the same time characteris-
tic of a more widespread species of early twentieth-century primitivist
sonorism. Jevreji, on the other hand, cultivates timbrally differentiated
and fragmented melodic ostinati in a manner that has something in
common with Stravinsky technically but sounds really quite different.
There are evocations here of traditional Jewish instruments (including
the shofar), and the baritone soloist and chorus likewise recreate Jewish
cantillation and choral prayer. In Budisti Slavenski builds gamelan-like
pentatonic sound worlds over which the chant-like text repetitions (m
mani padme hm) are superimposed, simultaneously fast and slow. And
in like manner, Muslimani culminates in a so-called ilhi, in which the
music is reduced almost entirely to ostinati (a study in religious ecstasy, it
is in reality closer to the music accompanying the zikr than to an ilhi).
As noted earlier, the Sinfonija orijenta was one of a group of works or
plans of works collectively labeled Misterij. One is reminded of the Mys-
terium envisaged by Skryabin, who developed a series of mystico-musical
symbols in his later music: interval types, chord colours, bell sonorities.
And also of Messiaen, for whom Hindu and Greek rhythms, neumes,
instrumentation, chord colours and birdsong all had similar signifying
roles. Slavenski was not quite a mystic in the spirit of Skryabin and Mes-
siaen, but he was deeply interested in religious experience, and attempted
in several works to convey something of the spiritual ecstasy beloved of
the other two. He was also a scientist manqu, and in this respect he went
much further than either Skryabin or Messiaen. It is true that both these
composers translated their eastern-influenced visionary ideas into sound
by way of rather sophisticated musical systems, but neither really came
386 chapter fourteen

close to Slavenskis enthusiasm for what would later be glibly labelled The
Tao of Physics.
Slavenski was interested in the (putative) underlying unity of the world
and of the cosmos, and in order to symbolise that unity musically he toyed
with neo-medieval correspondences between music and science: models
of the cosmos that might embrace acoustics, astronomy and even atomic
physics. He went so far as to coin the term Astroakustika [Astroacoustics]
to describe these adventures, and although he entertained no illusions
about their scientific importance, his aim seemed to be a re-ordering of
the tonal system in accordance with astroacoustic laws. What we know
about this aspect of Slavenski comes from notes, some dating from as early
as 1913, deciphered and summarised by Vlastimir Perii.19 Interestingly,
they contain not just calculations about measurements within the solar
system and about astrophysics in general, but also jottings of folk music
and Orthodox chant. It is clear that for Slavenski these musical archetypes
of humanitys ritual and religious experience, liberated from equal tem-
perament, were all parts of the larger scheme.
What emerges from this is not a scientific theory, but a game with num-
bers and intervals with a capacity to generate musical ideas of striking
originality. Planets are associated with musical intervals in several differ-
ent ways. In some cases, for example, calculations are based on planetary
distances as measured by astronomic units, so that the intervallic equiva-
lents naturally involve microtonal relations. Here Slavenski is an explorer,
a musical frontier man, not unlike Harry Partch, with whom he shared
a fascination with just intonation. He was less single-minded than Partch
(just intonation is the truth), but he was no less convinced that equal
temperament was an unnecessary and outmoded restriction on creativ-
ity, and he valued native Meimurjean music not least for its avoidance
of such temperament.
In 1937 Slavenski composed two pieces called Muzika u prirodnom ton-
skom sistemu [Music in the Natural Tonal System], involving in the first
the 53-note-to-the-octave harmonium of R.H.M. Bosanquet, and in the
second four (electronic) trautoniums and percussion.20 The low C with

19Perii 1984.
20Slavenski gave a lecture in 1938 on the Prirodni muziki system [Natural tonal sys-
tem], and in his article Nae narodne melodije (Slavenski 1946), he discussed the artificial
nature of equal temperament. There was a wider context for such debates at the time, and
for the construction of instruments to meet the needs of Just Intonation, taking us as far
afield as Eivind Groven in Norway (Lysdahl 2004).
 serbo-croat 387

which this second piece begins is also an astroacoustical sign, based on

an equation of the harmonic series with the planetary sequence (and also
with the periodic table of atomic physics). It first appeared at the opening
of the Sonata religiosa and then again at the beginning of the orchestral
piece Haos, completed in 1932. Slavenski also generated symmetrical scales
by manipulating these correspondences, including the octatonic scale, of
which the Istrian and Jewish modes (as in the second movement of Reli-
giofonija) can be folkloric instantiations. As Perii has indicated, the play
of correspondences was extended yet further, reaching into wavelengths,
frequencies and the spectrum. But what is perhaps more important than
the precise methods by which Slavenski arrived at his various pitch con-
figurations, was the searching spirit that lay behind the whole enterprise.
This aspect of his work embodied a kind of experimentalism that was rare
in Yugoslavia at this time, and that allows us to consider his music within
the framework of an avant-garde.
We can separate out two distinct impulses underlying early twentieth-
century formulations of the musically new. One is a quest for new ideas,
and the other a quest for new sounds. The former might be associated
with Schoenberg; the latter with the Futurists, and with a group of experi-
mental composers on the edges of the great tradition, of whom Varse is
the most significant. It is entirely realistic to relate Slavenski to the second
of these tendencies, and it is characteristic that his quest for new sounds
was associated with his quest for something elusively ancient, symbol-
ised in part by the sounds of organ and bells associated with his native
Meimurje. I referred earlier to the sonic explorations of the Sonata reli-
giosa, and to the musica coloristica of the Sinfonija orijenta. This aspect
of his creativity was arguably pushed to its extreme in the orchestral piece
Haos, material from which had formed part of the much earlier, and no
longer extant, Prasimfonija, and also of the projected Heliofonija.
Haos takes the form of a single structural crescendo, and conceptu-
ally one might again relate it to certain works of Skryabin, the Poem of
Ecstasy, for example, and even more the late piano work Vers la flamme.
The crescendo is achieved partly through dynamics, but more importantly
it is a function of sonority. From a single deep tone, static but pulsat-
ing, there slowly emerge circular ostinati, densely dissonant harmonies
and fragmentary motives in a graphic depiction of the evolution of the
world and the formation of matter. The sculptured sound of this music
is surprisingly close to Varse, in that the primary compositional determi-
nants are textures and timbres rather than themes and harmonies, though
thematic definition significantly relatable to the Meimurjean Moja
388 chapter fourteen

pesme is achieved as we approach the first of the works two big cli-
maxes. A moment of dissolution leaves the organ alone before the final
apotheosis. Listening to Haos, we quickly realise why Slavenski was drawn
to the idea of electronic music, not just in the Muzika u prirodnom ton-
skom sistemu, but also in the projected Heliofonija, which was conceived
for choir, orchestra and electronic instruments.
There are similar sonic explorations in two works dating from the late
1930s, the Muzika za orkestar: harmonije i disharmonije (Muzika 36), and
the Muzika za komorni orkestar (Muzika 38). Muzika 36 extends those evo-
cations of the Orient (referring here to the Far rather than the Middle
East) found in Sinfonija orijenta. To a large extent, this was achieved by
building on existing characteristics of Slavenskis music: the multiple cir-
cling ostinatos, the stratification of textures to create platforms of sound
that proceed at different tempi, the imaginative use of percussion, and the
broadly pentatonic melos. Rather like Haos, the first movement proceeds
by gradually filling out and then animating harmonic fields that remain
largely stable, though in this movement Slavenski achieves a structural
accelerando as well as a structural crescendo. Again as in Haos, the for-
mal process is a unitary one, in which the rhythmically dislocated and
ever more tightly compressed repetitions of a small handful of motives
enable a steady accumulation of energy. The second movement, splen-
didly marked allegro vandalico, is an orgy of brass and percussion, a dis-
harmony of superimposed stabbing figures in polyrhythmic layers, vying
with rather than supporting the obsessively repeating principal motive.
This is music that takes no prisoners.
In this group of pieces dating from the 1930s Slavenskis credentials as
an unreconstructed Modernist are unassailable. Here we may speak of
transition in the second of the two senses I outlined earlier: the transition
to a known new associated with Western cultural capitals. Like a handful
of pieces by Osterc and Milojevi, these works are conspicuous for their
cultivation of avant-garde techniques. They enable us to model Slavenskis
output as a whole or at least up to the outbreak of World War II by
way of a spectrum of styles. If we position Sa Balkana at one end of the
spectrum, the journey will take us past key milestones such as Balkanofo-
nija and Sinfonija orijenta until we reach Haos at the other end (the fact
that these four works are also in chronological sequence has some sig-
nificance, but is by no means defining). It is a journey from harmonised
folksong to abstract expressionism, from the modernism of Bartk to the
modernism of Varse, from the Balkans to the Cosmos.
 serbo-croat 389

Most of Slavenskis music is located somewhere close to the middle of

the spectrum, registering both these creative impulses. Muzika 38, per-
formed at the Venice Biennale, is characteristic. It establishes no fewer
than five ostinati, presented separately and superimposed, but in a man-
ner that actually links the music more to Janek than to Stravinsky.
Moreover it allows these polytonal platforms of sound to support devel-
oping melodies that achieve a kind of completeness in the horn melody
in which each of the two movements culminates. This melody makes the
link with Meimurje explicit, distilling surrounding complexities into a
simple song. At the same time those very complexities recall Haos and
Muzika u prirodnom tonskom sistemu by means of multi-layered harmonic
fields built on the astroacoustic low C platform. The elements of fragmen-
tation and distortion here are not just expressionist devices but modes
of deconstructive anti-nationalist critique. Yet the link with Meimurje
reminds us that what collapses in Haos and also in Muzika 38 is not the
link with traditional music. On the contrary, Slavenski is at pains to con-
nect the experimentation of these, his most radical pieces, with forms of
traditional music-making from which we have become alienated by the
devices of art music, including of course equal temperament.
This synthesis goes some way towards explaining the richness and
diversity of Slavenskis music, and its striking originality, but it also helps
us to understand why this composer seems so emblematic of his time and
place. His was a Modernism shaped by the Balkans. It was a project of
transition between East and West, between the traditional music of rural
communities in the wider region and the sophisticated art music of cul-
tural capitals to the north and west, between the Balkans and Europe.
In some works the transition is abrupt; indeed the explosive power and
energy of such works seems often to be generated by the collision of
worlds rather than a transition between them. In others, a universe of
sound is constructed quite literally on the bridge or bridges between two
worlds. But in all cases this is music betwixt and between.
The story changed after 1938. From this point there was a retrench-
ment. During the war, when he was active in support of the Communists,
Slavenski had little time for composition beyond tinkering with existing
music, orchestrating and arranging. The major work to emerge from this
was the Pesme moje majke [Songs of my Mother] for contralto and string
quartet, a beautifully reflective poem on Meimurje, and thus a home-
coming of sorts. Parts of it date from as early as 1916, but it was finally
completed in 1940. It summarises the composers lifelong preoccupation
390 chapter fourteen

with this region, which thus becomes quite literally the end point of his
symbolic geographies. It represented home and mother, a locality that
could stand for the larger Balkan themes of ethnic oppression and cultural
periphery (a Slavic enclave at the borders of Austro-Hungary). At one and
the same time, it could embody a highly personal sense of identity and a
site of ancient Slavic culture.
Following the composition of these songs, in the later stages of the war,
Slavenski spent much of his time harmonising Partisan songs and com-
posing a major but blatantly propagandist work Simfonijski epos [Sym-
phonic Epos], depicting Yugoslavia through the beauties of its folk music,
describing the attack from without, the resistance struggle, the mourning
for fallen soldiers and finally the attempts at reconstruction under Tito.
The work was completed in 1947, and I will refer to it again briefly in
a later chapter. For now we might note that in the post-war years the
composer felt himself doubly alienated: too modern for the wider public,
too conservative for the avant-garde. It was a dilemma for many of his
generation, but that would not have made it easier to bear. His music fell
into relative oblivion, and for the last five years of his life he composed
nothing of substance. Only after his death did his true importance begin
to emerge, and that mainly within Yugoslavia. He was undoubtedly one
of a very small handful of truly major composers from South East Europe
in the first half of the twentieth century, but even today most of these
figures remain largely unknown in the wider musical world. Only one of
them achieved anything like canonic status.
 CHAPTER FIFTEEN

PLACING GENIUS

A Tempting Comparison: Locating George Enescu

In 1940 George Enescu completed his Impressions denfance, Op. 28, a suite
for violin and piano. Fittingly it was dedicated to his old teacher Eduard
Caudella, Director of the Iai Conservatoire in Enescus homeland of
Moldavia.1 One of the Impressions is The little stream at the bottom of
the Garden, and to achieve what he described as una sonorit acquatica
Enescu enlisted a little help. There is an allusion here to Szymanowskis
The Fountain of Arethusa, also for violin and piano: not a quotation
exactly, but an explicit reference to one of the most imaginative of those
musical scnes deau we might loosely describe as impressionist. Arethusa
was the first of Szymanowskis cycle of Mythes, which had been in Enescus
concert repertoire since back in 1927, and the allusion to it in Impressions
denfance was a tribute to a work he admired. Yet it remains the only obvi-
ous point of contact between these two composers. All the same, I have
reasons to consider them in tandem.
In the years just before, during and after World War I the two com-
posers followed similar paths, and the parallels can be revealing of wider
issues. Their youthful works have relatively little in common. But with
the two second symphonies, Szymanowskis composed during 190911,
Enescus during 191214, following what the composer himself described
as an appalling effort,2 there was a moment of convergence. It would be
misleading to describe these as merely formative works; both are assured
and powerful. But in each case they pre-date the arrival of a truly dis-
tinctive voice. If you hear these symphonies with an innocent ear you
may be hard pressed to identify either composer. They are very different
symphonies, but they look in the same direction, adopting the rhetoric,
the gestures and the technical devices associated with an Austro-German

1Caudellas own Moldavian Overture (1913) makes for an interestingly contrasted evo-
cation of Enescus homeland.
2Malcolm 1990, 124.
392 chapter fifteen

post-Wagnerian orchestral style. Richard Strauss rides high in both works,

and especially in their first movements.3
Following this convergence the paths of the two composers ran in
parallel for a bit. Their third symphonies were both products of the
war years, Szymanowskis composed during 19141916, Enescus during
191618. And again the affinities are striking. For a start, the Straussian
tone of their predecessors has been decisively rejected; these symphonies
belong to a rather different world. Both are characterised by an extravagant,
lavish even sumptuous scoring; indeed the orchestral forces are similar,
including a raft of pitched percussion (bells, tamtam, celesta, glockenspiel,
et al.) together with piano, organ, harps and wordless chorus.4 And there
are several parallel gestures along the way: the openings with their chro-
matically sinuous string melodies, the dissolution of full-blooded climaxes
(Strauss may have gone, but the shadow of Mahler remains) into delicate,
evanescent sonorities influenced by modern French music, the mystical
ambience associated with the wordless chorus, and that unmistakable
whiff of the East. Surface parallels abound, then, even if the underlying
ethos of the two symphonies is rather different. To be more specific, the
hedonism of Szymanowskis score, especially in the middle section, finds
no echo in Enescu; characteristically, the tone of quiet, radiant ecstasy in the
third movement of his (Enescus) symphony has to be hard won in its earlier
movements. And that difference tells us much about what will follow.
The immediate post-war years saw both composers immersed in the
two great operas that lie right at the centre of their respective oeuvres, Krl
Roger [King Roger] and Oedipe, reworkings of Euripides and Sophocles
respectively. Here they struggled with matters both metaphysical and sty-
listic. In Krl Roger Szymanowski presented us with a Nietzschean refash-
ioning of The Bacchae, adapting the ending of Jarosaw Iwaszkiewiczs
libretto to portray a man who has first recognised and then overcome
the Dionysian within, and can thus emerge strong enough for freedom.
The message is clear enough, not least through the music: the intoxicat-
ing hedonism of the Third Symphony should not be rejected but accom-
modated, overcome. Enescu too was dissatisfied with the first version of
Edmond Flegs libretto for Oedipe. But here the changes concerned the

3The neo-classical variations of Szymanowskis second movement also find an echo

in some of Enescus earlier music, though I suspect Enescu would have disapproved the
Regerian fugue in which the Szymanowski work culminates.
4The outer sections of the Szymanowski work use a text from Djalal al-Dn Rumi, but
in the middle section the chorus is wordless.
 placing genius 393

beginning rather than the end. In its final version, Flegs libretto reaches
back to Oedipuss earlier life, fleshing out events that are given only a
cursory mention in Sophocles. Only in acts 3 and 4 does it align itself to
the Theban plays. By depicting the entire life cycle of Oedipus Enescu
humanises the work; there is a shift from plot to ethos. This allows for
the moral victory that can come with self-knowledge, let Destiny do its
worst. It is another form of overcoming, again spelt out by the music, and
especially by the final monologue, which invites comparison with King
Rogers closing hymn to the sun. At the end of the operas the protago-
nists have reached a state of exalted solitude; they are no mere reanima-
tions of ancient heroes. Knowing their shadow, as their light, they at last
become whole.5
These two models of humanism had a bearing on the parallel folklor-
istic turn taken by both composers in the 1920s. For Szymanowski the
nationalist turn constituted what he himself called a new period of my
creative life, during which he turned to the traditional music of the Tatras
as a source of inspiration. This represented the final stage of what might
almost be described as an archetype of the evolution of national styles in
East Central Europe (compare Bartk): three relatively discrete stages tak-
ing us from hostile imitation of a status quo (German late Romanticism),6
through a quest for alternatives (modern French music), to the discovery
of ones own jewels, to use Szymanowskis language.7 We should note,
though, that the jewels in question served a double function for Szyman-
owski: a symbol of the nation, but and probably more importantly also
an alternative exoticism. The brightly coloured music of the Tatras was
both homegrown and an exotic other; the jewels are ones own, but they
are jewels. For Szymanowski, the exotic was a prerequisite of creativity,8
and the real achievement of his later music was to accommodate it, har-
nessing the new harmonic and textural acquisitions of the war years to
formal and tonal frameworks of neo-classical lucidity. His folklorism,
then, was a project perfectly in tune with the Nietzschean message of Krl

5This is encoded in the intervallic structure of the leitmotiven of Oedipe, notably the
symbolic meanings attributed to tritone, minor third and major third.
6This corresponds to the category imitative but hostile in Ernest Gellners typology of
nationalisms (Gellner 1983). See p. 114 for further comment.
7My Splendid Isolation, first published in Kurier Polski on 26 November 1922. The title
is in English in the original. See Wightman 1999, 95101.
8His loss of faith in the exotic following the war years amounted to something of a
creative crisis for Szymanowski; Can you believe? I cannot compose now.....
394 chapter fifteen

Roger. It had less to do with nationalism than with a necessary conquest

of the exotic.
The case of Enescu is less straightforward. In the first place his music
cannot be so easily periodised in relation to German, French and indig-
enous (Romanian) influences. Rather it advanced through a shift in the
balance of these elements, all of which were present more-or-less from
the start. The folklorism of the 1920s, then, was not a new departure, but
the consolidation and enhancement of certain earlier tendencies and the
suppression of others. In some later works the idiom of traditional music
was imaginatively recreated to establish a new Romanian sound world;
in others it became a discreet presence in an impressionist landscape; in
yet others it receded to the background, influencing processive aspects
of the music rather more than melodic substance. And as this idio-style
took shape in the 1920s, Enescu decisively parted company with Szyman-
owski. For the role played by traditional music in his later compositions
had nothing to do with exoticism, and everything to do with the human-
ism represented by Oedipe. In this respect Enescu bought into some of the
familiar symbolic values associated with traditional (folk) music, in par-
ticular the identification with a collective natural community. In his early
Romanian Rhapsodies, it was a national community that was evoked. But
for the later music, this reading would be much too constraining. Exactly
like Slavenski, Enescu engaged in a larger project of transition, though he
achieved this in different ways. We may speak of modernism, but it would
be entirely wrong to speak of an avant-garde.
The point here is that Enescu was engaged in a traditionally humanist
enterprise. There is little trace in his music of anything we might recognise
as modernist alienation. It is true that from the 1920s onwards he forged
one of the most original and uncompromising musical languages (and
language, unusually, is probably the mot juste) of any early twentieth-
century composer. It is also true that in doing so he drew upon rich
reserves of Romanian, and more generally Balkan, music, allowing this
to reshape existing syntax in a radical way. However he did all this with-
out creating any real sense of discontinuity with the past. I will return to
this point later. For now, it will be enough to note that the mature Enescu
drew not just on the melodic and rhythmic substance of traditional music
the music of Everyman but also on its improvisatory manner, where an
expressive imperative, expressive more often than not of lament, implic-
itly challenges the authority of those collective (i.e. socialising) forms that
made the improvisation possible in the first place. The epic quality of his
later music lies in its duplication of this tension. What is overcome here
 placing genius 395

is not the seductive attraction of Dionysian life forces, but the impulse to
individuation that is inherent in, and always threatens to destabilise, the
world of collective forms.
The parallel achievements of Szymanowski and Enescu might be under-
stood in relation to a conventional narrative of East European musical
renaissance. The narrative would run something like this. Social mod-
ernisation and cultural renewal in the eastern half of Europe during the
nineteenth century were responses to ideas and practices from Western
Europe that stimulated and then fused with slowly developing national-
isms. Because of this response mode, there was initially an element of
forms without substance about this process.9 Thus, the professionalisa-
tion of musical life associated with the shift from court to city took lon-
ger in Eastern than in Western Europe, just as the underlying ideologies
of liberalism and nationalism were given rather different expression. In
particular, liberalism10 was foregrounded in the West and nationalism in
the East, a distinction that found musical expression in the manipulation
of two innocent musics. The music of Bach and the so-called Viennese
Classics music from a different era served the interests of a domi-
nant social class (a liberal bourgeoisie) in the cities of Western Europe.
In contrast, traditional music music from a different social group was
pressed to the service of a dominant political ideology in Eastern Europe.
Hence the rise of nationalist music associated with this region, finding its
historical moment in the late nineteenth century, first in Russia and the
Czech lands, then in Hungary, Poland and Romania. When the conditions
were right, the significant composers, including Szymanowski and Enescu,
appeared on cue.
This narrative is in need of some revision. Larry Wolff reminds us that
the division of Europe into West and East was in large measure a ret-
rospective one.11 Indeed we have already seen that in parts of Eastern
Europe the dynastic presence was integral to western culture, and played
an enabling role long before it became a focus for ethnic and nationalist
discontent. To push the point to an extreme, it would hardly be useful
to link Prague, a leading Habsburg capital and culturally close to Vienna,

9Boia 2001, 86.

10I am thinking here especially of the contractual liberalism that followed the 1848
revolutions, dependent on political concepts of consensus and social contract.
11 Wolff 1996. Wolff dates the beginnings of a discourse of East-West divide to the writ-
ings of eighteenth-century philosophes, but the divide was formalised, and institutiona-
lised, very much later.
396 chapter fifteen

with Skopje, which remained part of the Ottoman Empire throughout the
entire nineteenth century. Alternative divisions of Europe in the nineteenth
century might proceed along dynastic or religious lines. Thus, we might
propose a cultural division between territories governed by the Habsburgs,
Hoherzollerns and even Romanovs on one hand, and Ottoman-ruled
territories on the other. This division in no way corresponds neatly to
West and East, especially when we superimpose further divisions
between Catholic and Orthodox, or for that matter Christian, Muslim and
Jewish, communities. Nor does the pedigreed narrative hold up at all well
in its reading of cultural nationalism, which was every bit as integral to
France and Germany as to Poland and Hungary.
Poland and Romania, then, were not on one side of a single divide
as they entered the nineteenth century. Poland was a deeply Catholic
country, politically shared out between Austrian, Prussian and Russian
dynasties. It was firmly rooted in western culture, though from 1830 that
culture was subject to severe, politically motivated curtailment of a kind
familiar enough, though more extreme than, in other European (includ-
ing West European) territories. Not unnaturally, Polish cultural historians
have made much of these constraints. Romania, on the other hand, was
Orthodox, still struggling to free itself from Ottoman domination and influ-
enced profoundly by a history of Balkan (including Greek) affiliations. We
noted earlier that, for all the familiar rhetoric about an island of Latinity,
it was remote from western culture at the beginning of the century, and
that the swerve towards the West, when it finally came around 1830, was
remarkably abrupt.
So how does all this bear on music historiography? For a start, it sug-
gests that we still have to work at correcting some of the imbalances
bequeathed by the politics of the Cold War. An adequate account of Pol-
ish music history would place it centrally within the rise of European
music, even if documentation and demonstrable continuities have been
victims of Polands troubled political history.12 In just about all spheres
the cultures of church, court and city this was a European story from the
start. And it was no less a European story when Polish composers turned
to traditional music and appropriated it in the service of nationalism. Like
their German and Central European colleagues, they did not encounter
any massive syntactical space separating that music from the art music of
the day. This was as true for Szymanowski as it was for Chopin. Despite

12My reference is to Strohm 1993.

 placing genius 397

the novelties of the Gral (Tatra) idiom, this was a music that could easily
be accommodated by the neo-classical idioms characteristic of the 1920s.
Like the Mazovian elements in Chopins mazurkas, it added a specific
colouring, an inflection, to contemporary European styles.
The history of art music in the Romanian Principalities, on the other
hand, began in earnest only in the 1830s. Existing repertories Ottoman-
influenced classical and popular music, Orthodox church music, muzica
lutreasc, traditional agrarian music were not supplanted by Euro-
pean art music in the nineteenth century, but carried on a parallel exis-
tence alongside it, and remained largely unrelated to it. As elsewhere
there were projects of appropriation, not least in some of Enescus own
early music. But the space separating European art music from just about
everything else was a considerable one, and certainly much greater than
in Western and Central Europe. What that space signifies is the factor
that most decisively undermines any attempt to embrace Romania within
a territorial grouping labelled Eastern Europe: in a word, its ambivalent
relationship to the Balkans. A glance at the map is telling here. Romania
is in the Balkans or out, depending on whether we take the Carpathians
or the Danube as defining the peninsulas northeastern border.
A socio-cultural definition one that equates the Balkans to those
areas of South East Europe in which there was a significant and sustained
Ottoman presence is no less ambivalent, in that Romania was never
overtly conquered by the Turks, but rather came gradually under Ottoman
control.13 Adrian Cioroianu has constructed a psycho-historical narrative
around this ambivalence, characterising successive stages in Romanian
history as failed attempts to escape the Balkans, and allowing this to sug-
gest elements of a collective mentalit.14 The idea of the Balkans, he argues,
looms unusually large in negotiations of Romanian identity, and this can
entail either exaggeratedly positive or exaggeratedly negative readings of
what we now call Balkanism. For Cioroianu, Romania, especially since
independence, has constantly sought detachment from its geographical
condition, while at the same time trying to claim the best things from the
Balkans, which is a way of saying that Romanians want to look West and
East at the same time.
All this has, I believe, some explanatory value when we turn to Enescus
achievement, which is Romanian not just because it turns to indigenous

13The one region that is in the Balkans on either definition is Dobrogea.

14Cioroianu 2002.
398 chapter fifteen

sources, but also perhaps in Cioroianus sense of simultaneously valuing

and denying the Balkans. Of course Enescu is more than just a Roma-
nian composer, or for that matter a Balkan one. But it is surely significant
that his music is marked by its articulation of precisely that quality of
transition that, as we have noted, distinguishes Balkanism from Oriental-
ism. Specifically, he delved deeply into the transition between a diversi-
fied indigenous culture, strongly marked by its Byzantine and Ottoman
inheritance, and a European symphonic culture. However, we would do
him an injustice if we tried to represent this project exclusively in terms
of intersecting cultural spheres. At this point it will be worth recalling our
discussion of transition in chapter 11, where it was argued that in order to
give transitional states their due, we need to view them not just as sites
of theoretical transformation which contain elements of two systems, but
as invitations to locate a third system. This, it seems to me, has analytical
implications in relation to Enescus music that have been relatively little
explored in the relevant literature. Nor will it be possible to explore them
here, in what are no more than introductory thoughts. All the same I will
offer a few indicative remarks.

Closing In: Enescus Journey

Oedipe is a work apart. Indebted to Enescus earlier symphonies and

foreshadowing his later chamber music, its sound world remains distinct
from both. In rising to the challenge of its composition, Enescu worked
through issues of musical style that enabled him to set a direction for the
future. It was above all in Oedipe that he reined in the eclecticism char-
acteristic of earlier works, by which I mean the music composed prior to
1909. Passing over the very early compositions, including the four so-called
School Symphonies, we may note that his earliest success as a composer
was the Pome roumain, completed in 1897 and performed to rapturous
acclaim the following year; it earned him the patronage of the Queen of
Romania, including the use of a study at Pele Castle at Sinaia, where
he later built a house. Noel Malcolm has insisted on its indebtedness to
an existing tradition of Romanian music, including works by Stephnescu
and Caudella, but as with the better-known Romanian Rhapsodies (1901)
it is the combined influence of Liszt and Dvok that is more likely to
strike todays listener.
Early songs and chamber works reveal a rather different side to the
young Enescu, an affinity with Austro-German late-Romantic music, ranging
 placing genius 399

from Schubert to Brahms and beyond. This culminated in the Octet for
Strings of 1899, a work of considerable power, maturity and complexity, which
would merit heavy-duty analysis in a more focused study of the composer.
Already by then his music was registering the impact of French music,
and especially Faur, who is a presence in the Second Violin Sonata (also
1899) and in the Sept chansons de Clment Marot, a cycle of consummate
nuance and sensitivity. Another strand is represented by the Gallic neo-
classicism of works such as the two piano suites (1897 and 1903) and the
First Orchestral Suite Op. 9 (1903), with its highly original unison Prlude;
and yet another in the pianistic idiom of works such as the Barcarolle of
1897 and the Nocturne of 1907, where we view Chopin through the prism
of modern French music.
After 1909 there was a period of creative silence until 1914, at least in the
sense that major works did not appear; for the two years immediately prior
to the outbreak of war he was working on the Second Symphony. Then,
during the years of the war itself, he was mainly preoccupied with the
Third Symphony. We are now aligned with our earlier narrative, which
culminated in the composition of his masterpiece Oedipe in the post-war
years. Oedipe, I am suggesting, represented for Enescu a moment of arrival,
and also of departure. It is obvious that my summary of his earlier achieve-
ments does little justice to works of importance, but in the interests of the
argument I wish to focus on the music from the 1920s onwards, the music
of Enescus full maturity.
Stylistically, the distinguishing feature of Oedipe is not just that it
pares down the big romantic gestures of the two symphonies to taut, eco-
nomical gestures, but that it processes, rather than simply appropriating,
those elements of other styles, whether German, French or Romanian,
that continued to feed Enescus music. In his earlier compositions indig-
enous Romanian elements were either strongly foregrounded (as in the
Rhapsodies or the Dixtuor) or entirely absent. Such elements had not yet
assumed the importance they would carry in other works from the 1920s
onwards. And in this respect, as in others, Oedipe is the seminal work.
Enescu himself claimed to have written an opera with Eastern elements,
and musical features drawn from Romanian liturgical music play a part
in the score, notably scale types that correspond to the Octoechos, with
associated microtonal structures.15 Likewise much of the vocal writing in

15irli 1981. Coincidentally, Byzantine elements also find their way into the choral music
of Szymanowskis Krl Roger.
400 chapter fifteen

the opera has affinities with Romanian traditional music, most blatantly
in music associated with the shepherds, but in more subtle ways invading
the general melos of the work. This even extends to the incorporation of
unorthodox vocal techniques derived from folk traditions.
The important point is that these influences worked together with the
discreet yet all-pervasive leitmotivic structure Enescu imposed on the work
to transform his approach to thematicism. It is through the density of its
motivic information, where germinal cells and their constitutive intervals
permeate every layer of the score and where more extended melodic state-
ments are products of (rather than sources for) motivic working, that Oedipe
lifts Enescu clear of the late-Romantic inheritance that was unmistakable
in his earlier music. This also has a bearing on the contrapuntal writing
that had always been central to his music. The contrapuntal combination
of independently established themes took on a new significance in Oedipe;
it was less about synthesising oppositions, as in earlier cyclic composi-
tions, and more about revealing hidden affinities, a telling, and prophetic,
change of orientation. And one final point: the constantly evolving melos
that grows out of, yet at the same time cuts across or floats above, this
densely compacted motivic structure has every appearance of a spontane-
ous, fantasia-like sequence. Yet characteristically, as Octavian Cosma has
pointed out, this apparent freedom is underpinned by carefully designed,
though discreetly articulated, formal patterns, again prophetic of the later
music.16 The end product of all this is a score of astonishing originality, in
which conventional gestures and devices have been all but eliminated.
In the musical language that began to take shape in other works from
the 1920s onwards Enescu intensified and refined the folkloristic element,
but he did so in the light of the transformations already effected by Oedipe.
Most importantly, these works aspired towards a unity of musical sub-
stance. This was hardly a novel aspiration in music of the 1920s. Indeed,
a surface description of Enescus practice would suggest links with many
of his contemporaries. The musical idea is embodied in a germinal theme
or motive, often present at the outset; that theme or motive acts in turn
on the character of subsequent material, either through techniques of
developing variation or in the form of connected antitheses, and this pro-
cess continues throughout the work (i.e. across individual movements);
constitutive intervals take on an independent structural role; and finally
the motivic shapes permeate all layers of the texture, eliminating as far

16Cosma 1981.
 placing genius 401

as possible elements of thematic redundancy. In other words, much of

the music has something in common with the kind of total thematicism
found in works such as Slavenskis First String Quartet.
But it is the realisation of this ideal that sets Enescu apart. At the heart of it
lies a dialectic between improvisation and composition, operating between
open and closed forms; between elaborately ornamented and motivically
focused melody; between heterophony and strict counterpoint; between
rubato-parlando and giusto-silabico rhythm; between equal-voiced and
melody-accompaniment textures. The resulting sound world is unique in
twentieth-century music, and it establishes a stable reference point from
which Enescu could glance backwards to late-Romantic styles, or alterna-
tively across to modernist (neo-Baroque) idioms without for a moment
losing his individuality. Equally, from this vantage point he could glance
towards the West or towards the East.
I will profile here three distinguishable idioms constitutive of this new
sound world. They are refinements of the three major influences at work
on his earlier music, but they also carry significance as to spectral posi-
tioning. The first, glancing west, foregrounds motivic working, and is the
culminating expression of Enescus indebtedness to German symphonism.
The influence of traditional (folk) music is not obvious on the melodic
surface, but operates rather on procedural and processive levels. The sec-
ond is a kind of impressionism, where elements of traditional music con-
tribute to a musical evocation of nation and landscape; here the French
influence is foregrounded. And the third, glancing east, is a more explicit
recreation of traditional music, though viewed through modern lens;
this, self-evidently, is the highest expression of the Romanian element in
Enescu. The categories in this taxonomy are not mutually exclusive; nor
do they entirely cover the later period (there are several works, notably
Vox Maris, that will not fit easily in any of the categories). But they hold
good as a generalisation, and the journey between them neatly symbolises
the transition from West to East.
The first two idioms are already distinguishable in the outer move-
ments of the first work to be completed following Enescus initial period
of work on Oedipe, the First Piano Sonata, Op. 24 No. 1 (1924).17 The first

17The second movement of this sonata, like similar movements in later works (notably
the second movement of the Second Cello Sonata, Op. 26 No. 2), steers a course some-
where between a neo-Baroque toccata and a futurist celebration of mechanism not unlike
certain movements in Prokofiev from around the same time (e.g. the second movement
of his Fifth Piano Concerto).
402 chapter fifteen

movement explores a middle ground between formal and thematic defi-

nition on one hand and freely evolving, incremental transformations of
the same motivic substance on the other. A sonata-form archetype under-
lies the movement. But the sequence of events (and moods) is a fluid,
improvisatory narrative in which individuated motivic elements appear
to follow their own inclinations. It is rather as though an expressionistic
fantasia and a strict sonata unfold simultaneously on different levels, so
that the ear can move from one to the other. As to the fantasia, tefan
Niculescu reminds us that Enescu liked to refer to the dream state as inte-
gral to his creativity and then to compare this with the creative process
at work in traditional music.18 It is a suggestive analogy. On first hearing,
the logic governing the unfolding of motives in this movement is hard to
follow, let alone predict. Subsidiary motives arise from existing ones and
are combined with the originals in free counterpoint, creating a maze of
interweaving lines, where new material is subtly insinuated just as the old
is fragmentarily echoed, and where the differentiation between primary
and secondary material (between theme, motive and figure) is far from
clear-cut. The result is a texture often classified by Romanian scholars as
heterophonic.
This kind of writing resists conventional modes of analysis, and not
just in relation to formal and thematic processes. The harmonic language
allows a myriad of constantly shifting tonal implications to arise from the
bar-by-bar unfolding of the music in a non-diatonic and often dissonant
idiom. Sometimes this is an outcome of polymodal chromaticism derived
from the interplay of motives, but more often it is unsystematic, resulting
from momentary tonal connections between different components of the
texture, as a kind of inner hierarchy is established amidst diverse interval-
lic contexts. Then, to add to the mix, some of the more climactic moments
allow vestigial traces of late-Romantic harmony to surface momentarily.
All of this, along with piano textures of uncanny originality and fluid
rhythms that resist easy assimilation by conventional metric schemata,
adds up to a movement that is tough and uncompromising, and at the
same time powerfully expressive. And towards the end lies a moment of
revelation, a gesture whose simplicity makes sense of surrounding peaks
of rhythmic and harmonic complexity. A recognisably folk-like, stanzaic
melody, Romanian in character, emerges from the dark embryo, subtly
prepared in advance. It is a moment of clarity and comprehensibility, and

18Niculescu 1981.
 placing genius 403

following it the return of the germinal motive of the sonata has the char-
acter of an apotheosis.
As in Oedipe, this dialectic between improvisatory freedom and a unity
of musical substance has some symbolic potency, and especially to the
extent that it generalises aspects of traditional music. It finds an echo in
several later compositions, including the Piano Quintet, Op. 29 (1940) and
Second Piano Quartet, Op. 30 (1944). But in two of the very last works to
be completed (at least in their final form), the String Quartet No. 2, Op. 22
No. 2 (19512) and the Chamber Symphony, Op. 33 (1954), the motivic-
symphonic topic in Enescus late music takes a more severe, classical turn.
It is in these works that Enescus indebtedness to German symphonic
thought is at its most explicit.19 The quartet retains the complex poly-
phonic-heterophonic textures of Op. 24 No. 1, but not its processive dis-
continuities and abrupt changes of Affekt. Here a rigorous, closely unified
motivic process in the first movement opens out in several directions in
subsequent movements, some of them intensely subjective (the parlando
manner of individual voices in the slow movement, at times redolent of
Janek), others celebrating collectivities (the folk-dance manner in parts
of the finale).
The emphasis is on continuities, both bar-to-bar and movement-to-
movement, but this does not disguise the improvisatory quality so char-
acteristic of Enescu, such that the twists and turns of particular motives
seem to pursue a life of their own, even if in the end they have to submit
to the collective will. As to the single-movement Chamber Symphony, it is
as though Enescu distilled the world of the quartet, including its internal
tensions, to produce a yet more concentrated thematic essence. This is an
austere, initially unyielding composition, given neither to overt expressiv-
ity nor to folklorism. It is not without sensuous surfaces and moments of
climactic intensity, but in both cases these are products of, and are sub-
ordinated to, the logic of the thematic process. Rigour and economy rule
in this work. It repays repeated hearings.
I will pass briefly over the second distinguishable idiom in late Enescu,
associated especially with musical portraits of his homeland. This idiom,
exemplified by the third movement of the piano sonata, might be char-
acterised as a species of impressionism, evocative of place; indeed the
composer later described this movement as a depiction in sound of the

19Both these works, but especially the quartet, had a long and complicated composi-
tional history.
404 chapter fifteen

Romanian plains. Many of the stylistic elements are familiar ingredients

of impressionist tone painting from Liszt onwards, with obvious affinities
to Debussy and Ravel: static platforms of sound comprising either pedal
points or ostinato patterns; quietly dissonant chords in stratified textures;
washes of tonal colour from which bell-like notes emerge; modal, at times
oriental-sounding, fragments of melody; and wandering through all of this
a constantly repeated folk-like motive derived from the Second Romanian
Rhapsody.
There is a group of late works likewise inspired by thoughts of Romania,
evoking its landscape and some of the associations it held for Enescu. The
Third Orchestral Suite (Suite villageoise), Op. 27 (1938) and the Impressions
denfance, Op. 28, with which I began this chapter, fall into this category,
and both add onomatopaeic reference to the more generalised impres-
sionism with which specific scenes are depicted in music: the childrens
games and shepherds pipe in the Suite, for example, or the caged bird,
cuckoo clock and cricket in the violin piece. The third and fourth move-
ments of the Suite, depicting respectively the Old Childhood Home, and
the River in the Moonlight, offer a kind of orchestral counterpart to the
pianistic impressionism of the last movement of Op. 24 No. 2.20 Enescu
spent a great deal of time outside his native Romania, and nothing evokes
place more effectively than displacement.
Romania is a more musically specific presence in my third category,
referring to a group of movements or works in which the composer set
out to write in the character of Romanian traditional music, avoiding quo-
tation, but recreating through the most sophisticated control of rhythm,
ornamentation and sonority something of the characteristic sound and
ambience of this music. This is particularly true of the Third Violin Sonata,
Op. 25 (1926), parts of the Third Piano Sonata, Op. 24 No. 3 and Second
Cello Sonata, Op. 26 No. 2 (both 1935), and the Ouverture de concert sur
des thmes dans le caractre populaire roumain (1948). The Third Violin
Sonata in the Romanian popular manner presents this idiom at its most
explicit. As in the first movement of the First Piano Sonata, there is a
creative tension between the improvisatory manner and the sonata-based
structure of the first movement, but here the musical material is more
obviously related to popular idioms, to the hore boiereti [boyars horas] of

20The incomplete orchestral work Voix de la nature (of which only part of one move-
ment is extant) also belongs somewhat within this category.
 placing genius 405

Upper Moldavia, and especially to the rhapsodic flourishes and exuberant

virtuosity of professional lutari from all over the region.
To achieve this, Enescu devised radically new approaches to idiomatic
writing for both instruments. In the violin part he combined a calculated
imprecision of pitch and rhythm (achieved through profuse ornamenta-
tion, microtonal inflection, portamento, glissando, and parlando-rubato
rhythm) with a remarkable diversity of colours, including flute-like bowing
on the fingerboard and a range of different vibratos. The piano in turn adopts
multiple roles, ranging from cimbalom-like accompaniments to a heavily
ornamented heterophonic-bourdon technique, often strategically out-of-
phase with the violin in what sounds almost like an aleatory texture.
I noted earlier the affinities between the traditional music of Moldavia,
especially the popular music of professional lutari, and Middle Eastern
traditions. What are sometimes described as variable modes, for exam-
ple, may be related to makam traces, and some of the melodic and ges-
tural formulae associated with these are also found in the Enescu sonata.
Likewise, the rhythmically free, improvisatory flow of parts of the music,
incorporating endless repetitions and variations of tiny cellular motives
that circle around key scale steps, recalls the improvised taksm in Turk-
ish music, just as the fluctuating tone colours and vibrati of the violin
part remind us of the type of wide vibrato singing familiar throughout
the Middle East. This should not seem in any way surprising. There are
commonalities of practice in a wide range of popular and traditional
musics from the Levant to the Balkans. We noted earlier how intersec-
tions between a makam system and diatonic space represented one way
of thinking theoretically about such repertories (Bosnian sevdalinkas and
Greek rebetika, for example), and I suggest, tentatively, that it may also
have some relevance to Enescus music in the Romanian style.
Romanian musicologists have written at length about the folk models
for Enescus later music. In particular Sperana Rdulescu has pinpointed
affinities with traditional repertories in her discussion of the Violin Sonata.21
But even when the models are exuberant folk dances, as in the finale of
the Violin Sonata, the finale la roumain of the Second Cello Sonata and
much of the Ouverture de concert, they are hybridised, generalised, and
ultimately sublimated through their dialogue with modern European art
music. This is especially true of Enescus stylisations of the doina, by far
the most characteristic of his folk models, and one that is immediately

21Rdulescu 1981.
406 chapter fifteen

apparent in the melos of the Violin Sonata. We met the doina briefly in
an earlier chapter. It has something in common with the Ukrainian duma,
but is quite unlike any of the folk traditions of the southern Slav nations,
registering a rather different aspect of oriental influence than sevda-
linka, for example. The structure and manner of the doina proper were
described by Bartk and Briloiu,22 and many of the elements of those
descriptions introductory formulae, ornamental improvisations around
the augmented second between the third and fourth scale steps, rapidly
repeated melodic turns circling around and highlighting particular notes
of the mode or makam, internal cadence figures (alternating fourths), and
closing formulae are found in the Enescu work.23 Moreover, these same
elements, together with associated affects of sorrow and lament, are once
again strongly suggestive of familiar devices from Anatolian repertories.
Much the same model operates in the slow movement of the Third
Piano Sonata, where an ornamental melody is joined by other voices in free
rhythm to create a kaleidoscopic texture that slides easily from heteroph-
ony to free counterpoint, and from there to wisps of astringently harmon-
ised melody. And it operates again in the first movement of the Second
Cello Sonata. Here, as in the Violin Sonata, the piano alternates between
providing a cimbalom-like accompaniment, weaving motivic fragments
around the unfolding arcs of cello melody, and itself taking over, and
heavily ornamenting, the principal melodic line, or, more accurately, the
multiply-layered melodic lines. Taken together, all this music makes a
statement that is quite unlike anything else in early twentieth-century
music. It is concerned neither with appropriation nor confrontation but
with transition. It succeeds, as no other music really does fully in my
view, in making great art out of the transition between West and East,
a transition that is symbolically represented by the journey through my
three idioms, but in reality penetrates deeper and more uniformly into the
substance of the later music. If we follow Adorno in arguing that music
analysis exists to show to us how significant composers can bring to full
realisation what lies latent in musical material (and for Adorno musical
material is so heavily mediated that it can provide a remarkably authentic
snapshot of its historical moment), then the analytical challenge posed by
Enescu is an important one, and yet to be adequately addressed.

22Bartk 1923; Briloiu 1973.

23For a fuller discussion of the doina, see Alexandru 1980, 4955.
 placing genius 407

Wider Again: In the Modernist Canon

In the early years of the twentieth century, coincident with the triumph of
political and cultural nationalisms, significant music emerged all around
the edges of Europe, music that attained and has sustained widespread
international recognition. If we ask ourselves why Enescu was the only
truly audible Balkan voice in this chorus, we might try out a number of
possible answers. Perhaps his fame as a violinist was simply transferred to
his compositions. But this will not take us far. Why, for instance, has the
music of his compatriot Dinu Lipatti failed to make headway? Then again,
networking and promotion mechanisms are poorly oiled in South East
Europe, so that there was, and is, a battle to get music through to more
prestigious centres. At least Enescu had the right kinds of connections,
we might argue. Yet despite the worldwide respect in which he was held,
Enescu suffered more than most at the hands of publishers and agents,
and continues to do so posthumously. His major significance is widely
recognised, but he receives relatively few performances, and his contrac-
tual arrangements with Salabert have proved little short of disastrous (had
he signed with Universal Edition the story would have been very differ-
ent). Compare him with Kalomiris, genuinely gifted as a composer and
infinitely more skilled in self-publicity, yet somehow unable to secure a
place in the pantheon.
Perhaps we should really be addressing our own chauvinism. Does our
ignorance of composers from the Balkans of Greeks such as Kalomiris
and Riadis, of distinguished figures such as Josip Slavenski, and of Yugoslav
Moderna in general reduce in the end to questions of cultural politics?
Michael Herzfeld suggests that we need the Balkans to ennoble ourselves,
arguing that the perceived fragmentation, diversity and general fractious-
ness of this region are recognisably the other side of a familiar coin: the
Western self-characterisation in terms of individual genius.24 In recent
years scholars have been anxious to submit precisely this kind of self-
characterisation to critical scrutiny, not least in music. They have sought,
in other words, to contextualise the idea of creative genius as a perceived
historical category, and even to deconstruct it. Tia DeNora has examined
the contingencies of genius in relation to Beethoven, for example, and Dana
Gooley has attempted something similar with Liszt, usefully switching the

24Bjeli and Savi 2002, ix.

408 chapter fifteen

emphasis from composition to performance.25 Both musicians, we learn,

knew how to construct their image, how to survive in the patronal and
mercantile cultures of their times, and how to turn the conditions of
those cultures to their own best advantage. Exceptional talent (acquired
or innate) was there in both cases, of course, but it was nurtured by a
particular ecology and enabled by particular agencies.26
This takes us a long way, and we may add to it the self-confirming
nature of a canon, once established. But it is not the whole story. It is
not at all obvious that we can explain the power of a particular corpus of
European art from the Renaissance to the early twentieth century in
such terms. One might, for instance, supply counter examples that down-
grade the kinds of contingencies discussed by DeNora and Gooley. There
is the posthumously discovered genius, partly explicable in terms of the
needs of particular taste publics, but only partly. Conversely, there is the
meteoric but ephemeral success, where no amount of promotion (by self
or other) secures long-term visibility. My purpose in chapter 10 was to sug-
gest that the really key contingencies were of a rather different order. And
much of the discussion of art music in the last few chapters, including my
account of Enescu, has been shaped by the propositions advanced there.
Shortly I will review those propositions. But first it is necessary to
address how Enescu related to his more immediate context in Romanian
art music, if only briefly. He himself played a prominent role in the struc-
tures of musical life. Inter-war narratives were not dissimilar to those we
have tracked elsewhere, though the issue of bringing a newly ceded Tran-
sylvania on board presented unique difficulties, given that its elite culture
was primarily Hungarian. In other respects, Enescu was regarded as the
key figure even at the time, and he was an obvious choice to chair the
Society of Romanian Composers, which was founded in 1920 and merged
into the Romanian section of the ISCM in 1925. The Secretary of the Soci-
ety was Constantin Briloiu, who was active not just in folklore research
but in early discussions (in the journal Muzica) about a national school
of composers based on folklore (the link between ethnomusicology and
composition was foundational in the early stages of the former discipline).
The debates in the press, in other words, circled around the same themes
that we noted in Yugoslavia: ideas of the new and ideas of the nation.

25DeNora 1995; Gooley 2004.

26Psychological literature is wary of the a priorism suggested by term talent. However,
the argument of this paper is not influenced by competing theories about the causes of
differentials in human skills. That the differentials are there is self-evident.
 placing genius 409

It seems important to emphasise this, because it does provide a more

immediate local context for the change of direction in Enescus music in
the 1920s. To some extent, there was conformity here with other develop-
ments in Romanian music.
Let us take a brief snapshot of the inter-war years in this regard. There
were works from the older generation, such as the Second Symphony
by the Italian-Romanian Alfonso Castaldi (18741942), a highly influen-
tial teacher. Castaldis earlier symphonic poem Marsyas (1907) was justly
popular for a time. The symphony, on the other hand, composed in 1925,
is a late-Romantic heroic work that suffers from insecurities about style
that are characteristic of this generation. It has a grandiose programmatic
basis and draws freely on the world of the post-Wagnerian orchestra, but
it mixes this with elements drawn from modern French music. Of Cast-
aldis pupils, three leading figures were Alfred Alessandrescu (18921959),
whose Acteon of 1915 held promise but who stopped composing in the
early 1920s, Ion Nonna Ottescu (18881940), whose assured romantic-
impressionist style was leavened by folk-oriental and Byzantine elements,
as in the second section of De la Matei cetire [Reading Matei], and Filip
Lazr (18941936), who settled in Paris, and whose early death prevented
his potential being realised fully. Lazr was a composer of genuine origi-
nality, with some fine songs and piano pieces, and with a rather more
modernist-leaning musical language than the others. The rhythmic asym-
metries and astringent dissonances of Le ring (1918) in particular intro-
duced a breath of bracing modernist air, suggestive of the Paris where
much of his music was performed.
In Bucharest too there was some contact with modernist idioms, includ-
ing a Bartk concert, in which Enescu and Bartk together performed the
latters fiercely difficult Second Violin Sonata. Native Romanian voices
were less adventurous. They include the modest output of Ionel Perlea
(190070), whose Op. 10 String Quartet (192223) is broadly in German
Romantic vein, though its doina-like slow movement has some affinities
with Enescu, and whose Variations of 1934 is a more ambitious enterprise
hovering somewhere between romanticism and modernism (for perspec-
tive we might note that Schoenbergs Op. 31 Variations were composed a
few years earlier). Also important were Theodor Rogalski (190154), who
studied in Paris and wrote in a Ravel-influenced manner, and Constantin
Nottara, whose Poem for Violin and Orchestra of 1920 draws together influ-
ences from both France and Romania. His Suita n stil romnesc (1930) is
representative of the more popular folk-based idiom that was becoming
semi-standardised in Romania at the time, and to which certain works of
410 chapter fifteen

Enescu may also be related; likewise works such as trarii [The Gypsies]
of 1934 by Dinu Lipatti (191750).
In her account of modernity and the avant-garde in Romanian music
between the wars, Clemensa Firca discusses the impact of both Bartk
and Stravinsky on Romanian composers such as Rogalsi and Lazr, and
she further discusses moderate modernisms in music by Mihail Jora
(18911971), Paul Constantinescu (190963), Constantin Silvestri (191369)
and Zeno Vancea (192890), some of whom will emerge in later chapters.27
Firca outlines some of the trends that we associate with inter-war music in
Europe more generally at the time, and assesses how far Romanian com-
posers responded to them. And she argues, with Pascal Bentoiu, for certain
unifying tendencies in this music. Her survey also gives us a good sense
of the gradually widening catchment area for performances of modern
Romanian music, its increasing penetration of the world beyond. At the
same time, Firca is much too astute a critic to make exaggerated claims
for any of this music. Her account does indeed reveal that Enescu was
not a lone voice in Romanian contexts; indeed it allows us to see very
real connections between his music and that of his compatriots. But at no
point does Firca suggest that there is anything in earlier or coeval Roma-
nian music that might stand alongside the music of Enescu.
We could say much the same of almost any music composed in the
Balkans during these years. In the end it is probably impossible to say why
a figure such as Enescu should have emerged where and when he did. But
we can at least try. I suggested earlier that as an historical category, cre-
ative genius demanded not just individual aptitude (sometimes described
as talent), but a convergence of this with the kind of significant project
that was enabled by an institution of art. I further argued that the signifi-
cant project had to be uniquely defining of both its time and its place.
This latter formulation invites questions about the distribution of genius,
invoking geographical as well as historical perspectives. Just why do our
so-called great composers appear where and when they do? Why do we
find clusters and vacuums? There are no easy answers to these questions,
and some of the obvious answers (to do with political stability, a consoli-
dated bourgeois class, a well-developed institutional infrastructure, and
so forth) founder on closer inspection. I went on to outline a number of
options for the flourishing of creative genius. Depending on context, these
might include an increasingly individuated patronal art, Kunstreligion, art
as an embodiment of the nation, or art as a model of dissent.

27Firca 2001.
 placing genius 411

It is not unthinkable to theorise the distribution of genius by read-

ing these several options (together with their constitutive projects) as
the striated lines that mark out what Deleuze and Guattari have called
sedimentary as distinct from nomad space.28 Nomads, they remind us,
have no history; they only have geography. I do not want to insist on
this modelling. I mention it as just one of several possible frameworks
within which interferences between history and geography might be reg-
istered, but from a perspective that prioritises place rather than time, and
with the striated lines effectively standing for historical events. We might
learn something about the decline of instrumental music in Italy from this
approach, for example; or about the emergence of a symphonic ideal in
Germany; or about the long (apparent) silences in England and Spain; or,
to come directly to our subject, about the musical awakenings around the
peripheries of Europe at the end of the nineteenth century.
Those peripheral awakenings took two rather distinct, place-deter-
mined forms: a second growth of the symphony, and a modernism born
of the equation of nationalism (or its legacy) and realism. In the former
case music of affirmation, associated with a revitalisation of Beethovens
heroic style, was enabled on the peripheries of Europe even as it was
problematised at the centre. The peripheries in such instances, and I think
especially of Russia and the Nordic lands, staked their claim to a place in
the sun. In the latter case affirmation and critique were enmeshed. An
affirmation of the nation, or wished-for nation, implicitly critical of the
status quo, tended increasingly towards modernist critique and negation.
The point here is that within small would-be nations, and I think espe-
cially of East Central Europe, significant composers made their mark by
taking a step to the side of their immediate musical environment, initially
colluding with so-called mainstreams, but in the end favouring a ground-
clearing critique, where traditional (peasant) music served as both critical
tool and regenerative medium. What distinguished such composers was
not that they were representative of their national music, but rather that
they were unrepresentative of it. This, incidentally, also partly explains
their singularity within their own national contexts, though politics
played a part here, as did the familiar focus and fade mechanism of canon
formation, the tendency for the significant to obscure the only marginally
less significant.
Enescu belongs, and does not belong, within this latter category. He is
aligned, and is not aligned, with figures such as Bartk and Szymanowski.

28See, notably, Deleuze & Guattari 1987.

412 chapter fifteen

What separates him from the others is the Balkan context. I would argue
not just that an investment in transition was uniquely attuned to Balkan
history and geography, but that it may indeed have been the only viable
project for this region at this time; as we have seen, Enescu was far from
alone among Balkan composers, though he was certainly the most suc-
cessful, in attempting a modernist project of transition between East and
West. An analytical approach that is properly attuned to Enescus project
would have no difficulty in revealing the exceptional qualities of his later
music, even its greatness, in something close to Leonard B. Meyers use of
that term.29 But the key part of this is the attunement, and it is the part
that differentiates my own position from Meyers. Meyer appears to allow
for little if any element of historical contingency in his attempt to define
the attributes of greatness.
I have some sympathy, all the same, with Meyers attempt to rescue the
aesthetic from the many ideologies that lay claim to it. We should resist,
I feel, the tempting tendency to explain away (rather than to explain)
creative genius, to understand it exclusively as a category of reception.
Nothing is easier than the deconstruction of genius. Contingencies need
relatively little excavation. Yet the capacity of a small corpus of European
music to enchant or re-enchant the world, to create a symbolically dense,
clearly marked, privileged place, will not reduce quite so transparently to
the conditions of its production, nor to the ideologies that have undoubt-
edly shaped its reception.30 That corpus is not, however, immutable. It is
subject to revision, and the more so now that our historical narratives are
increasingly freeing themselves from a utopian modernist bias.31 Herein
lies the importance of placing genius. Not only does it avoid the mysti-
fication and reification of genius associated with critics such as George
Steiner and Harold Bloom; it leaves open the possibility that the very idea
of genius may have outlived its usefulness in todays world.32

29Leonard B. Meyer 1967a.

30Mircea Eliade refers to a break in space revealing a new centre for orientation,
detaching a territory, making it qualitatively different, and thus allowing for regeneration.
See Eliade 1959, 2026.
31See Albright 1999 for an alternative history of twentieth-century culture, one that
includes just such a revision of the musical canon. However we view Albrights revision-
ism, it is rather clear that due to the winnowing effect of canon formation the status of
twentieth-century composers is bound to be more contested than that of their nineteenth-
century counterparts.
32Steiner 1989; Bloom 1994.
 PART FOUR

EASTERN EUROPE
 CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE CURTAIN DESCENDS

Left, Right...

A distinguishing feature of the fascist Right in the 1930s was its mobilisa-
tion of the masses, and its capacity to sustain political engagement through
mass culture.1 Communism adopted similar means, and this accounts for
continuities in music-making across pre- and post-war administrations in
much of South East Europe. The pre-modern territories of the Balkans
were ideal breeding grounds for nationalist movements of the radical
Right, complete with grassroots anti-semitism, as the history of the Roma-
nian Iron Guard demonstrates.2 But the pattern was not monolithic. In
Croatia other factors came into play, including the catalytic role played
by the Catholic Church in promoting Ustaa as a populist movement, a
bulwark against the revolutionary Left. Such polarisation was a feature of
the wider region, and it continued into the war, with Communists promi-
nent in the resistance movements, and especially in the partisan forces of
Yugoslavia, Albania and Greece.
The increasing economic dependence of the Balkan states on the Axis
alliance ensured that Bulgaria and Romania were on side when the war
broke, and that Yugoslavia, Greece and Albania would quickly be overrun,
so that by the end of April 1941 Hitler effectively controlled the peninsula. Of
the puppet states, Ion Antonescus regime in Romania and Ante Pavelis
independent Croatia, extending well beyond present borders, stood out
for their singular brutality. In Romania, Jews and Roma were the victims
of pogroms and deportation.3 In Croatia, there were summary executions
or forced conversions of Serbs, ghettoisation of Jews, prison camps, and a
reign of everyday terror. The eventual outcome of the fighting in Yugoslavia
was largely determined by the decision of the Allies to back the partisans

1 The idea of mass culture is larger than a symbiosis of popular culture and the mass
media. It is in the end more to do with whether artworks adapt to these media or resist
them in Modernist mode. This Adornian formulation is articulated and glossed in Pad-
dison 1996.
2Ornea 2000.
3Deletant 2006.
416 chapter sixteen

rather than the royalist etniks. But for the Balkans as a whole, a no less
crucial factor was Romanias coup in August 1944, since this opened the
door to the Soviet Red Army. By the end of the war the entire peninsula
apart from Greece was under Communist control.
Wartime allegiances shaped formal culture to a marked degree, and
there is some irony in the fact that the two rival canonised traditions of
European art music should have found themselves politically aligned in
the war. Accordingly, Italy and Germany were well represented in the
musical cultures of the Axis puppet states. Frankfurt Operas production
of Wagners Ring in Athens was one of numerous visits from German and
Italian companies to the Balkans on the eve of the war, and during it.
At the National Theatre of Zagreb there were guest performances from
the Royal Opera of Rome, the Berlin Philharmonic and a Choral Society
from Graz in the 194142 season alone.4 Conversely, German and Aus-
trian opera houses during the Third Reich hosted several productions of
Greek, Croatian and Romanian operas, even if such events often took
place outside the regular season as part of a special festival.5 This is the
wider context for those performances of Kalomiris, Zoras, Vladigerov and
Gotovac in Germany, and one might add Romanian composers such as
Paul Constantinescu.6
The notion of collaboration is not usually appropriate, but in the
case of some composers Kalomiris in Greece, for instance, and irola in
Croatia there were writings and speeches that explicitly supported not
just the puppets but the puppeteers. German and Italian support of, and
subsidy for, native musical life, including the all-important radio, was
often the key to this. Transparently, the motivation was control, but for
some native musicians the benefits for their own careers and for local
cultures outweighed any propaganda value to the Axis Powers. The line
is hard to draw. In Bulgaria, most would have drawn it at Todorovs
Bulgarisch-Deutschen Gesellschaften. In Croatia, some would have singled
out the German-Croatian evenings that took place in Zagreb from 1943
onwards, though major figures such as Papandopulo and Baranovi saw
no difficulty about representation on these occasions. It should be noted

4Ceribai 1998a, 117.

5Levi 1994, 191.
6See, for example, Zeitschrift fr Musik (1943, ii) for a review of Constantinescus Roma-
nian Dances in Berlin in 1942.
 the curtain descends 417

too that there were contacts between Bulgarian and Croatian composers
in the inter-war period.7
The war forced issues in the field of art music, where the structures of
formal culture were easily compromised or appropriated, and where mid-
dle grounds were hard to maintain. Arguably there has been an asymme-
try of blame in the subsequent reporting of these matters. The tolerance
accorded to musicians deemed to have engaged in necessary compromise
in the Soviet Union, for example, has rarely been extended to so-called
collaborators in fascist states. In both cases, it often came down to sur-
vival, and to the viability or not of alternative responses. It is easy to be
wise after the event. Of course there were many victims, and their fate has
influenced the retrospective gaze. Musicians (especially Jewish) suffered
and died in the war, whether through direct fighting or through persecu-
tion; the respective ends of Vojislav Vukovi and Pavao Markovac have
already been described.
A whole story might be told about music and music-making in pris-
ons, concentration camps and ghettos in the Balkans as elsewhere. Only
relatively recently has this subject has been tackled in a serious way by
musicologists, notably by Guido Fackler and Shirli Gilbert, and currently
by Barbara Milewski.8 But accounts are mainly confined to a few camps,
especially Theresienstadt, Sachsenhausen and Auschwitz-Birkenau. It has
been noted that this research does sometimes lack nuance, supporting
(or attacking) narratives of music-making as spiritual resistance, where
first-hand memoirs strongly suggest that motivations were less clear-cut.9
But the Fackler volume in particular is remarkable for the enormity of the
source pool consulted and the wealth of information provided. Most of
the memoirs come from German camps, where there were many Balkan
musicians (they include an account by Predrag Miloevi of his time in
Nurenberg). What is so far lacking is an account of music in the camps
and ghettos of South East Europe itself, apart from descriptions of Miloje
Milojevis activities in a camp in Belgrade, where he continued to com-
pose and lecture.
There are some harrowing observations about Jasenovac in the puppet
state of Croatia. We read in Anton Ebersts collection an account by Jakob
Danon of his arrest by the Ustae in July 1941 and detention in the camp

7Spasova and Georgieva 2011.

8Fackler 2000; Gilbert 2007. Milewskis work on this subject is in progress.
9Milewski 2007.
418 chapter sixteen

until 1945.10 Among the prisoners there were excellent musicians, and they
brought their instruments with them. One prisoner, Dr. Slavko Goldmit,
who worked as an accountant in the camp, had been employed in the
Croatian National Theatre before the war, Danon tells us, and founded
an orchestra made up principally of strings, but with accordions, guitars,
trumpets and harmonicas. Several of the musicians had professional back-
grounds, including the conductor Erih Samlai, who had taught music in
Osijek, but with only two exceptions, Roma were not allowed to play in
the orchestra. The normal practice was to play classical and light music on
Sunday afternoons, but the orchestra also performed for the Ustae when
they had guests from Germany.
There were few scores, so the musicians were obliged either to write
down the music from memory or to compose it themselves. Danon gives
one example of how it worked. He recalls that a certain Moritz Kohen, a
prisoner from another camp at Stara Gradika, wrote a libretto based on
Scheherazade, that somebody from that same camp wrote music for it in
an oriental idiom, and that the score was then clandestinely transported
to Jasenovac. The end of the orchestra was tragic. In 1944, convinced that
Ivo Volner, a Jewish member of the orchestra, had tried to escape, the
Ustae killed all the Jews playing in the orchestra, including Goldmit, and
forbade all further musical activities. There are further stories of a choir
established by partisan sympathisers in the prison in Vukovar and of an
orchestra at the camp in Porto Re in Istria, but the whole subject is in
quest of comprehensive review.
Beyond the camps, the effect of wartime politics was to prolong and
intensify the nationalist orientation that had characterised art music in
much of the Balkans during the interwar years, and specifically to enhance
the folkloristic ethos. Programming policies reflected this, but so too
did original wartime compositions. There was movement into a middle
ground somewhere between art music and folk music, and it came from
both directions. Even as composers aimed at accessibility through the
appropriation of familiar material from folk-popular culture, creating not
just patriotic songs but effectively propagandist war songs, so there was
a move to add new layers of sophistication to folk traditions, in effect to
classicise them. This latter tendency was especially evident in the official
cultural policies and discourses associated with the puppet governments,

10Eberst 1985.
 the curtain descends 419

and it provides us with one of several intriguing pre-echoes of Communist

cultures.
In a nutshell, the Fascist dictatorships accentuated a pedigreed rhetoric
of cultural purity that increasingly translated into abuse of ethnic minori-
ties. The Metaxas regime in Greece was characteristic though certainly
not the most extreme, and here the rhetoric was allied to a blatant neo-
Hellenism (a Third Hellenic Civilisation) within which there was mas-
sification of specified elements of Greek culture and expulsion of other
elements. Similar forces were at work in Pavelis Croatia. Naila Ceribai
has noted that the rhetoric, embodied in the beauty and strength of tra-
ditional Croatian melodies, was often at odds with the obligation to pres-
ent Croatian music as cultivated and sophisticated: on a par with the best
of European culture.11 By citing reviews of folk performances by Croatian
musicians and dancers in Vienna in 1942, she exposes the officially sanc-
tioned imperative to polish and professionalise folk performances, again
foreshadowing the folk ensembles of post-war Cominform states. What
lay behind it was the myth of a uniform ethos whether of the Right or
of the Left embodied in the nation.
When we turn to popular music during the war years, we note a dis-
tinction between politically disinterested and politically engaged music.
The former was associated with the cafs, cabarets and artists clubs of
the urban centres, its clientele consisting of either the political establish-
ment or the occupying forces. The bulk of the repertory was international
popular music of the day, including North American, and much of it was
a direct response to the seedier by-products of war, which included the
growth of black market profiteering, and the exploitative culture this pro-
moted. The picture was a diverse one, marked by border crossing both
socially and ethnically. Roma, like Jews, were notoriously targeted by the
Fascists, but this did not prevent some of them from retaining their tradi-
tional musical roles in the cafs, weddings and saints days.
Such popular music was also presented to a wider public by way of
rapidly developing mass media, though as nationalised radio assumed
an explicit propaganda function it was increasingly censorious of the
products of the caf chantant. Naturally, it did not take political authori-
ties long to realise that radios entry into the home unleashed unprec-
edented powers of persuasion. Popular music was either censored directly
or invested with new political meanings through specific programming

11Ceribai 1998a.
420 chapter sixteen

policies. Yannis Constantinidis was director of the third programme in

Greece at the time, and he has left accounts of the political directives from
above.12 But propaganda can cut two ways, which brings us to the politi-
cally engaged music and music-making associated with the partisans of
the Left. Much of this activity was associated directly with the provinces,
where the fighting actually took place, and the diversity of the repertory
was a defining feature.
The patriotic songs and war songs cultivated by the Yugoslav Partisans,
for instance, drew eclectically on many folk and popular traditions, in
direct contrast to the ethos of uniformity promoted by the Ustae. One
factor here is that the Partisans came from many different ethnic and cul-
tural backgrounds. Texts may have been purpose-built, but musical styles
could range from the oldest layers of dinaric singing through modern sing-
ing na bas and epic songs, to the characteristic kolo dance songs found
over much of the Slavonic Balkans.13 Another factor is that the Partisans
were revolutionaries, and as such their cultural policies had not yet been
reified into the prescriptive agendas that would later accompany the rise
to power of Communist elites. And a third factor is that they accessed a
radical tradition unavailable to the Right, the revolutionary songs associ-
ated with the Soviet Union. In practice these were not so different musi-
cally from the war songs of the radical Right (there were even shared
melodies).
Leading composers engaged in the liberation struggle, or sympathetic
to it, attempted to raise the level of partisan music, and made their own
newly composed contributions to it. In the later stages of the war, Slavenski
wrote songs such as Heroj Tito and Stalin-Tito-Enver-Dimitrov, along with
Narodne partizanske pjesme and Makedonska partizanska. More directly
involved in the resistance were composers such as Panche Peshev (1915
44), Oskar Danon (19132009) and the young composer and musicologist
Nikola Hercigonja (19112000). Hercigonja had joined the Partisans in 1942
and he left accounts of their musical activities (choral singing and the-
atrical productions), as well as composing a body of original songs and
making numerous arrangements.14 A committed Marxist, he drew very
directly on Soviet models, especially in mass songs such as Crveni makovi
[Red Poppies] and Vihori [Hurricanes]. We will return to him shortly.

12Leotsakos 2005c.
13There are interesting reflections on this in ani 2007.
14Hercigonja 1972.
 the curtain descends 421

In Bulgaria, too, proletarian musical traditions flourished, as befitted

the Balkan state closest historically and culturally to Russia. Already in
the early twentieth century workers songs were cultivated, culminating
in numerous songs by Svetoslav Obretenov from the interwar period.
Obretenov also composed mass songs and cantatas on the Soviet model,
and contributed to the wave of anti-fascist songs that were composed in
great numbers between the wars and during World War II. As in Croatia,
the music harnessed by the resistance movement drew on a wide range
of popular sources, and by no means exclusively Bulgarian (there are pub-
lished collections by Elena Stoin and others),15 which is hardly surprising
given the class-based ideology espoused by the partisans, and their hostil-
ity to the political allegiances of the Bulgarian monarchist polity. Often it
was a question of taking existing Soviet songs and customising the texts
by, for example, associating present-day struggles with familiar historical
tales of national rebellion, heroism and vengeance.
Dencho Znepolski, a guerrilla fighter during the war before he was held
in the notorious Bellene camp in the early 1950s, has written about his
experiences with the partisans, as well as his experiences at the hands
of the Communist regime.16 His account of the music of the partisans,
cited by Krustev, is illustrated by songs such as Mladata partizanka [The
Young Partisan Girl] and Gsta e mgla padnala [Thick Fog Has Come
Down], but also by more conventionally conceived partisan marches, in
a stirring common time.17 As for Obrenetov, the fate of his collection of
workers songs was mentioned in chapter 13, but he also contributed songs
for the anti-fascist theatrical productions that were popular in student
and intellectual circles. Of all Balkan states, it was probably Bulgaria that
witnessed the most seamless transition between the revolutionary music
of the inter-war years and the mass songs of the Socialist Republic.
It is precisely in this matter of continuity that we may recognise a
contrast with Greece. Among the Communist guerrillas in Greece it was
again common to use Soviet songs, albeit with Greek-language texts, but
there were also many original revolutionary songs composed by Greek com-
posers, prominent among them Nikiforos Rotas (19292004) and Alekos
Xenos. Xenos has written of his wartime experiences among the Greek par-
tisans, and there are remarkable photographs of him conducting choirs on

15Krustev 1978, 135.

16Znepolski 1997.
17Krustev 1978, 136.
422 chapter sixteen

improvised stages in the field.18 There are further first-hand accounts of

music-making by the partisans in the volume Ta antartika tragoudhia [The
Songs of the Guerrillas], which contains song texts, a few songs with music,
and several articles and memoirs.19 Some of the most telling evidence
comes from surviving photographs, revealing of the diverse regional and
social backgrounds of the guerrillas, the range of instruments available to
them, and their resourcefulness in designing ad hoc performance sites.
From all of this we begin to see that, as elsewhere in the Balkans, the
resistance movements in Greece were surprisingly well organised. Up there
in the mountains were wind bands, choirs and even rudimentary forms of
musical theatre, all designed to boost the morale of the fighters but also
to sell their message to the indigenous population. A recently published
collection of partisan songs, all harmonised, is evidence of the diversity of
some of the repertory. There are Russian and Soviet marches and songs,
klephtic songs, Italian songs, American Civil War songs, and even a puta-
tive Irish song, together with original compositions that include songs by
Xenos and Theodorakis, and even one by Iannis Xenakis!20 All of course
were furnished with Greek resistance texts.
The musical practices revealed by such compilations were in every
way consistent with liberation struggles across the rest of South East
Europe. Volumes of folk, military and revolutionary songs were produced
in increasing numbers in the early war years, with obvious propaganda
value. Citing various war memoirs, Naila Ceribai conveys something of
the morale-boosting and enemy-deflating value of these songs in relation
to all three of the forces who were at loggerheads in the mountains of
Yugoslavia: Ustae, etniks, and Partisans.21 This was music at the front
line, and here the propaganda war, like the real war, was both vicious
and immediate.
In a volume edited by Andrija Tomaek, we have a detailed account of
Nikola Hercigonjas activities as a member of the agitprop of the Croatian
Communist Party Central Committee, including his early publication of
the collection Pjesme borbe [Fighting Songs], and his work at Biha with

18 See Maheras 1999. I am grateful to Kostas Kardamis, who introduced me to this

source in the Hellenic Music Laboratory of the Ionian University of Corfu.
19Ta antartika tragoudhia. Athens: Tetradio magazine, 1975.
20Dimitroadou 2002. Interestingly Xenos and Xenakis crossed swords in the early
1950s in an issue of Epitheorisi tehnis [The Bulletin of Art] about the existence or not of a
national Greek music. At the time Xenakis was a member of EPON (Eniea panellinia enosi
neoleas [ Unified Panhellenic Youth Union]).
21 Ceribai 1998a.
 the curtain descends 423

the partisan theatre group Kazalite narodnog oslobodjenja [Theatre of

National Liberation].22 The first performance of this group took place in
December 1942 at Bosanski Petrovac, at which point Hercigonja met Tito
for the first time, and from then onwards there were numerous perfor-
mances for partisans and for local people in the territories they occupied
at the time. In Hercigonjas own writings the detail is rich, and sometimes
quirky. We read about the difficulties encountered in learning songs from
different traditions (notably in a chapter on Romanian fighters), and we
discover that styles could be rapidly transformed following political direc-
tives from above.23
Most of all, we learn from Hercigonja the capacity of music to reinforce
ideological programmes directly and efficiently. This was a message already
well known to the political elites of the Soviet Union, and it was about to
be assimilated by those ruling the client states of the Soviet empire in
Eastern Europe. But in the post-war years popular music in Greece took a
very different turn, a mark of Greeces exclusion from the family of Com-
inform states. It was the resulting break in continuity that provided the
context for popular art songs promoted by Hadjidakis and Theodorakis.
These not only took on the role vacated by Kalomiriss national school;
they also substituted for a possible socialist popular music, which in the
rest of Eastern Europe played a key role not only in its own right but as
a catalytic element in art music. Much later, in the 1980s, just after Pasok
came to power, Xenos, still a die-hard communist, lamented this state of
affairs. He reflected on what was and what might have been.
Xenoss reflections were articulated in the polemical article Katigoro
to rebetiko [I accuse rebetiko].24 He attacked the fetishism of rebetika by
political leaders (he meant Papandreou), and he lamented the hypocrisy of
those song writers who now complain of the commercial culture they
helped to create (he meant Theodorakis). In contrast he evoked resistance
songs written by the people and the peoples composers (he meant him-
self). Some indication of how this healthier popular music might have
fertilised the art music of a Greek communist state was provided by his
First Symphony The Resistance, completed in 1945 (compare Slavenskis
Simfonijski epos). With an accompanying programme describing the lives of
the resistance fighters in the mountains, each of its three movements is

22Tomaek 1982.
23Hercigonja 1962.
24Xenos 1984. For a study of leftist positions on rebetika, see Zaimakis 2010.
424 chapter sixteen

based on an emblematic resistance song, including a Cretan song and the

resistance anthem of the Left, which comes into conflict with pernicious
distortions of the British national anthem. Although composed in 1945,
the work received its first performance only in 1979, in the aftermath of
the Junta. That it was awarded a prize by the Romanians in 1952 says
everything.

In Extremis: The Singular Case of Albania

Post-war reconstruction physical and cultural was a Europe-wide proj-

ect, transcending ideology. For many of Europes cities it meant clearing
rubble, rebuilding city centres, and repairing transport networks. None-
theless, within a short time ideologically competing structures began to
prise the two Europes apart politically and culturally. By the end of the
war the entire Balkans apart from Greece was under Communist control,
and by spring of 1948 Soviet treaties had been signed with Romania and
Bulgaria, as well as with Albania. The exception was Yugoslavia, which
parted company with Stalin in that same year, and was expelled from the
Cominform, but with her political structures already instituted on a Soviet
model. In all cases the formal organisation of government was based on
State-Party joint committees that controlled political, social and economic
affairs in a highly centralised way. And although the separate Cominform
states began to depart from the Soviet model as regional interests were
increasingly asserted, their economies were still run along Soviet collectiv-
ist lines. It was at this point that South East Europe transmuted to part of
Eastern Europe, a symbolic geography dictated by the Iron Curtain.
Cultural life was not the highest priority, but its propaganda value was
recognised early, and by 1948 the organisation of musical life was on the
political agenda. Again the model was a highly centralised one. There
were distinct pluses. An undoubted achievement was the development of
an impressive infrastructure for the teaching, promotion and dissemina-
tion of high culture, including professional music-making. But as creative
artists soon discovered, there was a heavy price to pay in terms of cultural
freedoms, which were curtailed across all the client states, in accordance
with the socialist realist doctrine that was a key component of Marxism-
Leninism. The decrees on music by the Central Committee of the Party in
Moscow in January 1948 (following earlier decrees on literature, theatre
and cinema) set the terms of reference, and composers in Eastern Europe
soon found themselves having to take careful note of the proclamations
of Andrei Zhdanov.
 the curtain descends 425

The pluses and minuses can be inspected in starkly polarised form in

Albania. Vlor, on the Albanian Adriatic, is where modern Albania really
began. Independence is its Leitmotif. If you visit it today you will see an
Independence Monument in the best heroic style, located in Indepen-
dence Square, and not a stone throw away from the Museum of Indepen-
dence. The town had long enjoyed an interesting history, not least because
of its once substantial Jewish population. But more pertinently, it became
a major centre for the independence struggle of the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, with educational activities and patriotic soci-
eties, including the Laberia Club under Ismail Kemal, helping to stoke
the fires of rebellion. And it was here in Vlor that independence was
declared on 28 November 1912, to be recognised in May of the following
year by the Treaty of London.
The Albanians quickly discovered that it was one thing to declare inde-
pendence, quite another to secure it, and especially in the shadow of more
powerful neighbours such as Italy, Greece and (after World War I) Yugo-
slavia, all of whom had vested interests in the countrys borders and politi-
cal colours. In December 1914, Vlor was taken by the Italians, and after
the war in the 1920s it became a centre for anti-Italian and anti-Zog
resistance, culminating in the so-called War of Vlor, and a brief moment
of democracy for Albania under Bishop Fan Stilian Noli in 1924. Later,
on the eve of the Second World War, the Italian occupation ordered by
Mussolini began with a landing in Vlor, and throughout the war the city
remained an important base for anti-fascist resistance, first against the
Italians, and then the Germans. Albanians were specialists in resistance;
the word sums up their history.
Prior to World War II, Western art music had been all but non-existent
in this tiny nation, probably the least developed region in the Balkans,
economically, socially and educationally (illiteracy ran at 85% in 1945).
There had been some musical activities (wind bands and choirs) associ-
ated especially with the important trading city Shkodr, with its cathedral
and Jesuit College, in the Catholic north. The self-taught composer Palok
Kurti (18601920) was active there, especially as director of the band that
was eventually named after him; likewise, the Franciscan Martin Gjoka
(18901940) played a pioneering role, composing stage and orchestral
works that had little hope of adequate performance, and instructing a
generation of younger Albanian composers. There were also Western-
orientated musical practices in the south of the country, and especially
in the pre-war Italianate town of Kor, home of mandolin orchestras
and (in the 1920s) of another high-profile band directed by Thoma Nasi
(18921964), who subsequently emigrated to America.
426 chapter sixteen

However, it was really only after liberation in October 1944, when the
Communist-led Anti-Fascist National Liberation Council was transmuted
into the Provisional Government of Albania under Enver Hoxha, that
Albanian music was put on an organised footing, along lines familiar in
the other Soviet client states. Again there were obvious musical continu-
ities between wartime partisan activities and the post-war regime. Thus,
in the immediate wake of liberation the Ensemble of the Peoples Army
was founded, along with a State Chorus, and exactly as in Yugoslavia
their repertory was made up largely of partisan songs and socialist mass
songs. Several of these songs were subsequently published, and of the
original compositions most are by composers who have since disappeared
without trace.
An exception to this was the contribution of the Shkodr-born com-
poser Prenk Jakova (191769). One might indeed spotlight successive
stages of Albanian post-war music history by way of Jakovas fortunes and
output. His song N nj dor kazmn, n tjetrn pushkn [A pick in one
hand, a rifle in the other] was characteristic partisan fare. It was popu-
lar at the end of the war, and very much in harmony with the socialist
direction Albania was to take in post-war years. Jakovas post-war career
was symptomatic of the brave new socialist world of music-making that
developed during these years. He became an influential figure in Albanian
musical life when he was appointed music director at the House of Cul-
ture in Shkodr shortly after the Liberation, and while there he organised
and directed a choir and orchestra that enabled him to promote Albanian
music, including the works of his younger compatriots.
In the country at large, music was hardly the first priority in these early
years of socialism. But music education was taken seriously, and again
it was organised in accordance with policy shaped in Moscow. The Jor-
dan Misja Music School was established in Tirana, and at the same time
the brightest young performers and composers were encouraged to study
in friendly countries overseas, especially Czechoslovakia and the Soviet
Union. State-subsidised publishing and recording were initiated, a Union
of Writers and Artists with a separate music section was established,
and several key performing institutions were put in place, including the
National Philharmonic Society (1949), which later (in 1953) absorbed the
Opera and Ballet Theatre. Then, after 1955, when the first groups of stu-
dents returned from overseas, now professionally trained, there was an
acceleration of activity, a burst of renewed energy that continued up to
the first major turning point in post-war Albanian history, Enver Hoxhas
breach with the Soviet Union in 1961.
 the curtain descends 427

This was the context for the composition (195658) of Jakovas opera
Mrika, to a libretto by Llazar Siliqi, an extension and elaboration of his
earlier musical tableau Drit mbi Shqipri [Light over Albania] of 1952.25 It
was the first full-scale Albanian opera, and it was performed in Shkodr
and Tirana in 1958, at a time when Albania was still a Soviet client state.
The subject matter is on message, depicting the building of socialism in
Albania in the context of post-war reconstruction and external hostil-
ity, though the story of Mrika herself, one of feminist self-determination,
transcends this context. Like the libretto, the dramaturgy is indebted to
Soviet models, in that the fate of individuals, portrayed by soloists and
ensembles, is positioned against an all-important background of the peo-
ple, portrayed by the chorus. Predictably, the musical idiom is conserva-
tive harmonically, while its melos is heavily influenced by folk models.
Mrika may have been one of the more professionally realised works to
emerge from Albania during this period, but it also demonstrated that the
implementation of a socialist realist aesthetic was already much stricter in
Albania than elsewhere in the Eastern bloc.
This had been true almost from the start, following a brief period of lib-
eral governance under the first Minister of Education Sejfulla Malshova.
In the wake of Zhdanovs proclamations, the obligatory conference of the
Writers Union, including its music section, was held in 1949, and from
that point artists and intellectuals were subject to surveillance and guid-
ance. All modern music and modern here included Debussy as well
as all jazz and popular music were condemned; the recommended sub-
jects for opera and ballet were the partisan struggle and the building of
socialism; and the idiom of contemporary composition was severely con-
strained. The official party line on compositional style, neatly articulated
in the brief section on music in an English-language guide to the country
published in 1978, was rigorously enforced, and for scholars such as Rama-
dan Sokoli, as well as composers, there were many problems.26 It was a
dangerous time, during which the alternative to conformity was persecu-
tion, internment or worse.

25A recent study of Jakova (in Albanian) by the Italian-based Albanian scholar Spiro
Kalemi looks at his achievements as the founder of Albanian opera (Kalemi 2006). Prior
to this book, Kalemi had already written extensively about Albanian music, notably on
musicians from Shkodr.
26An Outline of the Peoples Socialist Republic of Albania. Tirana: 8 Nntori Publishing
House, 1978.
428 chapter sixteen

Exactly a decade after the performances of Mrika, Jakova composed

a second opera Gjergj Kastrioti-Sknderbeu, the first major stage work to
draw on the life and deeds of the most famous of all Albanian heroes, and
the central figure in all mythologies of Albanian national romanticism.27
By that time (1968), Albania had broken with Moscow, left the Comin-
form, ostensibly in defence of Stalinist orthodoxy, and begun its liaison
with China. Not only were the familiar Soviet models now eschewed;
Soviet music was deemed just as unacceptable as the decadent products
of the West, and was officially proscribed. Following the breach in 1961, a
further reorganisation of cultural life was considered necessary to forma-
lise the new status quo, with controversial meetings of the Union of Writ-
ers and Artists in July of that year to debate future directions. This meant
further institution building, including the Music Conservatory in Tirana,
inaugurated just after the breach in 1962, and the Palace of Culture, which
housed the Opera and Ballet Theatre from 1964.
The effect of all this on Albanian composers was ambivalent. The vir-
tual exclusion of music from the wider world carried some benefits, at
least in securing performances. And although the Party exerted control
over music, inaugurating a series of song festivals of Albanian music all
over the country, the withdrawal of Soviet models paradoxically enabled
some more liberal trends artistically. This was reflected in the more ambi-
tious conception of Jakovas Sknderbeu, and in the greater diversity of its
musical and narrative forms, when compared with Mrika. Musically, this
is indeed a surprisingly sophisticated work. Ideologically, though, there
could be little room for ambiguity. To invoke a past hero in this way and
at this time, and to divorce him from the Christian world, was to serve the
personality cult of a present-day dictator. Personality cults were a famil-
iar feature of post-war Communist dictatorships, but nowhere were they
cultivated with such fanaticism as in Albania. Albania truly was a land
in extremis.
Jakova died a year after completing Sknderbeu, in 1969. As a result, he
missed the most oppressive period of all in Albanian intellectual life, the
decade following 1975. Relations with China had deteriorated in the early
1970s, and by the middle of the decade they had been cut completely. This
of course was contrary to the general direction of music elsewhere in East-
ern Europe, where dialogues with the West were developing. A tangible

27But note the film Sknderbeu of 1957, an Albanian-Soviet co-production directed by

Sergej Jutkevi.
 the curtain descends 429

result of the isolationist policy was that all Albanian musicians studying
abroad were obliged to return. Another was that not just Western and
Soviet music but all religious music Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim
alike was officially proscribed, with implications for choral societies, and
even for organists, that need no spelling out. This came in the wake of
Albanias coming out as the worlds first officially designated atheist state,
a policy enshrined by a museum of atheism established a few years later
(1972), in Shkodr of all places. These repressive policies culminated in the
Fourth Plenary Session of the Central Committee in 1974, at which Enver
Hoxha presented the now notorious report that effectively cut Albania off
totally from the remainder of the contemporary world.
Little was known of Albania during these years. From the late 1950s
the country had been something of a closed book to all but a handful of
western visitors. As to music, these included expeditions by the Romanian
ethnomusicologist Emilia Comiel in the early 1950s. Then, as noted in
chapter 7, there were collections made by the Stockmanns in 1957 and by
Albert Lancaster Lloyd (himself far from neutral politically) in 1965. There
were also several trips by the leading contemporary (activist) composer
Gerhard Stbler.28 But between 1975 and 1991 such visits were few and
far between.29 One exception was George Leotsakos. In 1981, right in the
middle of this reign of terror for artists and intellectuals, Leotsakos, then
employed as a music editor for Larousse, was invited to Albania. He was
astonished by what he found there during that initial fifteen-day visit, and
his first-hand account of it reminds us that even the most negative aspects
of the political system in Albania were incapable of quelling the creative
spirit of composers.30 It reminds us too that the more positive achieve-
ments of the system were remarkable.
Leotsakos was met by the composer Feim Ibrahimi (193597), who
despite having to toe the party line officially, demonstrated an unexpected
familiarity with the music of Iannis Xenakis and showed Leotsakos a Cello

28In an earlier period (1903), the German ethnographer Paul Traeger (18671933) vis-
ited northern Albania, and made a number of important recordings, predominantly among
Catholic Albanians. These, along with the recordings made by Edith Durham around the
same time, are the earliest known recordings of Albanian traditional music.
29Occasional windows on Albanian music were opened by enterprising musicians such
as the British composer Dave Smith, who travelled there in 1983 on the one (carefully
controlled) package holiday then available, and briefly recorded his impressions of urban
popular music, traditional music and a selection of compositions by leading Albanian com-
posers (Smith 1983). Later, in the 1990s, Joan Emerson (self)-published a short book listing
the major institutions of music-making and the leading composers (Emerson 1994).
30Leotsakos: personal communication.
430 chapter sixteen

Sonata he had composed a few years earlier in a progressive (atonal)

idiom; it was performed for the first time only after the fall of Commu-
nism. Later he encountered and came to know well other composers, such
as Tish Daija (19262003) and Tonin Harapi (19281992), both of whom
managed to compose in a manner that met official requirements, while
Harapi at least privately demonstrated a remarkable breadth of musical
knowledge, composing difficult works for the top drawer rather than the
concert platform.
But the real surprise for Leotsakos was the musical infrastructure he
encountered in Albania. For a city then comprising 250,000 inhabitants,
Tirana had an Opera and Ballet Theatre, several orchestras (including the
Symphony Orchestra of Albanian Radio and Television), a National Ensem-
ble of Folk Music and Dance, a Music Conservatory, and several special-
ist music schools. Even more striking was the extent and range of musical
activities taking place outside the capital in what had been an undeveloped
country in the pre-war years. Every major town had its house of culture, its
orchestra, and its choral society, and native operas were staged throughout
the provinces. Moreover, as everywhere in the Communist world of Eastern
Europe, a heavily subsidised culture meant tickets affordable by all.
By the time Leotsakos arrived in Albania there had already been more
than thirty years of Communist government, and musicians had watched
political allegiances and associated cultural policies change with the sea-
sons. He has not said so, at least to me, but as a music critic arriving from
the one country in South East Europe where Communism had failed to
take, or rather had been forcibly squashed, he could hardly have avoided
engaging in some comparative analysis. The results would have been
decidedly mixed, emphasising the ever-widening gap between Greece and
the Communist Balkans during these years. Putting it bluntly, the Alba-
nian authorities supported high culture; the Greek authorities did not.
Modern Greek art music was given some official backing (see chapter 20),
but in the main it was ignored; and it is still ignored today.
On the other hand, Greek composers could write what they liked. There
are debates to be had about the extent to which the new music carried
ideological messages, and about the supporting role of foreign powers in
the promotion of a post-war modernist culture in Greece; it is obvious
that censorship and propaganda were not invented in the Soviet Union.
But none of this measures up to the restrictions imposed on Albanian
composers by what was without question the most hard-line and dogma-
ridden regime of all the European Communist states. Nowhere else was
the divorce between the private and public voices of composers both
 the curtain descends 431

verbal and musical quite so complete, and even with the death of Enver
Hoxha in 1985 the grip of the Party did not slacken. It was not until 1991,
following the collapse of one of the last Communist regimes to survive in
the Balkans, that the doors to the wider world were pushed ajar.

Administered Music: Performing Communism

If we look more closely at the pluses and minuses of musical culture in

Communist South East Europe we will see that they represented two sides
of a single coin. The real issue is that the codes associated with musi-
cal categories were magically switched as those categories were either
appropriated by, or rejected by, state socialism. This code switching was
an extension of Cold War politics, much of which played out in European
cultural arenas. Thus, two categories that were considered antithetical
within the bourgeois culture of the first half of the twentieth century
modernist music and commercial popular music formed a kind of
alliance under Communism. Both were deemed to be part of the cultural-
political armory of the United States, and were condemned by the Soviet
Union and its allies as anti-humanistic and decadent.
There was comparable code switching associated with classical music
and traditional music. A creation of bourgeois Europe, classical music was
an elite culture, but when appropriated by socialist realism it lost these
associations and became the property of the people, expressive of universal
human values. It also became a site of competition, an assertion of cultural
prestige on the world stage. As to traditional music, this was eagerly appro-
priated by socialist realism, but its pedigreed associations with bourgeois
nationalism became problematical. Links with the nation were not elimi-
nated, but in a sense they should have been, and this created a kind of
unresolved tension within the aesthetic. One line was that national states
should simply wither away in the new order, and that traditional music
should be valued as an authentic expression of the people (the proletariat,
not the nation). But Stalins classic formulation tied nation building to the
class struggle, and in practice the nation not only prevailed but gained
enhanced status.31 What seemed more crucial was that traditional music

31As Marina Frolova-Walker indicates, the formula national in form, socialist in con-
tent was a temporary ideal only. Only the outward forms, the technical means of expres-
sion, might reflect the nationality of each republic [of the Soviet Union], and even this
was meant as a temporary concession, until all the national tributaries could merge into
432 chapter sixteen

should lose another of its bourgeois associations, this time with the primi-
tive. To a modernist, the primitive could be a highly valued category; to a
socialist realist, it was a mark of inferiority and regression.
It was this investment in classical music and traditional music that
determined the direction of musical life under Communist regimes. And
conversely, it was the opposition of these regimes to modernism and pop-
ular culture that resulted in severe curtailments of creative freedom. Since
they were wrapped in a single package, it may seem nave to label these
developments as pluses and minuses. But as part of the effective history
of the Communist years, that is what they were. The contrast was at its
most extreme in Albania, where an impressive infrastructure was con-
jured up seemingly ex nihilo, but where creative artists were reduced to
unwilling agents of propaganda. In the other Cominform states of South
East Europe, where there already existed an infrastructural history and
well-established creative directions, issues were less clear-cut. There was
not quite the same tabula rasa, on which a new socialist story might be
written, and although prescriptive dogma was imposed, history and tradi-
tion had a way of creeping back in to modify the story.
Much also depended on relationships with Moscow and with the West,
and here there was little uniformity. There has not been the same degree
of specialised scholarship on the musical life of the Communist states of
South East Europe as on Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, but one
certainty is that the more we learn about these cultures, and about Cold
War cultures in general, the more we are inclined to deconstruct the ste-
reotypes.32 The avant-gardes of Western Europe, far from cutting loose
from a political establishment, were themselves institutionally grounded
and subject to political influence. And, conversely, East European censor-
ship left much more room for artistic expression and disinterested judg-
ment than the conventional narratives allow. Ideological questions will
be addressed presently. But first I need to sketch in some of the shared
background to the structures of musical life.
Opera, its elitist origins conveniently forgotten, was widely supported
across the whole of the Eastern bloc in the spirit of the Soviet opera

a single mighty river of international Soviet culture, socialist in both form and content
(Frolova-Walker 1998, 334).
32For two studies of music in the Cominform states, see Thomas 2005 and Beckles
Willson 2007.
 the curtain descends 433

project.33 It had prestige, signalling a sophisticated culture, and when

translated into a peoples art it also had propaganda value. Accordingly,
in the early years of the new peoples republics, opera houses were either
newly promoted (with the national opera and national ballet given
independent status rather than part of the infrastructure of the National
Theatre) or newly established all over the bloc. The models for the organi-
sation of these institutions were the opera houses of the Soviet Union, and
it was common for Soviet staff to be employed in advisory and instruc-
tional roles.
This was notably the case in Sofia, where the National Theatre, restored
after extensive war damage, hosted several decades of Russian-influenced
opera and ballet. Russian classics and approved Soviet works dominated the
repertory, replacing pre-war Italian fare, and staging and direction were
also heavily indebted to Russian realist traditions. But singers, musicians
and conductors were Bulgarian in the main, and gradually a Bulgarian
repertory was established. There was a similar reorientation at the State
National Operetta, which took over from the earlier Operetta Theatre
in 1948, and again switched the standard repertory from Viennese to Rus-
sian and Bulgarian works. And in due course opera houses were estab-
lished in the major provincial cities of Bulgaria: Stara Zagora in 1946,
Varna in 1947, Rouss in 1949, and Plovdiv in 1953. Not for nothing had
Georgi Dimitrov, the first post-war Communist leader, promised to make
best use of our limited possibilities and to give, to give, so that both
theatre and opera can develop. All this will help to raise the cultural level
of our people, of our youth. It will be a mighty factor in the construction
of a new socialist society in our country.34
There was a similar story in Romania. Surprisingly, much institutional
work had already been achieved there during the war years, with funds
given by the Ministry of Public Instruction to establish a Philharmonic in
Bucharest (1942) and a Romanian Opera of Moldavia (1944). In post-war
years, the network of institutions was strengthened and consolidated, but
it had the additional task of imposing some cultural uniformity on prov-
inces with very different histories and traditions. A key objective was to
strengthen the alignment of Transylvania to Romania, though a delicate
balance had to be maintained here and some concessions were made to

33Marina Frolova-Walker exposes the contradiction at the heart of this project, as

between a realist subject matter and monumentality and an elevated musical language
(Frolova-Walker 2006).
34Quoted in Krustev 1978.
434 chapter sixteen

Hungarian populations, particularly concerning the (re-)naming of the

Hungarian Opera in Cluj-Napoca in 1948. Likewise in Yugoslavia, except
that here there was yet another task: to raise the general cultural level
of the less developed republics. Since Montenegro remained culturally
affiliated to Serbia, this meant in practice investing in Macedonia and in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, where art music in the western tradition had
very shallow roots.
Such unifying and levelling missions were not simply the province of
opera and ballet. Symphony orchestras were also promoted, following a
similar pattern in all the client states. Existing orchestras were restructured
to become State Philharmonics, while orchestras were either consolidated
or established at the Radio and Television. Again there were decentralis-
ing tendencies, with historical provinces given their due in Romania (both
Cluj-Napoca and Iai had Philharmonics) and with relatively even-handed
cultural investment in the separate republics of Yugoslavia. Everywhere
there was an attempt to develop and promote national repertory, but Rus-
sian and Soviet music was also well represented, and in Bulgaria there was
even a suggestion of a unified Russo-Bulgarian culture. In Romania there
was a shift of focus when Ceauescu came to power, though the liberalisa-
tion promised by his early years proved to be a mirage. As for Yugoslavia,
since Tito had broken with Stalin as early as 1948, one might have expected
a greater orientation towards western music from a rather earlier stage. In
practice, however, the cultural thaw was steady and gradual.
Choirs were a mainstay of musical life in all these states, with a reper-
tory that relied heavily on folksong arrangements, on mass songs not
all of them propagandistic and on socialist cantatas composed to a
blueprint provided by the Soviet Union. It was the choral medium that
most successfully bridged the gap between classical music and traditional
music, and often the choirs were formally linked to dance troupes with a
mission to promote the culture of the people. This was part of a sustained
attempt to democratise musical life along socialist realist lines, while at
the same time raising standards to a thoroughly professional level. In Bul-
garia and Yugoslavia in particular, there was continuity here with pre-war
practice. But what was new in the Communist era was the proliferation
of Soviet-influenced mass festivals and competitions regional, national
and international all over the Eastern bloc, show-casing the choirs and
dance troupes, and offering platforms to national traditions of classical
and folk music alike.
It is unnecessary to list these. More important is to stress the ethos of
progress they embodied, so that even amateur musicians were encouraged
 the curtain descends 435

to develop the highest professional standards (the dom kulture [house of

culture] was a key institution in promoting amateur music and dance in
provincial settings). And it was this same ethos that informed the invest-
ment in music education, at all levels from conservatory down to special-
ist music school. The resulting symbiosis between a rigorous, centrally
decreed and state-patronised music education and nation-wide institu-
tions for professional music-making has to be recognised as a strength
of the political culture. And finally, it goes without saying that each of
these states was alive to the importance of dissemination, and to the
even greater importance of controlling that dissemination. Government-
subsidised publishing houses, recording companies and radio were at the
service of music, provided it conformed to official requisites.
How, then, did composers fit in to this organised and carefully monitored
musical life? The pattern was not everywhere the same, but one constant
was the establishment of either an official Composers Union under the aegis
of the Ministry of Culture, or a specialist music branch of the Writers and
Artists Union. It was common for these unions to organise meetings with
discussion at which a central concern was to define a local position in
relation to ideological decrees emanating from Moscow.35 But it was also
through union channels that the censorship of composers and composi-
tions took place (adjudication panels, self-criticism sessions and purge
sessions), and conversely, that the familiar state prizes for composition
were awarded, in part with a view to consolidating the status of particular
genres as exemplars of the political and social order. In both cases the gen-
eral practice was to publicise the outcomes either in music periodicals or
in the specialised music journals that were the responsibility of musicology
institutes housed by government-sponsored Academies of Science.
It was also the job of the unions to commission new works notably
mass songs and socialist cantatas from composers, and they had funds
disbursed by the Ministry of Culture for that purpose. Then, depending on
the political proximity to Moscow, and on the presidency and executive
committee of the union, a careful eye would be kept on membership lists,
with migr composers characteristically excluded, and with the activities
of the membership closely monitored. In liaison with security networks
and the agitprop of the Central Committee, the unions had a major say
about who would attend this or that festival, for example, and in particular

35As Michael David-Fox points out, there were many different words for meeting with
discussion in the political language of the early Soviet years (David-Fox 1999, 8).
436 chapter sixteen

who would be allowed to make visits overseas. Co-operation brought very

real material benefits. Senior figures in the unions leading composers or
musicologists, who effectively created the official art and the official artis-
tic discourse could wield a powerful influence on the course of musical
life in the satellite states, often based on little more than personal likes or
dislikes. Careers could be made or broken.
The politics of a divided Europe thus imposed a measure of cultural
uniformity on Balkan territories that had very different histories and tra-
ditions. The Soviet empire replaced earlier empires, and it did its best
to shape the societies and cultures of client states in its image. Likewise,
Communism replaced earlier confessional traditions as an official belief
system it was always more than a political philosophy creating a unified
status quo (increasingly, a self-serving elite) and in due course a unified,
and considerably larger, community of dissent. Naturally these societies
were at different stages of development in 19445, some just emerging from
near-feudal conditions, others comprehensively networked into a central
European cosmopolitan culture. So the new structures were designed to
be, and to a degree really were, both socially and culturally levelling, even
if real power resided always in the Party, and at the centre.
Levelling was in any case relative. In Yugoslavia the socio-economic
and cultural roles assigned to Macedonia were hardly commensurate
with those played out in Slovenia. But given its pre-liberation backward-
ness, Macedonia still felt the benefits, and it is no coincidence that Yugo-
nostalgia today is commonest in the less developed republics. Naturally,
the conformity imposed from Moscow was also strengthened discursively,
through official political and cultural historiography and criticism, and
through Government-controlled media, all to a Marxist-Leninist agenda.
The results were hardly imaginative. Politically, there were revisionist read-
ings of the Second World War (only the ruling classes were responsible
for the pro-fascist alignments), and re-workings of conventional national
and even racial narratives to accommodate the concept of class struggle.
Culturally, the most surprising feature of all was the relatively seam-
less transition from inter-war nationalist discourses to post-war socialist
discourses.36 Thus, music history and criticism from the Cold War years
not only blanked out the darker side of the immediate past; they worked
to re-nationalise the more distant past. The nation, in other words, was

36See ani 2007, 76 on this.

 the curtain descends 437

aligned to class in Cold War discourses, just as it had been aligned to

modernity in the inter-war years.

Composers on Message

Nationalist rhetoric persisted, then, but there was a major shift of emphasis
under Communism. Separatism and competition were in theory replaced
by a brotherhood of nations, ideologically grounded by the socialist ideal,
by the international struggle against capitalism. It would be a mistake to
regard this new discourse as invariably the product of enforced propa-
ganda missions. In many cases it stemmed from conviction. A belief in the
promise held out by a new Communist order had been widely shared by
the interwar intelligentsia, and it remained robust at least until the Soviet
proclamations of 1948, and in several quarters beyond that. In the case of
Yugoslavia, the breach with Stalin ensured that composers were not really
subject to such severe constraints as their colleagues elsewhere in the
bloc.37 But for the other states, getting on message was an imperative.
The hard-line policy established by Zhdanov in 1948, and continued
by Tikhon Khrennikov, reaffirmed the dogmatic collectivism of 1932, and
it was an unmistakable signal to the bloc generally that conformism was
to be the order of the day. In each of the client states, a conference took
place in 194849 to determine the direction of the national musical cul-
ture, though by that time the message was already clear from earlier pro-
nouncements on literature and cinema. The certainty and determinacy
that ensued proved destructive, as certainty and determinacy invariably
do. Samuel and Thompson remind us that both positive and negative
myths were established across the bloc.38 There was the myth of socialist
man, a progressive figure there to be celebrated by artists, and there was
the myth of his political enemies, there to be demonised, for as Tzvetan
Todorov has remarked the totalitarian state cannot live without enemies.39
Those enemies included artists and intellectuals who refused to accept, or
whose work was deemed to mystify, the new reality.
No-one was left in any doubt about the official line on demons. There
was typically a hunt for opposition, followed by the coordinated denunci-
ations that had become formulaic within the Bolshevik Party in the 1930s.

37Ironically, the first Cominform centre was in Belgrade.

38Samuel and Thompson 1990, 5.
39Todorov 1999, 7.
438 chapter sixteen

Such denunciations were exported to the satellite states after 1948, and
they were indicative of an increasingly repressive political culture from
that point onwards. Some patterns were common to all. In 1948 the Inte-
rior Ministries issued circulars to bookshops and libraries, censoring west-
ern culture in general, and singling out and removing what were regarded
as subversive books. At the same time the activities of journalists, writers,
artists and musicians were all brought under the aegis of agitprop sections
of the Party Central Committees. In Bulgaria in particular the repression
was severe, associated especially with camps such as Bellene.
Reform of education was high on the list, with schools taken over by the
states, foreign schools closed, universities purged of perceived dissidents,
and school and university curricula revised. The national histories were
re-written along Marxist-Leninist lines, and that included airbrushing out
problematical war records. In Romania, for example, the first step was to
link nineteenth-century revolutionary nationalism to Communism, then
to unify acts of war-time resistance by groups from very different social
and political backgrounds into a single movement of Communist protest
and dissent, and finally to present the all-important coup of August 1944 as
Communist-inspired and Communist-led. All of this added up to an envi-
ronment of indoctrination, denunciation and nepotism, of which artists
and intellectuals were understandably wary; questions were moot about
just who might or might not be trusted. Michael David-Foxs description
of Soviet political culture in the 1930s might well be transposed to the
satellite states from the late 1940s to the mid 1950s: At times it could seem
like the political culture of the party-state had come to resemble a big and
deadly masquerade.40
If we compare the discourses of the inter-war period with those of social-
ist realism, we will note continuities but also clear differences. The latter
were distinguished by what Ivan iber has called a systematised world of
meanings that operates some way beyond manifest content.41 Key words
and phrases acquired a formulaic character, established through endless
repetitions: text after text, party conference after party conference. They
triggered meanings that could only be understood within the prevailing
political culture, and that were distinct from even opposite to mani-
fest meanings. One way to conceptualise this discourse is to view it as a
series of dialogues or attempted fusions between a core matrix, derived

40David-Fox 1999, 13.

41 ani 2007, 18.
 the curtain descends 439

from Soviet-style socialist realism, and a cluster of separate, nationally ori-

entated, matrices based on myth, folklore and history. Typically, the offi-
cial discourse would preserve links with older layers of culture, and would
use these to unite the faithful against their enemies within and without.
Enemies is the mot juste here, for the discourse was heavily militarised,
promoting the cult of heroism that was so central to Communist propa-
ganda, but allowing that cult to function simultaneously within nationalist
and socialist frames of reference. In this way national and class struggles,
Haidouks and partisans, could be drawn into the same universe of mean-
ing. The aim was a transformation of society, but it was acknowledged
that this was more likely to succeed if continuities could be established
that penetrated deep into the national culture, and with music playing its
part. We may ask just who was persuaded. And whether we examine the
responses of the Communist elites themselves, of the populace at large,
or of the intelligentsia, the answer will not be straightforward. The least
helpful way to think about it is in polarised terms. In a political culture
that encouraged circumvention, half-truth and duplicity, responses to
the official line were shaded and individuated. Even the line itself was a
variable. It was subject to modification by local contexts, and the hack-
neyed metaphor is inescapable it was liable to freezes and thaws.
If we place the spotlight on artists and intellectuals, it becomes fairly
clear that the general direction across the bloc as a whole was towards
growing discontent and an increasing willingness to give voice to that
discontent. What was at stake, after all, even for those artists who were
sympathetic to Communist ideals, was the sense of personal authenticity
that has to be negotiated within any professional practice. MacIntyres
concept of a practice, briefly referenced in chapter 1, is germane.42 Under
these Communist regimes the demands of the official institutions placed
an intolerable pressure on the practices they housed. As a result, it became
ever more difficult for artists to serve the practice, whose ethos they had
learned to respect, while at the same time submitting to the institution,
whose prescriptions they had little choice but to follow. It was an extreme
form of a familiar enough tension between practices and institutions, but
it became ever clearer that the schizophrenia it generated could not be
sustained indefinitely.
At the root of the problem was the simplistic version of realism
that became official policy in the years following Zhdanovs post-war

42MacIntyre 1981.
440 chapter sixteen

proclamations. This was a crude form of mimesis. The artwork should

reflect, rather than model, social reality. Instead of presenting the perfec-
tion of art as an ideal to which the social order might aspire (somewhat
in the manner of a nineteenth-century aesthetics of autonomy), Zdanhov
presented it as the mirror of a perfection already achieved by the new
socialist order, even if the ideal society it was to create remained work-
in-progress. It was the job of the artist to celebrate that order, and at the
same time to help protect it from those who would seek to undermine it.
There could be no dissonance, and no pessimism, since these would pre-
suppose a flaw in the social order itself, something incompatible with the
victory of Communism. Nor could there be any self-indulgent retreat into
a self-contained and elitist aestheticism. Art was for the people.
The resulting censure was more difficult for writers than for compos-
ers, but composers were in the firing line too. Their prescribed subject
matter the socialist struggle, the building of Communism, the idealised
lives and work ethic of the common people should be depicted in mass
songs and cantatas. That the celebratory tone demanded of these genres
amounted to a warped version of a nineteenth-century Kunstreligion is to
the point, given the substitution of secular symbols for sacred. But this
subject matter extended to other genres too, including opera and film
music, and even programmatic instrumental music. Absolute music was
more problematical. It was not proscribed, but it was treated with suspi-
cion. Its tendency, after all, was towards formalism, in the sense of mini-
mal referentiality, and the last thing the state wanted was a play of sounds
devoid of meaning. On the other hand, an existing symphonic canon was
approved, with Beethovens heroic style given pride of place. It was the
Beethovenian narrative of struggle and overcoming a narrative that
could accommodate dark, pessimistic (one might almost say modernist)
tones in the early stages of a work that became the historical model for
new symphonic composition, alongside Russian and Soviet traditions.
A rider to this was that musical materials should ideally have a basis
in the rich heritage of folk-song and folk-dance; and in practice a judi-
cious reference to traditional music could often mitigate modernist ten-
dencies elsewhere. The scare quotes are used advisedly, given that the
rich heritage was decidedly reinvented, stripped of irrational dimensions
and brought into line with social modernity. The much-vaunted paradox
of socialist realism emerges clearly from all of this. Social modernity was
allied to artistic conservatism, social progress with aesthetic regression. It
was this curb on the exploratory and the new (provinces of self-expression)
that had composers champing at the bit. Under Communism the balance
 the curtain descends 441

between the autonomy character of music (music is for me) and its com-
modity character (music is for all) became seriously skewed.
Composers found their own pathways across this treacherous terrain.
Some supported the ideals of state socialism, and had no difficulties with
ideological correctness; personal friendships with key ideologues in the
Ministries of Culture or Education naturally helped. Some preferred to
keep their head down, avoiding controversy as far as possible. Some were
already living abroad and decided not to return, while others went into
exile; typically, their music would then be banned. Some tested the limits
of correctness in public art, both through verbal discourse and composi-
tionally. And some offered what Maruka Svaek has described as private
acts of resistance.43 Svaeks formulation is useful, for there was indeed
an explicit separation between public and private spheres of music dur-
ing this period. The former was the preserve of the epic genres (opera,
symphony), of mass songs and of folksong-based compositions, all subject
to adjudication and censure on ideological grounds. The latter was the
province of chamber music and of various kinds of ad hoc groupings, and
here it was sometimes possible (though it could still be dangerous) to
work outside the world of official art.
There was unofficial music, in other words, and it could venture into
forbidden modernist territory. The more experimental compositions
might remain in the drawer or receive only private performances, but
modernist music also reached the concert platform in some modest ven-
ues, even in the early days of state socialism. One narrative might indeed
be characterised as the progressive penetration of the public sphere by
the private. Depending on the location, there was movement on several
fronts from the mid 1950s onwards: increasing experimentation in com-
position, greater contact with western modernism, a more openly criti-
cal discourse, and a more tolerant line in official circles. None of these
proceeded in a straight line. But they were recognisable tendencies, and
they were strengthened by the liberal policies taking effect elsewhere in
the bloc after 1956.
For those younger composers who aspired to a moderate modernism
under state socialism, there were real questions to ask about possible
ways forward. And here we may note a significant difference between
South East Europe and East Central Europe. In Poland, Czechoslovakia
and Hungary there were major canonic figures from the early twentieth

43Svaek 2001.
442 chapter sixteen

century, conveniently dead for the most part, who were unambiguously
part of the national history but at the same time recognised by a wider
modernist culture. In the post-war era these composers could form ref-
erence points for negotiations between the claims of ideology and the
imperative of the new. The official line was still to present nineteenth-
century masters such as Moniuszko, Smetana and Liszt-Erkel as the echt
models, but internationally recognised modernist figures could not be
ignored, and there was often an argument for appropriation and habilita-
tion rather than rejection.
Thus in Poland Szymanowskis later style formed a reference point
for a folk-based idiom of neo-classical lucidity, though the point was not
unduly laboured in official discourse.44 In Czechoslovakia, the argument
for Janek was stronger. He was promoted as a precursor of socialist real-
ism following the twentieth anniversary of his death in 1948, and in some
respects it was an easy case to make. As to Bartk and Hungary, this raised
yet more ambivalent questions. It is no exaggeration to claim that critical
discourses in Hungary were shaped and re-shaped through the prism of
Bartk reception, so that at varying points different features could be held
up either as warnings (the music of the twenties) or as models (the folk-
song arrangements; the later music); Danielle Fosler-Lussier has recorded
these shifting phases of Bartk reception.45 For composers, as opposed
to ideologues, the importance of such key modernist figures lay in their
potential as models of mediation. They offered possible options for steer-
ing a path between Soviet ideology and a modernist language.
There were no real parallels in the Balkans. The closest was Enescu,
but since he remained abroad after the war, he was persona non grata
with the Romanian authorities, and, along with Constantin Briloiu, he
was denied membership of the newly vamped Composers Union. As a
model for younger composers he was compromised, at least initially, and
his music was barely performed during the first post-war decade. We
might compare him in this regard with Martin in Czechoslovakia, who
likewise blotted his copybook by remaining overseas, despite the best left-
wing credentials and a resistance record in the war; he was habilitated
only with the thaw of the 1960s. And we might contrast him with Kodly,
who remained in Hungary and followed a broadly pro-Soviet line. Signifi-

44An interesting aspect of this is the blend of Marxist discourse and German Idealist
thought that informed the writings of key Polish ideologues such as Zofia Lissa, by no
means explained away by a narrative of common origins.
45Fosler-Lussier 2007.
 the curtain descends 443

cantly, it was only after Enescus death in 1955 that his status changed, and
a major re-examination of his music began in Romania. For Romanian
composers who were coming to maturity in the sixties, he was a crucial
model.
There was no composer in either Bulgaria or Albania who qualified
as an international figure in quite the way that Enescu did. Yugoslavia
had a more promising contender, of course, but the situation there was
not strictly comparable, given the break with the Soviet Union in 1948.
And in any case Slavenski all but disappeared from view in the post-war
years. All in all, it is perhaps not surprising that one of the options taken
by composers in this region was to turn to the early modernists further
north in East Central Europe as models for a fusion of nationalism and
moderate modernism (for Romanians, Bartk had in any case a unique
significance). There were already inter-war precedents for this, but the
new political structures welcome or not strengthened the possibility
of a more generalised East-European musical culture, and not exclusively
Slavonic.
There were other options however. One was to aspire towards the
seductive modernist achievements of a still only partially known, but
increasingly materialising, western post-war culture. Even in absentia,
western modernisms the idea of them, as much as the actuality were
a powerful force in the Communist states, and a major attraction for cre-
ative artists in particular, though to engage openly with them in the early
post-war years could be to court denunciation or worse. But of course
the most obvious option for all for these composers was to look directly
to the Soviet Union itself. Nor did this necessarily mean slavishly follow-
ing Party lines and remaining faithful to the tyrannical requirements of
socialist realism. Soviet composers were not just about mass songs and
cantatas. They had more experience than most in finding ways to walk
the tightropes, and they had much to teach others. There was in any case
a long history of affiliations between the Balkan states and Russia prior to
the establishment of a post-Yalta Eastern Europe.
 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

DIVERGING PATHS

Traffic with Moscow

Two empires carved up the Balkan Peninsula for much of its post-medieval
history. But from the eighteenth century onwards, a third also had designs
on it. In Russia there were dreams of the Patriarchate, of a Byzantine
succession, and of access to the Mediterranean. Various modes of cultural
imperialism linked to Orthodoxy the stories of the border Serbs and
later of Bulgaria were in support of these ambitions. But so too was
military force, resulting in a century of Russo-Turkish wars (from the 1770s
to the 1870s) during which other interested parties, especially Britain and
the Habsburgs, watched, waited, and on occasion intervened. The Prin-
cipalities (Moldavia and Wallachia) were directly in the line of fire. They
were overrun by Russia in the 1770s, became Russian protectorates in the
1830s, and then took advantage of the 18778 hostilities to declare an inde-
pendent Romania. But Serbia and Bulgaria were also agents of Russian
ambition at various stages of the narrative, and in those same hostilities
Bulgaria became the main theatre of war.
Following the Berlin Treaty of 1878 there was both disillusionment with,
and dependency on, Russia on the part of each of these states. Romania
lost Bessarabia (modern Moldova) to Russia in 1878, was rescued by Rus-
sia following a failed attempt to take Transylvania during World War I,
re-took Bessarabia at the end of the war, was forced by Hitler to cede it
to the Soviets in 1940, and submitted to the conquering Red Army at the
end of World War II. Bulgaria resented the Russian acquiescence in 1878,
but submitted to a strong Russian presence in, and influence on, the new
nation state, and again yielded to the Red Army. Like the Bulgarians, the
Serbs, despite their deep-rooted cultural affinity to Russia, were disap-
pointed by the outcome of 1878, and even more by Russias acceptance
of the Habsburg annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908. However,
one important later difference was that Serbia-Yugoslavia, unlike Romania
and Bulgaria, greeted the Red Army with an already formed Communist
administration under Tito, albeit one that had seized power only thanks
to Stalins patronage.
 diverging paths 445

The acquisition by the Soviet Union of four client states in South East
Europe, in one sense the realisation of a long-standing Russian ambition,
imposed some degree of homogeneity on the socio-political and cultural
profiles of these states, with terms of reference established in Moscow.
Where music was concerned, the hard-line Stalinist position established
by Zhdanov in Moscow was followed faithfully by Khrennikov, but under
Krushchev there was a political and cultural thaw roughly between 1955
and late 1958. Show trials, aggressive ideological campaigns and arrests
were all replaced during those years by new cultural initiatives, and these
gained sufficient momentum to survive the official end of the thaw, so that
in the 1960s previously proscribed works by Shostakovich and Prokofiev
were reinstated, and figures such as Myaskovsky and Khachaturian were
taken off the suspect list.
A younger generation of Soviet composers also emerged at this time,
and several of them managed to forge a musical career at some distance
from the officials of the Composers Union. During the Brezhnev years,
networking was all-important in the Soviet Union, with overlapping and
interactive circles of composers centred on the Moldavian-born teacher
Philipp Moyseyevich Hercovici, on Shostakovich and Shebalin, and on
the short-lived electronic studio (closed in the mid-1970s). As to composi-
tional options, two were broadly successful for those walking the tightrope.
One was to develop the kind of ironic play of genres and gestures honed
to perfection by Shostakovich, and the other was to cultivate the polysty-
listic composition that was to become emblematic of Soviet modernisms.
It was not the end of censorship, of course, and Denisov, Gubaydulina and
Schnittke all had their share of problems. Only under Gorbachev did the
curtain begin to rise.
This sequence does not apply to the client states in any uniform way.
Political relations between the Soviet Union and its satellites took differ-
ent forms, and those differences provide a necessary framework for under-
standing cultural policies in South East Europe. Yugoslavia, dissident
almost from the start, was expelled for bad behaviour, and found itself
in dialogue with the capitalist West as well as the socialist East. That is a
story for the next chapter. Albania, as we saw, retreated into its Stalinist
hermitage in the sixties, with the severest consequences for all intellec-
tual and cultural life. For the two remaining Cominform states there was
relatively little deviation from a hard-line Stalinist position during the first
post-war decade. Politically, Bulgaria remained a faithful acolyte of the
Soviet Union, so much so that on two separate occasions Todor Zhivkov
was willing to cede its separate political identity in favour of incorporation
446 chapter seventeen

within the Union. A sense of indebtedness to Russia was hard-wired into

Bulgarian history, but the shift from the San Stefano to the Berlin treaties
in 1878 was a major blow, and Russias compliance over the final settle-
ment qualified the prevailing Russophilia.
The loss of territory that accompanied the Treaty of Berlin was the first
of a series of disappointments in modern Bulgarian history. The conclu-
sion of the Balkan Wars likewise proved disadvantageous, and so too did
the Versailles treaty, following Bulgarias belated decision to support the
Central Powers in World War I. At times it must have seemed that Bul-
garia had an unerring capacity to back the losing side. World War II was
no exception, and it was against this background that the Communist
coup of the ninth of September 1944 and the subsequent Sovietisation
of the country were accomplished. More than anywhere else in the East-
ern bloc, Bulgaria proved biddable, and in the early years at least this
attitude served the nation well, economically and also politically.1 Even
in the early 1990s, despite a moribund economy, a policy of ruthless anti-
minority discrimination and a growing body of dissidents among the
intelligentsia, the wider population maintained a widespread nervous-
ness about any brave new democratic world. So Bulgaria represented in
some ways a default position, a kind of ideal client state from the Soviet
perspective (Donna Buchanan remarks that her Bulgarian friends would
turn to the Soviet press to see in advance what would soon be coming
their way politically).2
The administration of musical life in the country, and the formulation
of the aesthetic values it was supposed to embody, all derived explicitly
from Soviet models. And so too did music education. Curricular develop-
ment at the State Conservatory and the state music schools (there were
separate schools for folk music and art music), and likewise the schol-
arly agendas for musicology at the institutes established at the University
and the Academy of Sciences, were all borrowed from Moscow. As for the
organisation of community music-making, this took place within clearly
defined areas of a hierarchical bureaucratic structure that linked provin-
cial local authorities and Party committees to the State Council and the
Politburo, twin heads of State and Party. Within this structure it was
the Committee for Culture that was responsible for music, establishing
the terms of reference for policy and education.

1Bulgaria served as a laundry for suspect Soviet deals during these years, and reaped
the rewards financially.
2Buchanan 2006, 11.
 diverging paths 447

The Composers Union, established after several forerunners in 1947,

liaised with the Committee for Culture on questions of repertoire, agen-
das for scholarship and criticism, festivals and competitions, personnel
for performing and administrative roles, publishing and recording policies,
and above all censorship. This operated at all levels, from art music through
the professional folk ensembles to the popular music deemed suitable for
radio broadcast. Typically Union reports would follow in both senses
of follow the Bulgarian Party Congresses, which in turn would follow
the Soviet Party Congresses. In truth the bureaucracy was even more
complex than this summary suggests.3 There were separate committees
responsible for the organisation of tours, for example, not least the much-
sought-after invited tours overseas (cultural shop windows for the State),
and that included fixing payment rates; and there were also committees
tasked with overseeing amateur musical life.
Moscow was kept informed. Aside from the obvious communication
chains, there were concealed channels leading to the Soviets by way
of Bulgarian State Security. There were State Security informers in the
Union, and this enabled the authorities to keep the closest watch on
members. Indeed the individual files kept on composers and scholars
were so detailed that they amounted at times to day-by-day chronicles.
The usual denunciations took place. Rossitza Guentcheva draws attention
to the critical response to the first Bulgarian socialist operetta, Deliana
by Parashkev Khadzhiev, in 1952. The accusation was that the librettist
broke the rules by depicting decadence and intrigue in the world of the
Bulgarian village,4 in defiance of the prescription set out by Georgi Dimitrov
himself in a letter of February 1947, with all the usual strictures about
an alliance between a folk-based idiom and the Classics of the Western
tradition.5 Just how closely Dimitrovs directive was followed, and how
it was inflected by later shifts of policy in Moscow, can be gleaned from
Venelin Krustevs articulation of the Party line of the 1970s.
Krustevs survey of music, musicology and criticism during the post-war
period is a revealing document. It speaks of the need to correct residual
bourgeois tendencies in 1948, but also of the need to correct the imbalances
created by an over-rigid and over-narrow interpretation of the 1948 Decree
of the Soviet Central Committee. It celebrates the glorious achievements
of mass song composition in the post-war decade, but at the same time

3Ibid., 180ff.
4Guentcheva 2004.
5Krustev 1978, 186.
448 chapter seventeen

deplores the excesses of a political personality cult following the death of

Dimitrov. And in coded language it speaks of the relaxations that were
effected by the third and fourth reviews (effectively festivals) of Bulgarian
music in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and of the perceived necessity to
balance traditional folk-based materials and more advanced techniques.
What this account demonstrates is just how closely the official line fol-
lowed the shifting ideological positions adopted in the Soviet Union itself.
Had he been writing a decade later, Krustev would no doubt have at least
paid lip service to the benefits of perestroika.
Composers were another matter. Of the older generation, several were
well disposed to state socialism, and those who were not seemed able to
adapt to the new regime. There were, however, exceptions. For Dimitar
Nenov, who had little sympathy with Dimitrovs prescription and main-
tained a fiercely idealistic conception of the responsibility of the composer
towards the nation, it was all much too difficult, and he paid a heavy price
in terms of public esteem and personal wellbeing. Among the middle gen-
eration there were several for whom the familiar conflicts between politi-
cal prescription and (modernist) self-expression led them into difficulties
with the regime. Of the several composers one might cite, those with the
highest profile were Konstantin Iliev and Lazar Nikolov. Dissidents were
by no means unknown in Bulgarian music, then, but their voices were
muted, and their influence modest. Even the loosening of Marxist-Leninist
strictures from the 1960s onwards was not really motivated by agitation
from within. It was an officially sanctioned thaw, responsive to develop-
ments in Moscow, and it was given institutional grounding through the
so-called Weeks of Bulgarian Music.
Much of this pattern was replicated in Romania. Here, too, there
was strict allegiance to Soviet dictates in the immediate post-war years,
though the dialogues with Russia varied from institution to institution,
as between the Opera, the Conservatory and the Composers Union. The
Union was the most powerful force ideologically, and it was quickly taken
over by a generation of composers with the best Soviet credentials, several
with Soviet training. By a deft sleight-of-hand, there was a change of name
in 1949 from the old Society of Romanian Composers, founded in 1920, to
the Union of Romanian Composers, requiring fresh registration and thus
enabling major figures working abroad (above all Enescu and Briliou) to
be excluded without the embarrassment of more public expulsions. Of
the younger generation who came to power at this time, it was Matei Socor,
himself a fairly mediocre composer, who was made President in 1949, and
who organised the inevitable post-Zdhanov conference in that same year.
 diverging paths 449

Accordingly, socialist realist aesthetics regulated the decisions made by

the Union, and if anything they were applied more strictly under Ioan
Dumitrescu, Socors successor as President from 1954. We are fortunate
that there exists a published, year-by-year, account by Octavian Cosma
of the proceedings of the Union and of the pre-war Composers Society,
based on stenographic transcripts of most of the discussions.6 We learn
that Romanian composers were not slow to produce their mass songs
and cantatas to say nothing of their hymns to the Party, to Stalin or to
Gheorghe-Dej in the post-war years. And we encounter the same bias
in the official journal of the Union (Muzica), established in 1950, and in
the books (initially translations of Russian studies) and scores produced
by the newly founded publishing house, Edituri Muzicale. Commission-
ing, censoring and prize-giving activities were in the first instance heavily
politicised, we discover, but as time went on this became rather less of
a problem. As elsewhere in the bloc, sub-committees were established
by the Union for assessing opera, choral music, instrumental music and
musicology. But they were large enough to minimise personal prejudice,
and the Ministry of Culture was usually willing to accept the recommen-
dations of the Union without too much interference.
None of this changed the fact that internal repression remained severe.
The State Security Archives have been available to researchers for several
years now, and they tell a fascinating story, though to this day it is a mat-
ter of some sensitivity as to just how much can and should be widely
publicised (there have been inappropriate witch hunts by journalists, and
unreasonable condemnations of those composers who wrote mass songs
and cantatas).7 As in Bulgaria, some composers were themselves members
of the political committees of the Party, and some were undoubtedly used
as informers. And, again as in Bulgaria, the Securitate maintained a close
watch on composers. A figure such as Paul Constantinescu (190963), who
committed the double sin of having Jewish origins and composing reli-
gious music, was the subject of detailed reports.
Several leading figures, including Mihail Jora and Mihail Andricu (1894
1974), paid a price for gestures of dissidence or for what was perceived at
the time to be an unhealthy proximity to the West. In the case of Jora,
a confirmed monarchist, this followed an official instruction to gather

6Cosma 1995.
7In this climate of recrimination, even the fact that a composer or musicologist had
studied in the Soviet Union could serve as the basis for condemnation.
450 chapter seventeen

musicians together in the Conservatoire to celebrate the deposition of

King Michael. Instead of celebrating, Jora announced several minutes
silence. As a result he lost all privileges, including his paid employment,
and was kept under what was effectively house arrest for several years.
For Andricu the fault lay in his close association with the French ambas-
sador, which gained him access to Western luxuries, but also and more
crucially to Western scores and recordings, which he shared with younger
Romanian composers. He sustained this privilege for several years, but in
the end he was singled out for much the same treatment as Jora.
Like Bulgaria, Romania responded in some measure to the Krushchev
thaws. It is symptomatic that both Jora and Enescu were admitted as mem-
bers of the newly reformed Union in 1954. And it is no less symptomatic that
when Enescu died in 1955 Romanian composers and musicologists discov-
ered his music afresh and turned to it as a source of creative renewal. Dur-
ing the first post-war decade, only the early Rhapsodies and the Romanian
Poem had been given an airing in Romania. But after his death there were
pioneering scholarly studies, and a new creative interest on the part of
Romanian composers. Yet in the wider political arena, the thaw of the mid
1950s proved to be of short duration, especially in the aftermath of events
in neighbouring Hungary in 1956. The true onset of more liberal cultural
policies came only with Ceauescus rise to power in 1965. It is well known
that the Ceauescu years were not what they initially seemed. Nonethe-
less, doors to Western Europe were opened. Indeed they had never been
fully closed (Andricu in particular had introduced younger composers to
western modernisms through informal study sessions at his home). During
the earlier stages of Ceauescus regime younger composers had renewed
opportunities not just to visit the Warsaw Autumn, which was by then a
truly international celebration of new music, but even to attend the Darm-
stadt seminar, the power house of post-war modernisms.
Following Ceauescus break with Moscow, Romanian State Security,
unlike Bulgarian, became a purely internal affair. And other evidence of
unilateralism was very quickly manifested in musical life. Soviet music had
been widely performed during the first post-war decade, and that meant
predominantly mass songs and cantatas: what Marina Frolova-Walker has
aptly described as the art of boredom.8 But following the mass exodus of
Russian musicians and administrators, Romania turned its back on most of

8Frolova-Walker 2004.
 diverging paths 451

this repertory. Russian and Soviet music was still performed, but increas-
ingly artistic quality was the principal criterion for inclusion in concert
life, so that the tendency was to perform Russian classics rather than pro-
paganda pieces. Initially, the break with Moscow seemed to signal greater
freedom. But in the late 1970s and through the 1980s there was again a
freeze, as Ceauescu effected his own version of a cultural revolution. In
the later stages of the regime the sense of a maverick fiefdom, ruled irra-
tionally and veering rapidly out of control, was palpable.
How far this affected music is another question. These were years when
music was obliged to serve massive public spectacles, notably through
the institution of the choral competition Cntarea Romniei [Singing for
Romania]; years too when composers were obliged to take on a public
role in all the usual anniversaries, and when all contacts with Westerners
were very carefully monitored.9 Yet for all that, new music of a radical
cast was cultivated in Romania. It did not have the public exposure of
the comparable school in Poland, but its political resonance was similar.
New music became, in a word, a powerful assertion of artistic indepen-
dence, and of political resistance.

The Acolyte: Bulgarian Bridges

I referred earlier to the ninth of September, the date of the Communist

coup in Sofia in 1944. The phrase the ninth of September is familiar in
Bulgaria; it is a phrase with resonance. In the early post-war years, several
composers wrote works with Deveti septemvri as or in their title. There
was a cantata by Philip Koutev, a key figure in the formal culture of the
post-war years, as President of the Composers Union (from 1954) and as
Director of the influential State Folksong and Dance Ensemble. There was
a mass song by Lyubomir Pipkov, also a player in the Union and especially
instrumental in the transition from Savremenna muzika to the post-war
Composers Union. There was even an orchestral overture by Vladigerov,
who took on leading pedagogical roles in Sofia when he returned from
Berlin, and was also prominent in the Union.
The first two of these pieces were staple fare of socialist realism.
They need not detain us. But equally there is little merit in high-minded

9My own experience researching Enescus music in Bucharest in 1983 provided ample
evidence of this.
452 chapter seventeen

dismissals of those who produced them. As elsewhere in the bloc, no

opprobrium need attach to those who wrote mass songs and socialist
cantatas, though questions might be asked about those who wrote them
and later claimed not to have done. The third piece is different. Vladi-
gerovs overture is one of a cluster of heroic overtures composed at the
time, but there is no great stylistic disjunction between this work and the
composers other music. The heroic mould of the overture inflected but
did not fundamentally alter Vladigerovs relatively conservative brand of
late-Romantic symphonism, and it is a matter of judgment as to whether
we call this music committed, compliant or heavily ironic. Soviet music
furnishes us with many comparable examples.
Vladigerovs other major works in the post-war era, including his later
piano concertos, present a marked continuity with his earlier music. That
political constraints played a role is demonstrated by the bridge con-
necting his popular ballet score Legenda za ezeroto [The Legend of the
Lake], composed in 1946 before the socialist realist position was fully
implemented in Bulgaria, and some of his music of the 1960s, when those
constraints were already loosening. This is a familiar pattern among compos-
ers of the older generation. Even with Pipkov, whose socialist commitment
was real enough, there are stylistic affinities between major works from
the late sixties, such as the opera Antigone 43 and the Fourth Symphony,
and pre-1944 works such as the First Symphony; in the piano piece Proletni
priumitsi [Spring Fantasies] of 19712 such affinities extend even to the
re-use of earlier materials. Relative to these compositions early and late
the works of the fifties, such as the Oratoria za nasheto vreme [Oratorio
for our Time] (1959), come over as transparently tailored to socialist real-
ist ideals.
We can see the same bridging effect in the music of Marin Goleminov.
Bulgarian musicologists point to a new creative period in his music of the
1960s, and it is true that the Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra of
1963 does represent something of a new departure. But if we compare this
work with music by Polish composers from the same period, it is hardly
at the forefront of the avant-garde. Like his later Fourth Symphony (Shop-
pophonia) and Fourth String Quartet (Microquartet) of 1967, the concerto
is muscular music of power and conviction, but it is easier to view it as
a continuation of pre-1944 directions (Nestinarka, Symphonic Variations,
Third String Quartet) than to argue for belated modernisms.
It was really the next generation of composers, notably the Vladigerov
pupil Konstantin Iliev (192488), the Nenov pupil Lazar Nikolov (19222005)
and their contemporary Georgi Tutev (192494), who took Bulgarian
 diverging paths 453

music in new directions.10 Both Iliev and Nikolov made some necessary
concessions to official culture. Iliev in particular composed choral pieces
in a more traditional idiom. But in their instrumental music they experi-
mented with much more radical techniques (in Ilievs case partly stem-
ming from his studies in Prague in the immediate post-war years), and
they were clear about their rejection of both the late-Romantic idioms
associated with Vladigerov and the heroic, folk-based idiom demanded by
a socialist realist aesthetic. Although both composers, Iliev in particular,
secured high-profile positions in the musical world, this did not insulate
them from State opposition, and from endless difficulties with censorship.
Their works represent pandemonium, a senseless accumulation of disso-
nance, a sort of musical equilibristics, was the view of Blazho Stoianov in
Blgarska muzika in 1956.11
Ilievs First Symphony of 1947 and Nikolovs Piano Concerto were
both condemned as formalist; and in Ilievs case it hardly helped that he
worked tirelessly to introduce modernist repertories to Bulgaria in his role
as a conductor. Perversely, it was only in the late sixties, when there was
some relaxation of political constraints, that Iliev began to investigate folk
music, but he did so not in the spirit of socialist-realist folklorism, but in
new, creative ways. He had, after all, first established his modernist cre-
dentials in a series of tough-grained compositions dating from the more
ideologically difficult decade of the 1950s. The Concerto Grosso, composed
in 1949, inaugurated this creative period. It cultivated a dissonant coun-
terpoint and a rhythmic complexity that would certainly have proved dif-
ficult to sell to the commissars of culture at the time.
Much later, beginning with his Fragmenti [Fragments] (1968) and con-
tinuing through to works such as Bukoliki [Bucolics] (1977), Glasovete na
ravninata [The Voices of the Plain] (1971) and the Sixth Symphony (1983
4), Iliev turned to the carefully controlled aleatory textures that we associ-
ate with some Polish music from the sixties. It was in these works that he
began to explore ancient layers of Bulgarian folk music; compare Grecki
and Kilar. Polish sonorism was undoubtedly a tempting model for Bulgar-
ian composers. It loomed large in the later music of Lazar Nikolov too, and
even more so in that of Georgi Tutev, whose visit to the Warsaw Autumn
Festival in 1965 was immediately registered in the music he wrote from

10A more detailed survey would seek to do justice to more traditional figures such as
Alexander Raichev and Simeon Pironkov.
11Guentcheva 2004, 213.
454 chapter seventeen

the late sixties onwards. Tutevs modest but meticulously crafted output
ranged from the early, and still relatively traditional, Metamorphoses for
13 String Instruments (1966) to the radically experimental Calvinomusica
(inspired by the Cuban-born Italian writer Italo Calvino). Calvinomusica
was one of his last compositions, and it is a measure of the difficulties fac-
ing avant-garde composers in general that, along with several of his major
works, it was proscribed in his native Bulgaria, and was premired instead
at an overseas festival.
This is no doubt one of the reasons that several composers bypassed the
State-monitored larger ensembles and reserved their most experimental
music for smaller forces, and especially for the piano. Several exploratory
works for piano were produced in Bulgaria, including sixteen sonatas
(dating from 1962 to 2003) by Dimiter Christoff (b.1933) and a three-
volume Izkustvoto na seriyata [The Art of Series] (196670) by Ivan Spassov
(193496).12 Inspired by The Art of Fugue, each of these volumes consists
of twelve short sections, to be performed in indeterminate order, and
with the materials all based on transformations and transpositions of a
single twelve-note series. If we follow the chronology of their composition
(which differs from the final sequence) we will note a progressive free-
dom in rhythmic control, a loosening of the time connections between
sounds, in Lutosawskis phrase, that no doubt evidenced Spassovs links
with Poland. We might also include here piano works such as Sonograms
(1980) by Georgi Mintev (b.1939), and works by Alexander Kandov (his
Las mariposas nocturnas of 1993 is appreciated). Of the younger genera-
tion, key figures have been Mihail Goleminov (b.1956) and Georgi Arnaou-
dov (b.1957). Rituel I of 1988 by Arnaoudov and Klavierstck I of 1992 by
Goleminov are representative.
The seven piano sonatas of Nikolov, embracing four decades of post-
war creativity, lie at the heart of this corpus. Even in the early 1950s
Nikolov was writing uncompromising music, including the second of the
sonatas (1951), whose constant shifts and turns speak more of angularity
than whimsy. The dissonance level here is high, and there is little hint
of anything approaching a unifying tonal structure. This, in short, is far
from accessible music. Nor does it yield much on repeated listening, for
there is something oddly unsatisfying about its mix of old and new. If we
leap forward thirty years to the Sixth Sonata (1982), the difficulty melts
away. Here the modernist idiom (developed in works of the sixties, such

12Andreeva and Smilkov 2009.

 diverging paths 455

as his Symphonies for Thirteen String Instruments and Divertimento Con-

certante) is unencumbered, and the blend of serially organised textures,
fragmentary motives and free sonoristic writing emerges as an attractive
product of the free play of imagination. The picture changes again if we
skip forward another decade. Nikolovs seventh and final sonata (1991) is
from the same world as its predecessor, but it is more homogeneous and
assimilable, occupying a space somewhere between the first two Boulez
sonatas and the piano music of Zygmunt Krauze (more beguiling than
the former, we might say, but with greater weight and substance than
the latter). There is something very moving about the resoluteness of this
latter-day modernist ploughing his furrow in a politically alien world, a
world whose passing he lived to see. Paradoxes abound. In the end, his
particular brand of tough, exacting music would come to seem something
of an anachronism in the Eastern Europe of the 1990s.
The impact of Polish sonorism was yet more marked on the generation
born in the 1930s. Vasil Kazandjiev (b.1934) visited the Warsaw festival in
the mid sixties, and a score such as his Complexi sonori (1965) instantly
registered the influence. Like his teacher Iliev, and at around the same
time, he began to explore synergies between controlled aleatory notations
and elements drawn from Bulgarian traditional music, and in particular
tonal structures and gestures associated with the most ancient layers of
that music. This is apparent even in the abstract medium of the string
quartet, but it is more obvious in works such as Zhivite ikoni [Living Icons],
Kartini ot Blgaria [Pictures from Bulgaria] and Apokalipsis, all from the
1970s. The capacity of Polish-influenced aleatory devices to open up new
potentialities in traditional music was to prove all-important for Bulgar-
ian music, and we can see it again in some of the music composed by
Spassov contemporary with and following Izkustvoto na seriyata. Spassov
studied in Warsaw with Kazimierz Sikorski and Stanisaw Wisocki during
the early 1960s, and their influence is apparent in works such as Epizodi
za chetiri grupi tembri [Episodes for Four Timbral Groups] and Dvizheniya
[Movements] for 12 string instruments (1967). It was during the 1970s that,
like Iliev and Kazandjiev, he turned to traditional music in a new spirit,
notably in works such as Canti lamentosi (1979). And later still, in tune
with a revival of religious music (again compare Grecki), he wrote a
series of slow-moving, elegaic works, including Blgarski pasion [Bulgar-
ian Passion] (1990), Piet for 12 cellos (1991) and the Mass of 1993.
For this generation of Bulgarian composers, political constraints were
less oppressive. But they still operated. On his return to Bulgaria from
Poland, Spassov was dismissed from his conducting post in Plovdiv for
456 chapter seventeen

modernist tendencies, for example. Composers born in the late 1940s, on

the other hand, were still students when the cultural thaw of the 1960s
was instigated. As a result, they had much freer access to western avant-
gardes. Career patterns are revealing here. Emil Tabakov (b.1947) studied
in Sofia, and remained in Bulgaria as a conductor, albeit travelling widely
with the Sofia Philharmonic, until late in his career (he was conductor of
the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra in the nineties and at the time of
writing is a conductor in Ankara as well as conductor of the Sofia Radio
Orchestra). His music maintains links with the generation of the thirties,
and is notably Balkan in its big sounds and rhythmic energies. Compare
the modernist complexities of Stefan Dragostinov (b.1948), who studied
not just in Sofia and Leningrad but also in Cologne, or the minimalist idi-
oms of Plamen Dzhurov (b.1949), who completed his studies in Vienna.

The Zealot: Albanian Austerities

The political and institutional backgrounds to the development of post-

war Albanian music have been shaded in. It remains to offer a brief sur-
vey of repertory.13 Inevitably much of the output consisted of mass songs
and cantatas. All leading composers wrote in these genres. A senior figure
such as esk Zadeja (192797), closer than some to the political authori-
ties, could produce cantatas such as Atdheu [Our Fatherland] a title
that appears rather often in Albanian music of this period as well as
mass songs such as O ju male [Hey, you mountains], while at the same
time writing in more ambitious genres. Many of these works have little
artistic interest. But in the hands of a composer such as Tonin Harapi the
formulae could be transcended. Harapis extended cantata Knga e malve
[Song of the Mountains] is a case in point, and he went on to write several
other major vocal and orchestral works along similar lines, culminating
in his Poema e drits [Poem of Light] of 1971. The propaganda function
could not be avoided altogether of course. In Harapis three-movement
cantata Vullnetaret [The Volunteers] of 1965, a celebration of the youth

13A full account of Albanian music will have to wait for George Leotsakoss book, cur-
rently well advanced, though it will be published in Greek. Sokol Shupo is also preparing
materials for a history of Albanian music, though this may be long in the making. Spiro
Kalemi recently published a volume on late twentieth-century music in Albania (Kalemi
2010).
 diverging paths 457

volunteers who worked on projects such as the construction of Albanias

rail network, it could hardly have been more explicit.
In the more challenging genres, achievements were considerable, even
if composers were constrained by the political straightjacket, especially in
big, public works. Prenk Jakovas Mrika pointed the way for the subse-
quent development of Albanian opera, just as Kristo Kono (190791), who
was to Kor what Jakova was to Shkodr, looked to later operetta with
his Agimi [Dawn] of 1954, set on a collective farm and widely performed
throughout Albania during the Hoxha years. It is worth noting in passing
that no doubt because of their earlier histories both Shkodr and Kor
remained key centres for Albanian music, despite the growing importance
of Tirana. Many leading composers came from, or were closely associated
with, these two towns. They included Tish Daija, who came from Shkodr,
and who can be added to our list of firsts, in that he composed the first
Albanian ballet, Halili dhe Hajrija [Halil and Hajrija] in 1963.
As to instrumental music, we may turn again to Zadeja for yet another
first. His Symphony, composed in Moscow in 1956 and based on Albanian
folk music and on episodes from the national history, was not just the first
Albanian symphony. It set the tone for later orchestral music more gener-
ally. It was a conservative, late-Romantic tone for the most part, owing a
good deal to the music of nineteenth-century Russian nationalists. Nor
could it have been other than conservative. From the mid 1960s there
were indications of a more elaborate musical life and also a slight broad-
ening out to western repertories, but this remained relative, and what
counted as modern was hardly so when compared to other countries of
the bloc, let alone of Western Europe. This does not mean that Albania
lacked music of quality. In fact, the striking thing is just how strong much
of the music is, and how it can hold its own in an international forum,
now that critical criteria are less style-conscious than once they were.
esk Zadeja, together with Tish Daija and Tonin Harapi, studied in
the Soviet Union, establishing a pattern that would be followed by many
until the break with Russia in 1961. All three were born in the late 1920s,
and they could be considered the earliest professional composers in the
sense that they were professionally trained working in Albania. Two
other names from the same generation might be added. Nikolla Zoraqi
(192991) came late to composition (he was helped by Zadeja and Daija),
but he went on to produce some major instrumental works with a distinc-
tive musical voice. He too trained in Moscow, though as an instrumen-
talist rather than a composer. But on his return to Albania he acquired
a reputation as a composer of distinction, and his Uvertura e festivalit
458 chapter seventeen

[Festival Overture] of 1969 is still popular in Albania. He also composed

three violin concertos. Finally, Simon Gjoni (192891), another Shkodr-
born composer, studied conducting at the Prague Conservatory, and
although known principally as a conductor, composed a symphony and
a substantial body of orchestral and instrumental works, including sym-
phonic poems, orchestral rhapsodies and the like.
For several of these composers, opera was an enduring interest. Char-
acteristically the libretti would either represent everyday life in socialist
Albania or delve into the heroics of Albanian history. From the older gen-
eration, Kristo Konos popular Lulja e Kujtimit [usually known as Flower
of Remembrance] of 1961 to a libretto based on Foqion Postolis novel
about the class struggle, and Tish Daijas Pranvera [Spring], first per-
formed in 1960, are representative. Then, during the period of cultural
isolation, Tonin Harapi wrote two major operas, Zgijimi (1976) and Mira
e Mujsit [Mira, Daughter of Mujsi] (19834), the former (based on a novel
by Naum Prifti) dealing with the effects of war on village life. One other
composer of this generation who made a major contribution to opera was
Pjetr Gaci (b.1931), also Shkodr-born and an eminent violinist as well as
a composer, notably through his Prtej mjegulls [Beyond the Mist] of 1971,
which deals directly with the Kanun of Lek and the blood feuds of the
northern mountains, and his Toka jon [Our Land] of 1981.
Even more popular than opera, however, was ballet, no doubt because
it afforded ample opportunities for stylisations of traditional dancing.
Daijas Halili dhe Hajrija was closely followed by Zadejas Delina in 1964,
and both composers returned to the genre in the 1970s, with Zadejas Shqi-
ponja sypatrembur [Albanian Eagle] and Daijas Bijt e peshkatarit [The
Fishermans Sons]. The list of ballets is a long one, and it included popular
repertory pieces such as Cuca e maleve [The Girl of the Mountains], writ-
ten by Nikolla Zoraqi in 1968 to the theme of Loni Papas popular play
of the same year (the play was later made into a film). It also included
Plaga e dhjet e Gjergj Elez Alis [The Tenth Wound of Gjergj Elez Alise]
by Feim Ibrahimi, a major figure born in the mid 1930s, and one whom
we encountered in the last chapter (on this title, see the reference to Alija
erelez at the beginning of chapter 9). Aside from his prolific output of
instrumental music, Ibrahimi made a distinctive contribution to music for
films, another genre that was popular in Albania and one heavily freighted
with political agendas.
A glance at the outputs of these Albanian composers reveals a surpris-
ing number of pieces called Rhapsody. Tish Daijas Rhapsody for Flute
and Orchestra of 1981 is characteristic. So too are Tonin Harapis two
 diverging paths 459

Rhapsodies for Piano and Orchestra, the two orchestral rhapsodies by Feim
Ibrahimi, and a cluster of similar pieces by Ramadan Sokoli, Simon Gjoni,
and others. These pieces tended to be formulaic, arriving at a folk-based
idiom somewhat indebted to late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century
works so labelled, while at the same time nodding towards the epic tradi-
tions of the north, where the term rapsodi is also used. The formula was
acceptable to the Union of Artists and Writers, and was soon adopted by
younger composers. Here we might cite the folk-based Concert Rhapsody
Toka ime, knga ime [My Land, My Song] of 1979 for Violin, Cello and
Orchestra by Thoma Gaqi (b.1948), best known for his symphonic poem
Borova (another title that recurs, referring to the site of a World War II
massacre); or the Rhapsody for Violin and Orchestra (1977) by Aleksandr
Pei (b.1951), one of the most popular figures in Albanian music (his Litur-
gical Dialogue uses the voice of Albanias most famous daughter, Mother
Teresa); or the Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra by Sokol Shupo (b.1954),
a key figure in the organisation of Albanian musical life today.
Comparable works for orchestra, chamber ensemble or piano, usually
based on Albanian traditional music and with titles such as Fantasy, Bal-
lade, Variations, or simply Poem, were written by most composers prior
to 1991. The output of Pllumb Vorpsi (b.1957) is characteristic, including
Variations for Piano (Ballade) on an Albanian Folksong (1978), Symphonic
Poem (1983) and Fantasy for Symphony Orchestra and Choir on the Alba-
nian Folk Dance Napoloni (1988). In some of these folk-based pieces by
composers of all generations as also in the many concertos composed
during these years there are occasional glances towards Bartk and
Stravinsky, but this remained a largely surface matter. At root the idiom
was unambiguously traditional. Naturally all this changed after the fall of
Communism. Nowhere in the rest of the eastern bloc was the chaos as
great as Albania in 199091. Along with many others, musicians fled the
country in droves in a context of riots, profiteering and anarchy. From 1991
there was an abrupt transformation in Albanian music from infrastructure
without freedom to freedom without infrastructure. Once more Albania
presented as a land in extremis.

The Maverick: Romanian Renewals

Some of the most interesting music to emerge from South East Europe dur-
ing these years sprang from political contexts that were neither in hock to
the Soviet Union, nor aggressively defiant of it, but rather steered a course
460 chapter seventeen

through the middle ground, maintaining some sort of dialogue with both
East and West. This broadly describes the position in both Romania and
Yugoslavia, and although internal repression could be severe in the former
country, it was more of an issue for writers than for musicians. As in Bul-
garia, there was an older generation of composers in Romania several
of them discussed briefly in Chapter 15 who continued to work in the
post-war years. Of these, a number (including Enescu himself of course)
either remained, or emigrated, overseas. But others, such as Mihail Jora,
Mihail Andricu, Marian Negrea (18931973), Sabin Drgoi (18941968),
Marcel Mihalovici (18981985), Theodor Rogalski (190154) and Paul Con-
stantinescu, were based in Romania, and they adapted as best they could
to the new political realities. Aside from the direct conflicts that arose with
the authorities and the obligation to produce mass songs and cantatas, the
major difficulty was the lack of contact with musical developments else-
where in Europe.
In considering the possibilities open to composers we might begin with
some key works from the immediate post-war years, prior to the imposi-
tion of clear directives from the Composers Union under Matei Socor.
First, there was the diptych of oratorios for Easter and Christmas by Paul
Constantinescu (1946 and 1947, respectively). The symbolic potency of
Easter and Christmas oratorios in the aftermath of the war would have
been lost on none. With the help of his religious mentor, the priest Ioan
Petrescu,14 Constantinescu made a study of sacred music in Romania, and
cultivated in a number of works instrumental as well as vocal a con-
sciously archaic modal idiom based on those traditions. In this respect he
made a contribution both to the repertory of harmonised Orthodox music
and to that of Byzantine-influenced contemporary music. The second of
these paired oratorios Naterea domnului [The Nativity] was given its first
performance in the Bucharest Atheneum in 1947. It has since become a
popular work, with exposure beyond Romania, but at the time its poten-
tial to point to the future was bound to be limited. The contrived sim-
plicity and archaism of its musical idiom was in tune with the demands
of socialist realism, but the religious orientation ensured that this could
never be a way forward for Romanian composers. Significantly, the work
was not presented again until 1967.

14Petrescu subsequently complained that Constantinescu failed to acknowledge the

large part he played in introducing the composer to the Byzantine sources not just in these
two oratorios but in several works from the late 1940s and 1950s. When the oratorios were
performed, the priest wanted to be named as an author.
 diverging paths 461

In contrast, Mihail Andricus Second Sinfonietta, composed in 1946,

seemed to strike an acceptable note in terms of future directions. With
its folk-based modalities in a diatonic context, clean contrapuntal lines,
bright primary colours and sprightly neo-classical rhythms, this work was
a model for later instrumental works composed during the early 1950s. A
cluster of works celebrating Romania either through explicit references
to folk music or through pastoral evocations of an impressionist kind
appeared at this time. Among many others, we could cite Theodor Rogal-
skis Three Romanian Dances (1950), of which the second is an evocation
of the gaida, the Symphonic Dances (1951) by Tibor Brediceanu (190178)
and Marian Negreas Prin muntii apuseni [Hiking in the Transylvanian
Mountains] (1952), in which a folkloristic tableau such as Un izbuc [A Hot
Spring] sits alongside a pastoral-impressionist tableau such as Ghearul de
la scrioara [Ice rock in the Scrioara Cave]. We can place such works
on a continuum linking pre-war tendencies in Romanian music with
instrumental works from the mid-late fifties such as the Concerto for
Strings by Constantinescu (1955)15 and the Sinfonietta by Ioan Dumitrescu
(1957). They occupy a middle-of-the-road position in a decade dominated
by mass songs and cantatas. Significantly, at the end of the fifties and in
the early sixties, there were conspicuous changes in the music of several
of these older composers, including Constantinescu and even Jora.16
There is a considerable stylistic space separating such works from the
modernist offerings of the younger generation. These composers, most of
them born in the late 1920s or early 1930s, first entered the public arena
in the late 1950s, and therefore benefited from the cultural thaw associ-
ated with the 1960s. It is tempting to propose a parallel with Polish music
after 1956, where again there was a strong sense that the new generation
turned to avant-garde techniques at least in part as a political statement.
The situation in Romania was not so straightforward, however. Whereas
in Poland modernism became a well-resourced official culture in defiance
of Moscow, the official line in Romania maintained the familiar socialist-
realist rhetoric while at the same time insisting on its independence of
Moscow. Modernists in Romania, in other words, still had to fight their
corner, but at least the climate was one that enabled their voice to be
heard in counterpoint to the official voice.

15This was a reworking of a String Quartet composed in 1947.

16A case in point would be Joras ballet score, Inoarcerea din adncuri [Return from
the Depths] of 1959.
462 chapter seventeen

For the group of composers gathered around the Andricu and Jora stu-
dent tefan Niculescu (19272008) it was possible to establish something
of a power base within the Union, for example, and in later years they
were able to play an important role as teachers of the next generation.
They formed, in short, a real community, and again in ways that remind
us of Warsaw, where the modernist composer was a familiar part of the
furnishings of musical life in the 1960s and 1970s, known to audiences and
performers alike (Niculescu was the prime mover in the public listening
sessions for contemporary music promoted in Bucharest in the 1970s, for
example). Radical modernism in music may not have been an official art
in Romania, but for a time it did become a sort of orthodoxy.
Many of these composers took the later music of Enescu as a starting-
point, bearing in mind that Romania has emphasised particular qualities
of Enescus mature music, most of them relatable to indigenous reperto-
ries. They include the use of isons, microtonal writing, parlando-rubato
rhythms, various kinds of mi-voix speech-song, and above all what Roma-
nian scholars and composers describe as heterophony. The densely motivic
textures found in Enescu might be interpreted in several ways. But for
Niculescu and his colleagues heterophony was the privileged reading, and
it became subject to re-workings that allowed for modernist complexi-
ties while at the same time maintaining a link with archetypes of tradi-
tional music. During the 1960s Niculescu studied for a time with Kagel in
the Studio Siemens in Munich, and he was a regular at Darmstadt. His
Htromorphie (1967) is characteristic of the kind of densely interwoven
textures that resulted from a unique synthesis of Enescu reception and
post-war techniques. Later, in the 1970s, he wrote several works with the
title Ison, where again there is a considerable complexity of texture of
a kind that might be labelled either heterophonic or micro-polyphonic.
And in general his achievement right through to late works such as the
fourth and fifth symphonies (Deisis and Litanies respectively), composed
in the 1990s was one that allowed qualities understood as indigenous to
generate modernist sound worlds. There may be superficial resemblances
to Ligeti in works like Htromorphie, and to Messiaen in parts of the
Fourth Symphony. But, as with some Bulgarian composers, Niculescus
alliance of post-war modernisms and folk-chant archetypes resulted in a
very particular idiom: a unique product of its time and place.
Among the other composers associated with this modernist group
were Anatol Vieru (192698), Tiberiu Olah (19272002), Adrian Raiu
(19282005), Miriam Marb (193197), Dan Constantinescu (193193),
Aurel Stroe (19322008) and Cornel ranu (b.1934). Naturally they each
 diverging paths 463

have, or had, their separate compositional concerns, and their individual

creative personalities. But they also had a collective agenda, inseparable
from the political context. The sense of working at a dangerous frontier
is very strong in their enterprise. The spirit of exploration, the pushing
at boundaries, and at the same time the intolerance of more conserva-
tive orientations: all these gave political edge to their achievements. Like
Niculescu, they invested in the Enescu legacy, and also like him they were
intrigued by the possibility of generating systems that synthesised indig-
enous materials and modern techniques.
The systems were of several kinds. Vieru developed compositional
methods that drew aspects of mathematical set theory (the theory of
multitudes) and game theory (as in Xenakis) into a relationship with tra-
ditional modes. At times this extended to specific citations, as in the defa-
miliarised folksong and jazz references in Jocuri [Games] for piano and
orchestra (1963) or the evocations of Bachs C-major Prelude in the Musi-
cal Museum for harpsichord and orchestra (1968), where fragments of the
Prelude speak into a series of stochastic textures. These are two of a series
of concertos, all of which play with history, but discreetly, and informed
by a rigorous number working that controls the proportions of the music
as well as its pitch systems. In the last of these works, the Sinfonia Con-
certante for cello and orchestra (1987), it is again a folk melody that coun-
terpoints the lyrical lines of the powerful central movement. And as in
Vierus music generally, elements of traditional formal archetypes inform
the work as a whole, scaffolding its strange but compelling sonorities.
There are parallels here with Tiberiu Olah, one of the most distinctive
voices in modern Romanian music. He too started from Enescian hetero-
phony, quoting directly from Enescu in later scores such as Armonii IV
(1981), but more generally developing a technique of stratification involv-
ing overlapping streams of sound. This can be traced back to the first
work of his Brncusi cycle, the orchestral Coloana infinit [The Infinite
Column] of 1962, and it is somehow preserved even in the monodic con-
text of the second work of the cycle, Pasrea miastr [The Miraculous
Bird], composed in 1963 (as a virtuoso work for solo clarinet, and with a
birdsong referent, it can scarcely avoid recalling Messiaens Abme des
oiseaux). The technique crystallised in the third Brncusi piece, Spaiu
i ritm [Space and Rhythm] of 1964, where three groups of percussion
instruments proceed in separate layers and at separate speeds. And it
became more sophisticated in later cycles of so-called Translations and
Harmonies. Also in tune with Niculescu and Vieru is Olahs exploration
of archetypes of pitch structure derived from ancient music, though in
464 chapter seventeen

his case they are based on the pentatonic scale. This is clear in the pitch
organisation of later works such as the Second Symphony of 1987, which
invests in familiar triadic harmonies in novel ways.
There are many correspondences to be found across the work of this
group of composers. Several of the compositional preoccupations of Olah
are also found in Adrian Raiu, for instance. He too used Enescu as a start-
ing point, and he went on to develop a modal system of that in its turn
links to the concerns of Anatol Vieru. On the other hand Raiu took modal-
ity in different, and rather less accessible, directions, exploring a principle
of complementarity that owed a good deal to serial thought. This method
was rather consistently developed, beginning with less public composi-
tions such as his Cycle of Piano Works (1957), then transferring to a more
public arena in the 1960s (Concerto for Oboe, bassoon and strings [1963],
Concertino per la Musica Nova [1967]), and eventually reaching a culmi-
nating point in the chamber cycles of the 1980s and 1990s (Transfigurri
[Tranfigurations] I and II, and a series of Convergene [Convergences]).
Some of this music is almost Feldman-like in its reduction of the musical
argument to a state of near stasis and non-assertiveness. It can be austere,
and often arcane, but it is somehow always arresting.
It is impossible to do justice to the work of this generation with such
characterisations. Much could be said of Aurel Stroe, who visited Darm-
stadt in the sixties, worked in the US for a bit and also in Berlin, and
finally settled in Mannheim, teaching both there and in Bucharest. Politi-
cal agendas are rather clear in works like his ambitious Oresteia trilogy
(19731988), with its focus on ideas of freedom and resistance against tyr-
anny. But Stroe also developed a computer-assisted compositional system,
based on principles of morphogenesis derived from developmental biol-
ogy. It is at work in a series of radical works from the 1960s onwards, and
it culminates in the orchestral composition for saxophone and orchestra,
Prairie, Prires of 1993, which journeys from aleatory sonorism towards
determinism, its progressively shorter movements culminating in a 27-
second finale in which the pitch material has been stripped down to a
single scream on the solo instrument.
The contribution of Myriam Marb is also an individual one, albeit
with a shared interest in associating aleatory techniques with folk archa-
isms (her Serenata of 1974, a composed-out jubilation in which the sym-
phony orchestra appears to stylise traditional vocal ululation techniques,
is indicative). And similarly, we could discuss Dan Constantinescu, whose
music moved from a modal-serial synthesis that found its culminating
expression in the Piano Concerto of 1963, a work of real dramatic and
 diverging paths 465

coloristic flair, to a phase dominated by dialogues between aleatory devices

and serially structured determinism (the Variations, Op. 27 of 1966; the
Concerto for Two Pianos of 1972). And finally there is the Transylvanian
composer Cornel aranu, who likewise explored serial-modal syntheses,
and aleatory-determinist dialogues.
Collectively, this group changed the face of Romanian music, not least
through their teaching. That they made less of an impact internationally
than their Polish counterparts is as much to do with political and eco-
nomic contingencies as with artistic quality. Indeed one might well argue
that these composers successfully evaded some of the pitfalls of the Polish
avant-garde, achieving a more judicious balance between the seductions
of sonorism and the austerities of structuralism. Moreover their shared
interest in using contemporary methods to uncover and make available
to modern sensibilities ancient layers of music-making suggests a yet
deeper unity of purpose, and one that links these Romanian modernists
to several composers in Bulgaria. Within the context of state socialism,
this amounted to a powerfully expressive enterprise, and with clear politi-
cal resonance. Their dominance of the contemporary music scene was all
but total, but it carried with it the danger that more conservative com-
posers might at times be undervalued. It is interesting, then, to turn to
another distinguishable strand of Romanian music that flowed from the
later music of Enescu.
For several composers of the same generation the Enescu model sug-
gested a more traditional musical syntax, though the boundary here is not
clear-cut. We will pass over Theodor Grigoriu (b.1926) and the more con-
servative Wilhelm Georg Berger (192993), both of whom were significant
figures, and come directly to a composer whose achievements may well
prove to be the most lasting of all. Pascal Bentoiu (b.1927) registered the
liberalisation of cultural climate in his music of the 1960s, but he did so
cautiously and strategically. If we were to pursue the parallel with Poland,
we might say that his transition to new worlds of sounds was more akin to
Lutosawskis than to Serockis or Bacewiczs. That transition was effected
through a trio of works: the First Violin Concerto (1958), the Second Piano
Concerto (1960) and the Violin Sonata Op. 14 (1962), with the two-move-
ment sonata in particular marking a significant advance harmonically,
and also displaying an expressive individuality that plays ironically with
traditional contrapuntal forms and textures. His second (one-act) opera,
Jertifirea Iphigeniei [The Sacrifice of Iphigenia], a radiophonic meditation
on Iphigenia, was completed in 1968, and its hieratic character, with stylised
gestures, pared-down textures for organ, programmatic use of electronic
466 chapter seventeen

sound sources and vocal recitation, already looks ahead to the work that
many consider his masterpiece, the third opera Hamlet (1969), first given
in Bucharest in 1975.
Stylisation is the watchword of Bentoius Hamlet. His approach to the
Shakespeare was to focus on its conceptual aspects rather than its dra-
matic action, with the latter mainly portrayed through pantomimic and
balletic means. There are ten scenes that pinpoint what Bentoiu (his own
librettist) identifies as the crucial moments of the tragedy, and a series
of interludes that either pick up and develop ideas from the preceding
scene, as in the spectral first interlude, or presage the coming scene, as in
the second, passacaglia-based interlude. It is an ingenious solution, allow-
ing the spotlight to rest clearly on the speculative dimension of the play,
manifest in the mind and thoughts of the central character as they are
lit up by his very different responses to the other characters. Thus, scene
three holds on to the passacaglia of the second scene for the dialogue
between Hamlet and Gertrude, before ceding to the actors pantomime.
The pantomime then proceeds in parallel with an ever more intense musi-
cal argument that increasingly transfers to the orchestra, entwining Ham-
lets theme and the revenge motive to build a magnificent climax.
All the ingredients of Bentoius musical language are brought to the
service of this concept, with audible leitmotivic devices (partly based on
instrumentation and rhythm, but including 12-note themes that take on
radically different meanings in the case of Hamlets uncle and Ophelia),
and with a magnetic tape based on Hamlets voice to represent the ghost.
A degree of musical stylisation also enters in, allowing us to view the dia-
logues as to some extent stylistically discrete: the otherworldly magnetic
tape of the ghost, the exquisite transparent scoring associated with Oph-
elia (scene 5), the solid triadic writing for Laertes (scene 6), the monodic
idiom for to be or not to be (scene 8), the parodic qualities of Osrick
(scene 9), and so on.
Hamlet is one of the triumphs of modern Romanian lyric art, and it
stands as a monument to the so-called moderate modernism that repre-
sents a discernible direction in Communist South East Europe. It was not
of course the end of Bentoius story. All but one of his eight symphonies
(so far) post-date Hamlet, and there is a wealth of chamber music. It is
fitting that he became the first post-Ceauescu President of the Compos-
ers Union. By then, a younger generation of Romanian modernists had
come to the fore: Nicolae Brndu (b.1935), Mihai Moldovan (193781),
Corneliu Dan Georgescu (b.1938), Octavian Nemescu (b.1940), Fred Pop-
ovici (b.1948), Adrian Pop (b.1951), Maia Ciobanu (b.1952) and Dan Dediu
 diverging paths 467

(b.1967). But the sense of group identity associated with the Niculescu cir-
cle was lost, even if many of the techniques developed by that circle in
particular the anatomising of folklore through heterophonic and aleatory
devices have been carried forward. It is surely significant that certain
key words appear almost ubiquitously in the liner notes of Composers
Union recordings of works by the younger generation of composers. One,
referring to the quest for origins, is archetype, sometimes linked with
archaic, a trend associated with Nemescu and Georgescu in particular.
Another, associating these repertories with folk models, is modal, some-
times linked to pentatonic, and also to heterophony. In addition, there
is a range of terms that invoke mathematics (fractals theory, complexity
theory), indicating that developing systems remains a preoccupation of
younger Romanian composers.
In some ways the continuing vitality of modernist impulses through
into the 1980s was remarkable, given that political constraints were if any-
thing even more severe at that time, and contacts with the West more
limited. In any event the collapse of Ceauescu changed everything, and
since 1989 no-one has been much interested in dictating style or ideology
to younger composers (the Society of Composers the old Union has
lost much of its power and influence). The trouble is that no-one seems
interested in them at all. Or so one might conclude from a glance at the
music shops and concert programmes in todays Bucharest. CDs of con-
temporary music have been produced in voluminous numbers by the
Society of Composers, but are available only for promotional purposes
and cannot be sold, while Editura Muzicala, which with the help of gov-
ernment subsidies had published and helped disseminate the music of
Romanian composers, is no longer in a position to support contemporary
music. Locating modernism indeed art music generally within post-
Communist South East Europe is not an exercise destined to raise the
spirits. It will be attempted in a later chapter.
 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

ANOTHER TRY

Politics versus Culture: The Second Yugoslavia

That the second Yugoslavia survived its expulsion from the Cominform is
a matter of wonder. Titos stance faced opposition not just from Stalin, but
also from within. He stamped it out ruthlessly, and this may have taken
the steam out of Stalins anti-Tito propaganda campaigns and dashed any
hopes that the Yugoslav experiment might be brought to a swift close.1
In the post-Stalin era, Yugoslavia pursued a separate path, committing to
a self-governing model of socialism that attempted to reinvest in Lenin-
ist principles.2 But prior to that, and of necessity, Tito had engaged in
extensive dialogues with the capitalist powers, and especially with the US,
for whom this crack in the Communist edifice presented obvious strate-
gic advantages.3 In due course Communist Yugoslavia found its historical
roles first as a mediator between the two blocs, and later as a player in the
international non-aligned movement.
Nationality was the bugbear. The official line of the administration was
to recognise individual national cultures within a supranational state, a
position at variance with the Yugoslavism of the inter-war state, and in
theory at least one that facilitated the building of bridges to neighbour-
ing states.4 But the brotherhood and unity of Communist Yugoslavia
was inherently unstable. There was from the start a conflict of interests
between the anti-statist socialism favoured in the poorer republics and the
statism associated with Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia; ironically, in the later
stages of the state, to declare as a Yugoslav came to signify the last refuge
of either the dissident or the disadvantaged. This conflict of interests
was reflected in the leadership. As Dejan Jovi has argued, the victory of

1 Across the rest of the Soviet bloc, there was a vitriolic and well orchestrated anti-Tito
campaign, including cartoon depictions of him as a poodle led by the US.
2Benson 2001, 1013.
3Campbell 1967.
4Katherine Verdery remarks, admittedly of another part of the region, that precisely
because the Soviet regime had destroyed all other bases for political organization while
constitutionally enshrining the national basis, national sentiment emerged to overwhelm
federal politics. See Verdery 1996, 86.
 another try 469

Edvard Kardeljs decentralising agenda over Titoism served in the end

only to strengthen the statist tendencies of the three stronger republics.5
It was at this political level that the future of Yugoslavia was decided.
But the same tension existed in the arena of cultural politics and educa-
tion. Andrew Baruch Wachtel shows that despite centralised programmes
of education, the teaching of history, literature and language in the sepa-
rate republics followed distinctive patterns, and allowed for the expres-
sion of individual national qualities.6 On one hand there were unifying
supranational tendencies, embodied in the process Wachtel describes
as recanonising the classics, while on the other hand (and increasingly)
there were powerful centripetal forces, witnessed by the different reading
lists of the school programmes and the separatist tendencies of language
teaching.
It is interesting to look at music and musical life in light of these del-
icately poised political and cultural forces. As to the structures of pro-
fessional music and community music-making, Communist Yugoslavia
traced a pattern of institutionalisation similar to that found elsewhere in
the bloc. Indeed precisely because of its federal structure, it was closer to
the Soviet Union in this respect than the other client states. The aim was
to disseminate high culture across all the republics, and ideally across all
parts of the republics, and to this end a centralised policy was subject to
local implementation and allowed for a high degree of local autonomy.
Each republic had its composers association (even, belatedly, Montene-
gro), and although linked in a confederation, they were encouraged to
develop their own national cultures. Croatia, for example, developed its
active musical life well beyond the capital. Osijek was targeted, and devel-
oped an innovatory policy at the opera house in particular. And there was
cultural investment in the principal towns of the littoral. Both Split and
Rijeka saw a renaissance of musical life in the post-war years. There was
a similar story in Serbia. Opera was cultivated at the National Theatre in
Novi Sad, at Subotica, and for a time at Ni.
In the poorer republics the base line for these democratising exercises
was low. Macedonia in particular had been underdeveloped culturally even
during the first Yugoslavia, and it was only really in the post-liberation
years that an adequate infrastructure was put in place for music and
music-making. The job was tackled with the conscientiousness typical

5Jovi 2004.
6Wachtel 1998.
470 chapter eighteen

of state socialism. A list of institutions established in the post-war years

tells much of the history, but by no means all; it excludes, for example,
the kinds of educational factory concerts that were promoted by work-
ers associations all over the state. In the first post-war decade alone, the
Macedonian State Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Radio Skopje Choir
and Symphony Orchestra were founded; likewise the first Music School in
Skopje, the Macedonian National Theatre, the Association of Creative and
Performing Artists of Macedonia, the Elementary Ballet School, the folk
music and dance ensemble Tanec, and the Institute of Folklore Marko
Cepenkov. The first Macedonian ballet was given in 1952, and the first
opera in 1954. Later, in the 1960s, the Radio and Television Dance Orches-
tra was established, along with the Ohrid Summer Festival, the Balkan
Folk Festival, Jeunesses Musicales Macedonia (a local branch of the much
wider movement), the Academy (or Faculty) of Music, and the Contem-
porary Music Ensemble St. Sophia.
It would be a mistake to idealise this ab initio culture-building (stan-
dards of performance remained basic), but as in Albania attempts at graft-
ing elite culture onto the Macedonian corps were part of a more ambitious
surgery designed to modernise a society and an economy that had only
just emerged from feudalism. Much of the cultural activity was instigated
locally, but it could only be implemented with support from central gov-
ernment, and as part of a deliberate policy of cultural levelling. And the
same was true of the other poorer republics. In 1945 a Music High School
was opened in Sarajevo, followed by high schools in Mostar, Banja Luka
and Biha, while the following year a permanent Opera was established
in Sarajevo. In 1948 the Symphony Orchestra of Bosnia and Herzegovina
was created (later the Philharmonic), and in 1962 the Symphony Orches-
tra of Radio-Television Sarajevo was established, along with a chorus and
childrens chorus. Separate Associations of Performers and Composers
were also founded in the post-war years, the latter including musicolo-
gists. Montenegro was less well served, but the Elementary Music School
in Cetinje became a Music High School in 1958 with sites in Kotor and
Titograd, and Radio Titograd also sponsored several vocal and instrumen-
tal ensembles, including (from 1959) a Symphony Orchestra. The Compos-
ers Association was founded in 1969, and Dani muzike [Music Days] were
established on the coast in Sveti Stefan and Budva.
All this was supra-national work. For people living and working in the
poorer republics, and that included musicians, there seemed little reason
to set the nation (we are Macedonian) against the state (we are Yugoslav),
given that both the material and the cultural benefits brought by the
 another try 471

federation were tangible. However, the matter was viewed rather differ-
ently in the three dominant republics of the second Yugoslavia. Far from
looking towards Belgrade as a model for cultural reconstruction, Zagreb
and Ljubljana looked to their own active pasts; elite western culture
had thrived in both cities, after all, at a time when Belgrade still hosted
the pashas. The positive side of this was that there were infrastructures
already in place in these cities, albeit in need of re-activation after World
War II,7 and also that there existed traditions of national music on which
to build, or against which to react. But the down side was that cultural
life could often be insular. In general Zagreb and Ljubljana lacked the
wide-open quality that had characterised Belgrade at its best during the
inter-war period.
As to restructuring, the opera and ballet of the National Theatre in
Zagreb resumed their normal activities after the war, while the Symphonic
Orchestra of Zagreb Radio (established in 1948) became the Zagreb Phil-
harmonic Orchestra. In addition, numerous chamber ensembles were
founded, of which the best known were the Zagreb Soloists and the Zagreb
Quartet. Orchestras were likewise established in Rijeka and in Dubrovnik.
In Ljubljana, the Slovene Philharmonic Orchestra was re-established in
1947, complete with its own choir. The Radio Orchestra of Ljubljana was
founded around the same time, closely followed by the Maribor Philhar-
monic and the Chamber Choir of Radio Ljubljana. The opera houses in
Ljubljana and Maribor also picked up the threads of their earlier activities
in the post-war years. Various specialist groups were created at this time,
and in 1962 a festival of contemporary chamber music was established
at Radenci, and has been held there ever since. The Music Academy in
Ljubljana also resumed after the war, and in 1962 a musicology depart-
ment, validated by the University, was founded at the Academy. Similar
institutions were cultivated in Belgrade. It is unnecessary to list them, but
special mention should be made of the Academy of Music, which was a
magnet for leading teachers and promising student composers from all
over Yugoslavia. Belgrade also hosted the Union of Yugoslav Composers,
which functioned as the umbrella organisation for the associations of
composers established in each of the six republics.
That the three main cities presented a similar face to the world under
Communism was inevitable, given the homogeneities imposed by the sys-
tem. But we should not imagine that they felt the same; nor even that

7Name-changing was endemic among the institutions in both Zagreb and Belgrade.
472 chapter eighteen

they had similar goals. When we speak with musicians who were educated
in Communist Yugoslavia, it becomes clear that, even more than in the
teaching of literature and language, training in musicology or composition
meant the study of separate national traditions. The outside world may
have labelled Vinko Globokar Yugoslav, but the composer himself was in
no doubt that he was Slovenian. Symptomatic of this was the publication
of a landmark history of Yugoslav music in 1962.8 After a very short intro-
duction, the book divides into three entirely separate parts, enabling the
doyens of musicology in the three dominant republics (Dragotin Cvetko,
Josip Andreis and Stana Djuri-Klajn) to tell their national stories. Not
only was the opportunity to advertise a newly synthetic culture in the
later stages of this story passed over; the three poorer republics were cov-
ered in a few exiguous paragraphs of the introduction, roughly a page for
each in a book of over 700 pages.
Interestingly, in a slightly earlier official history, again edited by
Andreis (together with the Istrian composer Slavko Zlati), lip service was
paid to integration. Following separate treatments of the earlier music
histories of the six republics, the editors argued that in the passages
devoted to the development of Yugoslav musical life after the liberation
in 1945, such grouping proved unnecessary, and sometimes even imprac-
ticable, because some regions have already assumed general Yugoslav
characteristics to such a great extent.9 Such remarks, like the book as
a whole, were targeted at the outside world, and it is probably true that
the outside world bought into a unified Yugoslavia rather more than the
Yugoslavs themselves. Yet the major dictionary entries in Germany and
England made little effort to argue for a synthetic supranational culture
in the twentieth century. Of the 14 pages of text afforded to the art music
of Yugoslavia in Volume 7 of MGG (1958), 4 were devoted to Slovenia, 5 to
Croatia, 34 to Serbia, 2 to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and 1 to Macedonia
(21 pages were given over to traditional music, again treated nation by
nation). Astonishingly, the 1954 Grove had no entry at all for Yugoslavia;
and when the editors remedied this in the 1980 edition (The New Grove),
just over 2 of the 22 pages fewer than for Sweden dealt with art music,
again broken down into nationalities.
From todays perspective, we can look back at Communist Yugoslavia
as a political experiment that went badly wrong, after more than four

8Andreis, Cvetko and Djuri-Klajn 1962.

9Andreis and Zlati 1959.
 another try 473

decades of survival. However, it is too simplistic to attribute this failure

to its ethnic, religious and cultural diversity, as though this of itself guar-
anteed the breakdown of the state. History shows us that federal solutions
can work politically in contexts where such diversity is acknowledged and
accepted. There are conspicuous case studies of political unification where
over time cultural diversities have come to affirm rather than to threaten
the state, though even in long established unions we cannot assume that
culturally distinctive regions will always lack the will to nationhood.
Whatever the caveats, there were perfectly good grounds to assume, as
most outsiders did, that this country had a future.
In its early days the second Yugoslavia, unlike the first, actually insti-
tutionalised its separate national identities. Statehood was about balanc-
ing diverse cultures, not about imposing a single uniform culture. Thus
musicians by and large viewed themselves by separate nationality, first and
foremost. They might have held different views about how best to express
that identity: should the nation draw on its traditional music in the spirit
of romantic nationalism, or should it aspire to cosmopolitan modernisms?
But their sense of identity was not in doubt. And much the same was true
of traditional music. Attempts to professionalise this music in the spirit
of socialist realism were of course made, but they valued and promoted
regional variants as distinct and distinctive. There was little interest in
homogenising these variants (there are interesting comparisons to be made
here with changing phases of regional music policy in the Soviet Union).
It was political intervention in the later days of the state that did for
Yugoslavia in the end, including intervention from the major powers: that,
together with economic collapse. Statist players (younger leaders, whose
power bases were in their separate republics) asserted themselves in a cli-
mate of increasing austerity, and they had no difficulty in harnessing the
distinctive cultural identities of their constituencies to their cause. Minor-
ities were victims of these statist policies, but the agendas were not really
about minorities, whose principal role seems to have been to sharpen
the definition of majority identities. The competition was rather between
equals, with ethnic and cultural affinities but with a strong sense of their
uniqueness, and even their superiority, as individual nations. Already
before the death of Tito, in the context of a greatly weakened Party, such
policies were doing their cultural work. Depressingly, many of the intel-
ligentsia seemed all too ready to comply. And following Titos death, in an
upsurge of separate nationalisms, new statist establishments pounced on
music and found it an easy prey. As we noted in chapter 3, even church
music was not immune. It is hardly fair to blame the music.
474 chapter eighteen

The Dark Decade: Mainly Serbia

Composers in Yugoslavia entered their most testing period in the late 1940s.
We noted that already in the 1930s there had been a retreat from modern-
ism among those younger (and some older) composers who had studied
in Prague. We also noted that for several composers from the Balkans
there was a stylistic elision between partisan songs and socialist mass songs
devoted to war heroes, the popular army, the building of socialism, and so
forth. Oskar Danon was typical of a number of composers who were active
in the partisans and went on to play key roles in the post-war establishment,
and his Uz marala Tito [With Marshall Tito] was one of many propaganda
pieces; one might mention Mihovil Logars Himna Beogradu [Hymn to
Belgrade]) and Mihailo Vukdragovis Pesma izgradnje [The Song of
Rebuilding]. Composers were encouraged to write such pieces, and to
develop the rather crude form of national style (in orchestral suites and
programme pieces) for which models were available in the Soviet Union.
As a result, the modernism found in some inter-war Yugoslav music disap-
peared in the post-war years, even as contacts with contemporary develop-
ments in Western Europe were severed. In the very first issue of Muzyka,
published in 1948, Stana Djuri-Klajn warned composers against allowing
western trends to alienate them from their natural constituency.
The concert life of the new state initially reflected this orientation,
with a high profile assigned to accessible Russian and Soviet music. And
although the break with Moscow in 1948 changed much of this, the ensu-
ing cultural thaw was a gradual process, slower in music than in the other
arts. Already in 1949 there were signs of change in the literary world, as
the journal Mladost pointed young writers in new directions. Then, just
prior to the Sixth Congress of November 1952, Miroslav Krlea addressed
the Congress of Writers in Ljubljana in a plea for the rejection of social-
ist-realist strictures. The political authorities responded, albeit cautiously,
to such expressions of discontent, and a more experimental attitude was
permitted, though religious themes were still unacceptable. In music,
on the other hand, a more conservative aesthetic prevailed, and it was
only in the late 1950s that there was a general embrace of more liberal
attitudes. Again religion was the last frontier, with Serbian Orthodox
music removed from the concert halls until the early 1980s.10 Part of this

10Ira Prodanov has researched this topic, looking in particular at the hidden refer-
ences to religion in music of the time. See Prodanov-Krajinik 2007.
 another try 475

stemmed from the lack of contact with Western Europe. In contrast to the
inter-war years, when many Yugoslav composers worked in Prague and in
other central European cities, relatively few managed to travel abroad in
the immediate post-war years.
For an older generation of composers, born at the end of the nineteenth
century, not very much changed. In Serbia, both Konjovi and Hristi
were active after the war, but their nationally orientated styles could be
adapted rather easily to the new aesthetic. The critique of Konjovis opera
Prince of Zeta (1927), staged in Belgrade in 1946, was an exceptional
case of ideological pressure. Little new was added by this generation in
the post-war years. Neither of Konjovis two later operas (Seljaci [The
Peasants] of 1951 and Otadbina [The Fatherland] of 1960) achieved the
success of Kotana, and even the younger Marko Tajevi is remembered
today through pre-war piano works such as the 7 Balkan Dances. Likewise
in Croatia, Jakov Gotovac continued to compose in an accessible national
style, but lives on today through Ero and the interwar orchestral music.
This was also true of Dobroni. Krsto Odak, on the other hand, did find a
rather different orientation in response to the new politics, notably in a
group of symphonic and programmatic orchestral works. There are some
parallels here with an older generation of Slovenians, including Bla Arni
and Marjan Kozina. Lucijan Marjan kerjanc, a highly influential figure in
Slovenian music, was a exception, in that some of his music from the late
1950s nods slightly in a modernist direction; he even included the term
dodecaphonic in the titles to some works.
For a younger generation official cultural policy raised more difficult
questions. The retreat from modernism in Serbian music cannot be attrib-
uted exclusively to political pressures. But whatever the cause, it is strik-
ing that all these composers marched more-or-less in step. Mihovil Logar,
a modernist in the 1930s, composed not only the statutory cantatas in
the post-war years (Pjesma o biografiji druga Tito [Biographical Song for
Comrade Tito] in 1945 and eteoci [The Reapers] in 1946), but also tradi-
tionally conceived works such as the opera Pokondirena tikva [The Stuck-
up Woman] in 1954. And the same was true of Predrag Miloevi, who
produced conservative theatre pieces in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and
Dragutin oli, who (re)turned to folkloric idioms and symphonic poems
in national style (Uskrsna zvona [Eastern Chimes] in 1946 and Nikoletina
Bursa in 1951), all a far cry from his experiments with quarter-tone com-
position in the 1930s. Milan Risti followed a similar path, moving to folk
arrangements and melodramas in the post-war years, and to a program-
matic symphonism in the Second Symphony of 1952. And Stanojlo Rajii
476 chapter eighteen

likewise found his way to an extended tonality of fairly traditional cast in

the group of concertos he composed in the late 1940s.
By the end of the 1950s this picture had changed. Several of these
composers had by then adopted a neo-classical idiom with no trace of
national (folkloristic) elements or of the programmatic subject matter
encouraged by socialist realism. Logars violin and clarinet concertos were
characteristic; and so were the Symphonic Variations and Concerto for
Chamber Orchestra by Risti, lightly spiced with dodecaphonic elements.
For Rajii, the direction was towards a form of neo-expressionism (his
Fifth Symphony), and one might associate Rudolf Brui (19172002) and
Vasilije Mokranjac (192384) at least in some works with this trend
too. Although the shift from the early to the late 1950s was not an abrupt
one, it was a shift nonetheless. Partly there was a relaxation of political
constraints. There had already been some movement here as early as 1950,
but in 1957 a more decisive step was taken, with the programme for the
10th meeting of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia speaking of the
need to free educational, scientific, artistic and cultural life from admin-
istrative interference by government organs.11 Taken as a whole it seems
that the 1950s was a decade in which composers increasingly tested the
limits of official cultural policy. Three landmark dates in this process have
been proposed. Vesna Miki refers to 1951; Melita Milin pinpoints 1954;
they both agree on 1956.12
For Miki, 1951 is significant as the date of both Rajiis orchestral song-
cycle Na Liparu and Ristis Second Symphony. She locates these works
within a broad cultural frame of reference embracing the Montenegrin
painter Petar Lubarda and the writer Dobrica osi and argues that they
represent early intimations of so-called moderate modernism, where this
is measured against socialist-realist norms. Milin singles out the concert of
17 March 1954, when compositions by Enriko Josif (19242003) and Duan
Radi (19292010), were performed. What was striking here was the pointed
rejection of officially sanctioned options in favour of a cool, poised, anti-
romantic style indebted to Stravinsky and Parisian neo-classicism. This
was undoubtedly a turning point. The turmoil created by Radis Spisak
[The List], settings of sketches by Vasko Popa, gives some indication of
just how new this music seemed in the Belgrade of the mid 1950s, even

11 Quoted in Zupani 1976, 104.

12Miki 2008; Milin 2009.
 another try 477

if it comes over today as belonging to a much earlier Stravinskian world

(Pribaoutki).
Both composers remained on this path through the 1950s; witness the
neo-baroque idioms of Josifs Sinfonietta and Sonata antico and the clean
lines and sprung rhythms of Radis Clarinet Concertino and Divertimento
for strings, vibraphone and percussion. Only in the deliberate archaisms of
Radis ele-kula [Tower of Skulls] of 1957, again setting Vasko Popa, who
himself had no truck with official policy and who cultivated something of
the same fusion of archaism and modernism in his verse, was there a hint
of something rather different.13 In this work Stravinsky is evoked by way
of others (Carl Orff, for example), but there are also elements especially
in the lament of an earlier Russian realism (Musorgsky).
It seems likely that the tone of ele-kula was attributable, at least in
part, to the last of our three landmarks, highlighted by both Miki and
Milin. This was the performance in 1956 of Ljubica Maris cantata Pesme
prostora [Songs of Space], arguably the central event of Serbian music
from the 1950s. Mari belonged to the Prague generation, and in one sense
she followed the same general direction as Logar, Risti, Rajii and the
others. But she cannot quite be pigeon-holed in this way. She too had her
experimental phase in Prague, indebted to both Schoenberg and Hba; of
the works composed then, only the Wind Quintet of 1931 and the Music
for Orchestra of 1932 have survived.14 She also had her folkloristic moment
after the war (in Tri narodne [Three Folk Songs] for Choir and Brankovo kolo
[Brankas Kolo] for piano, though coeval works such as the Three Preludes
for Piano of 1947 are more adventurous). But Pesme prostora represented a
new departure, and not just for Mari. It is significant that Stana Djuri-
Klajn discussed the work alongside other cantatas of the 1950s, almost
as though it might be understood to be conformant with socialist-realist
norms.15 In reality, it is precisely because Mari turned to this approved
genre that the gesture of subversion, evident in the subject matter of the
texts no less than the musical language, comes over so strongly.
Pesme prostora inaugurated a move within Serbian music that foreshad-
owed developments elsewhere in South East Europe. We noted already
that one of the defining features of Bulgarian and Romanian music from
the late 1950s onwards was an attempt to draw together ancient layers

13Alexander 1985.
14Mari destroyed a substantial amount of her own music.
15Djuri-Klajn 1971.
478 chapter eighteen

of musical culture and modernist techniques. The saccharine folklorism

promoted by socialist realism was rejected, but equally there was a per-
ceived need to establish contact with what were thought to be deeper
cultural and spiritual roots. It seems that for several composers from this
region, the avant-garde of Western Europe was no less anonymous than
the official culture of Eastern Europe. The marriage of archaism and mod-
ernism (including novel applications of aleatory devices) offered them
an identity, and not just a narrowly national one. Pesme prostora signals
something of this aesthetic by turning to the inscriptions on some of
the famous medieval tombstones of Bosnia, traditionally associated with
Bogumilism.
The opening of the work confirms the new direction musically, its
densely layered, dissonant harmonies in predominantly woodwind scor-
ing close to the stiffly hieratic quality we associate with certain works of
Stravinsky. The choral chanting and treading ostinati of later movements
are also part of the Stravinsky legacy, and again they have the effect of
reducing any sense of immediacy; they are monumentalising or alienat-
ing techniques, in the precise Brechtian sense of the latter term. There
are no extravagant modernisms here; they would not have been an easy
option in the 1950s. But these archaisms offered a path to the future, and
for Mari it was a path that allowed very particular spiritual (rather than
narrowly national) identities to be affirmed through evocations of a medi-
eval Serbian world.
Such identities are apparent again in her Passacaglia for Orchestra of
1957, based on a traditional melody from the Morava river valley, ancient
and profound as if sung by the earth itself, in the composers own evoca-
tive description. But subsequently they came to be associated in her music
with the Serbian Octoechos, and with the post-Byzantine sacred world of
South East Europe more generally. The first fruit was Octoecha 1 (1958),
whose Improvisation, Ricercar and Coda are based on the initial melody
of mode 1. Then came the Byzantine Concerto for piano and orchestra
(1959), with its three movements based on modes 2, 3 and 4 respectively.
Next in line was the chamber cantata Threshold of Dreams (1961), followed
by the Ostinato super Thema Octoecha (1963) for chamber orchestra, both
based on mode 5. The final work, a Symphony based on the remaining
three modes, failed to get beyond the sketch stage. All four completed
works share a quality of renunciation that gets us close to the wellsprings
of Maris inspiration as a composer. The appeal of the Octoechos was less
to do with religion than with collectivity, with the quest for deep commu-
nal structures that might be re-activated for our times. Again it is easy to
 another try 479

cite Stravinsky, but in the Octoechos cycle any direct Stravinsky influence
has receded almost to vanishing point.
The Octoechos works were composed at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s.
We might construct two narratives around them. One would depict them
as a stage in the journey of Serbian and Yugoslav music from political
confinement and imposed insularity towards freedom of expression and
integration within European music. They were a gateway to a brave new
world. The other narrative would see them as valuable and privileged
precisely because they fought shy of a progressive Western avant-garde,
bearing in mind that this was hardly less ideological than a regressive
socialist realism. The larger political point here will be picked up later.
But for now we might note that in this narrative Mari was important in
the way that Enescu was important. She captured the historical moment
for Balkan music. Indeed this may well have been the last time that such
a thing would be possible for art music in the Balkans. Avoiding the false
consciousness of both the past and the folk that we associate with music
policy in state socialism, and at the same time avoiding the officially spon-
sored historical denials and elitism of the new music, she found a voice
somewhere in between, catching the resonance of collective voices from
the distant past, but sifting and straining them into an active present. It
was her voice, uniquely so, but as we noted in the last chapter it chimed
with the voices of others in the Balkans at just this particular moment. It
was of its time, and of its place.

In from the Cold: Mainly Croatia, a Little Slovenia, and Back to Serbia

The first of the two narratives outlined above, a narrative of emancipa-

tion, would single out 1961, the year of Maris Threshold of Dreams, as an
important landmark. It was in May of that year that Yugoslavia institu-
tionalised modernism in music through the establishment of the Zagreb
Biennale. It is certainly intriguing that this seminal event, as also the
important Opatija Festival, should have occurred in Croatia.16 Naturally
there are dangers of stereotyping if we profile the music of Yugoslavias
nations reductively. But one can at least say that in the inter-war years the
dominant musical culture in Zagreb, as represented by Antun Dobroni,
had been one of conservative nationalism. Croatian composers at that

16Opatija was also to become the site for a major international festival of popular song.
480 chapter eighteen

time with the exception of Slavenski, who worked mainly in Belgrade

conspicuously avoided the iconoclasm associated with the Serbian Prague
school, and for this reason socialist-realist imperatives created much less
of a disjunction in Croatian music history than in Serbian.
For the post-war years, such characterisations by nation are more
treacherous, but they do still have some explanatory value. On one hand
we could justly claim that during the 1950s Croatian composers played
their part in the slow, steady cultural thaw that was apparent all over
Yugoslavia. On the other hand, it could be argued that they opened out
to the West in a more all-embracing and less self-conscious manner than
their Serbian colleagues. Where the best of Serbian music since the war
tended to look inwards and to wrestle with issues of cultural identity, Cro-
atian music seemed to merge seamlessly and easily into the mainstreams
of European modernism, with Darmstadt as the principal model.
Initially, the Croatian Society of composers had followed the familiar
Communist line.17 Meetings in 1948 reported ideological disorientation
on the part of some members, and a year later there were complaints
about the lack of enthusiasm for mass songs. But signs of change were
apparent in the 1950s, especially towards the end of the decade, and even
among the older generation. In the case of the formidably gifted and pro-
lific (and politically interesting) Boris Papandopulo (190691), this meant
little more than a mild disruption to a fundamentally conservative idiom
(some of the bravura piano studies of 1956, for example),18 but for Milo
Cipra (190685), the shift was more decisive, with Sunev put [The Suns
Path] of 1959 inaugurating a phase of atonal-serial experimentation.
When we come to composers whose early music belonged to the post-
war years, the embrace of the West was yet more eager, and in many
cases the change of direction at the end of the 1950s was abrupt enough
to suggest parallels with Polish composers around the same time. A case
in point would be Branimir Saka (191879), whose works from the 1950s
are traditionally conceived, but who switched to avant-garde techniques,
including musique concrte pieces, at the end of the decade, and who went
on to experiment with avant-garde music theatre in the 1960s. Likewise
Natko Devi (191497) swerved from a series of works based on themes
and styles from Istria in the 1950s to an atonal-serial idiom in the 1960s.

17On the implications for Croatian music history of the shift between totalitarian gov-
ernments of the right and left, see Tomai 2004.
18Sedak 2004.
 another try 481

Moreover, the same turning point (late fifties early sixties) can be iden-
tified in the very different outputs of two leading composers from the
younger generation: Stanko Horvat (19302006), whose Polish-influenced
modernisms are still rooted in traditional idioms, and Ruben Radica
(b.1931), whose engagement with new techniques has been total.
It was symptomatic of the new eclecticism that a number of younger
composers, including both Horvat and Radica, learnt their craft in major
European centres. Some went on to make their career outside Croatia,
though in most cases they retained active musical contacts with Zagreb.
Ivo Malec (b.1925) is a case in point. He went to Paris initially for further
study in 1955, but settled there in 1959, and soon became a member of
Schaeffers Group de recherche musicale. He himself has argued that only
in Paris (i.e. from 1960 onwards) did he achieve his full maturity as a com-
poser, and especially in pieces such as Sigma for orchestra of 1963. But
already in the 1950s he laid foundations for what would become an inter-
national reputation in avant-garde circles for his contributions to musique
concrte and electronic music, for his experiments in modern virtuosity
(in the spirit of Luciano Berio), and for his work in music theatre. Not
the least interesting aspect of his work is the reciprocity it has promoted
between live and electronic forces. At its simplest, we might say that,
as in some works by Ligeti, he has composed electronic music for live
instruments.
Even more visible was Milko Kelemen (b.1924). He too studied in Paris
in the mid 1950s, and he went on to work in Siena and Freiburg, to attend
the Darmstadt seminar on several occasions, and (in 1961) to take up a
scholarship in the United States. Later, in 1969, he chose to settle perma-
nently in West Germany. But before that he taught at the Music Academy
in Zagreb, and he established his reputation there with a number of major
works composed in the late 1950s, in which he decisively pulled away
from the folk-based idioms of the immediate post-war years; they include
his Koncertante improvizacije [Concertante Improvisations] for strings of
1956, his challenging and innovatory Skolion for orchestra of 1960, and his
award-winning Transfiguracije [Transfigurations] for piano and orchestra,
also of 1960.
In 1959 Kelemen was closely involved in the initial discussions of the
Society of Composers about a festival of contemporary music, and he soon
emerged as the major power behind the Zagreb Biennale. Muziki Bien-
nale Zagreb (MBZ) was established in 1961 with Kelemen as its first presi-
dent, and it quickly secured an international reputation. Kelemen himself
has written about how he was able to turn the Cold War to advantage in
482 chapter eighteen

securing funding for the festival by playing the Soviet Union off against
the United States.19 Whatever the formula, the Biennale soon attracted
leading figures in contemporary music (the presence of Stravinsky at
the second festival in 1963 was symptomatic), and at the same time it
acted as the major platform for composers of a progressive orientation
from all over Yugoslavia. Indeed part of its mission was to set Yugoslav
modernisms in an international context, very much in the manner of the
Warsaw Autumn festival. As in Warsaw, moreover, the festival could
be at once a source of national pride and a symbol of cosmopolitanism,
though it was less successful in promoting native composers than its Pol-
ish counterpart.
The exception was Kelemen himself, for whom it was a conduit to wider
recognition, and eventually to a career in Germany. From 1961 onwards he
came to epitomise what was truly characteristic about modern Croatian
music: its increasing alignment with an international avant-garde and its
rejection of the Balkans. There is a precarious balance here. For many in
Croatia the new pluralism amounted to the recovery of a cosmopolitan
aesthetic traditionally associated with their nation. On this reading the
nationalism promoted by Kuha, and brought to fruition by Dobroni
and his circle, was a digression, or even an aberration. Since 1961, so the
argument ran, there has been a reintegration with Central and Western
Europe. There has been no Croatian music: just music in Croatia, and
music by Croatian composers living elsewhere. Croatia, after all, like Ger-
many and Italy, needed no reminders of the darker side of nationalism.
Thus, in the early 1990s the quest for independence was also a bid to join
the family of European nations. This is a comforting story for many, but in
truth the Croatian political and military record of the 1990s was Balkan
enough, by any standards. That, together with several manifestations of
mass culture, served as a reminder that the ghosts of the past are not so
easily laid.
Kelemen himself was at the forefront of internationalist agendas, and
his reputation as an exponent of the new music has been well deserved. In
his collection of writings, Labirinti [Labyrinths], published in 1994 though
dating from various stages of his career, he writes intelligently about the
limits of complexity, as also about the limits of freedom.20 A committed

19Kelemen 1971. See also parts of Kelemen 2002.

20Kelemen 1994.
 another try 483

Jungian, he writes too about the growing importance of archetypes for

his music, and connected with this about the relation between (sim-
ple) deep structures and (complex) surface detail. What emerges from
these texts, and from the music, is that while Kelemens colours have
undoubtedly been pinned to the modernist mast, he has been anxious
to avoid radicalism and to embrace immediacy. At its best (works such
as Changeant for cello and orchestra of 1968, Passionata for flute and 3
choirs of 1971, and Apocalyptica of 1979), his music has been challenging
in its complexity, but also immensely vivid, dramatic and exciting. And in
the 1980s these latter qualities were given a new context, as the composer
responded in his own way to more general postmodern tendencies. This
greater accessibility was turned to expressive account when the events of
the 1990s forced him, as it forced others, to look again towards the home-
land. In this context, archetypes acquired a new significance.
If Kelemen has a counterpart among the younger generation of compos-
ers, those born after 1940, it would be his one-time student Silvio Foreti
(b.1940). He too has been an entrepreneurial figure, especially through his
engagement with the Ensemble for Contemporary Music (AzSG), which
he co-founded. Like Kelemen, he settled in Germany (Cologne) in the late
1960s, and the creative path he followed there has been yet more explor-
atory and more radical than that of his teacher. In particular he has been
influential in multi-media composition, developing a kind of instrumen-
tal theatre in which he himself has often been the principal performer.
Characteristic would be works such as Fr Klavier? of 197071, Der achte
Tag oder auf der Suche nach der Weissen Zeit of 1973, and Semi-mono-
opera of 1979. There is often an element of (radical) political engagement
in these works, facilitated by polystylistic devices that generate clear ref-
erences. This was accentuated in the 1990s, when Foreti found himself
unable to avoid a creative response to the political realities of the Balkans.
His Ordinarium Missae for choir and instruments, begun in 1967 but fina-
lised only in 1995, introduces recorded sounds of war to the text of Dona
Nobis Pacem, a disturbing gesture in the political context of the time,
and one that somehow seems to underline an ambivalence at the heart
of Croatian culture.
A roll call of other distinguished Croatian composers active between
1960 and 1990 would include Dubravko Detoni (b.1937), Igor Kuljeri
(19382006), Davorin Kempf (b.1947), and Frano Para (b.1948). But roll
calls are hardly to the point here. As elsewhere in European music, there
were debates in Croatia about contemporary modernisms. There were
484 chapter eighteen

reactions to Darmstadt and to Warsaw. There were circles of composers

ordered according to ideology, aesthetic, musical style, teaching genealogy,
and even geography. None of this was unique to Croatia. But as the cen-
tury drew towards its close, there were questions asked not just about the
viability of modernist music but about the contemporary relevance and
future of classical music more generally.
Along with those questions came other questions, about the nation
and about the region. It is certainly intriguing that postmodern acces-
sibilities seemed to be linked with a return to regional specificities. For
some this remained on the level of topical satire. Several of the compos-
ers listed above began to address local issues, political and cultural, not
only in polemical writings but in the subject matter of their music. One
case in point would be Igor Kuljeri. In his 1980s opera on Orwells Ani-
mal Farm, Kuljeri assigns the role of Napoleon to the Sabor, the Croatian
parliament. It is an unsubtle political gesture, but it is the timing that is
of interest. For others, the waning of modernism a general European
phenomenon resulted in a more comprehensive investment in a sense
of place and in the cultural identities that might be forged from this, even
as the storm clouds gathered.
There are parallels in Slovenia. Of all the republics, Slovenia was the one
most obviously orientated towards western culture, and for obvious histori-
cal reasons. Several composers born in the 1920s, including Primo Ramov
(192199) and Uro Krek (19222008), made the familiar transition from
traditional (neo-classical) to modern idioms during the 1950s, and Ramov
in particular went on to play a key role as father figure of the avant-garde
of the 1960s. As in Croatia, several leading Slovenian composers worked
abroad, notably Janez Matii (b.1926), who settled in Paris, and most
famously Vinko Globokar (b.1934), who spent his early years in France but
moved to Yugoslavia in the 1947, and eventually settled in Cologne.
In the 1960s and 1970s Globokar had a comparable status to Kelemen
in avant-garde circles, and his acumen as a trombonist certainly helped.
Having studied in both France and Germany, and taught for some years
in North America, he is a citizen of the world, and although politically
engaged his anti-establishment credentials are as apparent under capi-
talism as they were under Communism he belongs to an international
modernist culture. In particular he expanded aleatory devices to incor-
porate active performer improvisation, instrumental characterisation,
extended techniques for woodwinds and semi-improvised musical theatre.
In some works Globokar turned towards Yugoslavia, notably in his Etudes
pour folklora of 1968, and more potently in his Kolo (1988) for mixed choir,
 another try 485

trombone and electronics, but these are exceptions.21 Although he main-

tains his links with Ljubljana, he belongs within the avant-garde circles of
Western Europe and in relation to Slovenian culture he represents above
all a prevailing cosmopolitanism.
It is symptomatic of this cosmopolitan orientation that in an essay osten-
sibly devoted to modernism and tradition in twentieth-century Slovenian
music Leon Stefanija seems to use Slovenia mainly as an opportunity to
address in microcosm issues that relate to the Western musical heritage in
general.22 There is admittedly a set of historical frames through which he
locates three key stages in Slovenian music: the early twentieth century,
the inter-war period, and the post-1945 period. But interestingly and
there is nothing in Stefanijas article that really spells this out Slovenia
looses specificity progressively as we move through these three frames,
at least until the later stages of the last of them. The context for the first
frame is unique to Slovenia, but that for the second is largely shared with
the rest of the first Yugoslavia, while the third seems to open out yet more
widely to an international culture.
Within this third frame the post-1945 period Stefanija identifies a
further three distinct phases, a common enough reading, as he recognises.
The first (traditional idioms in the 1950s) is shared with the rest of the
eastern bloc, but arguably also with other cultures beyond the modernist
circles of France, Germany and Italy, while the second and third (modern-
ism from 1960 onwards and postmodernism from the late 1970s) is shared
with an elite culture belonging to the western tradition more generally.
The whole sequence might be viewed, then, as a graphic representation
of Slovenian music seeping imperceptibly into the wider world around it.
That at least would be a convincing interpretation were it not that in the
later stages of the third phase there is, as in Croatia, some evidence of a
homewards turn.
As to the first phase, the 1950s, Stefanija downplays the importance of
socialist realism as a determinant of musical style, arguing that an effec-
tive repressive apparatus was lacking, and that where individual musi-
cians were targeted it was less to do with their music than with their
social position and political attitudes. This is fair comment, though it may
not quite do justice to the silent pressures of the political climate, even if

21Globokars wider understanding of the social and political value of improvisation as a

constituent of composition emerges from his own writings and interviews. See Stojanovi-
Novii 2004.
22Stefanija 2006.
486 chapter eighteen

verbal denunciation was as bad as it got. But in any case, if Slovenia is to be

singled out from a more general East-European pattern here, it will be as
one of the more liberal corners of Yugoslavia, itself one of the more liberal
corners in the bloc. When we get to the second phase of Stefanijas third
frame, however, Slovenia recedes further from the picture. The establish-
ment of the Pro musica viva group in Ljubljana was seminal in the 1960s
as the mouthpiece of Slovenian modernism, an essentially internationalist
movement. These early modernist stages might be represented by the serial
excursions of the prolific composer Alojz Srebotnak (19312010), beginning
with pieces such as Invenzione variata for piano of 1961 and Monologi of
1962. Alternatively one might cite the Polish-influenced aleatory methods
adopted by Ivo Petri (b.1931) in the late 1960s, notably in pieces written
for his influential Slavko Osterc Ensemble. Or the collage works (includ-
ing tape) composed by Darijan Boi (b.1933). Or the early works of Lojze
Lebi (b.1934), the youngest of the Pro musica viva group, and one of the
most interesting voices in contemporary Slovenian music.
From the 1980s onwards, however, there was a general retreat from these
modernist positions on the part of several composers. Those of the younger
generation such as Uro Rojko (b.1954), who teaches in Freiburg were
born into a postmodern culture. But many of their older colleagues looked
in this direction too. The shift that took place in Poland in the late 1970s
may have been an influence here, especially on composers like Ivo Petri,
whose music from the 1990s is marked by its return to a more traditional
idiom, and along with that by a nod to national themes. Characteristic
of this would be Gallus Metamorphoses (1992), The Song of Life (1995), on
texts by Slovenian poets, Four Seasons after Grohars Paintings (1995), and
Grohars Impressions (1998). In the case of Lojze Lebi, the shift took the
form of that same quest for archetypes that resonates more widely in music
of South East Europe. It is not appropriate to look for authenticity in any
of this. The archaisms are essentially poetic evocations of past cultures
and civilisations, and their simplicity is deceptive. After an intense and
critical confrontation with contemporary trends in composition, Lebi
formed his own mode of expression ranging between the impetuosity of
sound and the restraint of meditation as well as between cosmopolitan
modernism and his own sensitivity to the heritage of traditional cultures
and civilisations.
If Lebis concerns as a composer seem reminiscent of Ljubica Mari
back at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, this is perhaps no coincidence.
Shortly I will reflect on some of the implications, and the ironies, of such
connections, but first I will trace Maris own subsequent development
 another try 487

briefly, locating it within a larger Serbian context. Following the cycle of

Octoechos pieces there was a fall in creativity until the 1980s. Following
this, she turned her attention to chamber music, with works such as Mono-
dia octoecha for Cello solo (1982), Invocation for double bass and piano
(1983), and Asymptote for strings (1986). As these titles suggest, there is a
striking continuity in Maris concerns as a composer from the late 1950s
onwards, and this persisted right through to her last major composition,
the piano trio Torso of 1996. There is little hint that she troubled herself at
any stage with the trends and fashions of the new music, whether we label
these modernist or postmodernist. Her primary inspiration in many ways
remained her teacher Josip Slavenski, who likewise sought to uncover hid-
den layers of music that were often particular to the Balkan region, but in
all cases transcended narrow nationalisms. Like Slavenski, Mari believed
that such archetypes had universal resonance.
If we shade in the Serbian background to her work, on the other hand,
we can identify broad patterns in the journey from the sixties through
to the eighties. In the sixties traditional idioms were increasingly infil-
trated by modernisms. This was true of the other members of the Prague
Group, whose inclination was often to reconcile their pre- and post-war
idioms, and also of a younger generation of composers born before 1930.
Some of these have already been mentioned (Brui, Mokranjac, Radi
and Josif), but we might add to them Aleksander Obradovi (19272001),
Dejan Despi (b.1930) and Petra Ozgijan (193279). The seventies marked
something of a new departure, as a younger generation, more radically
orientated from the start, came to the fore; they included Sran Hofman
(b.1944), Vuk Kulenovi (b.1946), Vlastimir Trajkovi (b.1947), and Zoran
Eri (b.1950). Here techniques of post-Webern serialism, Polish-influenced
sonorism and American minimalism all made appearances, and so too
did studio-based techniques, a direct outcome of the establishment of the
Electronic Studio at Radio Belgrade in 1972.
For at least one student working in Belgrade at the time, the 1980s
represented a Golden Age.23 This was the period when composers such
as Kulenovi, Trajkovi and Eri came into their own, inspired in part
by the proselytising efforts of Aleksander Pavlovi, conductor of the Bel-
grade Strings, and by the wider creativity that was a marked feature of
Belgrade in those years, in theatre and visual arts as much as music, and
in popular music as much as art music. Anyone who lived there at the

23Kuzelich 2001.
488 chapter eighteen

time testifies to this energy. And it was then in Serbia, as in Croatia and
Slovenia that there was a turn towards postmodern pluralism. A key
stage in that particular journey was Trajkovis Arion, le nuove musiche
per chitarra ed archi of 1979, followed by Kulenikovs Raskovnik (1981), and
Eris widely performed Cartoon of 1984. Few were untouched by this new
post-modern orientation; we might equally cite Milan Mihajlovi (b.1945)
or Ivana Stefanovi (b.1948) as representative. And much the same gen-
eral direction was followed by a yet younger group of composers emerging
at the end of the eighties, right on the cusp of major political change in
Yugoslavia. With characteristic chutzpah, they labelled themselves The
Magnificent Seven, and we will return to them in a later chapter.
But we should move back a step first. Needless-to-say, a summary of this
sort can never be more than indicative. Mari was not the only composer
for whom easy pigeon-holing will not work at all. Vladan Radovanovi
(b.1932) committed himself to a remarkably radical position right from
the start. Already in the early 1950s he composed his Seven Chorales, a
work that has something in common with early minimalist composition.
But it soon became clear that Radovanovi was an avant-garde figure of a
more all-embracing kind. In a manner that is rare in South East Europe,
he went on to explore multi-media pieces of Stockhausen-like metaphysi-
cal ambition, even incorporating at times notations of his dreams. He
works in the visual arts as well as in music, and he has articulated novel
and interesting theoretical views on the nature of artistic synthesis. So it is
fitting that several of his compositions take the form of projects or hap-
penings, including film and computer-based installations.
Radovanovi was the spiritus movens behind the electronic studio in
Belgrade, and this has played into several of his cosmic pieces. If there
is a genealogy here, it might well return us to Slavenski. Titles such as
Kosmika muzika [Cosmic Music], Muzika sfera [Music of the Spheres]
and Sazvea [Constellations] are suggestive. It is tempting though per-
haps a little glib to see aspects of Radovanovis enterprise as extending
Slavenskis aesthetic in a rather different direction to the one taken by
Mari. Where Mari continued to explore archetypes of Balkan music very
much in the spirit of Slavenski, digging deeper and deeper into local soil,
Radovanovi pursued the other notable dimension to Slavenskis work,
pointing his telescope skywards. My earlier subtitles From the Balkans...
to the Cosmos are very much to the point.
The end of the eighties was a time of sharpening political differences
between the Yugoslav republics. Ethnonationalist agendas rode high, and
they culminated in war. For this reason it is intriguing to find areas of
 another try 489

convergence in the field of elite culture. We can detect movement in two

directions here. First, there was a growing tendency for Serbian compos-
ers to conform to some of the more generic trends in European music. In
some quarters, we might say that they were chasing European modern-
isms and postmodernisms with a vengeance. This had the effect of align-
ing Serbian music to cosmopolitan approaches that were already well
established in Croatia and Slovenia. Serbia, too, was coming in from the
cold. Yet and this is the paradox there was also a marked tendency
for composers in Croatia and Slovenia to turn their thoughts to that same
quest for archetypes (of the nation and of the region) that was already
well established in Serbia. There was a wider context for this in European
postmodernism from the 1980s onwards. But there was also a region-spe-
cific dimension to it. It is obvious that cultural forms may be appropriated
by politics, but they can also make their own statement, independent of
political manoeuvres and political agency. The real irony in all of this is
that the cultural project of Yugoslavism, demonstrably a failed exercise in
the political contexts of both the first and the second Yugoslavias, begins
to look something of a possibility in the context of the successor states.

Catching Up: Other Republics

In the less powerful republics of Yugoslavia it was very much harder to

establish and maintain separate cultural identities, and perhaps especially
so in the field of art music.24 The three cases were not the same. For Mace-
donia the struggle of the Partisans under Tito was tantamount to, and is
invariably described as, a War of National Liberation, and in the post-war
years there was a determined effort to affirm a unique and distinctive
nationality in all walks of life. The challenge was to carve out a cultural
space that could be cleanly separated off from the spaces already occu-
pied by influential neighbours. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the problem
was related but different, in that a sense of cultural distinctiveness was
undermined by ethno-religious difference. The demographic distribution
of Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks within this republic made it all but impos-
sible to profile its culture in terms of any single majority culture, even
where forms and materials were shared. As for Montenegro, the historical
links with Serbia were so strong here that for the majority of Montenegrins

24For an English-language survey that tries to do justice to all the republics, at least as
things stood in 1980, see Lipovan 1980.
490 chapter eighteen

the issue of a singular culture (as opposed to a singularly heroic version of

a Serb culture) did not really arise. In due course, that would change.
In all three cases it was in the post-war years that there were significant
creative achievements in art music. The pioneers of Macedonian music
were all-purpose musicians. They were composers, ethnomusicologists,
theorists, conductors and teachers. The key figures were ivko Firfov
(190684), an ethnologist and collector of importance, Trajko Prokopiev
(190979), the high-profile director of the State folk ensemble Tanec, and
Todor Skalovski (190979), conductor at the opera and a force behind
both the Composers Association and the State Symphony Orchestra. All
three are major figures in the local context. Along with Stefan Gajdov
(190592) and Petre Bogdanov-Kocko (191388), they made up the Mace-
donian Five, who laid the foundations for a national school of composi-
tion. Skalovskis Macedonian oro, an apotheosis of the emblematic folk
dance tekoto oro scored for chorus and orchestra, retains its popularity
among audiences today. So do several of his choral works, including a
piece in praise of Cyril and Methodius. Likewise, Prokopievs ballet Labin
i Dojrana (1958), recounting a familiar Macedonian legend in a folk-based
idiom, carries symbolic significance as a document of national culture,
just as his later opera Razdelba [Separation], first performed in 1971, is
hailed as a worthy musical match to the immensely popular Anton Panov
play (Migrant Workers) on which it is based.
Compositionally, the major step forward came with the generation
born in the 1920s. I will profile three composers from the 1920s briefly,
and then turn to those born in subsequent decades. The celebratory
nationalism associated with the establishment of a new order may not
have translated into works of great originality, but it did coincide with
a newly acquired professionalism. Younger composers learnt their craft
at other leading Yugoslav centres, and in a few cases in Russia or West-
ern Europe. Thus Kiril Makedonski (192584) studied in Zagreb, Belgrade
and Ljubljana, Vlastimir Nikolovski (19252001) in Belgrade and St. Peters-
burg, and Dragoslav Ortakov (b.1928) in Zagreb, Belgrade and Sarajevo.
Makedonski is best known in the history books for his 1954 opera Goce
(based on the Macedonian revolutionary Goce Delev), the first opera by
a native Macedonian composer. But his later historical opera Tzar Sam-
oil, first performed in 1968, is also regarded as a work of importance, and
he composed five symphonies between 1956 and 1978. Nikolovski also
drew on folk music, establishing clear points of contact with Stravinsky
through the choral chanting of the second of his three symphonies, and
the anti-romantic tone of chamber works such as Sonoro (1965). Ortakov
 another try 491

is best known as a musicologist, but as a composer he explored the world

of eastern chant in modernist contexts, notably in a series of pieces called
Ephtamerone. He was also a pioneer of electronic music.
What is not immediately detectable in any of this repertory is a distinc-
tive Macedonian voice. Macedonian composers tended to follow a genera-
lised, and in the early post-war years a politically conformant, Yugoslav
tendency to build a national repertory on the basis of folk sources. The
results are not readily distinguishable from other music composed within
the state. To some extent this direction was continued by the generation
of composers born in the 1930s, including Mihailo Nikolovski (193495)
and Tomislav Zografski (19342000). Yet Zografski did extend the nation-
alist orientation some way beyond neo-classical folkloristic pastiche, and
in some works he went on to explore archetypes of traditional music in
interesting ways. The oratorios Pohvala Kirilu i Metodiu [Eulogy to Cyril
and Methodius] and Cantus Coronatus, both of 1969, are representative,
and the Notes for voice and piano even more so. The most significant
figure born in the 1930s, however, was Toma Proev (193196). He stud-
ied in Zagreb and Ljubljana and then in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, and
his musical idiom ranged from the heroic brassy tone of the Fourth Sym-
phony to modernist-leaning chamber works such as Musandra III for wind
quintet, a study in instrumental characterisation that also makes use of
aleatory devices. There is a substantial corpus of works, including operas
(Pajaina [Spiders Web] of 1958 is highly regarded), an impressive sym-
phonic output, and in the seventies and eighties concertos for two
violins, for piano and for cello.
Of the generation born in the 1940s, Stojan Stojkov (b.1941) is an entre-
preneurial figure (he was President of the Composers Association at
various points), and his output is much respected. The stylistic journey
is a familiar one: from the neo-classical idiom of works such as Rondo
dramatico of 1965 to the more forward-looking world of Universal Mother
for soloist, narrator, electronics and strings of 1985. He is best known for
his Madrigals of 1976, six vocal-instrumental arrangements of well-known
themes, somewhat alienated by the recourse to baroque techniques. But
before that he had already established a reputation with his Twelve Prayers
of Penelope for voice and ensemble (1963) and his Bartkian Sonata for
Two Pianos (1965). The most original composer from this decade was Risto
Avramovski (b.1943), who explored modernist pathways in works such as
the tone poem Bibliofonija (1970), with spatialised sound and block struc-
tures, and also in works such as Psihofonija I of 1972. There is some influ-
ence from modern Polish music in the sonorism of the two Ezero [lake]
492 chapter eighteen

pieces for voice and piano, as in the cycle Crveni cvetovi [Red Flowers],
and Two Hands for singer, reciter and piano. And this in turn suggests
parallels with the most significant figure born in the 1950s, Tomi Manchev
(b.1950), especially in works such as Paganophony (1989). In some ways,
this is Yugoslav to the core, drawing together the pursuit of modernisms
and the quest for ancient roots.
Bosnia and Herzegovina also came into its own with the establishment
of the second Yugoslavia. The case was not quite as in Macedonia. Unlike
Skopje, Sarajevo was drawn more centrally into the cultural life of the new
state, somewhat at the expense of the other major Bosnian towns. The
Opera, the symphony orchestras and the Music Academy all ensured that
leading figures from the three dominant republics were a presence in the
city, as conductors and also as teachers. But even among the older gen-
eration there were key players from Bosnia too.25 The most eminent were
Vlado Miloevi (190091) and Cvjetko Rihtman (190289), and both were
distinguished musicologists and folklorists as well as composers. Miloevi
is the more highly valued as a composer, though the idiom is somewhat
anachronistic, a kind of rustic neo-classicism indebted to folk music from
Bosanska Krajina (the eight rukoveti, composed variously between 1940
and 1967 and in the spirit of Mokranjac), and in some works to Serbian
Orthodox repertories. Flirtations with impressionist devices seldom pen-
etrate much below the surface, though in some solo songs from the sixties
and seventies they are more foregrounded (Pastel; Sonet nepoznatoj eni).
There are in addition string quartets (including Kameni spava for reciter
and quartet of 1968), a violin concerto (1951), Dramatina simfonija (1967)
and the symphonic poem Hilendar (1972).26
Modernisms began to permeate Bosnian music with slightly younger
figures, of whom one of the first was Avdo Smailovi (191784), though
even here the basic musical idiom retained some contact with folklore.
Metamorfoze for piano (1980) is characteristic, including controlled alea-
tory devices and a tone that might be termed expressionist in its formal
discontinuities and explosions of dissonant harmony. A similar journey
from traditional idioms to moderate modernisms can be found in the
music, especially the chamber music and song cycles, of Nada Ludwig-
Pear (19292008), and likewise Vojin Komadina (193397), who has lived

25For a recent, immensely detailed, history of music in Bosnia and Herzegovina, see
avlovi 2011.
26avlovi 2001.
 another try 493

in several parts of former Yugoslavia but was based in Bosnia and Her-
zegovina during the 1960s and 1970s, and whose early folk-influenced
neo-classical works yielded to more modern techniques in later years.
A work such as Refrain IV Silent Round Dance from Glamo for piano
(1975) has a foot in both these camps, not entirely securely. A more radical
figure, experimenting with electro-acoustic and computer music, is Josip
Magdi (b.1937), currently based in Zagreb. Some of Magdis concerns as
a composer, evident as early as his Sound Spectrums of 1968, harmonise
with developments we have noted elsewhere, including the tendency to
draw elements of church chant and folk traditions into a modern sound
synthesis.
After the Bosnian war the number of Bosnian composers working
actively in the republic (as far as one can separate them out from other
Yugoslav composers working there), dropped significantly. Creative enter-
prises looked increasingly inward at this time, despite the valiant efforts
of the Music Academy to promote and maintain an active and truly
contemporary musical life. The title of one of the CDs produced by the
Muzikoloko Drutvo FBiH [Musicological Society of Bosnia and Herze-
govina] is no doubt significant: Works by B-H Composers Living Abroad.
Nor was art music immune from the political agendas that appropriated
sacred repertories and popular music traditions in the post-war years.
Self-analysis can be the most brutal of all, and the comments of Amila
Ramovi on the state of play in Bosnia and Herzegovina today are hardly
encouraging.27
To some extent the same problems attend two other territories of for-
mer Yugoslavia that have either gained or asserted their independence. In
both Montenegro and Kosovo there are obvious attempts today to establish
national cultures and to validate these historically, despite the associations
of the former, and the minority population of the latter, with a dominant
Serbian culture. To list as Montenegrin composers the teachers and choir-
masters Jovan Ivanievi (18801940) and Jovan Miloevi (18951959),
both of whom studied in Prague, is perhaps anachronistic; and likewise
several composers associated with Boka Kotorska. Attempts to chart a music
history of Montenegro have been made by several writers, notably Miloje
Miloevi and Manja Radulovi-Vuli, and it is common for such authors to
refer to Iloja Lakei (190873) as the first Montenegrin symphonist (his

27Ramovi 2005.
494 chapter eighteen

symphony of 1952),28 and to list as Montenegrin the cantatas and ora-

torios of Borislav Tamindi, as also his Impresije sa izlobe [Impessions
from an exhibition] of 1975, and his Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra of
1978. The break-up of Yugoslavia removed whatever infrastructure was in
place for art music. A brief visit to Marko Rogosis office, that constitutes
the Composers Union, says everything.
As to Kosovo, it need hardly be said that the starting-point was late and
that progress has been slow. There were amateur choirs and orchestras,
and in 1948 the first music school was founded in Prizren, followed by an
elementary music school in Kosovska Mitrovica in 1954. In the 1960s there
was comparable institutional development in Pritina, including a Music
school and a music department in the principal teachers college. Then,
in 1969, the Association of Composers of Kosovo was established, and it
gained its independence from the Yugoslav Association in 1972. The Sym-
phony Orchestra of Radio-Television Pritina followed in 1974, and the fol-
lowing year a music department was established at the Academy of Arts.
As in Macedonia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the earliest composers
were all-round musicians such as Lorenc Antoni (190991), more active as
a folklorist than composer, and Redo Muli (192382), and the latter has
indeed produced extended symphonic works. But it was the generation
born in the 1930s that may be reckoned the first professionally trained
composers, including Esat Rizvanolli (b.1936), who composes in a neo-
classical idiom, and Fahri Beqiri (b.1937), who combines folk-based and
modern techniques. The next generation Zeqirja Balata (b.1943), Rafet
Rudi (b.1949) and Bashkim Shehu (b.1952), who is now in Croatia where
he organises the Istrian Pula Summer Festival explored more complex,
and in some cases (notably in works by Zeqirja Balata) genuinely avant-
garde, territory. But the future of art music in Kosovo, like the future of
Kosovo itself, remains an imponderable.

28Radovi 1998.
 CHAPTER NINETEEN

BIRTHRIGHT OF THE PEOPLE

Orchestras: Classicising Traditional Music

Long after the advent of nineteenth-century nationalisms, the music of

rural communities in South East Europe retained its innocence of nation-
hood. Even after traditional music had been appropriated by nationalist
causes, it retained its local meanings in situ until those meanings were
changed by social modernisation (the decline of ritual), and by the parallel
drift of rural populations to the towns. The timing of all this varied, but by
the mid twentieth century a determinate stage had been reached across
most of the Balkans, and from that point onwards there was a loss of inno-
cence. It was compounded by the imposition of an intellectual model of
idealised rural folk music along Soviet lines, a model that paradoxically,
given its socialist orientation reinforced the nineteenth-century associa-
tion of that culture with the nation, and further divorced it from ritual.
This amounted to the construction of a professional or semi-professional
genre of folk music on the ground of a traditional musical culture that
was simultaneously made the subject of extensive collection and inten-
sive study. While this model encouraged multiple regional musics, accom-
modating these within the framework of the nation, it was conspicuously
intolerant of the musics of ethnic minorities, which were deemed cultural
pollutants. Likewise, and for similar reasons, it was often dismissive of the
hybrid musics of the towns.
An industry of folk music collection, performance and scholarship
was established. Folklore archives were instituted or re-instituted for the
deposit and classification of existing collections and newly acquired prod-
ucts of field research, and to this end scholarly programmes were launched.
The tasks were twofold: to map out regional musics on a systematic basis,
and to arrive at theoretical principles for the description and classification
of those musics. Such scholarship was not just motivated by the directives
of state socialism. It continued pre-war scholarly themes, with important
research undertaken both at music academies and at research institutes.
Major teaching curricula were a valuable by-product, in the music acad-
emies and also, for at least some parts of the region, in music lyceums.
496 chapter nineteen

But there were of course political imperatives, and political agendas.

They were not entirely self-consistent. There was a general assumption
that the music of peasant communities was privileged and had greater
value than urban repertories. But at the same time there was a move to
re-contextualise this natural music, to render it applicable to the modern
urban world, and to create new institutions to support it.
A commitment to traditional music the birthright of the people
was axiomatic. But even as ethnomusicologists sought to preserve this
music, others worked to render it suitable for consumption by a wider
public. Hence the appearance of folk ensembles on the Soviet model (the
Moiseyev Ensemble), dedicated to the presentation of national music in
all its regional variants. These ensembles were established in the early
post-war years, and they ranged from professional state and radio orches-
tras down to innumerable semi-professional groups and the amateur
ensembles that were widely promoted in emulation of these.
The folk ensemble represented a meeting point between traditional
music in its natural setting and the ethos of the classical orchestra. On one
hand it was a mode of conservation, keeping alive endangered traditions.
But on the other hand it was a construction, a synthesis of characteristic
elements of the local style in question, presented with an eye to profes-
sional performance standards, and often orchestrated for an array of folk
instruments that would never have been found together in a single village.
Again, the picture was not black and white. Within the ensembles there
were studied attempts to reproduce authentic performance styles in a
spirit of revival, and here the greatest professional skill was necessary to
recover the performance styles of the least professionalised (most primi-
tive) practices. In this sense, the folk ensemble was a simulacrum, rather
as Baudrillard understood it. It simulated a reality that was not (or was
no longer) there.1
The modernist appropriation of traditional music its conversion into
folk music was also found in Greece in the Metaxas years and beyond.
And, as Ljerka V. Rasmussen demonstrates, it had also been present in
the first Yugoslavia, and in embryonic form all over the Balkans in the
nineteenth century.2 In other words, socialist realism does not provide
a complete explanation for the folklorism associated with the post-war
years. More general processes of modernisation and urbanisation were at

1 Baudrillard 1988.
2Rasmussen 2002, 1112.
 birthright of the people 497

work. And the context might be widened yet further in the post-war years,
establishing something of a divide between Eastern and Western Europe,
and perhaps a later convergence. Here the association of folklore with
the fascist regimes of the 1930s was all-important.3 The propaganda value
of folk music as a putative music of the masses had not been lost on the
Nazis, and there are predictable similarities between the folklorist proj-
ects of late 1930s Germany (in education, publishing and concert life) and
those of the post-war Communist states in Eastern Europe. Conversely, it
was precisely those associations with fascism that played to the general
tendency of Western Europe to reject traditional music after 1945, until in
due course it was re-invented in the 1960s and 1970s.4
All that said, it is not hard to see why folk music became all-important
within the Communist programme, harnessing processes of urbanisation
and modernisation to a larger enterprise of investment in but at the same
time re-fashioning of the folk. Folk music was thus institutionalised,
and the primary model was provided by the Soviet Union. The All-Union
Conferences held in Moscow in 1959 and 1960 formalised the develop-
ment of secondary ensembles in schools and factories, the institution of
regional and national competitions and festivals of song and dance, the
engagement of classically trained musicians as arrangers and composers,
and the instigation of programmes of research at the Academies. At one
extreme, there was careful scholarship into, and performance of, regional
traditions of folklore across the Union, and at the other extreme there
were song texts crudely transformed for blatant propaganda purposes.
Most important of all, this new folk culture redefined the folk, embracing
the modern proletariat as well as the rural peasantry.
The whole enterprise, riddled with contradictions, was very quickly
adopted by the satellite states. We might register some of the paradoxes
by reflecting on practices in Romania. An obvious starting-point is the
state-sponsored Institute of Folklore (later the Institute of Ethnology),
which was founded in 1949, with Harry Brauner as the driving force.5
The Institute took over the Arhiva de folklore of the Society of Roma-
nian Composers (originally established by Briloiu) and the rival Arhiva

3For a case study of this during the Metaxas regime in Greece, see Loutzaki 2008.
4See Randall 2005.
5See Marian-Blaa 2000. A year after becoming Director of the Institute in 1949,
Brauner was imprisoned, having been implicated in a show trial. He remained in custody
for fifteen years.
498 chapter nineteen

fonogramic (associated especially with George Breazul),6 and it became

in effect the guardian of traditional music in Romania, maintaining contact
with thousands of amateur singers and performers by way of regional offices
and houses of culture, and taking great care to preserve the many local char-
acteristics associated with the national musical heritage. Thus, in a spirit of
regional authenticity (cultivated in much the same way in Bulgaria) sing-
ers and ensembles were encouraged to perform only repertory from their
particular region, bearing in mind that regional differences were indeed
immense. Only in Bucharest was there a license to cross boundaries.
This same institute, along with the Ministry of Education, also played
its part in the professionalisation of traditional music and dance. Folklore
festivals and competitions were supported, promoting traditional music
and raising performance standards to a professional level, but inevitably
homogenising musical styles in the process. From 1976 onwards much of
this activity was gathered under the umbrella of the Cntarea Romniei
[Singing for Romania]. And in support of it talented amateur singers
(village lutari) would be singled out and educated at state-sponsored
music lyceums, where they would learn music notation and theory, and
at least two traditional instruments. By the 1980s there were around forty
such music lyceums and in excess of fifty folklore festivals, big and small,
across the country. Through the festivals in particular, the picturesque
stage peasant, imbued with an image of contentment that was mark-
edly at odds with the reality of peasant life, became a familiar figure in
Romania, for although authenticity might be cultivated on some levels
(costumes, dance steps, musical idioms), it was conspicuously eschewed
on other, more fundamental, levels.
It was in this context, and especially at the larger festivals promoted
nationwide within the Cntarea Romniei, that the folk orchestras and
dance troupes came into their own, presenting a model of an idealised,
progressive community. And by definition the musical arrangement was
central to the ensemble. The arrangement was designed to enrich, polish
and complexify to improve the original material, but of its nature it
also stylised that material. Rather oddly, it could simultaneously modernise
and classicise it. There were of course arrangements and arrangements.
They could be sophisticated and artistic, the products of highly skilled,
classically trained musicians, or they could be monuments to kitsch. The

6For a discussion of the politics of these two archives in the inter-war years, see Men-
geel 2007.
 birthright of the people 499

latter were especially apparent in later tourist-orientated, propagandist

stage shows of the 1970s and 1980s, whether exhibited on foreign tours or
presented at home. Official visitors to Bucharest in the 1980s could escape
the kitsch only with the greatest difficulty.
None of this was unique to Romania. Ensembles, and the arrangements
they promoted, were found all over the bloc. Like American Swing bands of
the 1930s, they demoted raw improvisation and encouraged intervention,
and in due course composition. Monophonic melodies were given chordal
accompaniments, counter melodies were added, and the whole was then
scored for larger forces. Vocal parts were likewise orchestrated, building
larger forms on a principle of textural contrast, with solos, ensembles and
choruses juxtaposed. And traditional folk dances were elaborately choreo-
graphed, transforming the village square into stage spectacle.
The leaders of the more eminent ensembles wielded considerable influ-
ence. Characteristically they were classically trained composers and serious
folklorists, such as ivko Firfov, the power behind the Macedonian State
Ensemble (Tanec), founded in 1948, and Philip Koutev, who established
its counterpart in Bulgaria in 1951; it would later become internationally
famous as the Koutev Ensemble. Each of the republics apart from Bosnia
and Herzegovina had an equivalent, state-supported, ensemble (in Serbia
it was Kolo, in Montenegro Oro, and in Croatia Lado), but actually the
folk orchestras proliferated. The Radio Sofia ensemble was no less famous
than the Koutev, and within a short time, as Timothy Rice put it, every
major town [in Bulgaria] had its own professional folk ensemble.7 Again
we can draw non-Communist Greece into the picture, with the activities
of the Dora Stratou Greek Dances Theatre.
Folk ensembles could be sited in the villages or in the cities. Ana Hof-
mans ethnographic study of Niko Polje in Serbia is enlightening on the
villages. In presenting historical backgrounds she looks at the explic-
itly educative Village Gatherings established by the Serbian Republic of
Yugoslavia in 1973, and specifically at the gender implications of the new
socialist policy.8 Village Gatherings might be located somewhere between
traditional music-making and professional ensembles. They were public
representations of traditional music and dance, and as such they make
useful case studies in the mediation of such binaries as official-unofficial
and public-private. Hofmans ethnography allows many subject positions

7Rice 2004, 64.

8Hofman 2010.
500 chapter nineteen

to be articulated, but they all support her central thesis about the empow-
erment of performance, and about how it has negotiated between old and
new female roles. Her book tells a fascinating story. Like Buchanans Per-
forming Democracy, it allows personal histories to break down pedigreed
accounts of socialist cultural norms.9 Moreover, in telling womens stories
Hofman is also telling mens stories. Here the relationship between the
performative and the everyday comes into sharpest focus, especially as we
move into the post-Communist era. There is a challenge to the old roles,
but not a definitive transformation.
As to the cities, the folk ensembles had a capacity mysteriously to unite
peasant culture and the urban workplace. As Beno Zupani reminds us,
some of the factories in parts of Yugoslavia were not just visited by pro-
fessional folklore troupes; they had their own KUD (Kulturno umjetniko
drutvo [Cultural-Artistic Society]) complete with folk ensembles.10 And
the same was true of Albania, where ensembles were established at Houses
of Culture all over the country, and amateur groups instituted at several of
the larger factories. Some of the best of these amateur ensembles achieved
international fame, and the propaganda value was exploited to the full. The
most prestigious platform was the National Folklore Festival that took place
in Gjirokastr from 1968 onwards. It was a five-yearly event, but it generated
an industry of folklorism by way of preparatory local festivals and competi-
tions. Moreover, like comparable festivals elsewhere (the equivalent in Bul-
garia is at Koprivstitsa), Gjirokastr not only promoted Albanian traditional
music, but identified what might and might not be regarded as such. Reli-
gious songs were out, and so was the oriental-influenced ahengu shkodran.
Even the lyrics of well-known traditional songs were subject to purifica-
tion, all in the service of the new man, the peasant-worker beloved of
socialist realism. The usual prizes were awarded, and the entire event was
recorded and transmitted by the State Broadcasting Corporation.
Earlier I noted some parallels of function, not of style between folk
orchestras and American Swing bands. Those parallels might be extended.
Just as the Big Bands of the 1930s fostered solo virtuosity (as opposed to
group improvisation), so the new folk ensembles in Eastern Europe pro-
moted the professional folk soloist, whose artistry and virtuosity might
be projected against a uniform orchestral backcloth. Star soloists could

9Buchanan 2006.
10Zupani discusses in particular the Alat factory of Trebinje in a heavily ideological
reading. See Zupani 1976, 8691.
 birthright of the people 501

be of either gender, though interestingly, and despite official communist

doctrine on the subject, other roles were often gendered in traditional
ways, with accompanying instrumental ensembles male, choruses female
and dance troupes of mixed gender. Recordings of high-profile solo artists
accompanied by folk orchestra soon became a staple of recording compa-
nies such as Balkanton in Bulgaria and Jugoton in Yugoslavia, and these
artists were further promoted by the music channels on national radios.
It would be hard to overestimate the importance of radio as an active
shaping force in this whole development. It was the obvious means of dis-
semination for the new folk culture, and for that reason it was especially
subject to political control and remained conservative in orientation. But
more than that, it was thanks to the ambience and professional ethos of
radio that solo performers acquired, and were expected to acquire, pol-
ish and sophistication. The wheels of this development were already in
motion in the pre-war years. It was thanks to radio, for example, that one
of the first stars of folk music in Eastern Europe first came to national,
and then to international, attention.
For this story we need to return to Romania. In February 1937 Maria
Tnase (191363), then a waitress and family-taught amateur musician,
became an overnight sensation when she made her radio debut with a
programme of Romanian folk songs. Soon she had the attention of leading
composers, including Theodore Rogalski and Enescu himself, and in due
course she was given a weekly spot on radio. Her fame quickly spread,
leading to recording engagements and extensive tours, and culminating
in her appearance at the Romanian Pavilion of the World Fair in New
York in 1939. Together with Enescu and others, Tnase spent the war years
performing at camps and hospitals, but in the immediate post-war years
she was taken up by the regime, given employment at the newly estab-
lished folksong department of the Music Academy, and engaged to sing
with local ensembles all over the country. With her own ensemble Taraful
Gorjului (The Gorj Folk Ensemble), she also made numerous tours over-
seas. At the time of her early death in 1963, Tnase was a household name
in Romania, almost a national icon, and her body lay in state for several
days in Bucharest. She remains to this day a potent symbol of the ethos
of professionalism and commercialism that began to invade traditional
music with the advent of Communism.
It was likewise a radio competition that launched the career of Tnases
younger compatriot Ioana Radu. But by then celebrity folk artists had
begun to emerge all over South East Europe. The subsequent direction was
twofold. There was a classical orientation, where leading singers would
502 chapter nineteen

perform with the more prestigious ensembles, continuing the tradition

of arrangements established by Koutev and others during the 1950s. And
there was a more popular orientation that began to take shape in Yugosla-
via in the 1960s. This was associated with singers such as the Serb Predrag
Gojkovi Cune, with a prestigious line-up of Sevdah singers performing on
Radio-Television Sarajevo (Safet Isovi, Zaim Imamovi and many others),
and with Rom singers such as Esme Redepova and aban Bajramovi.
The local recording industry helped promote such artists, anticipating
in some ways Yugoslavias increasing absorption of elements previously
othered. And records also helped create a large audience for the new
folk stars among the expatriate communities of Yugoslav guest workers
abroad, especially as repertories swerved in the direction of popular music.
That swerve in turn indicated a growing disenchantment with the ethos of
the classical arrangement and of folklorism generally. The ensembles lost
ground to smaller, earthier combinations, derived in the main from urban
traditions. The most characteristic product was the newly composed folk
music that dominated the 1970s and 1980s in Yugoslavia.
I will consider that development shortly. But first I will return to the
folk orchestras, which resisted change and maintained their traditions
alongside these more popular idioms in the later stages of the Com-
munist era. That they were increasingly at the mercy of political vicis-
situdes emerges more clearly from the researches of visiting scholars than
from native accounts. By the 1980s ethnomusicologists from abroad had
become a fixture in South East Europe, and their agendas were often at
variance with those of local researchers. There were two main differences.
First, the visitors interested themselves in ethnic and religious minorities,
including Roma, who were either marginalised by, or assimilated within,
the official narratives of music history. To be fair, not all native schol-
ars conformed to the official position; witness Sperana Rdulescu, who
worked on Rom musics from a very early stage. But it was above all visi-
tors from Germany (Rudolf Brandl) and North America (Carol Silverman)
who made these musics their central focus, the former working in Greece,
the latter mainly in Macedonia. It has only been relatively recently that
minoritarian studies have blossomed in the native ethnomusicologies of
South East Europe.11
The second major difference was in ethnographic approach. North
American scholars in particular brought a less positivistic and more self-

11See, for example, Ceribai and Haskell 2006.

 birthright of the people 503

reflective perspective to their fieldwork, attempting to draw the observer

into the hermeneutic circle. For some reason, Bulgaria proved an espe-
cially happy hunting ground. Timothy Rice blazed a trail, and Donna
Buchanan followed.12 Her magisterial study, Performing Democracies, has
direct relevance to our narrative, based as it is on years of fieldwork with
the musicians of the Koutev and Radio Ensembles. The ethnography (and
the history) is multi-voiced in this book. The voices of informants emerge
through countless quotations and paraphrases woven into the texture of
the book, their memories, observations and impressions creating intrigu-
ing counterpoints with Buchanans voice. We hear from the appropriated
and the appropriators, and in many cases the effect is to mediate such
over-simple binaries. This is the value of the study, and of the approach.
It cuts through reductive descriptive categories to record the lived experi-
ence of musicians in a period of profound political and social change. In
other words, we glimpse something of the backstage world of an institu-
tion that has been assigned a monolithic meaning, and in doing so we
glimpse too those complicated and intimate places in which real people
work out their lives.

Newly Composed Folk Music

In September 2003 I joined several thousand others on a trek to the Olym-

pic Stadium in Sarajevo to hear a concert given by the popular Bosnian
singer Halid Beli. Beli had emerged in the 1980s as a cult figure of so-
called novokomponovana narodna muzika [newly composed folk music],
when that genre was in its heyday. At the time of the Sarajevo concert he
was a household name, well known as a narodnjak not just in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, but in Belgrade too, and in Macedonia. My companions on
that occasion described several of the songs as sevdalinkas, though this
title had come to be used so permissively by then that it seemed almost
meaningless. Others were Rom songs popular across the Balkans. All were
well known by an audience that cut across generational divides, though
it was predominantly young. The body language of the fans, a swaying
motion with semi-raised arms, was conspicuous. It is as familiar in South
East Europe today as in the Middle East, and it points to the oriental
surge that was a feature of this genre. Even for one unfamiliar with the

12Rice 1994 and 2004; Buchanan 2006.

504 chapter nineteen

music, it was clear that a particular space had been carved out by drawing
together elements of narodna [folk] music, zabavna [popular] music, and
orientalna [oriental] music. As to the language of the songs, Beli and
others insisted on staying with local vernaculars, even in the recording
studios.
In tracking the early history of newly composed folk music, Ljerka V.
Rasmussen refers to a major conceptual shift occurring in the 1960s, as
the arranger gave way to the auteur.13 One practical but important
point here is that with this shift the music fell under copyright laws, but
Rasmussen had in mind changes of much wider cultural significance.
She tells the story of Sarajevo-based songwriter Damjan Babi, not just
because he was a leading player, but because his career throws light on
the institutions that determined the success or failure of newly composed
folk music: the radio, the festival and the record companies. Negotiating
with these institutions was far from easy. We learn that Babi left the
record company Diskoton when it refused to sign up Goran Bregovis
Bijelo dugme, and that the conservatism of Radio-Television Sarajevo
forced him to establish an independent studio in the city. We witness the
treacherous path he steered between the demands of radio editors for a
more classical approach to folk music (one that retained some contact with
its original spirit) and the no less strident demands of a popular music
industry increasingly tied to the commercial marketplace. The balance of
interests was between what Rasmussen calls the significance of zabavna
music in providing the environment for this musics early development,
and an organised attempt at the creation of Yugoslav song within the
early festival context.14
Rasmussens account of these events exposes the workings of the cul-
ture industry in Communist Yugoslavia, bearing in mind that, as she had
already pointed out in an earlier essay on Juni vetar [Southern Wind],15
the particular model of self governing socialism cultivated there allowed
a robust, semi-privatised popular (but not unified) music market to
emerge at a much earlier stage than elsewhere in Eastern Europe. We
learn from her study something of the difficulties faced by musicians
as they negotiated much the same tricky path as Damjan Babi, a path
that led, broadly speaking, from folkloric to popular music environments.

13Rasmussen 2002.
14Ibid.
15Rasmussen 1996.
 birthright of the people 505

There were market-led pressures to move beyond the static prescriptions

for folk music created in the post-war years, and to that extent neo-folk
began to represent an alternative to official folklorism even as it built
upon its foundations.
We may ask why neo-folk developed in the first place, why it occurred
just when and where it did, and what deeper needs it met. These questions
have been addressed by several authors dealing with pop-folk, including
Sanja Raljevi who looks specifically at the development of the genre in
Bosnia and Herzegovina.16 Raljevi attempts a broad social, and even psy-
chological, profiling of the publics who made up its audience. Like sev-
eral others, she locates the major social cause not just in urbanisation but
in (r)urbanisation, by which she means the ruralising of urban culture
by those who have moved to the towns but find themselves unable to
adapt; these were the so-called primitivci [primitives], supplemented by
returning gastarbajteri, who made up much of the audience for neo-folk.17
Raljevi then sets this model alongside the more familiar escapist nar-
ratives associated with urban poverty, poor education and mass culture,
including the emergence of star singers, and of kitsch lyrics.
The oriental elements associated with neo-folk might also be under-
stood in these terms, their oneiric or seductive qualities again translating
into modes of escapist fantasy, even if the fantasy has a distinctly local
provenance, and is for that very reason subject to political censure. As
Mia urkovi demonstrates by looking at three very different periods of
music history in Serbia, oriental elements have always invited the same
criticism, and even the same critical language, in this part of Europe.18 In
other words, the censure was not just a product of the Communist years.
Again it would be pertinent to refer to similar developments in Greece, and
it would be possible also to cite the oriental character of oek, whether
Romani or non-Romani.19 The oriental model associated with Juni vetar
and soon found all over the Balkans became a source of controversy in the
1980s, a controversy discussed in some detail by Rasmussen and related by
her to similar debates yet further east in Turkey and Israel. What always
seemed to be at stake in such debates was how far such elements might be

16In her thesis, and in Raljevi 2003.

17The distinction is elaborated in Gordy 1999; see especially 106, and (for the social
breakdown this can cause) 197. Similar arguments have been advanced for the rise of
Turkish arabesk, whose heyday was in the 1980s. See Stokes 1992, 810.
18urkovi 2004.
19Silverman 2008.
506 chapter nineteen

understood to be a legitimate part of the native heritage, as distinct from

foreign imports grafted onto, and threatening the integrity of, that heri-
tage. We are back to one of the grand narratives outlined in chapter 6.
Just what actually constituted oriental elements musically is another
question, and not a straightforward one. In tracing the development of
newly composed folk music from its origins in westernised and classicised
folk arrangements to the folk-oriental idiom of the late 1980s, Rasmus-
sen distinguishes several regional elements, including Bosnian sevdalinka,
Serbian dvojka and Macedonian rhythms, and relates them to particular
streams within the developing genre, centred above all on Sarajevo and
Belgrade. Singers such as Hanka Paldum and Miroslav Ili are then con-
sidered in relation to these streams. She further discusses the impact of
popular music in the 1980s, epitomised in neo-folk by singers such as the
legendary Lepa Brena, the singer most often credited (or debited) with
instigating what would become known as turbo-folk, and she goes on to
discuss the self-consciously oriental stream associated with Juni vetar.20
Rather as with Greek paradhosiaka, complex issues of identity seem
to have been working themselves out through these oriental elements;
for obvious reasons the picture is very different in Serbia and Bosnia and
Herzegovina, for example. It is tempting to understand such elements
as a way of controlling an alien Ottoman inheritance (commanding it,
we might say); or even as a way of inscribing that inheritance into Balkan
identities. But their constitution (extending into commercially encoded and
essentially western stylisations of Arab, Iranian and even Indian traditions)
suggests that at least in some cases more conventionally orientalist glam-
orising, othering or self-exoticising modes may also have been at work.21
In any case, the fact that evaluations of this Slavonic-oriental repertory
typically denigrating it in relation to western pop and rock have tended
to draw on the familiar critical terms outlined by urkovi is perhaps less
surprising than the obvious enthusiasm for it at the grassroots.
The New Wave that swept over popular culture in Yugoslavia in the
late 1970s and early 1980s did not exempt neo-folk. As applied to neo-folk,
it signalled an attempt to bring this genre into the modern world, not
least by blending it with global popular music genres. There was no doubt
an attempt here to adjust the scales and to transfer to newly composed

20See Kurkela 2007 for Bulgarian contexts; also Lipsitz 1997, though here the focus is
not on the Balkans.
21There is an interesting discussion of this in relation to Balkan cinema in Iordanova
2001.
 birthright of the people 507

folk music, typically perceived as culturally regressive, and still stereo-

typically associated with rural, (r)urban or migr traditions, something
of the prestige associated with a more internationalist rock and popular
music scene. In the case of neo-folk there was a tension not just between
an official culture (folklorism) and a mass culture (neo-folk), but between
a superior mass culture designed for urbanites (rock) and an inferior
mass culture designed for (r)urbanites (neo-folk).
This tension further accentuated a dichotomy that had been a feature
of neo-folk from the start. On one hand it indicated the local through its
reference to traditional music, which connoted certain social imaginaries
through culturally recognised signs, and also (though this is more prob-
lematic) to indigenous oriental elements. On the other hand it pointed to
a global popular music scene, and allowed the music to be absorbed by
the marketing apparatus associated with that scene. There is a difficult
balance to strike here, as from the former perspective the genre could
appear a caricature of certain idealised origins, while from the latter
perspective it could seem parasitic and eclectic, feeding uncritically off
shifting trends in contemporary popular music worldwide. All that said,
the product was always a singular one. Even when it engaged explicitly
with a succession of western genres, from disco through dance to hip-
hop, there was always a local spin placed on the performance conventions
associated with those genres. Neo-folk, after all, was first and foremost a
form of commercial popular music.
The most famous of the bands was Goran Bregovis Bijelo dugme
[White Button], established in 1974 in Sarajevo, and soon immensely
popular all over Yugoslavia. Indeed to pigeon-hole Bijelo dugme as neo-
folk is hardly adequate. The band redefined itself on several occasions,
but its broad strategy was to refer to indigenous musics within the overall
framework of a rock idiom. That it was situated in Sarajevo was significant.
The Bosnian capital was a site of remarkable creative energy in popular
music, right up to the Yugoslav wars. It has become conventional to speak
of a Sarajevo pop-rock school, and Bijelo dugme was a leading part of
this. When it disbanded at the end of the decade, it was in the context
of a political extremism that forced responses in all directions in popular
culture in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bregovi was increasingly associated
with Emir Kusturica from this point onwards, and the subsequent direc-
tion of both men sometimes understood as a kind of politicised Balkan
essentialism, involving Rom appropriations and pastiche in both music
and film, and associated with Kusturicas move to Serbia has not been
well received in some quarters in Bosnia and Herzegovina (in the case of
508 chapter nineteen

Kusturica that puts it mildly). But in its heyday Bijelo dugme responded
to the changing fashions of a global popular culture. And in that respect
the band belonged within a much wider set of local-global dialogues that
took place in the late 1970s and 1980s.
If modernised neo-folk music formed one pole in Yugoslav popular cul-
ture at this time, the other pole was a thriving rock scene, linked to the
West, and implicitly or explicitly critical of state socialism, though the
politics of Yugoslav rock could look in several directions.22 It oversim-
plifies the picture to suggest that the former was associated with Serbia-
Bosnia-Macedonia, and the latter with Croatia-Slovenia. Croatia had its
own internal east, for example, and neo-folk thrived in the caf culture
of the cities even when blacklisted by official media channels. Conversely,
Yugo-rock was cultivated in Belgrade and Sarajevo as much as in Zagreb
and Ljubljana. There was indeed a pre-history to this attempt to create a
vibrant urban popular culture in the late 1970s. Already in the late 1960s,
initially in the teeth of opposition from Tito, a countercultural rock scene
had developed (Grupa 220 in Croatia, YU Grupa in Serbia, and the cover
band Kodeksi in Sarajevo). YU Grupa in particular cultivated a Balkan
rock sound, whose folk-orientation served to emphasise that the space
between this world and neo-folk was as much about rhetoric as style. This
is not to say that the space did not exist. What constituted it was the over-
all framework of the idiom, distinguishing rock with elements of folk from
neo-folk with elements of rock.23
The initial impulse for New Wave punk-rock came from Zagreb in
1977, associated with the caf-pubs Zvecka, Blato and Kavkaz (and later
the club Kului), and heavily promoted by the influential socialist youth
paper Polet [Enthusiasm]. Among the key bands were Paljavo kazalite
[Dirty Theatre], Pankrti [Bastards] (from Slovenia), and Patrola, but most
influential of all were the two incarnations of Azra, with its front man Bra-
nimir (Johnny) tuli (the break-up of the first Azra gave rise to another
influential band Film, led by Jura Stubli). Following the death of Tito there
was a second wave, this time including bands from Belgrade, such as arlo
Akrobata [Charlie Chaplin], Idoli [Idols] and Elektrini orgazam [Electric
Orgasm], associated with the Student Cultural Centre and brought to
wider notice by the Three Days of Young Slav Culture held in Belgrade

22For an account of the rise and fall of Yugo-Rock, see the chapter Rock Music in
Ramet 1996.
23Ibid.
 birthright of the people 509

in 1980. The Serbian bands were later joined by Bora orevis Riblja
orba [Fish Chowder], whose inflammatory lyrics led them into a long
series of conflicts with the censors on both ethical and political grounds.
Then, in the early 1980s, there was increasing dialogue between Zagreb
and Belgrade, now involving more recent bands such as Darko Rundeks
art-rock group Haustor [Stairway] from Zagreb. The major festival held
in Subotica (begun way back in the 1960s) was instrumental in bringing
leading Croatian and Serbian bands together.
1981 has been regarded by some of the key protagonists as the high
point of this New Wave, with leading bands such as Paljavo kazalite
and Azra migrating from the clubs to the bigger halls, selling more and
more records, and smartening up their image at the same time. In exam-
ining this rock culture, it can be challenging to spell out the succession
of genres and sub-genres. Generic distinctions are often hard to draw in
purely musical (as distinct from more general music-dance-behavioral)
terms with such repertories; a performer in Paljavo kazalite remarked
that the band became punk more-or-less by accident, as they tried
unsuccessfully to imitate The Rolling Stones. In any event, the active punk
movement associated with the New Wave soon spread all over Yugosla-
via. And again it may be worth singling out Sarajevo, since the punk bands
there were something of an inspiration to the influential new primitive
movement that emerged in the 1980s, contributing a distinctive brand of
satirical neo-Zenitism to the mosaic of popular culture. The best known
of the bands here was Zabranjeno puenje [Smoking Forbidden], with a
later incarnation to which Kusturica would become attached for a time.
Zabranjeno puenje cultivated a deliberately insular Balkanism that
played on familiar stereotypes, spiced by parodic, almost Pythonesque,
elements.
We didnt hear the roar coming from afar, claimed one performer,
referring to political rumblings in Kosovo and Poland in the early eight-
ies. Even those New Wave bands that thought of themselves as counter-
cultural but apolitical in impulse (in interviews with Igor Mirkovi, some
spoke of their inclination to create a private universe of rock),24 were
unable to insulate themselves from impinging political realities. Leading
players have discussed the effects of new financial stringencies (the power
cuts, the petrol shortages, the rising foreign debt) that affected Zagreb

24Mirkovis comment comes from his rockumentary film Sretno Dijete, which will be
discussed in chapter 23.
510 chapter nineteen

and Belgrade from 1982 onwards, together with the increasing roar from
Kosovo. Zona sumraka [The Twilight Zone] by Film, with its obvious
double meanings, seemed to mark this change of tone. And it inaugu-
rated something of a new period, during which some bands became more
establishment-orientated while others became increasingly disillusioned,
sensing that the dream had been shattered. Already in the eighties the
exodus began, notably when the most socially aware of all the New Wave
artists, Johnny tuli, left Zagreb in 1990. Others following in due course,
and today the New Wave heroes are scattered far and wide.
The face of popular music was beginning to change in other ways.
While bands such as Bijelo dugme and Riblja orba continued to attract
huge audiences through the 1980s, alternative movements from the West
were beginning to glimmer in the local discos. First there was a grow-
ing awareness of rap and hip-hop subcultures. These had the potential to
foster feelings of social and political disadvantage, but they could equally
carry the sense of a faddish interest in the most recent western trends. It is
widely recognised that global rap could take on many different meanings
according to context, and it seems likely that its meanings in Yugoslavia in
the 1980s had less to do with its origins in black urban ghettos than with
media-mediated images of a stereotyped gangsta paradise.
It was mainly in the late 1980s that homemade varieties made their
appearance. First there were musicians such as the Montenegrin Rambo
Amadeus, whose early albums combined rap and pop-folk, but whose
parodic play on styles became increasingly anti-establishment and politi-
cally activist with the outbreak of war. Secondly, and in sharp contrast,
there was a self-consciously sophisticated countercultural avant-garde,
often incorporating elements of classical music, and best represented
by the elite and controversial Slovenian group Laibach, whose subver-
sive political satire has proved to be notoriously open to misreading as
fascistic.25 If neo-folk represented the most inward-looking tendencies
of Yugoslav popular culture, increasingly appropriated by hard-line eth-
nonationalist politics, then Laibach was among the most outward-looking
bands. This was a blatantly cosmopolitan Balkan critique that came from
within but as though from without.
We might take these positions to represent nationalist-conservative and
cosmopolitan-modernist idioms respectively. It is tempting to draw paral-

25Sabrina Ramets reading of this group misses some of the play of meanings (Ramet
1996, 1024).
 birthright of the people 511

lels with the debates that took place in art music half a century earlier in the
first Yugoslavia, addressed of course to a rather different taste public. And as
with those earlier debates, the categories might be refined. Along the spec-
trum separating nationalist-conservative and cosmopolitan-modernist we
might place nationalist-modernist and cosmopolitan-conservative. All four
positions were represented by composers in the thirties and bands in the
eighties, though it goes without saying that the categories are not water-
tight. And the parallel might be extended. The debates of the inter-war
period we noted the exchanges between Dobroni and Osterc in Zvuk
were brutally overtaken by events (the outbreak of war), at which point
there was a sharp polarisation of cultures. And when a polity finally inter-
vened, it was the nationalist orientation that held sway. What effectively
happened under state socialism was that alternatives were removed; they
were squeezed out. Compare the late 1980s in popular music, where there
was a similar polarisation of pop-folk and pop-rock, and where again it
was all blown apart by the outbreak of war.
When war finally came, it threw everything into the melting pot, styles
and taste publics alike. Even traditional folk instruments, such as the gusle
and the tamburica, came to assume symbolic values in this political context
(as noted in an earlier chapter), and especially when allied to popular
music genres. Here folk and pop fused in a blatantly ideological manner.
Many of the established groups disbanded at this time. Bijelo dugme had
the highest profile, but the case of Riblja orba was perhaps more repre-
sentative. First they decided to disband; then they revoked the decision.
Finally, in the 1990s, they were victims of the increasingly polarised atti-
tudes that inevitably accompanied the wars, as Bora orevis support
for Arkan and for the Serbian action in Bosnia and Herzegovina (though
he was no fan of Miloevi) and his collaboration with the nationalist
turbo-folk singer Baja Mali Kninda lost him a fan base in key quarters. It
was characteristic of the separating power bases associated with these twi-
light years of the second Yugoslavia. And in this polarised context it was
of course the nationalist orientation that rode high under official politi-
cal prescription, a process documented by Eric D. Gordy precisely in the
terms of a destruction of alternatives, and not just musical alternatives.26
Gordy tells us how the rock culture enabled by the liberal version
of Communism found in Yugoslavia was pushed to the margins under
Miloevi, though he may exaggerate the extent to which the dictator was

26Gordy 1999. See also Hudson 2007.

512 chapter nineteen

directly in control of such events. Belgrade rock increasingly narrowed

the cultural space available to it by explicitly critiquing the association of
neo-folk with the regime, and thus allowing itself to become ghettoised.
It cultivated more explicitly, in short, the critical voice that was implicit
in this genre under state socialism. The whole process, associated with
the independent radio station B-92, was also described (more anecdotally
and with a good deal less balance) in Matthew Collins book This is Serbia
Calling.27 Put over-simply, Gordy and Collin show that the disintegration
of the market for a subversive rock culture was directly correlated to the
rise of a legitimising and affirmative turbo-folk music, a music that was
endlessly promoted by state-controlled media such as TV Pink and TV
Palma. In this way, the Miloevi regime operated a propaganda machine
that entered into private and leisure space, blocking out alternatives. It
would become a case study in the uses and abuses of power, in whose
service media technologies were all-important.
While he does not articulate it in quite these terms, Gordy reveals to
us that the engagement between popular music and politics could take
multiple forms. For one, music could function as an unknowing index of,
or product of, social and political change. The development of newly com-
posed folk music out of a particular kind of social disadvantage, whether
among the primitivci or the gastarbajteri, was of that order. For another,
music could be subject to political appropriation. Here we would note the
hijacking of traditional music by the Communist regime and of neo-folk
and later turbo-folk by ethnonationalist agendas, not just by the Miloevi
regime, but in a very different way by some Muslim groups in Bosnia and
Herzegovina.28 Music could also act as an active agent of political sub-
version in the last days of Communism, in some cases exerting a power-
ful sub- or counter-cultural charge. Some Rom repertories acquired these
connotations as early as the 1970s, but in the late 1980s rock bands such
as Riblja orba likewise qualified. And conversely, music in some cases
the very same bands (Riblja orba is a case in point) could function as
propaganda for a militant, celebratory ethnonationalism, as with some of
the explicit pro-war messages articulated by Serbian and Croatian artists
alike in the early 1990s.

27Collin 2001.
28Hogg 2004.
 birthright of the people 513

Simulacra: Wedding Music and More

The combination of a semi-privatised recording industry and a relatively

liberal version of state socialism enabled a popular music industry to
develop in Yugoslavia earlier than elsewhere in Communist South East
Europe. Western-influenced rock and pop music may have embodied
counter-cultural values (it was of its nature contra the status quo in a
Communist state), but it was at least performed in the major Yugoslav
capitals. Matters were rather different in Romania and Bulgaria, to say
nothing of Albania. These countries were subject to more stringent politi-
cal constraints, and the familiar socialist-realist position on western and
western-influenced popular culture was accordingly rigorously enforced.
It was thus much more difficult for Western rock to establish itself as a
model of dissent.
There was, however, a yet greater enemy. The authorities in Romania
and Bulgaria reserved most of their fire power for genres and perfor-
mance styles that connoted the East, and that meant not just Turkish
and Rom, but also Greek and Serbian, popular music. Mono-ethnicity was
a key component of political philosophy in these states. There was an
expectation that all expressions of culture should be purely Bulgarian
or purely Romanian, an expectation that was formalised by Ceauescus
so-called July Theses of 1971, and a decade later by massive campaigns
of re-nationalisation in Bulgaria. Both states were concerned about the
political aspirations of their ethnic minority populations, especially Turks
and Roma, and both engaged in draconian methods of suppression, from
expulsion to forced assimilation. In Bulgaria that included the Bulgarising
of Turkish or Romani names.
Music was not immune from these campaigns. It was obvious to the
political authorities that little could be done to curtail Rom music-mak-
ing, given the ubiquity of the practice. But the leading musicians and their
bands were subject to close political control. They were expected to per-
form only what was officially acknowledged to be native folk music, and
to avoid the oriental idioms that had developed out of earlier traditions
of Ottoman-influenced urban popular music. Those traditions included
algiya and muzica lutreasc, as well as the orientalised songs known
as manele in Romania, a kind of Romanian equivalent to sevdalinkas
in Bosnia and Serbia or amanedes in Greece. The official view of these
oriental idioms was that they were culturally regressive, and they were
accordingly banned from official public platforms, including media chan-
nels. But there were limits to the control that could be exerted over live
514 chapter nineteen

performances, especially privately commissioned performances for occa-

sions such as weddings. By the 1970s ethnic repertories and performance
styles were very much alive and well at unofficial performance sites where
Roma musicians were employed. And precisely because of the political
constraints, this music began to acquire a subversive political edge.
Wedding music, in which Rom musicians played a leading role, emerged
as important in Bulgaria at this time, acquiring the status of a high-kudos
mass-cultural genre. Based on reformulations of a algiya idiom, it became
the model of an alternative culture, a voice of dissent not just for ethnic
minorities but also for a larger youth movement. Articulated mainly in
live performance and through privately circulated cassettes, this voice was
necessarily moderated when the svatbarski orkestri [wedding orchestras]
assumed the more public roles that inevitably accompanied their growing
fame. On such occasions they were obliged to perform what was deemed
to be an unpolluted Bulgarian repertory. A classic case in point concerned
the major star of wedding music, and in many ways its pioneer, Ivo Papa-
zov. In his comments on Papazov, Timothy Rice demonstrates that he had
to tread a fine line between subversion and acquiescence.29 It is clear that
the real issue for the authorities was how they might manage to contain
a figure like Papazov, and the repertory and performance style associated
with him. Certainly by the late 1980s he had achieved an iconic status in
Bulgarian music, and he retains that status even today, as a glance through
the record stores of Sofia quickly indicates. Yet questions arise about the
changing significance of his music, and of svatbarska muzika in general.
As wedding music was absorbed by a developing popular culture indus-
try in Bulgaria, it began to lose something of its critical edge. Indeed in the
closing years of the Communist era it became increasingly difficult (at least
for a non-expert like myself) to separate out wedding music from other
forms of popular music with a basis in folk and oriental music. Generic
borders were blurred, with influences registered not only from western pop
and rock, but from neighbouring Balkan cultures, including the Yugoslav
neo-folk that could be heard on Serbian radio stations and through a black
market in pirate cassettes. It was from this alloy that pop-folk, later to be
known as chalga, was forged in Bulgaria. The label chalga signals a dis-
tant derivation from algiya, but the musical idiom was really more like a
Bulgarian-Macedonian variant of turbo-folk. The point to make here is
that although chalga was really only properly established in the 1990s,

29Rice 2004, 702.

 birthright of the people 515

musical tastes were already receptive to the idiom, given the extensive
contact with Rom musics, and with the new ethno-pop styles coming from
Serbia, Greece and Turkey. And it goes without saying that the association
of these repertories with cultural decay with a decadent East rather than
a progressive and stable Europe was already well grounded.
A similar story might be told of Romania. Again there was Romani
music, including manele, which retained points of contact with the older
lutar traditions, and was circulated largely through private performances
and on cassettes. Again it was considered subversive by the authorities
and was given no real access to official media. And again there was influ-
ence from neighbouring cultures. As Margaret Beissinger points out,
Bulgarian svatbarska muzika crossed the southern border freely, just as
Serbian neo-folk idioms made their way to Banat, where Serbian musi-
cians commonly performed at weddings, and from there to the rest of the
country (they were also disseminated through foreign radio channels).30
Beissinger also points out that in Timioara underground tapes of lutar
music, somewhat on the model of Serbian neo-folk, were produced in pri-
vate studios and then sold on the black market. And she comments on the
names assigned to these pop-folk repertories. For a time the generic term
muzic srbeas (Serbian Music) was used to describe the kind of ethno-
pop that was heard more and more commonly, but always unofficially, in
Romania. Then, in its subsequent (mainly post-Communist) crystallisa-
tion, the Romanian species of pop-folk was known as muzica oriental;
and eventually the older term manele was adopted. Like its counterpart
in Bulgaria, this title announces a particular historical genealogy and a
particular range of associations.
The larger message is that Yugoslav neo-folk became popular across
much of the Balkans in the 1980s, even before separate indigenous genres
emerged in Romania, Bulgaria and Albania. And there were similar devel-
opments in Greece, despite the different political context (see chapter
20), suggesting that much deeper questions of identity were raised by this
repertory. In the Communist world, the ascendancy of pop-folk registered
a shift in the political significance of popular music. It is hard to see pop-
folk as a counter-cultural movement of the kind represented by svatbar-
ska muzika in the 1970s, for example. Indeed it came to take on a range
of very different meanings in the late Communist world, many of them
unrelated to the political system as such, and for that reason capable of

30Beissinger 2007.
516 chapter nineteen

outliving it. Most typically, it was regarded as trashy and tasteless. This
was certainly the view of those who were keen to reinforce links with the
West. So as the European Union beckoned in a post-Communist world,
pop-folk was associated by some with a rural, backward culture, by others
with a decadent, permissive and eastern culture, and by yet others as a
symbol of strengthening ethnonationalist aspirations. Later I will exam-
ine why such different political positions could be inscribed in this genre.
But one part of the answer might well be broached here by looking at the
changing status of folk music more generally.
It is interesting to reflect on how two major categories, art music and
popular music, appropriated, hosted, or alternatively rejected, a third cat-
egory, folk music, across Communist South East Europe. There are two
evolving histories here, and they might be presented as follows. Within art
music there were three principal stages. The hosted folk ingredient was de
rigueur in the immediate post-war years. It was an officially sanctioned
even imposed marker of both national and (idealised) class identities.
The second stage saw the rejection or squeezing out of folk music under
a modernist imperative, signalling a form of progress, an alignment to
the Western world, and with that a certain loss of locality. The third stage
(at least for a significant number of composers) reinstated folk music in
the very different form of a poeticised archaism in the renewed quest for
local (Balkan) identities. The trajectory followed by popular music corre-
sponded very roughly to the second and third of these three stages. Thus
the folk element was initially absent from what was a subversive music in
this political context. But in due course it began to inflect internationalist
pop-rock idioms, and again the impulse seems to have been a perceived
need to foreground local identities within a global culture.
What, though, of our third category, folk music itself, considered this
time as a host rather than a guest genre? Here we might trace a process of
generic mixing, as this category opened itself to influences from the other
two categories in turn. The two stages by which this occurred have already
been outlined. In the first stage traditional music, with clear ritual mean-
ings related to the calendar, was translated to the world of folk orchestras,
concert stages and folk festivals. The translation involved the addition of
European harmony, and along with that came negotiations with Western
(equal) temperament and the introduction of some manufactured Euro-
pean instruments to the folk ensemble. The second stage was marked by
a much more obvious engagement with the world of commercial show
business, including electronic instrumentation, big sound systems, and
the performance conventions and characteristic idioms associated with a
 birthright of the people 517

whole succession of genres of western popular music. The general direc-

tion here was towards smaller bands, star soloists and marketing strate-
gies that belonged to a privatised popular music industry.
Earlier in this chapter I briefly referred to Jean Baudrillard. There is,
I believe, some value in relating these two transformations of folk music
to the second and third orders proposed by Baudrillard in his theory of
simulacra.31 Thus the Soviet-style folk orchestras that were found all over
this region in the early Communist years might be understood as a kind
of displacement of meaning. Recognisable symbols stood for, but at the
same time served to occlude, original meanings. The reality represented
by a particular system of signs was displaced in effect by an image based
on the same system on what Baudrillard called a principle of equiva-
lence. It was not a new reality, but an image standing for the old reality.
It was recognisable as artificial, but we were asked to believe nonetheless
that the artificial image bore some relation to the reality it represented.
In many concert performances given by the state folk ensembles, and in
the videos they made, this collusion was encouraged by rather literal rep-
resentations of the real, where village rituals would be reproduced on the
stage in the form of little dramatic scenes, framing the songs and dances.
Neo-folk, on the other hand, is more easily equated to Baudrillards
third order of simulacra. It is radically dislocated from any originary real-
ity and instead merely plays at being an appearance. The folk elements
are reified and take on an autonomous quality, their symbolic value now
complicated by loss of memory, spurious nostalgia (i.e. for a world that was
unknown), and the interpolation of either an alienated urban experience
or an experience of exile. In Baudrillards terms they become a faade, and
if they represent anything it is an absence. There are two points that might
be made about this. One is that this third order of simulacra is susceptible
to political appropriation, precisely because any reality lying behind the
simulacra has evaporated; there is no being behind the appearance. To
borrow Baudrillards language, the systems of signs now lend themselves
to all systems of equivalence. And the other is that in this third order
the simulacra have a capacity to replace reality, to become a new reality,
effectively negating the sign. The territory no longer precedes the map,
says Baudrillard with reference to his now-classic appropriation of the
Mrquez story. This is perhaps especially relevant to the representations
of a musical east that became part and parcel of neo-folk music.

31Baudrillard 1988.
518 chapter nineteen

It was only with the fall of Communism that such third-order simu-
lacra were fully registered. But already in the 1980s, overtly in Yugosla-
via and unofficially elsewhere, the stage was prepared for a time when
an orientalised pop-folk would be all but ubiquitous, heard in every taxi,
and on every radio and TV music programme all over the Balkans. The
genre markers are recognisably part of an Ottoman legacy. But they are
syncretic, and as a result they function on a purely operational level: as
signifiers without a single signified. More crucially, the collective iden-
tity that might register such symbols as the inscription of a shared his-
tory (a history that excludes the West) engages in a much simpler act
of substitution, for which other orientalist markers might and do serve
just as well. More often than not such markers are actually products of a
western cultural production, the outcome of those globalising tendencies
that we associate today with world music. And it is because both Easts
are present simultaneously backwards and Balkan and glamorous and
global is how one author describes them32 that conventional significa-
tion breaks down. In this particular imaginary, this myth of the east, only
the simulacra are left.

32Catherine Baker in a paper delivered to the ASN Globalization, Nationalism and Eth-
nic Conflict Conference in Belgrade 2006. See also parts of chapter 6 of Baker 2010.
 CHAPTER TWENTY

ONE GOT AWAY

Popular Art Music: Theodorakis at Large

Among the Chopin celebrations of 1960, one passed virtually unnoticed.

On 12 March, the Academy of Athens honoured the 150th anniversary of
Chopins birth with a lecture and concert. The concert included some of
the seldom-performed songs. It was not the first time they had been given
in the Greek capital. Forty years earlier, in 1920, a group of them had been
performed by the eminent Greek soprano Speranta Calo. One of those
in the audience had been Kalomiris, then aged 37, and before the 1960
concert it was an elderly Kalomiris who delivered the lecture on Chopin.
Subsequently published in the bulletin of the National Conservatory, its
title might be translated as The National Vibration in Chopins Music.1
Kalomiris began by comparing Chopin to Digenes Akritas, the hero of
Byzantine legend, whose double origins (Arab-Greek; East-West) epito-
mised the duality often taken as a determining factor of modern Greek
sensibility. Chopins double origins (Polish-French) were read as analo-
gous, and thus as a kind of validation of Kalomiriss project for Greek
music; it will be remembered that he referred to a Greek-oriental style.
He strengthened the analogy by discussing Chopins importance for the
Russian nationalists on one hand and for modern French music on the
other. We can ignore the false modesty at the end of his lecture. I am
neither a musicologist nor a music historian, said Kalomiris, not even a
music critic [...]. I am simply a composer, a singer who has also dreamt,
however unsuccessfully, of writing music born of the legends, traditions
and sufferings of our fatherland. Of course, in comparison to the magnifi-
cent song of the Polish troubadour, which reaches to the heavens, mine
seems coarse, feeble, and unworthy of discussion.2 Needless-to-say, the
real message was exactly the opposite. In describing and praising Chopin,
Kalomiris was describing and praising himself.

1Kalomiris 1961.
2Ibid., 356.
520 chapter twenty

Ever the polemicist, Kalomiris used his Chopin lecture to proselytise

for his understanding of a Greek national school, although by 1960 this
brand of romantic nationalism was already an anachronism. Increasingly
the Kalomiris agenda was sidelined by the popular art songs associated
with Hadjidakis and Theodorakis, which were received by many as the
authentic voice of Greece.3 There are indeed interesting political issues
involved here, given that Greece was the only country in the region to find
itself on the American side during the Cold War. Following the elections
of 1952, which drew a line under the Civil War, the other post-war music
that gained official acceptance (though it was hardly popular) was a mod-
ernist project in the spirit of the new music of the West. This was associ-
ated above all with the two Papaioannous and with a group of younger
composers who were anxious to stress Greeces European credentials. As
we noted in chapter 12, modernism had been tried and found wanting
during the inter-war period. That the composer Papaioannou succeeded
in acclimatising the new music to Greece where Mitropoulos and Skalkot-
tas failed is less a comment on the quality of the music on offer than on
the changing political climate.
This was the context for that Kalomiris lecture. On one hand popu-
lar art songs were emerging as a new kind of national music. On the
other hand, there was an avant-garde that could be read as an implicit,
US-supported, culture critique of the eastern bloc. The Kalomiris lecture,
then, was not just the last gasp of a movement that had already become
history; it was also even if unwittingly on the wrong side of the politi-
cal divide, committing to the kind of nationalist project associated with
the Soviet bloc; indeed Kalomiriss investment in national opera rein-
forced the point. I say unwittingly because his earlier political affilia-
tions had been Venizelist and then right-orientated. After the war, in the
polarised politics of the late 1940s and 1950s, he kept a low profile. But
there was little appetite for recrimination against so-called collaborators
at this time. For one thing, centre-right parties were much too concerned
about the Communist threat to bother with Kalomiris, and for another
some of the Communists were inclined to protect him. He may have rep-
resented the conservative establishment of Greek music in the 1950s, but
his position was largely apolitical, motivated above all by the need to find
the most favourable conditions for art.

3As noted in chapter 3, popular art song is not an adequate translation of the term
used by Theodorakis. A more literal translation might be artistic popular songs.
 one got away 521

It is instructive to compare this with the approach of Theodorakis,

whose popular art songs and film scores would become in due course all
but synonymous with Greece. Theodorakis was not just politically com-
mitted to the Marxist left; he had political ambitions and indeed a political
career. In his early years he paid a price for his activities in the resistance
and Civil War, including arrest and imprisonment, but with the defeat of
the Communists made possible partly by the secession of neighbouring
Yugoslavia, but mainly by military and financial investment from North
America he channelled his disaffection into his music. I will come to
that in a moment. But it is worth noting that his reputation as a composer
led to his wider acceptance as an heroic anti-establishment figure, and
to a renewed engagement with activist politics. This was more success-
ful when it took the form of worldwide concert tours that could turn his
charisma to political ends than when he held political office. He was first
elected to the Greek Parliament in 1964. Then during the dictatorship he
became a cult figure of huge symbolic importance, returning from exile as
a national hero. In later, post-Junta, years his attempts to secure political
influence were less successful, despite several spells as a member of the
Greek Parliament, and a brief period as a minister.
The turning point in Theodorakiss creative development came in the
late 1950s. He had moved to Paris in 1954, and it seems that this focused
his choices prior to his return to Greece in 1959. Before and during the
Paris years he composed symphonic and chamber works drawing on tra-
ditional music Cretan and other in the spirit of the national school.
But increasingly he expressed his dissatisfaction with existing models of
Greek national music, while at the same time resisting the modernist
direction of his compatriot Iannis Xenakis, also living in Paris at this time.
For Theodorakis, little of this music, whether national romantic or mod-
ernist, was engaging with a wider public. Immediately on his return to
Greece in 1959 he launched an attack on the Greek musical establishment
in the magazine Kritiki, and a year later the very year of Kalomiriss
Chopin lecture he followed through with a manifesto (also in Kritiki)
arguing for the reform of musical education, for a programme of popu-
lar concerts, and for serious study of indigenous music, including chant.4
He was calling for a national music that would be Greek from the start,
rather than one that expressed its Greekness in modern European terms.
The first compositional outcome of this new thinking was his song cycle

4Holst 1980, 4344.

522 chapter twenty

Epitaphios, composed in Paris in 1958 to texts by the leftwing poet Yannis

Ritsos about the death of a striker, and presented to the public in 1960.
This turned out to be a landmark event.
The background to Epitaphios, and in particular its relationship to
Hadjidakiss lecture on rebetika, was sketched in Chapter 10. However,
fine-tuning is necessary, not least to clarify the difference in perspec-
tive between Hadjidakis and Theodorakis. Gail Holst tells the story.5 The
performance of Epitaphios in 1960 made use of the well-known rebetika
singer Grigoris Bithikotsis and the bouzouki player Manolis Hiotis. Two
recordings were then made, one by Hadjidakis in an orchestration for
conventional instruments and with the singer Nana Mouskouri, and the
other by Theodorakis with Bithikotsis and Hiotis. That Theodorakis had
been unable to secure a recording of his own orchestral version because
members of the radio orchestra refused to perform alongside a bouzouki
player speaks volumes about the continuing prejudice against rebetika.
These songs were still associated with a decadent, low-grade culture, at
least when presented in the raw form of which the bouzouki was taken
to be emblematic. A controversy arose over the two recordings of the
piece, and the success of the Theodorakis version endorsed his growing
empathy with mass culture and popular music. From this point onwards
the two composers diverged, though they remained mutually supportive.
Between them they carved out a space for a new kind of national music
that appealed to a very wide spectrum of Greek society.
The songs of Hadjidakis, who might be considered the godfather, if not
the father, of the new popular art song, are settings of poetry ancient and
modern, encompassing a wide range of expression, and with sophisticated,
intricate accompaniments often provided or fine-tuned by Tasos Kara-
katsanis. Like several of his piano pieces, they remain at some distance
from anything we might want to call popular music and are closer to a
light classical idiom. Although undoubtedly influenced by some elements
of rebetika, these songs are often scored for voice and piano, and their
carefully crafted harmonies are positioned a long way from the earthi-
ness of rebetika prototypes. In later life Hadjidakis continued to write
songs (many to texts by Nikos Gatsos), theatre music and film scores for a
largely bourgeois audience, eschewing the mass culture eagerly embraced
by Theodorakis. Some of the songs, including the cycles Mythologia (1965)
and O megalos eroticos (197171), can sit happily enough in a recital of

5Ibid., 44 ff.
 one got away 523

art music, and several of the piano pieces are not so distant from pieces
by composers from the Kalomiris circle. Yet invariably there is a foun-
dation in the familiar melodic and rhythmic patterns of Greek popular
music, and on occasion there is a swerve towards an idiom with greater
mass appeal. His association with Nana Mouskouri, whom he discovered
and promoted, but whose later global fame did something to return the
favour, helped keep him in the public eye. So too did his Oscar-winning
score for the Jules Dassin film Never on Sunday, especially given its asso-
ciation with Dassins wife Melina Mercouri.
One of the key ingredients of Hadjidakiss musical world, distinguishing
it clearly from more commercial forms of popular music, was his respect
for, and ear for, poetry of real artistic merit. There are analogies here with
a particular species of popular, literary chanson in France (Brassens,
Ferr, Gainsbourg).6 But in any case the new Entekhno lako tragoudhi
[popular art song] or poetry set to music took its stand on an intimate
connection between poetry of status, old and new, and demotic musi-
cal idioms. This was no less true of Theodorakis. Ritsos was only one of
the highly valued 30s Generation modernist poets to whom he turned in
later years; indeed his central aim was to present this poetry to a wider
public by way of a music with popular appeal (this was not always greeted
with approval by the poets themselves). There was, however, a major dif-
ference in orientation between the two artists. Unlike Theodorakis, Had-
jidakis was not inclined towards poetry of political commitment. He was
reluctant to identify explicitly with populist causes, and it was this more
than anything that separated him off from the cultish popularity enjoyed
by Theodorakis. For Theodorakis the message was all, and popular appeal
was essential. He forged his melodic style from traditional music of vari-
ous kinds, including rural dance songs, Byzantine chant and rebetika, but
from Epitaphios onwards he avoided the kinds of sophisticated appropri-
ations of traditional music associated with the national school, aiming
instead at direct communicative simplicity. For this reason his accompa-
niments tend to be unobtrusive and uncomplicated, for nothing must be
allowed to stand in the way of the poetic message.
At the same time his artistic ambition remained high. He wanted his
music to endure, but he also wanted it to reach the people, and that

6Papanikolaou 2007. There are close parallels between the two traditions, and especially
the use of high-prestige poetry to generate a superior form of popular song. Papanikolaou
discusses the critical discourses that developed around these two national canons, com-
paring Brassens, Ferr and Gainsbourg with Theodorakis, Hadjidakis and Savvopoulos.
524 chapter twenty

meant establishing clear points of contact with a world they already

knew and loved. Not for nothing did he give the title Music of the Masses
to an account of his work.7 It was Epitaphios that crystallised this aes-
thetic, and in doing so it helped create what was in effect a new kind of
popular music in Greece. Several of the songs in this cycle have roots in
the rebetika idiom, though that had not really been part of Theodorakiss
earlier musical experience, and the bouzouki (pace Hadjidakis) is essen-
tial to any adequate realisation of the work as a whole. The association
of this instrument with disadvantage and repression with the world of
the rebetes perfectly caught the mood of Ritsoss elegy to a victim of
dictatorship, based on an incident from 1936, the time of the Metaxas
regime. Here poetry, politics and music are inextricably intertwined in
a work of affecting simplicity, and one whose melodic substance took its
shape and character alike from Byzantine chant, island folk melodies and
rebetika. It is no surprise that some of these songs, perhaps especially the
third, A Day in May, have retained their popularity in recitals of Greek
popular song.
Following the performances and recordings of Epitaphios in 1960, The-
odorakis became more active politically. Several works were banned by
the Karamanlis government, and in the wake of the Lambrakis affair (the
murder in 1963 of a prominent left-wing dissident) he was thrust to the
forefront of left-wing politics as President of the Lambrakis Youth Move-
ment. A year later he was elected to Parliament. At the same time he
continued to compose, extending the range of his new manner in two dif-
ferent directions, neatly represented by two scores of 1964. One was music
of almost iconic popular appeal, his film score for the Nikos Kazantzakis-
based film Zorba the Greek, whose syrtos dance is known the world over.
The other was the song cycle Axion Esti, thought by some to be his fin-
est achievement. The poem, a seminal text by the 30s generation author
Odysseus Elytis, took its title and design from the Orthodox liturgy (com-
pare Epitaphios), though it is at the same time a celebration of, and lament
for, Hellenism (the 30s generation poets were exercised by this synthesis).
Accordingly, as Gail Holst points out, Orthodox chant is an obvious pres-
ence in the melodic material.8 Holsts reference to Stravinsky is also apt,
though it would be misleading to suggest that Theodorakis had ventured
into a Modernist world here, even in his opening depiction of chaos. In

7Theodorakis 1972.
8Holst 1980, 8299.
 one got away 525

reality it is the group of popular songs (accompanied by bouzoukis and

santouri) that stay in the memory rather than the more self-consciously
classical music.
In the end, classifying this music is treacherous. Such was the range of
the middle ground Theodorakis and Hadjidakis occupied that distinctions
between art music and popular music were blurred; hence the term
popular art song. On occasion the borderline could be further smudged
by the choice of performer. Just as Nana Mouskouri could widen the pop-
ular appeal of songs by Hadjidakis, so George Dalaras performing Theodo-
rakiss Axion Esti could draw a work of some classical ambition into the
realm of commercially successful popular music. What is never in doubt
is the nationalist import of the music. During the Junta it cemented the
cultural nation both at home and abroad, and when Theodorakis returned
to Greece, he was fted as a national hero. The audiences for his concerts
crossed all social boundaries, and the entekhno lako tragoudhi conquered
all. It was a triumph for Theodorakis and, in a sense, a triumph for music.
Yet in subsequent years his political influence waned, and we are left with
a hint of the crusader without a cause. It may be that this also influenced
his creativity. In the 1970s and 1980s he began to explore new creative
territories, and in some cases added a further layer of artistic ambition to
his music, perhaps aware that he was losing much of his popular appeal
to new forms of popular culture.
Aside from the flow songs composed in these years, departing from
familiar dance rhythms but retaining some basis in indigenous melodic
archetypes, he developed what he himself identified as a symphonic
dimension from 1980 onwards, once more turning to European forms and
even to opera. With this greater pretension, he moved just a little closer to
the position adopted by Hadjidakis, whose songs were regarded in some
circles as representing a distinctly superior form of popular music, and
who had in any case always had more than a foot in the camp of serious
music. Hadjidakis not only established the Orchestra of Colours, but set
up and personally financed a prize for younger Greek composers, of which
one recipient was none other than Iannis Xenakis; he even commissioned
Xenakis to compose music for a production of the Hiketides [The Suppli-
ants] for the Epidauros Theatre. And for a crucial few years, he was also
Director of the State Radios Third Programme. Ideologically committed
to modernism, Hadjidakis was more aware than anyone that his own tal-
ent lay elsewhere. And for younger composers, just emerging from the
conservatories, it was the range of possibilities afforded by his popular art
song that seemed attractive.
526 chapter twenty

As to Theodorakis, the overriding popularity of his earlier works was

seldom regained. Greece was changing, and it seems that its cultural needs
were changing too. One symptom was a revival of interest in original rebe-
tika in the 1970s, accompanied by re-releases of early recordings. Having
introduced this music to a wider public, Theodorakis was now in danger
of falling victim to an ethos of authenticity. But he was also challenged on
home ground. Younger singer-songwriters were emerging, and they subtly
changed the tone of popular art songs to address new audiences. Promi-
nent among them were Yannis Markopoulos and Dionysios Savvopoulos,
left-wing composers whose output might be compared to that of Theodo-
rakis, though they each trod an individual path (neither was really suited
to the big mass concerts patronised by Theodorakis). Both remained in
Greece during the dictatorship, and became foci for anti-establishment
sentiment at home. Holst suggests that Markopoulos, despite securing a
following among youth audiences in the 1970s, failed ultimately to mount
a successful challenge to Theodorakis as a darling of the left, though he
did help shake off the association of traditional music with the Junta. Sav-
vopoulos, on the other hand, was a true original, and arguably caught the
mood of post-Junta Greece more accurately than Theodorakis. Both his
satirical tone and the mood of resignation and acceptance that comes
through in so many of his rock ballads struck a chord with younger audi-
ences (later he played a role in promoting paradhosiaka).9 People were
growing weary of heroics.
For all that his capacity to speak for the nation diminished, Theodora-
kis lives on, literally and metaphorically, not just for a significant body of
work that retains its ability to evoke patriotic feeling, but as the instigator
of a particular kind of alliance between sophisticated (modernist) poetry
and popular song. This alliance proved to be enduring. There is still an
audience today for popular singers and singer-songwriters who remain
separate from more commercial forms of popular music. Their reper-
tory is catholic, ranging from Theodorakis and folksong arrangements to
medieval ballads and Sephardic romances, as well as the so-called piotiko
tragoudhi [quality song] that is the most obvious direct descendent of the
popular art song. These singers are so numerous that to name a few seems
invidious. George Dalaras has been mentioned from the (now) older gen-
eration, and it should be added here that he was one of those involved

9As Eleni Kallimopoulou notes, he was the producer of the album Dhinamis tou Egheou
[Powers of the Agean] by the band of that name in the mid 1980s. Kallimopoulou 2009.
 one got away 527

in the revival of rebetika. Then there are the divas, including Savina Yan-
natou, Eleftheria Arvanitaki, Haris Alexiou and Vicki Leandros. And there
are younger artists still emerging today. A singer such as Athena Andreadis
belongs more to the world of popular art song than to commercial pop.
What is true of all of these singers is that they eschew the explicit politi-
cal content as distinct from a more generalised patriotism or nostalgia
that was part and parcel of Theodorakiss music.

Art Music: Modernism is Official

Greece has hardly figured in recent debates about US cultural aid in

post-war Europe. The questions raised by these debates have become
familiar. To what extent was cultural aid an extension of US foreign
policy, and how far were European artists and intellectuals, mostly with
explicit leftist sympathies, aware of what George Kennan, architect of
the Marshall Plan, called the necessary lie? When the New York Times
and the journal Ramparts broke the story of CIA covert operations in
196667, the floodgates opened; we learnt about Nabukovs Congress
of Cultural Freedom,10 about CIA backing for the magazines Preuves,
Der Monat, and Encounter, about quiet channels such as the Ford and
Rockefeller Foundations, and about the consortium of ex-Communists.
As to the awareness of artists, some were no doubt blissfully ignorant.
As one national Security directive of July 1950 stated, the most effective
propaganda allows the subject [to] move in the direction you desire for
reasons which he believes to be his own.11 Some were under no illusions:
Isaiah Berlin, in private correspondence, remarked that the subject was
sensitive: a minefield. And some, including Hugh Trevor-Roper at the
launch of the Congress of Cultural Freedom, immediately smelt a rat.
There is now an extensive literature dealing with the place of music
within the campaign.12 The US Information Service pumped money into
American orchestras on tour, scholarships, American House programmes
and so on and so forth.13 What remains more of an open question, how-
ever, is how far there was an ideological charge attached to particular
kinds of repertory. It is tempting to see a mirror image of code switching

10Saunders 1999. See also Carroll 2003.

11Saunders 1999, 4.
12Saunders 1999; Beal 2006; Thacker 2007; Monod 2005.
13Beal 2006.
528 chapter twenty

in the Soviet bloc, with the avant-garde as an insignia of the Free World:
anti-Communist as well as anti-Fascist. In the case of France and occupied
West Germany, this oversimplifies the picture; it is not without founda-
tion, but needs qualification. What one might say is that the Congress
of Cultural Freedom, the radio stations of the occupied zones in West
Germany, and other USIS-sponsored activities made room for an avant-
garde to develop (almost a definition of Isaiah Berlins so-called negative
freedom).14 But propaganda was only part of the story. Local agendas sur-
faced, and there are alternative narratives for the ideology of a post-war
avant-garde. At least recent literature has exposed something of an asym-
metry in earlier musical scholarship dealing with the Cold War era, where
ideology and propaganda were regarded as the province of the eastern
bloc, and the western avant-garde was somehow apolitical.
Against this background how are we to locate Greece in the post-Civil
War years? Political power moved decisively to the right following the
elections of 1952, and from that point onwards the Cold War ensured that
Communists were confined to opposition. However, if power moved to
the right, culture moved to the left. The Communist cause, or at least the
cause of a broadly Humanist left, gathered around itself the sympathies
and talents of a very broad swathe of the artistic and intellectual commu-
nity. In the battle of ideas, the left held sway, and it was helped by a long
tradition of anti-establishment thought in Greece. A figure such as The-
odorakis belonged centrally within this tradition, and although he could
appear a maverick figure at times, he was able to draw a following from
right across the social spectrum. That his more political music was peri-
odically banned was of considerable help. But there were other threats to
his domination of popular music, not least the sudden influx of American-
influenced mass culture, siphoning off a major part of his support. This
may have been partly responsible for the greater ambition of some of his
later music. But the space he might have hoped to enter was already occu-
pied, and not just by the Kalomiris circle. Art music, invariably dependent
on some measure of official support (even when it appears dissenting),
was taking new directions in Greece, and as usual they were inseparable
from politics.
Greece depended heavily on the US during the later stages of the Civil
War, both militarily and economically, and that dependence, closely tied
to Cold War strategy, ensured that it became hardly less of a client state

14Berlin 1969.
 one got away 529

than its northern neighbours. The Truman Doctrine, introduced in 1947

with reference to both Greece and Turkey, was the first stage in a sustained
US programme (formalised by the Marshall Plan and the establishment
of NATO) designed to support free peoples who are resisting attempted
subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. At this time
the late 1940s there was still a perceived need to prevent Greece fall-
ing under Soviet influence. And it was considered no less imperative to
harness both Greece and Turkey to NATO. It hardly helped that the two
nations veered from one crisis to another in relation to Cyprus, but this
simply made it all the more essential to maintain stability at all costs,
given their strategic importance to the Western defence system. One of
the costs involved was US support for the military junta, whose human
rights record was notorious. In offering that support America lost much
of its standing in Greek eyes. It was one of several reasons for the gradual
shift of focus away from America and towards Western Europe that cul-
minated in EU membership in 1981.15
Long before any of this, in the immediate aftermath of the war, the
main influence culturally had been Britain. Through the Anglo-Hellenic
Information Service and later the British Council there was some expo-
sure to modern British music, including a festival, representation on the
Friday evening radio broadcasts, British guest conductors of the Athens
State SO, and commentaries in the Anglo-Hellenic Review.16 Something
of this proselytising mission comes over in the British Council report to
the Foreign Office in 1946, from which document it is clear that Cold War
positions have not yet been clearly defined. It is felt that Russia, in spite
of the vast advances which she has made under Soviet rule and in spite
of the immense interest of her social, political and economic experiment,
differs too widely both in her problems and in her mentality to have much
to offer to Greece; while America, though interested platonically in Greece
and a source of inexhaustible material supply, cannot really understand or
help the Greeks in their present situation. Such sentiments would have
been inconceivable a year later, and not just because of the benign view
of Soviet rule. Indeed if we leaf through the pages of the Anglo-Hellenic

15In reality, the EEC countries had been Greeces major trading partners for some time
before that.
16There are some intriguing exchanges between the British Council in Athens and
the Foreign Office on these matters: including the request to send modern English music
urgently by air: they have nothing but Vaughn Williams and Quilter. FO 024/162. 9 March
From Athens to FO (Sir R. Leeper). National Archives, London.
530 chapter twenty

Review we can almost literally graph the cultural withdrawal of the Brit-
ish, as they handed over to the Germans and their Americans mentors
from around 1947 onwards.17
It was in 1952 that the first Goethe Institute outside Germany was
founded in Athens, and it promoted a series of concerts of music by Greek
and German composers that culminated in the highly ambitious Goethe
Institute Workshops for Contemporary Music, co-organised by the musi-
cologist John G. Papaioannou and the German composer Gunther Becker,
at that time resident in Greece. Then, in the same year, a series of Ameri-
can concerts was initiated, funded by the US Information Service and held
at their film room on Monday evenings (where USIS-funded propaganda
films were regularly shown) with the explicit aim of introducing contem-
porary music to Greece (there were comparable initiatives in Turkey).18
Programmes were mainly of music by Greek and American composers,
and typically they combined recorded performances of American music
with live performances of Greek chamber works.
These events not only helped displace the National School; they
encouraged the development of a modernist culture among native Greek
composers, including, as we noted in chapter 12, established figures such
as Zoras and Poniridis. This is not to claim political motivations on the
part of the composers themselves. Rather it is to argue that a space was
opened up by Cold War politics for a modernist music that was assured
of some level of official backing. To some extent this simply duplicated
the pattern observable in Western Europe. When Adorno referred to the
ageing of the new music, he partly meant the transformation of an avant-
garde from the explosive, dissenting new of the first half of the twentieth
century into the officially sponsored new of its second half. But in Greece
this sequence was played out in a particularly blatant form. Modernist
music was one way to express an allegiance to the West, and to distin-
guish clearly an official Greek culture from the socialist realism of the
eastern bloc.
Such cultural aid culminated in the Hellenic Weeks of Contemporary
Music inaugurated in 1966, and running through with several breaks until
1976. The programming tells a fascinating story (especially in relation to
the canonising of Skalkottas), but hardly less significant was the pattern

17I am grateful to Kostas Kardamis for his help with this topic.
18Regarding the introduction of musical modernism in Athens see Romanou 2006b,
2347.
 one got away 531

of sponsorship. Here we can see very clearly the context within which
Greek modernism had its moment in the sun. For the first week (1966) the
principal external sponsor was the Goethe Institute. For the second week
(1967) the cultural office of the US Embassy joined in, and the programme
reflected that. Then, for the third week (1968), organised within the period
of the Junta, most of the funding came from the Ford Foundation, and
exactly the same was true of the fourth week (1971). For the last of the
weeks (1976), now post-Junta, all external funding was withdrawn, and
it is obvious from the Acknowledgements and Introduction on the pro-
gramme that there had been great difficulty in securing local funding.19
The inauguration of the Hellenic Weeks represented the point at which
modernism was finally acclimatised in Greece; the point at which it found
a sympathetic hearing and became an official art. Admittedly this was a
period when young composers tended to study abroad, and several did
not return. Of those born in the 1920s and 1930s one might cite Argyris
Kounadis (19242011), Dimitris Terzakis (b.1938) and Yannis Vlachopoulos
(b.1939), all of whom settled in Germany; or Anestis Logothetis (192194),
who chose Vienna. But for those who did come back to Greece, there was
now a more receptive climate for the new music. The Greek section of the
ISCM and the Hellenic Association for Contemporary Music (more-or-less
synonymous in practice) were founded around the same time as the first
Hellenic Week, along with the Hadjidakis composition competition at
the Technological Institute, and Theodore Antonious Hellenic Group for
Contemporary Music. Antoniou (b.1935) established the Hellenic Group
in 1967, and he did much to promote new music in the brief period of its
activity before he too decided to base himself in North America, though
he continued to spend part of the year in Greece. We might also refer to
the key role played by Yorgos Sicilianos (19202005) in a variety of admin-
istrative and media positions.
But more than anything, it was the composer Yiannis Papaioannous
presence at the Hellenic Conservatory that made a difference, for this
ensured that contemporary compositional methods, and especially the
twelve-note technique, were taught to Greek composers. His own music
led the way. In a schematic periodisation of his oeuvre, Papaioannou pin-
pointed 1952 as a turning-point (as we saw, it was a turning-point more
generally in Greek music). Strictly speaking, it inaugurated the fourth of

19In current research in progress, Ioannis Tsagkarakis nuances this picture, especially
with regard to Ford Foundation funding.
532 chapter twenty

the six periods he identified, but it is privileged within this periodisation

in that it marked his passage into atonality and dodecaphony. It may be
possible to give at least a sketchy context for this by attempting a brief
characterisation of selected works from different stages of his creative evo-
lution, beginning with his Violin Sonata of 1946. This falls within a period
Papaioannou described as dominated by Byzantine appropriations, but
the sonata stands apart from this. If anything, we hear elements from his
earlier engagement with folklore (in the finale) and with impressionism
(the slow movement), but the character of the music is determined more
by its neo-classical design and its contrapuntal impulse. Of the former
we might note the repeated (three-stage) exposition of the first move-
ment, and of the latter we would remark on the lucid counterpoint of the
second theme for piano alone, and even more of the development sec-
tion. The formal and textural clarity of this work is entirely characteristic
of Papaioannou.
Byron was an enduring enthusiasm for this composer. His symphonic
poem Corsair was composed in 1942, and his final compositions were the
Two Last Songs, settings of Byron that were completed two weeks before
his death in 1989. His Seven Corsair Dances for piano date from 1950, just
prior to the 1952 caesura, and in them we still find clear links with national
materials, now treated in a more obviously Bartkian fashion. The driv-
ing ostinato, circling melodic fragments and percussive dissonance of the
first of these seven pieces, for example, immediately suggest the Allegro
Barbaro. This is a more aggressively modernist idiom than we encounter
in the Violin Sonata, but it remains tonally grounded, and in that sense it
is still part of Papaioannous past rather than his future. It was the Third
Symphony (1953) that marked the transition to a neo-classical serialism,
of a kind characterised by textural clarity in the orchestral writing, by a
supra-serial thematic writing, and by a contrapuntal style that reveals
obvious continuities with his earlier music. This contrapuntal style is
found not just in the fugal second movement, but in the cantus firmus
technique in parts of the first movement, and in the driving moto perpetuo
of the finale (a kind of fugato on strings). Throughout the work there is
a tightly-knit thematic process, much of it based on motivic cells sup-
plied by the slow introduction. This evolutionary process unfolds across
all three movements.
Relative to his earlier music, Papaioannou undoubtedly sacrificed a
dimension of memorability in the angular lines of this symphony. Yet
its phraseology remains grounded in tradition. The period he identified
beginning in the mid 1960s represented a more fundamental break. It is
 one got away 533

tempting to compare this with the journey of another Mediterranean

serialist, Luigi Dallapiccola. Like Papaioannou, but a decade earlier, Dal-
lapiccola moved from an early tonal phase into a dodecaphony that nego-
tiated freely with traditional devices and was characterised by melodic
priority and contrapuntalism. Then, in the mid 1950s, he developed a more
uncompromising serial idiom responsive to the musical world of younger
composers. Something similar seems to have occurred with Papaioannou
in the mid 1960s. A work such as the cantata The Funeral of Sarpedon
(1966), a setting of Cavafy, might be taken to exemplify this change of
manner. Haris Xanthoudakis contextualises it by relating it to Papaioan-
nous numerous other settings of Cavafy (as also to Mitropouloss set-
tings), and by considering its possible musical antecedents, including the
late cantatas by Webern.20 He refers to the composers faith in traditional
formal prototypes, but this should not obscure what is new here. There
is a considerable stylistic space between this work and the Third Sym-
phony. The pointillist textures of the cantata, along with its constantly
shifting timbral landscape, its cellular construction, and its avoidance of
an explicit musical teleology, all register this music as avant-garde in a
much fuller sense than the symphony.
Unlike Papaioannou, who progressed from a nationalist orientation to
a modernist idiom, the Kalomiris pupil Dimitris Dragatakis (19142001)
was involved in a synthesis of traditional and contemporary elements
right from the start. He was less influential than Papaioannou, but as a
composer he was highly individual. Drawing on music from his native
Epirus, he developed a distinctive modernist voice, whether in the micro-
structures characteristic of some of the later pieces (Rtrospections for
piano) or in large-scale compositions such as the Violin Concerto of 1969.
There is a distinct advance from the accomplished but conventional early
String Quartet (1957) and Essay for Orchestra (1958) to the strikingly origi-
nal sound world of the Violin Concerto, an evocative accompanied mono-
logue in which distant echoes of Epirotic music appear entirely at home in
a thoroughly modernist setting, conveying, in the composers words all the
harshness of the land, and [springing] from its rhythms and dirges.21 One
finds something similar in the Sixth Symphony (1989), at least in its slow
movement, where a lament performed on Cretan lyre, together with ison,

20Xanthoudakis 2004.
21Quoted in the liner notes of the recording in the collection 20th-Century Greek Avant-
Garde Music: A Cross Section, p. 177.
534 chapter twenty

is embedded in a dissonant musical landscape. In context it emerges as

a postmodern gesture, an archetypal tendency, rather more than a nod
towards the Kalomiris agenda, though the final peroration of the sym-
phony is conventionally heroic.
One could tell a much fuller story of the Greek avant-garde from the
1960s through to the 1980s. But from an historical point of view, the
important point is that it was now a card-carrying official culture, even
if inevitably an elitist one. A composer such as Yorgos Sicilianos is rep-
resentative; indeed his was in some ways a stronger creative voice than
Papaioannous. From early works in the tradition of the National School,
he entered Bartkian waters with his Concerto for Orchestra and Second
String Quartet, and explored serial techniques (and sophisticated rhyth-
mic systems) in works of the 1960s (his Fourth String Quartet is the most
systematically organised of all his pieces). Another characteristic feature
is the alliance he creates between modernist techniques and Classical
Greek themes, notably in pieces such as the Aeschylus-based Epiklesis. The
stylistic trajectory of Sicilianoss music, from tonal, through serial, poly-
stylistic and sonoristic phases to a postmodern idiom from the late 1970s
onwards (notably in his Samuel Beckett-inspired Violin Concerto), was
broadly representative of the general direction of Greek post-war music.
Another way of saying that is to observe that he and others followed the
direction of the European avant-garde.
If this was a general tendency, it was one that allowed for variations.
Other avant-garde composers of the same generation created their own
worlds. Compare Sicilianos with Nikos Mamangakis (b.1929), who studied
in Germany, attended Darmstadt, and developed a Berio-like fascination
with modern virtuosity as well as with sophisticated number working. At
the same time he produced some of the most imaginative and iconoclas-
tic multimedia works of contemporary Greek music, including Parasta-
sis (1969) for soprano, flutes and electronics, and Kykeon (1972), which
exists in several versions. Or with Michael Adamis (19292013), already
discussed in relation to the Orthodox liturgy, but no less important for his
work in electronic music, having pioneered a studio in Athens in the mid
1960s; in the 1980s in particular he developed a form of complex heteroph-
ony (beginning with Alliostrofa and Eptaha in the late 1980s) that echoes
similar things in Romania. Or with Nikiforos Rotas (b.1929), who studied
in Vienna, and also attended Darmstadt, but who remained somewhat
apart from the institution of the avant-garde in Greece. In addition to his
work in theatre and dance, he made original contributions to electronic
music in Greece, notably with Antiphonia I (1967) on a text by Aeschylus,
 one got away 535

its childs voice inevitably recalling Gesang der Jnglinge, just as its final
breathing recalls the Hymn of Pluramon from Hymnen.
Certain gestures were ubiquitous in the Contemporary Music festivals of
Europe in the 1960s and 1970s. We are reminded of what Leonard B. Meyer
once described as the aesthetics of stability.22 The beehive sonorities that
resulted from fairly standardised aleatory devices were one such; and the
Varse-like changing coloration of a single pitch was another. When we
listen to a work such as Projections, composed in 1968 by Yannis Ioan-
nidis (b.1930), it is hard not to hear these and other devices as part of the
anonymous modernist soundscape of their time. And likewise, when we
hear the polystylistic moments in the Music for Wind Quintet (196566) by
Georges Tsouyopoulos (b.1930), where Tchaikovsky invades the modernist
world, we are reminded of similar gestures of parody or stylistic counter-
point in any number of contemporary scores. There appeared to be no
ambition in either case to distinguish this music as peculiarly Greek, but
rather to see it as a part of European music, as up-to-date as anything
from the more prestigious cultural centres. It is possible to read this as
a symptom of cultural maturity. Like the Hellenism of 1930s modernist
literature, it might be argued, the new music dignified modern Greece,
allowing it to compete with Western Europe on its own terms. That the
West remained largely indifferent to an avant-garde it had initially helped
to make possible was largely a matter of straightforward chauvinism.
In any case, the ideological charge of the avant-garde weakened soon
enough, and its political value lessened as a result. It succeeded somehow
in maintaining its status as an official culture, but as Cold War politics
lost its immediacy, the tendency was to realign the avant-garde, to see it
as at best the spearhead of a wider classical music culture (in which there
was little investment in Greece) and at worst as a kind of cultural ghetto.
Appropriations aside, avant-garde composers had always tended to view
their own activities as largely apolitical, if not autonomous, and in this
they aligned themselves with more general international tendencies. We
perhaps need to ask, then, how valuable it is to invoke a national perspec-
tive on this music at all, given that Darmstadt set the trend for composers
everywhere. There was what some writers have called (in another con-
text) a national bypass operative within this culture.23 Admittedly, the
postmodernism of the late 1970s acquired a particular piquancy in Greece

22Meyer 1967b.
23Malm and Wallis 1992.
536 chapter twenty

with the fall of the Junta, but this point could be over-stressed. The real-
ity is that if modernist composers saw their activities as apolitical, most
politicians saw them as not worth claiming.
Only within the institution of art itself, embodied in a musical estab-
lishment that struggled to gain funding from successive governments, was
there a sustained attempt to promote this culture and to construct its tra-
dition as something intrinsically national. And even here the nationalism
was less about projecting a particular, culturally unique, brand a Greek
product and more about holding ones own in a global cultural market-
place. If anything, it represented a conservative view, a tacit acknowledge-
ment that for art music there was still some life in binary centre-periphery
models of national identity that had become obsolete in popular music.
Inevitably, perhaps, the agency involved here proselytising exercises on
behalf of a sophisticated and genuinely undervalued culture of Greek art
music increasingly extended to composers whose successes owed little
to Greece, though they might conceivably be viewed as representative of
another Greece, and a prominent one: the diasporic nation. At the heart
of this lay a form of proprietorship, with nationality foregrounded among
many competing modes of identity construction. It was applied to the
migr composers mentioned above, most of whom retained close links
with Greece. But above all it was applied to two towering creative fig-
ures of the post-war era, men whose association with Greek music was
at best indirect.
Jani Christou (192670), already a cult figure in certain circles, is emerg-
ing as a composer of international significance. Born into the Greek com-
munity in Egypt and educated in philosophy with Russell and Wittgenstein
in Cambridge, he spent only his last ten years in Greece, and even then he
had relatively little engagement with its musical life. As Panos Vlagopo-
ulos has observed, he was doubly isolated, an outsider to Greek contexts
during his early life, but later removed (through his move to Greece) from
international contexts.24 At the time of his early death, he was working
on what Leotsakos has called a massive stage ritual after Aeschyluss
Oresteia.25 Had it been completed, it might well have brought to a culmi-
nating stage a process that seems to have been under way through much of
his output. That process might perhaps be described as the gradual yield-
ing of music to philosophy, and it was no doubt influenced by his studies

24Vlagopoulos 2004.
25Leotsakos 2001.
 one got away 537

with Wittgenstein, by his intense interest in Jungian psychology (inspired

by his elder brother, a practicing analyst), and by his interest in the myths
and rituals associated with ancient cultures, Egyptian and Greek alike. In
practice the collapse of composition into philosophy tended towards a
view of music as a pathway to transcendental states.
A turning point was his Mysterion for three choirs, orchestra, narrator
and tapes of 196566, based on The Egyptian Book of the Dead. In this
work, and in those few of his subsequent Anaparastases (stage rituals or
psycho-dramas) that were completed as part of a major multi-media enter-
prise known as The Project, Christou renounced the aesthetic in favour of
a form of metaphysics, in which music was an agent privileged by its links
with the primordial. These late works are thus programmatic of psychic
action, designed to activate trance-like states or even to induce the kind of
delirium that might break through civilised veneers to allow contact with
our deeper selves. This also involved a change in underlying musical pro-
cesses. Christou devised a unique notational system in these later years
(visually exquisite pictographic devices), and it was especially instru-
mental in enabling what he described as metapraxes, meaning moments
of excess in which performers step outside normative roles. This might
be understood by considering two fundamental patterns at work in his
music. The first, the Phoenix pattern, was there from the earliest work he
recognised, Phoenix Music of 194849, and as the term suggests it involves
cyclical processes of birth, growth, extinction and rebirth. It is embodied
in specific motivic recurrences (a three-note motive that is ubiquitous in
his music) and in specific musical gestures (continuous sustained sounds
as against characteristic explosions of sound), and it can operate at the
level of the unfolding work, the evolving sequence of works, and even the
succession of creative periods.
If the Phoenix pattern was a constant, the Lunar Pattern was a prod-
uct only of works from his later period, basically post-Mysterion. The
musicologist John G. Papaioannou explained it as containing the possi-
bility of unpredictable phenomena, like the partial or total eclipse (the
composer himself described the shift from one prototype to the other as
a shift from Praxis to Metapraxis). Even in earlier works such as the
Second Symphony (1956), characterised by Christou himself as freely
atonal and registering muted influences from Stravinsky and Berg, there
is an element of rhetorical persuasion that overrides any purely musical
logic. Typically it can produce moments of intense calm, or alternatively
of intense hysteria. But in late compositions such as The Strychnine Lady
(1967), Enantiodhromia (196568) and Epicycle (1968), this is taken to a
538 chapter twenty

different level. Enantiodhromia is representative. Elaborating a philosoph-

ical idea of Heraclitus, it maintains for most of its course a high-register
stasis, though, as in some late Feldman, there is greater incidence within
this variegated continuum of sound than appears at first hearing. Then
towards the end of the work there is a rapid acceleration of activity cul-
minating in a catastrophe of immense power and wild energy, in which
performers engage in what Christou would term metapraxes, notably
shouting and screaming, before we return abruptly to something like our
starting point.
This cursory outline of Christous achievement reflects the fact that
his music still awaits an adequate assessment, Papaioannous study not-
withstanding. If I offer a similarly reductive sketch of another major fig-
ure of the Greek diaspora, it is for the opposite reason. Iannis Xenakis
(19212001) has been a much discussed and debated figure in European
post-war modernism. A naturalised French citizen since 1965, he was born
in Romania to Greek parents, spent his teenage years in Greece, and was
active in the resistance before fleeing to Paris in 1947. Like Christou, he
retained a lifelong interest in the writings and rituals of Greek antiquity
(the titles of his works are a powerful symbol of allegiance), but it was
only in the post-Junta years that was he able to re-visit Greece, a home-
coming every bit as momentous as that of Theodorakis, accompanied as
it was by major concerts and spectacles (the Mycenae polytope). In some
early works and writings Xenakis had explored the possibility of a mod-
ern Greek music based on indigenous materials, but this was a passing
moment, and from Metastaseis (1954) onwards he forged an original musi-
cal idiom from synergies between music, mathematics and architecture.
He stood for an emphatically modernist aesthetic, an aesthetic of fierce
authenticity, committed to rational questing in music, though that quest-
ing could entail an element of play. For him, new modes of thought and
perception demanded new modes of action. Ideally we would cleanse
our ears of pedigreed habits of listening. We would listen to his music as
though it were the first music we had ever heard.
Christou and Xenakis were utterly different in many ways, but they
shared a radical, uncompromising approach to creativity, a sense of intel-
lectual isolation, and a belief that some guidance for their arduous cre-
ative quest might be found in the world of Greek antiquity, the germ,
claimed Xenakis, of the most advanced ideas of contemporary life. For
Christou, this ancient world pointed towards the collective unconscious;
for Xenakis, it signalled Pythagorean logic and extra-temporal abstract
forms. Each one of my works poses a logical or philosophical thesis. For
 one got away 539

both composers, the creative journey was endlessly challenging, and inter-
estingly Xenakis even saw this partly in national terms. Greeks are like
that: they are a people continually in search of themselves, always ready
to launch out into all kinds of rapid, violent, sometimes fatal actions, and
end up by not finding themselves. Carrying this Greekness with him in
the world of cosmopolitan modernism was an asset in later life, a way of
marking him as distinctive. But in his early years in Paris success was by
no means immediate. His anti-serial, anti-pointillist path won him few
friends among the avant-garde, and for some time he was ignored by the
institutions of modernism in Germany too, despite early performances
of Metastaseis and Pithoprakta given by Hermann Scherchen. But in the
1960s the tide turned, and the singularity and sheer power of Xenakiss
stochastic music, in which massed sonorities (notated with precision) are
controlled by mathematical processes, above all the calculus of probabil-
ity, succeeded in converting the critics.
It is in their attention to the larger features of the form, where the pur-
poseful shaping of sonorities within a space-time continuum takes pri-
ority over the miniscule constitutive elements of those sonorities, that
these early works of Xenakis may be distinguished from classic essays
in multiple serialism in the early 1950s. Those essays in serialism were
similarly unitary in effect, but they exhibited, in Xenakiss view, a dras-
tic disjunction of means and ends. Thus in Pithoprakta, mass events are
created from intersecting, measured glissandi (cf. ruled architectural sur-
faces) and from pizzicato or col legno clouds (cf. kinetic theory of gases),
where both continuities and discontinuities are statistically controlled by
probability theory. Soon he would use a computer programme to deter-
mine these and other derived processes (including mathematical game
theory, Markov chains, and sieves, which allow particular ordered sets
of pitches and/or durations to develop by a process of blocking and dis-
placing). Something of this thinking remained with him to the end, but
from Synaphae (1969) onwards it was inflected by new kinds of random
processes embodied in Brownian movement (random movement of par-
ticles within a gas or liquid under thermal agitation), and arborescences,
where voices branch out randomly into tangled polyphonic strands. Haris
Xanthidakou has written about this, proposing that this new direction was
tantamount to an investment in dualism, replacing the monism charac-
teristic of Xenakiss earlier stochastic music.
The techniques and systems at work in Xenakiss music were multi-
ple, and they have been multiply documented. Of all the composers in
this book, he is perhaps the one best served by secondary literature of a
540 chapter twenty

technical, analytical kind. The more interesting questions, perhaps, con-

cern the fate of subjectivity within an aesthetic such as his. It remains
an inescapable paradox that the systemic structures generated by this
scientist-composer, irreducibly rational in impulse, have an impact that
is brutally visceral. It is another link with Christou. These two outsiders
were outsiders in more than just the literal sense. Their music exemplifies
a face of modernism that extends rather than rejects Romantic notions of
genius. They were artist-heroes who presented themselves as isolated by
virtue of their heightened sensibilities, their pioneering spirits, their ideal-
ism, and perhaps their vulnerability. More than most, they embodied the
ethos of originality that defined a Romantic, and later a Modernist, spirit
in the arts. All of this was of its moment, but it already looked like yester-
days moment in 1989, when the Communist regimes of Greeces northern
neighbours began to fall. By then, the cultural fracture was less severe, as
official modernisms found a niche in South East Europe, irrespective of
politics. Modernist composers were doing their thing all over the region,
but that thing was increasingly labelled postmodernism rather than
modernism, and that term would have been anathema to both Christou
and Xenakis.

Popular Music: Rebetika and Beyond

In an earlier discussion of traditional music, I suggested that local styles

in Greece might be placed in relation to three larger geo-cultural regions:
Anatolia to the east, the Slavonic Balkans to the north and the western
Mediterranean. A similar symbolic mapping, albeit with an enlargement
of the regions, is feasible for post-war popular music, globalisation not-
withstanding. Eastern affinities can once more be identified, but now
ranging beyond Anatolian, to include Egyptian, Arab and even Indian,
traditions. Likewise, the Slavonic Balkans represented a continuing refer-
ence point, especially in the presentation and appropriation of traditional
or demotic music within popular music contexts, and overlapping the
previous category in the orientalising of that music. And finally, look-
ing west, the Mediterranean retained some purchase on popular culture
(there have been attempts to theorise this by numerous writers on popular
music),26 though the real impact now came from an all-pervasive Anglo-
American mass culture.

26See, for example, Plastino 2003.

 one got away 541

It is true that in the post-war years Greece was largely isolated from its
Communist neighbours, and there was no lack of mutual hostility. Yet in
looking at the background to an emergent popular culture it may be more
helpful to consider features that cross political divides than to emphasise
the differences. In the 1950s and 1960s there was planned social moderni-
sation under the right-wing governments of Greece as also the Commu-
nist governments of the eastern bloc, and common to both was the rapid
spread of concrete across the cities and the rush to newly-built city tower
blocks from rural populations. This laid the seedbed for an emergent mass
culture, and at the same time it helped break down the structures of rural
life. Even the place of western culture within the two worlds was not so
different, whatever the official policy.
A fully commercial Anglo-American popular music scene remained a
forbidden fruit in the eastern bloc, but attempts to counter it with folk-
lorism proved in the end ineffectual, given the widening accessibility of
hegemonic mass media. At the same time a resistance to this cultural
imperialism a quest for local identities was established in popular
music, even if this too was eventually subjected to political manipula-
tion. In Greece there was a comparable attempt to promote folklorism. It
began in fact under Metaxas, notably with the folk festivals presented at
the Olympic Stadium in Athens (193740), was continued with less obvi-
ous political intent by the Dora Stratou Theatre, founded in 1953, and was
picked up with enthusiasm by the Colonels. Given some of the associa-
tions here, it is not surprising that from the late 1970s onwards folklorism
was widely regarded as politically tainted in Greece.
Folklorism needs to be distinguished from the conservation and revival
of local cultures, activities that continued apace on both sides of the
political divide. In Greece, there was an historic devotion to the rural
nation, however idealised, and this was intensified as modernising ten-
dencies forced a rejoinder, generating a tension between opposing forces
in the society and the culture. Local traditions from the regions were thus
grouped together to form a national music, and, crucially, they were
associated with the music of the Orthodox Church, another emblem of
authentic Greece. Under the auspices of Simon Karras in particular, these
two musical worlds were brought under a single explanatory framework.
And since that framework was strengthened by familiar arguments about
historical continuity, the effect was to give a kind of national legitimacy
to cultural expressions of the East. Karras had entrepreneurial flair, and
he was a proselytiser of genius. Already in the inter-war period he had
established a Society for the Dissemination of National Music, and had
assumed the role of Director of the Department of National Music at the
542 chapter twenty

State Radio. He also formed a prominent Radio Ensemble, in which the

national music of Greece embraced an Ottoman instrumentarium. Most
important of all, his theories and methods were widely adopted in the
State Music Schools, giving the seal of authority to his understanding of
the national music and its history.
In due course roughly from the 1960s onwards rebetika were added
to this cluster of national traditions. They had the advantage that they
could point equally to east and west, and were thus able to bolster either
component of the longstanding and continuing tension between a per-
ceived need to catch up with Western Europe and a commitment to tradi-
tional values. Precisely that tension defined a good deal of Greek popular
culture in the postwar years. Thus, the singer-songwriters of entekhno lako
tragoudhi could appropriate all three musical components of traditional
values (demotic music, Orthodox music and rebetika), while at the same
time exploring synergies with more commercial, western-orientated, idi-
oms. Dionysis Savvopoulos was influential here. His early, much admired,
album Fortigho [Truck] of 1966 drew together native idioms drawn from
Bob Dylan and Frank Zappa, and in doing so helped set the tone for per-
formers such as Mariza Koch, Kostas Hatzis and Nikos Xydakis. In musi-
cians such as these the Theodorakis tradition lived on as the elitist wing
of popular music. This set Greece apart within the Balkans, for it was
without any real parallel in neighbouring communist states. In contrast,
when we come to consider more mainstream popular culture we begin
to find compelling synergies with developments in those states, Yugo-
slavia in particular. Nowhere is this clearer than in the role assigned to
oriental elements.
Even as the idiom of rebetika was appropriated by popular art songs in
the 1960s, it simultaneously morphed into more commercial forms of Greek
popular music (laka), urban songs that were simultaneously indebted to
western traditions of popular music and to oriental styles. These latter
included elements from Indian film music, and for a decade or so from
the late 1960s there was even a sub-genre known as Indika, touching lead-
ing singers such as Stelios Kazantzidis. Within laka there was already a
debate about quality. One strand we might include star singers such as
Kazantzidis himself and his one-time associate Marinella, as also Stratos
Dionysiou was considered a high-quality descendant of rebetika. But the
bulk of the laka were widely denigrated as culturally impoverished, and
in Greece that produced its own ironies. Rebetika, once associated with
the lowest rung on the social ladder, came to be regarded as an authentic
and superior expression of the Greek spirit, while laka were increasingly
viewed as their bastard offspring.
 one got away 543

Already by the time of the Junta (1967) laka were thought of as mass-
cultural songs associated with the bouzouki and were widely promoted
by record companies in what had become a newly affluent nation. Laka
developed their own star system we might take figures such as Lefteris
Pantatzis and Angela Doimitriou as representative and they were widely
performed in music tavernas as well as over the air waves. In general,
we could probably claim that the oriental elements in this music per-
formed something of the same double function associated with those in
the Slavonic Balkans. In Greece, exactly as north of the border, there was
often an uneasy slippage between a Balkan east associated specifically
with Ottoman legacy and a more fashionable and stylised east identified
with pop divas (sirens) everywhere.
The oriental elements in laka raised deeper issues of identity, espe-
cially in the aftermath of the Junta in the late 1970s. This was a time of
self-scrutiny and self-definition in Greece, a time when the old debates
about double-descendedness and language were brought into sharp focus,
achieving resolution in some particulars (notably language), but allow-
ing for continuing antitheses in others (they were expressed politically in
the opposition beween the European orientation of Karamanlis and the
traditional nationalism of Papandreou). From this point, as we move into
the 1980s, patterns of popular culture began to register their receptivity
to different cultural worlds in ways that did not always mirror political
realities. Thus American political influence was on the wane as Greece
looked increasingly towards Europe, but Anglo-American popular culture
was in the ascendant. It is at this time that Greek pop music (minus the
bouzouki) might almost be said to begin. All the familiar sub-genres of
western pop and rock were registered, and with all the usual confusing
taxonomies. In the 1980s there were New Wave bands (Metro Decay, Film
Noir), punk bands (Deus ex Machina, Adiexodo), rock bands (Diafana
Krina, Endelekheia) and hip hop bands (Vita pis, Razastarr), and in later
decades other genres (Indie, Metal, Techno) joined the parade.
This did not always imply surrender to western pop, however. Hip hop
in particular, because of its origins in black ghetto-land and its prioritising
of the verbal text, could use western idioms to critique a western status
quo, and at the same time to promote a more local identity. An Ameri-
canised mass culture was a powerful force in Greece, then. Yet by the
1980s the mainstream of popular music, while it certainly drew on western
pop-rock, also looked to the north and to the east. As to the former, it is
notable that the barriers erected by Communism were beginning to break
down at this time. There was still mutual suspicion between Greece and
bordering territories (indeed there were border disputes), but the quest for
544 chapter twenty

a kind of Balkan identity in popular music was common to both sides of

the divide. We have noted elsewhere that commercial Rom musics of vari-
ous kinds, cultivated especially in Yugoslavia, began to infiltrate Greece
in the 1980s. These included Balkan brass traditions, later popularised
by Bregovi, as also the music associated with well-known Serbian and
Macedonian divas. Already in 1985 the Greek group Heimerini kolimvites
(Winter Swimmers) incorporated this Balkan sound in their recordings,
making use of the well-known Florina band.
But the real commercial success story was the transformation of one
strand of Greek laka into something akin to Serbian turbo-folk. Just as
in Serbia, laka came to be symptomatic of one side of a growing divide
between a western orientation (epitomised politically in the move to EU
membership in the 1980s) and a nationalist resistance to that orientation
(epitomised by the coeval activities of the socialist movement Pasok). But
it was also symptomatic of the down-market side of a divide between
educated and popular tastes, with western pop-rock representing the up-
market trend, exactly as elsewhere in South East Europe. Here there was a
wider context. The deluge of pop-folk, with trash lyrics and synthesizers,
was part of a development associated with the emerging fantasy world of
TV music channels right across southern Europe and the Eastern Medi-
terranean. The Berlusconi television empire, a monument to kitsch con-
sumerism, is probably its crassest manifestation. This version of an MTV
culture did not really come fully into its own in Greece until the 1990s,
but already before the fall of Pasok it was fast becoming an unmistakable
feature of mass culture.
What, then, of the eastwards look? The oriental idioms associated with
Greek pop and turbo-folk were not unique to the Balkans. But in Greece
they took on a rather particular significance, indicative of longstanding
cultural proximity to the Eastern Mediterranean. This was manifest in
particular in the links between Greek pop and the Egyptian-influenced
Turkish arabesk. Some Greek genres were effectively Greek-language ver-
sions of Turkish counterparts, notably skiladeli, which is almost a Greek-
language translation of Turkish arabesk. There was of course a pre-history
to these links. At least since the exchange of minorities tsifteteli was a
popular idiom in Greek popular music, with origins in Turkish or Arab
traditions. The genre never really lost its popularity in Greece, but in the
post-Junta years it was in a sense reinvented. It represented one of several
shared cultural forms that belied the political tensions between Greece
and Turkey (united in NATO, divided by Cyprus) during the Junta, ten-
sions that reached a war footing at one point. And it was in the context
 one got away 545

of a subsequent thaw in these political relations that modern forms of

tsifteteli were cultivated.
There was, too, an increasing interactivity between Greek, Turkish and
Egyptian musicians during the 1980s, including exchanges, song transla-
tion across three languages, and collaborative artistic projects. There were
even recordings made in which the Turkish and Greek languages appear
together (collaborations between Mustafa Sandal and Natalia Doussopou-
los, for example). And the traffic was increasingly in both directions, as
performances of rebetika became ever more popular in Turkey, and given
by both Greek and Turkish musicians. The sense of cultural cross-over in
popular music was palpable in all of this, promoting reciprocity between
nations where traditional rivalries served to obscure a shared heritage. It
goes without saying that such cultural dialogues with Turkey were of the
greatest interest, not least because they had the capacity to register major
claims about roots and identity at a time of increasing political friction
between the two nations
If we try to make sense of Greek identities in popular music prior to
the destruction of the Communist world of the Balkans, we might clear
the ground by referring back to the geo-political and geo-cultural tenden-
cies discussed at the outset, effectively describing a spectrum between
west and east. A fully Americanised mass culture impacted on Greece
like a tsunami. There was no escaping it. It generated a wealth of Greek-
language imitations, but it also provided the framework for a distinctively
Greek sound. These rapprochements took different forms, ranging from
the infusion of an existing tradition of entekhno lako tragoudhi and its
offspring piotiko tragoudhi with elements of Anglo-American pop-rock to
the inflection of hip hop by specifically Greek modes of subversive con-
tent. Most common of all was the ethno pop that fused western pop-rock
with oriental elements, finding common ground with Yugoslav turbo-folk
on one hand and Turkish arabesk on the other. This was the music that
seemed to stand for youth culture, and it quickly became the ubiquitous
fare of the radio and TV music channels, as well as the ambient music
of the streets. By replacing the bouzouki with the synthesizer, it forced
a separation from yet another powerful symbol of Greek identity. The
bouzouki was increasingly marginalised in Greek pop. It was reified as an
unmistakable touristic emblem of Greece, and the homogenised demotic
repertory indelibly associated with it has since become the property of
Greek restaurants the world over.
In summary, Greek pop in the 1980s, like its Serbian counterpart, may
have belonged in part to a trash or pulp subculture, but its eastern
546 chapter twenty

elements seemed to plumb deeper wells of identity that were strongly

suggestive of a counterculture. Something similar also informed the more
self-reflective engagement with the east that characterised more elitist
strands of popular culture, triggered no doubt by the rebetika revival of
the late 1970s and 1980s. Perhaps the most characteristic of these strands
was the movement known by its adherents as paradhosiaka, which was
already beginning to take a distinctive shape by the mid 1980s, associated
especially with urban educated youth. The defining characteristic of par-
adhosiaka was its reanimation of Ottoman instruments (the Irish-born,
Cretan-based musician Ross Daly was influential here), and its selective
appropriation of idioms and systems drawn from Orthodox sacred music,
Turkish classical music and rebetika. Its rise, in the 1990s, documented in
some detail by Eleni Kallimopoulou and associated with bands such as
Power of the Agean, might be viewed as a sophisticated expression of a
widespread investment in a Greek tradition that may indeed be hard to
define, but that seems to embody urban reflections on a rural ideal and
fuses these with a neo-Orthodox ideology and a sense of common culture
with the Ottoman past.
 PART FIVE

GLOBAL BALKANS
 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

ALL CHANGE

Brave New World

Why does the ancien regime collapse? We might ask this question about
the end of the Roman Republic,1 about Constantinople in 1453,2 about
France in 1789, which by convention marked the beginning of the long
nineteenth century,3 and about Eastern Europe in 1989, the year that
rounded off the short twentieth century.4 Both 89s were indeed falls.
They were revolutions in the full sense of the term, where an existing
order was displaced, and where part of the impulse underlying the change
was mass protest, a movement of the populace (for it is possible to over-
state the extent of the orchestration, even if the unique power of modern
media to politicise the masses was clearly crucial in the latter case). For
both 89s, the date marked the beginning of a process rather than a dis-
crete event. Thus in 1989 the (mainly velvet) reversals in Eastern Europe
initiated socio-political transformations that extended through to 1991,
by which time the unification of Germany and the disintegration of the
Soviet Union were both faits accomplis. In South East Europe at least
in former Yugoslavia the process, which involved an accumulation of
capital by new elites (in reality close to the old elites), continued well
beyond that.
The Communist world was never a monolith, however much that image
may have informed Western policy.5 Yet even as the fissures appeared,
the inert power of an internationalist political system, allied to imperial-
ist policies where these could be imposed, created certain social and cul-
tural uniformities. The collapse of that world was accordingly responsive
to pressures that were uniform in some respects and singular in others.
The dynamic of the change is imperfectly understood, even today. But

1See Alston 2010 for a thoughtful contribution to debates about the End of Antiquity,
based partly on what he calls resilience theory.
2Runciman 1990 is still the authoritative account, but see also Wheatcroft 1995.
3Doyle 1990. An original take is Schama 1996.
4Hobsbawm 1995. See also the later stages of Brown 2009.
5Selverstone 2009.
550 chapter twenty-one

what is certain is that Gorbachevs restructuring, and his abandonment

of the Brezhnev Doctrine, had consequences he neither intended nor
foresaw. And if Perestroika and Glasnost fomented local nationalisms in
Eastern Europe, the decision to allow greater self-determination among
client states was in practice nothing less than an imprimatur for the pub-
lic expression of those nationalisms right across the bloc. This, combined
with a near-total reliance on western credit in several quarters, precipi-
tated the collapse, giving head to popular protest. And at this point the
flow of influence was reversed. It is true that Glasnost at the Soviet centre
provoked protests on the periphery, but after 1989 it was revolutionary
change in Eastern Europe that served as an inspiration, a model even, for
changes within the Soviet Union itself.6
The price paid for new freedoms was a high one.7 Indeed freedom is
hardly the mot juste. In Romania, uniquely, the end was violent, partly
because there had been no hint of an organised opposition to channel
the widespread civil discontent of the later Ceauescu years. How exactly
the events of the Christmas revolution in Timioara came about remains
something of an open question, but what followed them was in some
ways more of the same, at least until the end of the Iliescu years in 1996.8
Romania was not the only state where the old Communist elites found
their niche, where strong-arm tactics continued to play, and where state
security had a new incarnation. But it was the one where authoritarian
methods remained most blatantly alive, reinforced by shock troops (the
infamous alliance between Iliescu and the miners). The difference was
that despite support for Iliescu among the rural population, there was
now a political channel for the dissenting voice. As a result post-1996
politics enacted a series of pendulum swings, all within the context of a
growing pro-western movement that culminated in membership of NATO
(2004) and of the European Union (2007). Reform did follow EU accession
(though many injustices still remain hidden from view), but one effect of
the accession was to accelerate the flow of emigration, as people sought
to escape a world where living standards were low, where opportunities
for advancement remained limited, and where the political culture was
still riddled with corruption.

6Brown 2009.
7Ramet and Wagner 2010. See also the various other essays on Former Yugoslavia in
this volume.
8Siani-Davies 2007.
 all change 551

Corruption was unavoidable across the bloc during this transition,

given that any initiative based on private ownership was dependent on
a bureaucracy that could name its price for compliance. It was especially
marked in Bulgaria, for whom the collapse of the Soviet Union presented
acute economic problems, exacerbated by the international blockades
imposed on Yugoslavia.9 Again it was largely ex-Communists who domi-
nated the political scene, and again the path to reform proved slow and
painful. Attempts to modernise the country were made, but they were
thwarted by the vested interests of political elites, and by the power and
influence of globally networked criminal gangs which quickly became a
law onto themselves, complete with a culture of contract killings. This
was gangster capitalism with a vengeance. One is reminded of Smiley in
Le Carrs Our Kind of Traitor: Now were finished with Communism our
next job is to deal with the excesses of capitalism.10 The new democratic
Bulgaria rapidly became a key centre for drug and women trafficking,
helped by its strategic location on routes between east and west, and this
reputation has been difficult to purge. Yet, as with Romania, European
Union membership has been crucial, for tough conditions were imposed,
with ongoing checking and the threat of exclusion clauses.
Albania was one of the last surviving Communist states in the Bal-
kans. The various attempts by Hoxhas successor Ramiz Alia to institute
reforms, and to arrive at accommodations with hostile neighbours, were
not enough to halt the momentum for more fundamental change, and
in June 1991 a Government of National Stability was installed. A year
later Sali Berishas Democratic Party outnumbered the Party of Labour in
the Government and Berisha became the first non-Communist President
of Albania since 1944. But the social and economic problems were too
deep-rooted to be resolved by waving a democratic wand.11 Within a gen-
eral context of western-orientated reform, there was political corruption
(including electoral fraud) and mishandled economic capitalism (the pyr-
amid schemes and their collapse), culminating in riots and near-anarchy
in the mid 1990s. Berishas eventual resignation in 1997 was followed by
the return of the socialists to power, and all against a background of prob-
lems with Greece over mutual minorities and with Serbia-Yugoslavia over
Kosovo. A brief sketch cannot convey the political and socio-economic

9Bell 1998.
10Le Carr 2010.
11Vickers 2006.
552 chapter twenty-one

chaos of post-Communist Albania. Yet despite everything, the direction of

change was determinate. In April 2009 membership of NATO was secured,
and an application lodged for membership of the European Union.
An industry of literature has been devoted to former Yugoslavia in the
1990s.12 The outline story is familiar. But it is worth stressing that the
last days of Yugoslavia were marked by those same nationalist impulses
that were promoted all over the eastern bloc. The difference is that the
nationalisms involved were within, rather than of, the state. In the cases
of Slovenia and Croatia the elections of April 1990 reflected the more
general liberalisation of Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, and the Com-
munist parties of both republics ceded power without any real struggle.
Serbia was a different matter. The Greater Serbia ideology embodied in
the SANU Memorandum of 1986 was rooted in Serbian culture, but it was
also a backlash against the cultural fragmentation of Yugoslavia. In the
mode of a nationalist populism, it was this agenda that allowed the rise to
power of Miloevi, and that led to the secession of all the other republics
apart from Montenegro. It is well known that in the wars of the 1990s poli-
cies of ethnic cleansing were brutally implemented, leaving deep tears in
the social fabric of all the successor states. The Dayton accord, and later
NATOs bombing of Serbia, called a halt, but politically the outcome of
Yugoslavias dismemberment remains uncertain, notably as to a federated
Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a Kosovo whose independence has been
recognised by many nations but by no means all.
A striking feature of all these nation states, and it was echoed else-
where in the bloc, was the intermittent return to power (at various points
right up to the present) of the ex-Communists, invariably under a differ-
ent label. It is the more striking in that it was achieved in several cases
by means of democratic election. Partly this was due to the harsh real-
ity of market forces (unmitigated by the social cushioning found in most
Western democracies), and the removal of the safety net provided by
Communist regimes. Partly it came down to the incompetence of inexpe-
rienced leaders, and an increasing recognition that the old Communists
were rather good at dealing with the forms of corrupt capitalism on offer
throughout the region. There was also resistance to the Americanisation
of everyday culture (though not to the economic interventions of the
European Union), bolstered by an element of spiritual revival that was

12Among the most recent at the time of writing is Djoki and Ker-Lindsay 2011. But
authoritative studies are Woodward 1995, Woodward 2001 and Jovi 2009.
 all change 553

partly politically driven but partly a reaction to years of repression.13 The

result, in any case, was the polarisation of a conservative, often rural, con-
stituency for those politicians who seemed to represent the presumed cer-
tainties of the past, and an anti-Communist dissident agenda, premised
on the view that true democracy still eluded this region. The dissident
voice was (and remains) as much anti-Fascist and anti-Nationalist as anti-
Communist, and these days it articulates everything from Green issues
to gay rights.
In looking at the relative stability of those states from South East Europe
that are in the European Union and those that are out, one might balk
a little at the schematicism of Andrew Baruch Wachtels typology based
on three of the multis (multinational, multiethnic and multicultural),14
especially as this picture has changed radically in recent years for even
the most established European partners. However, if we look back at the
success rate of the modern nations as they emerged from multicultural
empires (Habsburg as much as Ottoman), we will have to concede that
Yugoslavia was the one for which even a notional, proclaimed mono-
ethnicity was bound to be unrealistic. This does not mean that a political
federation was bound to be unworkable. But the fact that it was tried and
found wanting is a measure of the potency of the ethnonational ideal. It
is only today, in a context where an ethos of mono-ethnicity informs most
Yugoslav successor states (whatever the official policy on minorities), that
a political accommodation with the European Union seems increasingly
likely for each of those states. As the entire region edges ever closer to
Western Europe, culturally as well as politically, the old diversities give
way to new diversities.
With this process comes some loss of singularity. How far, we may
ask, do the globalising processes found just about everywhere in recent
decades, simply extend, mutatis mutandi, to South East Europe? Clearly
there has been some such move to the uniform diversities of a globa-
lised society, symbolised by the multi-nationals everywhere on display,
but vestigial multiform diversities remain. Are we there yet? might be
the cry of constituent nation states in the Balkans as the entire region
stumbles towards Western Europe, whether or not there is a welcome or
welcoming destination. A brave new European world, itself multicultural,

13See Benovska-Subkova 1996 for an account of Christianity in post-Communist

Bulgaria.
14Wachtel 1998.
554 chapter twenty-one

does indeed beckon, but elements of an older multi-ethnic, multi-cultural,

and multi-faith Ottoman society and culture, hopelessly problematised by
modern ideas of the nation, linger on stubbornly. As one writer sees it, we
are today in the final stages of a long transition from the Balkans to South
East Europe.15 In due course, the region may no longer be betwixt and
between. But that moment has not arrived. Meanwhile, it is inadequate
to imagine a globalised future that might effectively close the circle with a
pre-national, ecumenical past. The shaping power and energy of ethnona-
tionalism have been much too strong to allow for such a simple trajectory,
and that power and energy continue to rock the region to this day.
Societies in the Balkans have been in flux in recent years, as have cul-
tural forms. Music is no exception. If we look at the longue dure, we
can argue that current instabilities in musical life are part of a process:
a response to undercurrents of change that issued from the long transi-
tion mentioned above. More immediately, however, they were a reaction
to the political upheavals of 1989. In the remaining chapters of this book
I will look at the aftermath of those upheavals, and in particular at how
various categories of music and music-making fared in the nineties and
beyond. In the popular music field, the response to 89, as to the wars of
Yugoslav succession, was immediate, and almost by definition it enjoyed
wide media coverage. For art music the situation was more complex, in
relation to both institutional frameworks and compositional praxes. I will
look at both types of music in subsequent chapters, and as a framework
for investigating them I will consider mechanisms of appropriation. Both
popular music and art music could be appropriated by an official pol-
itics or alternatively by a counterculture. At the same time they could
themselves appropriate other categories such as traditional music, church
music and oriental music. In the case of art music one might even argue
that an avant-garde could in some contexts be understood as an appropri-
ated repertory.
Before turning to this, however, I will register one further response
to 89 and its aftermath. For numerous composers and performers of art
music, the loss of infrastructure, together with the more general unem-
ployment and poverty of those years, resulted in a crisis of confidence
and of any sense of a clear social role for their music and music-making;
indeed in some cases this brave new democratic world meant real hard-

15Wachtel 2008, chapter 5.

 all change 555

ship. Inevitably, this strengthened the attraction of foreign parts. For

reasons of necessity, studying abroad had long been a leitmotif of Balkan
music history, and in many cases there was no return journey. So the exo-
dus of musicians from the Balkans in the 1990s was in no sense new; it was
simply accelerated. It is not obvious that international prestige commonly
rewarded such emigration (figures such as Xenakis had always been the
exception), but there was at least some hope of job security. As to com-
positional options, the game could be played two ways. One could merge
with local environments and leave the Balkans behind. Or one could
invest in roots, and in doing so create a distinctive brand. For much of
the 1990s, after all, the Balkans could hardly have had a higher profile. It
was eminently brand-worthy.
Emigration was no less a theme in the popular music field. With the
Yugoslav wars of the 1990s musicians commonly flitted, either for politi-
cal or pragmatic reasons, from one successor state to another. Admittedly
this was hardly emigration it was movement without migration but
for many musicians there was a strong temptation to look further afield
and to make a career for themselves in the commercial music scene
overseas, not always in directly creative capacities. For this reason, and
for other reasons too, more directly related to war and politics, many of
the leading Yugoslav groups disbanded, and as we will see in chapter 23
there was some loss of vitality in what followed. Although in theory bands
could aspire to conquering a global market from local sites and by means
of overseas tours, there was in practice a real choice to be made, and
mainly because of the language. Significantly, in that small handful of
cases where some measure of international success was indeed achieved,
it was invariably on the basis of an (exoticised) Balkan identity. This was
notably the case with Rom divas and ensembles and to some extent with
more popular forms of sevdalinka. It was a matter of local branding on
the world music scene. And a key issue here to a lesser extent it was an
issue for art music too was the extent to which the Balkans had already
established a musical presence outside the region itself.

Another Balkans: The Diasporic Imagination

At the root of this question lies the most commonly appropriated of all
repertories: traditional music, or, as it may be legitimately described in its
diasporic form, folk music. This repertory had long been identity-affirming
among Balkan populations abroad, but it exerted a no less powerful
556 chapter twenty-one

attraction for their hosts. Not for nothing did the late Mirjana Lauevi
call her absorbing study of American Balkanites Balkan Fascination.16
During the 1990s Lauevi, a native of Sarajevo, engaged in extensive field-
work in the North American Balkan music and dance scene. However,
some of the most interesting parts of her book concern the pre-history of
that scene: not just her account of the gradual consolidation of folk prac-
tices but her analysis of the intersecting ideologies that lay behind those
practices. Thus, the settlement movement, developed by wealthy middle-
class Americans from the late nineteenth century onwards, promoted folk
dancing within a programme of social meliorism and integration. Para-
doxically enough, it was considered both an aid to Americanisation for
the immigrants, and a healthy antidote to corrupting commercial culture
for Americans. As the folk dance movement spread to schools and col-
leges it took on further layers of significance, ranging from health- and
character-building to the quest for history and European roots, the latter
a familiar antidote to the newness of American culture. In all of this, of
course, Balkan music and dance represented just one corner of a much
larger field of international folklorism.
Lauevi further addressed the infrastructures of folk dance programmes
during the inter-war years, including the proliferation of festivals (of which
the World Fairs were the most high-profile), the appearance of publica-
tions and recordings, and the emergence of key teachers and entrepre-
neurs. Through all of this America was able to promote multiculturalism
as a positive value, while at the same time enabling the kind of virtual
tourism that constructs alterities as imagined peasant communities. It
was on the back of these developments that a Balkan craze developed
in the post-war years, associated with the proselytising work of teacher-
ethnographers, and finding its institutional expression in the New York
Balkan Arts Centre, founded in 1966, and in the Balkan camps that pro-
liferated in the 1970s and 1980s, many of them sponsored by the Eastern
European Folklife Centre, still active today. In this later stage of its devel-
opment the Balkan scene maintained close links with the region itself,
hosting leading musicians from there, employing teacher-ethnographers
who had spent long periods of fieldwork in South East Europe, and main-
taining close links with Balkan festivals and ensembles. Yet there can be
conflicted responses when the region itself becomes real for Balkanites

16Lauevi 2007.
 all change 557

in this way. The Balkan village, after all, is largely a construction in this
scene: a simulacrum.17
One development that can be associated with the North Ameri-
can scene today, but is not unique to it, is the divide that has opened
up between traditional folk idioms and Balkan-inspired dance and rock
music, especially popular for weddings and youth dances.18 Lauevi did
not enter this territory in her book, but we might note that the separa-
tion effectively created three types of ensemble: traditional, modern and
in-between, meaning those that attempted to cater for both tastes. There
are countless groups (choral, instrumental and dance) that are relatively
purist about folk music and dance and that use only traditional instru-
ments: one might cite almost at random the tamburica orchestra Prazna
flaa [Empty Bottle] from Milwaukee or the Bulgarian-Macedonian group
Lyuki chushki [Hot Peppers] from Washington. At the other extreme there
are bands such as Kultur shock from Washington or Toids from San Fran-
cisco that specialise in Balkan-inspired (and on occasion Middle Eastern-
inspired) rock. As to the third category, bands such as Izvor [Fountain]
have been fairly successful in bridging the gap between traditional and
modern, maintaining a folkloric ethos, but expanding it where necessary.
Likewise Mike Gordons Washington-based Balkanarama has now gained
an international reputation for a practice that crosses borders freely and
eclectically. Synthetic approaches are not always trouble-free, of course,
and in some bands the difference in philosophy between old and new
styles has resulted in complex histories.
Greek-American culture is a category all to itself, and one that I will
largely sidestep here. Of course it celebrates Greekness, but it does so in
ways that maintain a certain independence of the motherland. It has, in
short, defined an identity of its own. This is apparent in the distinctive
practices and idioms of the Greek-American Church, organ and all, and in
the thriving activities of traditional music and dance (where characteristi-
cally some native Greeks claim to have difficulty recognising the dances).
It is no less apparent in popular music, where Greek-American artists
have carved out a singular niche. Among the most distinctive is Diamanda
Galas, though to assign Galas to popular music is hardly adequate. At any
rate, she is Greek-American rather more than Greek. Both her parents

17At the same time, Lauevi is at pains to argue that the Balkan craze created in the
end a unique and valuable space within American culture.
18One might include here the jazz crossovers associated with Don Ellis, notably his
famous recording Bulgarian Bulge of 1971.
558 chapter twenty-one

were born in North America, and her identification with Greece takes a
highly individual form. Drawing eclectically on many streams of popular
music, jazz and gospel, she blends them with traditions from the eastern
Mediterranean, including the amanedes tradition in Greece. Her music is
political in the sense of supporting minority causes, but she insists that
she is not interested in propaganda, even if some of her pronouncements
suggest otherwise. In the end, whatever the rhetoric, her commitment to
the aesthetic sphere ensures that she has a restricted but loyal fan base,
and if the rhetoric is occasionally divisive, the music tells a more humani-
tarian story.19
Today there are Balkan scenes all over the world, though few are as
highly developed as those of North America and Canada. Only in Austra-
lia, where there is a substantial immigrant presence, are they institutiona-
lised somewhat on the American model, with folk festivals taking place
all over the country, with a pronounced Balkan presence in the many
international folk societies, and with sound worlds that range from Bul-
garian voices to Bregovi-inspired brass bands. There has already been a
reference to one band that specialises in Macedonian repertories, Linsey
Pollaks Tsrvena Kniga, but one might also mention Xenos, which special-
ises in Rom dance music of Macedonia and northern Greece, or BabaGra-
noush from Preston, which performs a more generic Balkan music that
can slide from ethnic music to caf music and beyond. On the more popu-
lar front there is also a lively dance scene associated with recorded music
(the usual remixes) played in bars and clubs, and here the DJ team Balkan
Beasts, located mainly in Melbourne, has a prominent role. This takes us
into world music, where Balkan specificities (the inevitable gypsy brass)
yield to crossover styles of various kinds, including Middle Eastern music,
jazz and reggae, klezmer music, ska, and rock.
It is unnecessary to embark on a Cooks Tour of Balkan music around
the world. But it may be worth closing in on my home ground, to convey
some sense of the diversity of the offerings, and of the different philoso-
phies that lie behind them. As in the American scene, it is not uncommon
for immigrant populations in Britain to initiate processes that then extend
to native British participants. This was the case when Dessislava Stefanova,
a former member of the Koutev Ensemble, founded the London Bulgarian
Choir in 2000. Capitalising on the popular status of the Bulgarian choral

19Ioannis Polychronakis commented interestingly on Galas in an unpublished paper

given at the First Biennial Euro-Mediterranean Music Conference in Cyprus in 2009.
 all change 559

sound, this choir predominantly non-Bulgarian in personnel has now

gained considerable success in competitions, festivals, film soundtracks
and recordings. On a more modest scale, there have been attempts to pro-
mote sevdalinka on the part of a handful of Bosnians living in London,
chief among them Mirza Bai. This has been done principally by way of
World of Sevdah, essentially a website and English-language database, but
it has also extended to modest concert organisation, and there is (inter-
mittently) a London Sevdah Choir. The enthusiasm for sevdalinka on the
part of certain key figures in British classical music, notably the composer
Nigel Osborne, adds a further dimension to this, and it is worth noting
that Osborne has composed a sevdah opera, Differences in Demolitions,
which has now been performed both in Mostar and the UK.20
Meanwhile, Balkan folk dance has been cultivated by Balkanplus, cur-
rently led by Brian Dowsett. This is a facilitating organisation, offering
dance workshops with eminent teachers to native enthusiasts, but also
inviting visiting groups from the Balkans and beyond. On occasion Bal-
kanplus has hosted what is now probably the leading UK ensemble for
traditional Balkan music, the London-based Dunay. It has a relatively pur-
ist approach to instrumentation and style, and through festival appear-
ances, tours, broadcasts and recordings, has acquired something of an
international reputation. Dunay performs music from all over the Balkan
region, but there are also specialised scenes associated with some of the
more established immigrant communities. Albania is becoming a modest
cultural presence in London. But by far the most prominent of the immi-
grant communities are Greeks (and even more Greek-Cypriots). The Hel-
lenic Centre in London sponsors Greek culture of just about every kind,
organising festivals, screening films, and promoting folksong and dance
events. At some remove from this is the so-called Institute of Rebetology,
loosely connected to London Universitys School of African and Orien-
tal Studies, which proselytises on behalf of rebetika through an extensive
website and organises talks on, and concerts of, Greek-Turkish music of
the urban tradition.
The world music scene is also well represented in Britain, notably
through bands such as Gundula Gruens London-based Tatcho drom
[Romany: True Journey] Quintet, playing music from the Balkans and
beyond, but without the purist orientation of Dunay. One might also

20Based on a poem by Goran Simi, Differences in Demolitions tells of an exiled builder

looking back on his life in Bosnia and on his love for a woman called Sevdah.
560 chapter twenty-one

mention Dave Kelbies Szapora, and although this seems to have disap-
peared from view at the time of writing, one of its Bosnian personnel,
Ta Hodi, has established the thriving Ta Hodi Trio. One intriguing
feature of concerts by such groups is that British audiences happily listen
to songs sung in languages of which they have no knowledge whatever.
Ta Hodi admits to some bewilderment at this, given that the words of
the songs are so utterly central to their significance, and are indeed their
true starting-points. And the same goes for other traditions; witness the
London-based Algerian band Fantazia, the various Arab musics associated
with performances at the Dash Caf venue, and the thriving Latin scene
in London. If it indicates anything at all, it is that the other Balkans is
part of a much larger construction of alterity, that it remains an exoticism
for British audiences: truly a Balkan fascination. The Balkans as made in
Britain, in other words, tells us relatively little about the Balkans in situ.
This is yet more apparent when we turn to the fusion repertory per-
formed by groups such as Trans-global Underground and the Newcastle-
based, but now internationally known, Baghdaddies. Such Balkan- or
Middle East-influenced world beat can now be heard all over the world in
relevant festivals and clubs, and it is a very long way from the folk music
and dance scene described by Mirjana Lauevi. Closer to popular music
than folk music, it often takes its initial impulses from the Rom bands of
South East Europe, the more high-profile of which were given international
exposure by well-placed Western entrepreneurs. Some of these bands
were discovered, others constructed. But either way one might want to
complain about the manipulation of the musicians by external commer-
cial interests (money is made, but seldom by the musicians). In any case,
by the time Taraf de Hadouks appeared in the films Latcho drom (1993)
and The Man Who Cried (2000), there was already a widespread interest in
the essentialised Balkan sounds associated with such Rom bands.
A little further commercialisation was all it took to seal this interest,
and with the help of the German dance producer Shantel, associated with
the Bucovina Club in Frankfurt, and the Belgian record label Crammed
Discs, DJs began to mix traditional Balkan music with techno drum and
bass to create a global dance music widely associated with club culture.
Producers and DJs now came into their own, with Balkan traditional
music typically forming a foundation layer, remixed electronically with
other idioms. Percussion-driven Balkan brass met with Latino beats; fla-
menco rhythms were blended with heavily manipulated samples drawn
from Balkan traditions; Bulgarian vocal magic sat alongside guitar riffs
and techno beats. This was global fusion.
 all change 561

The production of new recordings along these lines for labels such
as Six Degrees involves first a contract with an existing label producing
mainly Rom music, of which the most prominent is Crammed Discs, then
a selection of suitable tracks, and then a remix for the dance floor (one Six
Degrees CD, produced by Simon Emmerson and Phil Meadley, is called
Ethnomixicology). Effectively this creates a new piece, where for example
the original vocals might be kept but the instrumental backing replaced
by synthesised drum-bass idioms in house music style. Alternatively, in
the case of underground DJs, several recordings might be sampled sepa-
rately and then mixed into one. All this has become a widespread practice
in dance music generally. Indeed the tendency to reduce other traditions,
notably hip-hop and rap, to dance music though remixing, is a common
one today, and in most such cases, including those where Balkan CDs are
used, the original source is not just modified but totally deconstructed.
Leaving aside questions of ontology, or for that matter copyright, it is
enough to remark here that the Balkans becomes an ambivalent, and
largely catalytic, presence in this corner of what is in reality an interna-
tional idiom. Indeed one might go further and argue that it is an ambiva-
lent presence more generally in World Music, understanding this term
in its narrow definition as an independently marketable commodity pre-
sented in dedicated festivals such as Womad and proselytised by journals
such as Songlines. Any sense of place here is inevitably reduced to that of a
brand. And it is not surprising that this should have attracted criticism on
the part of those whose interest lies in Balkan music first and foremost.
There is, however, one place that could stake a claim to be the centre
of these Balkan-inspired fusions, and appropriately it is the fons et origo
of the Balkans, understood as Ottoman legacy in South East Europe. In
Istanbul today a synthetic image of urban Balkan culture is manufac-
tured through fusion sounds. In the lanes behind Istkal Caddesi music
cafs and clubs host a lively mix of international and Turkish musicians
performing a wide range of fusion music, where Sufi electronica, gypsy
funk and oriental hip-hop not only co-exist but blend. A key player in
this history was Hasan Saltik, who founded the record label Kalan Mzik
in 1991, with the intention politically tricky at the time of presenting
the music of Turkeys minority groups (Aynur Doans Kurdish-language
Kee kurdan [Kurdish Girl] was a notable landmark). But it was above
all Ahmet Ulu who launched and promoted modern fusion sounds. He
is the co-owner of the nightclub Babylon, which is right at the centre of
the live music scene, and also of Doublemoon Records, which transmits
that scene to the rest of the world. Musicians such as the rap artist Ceza,
562 chapter twenty-one

the fusion band Kolektif Istanbul, and the Sufi-inspired performer Mercan
Dede (whose career raises all kinds of questions about the ambivalent role
of Islamic music when it is appropriated by a culture it inherently resists)
all record on Doublemoon. Accepted that this remains a niche market, it
was nonetheless given considerable global exposure when Fatih Akins
documentary Crossing the Bridge: The Sounds of Istanbul, was issued on
general release at cinemas all over the world.
The centring of Balkan fusions in Istanbul rooting them in a place
draws attention to some of the paradoxes surrounding notions of authen-
ticity with this kind of Balkan beat. It is perfectly true that pre-modern
traditional repertories in the Balkans were closely tied to place and
loosely defined temporally; i.e. without an obvious history. They had spa-
tial boundaries, in other words, but they tended to flow unimpeded across
time. Naturally when such repertories are appropriated by commercial
World Music ensembles, and especially when they are mixed with very dif-
ferent repertories, the significance of place is bound to be changed; we are
offered in effect something rather like the musical equivalent of cultural
tourism (even Crossing the Bridge cannot quite escape this charge, if it is a
charge). However the story is arguably rather different when urban music,
and especially Rom music, forms the basis of the remix. If anything could
be described as authentic within Rom traditions, after all, it is precisely
the idea of fusion and the related embrace of commercialism. Moreover,
a sense of place was always of secondary importance within Rom music-
making, and was very largely a product of contingency, a market-driven
adoption and transformation of local idioms. It is no surprise then that
the gypsy bands of the Balkans have themselves been more than happy
to be associated with the institution of World Music. They are in a sense
working within their own traditions. Today, the leading bands not just
standard Rom bands, but native fusion bands such as Shukar Collective
and Mitsoura are sell-outs at prestigious venues.
Nevertheless, several cognoscenti have suggested to me that enthusi-
asm for this kind of world beat is beginning to wane (possibly related
to the revival of live music, of which more later), or at least that it is no
longer showing signs of conquering all to achieve the status of a new
form of classicism, as once argued by Jan Ling).21 I am not well placed to
assess this. But in any event, there can be no doubt that several Balkan
musicians living outside the Balkans have found a niche for themselves

21Ling 2004.
 all change 563

within this culture, as some of the discussion above amply illustrates. Of

course there are still many who work for some sense of an authentic voice
of the region (they often tend to operate within the nostalgic orbit of
already well-established immigrant communities), and for them the world
beyond functions as a kind of counter-site, literally another Balkans. But
for others their Balkan roots function primarily as a useful passport to a
career within fusion bands of one kind or another. The point is not to
make judgements here, but simply to note that the classic responses of
exile those narratives of nostalgia and acculturation discussed in an ear-
lier chapter may need a little nuancing to meet this new reality. A third
way is effectively opened up by some of the Balkan participants in the
World Music scene, one that constructs nostalgia as an aid to accultura-
tion. Nor is this third way entirely unknown in the world of art music.

Composers in Exile

There were obvious reasons for the exodus from Sarajevo and Belgrade
during the 1990s. Unlike most capitals in the region, for which the key
moment of change was the beginning of the decade, these cities were
unable to attempt any kind of renewal until rather later: the mid-decade
for Sarajevo and the end of the decade for Belgrade. I will consider the fate
of music in both cities in the next chapter, but for now I will look rather
at the exodus. In 1989 there were ninety professors at the Music Acad-
emy in Sarajevo. In 1995 there were nineteen. At the time of writing there
are fifty-three.22 These figures tell an obvious story: a dramatic collapse
followed by a process of steady, but partial, re-growth. However, the re-
growth has been largely the result of new recruitment. Of those professors
who left because of the war, only five have returned. The majority settled
abroad. There is a similar story when we look to other musical institutions,
notably the Opera and the three professional orchestras. In all, some four
hundred musicians left the city during the early 1990s, and they are to be
found today in orchestras and conservatories all over Europe, and as far
afield as Australia. It should be added that relatively few of the composers
who had been active in Sarajevo before the war remained there through-
out the 1990s. Conspicuous among those who did remain is Ivan avlovi,
who is also the Director of the Academy.

22These figures refer to full-time teachers. There are (again at the time of writing) a
further forty to fifty part-time teachers at the Academy.
564 chapter twenty-one

Of the composers who left, some of the older generation moved else-
where in the former Yugoslavia. Two were discussed briefly in chapter 18.
Vojin Komadina and Josip Magdi both left during the war years, the
former for Serbia-Montenegro and the latter for Zagreb, and Magdi in
particular has maintained a creative interest in folk music from the moun-
tain regions surrounding Sarajevo. Both men were of the generation of the
1930s, and so too was Alojz Ajdi (b.1939), who moved to Slovenia, where
he has played a prominent role in music education as well as in compo-
sition. The younger generation of composers was more inclined to look
further afield. Vojislav Ivanovi (b.1959) settled in Greece, and has been
associated with jazz and traditional music as well as with concert music
and film scores. He founded the Levantine Jazz Trio and has collaborated
with leading singers such as Savina Yannatou. The Kosovo-born Ramiz
Tahiri (b.1950) worked mainly in Zenica until the war, at which point he
left for Germany, as did Jasmin Osmanagi (b.1963). Dino Reidbegovi
(b.1975) likewise moved to Vienna, and Igor Karaa (b.1974) to North
America. Several of these composers Ivanovi and Karaa in particular
have kept close links with Bosnia and Herzegovina. And it is notable too
that, aside from their creative deployment of traditional music, some have
made explicit references to the war in their music. Magdis Sarajevo War
Postcards, a suite of ten pieces for organ or piano composed in the midst
of war in 1993, each of them pinpointing a particular place in Sarajevo,
is emblematic.23
Is there an umbilical cord linking these Bosnian composers to their
homeland? And if so, is it a matter of straightforward nostalgia? We might
ask the same questions of Serbian composers in diaspora, bearing in mind
that Sarajevo and Belgrade inevitably invite comparison in the post-war
years. There was indeed an exodus of composers from Belgrade in the 1990s,
and in at least one case, Vuk Kulenovi (born in Sarajevo before settling
in Belgrade), exile to North America in 1996 was a direct result of political
protest against the Miloevi regime. For reasons that are not immediately
obvious a high proportion of those who left Serbia were women.24 They
included Nataa Bogojevi (b.1966), now in Chicago, Katarina Miljkovi
(b.1959), now in Boston and Aleksandra Vrebalov (b.1970), now teaching

23As noted on p. 493, one of the CDs produced by the Academy of Music in Sarajevo
is dedicated to Works by B-H Composers Living Abroad.
24See the interesting essay on women and music in Serbia by Jelena Novak (Novak
2011).
 all change 565

at the City University of New York.25 Of this generation of women com-

posers, several of them members of the Magnificent Seven, only Isadora
ebeljan (b.1967) has remained in Belgrade.26 All are talented, all have a
broadly modernist orientation, and all are interested in success; they are
composers, after all. But for ebeljan, who has a corpus of major operatic
as well as instrumental works to her credit, the task has perhaps been eas-
ier than for the others. Belgrade may not be the centre of new music, but
it provides ebeljan with a clearly focused identity as a Serbian composer
(she was elected to the Serbian Academy at a surprisingly young age), and
a base for the highly skilled Europe-wide networking that has made her
one of the most widely performed Serbian composers today.
For Bogojevi, Miljkovi and Vrebalov there has been a steeper moun-
tain to climb. All have had some success, with teaching posts, a healthy
record of commissions and performances by world-class ensembles, some
on international platforms. But the North American pool is a large one,
and it is hard to be noticed; there are many composers with impressive
curricula vitae of whom few in the wider musical world have heard. Fol-
lowing the success of her Formes diffrentes de sonneries de la rose+croix,
Bogojevis more recent work has veered eclectically between electronic
and multimedia compositions such as Bajalica (2007) and polystylistic
compositions such as Le beau est toujours ..., labelled by the composer
Neogesamtkunstwerk for Klaus Nomi. Miljkovi has a more distinctive
and potent creative voice, and one that has taken on a unique identity
through her interest in complexity theory in sound and movement, and
especially in the application of Stephen Wolframs NKS (New Kind of
Science) to music (works such as Overhearing Complexity of 2006 and
nkScape of 2008). A latter-day Xenakis, her video collaborations with
Dawn Kramer, notably Cracking of 2008, are truly exciting multi-media
experiences. Vrebalov has perhaps the highest profile of the three. The
combination of a traditionally romantic intensity curve (works such as
Passion Revisited for Piano Trio) and an ambitious play with proportional
designs, metric modulations and multi-layered structures (the orches-
tral Orbits of 2002 is a case in point) adds up to a complex yet accessible

25Also New York-based is the interesting crossover figure Milica Paranosi, who
engages in various kinds of performance art, often with educational or socially activist
intent, and drawing on classical, popular and world musics.
26These were Igor Gostuki, Isidora ebeljan, Ana Mihajlovi, Nataa Bogojevi, Ogn-
jen Bogdanovi, Srdjan Jacimovi and Vladimir Jovanovi.
566 chapter twenty-one

sound world, given added resonance by recourse to stylistic allusions and

at times direct quotations.
Where are Serbia and the Balkans in all of this? For Bogojevi they
hardly seem a significant presence, beyond her Kolo for Bernard Rands.
Miljkovi, on the other hand, returns to traditional materials persistently,
and her processing of them, often highly systematic, results in an evoc-
ative symbiosis of mimesis and rationality. Thus, her Threads (2005) is
based on Balkan womens chants, initially as scattered fragments, but
then expanded into melodic groups and variational processes. Having a
Balkan background, says Miljkovi, I realised that I am caught in a net-
work of threadlike memories, each of which has a specific sound stream-
ing from music of my heritage. This composition is an attempt to follow
these threads. Likewise Window (2006) uses fragments of Serbian folk
songs assembled by way of formal mobility, while Drop (2007) turns to tra-
ditional laments for its melodic substance. A yet more explicit program-
matic element is presented in her multi-media White City, written for the
violinist Ana Milosavljevi. This is a tribute to Belgrade, and is based on a
12-minute recording of the urban soundscape taken from the balcony of
the composers apartment. The concrete sounds of the city are blended
with Ana Milosavljevis pre-recorded violin sounds, and the whole is
transformed by the entrance of a live violin part bringing Serbian tradi-
tional chanting and prayer into the soundscape. The composer remarks
that the video recording, unfolding simultaneously in two different ways,
preserves a natural, intuitive rhythm of the eye of an observer.
Vrebalov, too, has employed traditional materials, notably in her early
string quartet Pannonia Boundless, where her Vojvodina background
is evoked by way of various East European musical references. More
recently, in... hold me, neighbour, in this storm...(2006), she has offered
a kind of musical sermon on the political divisions of the Balkans. She was
not the first composer to address directly the events of the 1990s. At the
beginning of the Bosnian war the Association of Composers had helped
organise a public protest begging Miloevi to resign, and several felt
impelled to offer a creative response to the war. There was Eris Images
of Chaos IV, Kulenovis [War]Boogie, Mihajlovis Eine kleine Trauer-
musik, Despis Dies Irae and Stefanovis Lacrimosa; later there would be
Exodus (2001) by Ivan Jevti, who spent the late 1990s teaching in Bra-
zil. In other words, there was a pre-history to works such as... hold me,
neighbour, in this storm..., a response to a commission from Carnegie Hall
for the Kronos Quartet. Bringing together the sounds of Serbian church
bells and Islamic calls to prayer, and evoking primal Balkan percussive
energies as well as rural traditional music and urban tavern songs, this
 all change 567

work attempts, in the composers own words, to connect histories and

places by unifying one of the most civilised sounds of Western classical
music that of the string quartet with ethnic Balkan instruments, the
gusle and tapan. It is a way to piece together our identities fractured by
centuries of intolerance and to reach out and celebrate the land so rich
in its diversity, the land that would be ashen, empty, sallow, if any of us,
all so different, were not there.
There can be an uncomfortable ambivalence surrounding such gestures.
Arguably a work such as... hold me, neighbour, in this storm...conflates
a number of discomforts. First, there is the facility in two senses with
which ensembles like the Kronos Quartet feel able to draw world music
into the realm of a western cultural production, without a hint that there
might be any problematic associated with this transfer. Secondly, there is
the presumption of the artist who poses as healer, and in doing so gains
the sympathy of the audience before a single note is heard. And lastly,
there is the awkward positioning of the outsider who is at the same time
an insider. This latter is of course the issue of exile. My own sense is
that Miljkovi succeeds in treating traditional Balkan repertories with an
appropriate sense of distance, and that this is at once a more challenging
and provocative, though perhaps a less marketable, creative stance than
the crude symbolism offered by Vrebalov. Certain other Serbian compos-
ers working abroad have likewise been successful albeit by a very differ-
ent means in referring to the homeland in intelligent and questioning
ways. One such is Ana Mihajlovi (b.1968), a member of the Magnificent
Seven who is currently based in Rotterdam, and a composer-performer
who is equally at home on classical concert platforms and with the ambi-
ent sounds of the band Cloud Society.
In considering these various careers it is tempting to invoke the question
of generation, though I do so tentatively. In my final chapter I will broach
it again, suggesting that divisions between the generations have in some
respects begun to override differences of class, education and nationality
as principal arbiters of style and taste. At the very least we could claim that
composers of an older generation such as Xenakis and Ligeti would proba-
bly not have made the mark they did on the new music had they remained
in Greece and Hungary respectively. There was a rather clearer sense of
centre and periphery in the 1960s, and for these composers the charismatic
centres of new music in Europe and North America proved to be the gate-
ways to international acclaim. Something similar might be claimed, albeit
at not quite the same level of international exposure, for composers such
as Kelemen and Globokar, who likewise made their names outside their
native Croatia and Slovenia respectively. There may have been two-way
568 chapter twenty-one

traffic between centres and peripheries in the heyday of 1960s modernism,

but there was no real doubt about which was which. Arriving at the centres
did not guarantee visibility, of course; they were nothing if not competitive
arenas. But avoiding the centres all but guaranteed invisibility.
For a later generation the conditions were rather different. We may
want to ask if the great composer as an institution of Western classical
music is any longer truly viable (Paul Griffiths has claimed that Harrison
Birtwistle may be the last of the species),27 or if it can only be understood
as the product of a very particular phase of European culture, now suit-
able for relegation to a category some sociologists have labelled zombie
institutions.28 Perhaps we should be cautious about viewing this as his-
torically specific. In an absorbing meditation on Romanity, Alston and
Spentzou remind us that Pliny asked similar questions. Pliny is asking a
fundamental question, they argue. Is it possible to be great in these mod-
ern times?29 Whatever the answer, it does seem that younger compos-
ers today are less likely than their predecessors to entertain universalist
claims for their music or to hold expectations that it will survive the pro-
verbial test of time.30 They are more modest in their ambitions, and are
inclined to measure their success cumulatively in terms of a concert here,
a recording there (as Ana Mihajlovi rather engagingly and gratefully puts
it on her website, I had a few big times in my life). For this generation
the major cultural centres are no longer quite the passport to fame they
once were, and this may have some bearing on the story of our Serbian
women composers. In the end, a clear local identity, such as that carefully
cultivated by ebeljan, may prove more valuable than an allegiance to
cosmopolitan modernisms.
There was a similar exodus of musicians, including composers, from
Bulgaria, and for similar reasons. Bozhidar Spassov (b.1949) left for Ger-
many in 1990, settling initially in Bohum and later in Essen, where he
currently teaches at the Folkwang Musikschule and cultivates serial
and electronic music indebted to Stockhausen and his circle. Alexan-
der Kandov (b.1949) left for Spain at around the same time. It is worth
registering that although Spassovs two chamber operas are based respec-
tively on ancient German legends and on Hans Christian Andersen, and
Kandovs cultivation of electronic music and music theatre belongs to a

27Griffiths 1995, 324.

28For a discussion of this term and concept, see Bauman 2000.
29Alston and Spentzou 2011, chapter 5.
30The so-called test of time has been scrutinised in Savile 1982.
 all change 569

modern cosmopolitan world, both composers retained their association

with Bulgaria. It is hardly invidious to remark that of the two Spassov is
the one with an international reputation (indeed Kandov now seems to
have largely abandoned composition).
Spassov is widely performed today in Germany, and in Europe gener-
ally. Like many others at the time, he was no doubt aware that success
economic and reputational was more likely if he left his homeland. But
his departure was motivated more by politics than economics. Like many
others, he felt so let down by what he saw as the deeper failure of the
1989 revolution by the absence of any real change that he embarked
on major acts of protest, including hunger strikes. There were also some
local difficulties, characteristic of the collateral damage done by major
political change. In this case it concerned the Composers Union. The
Union took advantage of new-found freedoms to display an exclusivist,
albeit happily a temporary, hostility towards the musicologists with whom
they shared the Union, expelling them from the membership and abol-
ishing their journal Blgarska Muzika (the problem was resolved in 1994
when an independent section of musicologists was established within the
Union). On this issue Spassov took the side of the musicologists.
Such idealism is not perhaps the norm. It was more usual for compos-
ers to leave quite simply because the new market economy, in Bulgaria as
in former Yugoslavia, was unsympathetic to their needs. Composers such
as Dimitar Naumoff (b.1943) and Roussi Tarmakov (b.1949) had enjoyed
some success in Bulgaria under the old regime, but both struggled in the
nineties. As a result, Naumoff emigrated in 1995 for Washington D.C. and
Tarmakov in 2001 for Toronto. They are actively involved with musical
life in the new world, but their success as composers has been limited
and they have now largely abandoned composition. This too is a familiar
pattern. Only a few other Bulgarian composers in exile have found any-
thing like the success of Bozhidar Spassov. The classical and jazz com-
poser Milcho Leviev (b.1937), who left Bulgaria for the United States for
political reasons in 1970 and whose music was banned in his homeland for
a decade, is certainly one. Leviev has had a successful concert career, and
currently teaches jazz at the University of Southern California, but he has
continued to write symphonic music, and has since been rehabilitated
indeed honoured in his homeland.
Another success story is the migr composer Wladimir Pantchev
(b.1948). Pantchev left for Vienna in 1991 and has built a reputation there
and elsewhere in Europe. In the orchestral music composed while still in
Bulgaria the most relevant stylistic affinities were with Edison Denisov
570 chapter twenty-one

and Ligeti, and these composers are still a presence in his music today.
However, since leaving Bulgaria Pantchevs modernist, monodic-hetero-
phonic idiom draws more and more on Bulgarian traditional music both
melodically and rhythmically. Thus, the music of Orthodoxy is evoked in
the Doublebass Concerto of 20012, while traditional agrarian repertories
were the inspiration for the Trumpet Concerto of 20023. If this plays into
a larger pattern, it is one that has already been articulated in this book. It
is by no means a question of narrow nationalism (Pantchevs music has
many other points of reference, from Baroque repertories to Mozart and
Gershwin). Rather the swerve towards traditional repertories is symptom-
atic of a quest for roots that seems to be profoundly motivated in this
region. In Pantchevs case such a quest may well have been accentuated
by the experience of exile.
In Romania the exodus was not dramatic in the early 1990s, though
numerous performing musicians, and especially singers, did seek their for-
tunes abroad at this time. In fact, several of the leading diasporic compos-
ers had already left in earlier years. Of these the best-known is Corneliu
Dan Georgescu (b.1938), who settled in Berlin in 1987, but one might also
cite the Olah pupil Lucian Meianu (b.1937), who moved to Lausanne in
the late 1960s and taught at the Conservatory there, and Gheorghe Costi-
nescu (b.1934), who settled in the US and taught at various institutions,
including CUNY. Predictably, Paris was also a magnet, and among the
composers who settled there were Mihai Mitrea Celarianu (19352003),
Costin Cazaban (b.1946), and the popular film music composer Vladimir
Cosma (b.1940). However, the diasporic composer with the most nota-
ble success, apart from Georgescu, is the Myriam Marb pupil Violeta
Dinescu (b.1953), at present a Professor of Composition at the University
of Oldenburg in Germany. Dinescu moved there in 1982, and inter alia her
childrens opera Der 35. Mai [The 35th of May] (1986) was performed in
Hamburg and Vienna to considerable acclaim. It is appropriate that she
should have been awarded the Society of Composers prize for the most
prominent diasporic composer, for she maintains close links with Roma-
nia, not least by ensuring the presence of Romanian music at the annual
Komponisten-Colloquium she has organised since 1996.
When we turn finally to Greece, we note that in most cases the sig-
nificant waves of emigration pre-dated 1990. The truly eminent of the
migr or diasporic composers, Xenakis and Christou, have already been
discussed. However in both cases there remain interesting questions
about their reception in Greece. In the post-Junta years that reception
was invariably enmeshed with political motives, and in ways that often
did considerable disservice to the two composers own views on matters
 all change 571

political. Next in line would be Theodore Antoniou, who for many years
maintained a double existence in Boston and Athens (he has now returned
to Greece), and who has been responsible for teaching a whole generation
of younger Greek composers at the conservatory Musical Horizons in
Kalamata. He carved out a smaller niche for himself in the United States
than some in Greece might like to think, but he does remain a significant
figure for all that, and he now plays a typically energetic role in promoting
contemporary music as director of the Hellenic Group for Contemporary
Music. His award-winning work Oedipus at Colonus (1998) was designed
for programming alongside Stravinskys Oedipus Rex.
Antoniou is really the only Greek composer of note to have settled in
the new world, though Christos Hatzis (b.1953) has made a name in Can-
ada for an eclectic idiom that draws in some part from Greek traditions,
and Dinos Constantinides (b.1929), teaching at Louisiana State University,
has had notable successes, especially with his opera Antigone. In a more
limited way Vicky Tzoumerka-Knoedler (b.1941), has emerged in dance
circles as a composer with an interesting if conservative, voice, often
indebted to traditional idioms. For most Greek composers, the familiar
West European capitals proved more seductive. Mention has already been
made of some of those who settled in Germany or Austria. The most sig-
nificant were Anestis Logothetis and Argyris Kounadis. Logothetis, who
was born in present-day Bulgaria to Greek parents and who studied in
Greece, left at an early stage, settling in Vienna in 1942 and following an
avant-garde path there (notably with his graphic scores) while at the same
time keeping links with Greece (he featured in the Hellenic Weeks). Kou-
nadis also left for Germany at an early stage, securing a teaching post at
the Hochschule in Freiburg. Of the younger generation a key figure in the
world of new music, also based in Germany, has been the highly success-
ful conductor and composer Konstantia Gourzi, currently a professor at
the Hochschule in Munich.
The picture since the 1990s is harder to sketch for a Greek and Greek
Cypriot diaspora. It is still very common for younger composers to study
abroad. For Cypriots in particular Britain has been an obvious destina-
tion, as it has been too for several Albanian composers, and even some
Turkish.31 One is struck in informal conversation that many of the younger
composers are very relaxed about whether or not they return to the home-
land. Perhaps this is not so very different from the past. At any rate, the

31Notably the Albanian composer Thomas Simaku and the Turkish composer Emre
Araci.
572 chapter twenty-one

main object is to find a sympathetic context where a living can be made

and where their music might be performed. Certainly it is hard to imagine
anything remotely comparable today to the symbolic potency of Xena-
kiss visit to Greece in September 1975, when a week of concerts and lec-
tures attracted the widest possible interest. The politics were different of
course. And in the immediate aftermath of the Junta music was riding
high in Greece, not least because of the Theodorakis concerts (applica-
tions for conservatory places increased dramatically at this time). Todays
world is a very different one. It is not just that Greek politicians and the
Greek public no longer seem quite so interested in embracing their cul-
tural heroes; they seem not to be making the heroes any more. But that,
of course, may not be unique to Greece.
 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CONSERVATION

Who Needs Classical Music?

Julian Johnson would balk at any suggestion that classical music is for an
elite, and especially a social elite.1 His is an inclusive message. He pleads
for a re-investment in the aesthetic, and for a rejection of cultural relativ-
ism. We might want to argue that he proposes a sharper division between
art and entertainment between the autonomy character and the com-
modity character of music than is realistic. But his thesis is not really
damaged by this. What Johnson wants to suggest is that classical music
multi-layered, dense with information, richly implicative, discursive, and
pretentious in a good way has a capacity to transcend social dependen-
cies, including the dependencies that made it possible in the first place.
This should not really be a controversial position. It is incontestable that
the ideological privileging of the aesthetic within European culture was
socially and politically contingent. But that privilege resulted in ideal con-
ditions for the flowering of creative genius, promoting those very qualities
that refuse to yield to contingent explanation. For that reason, classical
music retains its capacity to enrich us today. Its universalist aspirations
may have been based on a myth (the developing belief that a bourgeois
culture might speak on behalf of all), but it turned out to be an immensely
productive and valuable myth.
The continuity between this tradition and new music is another mat-
ter. Earlier I suggested that creative genius was an historical category
instituted in Early Modern Europe. As that category was increasingly
embedded within bourgeois culture its Janus-faced character became
more marked. There was the great music of the past (the canon) and
there was the great music of the future (the avant-garde).2 At the turn of
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries these two had been rather cleanly
divided, and both were further separated from a third category, which we
might label commercial music. In a Modernist age these three classical,

1Johnson 2002.
2See the chapter The Great Composer in Samson 2002.
574 chapter twenty-two

new, commercial existed in a set of mutually dependent, polarised rela-

tions, creating in effect three separate force-fields. And for this reason it
became increasingly difficult to understand new music as a continuation
or immediate inheritance of classical music, despite obvious continuities
on a technical level. If anything, it was perceived by many as a kind of
rejoinder to classical music. None of this is to deny the value of Johnsons
aesthetic turn as a legitimate present-day response to the hijacking of the
aesthetic by one ideology after another. Nor is it to suggest that an appre-
ciation of the richness, complexity and discursive character of classical
music need be tied to social class. But it still remains yesterdays music.
Today the force-fields have partially dissolved. New music can sound
like old; classical music can be marketed as commercial; popular music
uses the technologies of an avant-garde. But this is not quite a return to
some pre-modern stylistic continuum. Rather it represents a new and
knowing fluidity that threatens to dissolve already-established and insti-
tutionalised categories, and with a marked tendency to draw two of them
(classical and new) into the orbit of the third (commercial), based on the
ruthless imperatives of a market economy. We may not like this, of course.
We may bemoan the present and hope for a better future, and we may
even aspire to a new music that recovers the depth of the old. But it is
hard to deny that the structures of musical life changed when printed
music and the formal concert yielded to recording technologies. Those
market-driven technologies have kept performers (and conservatories) in
business. But the real victim of the market economy has been live pro-
fessional music-making, especially at the (mostly non-subsidised) levels
of the regional music society in Britain, the more formally constituted
eingetragener Verein in Germany or the church concert in France. These
three are by no means equivalent, but they were all magnets for music-
lovers, and a major source of income for middle-ranking professional solo-
ists. None of them really thrive today.
The story is rather different for the high-status formal culture of our
major cultural capitals. Here, despite recurrent prophesies of doom, clas-
sical music still rides fairly high, musical standards remain impressive,
and ticket sales are tolerably healthy, even if audiences are ageing. But
the infrastructure is under strain, and it only remains in good shape in
contexts where market forces are given a little help. In other words, this
is a heavily subsidised culture. But then it had ever been thus. Opera and
classical concerts had always depended in large measure on private and/
or public patronage. At various points blatantly mercantile models came
into play, notably in the post-classical pianism of the late eighteenth and
 conservation 575

early nineteenth centuries. Within that culture the instrument itself gen-
erated interconnected, increasingly specialised and mutually dependent
roles, all addressing the needs of a new kind of consumer (they included
piano manufacturer, publisher, promoter, critic, teacher, performer and
composer). But such corners of free-market economics, embodied in
the benefit concert, could survive only by responding very directly to
the demands of popular taste. The more aspirational investment in the
piano as an agent of expression, in part a reaction against such mercan-
tile values, was possible only within the framework of a patronal culture,
whether of the salon or the subscription concert.
When we turn to the former Communist states this issue really comes
into focus. Here the shift from state patronage to the free market could
hardly have been more abrupt. Under Communism there was no short-
age of subsidy for the performing arts. Artists may not have made their
fortunes, but there were plenty of jobs and they had a palpable sense
of their place in the community. And when Communism fell, there was
accordingly a rather major reality check for artists and performers alike.
Classical music, it was quickly learned, does not thrive if left entirely to
market forces. We may find some of the evidence by returning to our pair-
ing of Sarajevo and Belgrade, two cities whose fates were unhappily linked
in the 1990s. For both cities there was a virtual disintegration of formal
musical culture during that decade. In Sarajevo, where classical music had
shallow roots, the Opera was hit hardest of all. It collapsed totally during
the siege, and re-opened again only in 1996. But despite its avowed policy
of introducing two new productions each year it struggles to maintain a
professional standard, and today it faces many pragmatic and personnel
difficulties. The story of the Philharmonic Orchestra is happier. It is not
what it once was, but like the Music Academy, which now mounts an
ambitious programme of teaching, scholarship and performance, it is on
a steady upward curve. Yet before the war there were three orchestras in
the city, and of these only the Philharmonic remains.
The story in Belgrade is similar, albeit on a different scale, and for that
very reason endowed with a greater capacity for renewal. It is clear that
the economic elites who rode high during the Miloevi years had very
little interest in any corresponding elitism in the cultural world. Where
music-making was concerned, most existing institutions including the
symphony orchestras, the Opera and Ballet, Radio Belgrade, the music
festivals BEMUS and the International Tribune of Composers, together
with the whole music-educational establishment were very badly bat-
tered during the 1990s. Naturally there were the financial problems that
576 chapter twenty-two

attended all such institutions in a period of hyper-inflation and low sala-

ries, but there was in addition a drastic loss of key personnel, bearing in
mind that as many as 800,000 young people below the age of 35 left the
country during that decade. It is hardly to be wondered at that there was
such a serious crisis of morale among the intelligentsia. The informal caf
culture of Belgrade, traditionally active and dynamic (and still so today),
continued much as before, but formal culture all but ground to a halt.
Katarina Tomaevi takes the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra as a
case study of the transition from socialism into the new millennium.3 For
all the reasons outlined above, the orchestra changed during the 1990s
from a reputable institution, with a cluster of good recordings to its name,
into what Tomaevi describes as somewhat akin to a provincial amateur
orchestra. Then, following the democratic revolution of October 2000,
there was a major change in its fortunes, a change that might be taken as
symptomatic of the brave new world of the 2000s. It is a story of entrepre-
neurship and initiative, in which the new conductor of the Philharmonic,
Ivan Tasovac, cultivated key figures in the political and financial establish-
ment, and gained the support of high-profile external figures such as Zubin
Mehta, in order to secure both public and private funding for the profes-
sionalisation of the orchestra. Through skilful management and branding,
the orchestra gained a privileged status in Serbia, with an influx of young
performers, foreign tours and recordings, and a newly renovated building,
though this is also used for more popular events. Tomaevi reminds us,
however, that there are less happy aspects to the high profile enjoyed by
the Philharmonic, notably its almost total neglect of Serbian music and its
failure to secure a solid audience base for the concert season, due to the
prevailing climate of financial hardship. Ticket prices are now beyond the
means of many of those who had been passionate supporters of classical
music in earlier times.
If the Philharmonic is a (qualified) success story, most of the institu-
tions of classical music have a less sanguine tale to tell, and that includes
the National Theatre, where both opera and ballet programmes are at a
rather mediocre level. No less crucially, the boards of the two major radio
stations, Radio Belgrade and Studio B, closed the two programmes in Serbia
that were devoted to classical music, a decision that met with widespread
opposition (protests and petitions) from music-lovers and professional

3In an unpublished paper Serbian Music in Times of Transition read at the 17th Con-
gress of the IMS, Zurich 2007.
 conservation 577

musicians alike, but to no effect. This decision was a real blow to classi-
cal music in Serbia. The tendency now is to concentrate its activities into
festivals, which are increasingly separated from, rather than an outgrowth
of, regular concert activities (there are very clear parallels in the other arts,
notably film; the number of cinemas has dropped drastically, but film fes-
tivals continue). The major music festival is BEMUS, currently directed
by Ivan Brkljai, but even this is not what it was due to financial strin-
gencies, and the same is true of the International Tribune of Composers.
Moreover questions are being posed just now about the future viability of
the many festivals in Serbia, including the NOMUS festival in Novi Sad, the
Marble and Sounds festival at Arandjelovac, and several festivals devoted to
individual instruments, such as the International Cello Festival.4
The other side of this coin has been the success of a largely uncriti-
cal popular culture. In this respect little has changed since the Miloevi
regime, and it is doubtless significant that some of the turbo-folk stars
of the 1990s above all Ceca have had comebacks in recent years. It
is only fair to add that little of this is unique to Serbia among the post-
Communist countries in South East Europe. But Serbia does bring into
very sharp focus the division that lies deep at the heart of the wider
region, a division that is thematic to this book. I have referred on several
occasions to two Serbias. They still exist. There is the Serbia celebrated
by Miloevi and by subsequent populist nationalists: xenophobic, anti-
western, proud of its Byzantine roots and legacy. And there is the Serbia
that looks to Europe. Tomaevi neatly encapsulates them in two festivals
whose character and location speak of the deeper divide: the now-famous
trumpet festival at Gua, increasingly branding a commercial form of Rom
music, and the rock festival EXIT at Novi Sad, which mounts a challenge to
the ubiquity of pop-folk (even the locations are telling). The EXIT festival
is indeed viewed as the province of an elite audience, an intelligentsia
whose disdain for pop-folk is total. What seems clear is that this intel-
ligentsia is not supporting or not in significant numbers the culture
of classical music.
The pattern is not so different elsewhere in the ex-Communist Balkans.
In Albania and Bulgaria one might venture that there had been quite sim-
ply too many orchestras, both classical and folk, under the Communists to
be remotely sustainable. In Bulgaria almost every reasonably sized town
had been well catered for, thanks to generous, if ideologically motivated,

4Jankovi 2007.
578 chapter twenty-two

state subsidies. And when cuts were imposed, theatres, symphony orches-
tras and folk ensembles across the country were forced to close, leading to
familiar tales of unemployment, and for those of a feasible age to emi-
gration. Only the leading ensembles, and especially those with the status
of national institutions, such as the National Theatre and the National
Symphony Orchestra, continued to receive adequate state support. Even
the Koutev ensemble was affected adversely, obliged to change its pro-
gramming and its aesthetic in response to newly reduced subsidy. Nor
was this exclusively a phenomenon of the 1990s. Perverse understandings
of cost-effectiveness in the artistic sphere continue to beleaguer cultural
and educational institutions in Bulgaria to this day, and perhaps espe-
cially those that are perceived to have close links to the ancien rgime.
The pattern in Romania is similar in some respects, but significantly
different in others. There were predictable difficulties in the early 1990s,
especially with provincial orchestras, as performers left Romania for more
fertile land. But if anything there are now more orchestras in the country
than in Communist times, thanks to the competitive ambitions of local
authorities, which have been prepared to fund them (as indeed they fund
universities and conservatories, for several provincial cities have a univer-
sity with a music school) to gain prestige. Quality is another matter, and
in some cities both performance and educational standards leave much
to be desired. In the major centres, Bucharest, Cluj and Iai, where the
level remains fairly high, and where there is national government subsidy,
the programming is depressingly conservative. The opera in Bucharest is
symptomatic, relying mainly on standard nineteenth-century Italian fare.
Wagner is a rarity, and Russian, Czech and twentieth-century repertory
likewise. Even Enescus Oedipe is performed only as part of the biennial
Enescu festival, which has separate guaranteed funding. Indeed Roma-
nian composers are conspicuous by their absence from the programmes
of big public concerts, despite lobbying from the Society of Composers.
On the other hand, ticket prices at the Opera, and also at the orchestral
concerts of the Philharmonic Orchestra and the National Radio Orchestra,
remain cheap. Only the Operetta Theatre, which mounts truly innovatory
productions, has seen a major price hike.
It is no doubt predictable that Slovenia, which sports its EU member-
ship, and Croatia, which will be a member when this book is published,
should have a happier story to tell with respect to formal culture, includ-
ing the institutions of music and music-making. And in some measure
this is true of Greece too. Yet the picture in Greece is a decidedly ambiva-
lent one. The key moment of change here was in the mid-seventies, with
 conservation 579

the fall of the Junta, the symbolically charged visits of Xenakis, and the
return of Theodorakis. It would be hard to overestimate the effects of the
latter. For one thing there were cross-over activities between classical
music and popular art song, with many Greek composers now turning to
the latter, for reasons that could be idealistic, pecuniary or both. But for
another, it raised the status of music generally. Until the seventies the
three orchestras in Athens (State, Radio and Opera) consisted of many of
the same performers, but with the conservatories turning out many more
musicians all this changed, and a new professionalism entered the scene.
Much the same could be seen beyond Athens, moreover, notably in Patras
and Thessaloniki.
This is not to say that the culture shift in the early 1990s passed Greece
by. There were both pluses and minuses at this moment of caesura. On
the negative side, we might mention that in the 1990s the regular, albeit
small, audience base for the concerts given by the Athens State Orches-
tra was somewhat dissipated. And likewise, we would note that in the
last few years much of the dynamism and ambition associated with the
Festival of Athens has also been lost. In other words, just as in the ex-
Communist world, one can see evidence that the institutions of bourgeois
music-making took a hit in the new climate of aggressive capitalism asso-
ciated with the nineties and noughties. The situation in music education
likewise remains an unhappy one in many respects, with no real National
Academy and with an in-built constitutional weakness regarding the sta-
tus of conservatories. And it remains the case that the best graduates from
these institutions are likely to seek their fortunes abroad.
On the plus side we would note the mushrooming of big cultural proj-
ects from the 1990s onwards, beginning with the Megaron, whose sym-
bolic significance was considerable. It was with the establishment of the
Megaron that a new professionalism entered Greek musical life. But it is
significant that the major funding for this project derived not from the
Greek Government but from the Onassis Foundation, which is also at this
moment planning to develop a new Cultural Centre for arts and literature.
The tradition of sponsorship from wealthy Greeks and expatriate Greeks
extends back to the late nineteenth century (the monumental projects
that characterised town planning in Athens at that time owe a great deal
to it). And it has continued ever since. Like the Onassis Foundation, the
Niarchos Foundation is currently funding similar major projects, includ-
ing the new National Library and a proposed Maria Callas Opera House.
Projects that would be well beyond the reach of the Greek government,
in short, become possible due to these big Foundations. And they are
580 chapter twenty-two

invariably projects with the highest possible profile. It is no accident that

in Greece the relevant government ministry is the Ministry of Culture
and Tourism.
Two further points might be made on the positive side. At the present
time, due more to the egotism of Mayors than to philanthropy, there is
a Municipality Orchestra in Athens offering free concerts in various ven-
ues to a dedicated audience. This is an unusual and distinctive gesture in
todays world, though issues might be raised about musical quality. And
secondly, one would note that the fall-out from the events of 198990 had
collateral benefits for Greek music. Following the collapse of Communism
there was massive immigration into Greece from neighbouring states, and
they were states with the highly developed musical traditions we associ-
ate with state socialism. This played its part in the professionalisation of
Greek musical life. Many of the orchestral players from former Yugoslavia
and Albania now find themselves in Greek orchestras in Athens or in the
provinces, and several have taken on responsibilities at several levels of
musical life; an example would be the rather good orchestra of the City
Conservatory in Kalamata, whose director is Albanian. It is not the only
case in which a Communist loss became a Greek gain.

Has Modern Music Really Grown Old?

Adornos formulation is a suggestive one.5 We are invited to imagine mid-

dle age spread inexorably overtaking the avant-garde. However, he signi-
fied something rather more than the reification and institutionalisation of
the dissenting voice. As noted in chapter 20, he was effectively distinguish-
ing between the spirit of early twentieth-century modernism (especially
Schoenberg, who brought to a close, as Adorno saw it, the humanistic
project of Beethoven) and the new music of the 1950s (Boulez, Stock-
hausen, Berio). Certainly the new music shared with that earlier modern-
ism its commitment to a specialised, progressive and authentic art, and
to that rhetoric of endless innovation so pertinently identified by Alastair
Williams.6 But there is also a sense in which this post-war repertory repre-
sented an official art, a modernism that was supported by the institutions.
It was far removed in tone from the explosive, campaigning modernisms
associated with that earlier period, when the bourgeois-romantic project

5Adorno 1956.
6Williams, A. 1997.
 conservation 581

of greatness truly reached its apotheosis. Post-war modernism, in short,

was sanctioned rather than dissenting. And in due course it found its
place in one corner of a plural cultural field, with its own modest taste
public. It was neither threatened by, nor did it threaten, the politics and
aesthetics of mass culture. Indeed, to the extent that contemporary music
softened its tone, modernism became itself historical: a movement to be
remembered and even conserved.
A further dimension of this story concerns place and identity. In the
case of early twentieth-century modernisms, there was a strong sense
of place, and indeed of nationality. The modernisms of Berlin and Paris
were very different in nature. Where the one was progressive and (later)
socially engaged, the other was eclectic, diversified, detached and experi-
mental. And both were different again from the modernisms of St. Peters-
burg and Vienna, the former all about the collision of cultures, the latter
about an inward-looking crisis of expression, alienated from the public,
jealous of the integrity of art and protective of its truthfulness. These are
generalisations, but they help us to understand the different projects of
Busoni-Weill, Debussy, Stravinsky and Schoenberg. Likewise, the modern-
isms that developed around the eastern edges of Europe Janek, Bar-
tk, Szymanowski, Enescu were heavily dependent on place and nation.
In this respect, as in others, the new music of the postwar years regis-
tered a significant change. To a marked degree, though not completely,
this music detached itself from a sense of place and nation. There were
leading centres of the new music, of course, but they were not inscribed
in particular styles; nor did they actively shape particular cultural identi-
ties. If anything, they established a norm of cosmopolitanism to which all
might aspire.
The cluster of changes that took place in creative praxes during the
1970s and 1980s, sometimes collectively filed under postmodernism,
resulted in something of a re-investment in place. It was a widespread
tendency, and it took several forms, very often linked to what were taken
to be the ancient religious or ethnic roots of a people. Something of this
has already been noted. Importantly, it gave a license to composers once
more to celebrate nationhood and regional identity, and that in its turn
had some capacity to change the dynamic between centres and peripher-
ies. The fate of new music in South East Europe needs to be viewed within
this broader context. Already I have described two opposing narratives:
a narrative of emancipation, which found its appropriate context in the
cosmopolitan modernism of the postwar years, and a narrative of home-
coming, which aligned itself more naturally to a postmodern aesthetic.
582 chapter twenty-two

The second narrative did not entirely supplant the first. Rather there was
a shift in emphasis between two co-existing impulses among contempo-
rary composers, and it was a shift that may well have been influenced by
more material questions. Another way of saying this is that the need to
negotiate cultural identities no doubt seemed more urgent given the new
realities of a post-Communist world.
As we have seen, the transfer to an uncompromising market economy
wreaked havoc with the Communist culture of state subsidy (hence the
exodus), and as a result contemporary music returned once more to the
more typically rarefied existence (niche product or ghetto, depending on
your taste) with which it has most typically been associated. In major west-
ern capitals high-profile public music-making could and did make room
for contemporary modernisms, though in the sort of modest proportions
that can all too easily smack of tokenism. But in the former Eastern Bloc
this was more difficult to achieve. Those who followed the postmodern
minimalist trails blazed by the likes of Arvo Prt in Estonia and Henryk
Grecki in Poland could well achieve wide, and even mass, appeal. But
modernists of the old school were relegated to the college-conservatory
circle, where they could indeed secure avid support.
We may make a return visit to Sarajevo and Belgrade to follow these
fortunes. One issue at stake here is the prominence of the academy in
the public domain, for it is in the nature of the academy to support new
music. It may be precisely because the public domain as a whole is under-
developed in Sarajevo that new music has gained some support there
since the war. The Academy of Music is central to a good deal of Sarajevos
musical life. It promotes concerts by the Sonemus Ensemble (a dedicated
new music group, comprising staff from the Academy, programming only
music from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries), as well as sponsor-
ing recordings associated with the annual symposium Music in Society,
and in series devoted to concert music and competition works. These
recordings are not commercially available, however, reinforcing the sense
of a niche product. (Indeed this is a pattern found elsewhere; as noted
earlier, recordings sponsored by Composers Union in Romania cannot be
sold in the market place.) The overall impression is of a group of young
Bosnian composers none truly outstanding, it has to be said who have
a clear sense that they belong to, and are valued by, a relatively small com-
munity, even if they remain largely hidden from the wider view. There is a
political dimension too. The contemporary music that really does reach a
wider public the classic example is Asim Horozis opera Hasanaginica
(2000) is invariably populist, and with an obvious capacity to reinforce
the political status quo.
 conservation 583

Perhaps the key difference in Belgrade is a simple one, namely that

composers have higher expectations. There are more composers than
musicologists in the Serbian Academy, and they are in no doubt that the
job of musicologists is to promote contemporary composers. Likewise the
composers are all members of a Union that has traditionally been strong
and assertive in its support for contemporary Serbian-Yugoslav music,
and that maintains an outlet to the world beyond by way of its Music
Information Centre. That this has recently become virtual (losing its
physical space alongside the Slavenski Museum, itself all but closed down
it seems, in 1909) is telling. It is indicative of a loss of presence for con-
temporary composers. They are still featured prominently enough in the
pages of Novi Zvuk, and in its related CD series, but public performances
are largely in University, Academy or Composers Union circles, or at the
annual International Tribune of Composers, which is the only major out-
let for contemporary composers today. The older generation whether
traditionalists such as Dejan Despi and Vlastimir Trajkovi, modern-
ists such a Sran Hofman, or avant-garde iconoclasts such as Vladan
Radovanovi is inclined to feel hard done by. No doubt such figures are
nostalgic for a time when the contemporary composer was a prominent
voice in the musical community. Admired or vilified, he or she was at
least noticed.
Among younger composers there is perhaps a greater realism about
this. We noted earlier the all-but-inevitable tendency for the more gifted
to emigrate, and we could have added to that list Branka Popovi (b.1977),
currently based in Britain, and Jasna Velikovi (b.1974), who works in
the Netherlands. Yet we also noted, paradoxically, that the Serbian com-
poser with the highest profile is one who stayed, Isadora ebeljan. There
are other young composers active in Serbia today, and again the roll call
confirms the intriguing gender weighting mentioned in the last chapter.
Aleksandra-Anja orevi (b.1970), known for her imaginative work with
traditional Balkan music and her collaborations with Goran Bregovi
as well as for her contributions to modernist repertory (some based on
ancient myth), is a case in point. But it is the success of ebeljan that
really calls for comment.
ebeljan is a genuinely gifted composer, with a recognisable voice.
Her music is published by Ricordi, and it has been extensively performed
abroad as well as in Serbia, including a prestigious David Pountney pro-
duction of her chamber opera Zora D. This latter is an imaginative inter-
action between the emotionally charged worlds of a present-day young
woman and a 1930s poet named Zora Dulian, and its staging in Amster-
dam and Vienna in 2003 (and subsequently elsewhere) met with real
584 chapter twenty-two

public acclaim. In addition, there have been several works commissioned

by the Genesis Foundation, including her Clarinet Quintet. ebeljan has
been uncannily successful in finding a voice that seems to meet the needs
of her public at different times. Her gift for expressive, highly evocative
scene setting is already obvious in Pep it Up (1988), notably through its
integral use of glissandi, but so too is the hint of subversion, the carefully
calculated quota of guarded modernism (the continuum of expressive
sound is periodically invaded by percussion, and the style veers towards
a jazz idiom; the work is subtitled Fantasy). Likewise the modern folk-
lorisms and blatant historical associations of Rukoveti had potency at the
time of composition (2000).
In the best of her more recent music, and the orchestral work The Horses
of Saint Mark of 2004 (written for the Venice Biennale) is certainly among
the very best of it, there is a coming together of the old and new, resulting
at times in a striking intensity of expression. At the same time ebeljans
high profile is by no means a simple case of talent surfacing, come what
may. Her career is a telling demonstration of just how much the success
of Serbian composers, both at home and abroad, depends on entrepre-
neurial acumen, political nous, and a capacity to network. This, it may
be argued, is as true of London or Amsterdam as of Belgrade. But there
is a difference, and it speaks of continuing life in the centre-periphery
dynamic. The real point is that in Belgrade the contemporary composer
has been squeezed to the very edges of the public sphere.
In a way this brings us to the heart of the dilemma for new music in the
ex-Communist world. Under Communism living composers had found
themselves at the centre of things to an extent that was distinctly atypical
for a wider late twentieth-century culture. They were visible in the musi-
cal community, and whatever the constraints, they were prominent and
largely respected. Since 1989 all that has changed. The Union of Compos-
ers in Bulgaria, which in one form or another now has something like an
eighty-year history, makes for an interesting case study of contemporary
survival strategies. That it is able to function at all with only a modest sub-
sidy from the Ministry of Culture comes down in part to its ownership of
an impressive building in the centre of Sofia. Here the free market and the
new music work together. By renting out several of the upper floors, the
Union is in a position to fund much of its activity, including the concerts
of New Bulgarian Music that take place on a regular basis throughout
the year in its Philip Koutev concert hall, as well as at its annual Spring
festival. Attending the concerts is akin to dropping in on a private club,
where everyone (except oneself) is known to everyone else. The music on
 conservation 585

offer is of distinctly variable quality. Stylistically it embraces anachronistic

(as distinct from postmodern) romanticisms (Rossen Balkanski [b.1968]),
simple folk-inspired idioms (Nikolay Kaufman [b.1925]), impressionistic
soundscapes (Stefan Ikonomov [193794]), neo-Bartkian Balkan ener-
gies (Krassimir Taskov [b.1955]) and self-consciously modernist adven-
tures (Emil Mirtchev [b. 1953]).
In this context the composers of real distinction stand out in conspicu-
ous relief. Several of the older composers discussed in an earlier chapter
are still active today. Dimiter Christoff and Vassil Kazandjiev, for example,
are certainly two of the most distinguished of todays Bulgarian compos-
ers, with characteristically challenging works dating from the 1990s and
beyond. Indeed Kazandjievs Fourth Symphony (Nirvana) of 2000 and
Fifth Symphony (Lux Aeterna) of 2006 could be considered respective
high points of his creativity.7 Emil Tabakov is also still highly visible as
an eminent public figure (he was Minister of Culture in 1997), and in his
role as a leading conductor he has been well placed to present his music
both at home and abroad. There are signs in some of his later music that
the hard Balkan edges of his earlier style have been somewhat softened,
notably in his Requiem of 1994, whose metaphysical dimension has affini-
ties with some of the later music of Ivan Spassov. Likewise Stefan Dragos-
tinov continues to challenge, drawing on traditional Bulgarian music, but
in complex, modernist contexts; works such as the song cycles Love Story
and Christmas Star (volumes 5 and 6 of The Key to the Mystery) are char-
acteristic. But these later years have also seen him work on experimental
multi-media projects such as Happy Music and Motion Grafics (2001).
We might add to the list two composers who stand apart for particular
reasons. Simo Lazarov (b.1948) is notable as the Bulgarian composer who
has invested most comprehensively in electronic and computer music,
initially by founding the Electronic Music Studio at Bulgarian Radio (no
longer in existence) and currently through his teaching of Computer
Systems and Technologies at the New Bulgarian University. He has thus
been a pioneering figure in developing an interest in studio and computer
composition among the younger generation. Julia Tsenova (b.1946) stands
out as one of a small handful of successful women composers in Bulgaria,
immediately suggesting an interesting, and not easily explicable, contrast
with Serbia. Tsenova is at home in the worlds of pop and jazz as well as
of classical music (she currently teaches piano in the Pop and Jazz Music

7For a very detailed technical study of Kazandjievs music, see Bojikova 1999.
586 chapter twenty-two

Faculty of the State Academy of Music), but in the latter field she has
developed a genuinely novel contemporary idiom involving pastiche and
collage. In her music of the 1990s and beyond she has cultivated a reflec-
tive, restrained modernist manner, somewhat inspired by oriental phi-
losophy. Works such as her Triptych for piano (1996), Green Silence (2000)
and Amadeus Rondo for Flute and piano (2006) are representative.
Of the generation born in the 1950s and 1960s, one of the most dis-
tinctive and original voices is undoubtedly that of Georgi Arnaoudov. His
music has a wide range of expression (there are interesting experiments
in extending classical and baroque styles in some works), but the slow-
moving crystalline textures not static, but building intensity steadily and
carefully of Le Temple du silence for two pianos of 1996 perhaps reveal
him at his best. Inspired by an evocative passage from the Life and Teach-
ing of the Masters of the Far East by the New Age writer B.T. Spalding,
this work also reflects Arnaoudovs interest in Ancient and Far Eastern
Music. Other prominent figures from this decade include Velislav Zaimov
(b.1951), currently President of the Union, a relatively more traditional but
nonetheless challenging composer. His recent work, including a series of
instrumental concertos and symphonies, is invariably carefully thought-
through, while smaller-scale works such as the Fourth Piano Sonata of
2005 are terse and economical in construction, but at the same time
capable of considerable poetic intensity. Lubomir Denev (b.1951) is also a
significant figure, one of several Bulgarian composers who seem equally
at home in the worlds of contemporary classical music and jazz (compare
Julia Tsenova and Milcho Leviev), and of the younger generation.8
The picture in Romania is not dissimilar. For a senior figure such as
Pascal Bentoiu, the present state of affairs has been so enervating that
he has all but stopped composing. The Society of Composers continues,
though it is embroiled in legal questions over the status of its splendid
quarters in the Cantacuzino palace. But its once powerful role has been
reduced. Exactly as in Sofia, funding is maintained by renting parts of the
building, as also much of the space within its shop on Bucharests Calea
Vittoria, but compared with the funding it was in a position to offer for
commissions and prizes in the past, the present provision is poor. Above
all, it has lost its role as an arbiter of quality, a role that naturally had
its problems, but that worked well for the most part. In the current free
market decisions about commissions and performances are commercially

8For a discussion of Leviev, see Levy 2007.

 conservation 587

based, often arbitrary and without real artistic integrity; in particular

they are a prey to the naivety of local mayors. As elsewhere in South East
Europe, younger composers offer their music to depressingly small audi-
ences either within the club-like atmosphere of the Society of Composers,
where there is an attractive concert hall, at the University of Music, or
at dedicated events such as the Enescu Festival (which is contractually
obliged to devote part of its proceedings to Romanian music, and has an
accompanying symposium) and the annual Contemporary Music Festival.
In addition there are occasional one-day festivals in provincial centres.
Composers active in Romania today present us with a wide range of
styles, not to say family groupings, from the New Romanticism associ-
ated with husband and wife team erban Nichifor (b.1954) and Liana
Alexandra (b.1947) to the more challenging, but still traditionally orien-
tated approaches of mother and daughter team Doina Rotaru (b.1951)
and Diana Rotaru (b.1981). Electronic and computer (or more specifically
French-influenced spectral) musics are represented principally by Calin
Ioachimescu (b.1949), Iancu Dumitrescu (b.1944), Fred Popovici (b.1948)
and (in some works) Octavian Nemescu, while more eclectic, polystylistic
idioms are the province of Irinel Anghel (b.1969) and Mihaela Vosganian
(b.1961). But the leading figure today is Dan Dediu (b.1967), currently the
Rector of the National University of Music and also Supervisor of Sym-
phonic Music at the Society of Composers. In addition to his studies with
Niculescu, Dediu worked in Vienna and at IRCAM, and he has been aston-
ishingly prolific, both as a composer and critic. Key works include his
chamber opera, Post-ficiunea (1995), four symphonies, and a substantial
body of chamber music and songs. The range of expression is striking, as
is Dedius obvious concern with continuities in Romanian music, drawing
on techniques and approaches associated with several of his modernist
predecessors.
I will end with a very brief word on Greece. As noted in earlier chap-
ters, the story of Greek music in recent times does not seem to fit neatly
with our other Balkan stories, at least on the surface. Thus Greek mod-
ernism was cultivated in the 1950s and 1960s at a time when it was out
of favour if not proscribed in the Communist world. Likewise the end
of the Junta in 1974 witnessed a decisive swerve towards more popular
styles at a time when modernism was really coming into its own across
the border. Even on this surface level, however, the invariably political
resonances of Greek music led to unlikely alliances, as when one of the
key sponsors of contemporary music turned out to be Manos Hadjidakis.
Beneath the surface there were impulses at work that drew Greece into
588 chapter twenty-two

the larger Balkan fold. I will suggest in chapter 24 that the underlying nar-
ratives that shaped compositional histories in the Communist sector were
no less active in Greece. But it is harder to draw firm conclusions about
developments since 1990, in Greece as also in the ex-Communist world.
Determinate compositional trends are not so apparent. Nor can one iden-
tify with certainty the most significant composers, given that those per-
ceived to be so are more often than not key personalities in musical life
more generally.
Consider first two very different, composers of the older and middle
generations, both of whom worked in Paris for several years. The Messi-
aen student Giorgos Kouroupos (b.1942) made a good career in France as
a respected composer and teacher, and could indeed have stayed there.
His return to Greece immediately after the fall of the Junta was largely for
idealistic reasons, and was instigated above all by Hadjidakis, at that time
hugely influential in the determination of culture. Working mainly in the
Third Progamme of the Radio, Kouroupos has played an influential role in
promoting music characterised by new simplicities. In contrast, the com-
poser and musicologist Haris Xanthoudakis (b.1950) is a committed mod-
ernist, and has made use of various mathematical processes to activate
structures that objectify, without destroying, the expressive impulses
that underlie much of his music. He too studied in Paris, but after teach-
ing in several conservatories in Europe returned to Greece to found and
develop the dynamic music programme at the Ionian University of Corfu,
where he was for a time Vice-Rector.
Consider, secondly, three of the many younger composers working in
Greece today, all born in the 1960s, and all sustaining a high reputation.
Minas Alexiadis (b.1960), who studied in Dusseldorf, has also worked in
jazz and has developed a rather specific form of contemporary heteroph-
ony in some of his major works. Periklis Koukos (b.1960), the most high-
profile of the three, explored modernist styles in his earlier compositions,
but has subsequently from the late 1980s onwards cultivated a neo-
tonal idiom that stands apart from more fashionable, and one might say
conventional, expressions of a postmodern aesthetic. And finally Nikos
Xanthoulis (b.1962), a distinguished trumpeter, has an extensive output
for the theatre, including childrens operas and incidental music for the
Epidaurus Festival. All three are relatively high-profile figures in Greek
musical life. Yet their music remains somewhat in the shadows. And in
this respect too Greece is not so different from its neighbours. New music
everywhere struggles to be heard.
 conservation 589

Where Have All the Folksongs Gone?

Ethnomusicologists seem to enjoy reflecting on what they do, and on what

they ought to do. Perhaps it is easier to reflect on this discipline than to
practice it. So when Henry Stobart published The New (Ethno)musicolo-
gies in 2008 he was extending a tradition of debate that already had some
form.9 A glance at the journal Ethnomusicology makes the point, and it
also serves to emphasise that any such self-reflection, and in particular any
self-conscious engagement with the new, necessarily implies a strongly
developed sense of the tradition of the discipline. There is a paradox asso-
ciated with this self-reflection, as Philip Bohlman points out elsewhere in
the volume.10 Bohlman reminds us that ethnomusicology has cultivated
a rhetoric in which newness becomes normative and thus ceases to be
new. It seems unhelpful, then, to speak of paradigm shifts here in the way
one did of musicology back in the 1980s (it would be glib to suggest that
in musicology there had been plenty of doing and not enough reflecting).
Many of the questions aired by Stobarts contributors are questions that
have been raised in one form or another for some time, but that does not
make them less germane to the concerns of this chapter. In particular the
status of area studies, a topic initially broached by Michelle Bigenho in
her view from anthropology and picked up later by Martin Stokes in his
afterword, deserves some consideration here.11
I have already intimated that until relatively recently there was a con-
siderable space between the scholarly traditions and mentalits of native
ethnomusicologists in South East Europe and those of the several out-
siders (mainly North American) who have worked in this region. At risk
of caricature, one might say that there has been a broadly conservative
approach to the discipline among many native scholars, an approach that
cannot be entirely attributed to the prescriptions of state socialism. This
conservatism was especially evident in the tendency to map out through
fieldwork and classification particular, often quite small, geographical
regions while fighting shy of wider interpretative perspectives. The view
from outside has been more adventurous, not least in its tendency to
replace groups with situations, in its desire to draw the observer into the

9Stobart 2008.
10Bohlman 2008.
11Stokes 2008.
590 chapter twenty-two

hermeneutic circle, and in the status it has assigned to urban and minor-
ity cultures. Today these distinctions have much less meaning, such is the
fluidity of scholarly commerce, but they have not entirely disappeared. Of
course, what both approaches share is an investment in area studies, and
it is against this background that the views of Bigenho and Stokes might
be revisited.
For Bigenho, a preoccupation with area studies still emerges clearly
from the course structures and textbooks of the North American College
circle, however much ethnomusicologists insist that they have moved on.
As she sees it, this betrays the lingering presence of the colonialist origins
of the discipline and of the ethos of the exotic wrapped up in those origins.
Stokes accepts the critique, but makes a claim for a form of area studies
that transcends this ideology, that allows for an imaginative crossing of
boundaries, both physical and repertorial, and that promotes a more criti-
cal engagement with constructions of place. What neither author takes
any account of is the very different ideology that has informed area stud-
ies in the hands of East European scholars, and which catches a differ-
ent resonance from the origins of the discipline, and from much earlier
Herderian notions of culture. Bartks approach to traditional music was
an evolving one, but from the start it involved the conservation of mate-
rial that had been bypassed by the rationalising tendencies of Western art
music, and as a result was regarded as both privileged and in some sense
pure. At various stages of his evolving thought this approach was allied
to questions of ethnicity and nationhood, and it was this latter tendency
that was highlighted in post-war Eastern Europe. It is not hard to see how
all this could rather easily slip into a form of xenophobia that took a step
beyond anything found in Bartk.
Far from an exoticism, then, traditional music was here understood as
a badge of nationhood in the familiar Herderian tradition. The verities
of local cultures were respected, but they were subordinated to an offi-
cially sanctioned and motivated ethnonational agenda, and often at the
expense of minority cultures within the state. It would be wrong to associ-
ate this approach exclusively with Communist programmes, for it was no
less visible in other parts of Europes periphery. In practice, it resulted in
ambitious, and in the case of Communist states systematic, programmes
of collection, with the aim of conserving, and also mapping, the nations
music. Something of this was discussed in chapter 19, where it was also
noted that ostensibly countervailing forces stemming from impulses to
modernisation were in due course reconciled with the nationalist agenda.
To this day, programmes of conservation, revival and revitalisation are
 conservation 591

alive and well in South East Europe, as are the festivals, partly a hangover
from Communist days. There are still scholars who see a unique kind of
strength and lyricism in dying rural traditions, and who view these tradi-
tions with a nostalgia infused by national pride. But for others, the study
of continuity and change has sloughed off much of this ideological bag-
gage. Even for them, however, the focus is often on home ground, if only
because accurate reconstruction of a traditions history can help prevent
its political manipulation.
There are other reasons for the focus on home ground. Resourcing
ethnomusicology can be an expensive business, for a start. But in any
case one thing is certain. Fieldwork of the traditional kind is a game with
diminishing returns in South East Europe, for the very obvious reason
that the generation with relevant memory is disappearing. There are, in
short, pragmatic as well as ideological reasons for the reorientation of
ethnomusicology towards urban repertories, an engagement with new
global media (e-fieldwork), performance studies, and activism (applied
ethnomusicology). For younger scholars, and especially for those in the
university sector, there is also no doubt a strong sense that the evolution
of the discipline (cutting-edge research) creates its own imperatives. We
are left, then, with a diminishing pool of scholars who continue to plough
the older furrows, who still place conservation high on their agenda, and
who do so by and large within the framework of national, if not national-
ist, scholarship.
We have met several of them already. In some cases the mapping has
been local, as with Athena Katsenevakis fieldwork in north Pindus, Jelena
Jovanovis research in umadija, Dimitrije Golemovis recordings from
Plav, or (in an interesting combination of insider-outsider perspectives)
Jacques Bout and Sperana Rdulescus project in the Oa Country. And
we might add here the recordings of Pomak songs made by Nikos Kok-
kas in Western Thrace, and by Vasilis Nitsiakos in Konitsa. Elsewhere the
framework is the wider nation, as in the continuing projects of the (Mer-
lier) Music Folklore Archive in Athens, under the leadership of Markos
Dragoumis. Yet even here and it is typical of such archives just about
everywhere more time is now devoted to digitising existing collections
than to collecting new material. An impressive collection of CDs has
already emerged from the Music Folklore Archive, covering the islands
as well as the mainland, and in some cases mixing old and new record-
ings. There are previously unpublished recordings from the Dodecanese
(Baud-Bovy collected here in the 1930s), recordings of lullabies from all
over Greece, of songs from Asia Minor, and from Siphnos, Samothrace,
592 chapter twenty-two

Aegina, Vogatsiko Kastoria, Janina, Leros, Pontos, Florina, South Euboea,

and so on.
We may take Croatia as a measure of changing approaches to ethno-
musicology in the ex-Communist states. The wider context is ethnologi-
cal studies more generally, and here Croatia has had notable strengths
in dance and folk poetry as well as in music. The major institutions in
the first half of the twentieth century were the Department of Ethnology
at the University of Zagreb and the Ethnographic Museum. The Music
Department within the Museum, established in 1921, was especially
important for the conservationist agenda, and in 1948 it became the Insti-
tute of Folk Art, later the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research,
with its own Musical Folklore Department. The Institutes first Director,
Vinko ganec, spelt out the programmes of collection and classification
that were common to all such institutes in the Communist world. Jerko
Bezi, a key figure in the Institutes history from the mid 1960s, reminds us
that according to terms of reference provided by the First Congress of the
Yugoslav Composers Association held in Belgrade in 1950, scholars were
enjoined to work on collecting and scholarly elaborating our musical folk-
lore, leading to knowing and deepening the national musical language.12
Moreover, familiar prejudices were at work. According to ganec, condi-
tions [for creating folklore] were more favourable in the village than in
the town.13
During the 1950s and 1960s there was a notable ideological dimen-
sion to this research. Collection and conservation were still the principal
imperatives, but partisan songs, as well as more traditional agrarian rep-
ertories, were included and promoted as models with a specific socially
educative role. Then in the 1970s a more anthropological approach was
adopted, with Jerko Bezi leading the way. The real nature of this shift was
the rejection of an idealised, politically motivated and essentially static
portrait of folk music in favour of a more direct engagement with tradi-
tional music as embedded within a constantly evolving and fluid contem-
porary culture. Then, as Bezi himself reminds us, the 1980s departed yet
further from more traditional, prescriptively organised regional studies,
partly in response to the evolution of the wider discipline but also to take
some account of the neo-folk movement that had by then swept across

12Bezi 1998.
13ganec 1962.
 conservation 593

Yugoslavia, departing significantly from an earlier agrarian ethos.14 Naila

Ceribai has suggested that these shifts were more apparent than real,
however, and locates the true paradigm shift in the 1990s, at which point a
much greater variety of approach and method can be detected, including
an engagement with diversity, with minorities and with the realities of
war, to say nothing of a new-found self-reflection as to the true nature of
the discipline, very much the point at which this section began.15
At the same time Ceribai reminds us that conservation has not gone
away; rather it has been carried out in a new spirit. It is no longer orienta-
tion to the idyllic past, but careful reconstruction of historical actualities.16
This is an important message. It reaches to the heart of why we need to
care about traditional musics, despite their irrelevance to most peoples
lived experience today. The more enlightened scholars in South East
Europe are not attempting to reify these musics in a spirit of nostalgia,
presenting them as representative of some mythical Golden Age. Rather
they interrogate them critically, in an attempt to strip away some of the
more blatant ideological constructions that have attached to them in the
past. In other words, they engage in an act of recovery, which very often
becomes an act of discovery. More often than not Ceribais historical
actualities blur the sharp lines drawn by nationalist politics, and draw
our attention rather to the shared cultural spaces that emerge at local lev-
els. Culture, after all, deals with particulars rather than universals: almost
by definition.
The institutional energies found in Croatian ethnology are not univer-
sally apparent across the region. Financial stringency has been a major
issue, and has constrained scholars from exploring beyond the boundaries
of the nation state to diasporic communities, the most natural next step
given that fairly comprehensive collecting was undertaken during the
Communist years. Macedonia has found its own solutions to these prob-
lems by diverting its energies almost entirely into technology rather than
fieldwork, with successful and well-publicised programmes of digitisation
centred on the Academy and making use of its students. In Romania,
fieldwork continues, but financial imperatives have dictated programmes
that look to immediate neighbours rather than further afield (Romanian
communities in Vojvodina, for instance), or that divert resources to the

14Bezi 1998.
15Ceribai 1998.
16Ibid.
594 chapter twenty-two

study of ethnic minorities such as the Roma. Much the same has been true
of Bulgaria, where monies are still made available to support the bigger
folklore festivals such as Koprivstitsa, but where it is increasingly difficult
for individual scholars to gain institutional support for their fieldwork.
Again the tendency has been to look to ethnic minorities, including, as we
saw in an earlier chapter, Turkish communities in the East.
Interestingly, it is Greece that has seemed to move with greatest diffi-
culty on the issue of ethnic minorities. At risk of over-generalising, it seems
that traditional collection, conservation and digitisation of the national
heritage continues apace, notably through the efforts of Dragoumis and
his team. It seems, too, that there is openness to new perspectives within
the discipline, promoted by Pavlos Kavouras at the University of Athens,
and including various kinds of urban ethnomusicology. What has proved
more difficult, and has tended to run up against official opposition, is seri-
ous research by Greek scholars into the music of ethnic minorities that
maintain their separateness. Of course there are exceptions, and some of
them have already been noted. But the work of Nikos Kokkas on Pomaks
in Western Thrace has not been plain sailing. And likewise there has been
resistance to the attempts by Haris Sarris to include music from Slavo-
phone villages in the recordings he has made in northern Greece. The
official agendas, those dictated by the funding bodies, would prefer not to
acknowledge such repertories. Conservation, in other words, is selective.
 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

BALKAN BEAT

Heroes

This is the story about the times when they were big and I was little.
In this way the political commentator Igor Mirkovi introduced his 2003
rockumentary film Sretno dijete [Lucky Kid]. The they in his narration
referred to his onetime heroes, the performers associated with the so-
called New Wave movement that dominated Yugoslav popular music in
the late 1970s and early 1980s. Mirkovi looks back, in other words, from
one century to another, and from one political system to another. And as
the title of his film indicates, he sees that earlier stage of Yugoslav popu-
lar culture as a kind of golden age. It is a story of idealism (a privileged
moment in the narrators life remembered and treasured), but also of
some loss of idealism on the part of the heroes themselves and of at least
one member of their public. In the closing moments of the film Mirkovi
remarks: I lost that fantastic nave ability to admire them [the heroes]
unreservedly. Even so, his love for his golden age is everywhere apparent;
the memories are an active part of his present. Nor is he alone.
Sretno dijete centres around a reunion of some of the key personnel in
Zagreb in 2003, but to track down his heroes Mirkovi has to travel far
and wide: to Paris, Budapest, Vienna, Utrecht and New York. Some are
still involved with music, some are not; some have achieved material suc-
cess, some have not. Most are cooperative, and the personal reunions, the
exchanges of memories, make for genuinely interesting footage. But one
of the most influential of them, Branimir (Johnny) tuli, proves elusive
to the end. Although he retains a messianic aura in former Yugoslavia,
even today, tuli has consistently resisted all attempts to draw him out of
his secluded private existence in Holland. Accordingly, he refuses to play
Mirkovis nostalgia game, a game in which multi-sited interviews set in
the present are juxtaposed with footage recorded in the Yugoslav capitals,
Zagreb in particular, back then in the golden age.
Naturally this juxtaposition invites us to reflect on what might have
been lost. For one, there is the excitement and energy that derived from
a specific place at a specific time; and in this respect the Kului Club in
596 chapter twenty-three

Zagreb, where you rubbed shoulders with your heroes, might almost be
compared with the Cavern Club in Liverpool back in the 1960s.1 The Yugo-
slav capitals may indeed have felt at the edge of the world, as Mirkovi
puts it, during the Communist era, but for a brief period at least they
throbbed with the energy of a vibrant, defiantly self-confident youth cul-
ture, played out against a background of decaying socialism. For Mirkovi,
and for others of his generation, Zagreb was the only place to be during
this explosion of punk-rock culture, prior to its anaesthetisation by the
culture industry. Compare this energy, the narrator seems to say, with the
standardised and stereotyped pop-folk played all over the Balkans today.
For another, there is the idealism. When Jura Stubli, the frontman of
the band Film, tried to articulate some of the values associated with the
New Wave, he remarked that he and his colleagues disliked people with
money. And it is true that, at least in the early stages, the heroes made rel-
atively little from record sales or gigs, and that money was not really what
motivated them. Again we are implicitly invited to compare this punk-
rock anti-materialism with the image and ethos associated with todays
heroes. Who, we ask, are todays heroes? Are they the turbo-folk divas of
the culture industry, with their kitsch palaces and saccharine sentiment,
all available on tap through the TV music channels? Could they even be
the machismo heroes of gangster land, no doubt deplored in reality, but
idealised and even celebrated in some of the trash imagery of pop-folk
videos? None of it is quite that simple, of course. For one, Mirkovi him-
self makes no such direct comparison with todays popular music. For
another, it would be a mistake to translate an autobiographical film into
straightforward social commentary. And for yet another, todays pop-folk
constitutes neither a uniform repertory, nor a repertory entirely lacking in
critical edge. Nevertheless, it is undoubtedly true that New Wave fans of
a certain generation find it hard to understand how young people today
can idolise figures such as Dino Merlin.
Mirkovis film unfolds against a background of political events. We see
in rapid succession first the celebrations surrounding the fortieth anni-
versary of Titos regime and then the public mourning that attended his
funeral. We see the small-town atmosphere of Zagreb in those days, a
town where just about everything was closed by 10 pm. We see the evi-
dence of economic collapse in the 1980s: the power cuts and electricity

1See Cohen 1991, 15, for a discussion of the shaping elements created by local
contexts.
 balkan beat 597

shortages, the widespread unemployment. And we see the censorship of

rock music, direct and indirect, and based less on political dissent than on
the putative immorality of the lyrics. To what extent, then, was the New
Wave a genuinely critical popular culture. That it was provocative and
anti-establishment is clear. And in certain cases (Stubli in particular) it
was socially aware and sought to make a difference. But mainly it seemed
to represent an attempt to distance social and political immediacies
through art, a kind of art for arts sake in response to the greyness of the
world. For Mirkovi and his associates punk rock generated an alterna-
tive all-consuming reality; it was more important than life itself. Renato
Metessi from the band Patrola articulates something of this in the film.
I created my own world. So politics was out of mind; we never bothered
about that. Tito, the Party, what was that? It never mattered. A more stri-
dently political position came only with the Miloevi era.
The original heroes, as we noted, dispersed after 1990. Consider Haus-
tor and Idoli, based in Croatia and Serbia respectively. The key person-
nel in Haustor had been the bassist Sran (now Samuel) Sacher and the
guitarist Darko Rundek. But Sacher had already left the band in 1988,
leaving Rundek as the main driving force. Then, in 1990, the entire group
disbanded, and their temporary reunion later in the decade proved to
be fleeting. As for Idoli, it fell apart in the mid 1980s. The major players,
Neboja Krsti and Sran aper, continued to collaborate on some proj-
ects, but in the end they both left the musical world, with aper making a
career in marketing and politics, and Krsti becoming a doctor and actor.
Again there was a brief reunion, at least of these two, in 1995. Of the other
members of the band, Vlada Divljan eventually settled in Vienna (after a
spell in Australia) and is a reasonably successful solo artist and leader of
the Old Stars Band, while Zdenko Kolar took a variety of jobs, but is also
a member of the Old Stars Band. Kokan Popovi, meanwhile, moved to
South Africa, where he formed a band of Serbian musicians known (no
doubt with heavy irony) as Kokan and the Traitors.
It is hard to find in any of these later incarnations even vestigial traces
of the idealism, the anti-materialism, and the critical energy associated
with Mirkovis golden age. Indeed it is reasonable to ask if there are such
traces anywhere in todays popular culture in former Yugoslavia. We might
consider this question by placing the spotlight on Bosnia. Bijelo dugme was
the most high-profile of the New Wave groups to disband with the war,
with Bregovi moving to Paris before developing a vie bifurcique in Paris
and Belgrade. Zabranjeno puenje disbanded at the same time, or rather it
split into two bands. Most of the original group remained with Sejo Sexon
598 chapter twenty-three

in Sarajevo and (during the siege) Zagreb, but Nele Karajli, himself an
ethnic Serb, moved to Belgrade, where in due course he established a sec-
ond version of Zabranjeno puenje, and later a third with which Emir Kus-
turica was at one time involved. The result has not been promising. It is
hard to know whether Karajlis current pro-Serbian stance is a response
to his rejection by Bosnia (his attitude was once very different), but in
any case the musical results add up to a very pale shadow of Zabranjeno
puenje in its Bosnian heyday.
Even at the height of the New Wave the bands in Bosnia and Her-
zegovina were clear that their primary audience was a local one. There
was a sentimental strain running through some of the lyrics (links with
sevdalinka) and often too a faux-heroic quality that might be directed, for
example, to local sports figures. But there were also provocative messages,
anti-establishment critiques, and parodic gestures. With the departure of
the heroes, much of this was lost. The new role models, who include Hari
Mata Hari and Dino Merlin, still probably the biggest figure in pop-folk in
Bosnia today, are both more localised (though in Merlins case there is rec-
ognition beyond Bosnia) and more conformant. And that in turn speaks
into a larger narrative about the redefinition of Bosnian identities in the
post-war era, marked by new national ideologies, new parties, new cultural
associations, and new public spaces for the playing out of national nar-
ratives. Music contributed in two ways to these reformations of national
identity. National musics in modern guise sevdalinka in particular, but
also ilahije have become ubiquitous. But at the same time a more anony-
mous pop-folk, common to so much of the Balkans these days, is given
spurious national associations. Amila Ramovi comments scathingly on
both the labelling and the marketing of one of Merlins CDs, a tribute to
Burek, the familiar pie found all over Bosnia and Herzegovina.2
In recent years there have been some indications of a resurgence of
a critical popular music in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Attempts to revive
the old bands have not been notably successful, but a handful of socially
aware, provocative bands have made an appearance, referring freely to
a variety of traditions, including that of pop-folk. One such is Letu tuke
[Airoplane], based in Sarajevo, and led by Dino arin, who together with
producer Dzani Pervan set out to rebel against the narrow limits of todays
popular music scene. Several of their lyrics are both anti-capitalist and

2Ramovi 2005.
 balkan beat 599

anti-nationalist; in Minimalizm, we learn at one point that capitalism

fails to understand the value of small things, and at another that the boot
(of nationalism) threatens to trample us into the ground. Likewise the rap-
per Edo Majka, a young Bosniak who has collaborated with arin and who
became known after releasing an album in Zagreb, attempts to examine
present-day realities in ways that respect all ethnicities and religions but
remain critical of the status quo (Jebo vladu [Screw the Government]).
Or we might cite the reggae-influenced Mostar band Zoster, whose vid-
eos (notably the animated Ko je jamio [Who has stolen]) again strike an
anti-establishment note. Or Dubioza kolektiv, which preaches tolerance;
in trajk [Strike] they plead to be accepted as Bosnians, not narrowly
defined by their religion, i.e. Bosniak. There are suggestions here of a new
idealism, perhaps even the beginnings of a new core for a creative, dare
one say progressive, pop music in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Re-Inscribing Yugoslavia

Such hints of renewal hardly challenge the ubiquity of pop-folk, not just in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, but all over the former Yugoslavia. This calls for
some comment, not least in relation to expressions of nationhood among
the successor states. Within a classic understanding of cultural national-
ism, the spirit of the nation is embodied in its language and in the cul-
tural practices of its people. It is interesting, then, to consider the fates
first of language and then of cultural practices in the Yugoslav successor
states. Serbo-Croat had its dialects, but throughout the twentieth century
it was in practice a single language. Since 1990 it has been fragmented,
forced apart by nation state politics. When we turn to popular cultural
practices, on the other hand, there has been an increasing convergence
since 1990, and especially in music, where an orientalised pop-folk rules.
The discourses emphasise that similar things can mean different things,
but the music tells its own story.
It is of some interest, then, to examine pop-folk boundaries between the
principal South Slav nations. I will pass over the propaganda war music
associated with the early 1990s (as discussed by Ljerka Rasmussen),3 and for
that matter the anti-establishment, underground rock music cultivated in

3Rasmussen 2007, 613.

600 chapter twenty-three

Serbia (as analysed by Branka Mijatovi),4 and move directly to so-called

turbo-folk. I discussed earlier in the context of Gordys destruction of
alternatives the association of turbo-folk with the xenophobic policies
of Miloevi in Serbia. Indeed it is arguable that the genre title turbo-folk
only really has meaning within this political context, and that the music
should be labelled differently in the post-Miloevi era. It is enough to
remind ourselves of the fortunes (literal and metaphorical) of the leading
turbo-folk diva, Svetlana Ranatovi (Ceca). That Ceca was the wife of the
alleged war criminal Arkan, notorious anti-hero of the Serbian wars, has
assumed emblematic significance in Serbia, especially given the subse-
quent murder of Arkan. Above all, it is emblematic of the extent to which
turbo-folk, addressed to (r)urban migrants and new economic elites alike,
assumed the status of a national mass culture in Serbia during the 1990s,
all but drowning out the dissenting voice.
A question naturally arises. Just how far is it possible to disengage the
turbo-folk repertory from such associations today? (I might add, inci-
dentally, that the same question arises over the revival of the epic tradi-
tion). The treatment of turbo-folk by Radio B-92 is of some interest in
this respect. In the early nineties, that station carried on what has since
become a legendary rearguard action against turbo-folk as nationalist pro-
paganda, promoting both western rock and an indigenous, and increas-
ingly anti-establishment, tradition of rock. When both its airwaves and its
physical property were hijacked by the regime in the early stages of the
NATO bombing of Belgrade in 1999, there was outrage among the intel-
ligentsia, expressed through a major campaign of support that culminated
in a Free B-92 concert involving several of the leading progressive bands.
That this same station could present a multi-part history of turbo-folk just
a few years later is perhaps the strongest possible acknowledgement that
the story of this music, and of the massive support for it among the lower-
class, uncultured many, is not to be explained exclusively in the terms of
political agendas and political appropriations.
In truth, it is not immediately obvious why the turbo-folk idiom, with
its distinctive blend of oriental folk and western dance, should have been
of propaganda value to the Serbian regime. In an insightful chapter, Ljerka
Rasmussen quotes Tomislav Longinovis seductive hermeneutic, in which
he argues that techno rhythms [...] embraced from the colonial cultures
of [...] Europe proper [are] markers of racial/cultural superiority, while

4Mijatovi 2008.
 balkan beat 601

the wailing voice of the singer articulates a suppressed, shameful legacy

of ones slavery to the Turks who are regarded as a part of inferior cultures
and races of the East and South.5 What this reading draws attention to
yet again is the ambivalence surrounding oriental elements in neo-folk
and turbo-folk. Yet my own sense is that Longinovi comes down rather
too firmly on one side only of a twofold truth. The other side would rec-
ognise in turbo-folk a familiar, long-standing tradition in the representa-
tion of the (Turkish-Muslim) East within Serbian-Yugoslav music. I mean
here that despite cover stories about a hostile other (as depicted in end-
less libretti and song texts) the music associated with both Turkish and
indigenous Muslim populations could acquire positive values, coloured by
what Orhan Pamuk calls hzn [melancholy].6 This ambivalence is even
greater in those regions of southern and eastern Serbia where the East has
been internalised: where it has indeed become ours.
Naturally this latter condition is even more germane to pop-folk tradi-
tions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where pointers to the East are viewed
rather differently. Indeed the politically loaded term turbo-folk is avoided
in Bosnia in favour of descriptors with local resonance, of which sevdah-
rock is one. There is some irony in this, for Bosnia was right at the heart
of the neo-folk movement (Halid Beli and many others), and Lepa Brena
was herself born a Bosniak. She was one of several artists who made the
switch to Serbia in the 1990s. Some of them Brena herself, Kusturica and
Karajli pinned their colours to a Serbian-Yugoslav mast, while others,
most famously Bregovi, have presented a neutral, apolitical profile that is
treated with suspicion in some quarters in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The
fact is that the boundary between Bosnia and Serbia is so heavily ideo-
logical that cultural responses to it are open to intensive questioning, and
that goes as much for Dino Merlins professed Bosnian nationalism as for
Bregovis professed neutrality and internationalism. This makes the musi-
cal border-crossing all the more striking. It offers yet another instance of
musics capacity to bypass, if not to transcend, ideological imperatives,
even when song texts tell radically different stories either side of the bor-
der. It is not that music tells the truth or that it knows best (the herme-
neutic position), but rather that, as Karol Berger puts it, words know one
thing and music knows another.7

5Rasmussen 2007, 789.

6Pamuk 2005, 93.
7Berger is here commenting on Carolyn Abbates text, Music Drastic or Gnostic?.
See Berger 2007, 378.
602 chapter twenty-three

Rasmussen may be right to suggest that turbo-folk and sevdah-rock

have limited credentials as a global music. They have made relatively little
impact on global markets (unlike, for example, commercial recordings of
Balkan Rom bands). And their oriental elements are in the main local,
referring to aspects of an Ottoman inheritance that are part of peoples
lived experience, however mediated, and however differently understood;
and they are, of course, very differently understood by Bosniaks and Serbs.
This point is underlined when we consider the view from Croatia. Here
the tendency is to conflate, or all but conflate, Serbia and Turkey in
discussions of neo-folk and turbo-folk, as Catherine Baker has noted.8 At
the time of greatest hostility (in the early nineties) the imperative was
to mark out a separate, more European, territory for Croatian popu-
lar culture, notably by building on the assimilated tamburica tradition
(Slavonia), on klapa repertory (the Adriatic) and even on schlager (cen-
tral Europe). But Bakers story is really one in which the boundaries are
increasingly blurred, and where turbo-folk has inexorably encroached on
a Croatian cultural space.9 Again there may be discursive points to be
made about the different signification of the East in Croatia (an impulse
to accommodate it within a global World Music culture rather than rec-
ognise it as Turkish-Balkan), but the music itself is not always so clear
about such distinctions.
Almost by definition, the further removed we are from the heart of the
Balkans, the easier it is to read elements of Ottoman legacy as a form of
exoticism. This is the Balkan fascination of which Mirjana Lauevi has
written so eloquently in her discussion of the American Balkan scene.10
Questions of identity are naturally much more complicated in Croatia and
Slovenia, but to the extent that these new nation states seek to dissociate
themselves from the Balkans something of this same exoticising may take
place. In the case of Slovenia, more Western than the West, there is cur-
rently a fascination with Bosnian folk-pop, and it seems unlikely that this
involves a great deal of agonising over a Slovenian cultural identity.
Matters are more complex in Croatia. As Bakers work demonstrates,
issues of identity here are shot through with ambivalence. It can come
down to particulars of presentation, where, for example, some pop videos
will render pop-folk elements acceptable by situating the performer in

8Baker 2010.
9Ibid. See also Baker 2007.
10Lauevi 2007.
 balkan beat 603

a transparently Western context, and thus distancing her/him from the

material (Baker illustrates this by referring to two videos of the same
song by Ivana Kindl, one looking East, the other West).11 Yet however
we interpret them, there are commonalities in the mass culture of the for-
mer Yugoslavia that seem to belie the recent political histories of succes-
sor states. From around 2000, moreover, these commonalities have been
paraded before a much wider public in the form of the Eurovision Song
Contest. If anything might seem to reinscribe Yugoslavia it is the music
and the voting patterns of Eurovision.
Philip Bohlman has looked more closely than most at Eurovision, and
at the politics of power [and] pleasure it embodies.12 In a paper deliv-
ered in 2001 he noted the growing presence of South East Europe, from
the victory of Yugoslavia in 1989 to the ever more regular participation
of most successor states (apart from Serbia at the time he was speaking),
as of the other Balkan states.13 The regionalism that has so transparently
dictated block voting patterns in recent years, whatever the political divi-
sions within the block, is of course a notorious feature of the contest, as
is the growing success of Eastern and Northern Europe at the expense of
Western nations, where there is perhaps a little more irony in the game.
But Bohlman addresses more challenging questions about political imper-
atives and musical codes. He charts the emergence of South East Europe
in Eurovision against the background of an uneasy alliance between the
politics of the (notionally distinctive) nation and of the (notionally uni-
fied) continent. And he goes on to identify a common formula that places
Europe at the aesthetic centre of a song and the nation at its periphery,
characteristically by way of an idiomatic middle eight. In subsequent con-
tests (subsequent, that is, to Bohlmans paper) this forms a kind of middle-
ground position, with some songs veering towards the nation and others
towards the continent.
It was above all the Yugoslav successor states that invested in a pop-
folk approach to Eurovision. Turkeys success in 2003 provided one model
of an ethnic presentation, with explicit belly-dance allusions to an ori-
ental harem, just as Ukraines winner the following year provided another,
with a Xena, Warrior Princess presentation that instigated a tradition of

11In her paper (unpublished at the time of writing), Backwards and Balkan or glam-
orous and global: locating the east in Croation popular music. This was delivered at the
ASN Europe conference, Sciences-Po, Paris in July 2008.
12Bohlman 2007.
13Bohlman 2008.
604 chapter twenty-three

big percussion that would soon become a recognisable sound and sight at
Eurovision. In the same year, it was Serbia and Montenegro, with a native-
language song, traditional instruments (a kaval solo at the beginning) and
nation-historical imagery abounding, that came through to second place,
while the English-language, more western-orientated songs of Greece and
Albania reached third and seventh place respectively. In the winning song
of 2005, Greece stayed with the English language, but allowed recognisable
elements of local colour in the instrumental interludes, while both Bul-
garia (which has not yet made the final) and Romania seemed determined
to present themselves as good Europeans. In this year it was Albania and
above all Croatia that went for local colour, with the Croatian song (in the
native language) conspicuously drawing together dinaric and Pannonian
elements of the national culture. Then, in 2006, Bosnia and Herzegovina
came to the fore (third place), with Hari Mata Hari making play with sevd-
alinka, while Croatia veered in the direction of ethnic kitsch. This time it
was Macedonia (in its most successful entry in Eurovision) that looked
westwards while still working within the broad framework of pop-folk.
2007 was Serbias year, and the importance of that victory was consider-
able, not least as a way to present Serbia in new ways to Europe (it was a
bonus that Marija erifovi could be harnessed to minority causes of both
sexual orientation and ethnicity).14 It is perhaps a little glib to risk too
many conclusions about what Eurovision success meant for the shifting
sands of identity politics in Serbia. Nevertheless one might hasard that
it did have some bearing on the two Serbias we have encountered on
several occasions in this book. Both in musical style and in presentational-
behavioural coding, erifovis Molitva seems to have possessed a con-
siderable symbolic value. Naturally it had limited power to dissolve the
stereotypes, or to expunge from collective memories the worst excesses of
totalitarianism and nationalism, but it did suggest at least the possibility
of transcending traditional dualities and of embracing multiplicity on sev-
eral levels. Preparation for hosting the 2008 event in the gaze of the wider
world presented its own problems, of course, especially in light of predict-
able Serbian responses to the Kosovan declaration of independence early
in the year. But in the end the contest was a triumph of organisation and
spectacle. It was a test case for the new face of Serbia, in which the local

14Gligorievi 2007.
 balkan beat 605

environment shaped the event, while the global event shaped the envi-
ronment. Did it in fact establish a model for Serbia in Europe?15
It is tempting to propose that this is ultimately what Eurovision pro-
vides: a mass-cultural model for the negotiation of national identities
within Europe. But in reality the contest is too conformant in its stylistic
imperatives to allow this. It has become a site for world music mixes of all
kinds, but they are invariably subordinated to a standardised mainstream
idiom. What Bohlman calls the aesthetic centre remains something of
a given (albeit one that changes with changing fashions), while at the
same time the national identifiers are themselves homogenised, directed
to the wider region by means of recognisable but generalised symbols.
For this reason the contest neatly accommodates the general tendency for
the boundaries between popular music styles in the Yugoslav successor
states to become increasingly blurred, including endless mutual covers.
Eurovision was certainly not the cause of this, but it has become a channel
for its very public promotion and display, and that in turn can be origi-
nating. While looking at recent developments in art music (chapter 18),
I suggested that cultural Yugoslavism seems to have greater potential in
the aftermath of the state than it did under either of the two Yugoslavias.
Something similar seems to be happening in popular music. It is not just
the voting blocks in Eurovision that reinstate Yugoslavia. It is also the
music. Indeed it could be argued that the music reinscribes not just Yugo-
slavia, but the Balkans.

Divas

Such, at least, is the conclusion of one of Jane Sugarmans informants. A

common Balkan music is emerging, where you cant tell whether it is Ser-
bian, Bulgarian, Greek, Albanian, or Turkish.16 The spread of a particular
species of pop-folk across South East Europe is now total. Generic labels
differ, as do the political and historical resonances they evoke: turbo-folk,
sevdah-rock, chalga, manele, laka, and muzika popullore. These genres
are not identical. But there is an obvious kinship among them. Sugarman
speaks of commonalities in sensibility and experience that might lead the

15Interestingly the Serbian entry for 2010, by none other than Bregovi, was a defiant
Ovo je Balkan [This is the Balkans], complete with Balkan brass. Bosnia and Albania, in
contrast, presented a decidedly European face to the world on this occasion.
16Sugarman 2007, 301.
606 chapter twenty-three

regions national groups to affirm a common Balkan identity. But she

goes on to qualify this, emphasising ethnonational distinctiveness, and
arguing that the social role of these musics is to nourish a space for a
cultural intimacy that is experienced as ethnically specific.
There are clearly some nice distinctions to be drawn here. In some
ways the closest parallel, unlikely though it may seem, is with nineteenth-
century nationalisms in art music, which exhibited a similarly paradoxical
condition. They staked their claim on their contribution to a generalised
culture, in this case an elite bourgeois culture. Yet at the same time they
asserted their distinctiveness, usually by drawing elements of history and
myth, together with suitably sanitised components of folk culture, into a
synthetic national tradition. What tended to happen was that each nation
presented a variant on a single culture, while at the same time competi-
tively elevating, asserting and promoting its uniqueness.
Very much the same mechanisms are at work in contemporary pop-
folk, however widely separated the aesthetic ambition and the musical
style. Again the key element of the semiotic is folklore, which is viewed
however spuriously as a collective expression of national (as opposed
to social or regional) identities. And again the general practice is to allow
a repertory of generalised idioms to serve as all-purpose musical signi-
fiers, while specificity resides in a poetics of intention and reception. In
the case of nineteenth-century national musics that repertory consisted
of particular modal types, bourdons and dance rhythms associated with
a partly mythical rural culture; in the case of contemporary pop-folk it
consists of makam traces, oriental ornamentation, and oek or tsifteteli
rhythms associated with a partly mythical urban culture. Moreover, such
local signifiers operated/operate within larger stylistic and syntactical
frameworks, in the former case determined by the common-practice tra-
ditions of bourgeois concert music, and in the latter by genres such as
techno music and hip-hop, whose origins lie in African-American tradi-
tions of popular music.
One key difference is that the umbrella culture of pop-folk is about as
far from an elite bourgeois one as it is possible to get. It is by no means
a homogeneous culture, for it embraces rural and urban workers, as well
as native and diasporic dwellers, but in general it has been marked by its
association with a predominantly uneducated, even an anti-intellectual,
taste public and with mass-media promotion of its wares; the most stri-
dent criticism of pop-folk, it should be noted, invariably comes from the
intelligentsia. In the case of turbo-folk, which established something of a
paradigm for pop-folk in this region, links with a parent culture of neo-folk
 balkan beat 607

ensured that further associations were made with more regressive forms
of nationalism, and these were strengthened by the appropriation of
turbo-folk by the Miloevi regime. Yet, paradoxically enough, one of the
things that marked off turbo-folk from neo-folk was its response not only
to modern global musical styles but also to video-presentational imagery
modelled on a Western star system, albeit blended in highly idiosyncratic
ways with elements drawn from Turkish, Egyptian and even Indian pre-
sentations of popular music and dance. Both the musical styles and the
imagery enabled turbo-folk not just to outlive its association with the poli-
tics of xenophobic nationalism but also to influence, if not to colonise,
pop-folk right across the region.
Part of this can be explained by the nature of these societies as they
emerged from and reacted against their socialist past, and by the kinds
of values that were not just on public display, but were implicitly or even
explicitly approved by the new regimes. Once more there was a distinc-
tive mix of Balkan specificities, arising partly from the prevailing gangster
capitalism of the early 1990s, and western mass-cultural models, of which
the most prominent and influential was probably American music televi-
sion. Thus, the blatant sexuality of some of the pop-folk videos, at times
moving into something close to soft porn, is often linked to a machismo
imagery (warrior chic is a term sometimes used) that harmonises alarm-
ingly easily with traditional Balkan stereotypes involving violence and
the subjugation of women. Such associations are positively invited by the
folk element in pop-folk. On the other hand, the pop element insists on
the slick modernity of the society that is represented here. The males in
these videos are decidedly part of a modern world, specifically a get-rich-
quick world of easy consumption, fast cars and designer clothes: a world
that hints at a glamorised criminality (guns, drugs), and one where beauti-
ful women seem complicit in their own exploitation.
This latter point needs scrutiny. The question of who exercises power,
and conversely who is the victim, in these videos is often moot. Most of
the singers are female; they are glossy divas, marvels of cosmetic surgery,
presented as seductive sex objects in a context of male dominance. Yet,
exactly as with some better-known Western pop icons, their beauty can be
controlling and even destructive. The tradition of the Siren, who combines
the seductions of music with those of the feminine, is an obvious back-
ground here, reinforced by settings that are often imaginary, even mytho-
logical, in character, where the performance becomes an escape from the
drab immediacies of life. The figure of the Siren is ambiguous, however,
and its significance has changed from Classical through Medieval and
608 chapter twenty-three

Romantic to Modern representations; in particular Balkan folk contexts

it is conflated with that of the fairy (vila or, in Albania, zana). Of the two
broad groups classically identified as Homeric and Platonic, the pop-folk
diva tends to belong to the fatal rather than the noble and saving type;
she is more a temptress, in other words, than a Pre-Raphaelite-like inno-
cent or a Madonna-like paradigm of heavenly beauty, though turbo-folk
stars like Ceca also present as iconic victims.17 It is worth noting, more-
over, that while there are immediate models for the diva in both East and
West the Middle Eastern or Indian dancer-singer; the Hollywood screen
goddess Ruskins fatal Siren, the femme fatale, has often been associ-
ated with oriental beauty within Western culture.
We return, then, to the category oriental. It is no doubt significant
that just about every commentator on Balkan popular music feels the
need to problematise the oriental components of pop-folk in relation to
identity politics, and that they say rather similar things, irrespective of
which national tradition they discuss. The path-breaking collection edited
by Donna Buchanan makes the point.18 The oriental topic is interrogated
by Ljerka Rasmussen, who demonstrates the changing shape of oriental
elements in turbo-folk, assesses the significance of these elements for the
Serbian imaginary (partly by quoting Obrad Savis neatly-worded attrac-
tive codes of occidentalism and obsessive icons of orientalism), and notes
their very different significance in sevdah-rock. Margaret Beissinger in
turn shades in the historical background to oriental elements in Roma-
nian manele, highlighting the ambivalence at the heart of Romanian per-
spectives on Rom musicians they are at once bearers of the national
culture and a threat to it and documenting some of the ways in which
this genre exposes a crisis of modern Romanian identity within the new
Europe. Tellingly, many of her observations with respect to social class,
urban-rural values and the roles of the media and of private cassette
and CD production, meet the Serbian-Bosnian case just as fittingly as
the Romanian.
Vesa Kurkelas chapter in the same volume, in particular his discussion
of the background to chalga, demonstrates that the same points apply
to Bulgaria. Again there are reflections on the ambiguities surrounding
oriental elements, including those associated with the Roma, and Kurkela
extends this to an analysis of the visual imagery as well as the musical style

17These are discussed by Henry Stobart in Stobart 2006.

18Buchanan 2007.
 balkan beat 609

of the chalga music videos that are his primary concern. The slippage that
occurs constantly in pop-folk between Balkan and global orientalisms to
reprise that distinction is also discussed by Kurkela, and he goes fur-
ther than most in setting up a typology that enables this slippage to be
assessed. By pairing his categories through the mechanism of connected
antithesis, he is able to make clear distinctions between the oriental
themes in chalga videos and the classical discourse of orientalism pio-
neered by Said. And in a perceptive conclusion he pinpoints the paradox
that underlies so much pop-folk not just in Bulgaria but across the region,
arguing that orientalism mirrors and emphasises its apparent antithesis,
the westernisation of culture. This is why the seductive diva of the music
videos, like her machismo (mafioso) male counterpart, can be both a
home-grown product and an amalgam of two separate exotic others.
It is an all but arbitrary exercise to single out particular divas. In many
cases a background in more traditional forms of folk music is evident. A
case in point is the Serbian turbo-folk star Jana (Dragana Todorovi), one
of a number of singers whose success in exploiting the local idioms of Ser-
bia has not dissuaded her from living outside its borders. In her concert
performances of ta e ti pevaica [Why do you need a singer], one of her
most popular songs, the musical hybridity expertly-performed oriental
roulades, Serbian folk idioms with folk-iconic accordion accompaniments,
and Western dance music is matched by dance and gesture, with the
supporting dancers grounding the performance in Serbian traditions. And
one can find much the same hybridity in Bosnian-born Indira Radi, who
rose to prominence in the 1990s and is now a popular artist all over former
Yugoslavia. Her TV Pink video Ratovanje [Warfare] is characteristic.
If this hybridity is a central reference point, we might then locate to
one side of it the Bulgarian diva Ivana (Vania Todorova Kaludova), whose
videos take us into the modern world of city landscapes and stretch limou-
sines (Bezumna tsena [Crazy Price] with the ubiquitous telephone), high
fashion and girl power (Nai-dobrata duma [The most beautiful word],
and hotel trysts (Kato na 17 [17 Years Old]). Or, to take a step further in
this direction, we might cite the popular Serbian singer Jelena Karleua,
who presents as a siren in futuristic, often utterly surreal settings (Candy
Life, with balloons in the washing machine, or Insomnia, with the singer
as a kind of Darth Vader figure). To the other side is the Albanian singer,
Maya Alikaj, who allows folk elements to assume much greater signifi-
cance, both musically and visually. Here it is the traditional music of
Epirus is that is recreated, from the unmistakable Epirotic clarinet style
of Guri i rnde n vend t vet [Heavy stone in its place], to the rhythmic
610 chapter twenty-three

ison and pipes of Fustani i verdh [The green dress]. The videos spell out
that although Maya is a modern diva, pastoral images of nature, myth and
history provide an often disturbing counterpoint (she is juxtaposed with
an old Albanian peasant woman in Guri i rede). Strikingly, the Bubulina
video depicts her as a mermaid (the Siren figure par excellence), and the
final image is of a (presumably drowning) male protagonist.
Maya is one of the ubiquitous singers on Tirana Music TV and STV
Super Sonic, which together offer a panorama of Albanian pop-folk to any-
one spending a quiet evening in a Tirana hotel room. Her appropriations
of traditional music root her firmly in a specific place, and connect her
indeed with a specific repertory, the music of southern Albania (Epirus).
Not all the singers are as firmly rooted in rural traditions. Macedonian-
born Muharrem Ameti, no less popular on Albanian airwaves, offers an
alternative perspective, appropriating either Rom musics (especially tal-
lava) or urban oriental idioms that relate to the Greek amanes or the Otto-
man gazel. His recording of Aman, aman, one of several covers of this
popular song (see also Elda Shabani) is entirely characteristic. Ameti is
one of several male stars on the Albanian folk-pop scene, including Bujar
Qamili and Mozi, and his style of singing has much in common with male
singers of manele in Romania (Adrian Copilul Minune and Nicolae Guta)
and of chalga in Bulgaria (Iliqn Mihov Baroveca and Ivo Tanev). National
specificities notwithstanding, we are left to wonder again at just how far
the musical materials and styles of folk-pop, like the liquids in Zygmunt
Baumans liquid modernities, flow freely across the borders.
For the most part, the fame of these singers does not reach far beyond
their native country, and certainly not beyond the Balkans. Pop-folk
remains an art for local consumption. This is broadly true even of Azis,
one of the best-known of the Bulgarian chalga singers, though he has had
his outings in a wider global marketplace. A Rom musician, and with an
earlier career as a folk singer, Azis draws freely on Rom traditions, but he
is known today rather more for his cultivation of a typically androgenous,
sexually ambivalent or sexually marginalised image and performance
style. As so often, it is possible to relate this image on one hand to some
avant-garde tendencies in global pop (and it might be noted in passing
that even female divas such as Jelena Karleusa occasionally exploit it in
this spirit), and on the other hand to a more immediate inheritance. I
refer here to an older and more specific tradition of drag belonging to the
eastern Mediterranean and yet further to the east. It is a familiar trope
among some niche communities of Indian popular singers and dancers,
 balkan beat 611

for example. And closer to home, it is a familiar idiom in Turkish Arabesk

and related Egyptian genres, as Martin Stokes points out.19
These days, Azis has moved a little closer to the centre. His story neatly
demonstrates the finely balanced elements that make for success or fail-
ure in this precarious world. Attracting his initial following by presenting
as slightly scandalous, he rises subsequently to something of an entrepre-
neur of the music industry, with his own TV show. At the same time he
cannot be written off as an establishment figure, for of late his offerings
have a critical content they formerly lacked. It is as though he first had
to make his name in the circus, and then to become one of its movers,
before he could avail himself of that status in order to critique it. Some-
thing similar might be observed in Kou-kou Band, one of the best and
most interesting of the Bulgarian groups today. They too have their own
TV show (it was first called Kou kou, then Hushove [Exiles], a reference
to the nineteenth-century revivialist fighters and exiles, and finally Slavis
Show). Kou-kou Band remains somewhat controversial, for the perform-
ers use parody, irony and humour (they are masters of double meanings)
to critique many aspects of Bulgarian society and culture today. They are
testimony to the dangers of reducing everything in pop-folk to a single
(low) level of signification. Of course it can be kitsch. But kitsch is not
always what it seems.

Greek Mythology

The collapse of the Communist world at the end of the 1980s was not
without consequences for, and parallels with, the political events unfold-
ing in Greece. From June 1989, in a context of instability and political
scandals, there were multiple elections, resulting in coalition parliaments
through to the end of 1990. At this point the socialist Pasok party lost
power and a new conservative, western-orientated politics was initiated in
Greece, accompanied by many of the same features, social and cultural as
well as economic, that we associate with the immediate post-Communist
years in the former Eastern Bloc. Even the subsequent re-design and
re-election of Pasok reminds us somewhat of the facelifts and successive
re-elections of the old Communists north of the Greek border. Exactly as

19Stokes 1992.
612 chapter twenty-three

in the ex-Communist states, moreover, the new politics proved conducive

to major changes in popular culture, including music. It was really from
this point that a ubiquitous Music Television, comprising numerous pri-
vate companies and networks, began to invade peoples private space in
a big way in Greece, resulting in a near total saturation of the air waves
with foreign music, both from the Anglo-American world and from the
former Eastern Bloc.
The 1990s, in short, marked a real departure from existing norms of
popular culture in Greece, just as they did elsewhere in South East Europe.
However, the ensuing wave of pop-folk in Greece encountered certain
already-established and uniquely Greek traditions that could not easily be
swept aside. The rebetika revival of the 1980s continued as an active force
through to the 1990s, for example, as Dafni Tragaki has demonstrated
in her sensitive ethnographic study of venues in Thessaloniki.20 In the
context of a nostalgic quest for roots, a cult of authenticity, and a rejec-
tion of the (modern) West, the shadow indeed the active presence
of rebetika continued to shape aspects of Greek popular music, and, as
noted in chapter 20, it continued to function as a national identifier. So
too did the music of the bouzouki, including the tourist music associ-
ated with one tradition of laka. That too had come to spell Greekness, to
the outside world and to Greeks themselves. Whatever influences came
to bear on popular music, rebetika and the bouzouki remained as twin
reference points, symbols of Greece, whether for good or ill, whether to
be embraced or rejected.
It may be for this reason that pop-folk in Greece in the 1990s was sig-
nificantly more westernised than in the Slavonic Balkans, and also more
westernised than Greek pop-folk of the 1980s. In other words, the balance
between traditional ethnic elements and western (or global) pop was now
weighted towards the latter. There was an imperative that this new mem-
ber of the European Union should be thoroughly modern, and along with
that came a studied rejection of the insularity that might attach to artistic
expressions of nationhood. This was a time, after all, of necessary adapta-
tion to West European social and political practices. The models for Greek
pop-folk accordingly included leading world artists such as Madonna and
Michael Jackson, as well as the turbo-folk divas, and although the ethnic
element remained (this was still pop-folk) there was an obvious attempt
to present to the highest international standards, as to orchestration and

20Tragaki 2007.
 balkan beat 613

studio technology (the synthesisers, sequencers and samplers). These

standards were broadly achieved in audio terms, though both the techni-
cal quality and the general imagery of the music videos produced during
the early 1990s remained somewhat anachronistic. It was only in 1996,
with the arrival of MAD, explicitly modelled on American MTV, that the
world of Greek music videos was seriously modernised.
Significantly, it was also in that year that Anna Vissi, already a well-
known figure in Greek popular music, achieved iconic status with her
album Klma tropico [Tropical Climate]. In a thoughtful examination of
the rise to fame of this Greek Madonna, as she is widely known, Ioan-
nis Polychronakis used Vissis career to illustrate some of the see-sawing
that has taken place in constructions of Greek identity, as between the
draw of the (modern) West and the claims of a national tradition and
perceived identity.21 Although he does not use the terms, his case study
might be linked to the two competing narratives of emancipation and
homecoming that I used earlier in discussing art music. Interestingly,
Polychronakis demonstrates how the song Call Me acquired many of
its Greek-oriental features only when it was widely distributed as a sin-
gle in the United States in 2005. The version performed live during the
MAD-Music-Video-Awards show in Athens in June 2004 emphasised the
Madonna rather than the Greek part of the pairing (the parallel with
Ivana Kindls two versions of a single song, mentioned earlier, is striking).
Conversely, the DVD of Vissis performances at the Athenian nightclub
Diogenes Palace in 2004 stresses the Greek part. Polychronakis goes on
to suggest that the ambivalence between these two halves of the Greek
Madonna image played out to Vissis disadvantage in her subsequent per-
formance of Everything at the 2006 Eurovision in Athens.
Anna Vissi is still a high-profile pop diva today, although she is in her
mid-fifties at the time of writing. She has her rivals, of course, and chief
among them is the younger Despina Vandi. Each has her followers. But it
is tempting in any case to view this rivalry as a construction of the music
industry. Both artists benefit from it, and so does the industry itself. This
is the way of modern marketing strategies, and it is evidenced again in the
skill with which the two divas have crafted their own images on stage and
in music videos. Both conform to some of the stereotypes we noted in for-
mer Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. Thus, Vandi can present in some MAD vid-
eos as the familiar oriental seductress, as in Anavies foties [You set things

21Polychronakis 2007.
614 chapter twenty-three

on fire], with its gypsy campfire setting and ethnic drums in the middle
eight. In others she can be an iconic victim (Na tin xerese [Enjoy her
Presence/Company]);22 compare Vissi in Call Me. If anything really sepa-
rates them, it is perhaps determined by generation, for Vissi remembers
in many of her performances the lure of the bouzouki culture: Kanena
or Methismeni mou kardhia [My Drunken Heart]) are examples. And
she remembers too her early experience with the popular art song tradi-
tion, notably in a song such as Den thelo na ksereis [I dont want you
to know], which she performs with Piaf-like intensity and emotion. In a
word, that she retains a more grounded sense of an indigenous Greek tra-
dition of popular music than her younger rival.
It seems hard to escape the controlling power of our two narratives in
all of this. Even those movements that set out in defiance of Greekness
often proved in the end unable to resist its pull. Consider the emergence
of Hip-Hop in Greece in the late 1980s. It began of course as an import
from the United States, and remained a marginalised style right through
to the mid nineties, with the usual informal distribution networks (chief
among them pirate cassettes), and with the familiar associations with par-
ticular post-industrial neighbourhoods, whose invisible borders were jeal-
ously guarded. But with the emergence of the group Hemiskoubria [Half
Sardines], and especially when this group collaborated with well-known
artists such as Elpidha [Hope], Hip-Hop was drawn closer to the main-
streams. This was still a music created in defiance of tradition, and spe-
cifically of a national tradition. However, as the Hip-Hop groups became
more individual in style and character, even this began to change. Increas-
ingly the conflicts of style, somewhat as in conflicts between US East and
West coast styles of Hip-Hop, began to take on a national dimension,
determined by whether or not one looked away from Greece (the com-
mercialised brand) or towards it (the authentic brand).
From the late 1990s and into the 2000s, these two tendencies were
epitomised by Nikos Vourliotis [NiVo] and TXC (Terror X Crew) respec-
tively. The latter began as a trio, but in due course American-born DJ
ALX, together with Artemis Efthimis (AE), renamed it as TXC. It was at
this point that the associations with narratives of Greek nationalism and
Greek identity became pronounced. Reacting forcefully against wide-
spread perceptions of the genre and of the group as representative of a

22It should be said that the text here is heavy with irony, where na tin xerese means
exactly the opposite of what it says.
 balkan beat 615

nasty subculture, TXC set out to reconnect with a national heritage, and
they looked to all the usual sources to do so. In this way the world of
Hip-Hop, or as it was then increasingly known, urban music, found itself
somewhat bizarrely invaded by references not just to the Classical past
but also to the world of post-Byzantine Orthodoxy. The old debates about
double-descendedness thus found an unlikely site for their continuing
articulation in modern Greece. What this shows above all is that whatever
the influences that came from the Communist and ex-Communist north,
or indeed from the global music scene, Greek popular music retained an
identity that was essentially distinct, almost at times in spite of itself. If
there are synergies that remain vital in this music, they are with the east-
ern (Anatolian) rather than with the northern (Slavonic) neighbours. The
voices of the Fathers refuse to be silenced.
 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

ON BOUNDARIES AND EVENTS

In Theory

If we look back over the various stories in this book, we can scarcely ignore
the proliferation of boundaries in South East Europe. There are boundaries
of all kinds. They divide societies; they separate ethnicities and genders;
they draw lines between the generations, and between musical styles.
There are boundaries of place, and boundaries of time: partitions of politi-
cal and cultural spaces, and markers that punctuate the flow of history.
Spatial and temporal boundaries are often interlocked. Where communi-
ties have been separated, where borders have been created, there is usu-
ally a pre-existing ground a social ontology that renders the separation
intelligible if not predictable. But there may also be a defined moment
of severance. An agency may intervene; a moment of rupture may occur,
and from that point onward division will be formalised. In short, there
may be an event. I will explore a little further some of the implications of
boundaries and events for a cultural history. This will mean looking again
at questions of alterity, for the relation between self and other underlies
any discussion of boundaries. But it will also mean reflecting again on the
event, the singularity whose disruptive force can make structural change
possible both for individuals and for societies.
Some key points about the philosophical underpinnings of the event
are relevant to our stories. One is that subjectivities are dependencies; the
subject is shaped, indeed Alain Badiou would argue it is created, by the
events to which it is subjected (we happen).1 Another is that the limits of
transformative possibilities created by the event are infinite. A third, and
now we move to a more pragmatic level, is that investing in the event
allows for breakdowns in historical narratives, countering or attenuat-
ing putative plots. Both the instigation of Communist rule in South East
Europe (Red Amy incursions and the Yalta Declaration) and its dramatic
fall half a century later might seem to conform to this latter criterion.
Both occurred at, or emerged from, moments of maximal stress, and both

1Badiou 1988 and 2006.

 on boundaries and events 617

might be understood to have sprung from the void that Badiou identi-
fies when conventional power is no longer able to police the anarchic
multiplicities inherent in any situation. The evental site, for Badiou, is
located at the edge of this void, outside the normal state of the situation
as between centre and margin, included and excluded, and it is this loca-
tion that enables a reversal, a transformation within the structure.
An event, as Badiou understands it, exceeds its context. Admittedly it
is not always entirely obvious how this criterion is to be tested in prac-
tice. Indeed it remains a matter of judgement whether even those key
moments of inception and closure in the history of Communism in Europe
do in fact qualify; the issue at stake is presumably how far they may be
understood in relation to a pre-existing socio-political ground. But what
is not in doubt is that both moments resulted in truly massive structural
transformations, and that these were manifest politically, socially and cul-
turally. Significantly, both also involved acts of separation and division.
And, even more significantly, violence loomed large over both transforma-
tive moments. There was the violence of World War II and the Red Army
advances that drove a wedge through Europe, and there was the orgy of
violence, terrifyingly proximate both temporally and spatially to our own
civilised version of Europe, that tore asunder a formerly unified nation
state when Communism fell.
Most of us find it hard to make sense of the inhumanity that con-
fronts us when we look into particular corners of Balkan history in recent
decades. The brutality of the succession wars has been widely publicised;
but there was also the treatment of minority populations in Bulgaria and
Romania in the later stages of Communist rule; and there was the ruth-
less suppression of a dissenting voice in Albania. Despite abundant evi-
dence that it is a norm of human history, that it is hard-wired into all our
histories, this impulse to do violence to people and places, as well as to
ideas and symbols, continues to shock and disorientate us. It is redundant
to specify Balkan traumas in any of their harrowing detail. We have the
histories in plenty, and we have the personal accounts of those who lived
through these times. Yet, as Susan Brison reminds us in a moving account
of her own violation in an entirely different context, the challenge of find-
ing language that is true to traumatic experience is [...] a daunting one.2
Ironically, perhaps, it is fiction that can sometimes meet this challenge,
conveying more potently even than autobiography the effects of violence

2Brison 2003.
618 chapter twenty-four

on subjectivity. We need only think of the powerful and disturbing rec-

reation in fiction of a Bosnian womans experiences in the rape camps
(it has echoes of Brisons experience) in Slavenka Drakulis As if I am
not there.3
This is not new. Lucans Pharsalia (The Civil War) is not exactly fiction,
but it is not exactly history either. And as Shadi Bartsch and Efrossini
Spentzou have separately demonstrated, its rhetorical and poetic force
conveys vividly and powerfully the disintegrative effects of violence and
violation, and above all their capacity to break down both personal and
social boundaries. Bartsch points us towards the (Kristevan) abject. The
abject, she remarks, [...] is what disturbs identity, system, and order,
disrupting the social boundaries demanded by the symbolic.4 Spentzou
in turn associates the abject with the Kantian sublime in her masterly
exegesis of Lucans Caesar. There is an excess to Caesar, she notes, that
can hardly be adequately represented. He breaks free of conventions and
his extremity means that he can neither be controlled nor understood.5
For Spentzou, it is only through the category of the sublime, marked by
both transgression and incomprehension, and imbued with what Terry
Eagleton calls an annihilating, regenerating power, that this figure can
be afforded any measure of explication.6
While Spentzou makes no reference to Badiou, her language does none-
theless resonate with Badious account of the transformative potential of
the exceptional the unique state of affairs, something that emerges
from the edge of the void, and stands apart from the intrinsic stabilities
of structural norms. The sublime Caesar is an overbearing figure precari-
ously perched on the edge, the chaotic moment of transition from the
dying Republic to...something else. His abject perversion makes him
catastrophic and irresistible at the same time. Indeed, rousing transitions
just before vast historical changes often end as repulsive periods of Ter-
ror. Caesars fate is of course well known. And Balkan dictators are no
Caesars, despite an analogous love of excess. 1989 witnessed the demise
of some dictators and the rise of others. It witnessed too the invasion of
social and cultural spheres by political events, with all their destabilis-
ing power. In the chaotic moment of transition (Spentzou) of the early
1990s, social structures changed abruptly, and cultural life changed too. It

3Drakuli 2001.
4Bartsch 1998.
5Spentzou, forthcoming 2014.
6Eagleton 2008.
 on boundaries and events 619

seems that at such moments of transformation anything might happen;

in Badious terms, the transformative possibilities are infinite. It seems
too that in the throes of such convulsive changes the shift from a Com-
munist to a post-Communist world new sensibilities could be forged,
new subjects created.
My first case study is about boundaries. In my second and third bound-
aries and events are drawn together. And the events in question were wars.
It goes without saying that war brings ethical questions into sharp focus.
For Immanuel Kant it represented the natural state of things, a state from
which peace might be considered an abstention or intermission. And if
this abstention is a condition towards which we must strive, it is also one
that contains within it the residue and memory of war. The interconnec-
tion of war and peace, the sense that they are not opposites, has been
widely acknowledged in the literature.7 As I noted in chapter 14, for some
writers it even privileged the troubled Balkans, in that the region might be
located close to the laboratories of truth. Yet, as Jacques Derrida points
out, that relation was turned on its head by Emmanuel Levinas, certainly
one of the most influential of all modern thinkers, and one for whom eth-
ics has a primary position, in the literal sense that it precedes ontology.
For Levinas, the violent rejection of the other (a state of war) is only pos-
sible because of an original openness to the other, the pre-originary hos-
pitality of what he calls the face-to-face. War is thus somewhat akin to
an allergic reaction. It also contains within it the residue and memory of
peace, and it is perhaps not unreasonable to suggest that this residue and
memory is manifest above all through culture.8
Again it needs to be stressed that Levinas worked from an ethical rather
than an ontological premise. The face-to-face (with a transcendent Other
and with others) may be inherently violent; in the case of the others it
certainly involves a power relationship. But it is the sense of responsibil-
ity, the ethical duty, we have towards the Other (before whose rawness,
and in the ineluctable presence of what Levinas calls the third, we are
abject) that gives us meaning as subjects. For Levinas, there cannot be
a subject without an Other, just as for Badiou there cannot be a subject
without an Event (we are, in short, subjected to either the Other or the
Event). The parallels between these two very different thinkers might be
extended. Just as Badiou can conceive of infinity can even give it an

7For a discussion, see Pick 1993, 1415.

8Levinas 1981. See also Schroeder 1996.
620 chapter twenty-four

ontology by way of its theoretical, abstract mathematical projection,

so Levinas can conceive of infinity through a transcendent alterity. To
approach the Other in discourse is [...] to receive from the Other beyond
the capacity of the I, which means exactly: to have an idea of infinity.
Such parallels can be deceptive, of course, but we will extend them one
stage further through a return to the issue of violence and the political.9
For both Badiou and Levinas the entire realm of the political is inher-
ently violent, though they draw very different conclusions from this
defining condition. For Badiou the violence of the political is a necessity,
transforming existing ontologies and creating new ones; for Levinas, on
the other hand, the realm of the political is a deception, rendering impo-
tent the transformative power of the face by bringing it into view and
effacing its unicity. In practical terms, Badious message can be construed
as a call to action. Levinas, in contrast, challenges us with a plea for per-
sonal responsibility. Since our sense of self is utterly dependent on what is
irreducibly different we have an obligation to that difference. Needless-to-
say, this can hardly constitute a political agenda; if anything it represents
a utopian aspiration for a better world and a lesson in self-improvement.
It would seem, then, that for Levinas the capacity of ethics to influence
politics was limited. Terry Eagleton expresses something of the same, and
in typically forthright terms. If the political tends towards the degenerate,
the most ethics appears to be capable of, he argues, is to shake it up from
time to time.10
It will be worth turning from two eminent philosophers to one eminent
sociologist as a postlude to these reflections, with the inevitable conse-
quence that we introduce an historical dimension to the discussion. In his
challenging studies of the changing conditions of contemporary social and
political life, Zygmunt Bauman, whose own Postmodern Ethics offers some
of our most perceptive commentaries on Levinas, gives specific contem-
porary relevance to boundaries and events. His work focuses especially on
urban settings, and we will return to it in the final chapter. But for now
I will note that his reading of the shift from heavy to light modernity
deprives events of much of their energy. The world depicted by Bauman
is one of instant living, of the manipulation of transience; it is a present
(and here he quotes Guy Debord) which wants to forget the past and no

9For a meditation on violence and contemporary culture, see the introduction to

Bogue and Cornis-Pope 1996.
10Eagleton 2008.
 on boundaries and events 621

longer seems to believe in the future. Since social and cultural forms are
no longer given time to solidify in this world, the capacity of events to
transform it is correspondingly reduced. Bauman is alive to the ethical
implications of what he calls this seductive lightness of being. The world
he portrays is one where the advent of instantaneity ushers human cul-
ture and ethics into unmapped and unexplored territory.11
As to boundaries, Baumans analysis of the meetings of strangers in our
modern world (when strangers meet strangers) is not exactly a cheerful
one. Inter alia, it adds new categories to the classic strategies already iden-
tified by Claude Lvi-Strauss for dealing with difference. Thus, in addition
to Lvi-Strausss exile or annihilation of the others and suspension or
annihilation of their otherness (emic and phagic strategies respectively),
both potently linked by Bauman to rather specific types of modern public
space, there are the non-places which serve to keep differences at bay,
and there are the empty spaces where differences are wittingly or unwit-
tingly occluded from our individual mental maps. Baumans exposition of
the great transformation we are currently living through adds up to an
uncertain and in some ways a bleak portrait, but we may be entitled to
draw some reassurance from it with respect to the boundaries that con-
tinue to divide communities in the Balkans. In our present age of liquid
modernity, might one hope that such divisions are part of a history that
slowly draws to a close? And if this is indeed the case, does this closure
entail a loss of identity among the relevant protagonists?

Greece and its Neighbours

The recent thaw in hostilities around much of the present-day Greek border
might well be viewed in this light, an attribute of the wider social transfor-
mation Bauman describes. It might also be an implicit acknowledgement
that traditional constructions of Greek identity, forged by language, religion
and culture and progressively defined against alterities of various hues from
ancient times to the present, are becoming harder to sustain, and the more
so following the large influx of immigrants from the 1990s onwards. Greece
traditionally worked to assimilate and hellenise its non-Greek populations,
including the Arvanites and the Aromanian Vlachs living within its borders
(Lvi-Strausss phagic strategy). Those who proved unassimilable the

11Bauman 2000.
622 chapter twenty-four

Slavophone and Muslim communities in the north, and the Roma every-
where were marginalised, affirming Greek identities through their alter-
ity (the emic strategy). But recent patterns of immigration have been of a
rather different order. While for many Greeks these new immigrants may
seem to occupy Baumans empty spaces, barely registering at all on their
individual mental maps, they do nonetheless signal an encroaching multi-
culturalism at odds with traditional Greek ideas of nationhood. One should
not overstate the case. The Greek ethnos, cemented by Orthodoxy, remains
powerful, but the effects of globalisation, softening the edges of hermetic
identities, are ever harder to ignore.
For much of the twentieth century there was a less amenable story to tell
about alterities. As national boundaries were carved out of empire across
this region, Greece was involved in a succession of disputes with its neigh-
bours, and some of these linger on today. Moving from west to east, we
note that since the declaration of Albanian independence there have been
difficulties over respective minorities in Greece and Albania (especially over
the expulsion of the Cham Albanians), though currently relations are rela-
tively good. Next we encounter the controversy surrounding the naming of
a newly independent Macedonia; Greece has consistently refused to accept
the constitutional name, which it views as potentially irredentist and an
appropriation of its own historical legacy. Continuing eastward, we note
that while present-day relations with Bulgaria are good, the two nations
were on opposite sides of three separate wars in the early twentieth cen-
tury; and in the last of them Bulgarians occupied parts of northern Greece,
leaving a legacy of hostility that has been hard to expunge. Then there is
Turkey. Leaving aside the shared Ottoman legacy, the twentieth century has
witnessed wars, the population exchange, the Istanbul pogrom, the Aegean
dispute, and Cyprus. Yet here too relations are currently improving, espe-
cially following the earthquake diplomacy in 1999.
Against this background, it may be interesting to return to three stories
about Greece and its neighbours. They take us around the political bor-
ders from west to east. And as they do so, they traverse other boundaries:
from pre-modern through modern to postmodern cultures and societies;
from traditional music through art music to popular music. Maria Todo-
rova reminds us that if we study boundaries we foreground divisions right
away, whereas if we study spaces we allow that there might be unities.12
In reality it is rather hard to examine the one without the other, but it

12Todorova 1997.
 on boundaries and events 623

does come down partly to how we frame our questions. My three stories
reveal some of the tensions that arise when we shift our perspective from
boundaries to spaces and back again. And I will suggest that they are very
often tensions between politics and culture.
The first of them concerns the polyphonic music of Epirus, discussed
briefly in chapters 2 and 9. In an essay published in 2003, the anthropolo-
gists Vassilis Nitsiakos and Constantinos Mantzos surveyed both Greek
and Albanian literature about this music, and in doing so they showed
us how two mutually incompatible national traditions were constructed
around it, and how each tradition was given historical depth, returning
us respectively to Hellenic and Illyrian pasts.13 More recently Eckehard
Pistrick has extended this work to look to the public presentation of poly-
phonic song today, notably in Greek and Albanian festivals, and he looks
also at the ideologies that inform those festivals.14 All of this exhibits a
familiar enough pattern. Music has to belong to someone to have an iden-
tity, it seems. And as political borders force cultural communities either
side of a line, invented histories validate the new spaces.
We may remember too that that this tradition is shared with Vlach
communities. This complicates the binary Greek-Albanian picture, add-
ing a minoritarian dimension. Vlachs are not of course a single group.
Nor do they articulate a single politics. You will hear very different sto-
ries about identity if you travel around the Vlach villages of Epirus and
western Macedonia, or indeed if you simply trawl the blogs on the inter-
net. You will encounter a pro-Romanian faction (it has its heroes, and its
history).15 You will find assimilationists, Greek Vlachs, for example, who
are insulted to be called a minority given what they and their forefathers
did for Greece, but who are also conscious of material advantages offered
by Greek affiliation. And you will meet nationalists, if that is the right
word: members of the Vlach Association in Albania or the Pan-Hellenic
Association of Vlachs, who resist assimilation to any national culture, who
demand language rights in education, hold annual conferences on Vlach
culture, and so forth. There are, in short, conflicted Vlach identities.

13Nitsiakos and Mantzos 2003.

14Pistrick 2008.
15Many Vlachs/Arumanians settled in Romania, accounting for the section of Aruma-
nian polyphonic songs on the Music of Romania LP produced by UNESCO in the 1970s, as
part of its collective project Music Atlas. The sleeve note is at pains to distinguish this poly-
phonic style from what it considers authentically Romanian traditional music. In other
words, Romania wants to claim this culture in one place, and to disown it in another.
624 chapter twenty-four

The politics of nationalism thus divided a relatively homogeneous cul-

ture into two separate national cultures, while at the same time creating
a divide between majorities and minorities. It feels important to unpick
these processes by investigating Epirotic polyphony more closely, despite
the frankly limited reach of such research (it is performed only by small
handfuls of the older generation, or else by secondary ensembles). This is
not a matter of idealising traditional cultures, which does them no favours
at all; we respect them more by critiquing them. Nor is it about therapy.
This music has no real capacity to glue back together cultures that have
been split apart by nationalism; and it remains impotent in the face of
minoritarian struggles over identity; in other words, I am not really inter-
ested in ideas of music mystically transcending ideology in some way.
What it is about is getting the history right, or as right as we can. And
here the kind of deconstruction offered by Nitsiakos and Mantzos is the
easy bit. A harder task is to peel away layers of history through detailed
comparative study of the several surviving species of this music and of
neighbouring musics.
This is the value of the work done by scholars such as Katsanevaki and
Pistrick. Through their research an alternative music-historical atlas takes
shape, based on shifting cultural rather than political borders. It relies on
evidence-based continuities rather than crude survivalist theories and it
reveals the fluidity of borders within shared cultural spaces, rather than
the firm lines drawn by nationalist politics. Pre-modern cultural verities
are local, and these scholars are alive to that. Paradoxically it is a sensi-
tivity to place that enables us to get the history right, as I put it earlier.
And it is by getting the history right that we create a bulwark against the
abuse of the past by the powerful, or to put it another way, the abuse of
culture by politics. My language here betrays the ethical imperative. In
recovering and preserving something old and all but lost to us, we model
a unified culture, one that resists appropriation and accepts responsibil-
ity for the other. This may not change the politics, but it may shake it up
from time to time. The music itself remains passive throughout, innocent
of the politics that besiege it. Indeed, if we feel any sense of responsibility
towards it, it may be precisely because it lacks any real capacity to talk
back to the political world.
This is a major difference with my second story, which focuses on art
music and on the border that separated Greece from its northern Com-
munist neighbours from the late 1940s to the early 1990s. This is the Cold
War era, and the context is well-known: the Yalta Declaration, and the
ensuing Civil War, with Greek Communists persecuted in huge numbers,
 on boundaries and events 625

many of them fleeing across the borders. In chapter 20 I discussed the

role of the West, and especially the United States, in promoting Greek
modernism from the 1950s onwards. On the face of it this represented
a stark contrast to official art in Yugoslavia, as discussed in chapter 18.
However my suggestion here is that if we focus on what composers said
and did rather than on which side of the ideological divide they found
themselves, we will be struck by the commonalities between Greece and
its northern neighbours. And I suggest further that the two competing
narratives I identified in relation to the Communist world a western-
orientated narrative of emancipation and a quest for Balkan roots and
Balkan identities were no less applicable to Greece. Indeed I would
argue that these narratives between them shaped the development of
post-war art music in the Balkans.
The first narrative, facilitated by Great Power politics in Greece and
impeded by them in Yugoslavia, has already been discussed at length, and
it will be developed further shortly. But the second narrative requires fur-
ther exposition. Katy Romanou points out that for a period in the 1950s
Greece and Yugoslavia tried to revive some of their collaborative ventures
of the early 1930s.16 There had been various projects affirming a Balkan
cultural identity at that time: the periodical Les Balcans, edited by Alex-
andros Papanastasiou, four so-called Balkan conferences, and an inter-
Balkan concert conducted by Mitropoulos. In the 1950s, some of those
threads were picked up again. There was a Yugoslav concert in Athens
in 1952; there were visits from Manolis Kalomiris to Belgrade in 1952 and
1953, followed by eulogistic articles on music in Yugoslavia in the Greek
press. And there were plans for a series of festivals in Athens, Belgrade
and Istanbul. It is unnecessary to elaborate on these collaborative pro-
grammes. In the end they foundered, and they did so primarily because
by the late 1950s, as Romanou suggests, Greece and Yugoslavia were both
more interested in their separate relationships with the West than they
were in each other. In other words, the first narrative began to take pre-
cedence over the second.
That first narrative I called it a narrative of emancipation reached
a determinate stage in the early 1960s. It culminated in two major festi-
vals, one on each side of the political boundary. They were treated sepa-
rately in earlier chapters, but will be linked here in the context of Great
Power sponsorship. The first was the Zagreb Biennale. As noted earlier,

16Romanou 2010.
626 chapter twenty-four

one of the principal reasons the Biennale was able to survive and indeed
to become an enduring success was that Kelemen and his colleagues
were in a position to play the Soviets off against the Americans in the
sponsorship stakes.17 The other was the Hellenic Weeks of Contempo-
rary Music in Athens. This too was a landmark event, but in the end it
was not sustained, mainly because American funding was withdrawn
after the fall of the Junta. The point here is that the Hellenic Weeks foun-
dered because, unlike Yugoslavia, Greece was at the mercy of one of the
two superpowers.
This was in the late 1970s, and by then my second narrative of home-
coming, of Balkan identities, of the quest for roots had begun to re-assert
itself, displacing and eventually subsuming the first. This development
was discussed in relation to the Communist Balkans. But again it is worth
noting that it influenced Greece no less than its Communist neighbours.
It may be a little over-glib to put it in this way, but one might argue that
if the composer Yiannis Papaioannou was the emancipator in Greek post-
war music, the self-conscious stylist and innovator, then Dimitris Draga-
takis was the seeker after archetypes and roots. In this respect he found
common ground with Ljubica Mari in Serbia, with Konstantin Iliev and
Ivan Spassov in Bulgaria and with tefan Niculescu and Tiberiu Olah in
Romania. And we noted earlier how this marriage of archaism and mod-
ernism offered a distinctive identity to composers from this region.
In this second story about art music, as in the first about traditional
music, a divided politics both created and actively promoted a divided
culture. It differs from the first story, however, in that the cultural world
then worked to cross the divide. In both, music was hijacked by politics,
but in the second it talked back. If we take a birds eye view of post-war art
music in the Balkans, what we see I think is that while political appropria-
tions pulled Greece and its northern neighbours apart, the talking back
actually drew them together through shared narratives of emancipation
and of Balkan identities. That was then. In todays world, native scholars
disenchanted in the main fight the corner for art music in a hostile
environment, struggling to gain recognition and funding from successive
governments. In the process, they are inclined once again to construct
musical traditions as intrinsically national, unique brands that might hold
their own in a global cultural marketplace. This is understandable. But
it is not comfortable to see division originating from within rather than

17Kelemen 1971 and 1995.

 on boundaries and events 627

from without the institution of art. We need to recognise chauvinism for

what it is, and we need to acknowledge that it can come from us as well
as from politicians.
My third story, where the border extends further eastwards to Turkey,
can be covered fairly briefly, as it has been extensively rehearsed in recent
chapters. For many of what we might call the cultural elite in South East
Europe, including Greece, the rise and spread of pop-folk proved threat-
ening precisely because its oriental component was regarded as an alien
element that polluted the native heritage. Yet the revival of rebetika in
the 1990s, and the earnest engagement with a discourse of authenticity
that accompanied that revival, began to change this picture, as Dafni Tra-
gaki documents.18 We might remind ourselves, moreover, that rebetika
became hardly less popular in Turkey at this time; ebnem Susam-Saraeva
refers to the return to Anatolia.19 And, to round off the picture, we have
the development of what Elena Kallimopoulou calls paradhosiaka.20 All
of this signals an ever-increasing dialogue between Greece and Turkey in
popular culture, and on several levels: a ubiquitous pop-folk, and at the
same time a more elitist and sophisticated popular music scene. This is
important, because of our three stories, this is the one that is closest to
most peoples lives today.
The development of musical dialogues between Greece and Turkey in
recent years has no doubt been facilitated by a high-level politics of rap-
prochement pursued on both sides from the usual self-interested motives;
the debate about the European Union rumbles on. But these developing
dialogues are also to do with generations. As I will suggest in the final
chapter, youth today, unlike their parents and even more their grand-
parents, seem to resist notions of culture as something solid and fixed,
something to which one is born. Alongside the very real and powerful
sense of a Greek identity there is, then, a developing sense of a rather
wider Greek-Anatolian identity, and especially among the younger gen-
eration. Tormented by history, Greek nationalists would no doubt seek
to understand this as a form of reclamation, while Turkish nationalists
would naturally see it differently.
As so often in the Balkans, there is no single narrative in play. At the
time of writing, there is discussion of a proposed fence to be built at a

18Tragaki 2007.
19Susam-Saraeva 2006.
20Kallimopoulou 2009.
628 chapter twenty-four

strategic crossing point between Greece and Turkey, a symbolic gesture

of antagonism (utterly futile in practical terms) by the Greek authorities
towards growing numbers of illegal immigrants. Yet elsewhere it has been
a contrary narrative a politics and culture of rapprochement that has
seemed to dominate. The question asked by many in recent years has
been just how far the culture may have influenced the politics: how far,
in other words, has cultural work helped deconstruct traditional and on-
going hostilities.21 The world is certainly changing, and Zygmunt Baumans
analysis seems to have some purchase on that change. As we watch popu-
lar culture seep across increasingly porous political and social boundaries,
or even in some cases flow freely across them, we may be tempted to see
further evidence of the transformation from heavy to light modernity. The
liquid metaphor is Baumans.

Music Partitioned...

A glance at the map says a great deal with respect to Cyprus. The island is
just a few miles from the Turkish coast and distant from mainland Greece.
This accounts partly for continuing insecurities among the Greek Cypriot
majority on the island. It also accounts for the sense of entitlement among
Turkish Cypriots, bearing in mind that Cyprus was under Ottoman rule
for three centuries before coming under British administration from 1878.
Almost from its belated start Greek Cypriot nationalism, with powerful
support from the Church, took the form of enosis (union with the mother-
land, as they perceived it, in a spirit of Panhellenism), rather than an inde-
pendence movement (Cypriotism), and understandably this was resisted
by the Turkish Cypriot population, who had a four-hundred year history
on the island, and who accordingly boycotted the plebiscite on enosis in
1950. The results of this plebiscite more than 90 per cent of the Greek
Cypriot population in favour were in any case ignored by Britain.
From this point, and faced with anti-imperialist guerrilla warfare by
the radical pro-enosis EOKA, British policy was to look favourably on
indeed to energise Turkey, effectively widening the space between the
two communities on the island and even condoning the discourse of
taksim [partition] that accorded with the aims of the radical Turkish-
Cypriot organisation TMT. It was a policy of divide et impera. And it

21Nye 1990.
 on boundaries and events 629

was against this background, with enosis looking increasingly unlikely,

that Archbishop Makarios III was obliged to come out in favour of inde-
pendence. At the Zurich talks between Greece and Turkey (brokered by
the US) a highly conditional independence giving rights to both commu-
nities was indeed achieved (1960), under the protection of Greece, Turkey
and Britain. However, this satisfied neither party, and in particular was
regarded as a betrayal by the more nationalistic Greek Cypriots. Accord-
ingly, inter-communal violence broke out in 1963, and it is really from this
point that a culture of conflict accelerated among the nationalists on both
sides. In particular the Turkish Cypriot minority was marginalised. Many
of them were either forced into, or formed themselves into, enclaves. The
(then discontinuous) Green line dates from that point.
Ironically, the violence had abated, and discussions were under way,
by 1967 when the Greek Junta took power. The coup dtat of July 1974
was jointly masterminded by the Junta in Athens and the radical Greek
Cypriot nationalist group EOKA B, at which point Makarios III was forced
into exile.22 The coup in turn precipitated the two-stage Turkish invasion
of 1974, with London and Washington standing by. This invasion was
ostensibly designed to protect the Turkish Cypriot minority on the island,
and there is a perfectly credible case that it was within Turkeys rights as
one of the three protecting powers to undertake it in order to re-establish
the status quo. It was not so much the invasion itself, then, but the sub-
sequent occupation of the northern territories the fact that the Turks
remained and extensively settled what would later (1983) be called the
Turkish Republic of North Cyprus that ensured that the new state, de
facto part of Turkey, would be recognised only by Turkey and would be
subject to international embargo, as it remains today. The invasion effec-
tively brought down the Greek junta and ensured the return of Makarios,
who remained President of Cyprus until his death in 1977.
It is possible to argue indeed it has been argued by Daniel Pick that
war has an anchoring effect in the constitution of collective identities, that
having forced a separation it then freezes the newly defined positions.23
In 1974 there were two wars in Cyprus: two violent events, orchestrated
respectively by Greece and Turkey. There was the Junta-backed coup

22Few accounts of recent Cypriot history can avoid allowing their subject position
to come through. For studies that emphasise the global players, see Mallinson 2005 and
Papadakis, Peristianis and Welz 2006. See also the trenchant, far from balanced, article by
Perry Anderson (Anderson 2008).
23Pick 1993.
630 chapter twenty-four

(Makarios described it as a Greek invasion of Cyprus), and there was

the Turkish invasion. The effect of these events was to reset the terms
of Cypruss political life, creating a partitioned island. Existing structures
were erased, and a chasm was opened up between two communities that
had for the most part, extremists on both sides apart, co-existed for many
years before 1963. The divisions were not in any case exclusively about
ethnicity. Papadakis, Peristianis and Welz remind us of the politics of left
and right on both sides, where right-wing politics promoted enosis with
respective motherlands, while left-wing politics promoted Cypriotism.24
How, we may ask, did the cultural world respond to the partition of
the island? In particular, how far did music of all kinds contribute to the
construction or confirmation of identities in the separate communities?
What has been the role of public policy, and conversely of private initia-
tive, in fostering both music-making and music pedagogy? Which initia-
tives have been established to promote bi-communal musical activities,
and to exploit the soft power of music as a means of crossing political
divides? To what extent is the traditional music of the island a shared
heritage, and is it actively promoted today? What about popular music in
Cyprus? Does it have a distinctive identity, or is it simply a carbon copy
of contemporary trends in Greece and Turkey respectively? And how far
can one identify continuities with musical traditions prior to the events
of 1974? A more detailed study of music in Cyprus would need to address
these questions more closely than can be justified in the present volume.
But at least I can make a start.
If we were to sketch a history of music in Cyprus we would return at
least to the Lusignans and their musicians, for there was an Ars Nova
practised by French musicians in Nicosia, leaving a distinguished material
trace.25 We would have stories to tell about the Renaissance period, includ-
ing the Cypriot madrigals of Gian Domenico Martoretta, who stopped
in Cyprus for an extended period in the mid 1550s and dedicated ten of
the twenty-eight madrigals of his Terzo Libro to noble Cypriot families.26
We would discuss the emergence of domestic European music-making
associated with the British accession in the late nineteenth century.

24In their Introduction to Papadakis, Peristianis and Welz 2006.

25Gnther and Finscher 1995. For a wider study of society and culture under the Lusig-
nan Kingdom, see Nicolaou-Konnari and Schabel 2005.
26See Maria Antonella Balsanos introduction to Book 2 (Martoretta 1988), and her
unpublished paper The Cypriot Madrigals of Giandomenico Martoretta read at the 2009
Biennial Euro-Mediterranean Music Conference, 1820 September 2009.
 on boundaries and events 631

And we would refer to works such as Cypriana (1943) for solo piano by
the Cypriot-American composer Anis Fuleihan (190070). European art
music, in other words, had a presence on this island at particular stages
of its earlier history. Likewise post-Byzantine chant was also cultivated by
the Cypriots, though Cypriot chant lacks the regional identity of, say, the
Smyrnean school of the late nineteenth century or even of the Thessalo-
nians today.27 And finally, Ottoman traditions were well established from
the late sixteenth century onwards; indeed the Mevlev tekke in Lefkoa
(on the Turkish side of the city) functioned as an important early school
of music and poetry (mevlevihne).
As for traditional music, this as one might expect belonged to the
wider Greek-Anatolian region, though there are distinctive features (often
a faster tempo) that identify it as Cypriot. The major dances were familiar
ones originating in Asia Minor and found also in Greece: using the Greek
names, they include the sirto, the karsilama, the tsifteteli, and the zeibekiko.
There have been projects on both sides of the island documenting record-
ings of these dances and dance pieces from the pre-1963 era, some with
Turkish-Cypriot musicians and dancers, some with Greek Cypriots, and
some with a mixture of the two ethnicities. The blind violinist Mehmet Ali
Tathyay (192088), who appears with his trio on many of the videos housed
by the Lefkoa Folk Association, had major exposure and exerted consid-
erable influence on the course of traditional music among the Turkish-
Cypriot community. From 1963 onwards, there are predictable stories to
tell about the attempts to draw this island-wide repertory into national
narratives of both Greece and Turkey, attempts that have not always been
acceptable to either Greek Cypriot or Turkish Cypriot musicians.
Culturally, no less than politically, Cyprus presents something of a
microcosm of the wider Greek-Anatolian region, while at the same time
offering something distinctive, not just because all islands inflect generic
idioms one way and another, but because the British presence as in
the Ionian islands left its own mark. Thus, from 1879 onwards Euro-
pean music was cultivated both at diplomatic residences, at British (and
also French) schools, and by way of the British army bands. Teachers and

27I am grateful to Alex Lingas for information about this tradition. It seems that during
the Venetian period Cyprus did seem to be developing distinctive regional idioms similar
to those found on Crete (notably the works of John Korkodotos and Hieronymos Trago-
distes). Nicoletta Demetriou has written interestingly on the attempts by Theodoulos Kal-
linikos to draw Byzantine and demotic traditions together in support of familiar readings
of a continuity in Greek music history (Demetriou 2008).
632 chapter twenty-four

performers were almost entirely non-Cypriot, but by the early twentieth

century Cypriot-run music associations and private music schools began
to appear in Larnaca, Limassol and Nicosia. Most existing accounts of this
fail to acknowledge that not all were dedicated to European music. In sev-
eral of the associations Ottoman and European traditions co-existed, and
some were devoted exclusively to Ottoman classical and semi-classical
music. Moreover, it would not be correct to assume that Ottoman tradi-
tions were exclusively the preserve of the Turkish Cypriot community.
In the case of the Cypriot branch of Dar-l-Elhan [Abode of Sounds],
founded in 1925, Turkish Cypriots were the prime movers, and the his-
tory of this organisation, culminating in its debut on Cyprus radio in
1953, is really a history of the conservation, teaching and transmission of
Ottoman-Turkish traditions.28 To an extent, then, Cyprus joined certain
other parts of the Balkans in preserving Ottoman traditions that had been
proscribed in Turkey. It needs to be emphasised that musicians could
move between traditions. Larnaca-born Mustafa Kenan, for example, con-
ducted the orchestra and chorus of Dar-l-Elhan in the 1930s and 1940s,
while also performing with the Music Association Mozart, conducted
by the best-known of the Greek-Cypriot composers, Solon Michaelides.
Later, after independence, he also played in the ethnically mixed orches-
tra of the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation. From the reviews of concerts
given just before and after independence,29 we learn that successive con-
certs might alternate Turkish music and Western music, or indeed com-
bine the two.
It was really the events of 1963 that separated the communities and
prised apart their cultures. This was the point at which Cypriots became
Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots rather than Turks and Greeks. And
from this point onwards there is no reference in the Greek-Cypriot press
to Turkish-Cypriot musical activities.30 Indeed it was increasingly difficult
for the Turkish Cypriots to maintain an active cultural life at this time.
Both the Dar-l-Elhan and the Kmran Aziz Ensemble ran into difficul-
ties, though the Turkish Cypriot Philharmonic Society was founded in the
1970s by Yilmas Taner, still an influential (and politically privileged) figure
in North Cyprus today, son of the pioneering musician Zeki Taner, and
father of the salaried state artist, the pianist Ruha Taner.

28Yeilada 2008.
29These have been usefully brought together in Adanir 2001.
30This is confirmed by the current doctoral research by Anastasia Hasikou in the Pub-
lic Information Office in Cyprus.
 on boundaries and events 633

Not surprisingly, the two parts of the island have fared very differently
economically and culturally since 1974. With partition there are always
winners and losers. It is to the great credit of the Greek Cypriots that they
succeeded in building a prosperous modern state with a high per capita
income and low unemployment following partition, re-designing a tour-
ist industry whose prime locations had been in the North and forging a
successful commercial economy prior to the crisis of March 2013. As the
economic base of the society gradually strengthened, moreover, educa-
tional and cultural activities were increasingly promoted. Today there are
numerous festivals, the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra, a Centre for Cypriot
Composers (with Music Information Centre), Youth State Orchestra, and
music programmes at the University of Nicosia (formerly Intercollege)
and the European University of Cyprus, as well as at private schools such
as the Arte Academy. At the time of writing a major Cyprus Cultural Cen-
tre, to an innovative architectural design, is nearing completion.
There is also a quite well developed compositional culture on the Greek
side. Aside from Michaelides, one could cite composers such as Michalis
Christodoulides, who makes creative use of makam-s and a Middle East-
ern melos more generally (O Saratsinos, composed in the early 1990s, is
characteristic, including an opening taximi), and Patras-based Andreas
Georgiou, who uses traditional melodies in some works (Steile me mana sto
nero [Mother, send me to the fountain] for solo guitar) but more typically
allows folk elements to provide a kind of background ambience (Costantia
and Dhoron Exagnismou [Gift of Purification]). There is even a Symphony,
Kypriakes Eikones [Cypriot Icons] and one-act Chamber Opera, Manoli...!,
by the Limassol composer Vassos Argyrides, best known for his work in
film and TV.31 Composed in 1990, and based on the coup of 1974, Manoli ...!
is a work of considerable expressive power, and it has already secured pro-
ductions in Kaiserslautern and Hamburg. Other notable composers are
Mikis Costeas, Tasos Stylianou and Andreas Moustoukis.
It would be hard to claim the same successes for North Cyprus, where
there have been the inevitable economic and social problems that accom-
pany a proscribed state. North Cyprus is a unique case. But it also presents
similarities with other fragments of territory small, isolated, defensive
that have calved off from larger units, the outcome of nationalist violence
and consequent ethnic separation. We will encounter other cases in
these last two chapters. Seeking to establish or confirm an independent

31Papaeti 2010.
634 chapter twenty-four

nationhood, they try to build a national culture almost ab initio, but they
are vulnerable and exploitable both from without and from within. Char-
acteristically they will be prone to a corrupt political culture, and to an
establishment that enjoys and protects its privileges.
North Cyprus is obviously heavily dependent on Turkey, and that in
turn has bred resentment at what are taken to be exploitative and con-
trolling policies. Indeed what is not always appreciated is that Turkish
Cypriots (those whose mother and father are both Cypriot) are a minority,
and that their relations with Anatolian settlers are not harmonious. There
is also a considerable population of ex-pats living in the Girne (Kyrenia)
area in particular, and that too has a cramping effect on the survival of a
local culture. At the time of the Annan plans there was real enthusiasm
in the North for peace, but when the final plan was rejected, following
the referendum in 2004, a different mentality ensued. One can feel tangi-
bly the force of Badious point about subjectivities and events. In North
Cyprus today the philosophy is live for the moment, or perhaps dont
face the reality. None of the current options for resolution appear par-
ticularly attractive to the Turkish-Cypriot community.
The attempts to build a culture in this part of the island have a ram-
shackle quality that is not without a tragi-comedic element, as in the fate
of the so-called State Symphony Orchestra and Choir, now reduced to
three fully-salaried members, and with a building so under-used that it
was occupied by squatters. More active is the Lefkoa Belediye Orchestra,
but its ambitions as a classical ensemble have taken a knock, and it now
performs an almost entirely popular or light-classical repertory. Moreover
there is little belief among the (accomplished) performers in the conduc-
tor, whose appointment was largely political. During my period in North
Cyprus, critiques of this state of affairs were in the newspapers and on the
radio. There is a group of committed younger musicians who have pressed
for reform, but as yet with little success. Building something sustained is
notoriously difficult in North Cyprus, as in all such regions. It is easier to
invest in festivals. Some, such as the Famagusta festival of popular and
world musics, cultivate an indigenous audience. But more often they are
linked with tourism, as in the two festivals at Bellapais Abbey organised
by the North Cyprus Music Foundation (Yilmas Tanner) and the Cyprus
Music Association (Halil Kalgay).32

32For an idealised view of North Cypriot culture, see Oberling 2007.

 on boundaries and events 635

It is no doubt symptomatic that the one University Music Depart-

ment (at the Eastern Mediterranean University) has been forced to close,
though the Music Education Department has survived, and there are
impressive teachers at the High School for Fine Arts and Music in Lefkoa
and at a private music school in Girne, with a choir that has had inter-
national exposure. There are also plans for Istanbul Technical University
to establish a campus in North Cyprus, with a Music Department focus-
ing (with obvious ideological resonance) on Turkish Classical Music. The
once-thriving tradition of performing this music has declined in North
Cyprus, and there is some resentment today at the tendency of some of
the more nationalistic of the Anatolian settlers to play Mehter music on
their radios and in their cars as a kind of affirmation of a Turkish national
culture. Certainly Turkish music seems to have no particular privilege at
the moment, taking its place alongside other non-European repertories,
including a highly successful Tango group and several jazz ensembles.
If anything is privileged it is Cypriot folk music and dance, with sev-
eral ensembles, a Folk Association, and research projects for conservation
and analysis, some of them shared with the Greek side of the island. A
bi-communal project, Uniting Through Traditional Music [UTTM], led by
Panikos Giorgoudes and funded mainly by the UN, began in 2004, and
another EU-funded project is currently under way in Lefkoa, in which
multiple performances of Cypriot music and dance are compared and
analysed. In general the traditional music in North Cyprus has not been
well preserved. Indeed some ethnomusicologists there are of the view
that after 1974 there were deliberate attempts to downplay it in order to
draw the Turkish Cypriot community closer to Turkey and to loosen their
links to their Greek-Cypriot compatriots. If this is the case, it may not be
entirely confined to the Turkish side of the island. On the Greek side the
music is certainly better preserved, but the links with Greece have been
emphasised and strengthened since 1974. Such are the familiar mecha-
nisms of nationalist appropriation of culture.
Even as common repertories are edged apart by the politics of the moth-
erlands, internationally funded projects try to draw them together again.
Prior to the referendum in 2004 there were many such bi-communal proj-
ects, notably associated with meetings in Ledra Palace, symbolically in the
dead zone. They include the various projects promoted by Jeunesse Musi-
cale Cyprus, an impressive bi-communal choir, the movement Dance for
Peace (common traditional instruments), tango orchestras on both sides
of the island that collaborate on occasion, and a popular music duo that
straddles the two communities. Perhaps more striking than this deliberate
636 chapter twenty-four

bridge building (the Barenboim approach) is the wider tendency already

noted in the last section for popular music to ignore political divides.
There are the usual global idioms of popular music found in Cyprus, asso-
ciated especially with an active club culture on both sides of the island,
bearing in mind that there is now freedom of movement across the Green
Line. And there is a pop-folk idiom that looks both to East and West, but
without associating these orientations with either community (thus, the
live music scenes on the Greek side tend to look West in Limassol, which
incidentally hosts kantades societies exactly analogous to Dalmatian klapa,
and East in Nicosia).
The future remains uncertain. Current administrations in Turkey are
bullish, consolidating and strengthening their hold on North Cyprus, and
less swayed by the lure of the European Union than once they were. In
the meantime those nations who are unhappy about Turkish accession
continue to use Cyprus as a reason, or a convenient excuse, for their oppo-
sition. If you spend time with musicians, you will see the best and the
worst of it. You will see how easily music can be exploited and manipu-
lated by both political and commercial interests. You will see how corrupt
and nepotistic administrations can prey upon a musical culture, and can
frustrate well-meaning attempts to reform it. But you will also see how a
love of making music and of thinking about music can override all of this,
drawing people together, whatever their ethnicity, politics or religion. And
you will see too that the music associated with youth culture is a shared
music, barely ruffled by events and largely indifferent to boundaries. The
one frustration that seems common to all is the omnipresent guiding
hand from without, always dictating and always prescribing. If a solution
is to be found to a problem of some fifty years vintage, it will have more
chance of sticking if it comes from within.

...and Not Quite Partitioned

Two decades after the partition of Cyprus, the Dayton accord finally
brought an end to the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. There are paral-
lels. In both cases an act of war resulted in a formal separation of ethno-
religious groups. But there are also major differences. For one, there were
three groups involved in Bosnia; and during the war every possible permu-
tation of enemy pairings was in evidence. For another, there is the matter
of scale. There was much devastation in Cyprus in 1974, but nothing that
happened there was on the scale of Bosnia and Herzegovina. And for a
 on boundaries and events 637

third, the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina into two separate political
enclaves, Republika Srpska and the Bosnian Federation, was the product
of an internationally sponsored peace treaty, and with only limited local
support. It was a foreign imposition, but it has status in international law,
whereas North Cyprus is recognised only by Turkey. Republika Srpska
does have legitimacy, but in the eyes of many the decision to establish it
as a largely autonomous region is hard to justify. Other things aside, there
is no real geographical logic to the region; the Inter-Entity Boundary Line
was negotiated somewhat arbitrarily according to the status quo at the
time. The Dayton peace was an international construction, just as much of
the responsibility for the war must be assigned to the international com-
munity. Even so, Dayton Bosnia, a fudge in terms of sovereignty norms,
did at least stop the bloodshed.33
Despite the division, Bosnia and Herzegovina is a single state, albeit
with a cumbersome institutional structure. The Office of the High Repre-
sentative commits to strengthening cross-sector state institutions, but the
reality on the ground is somewhat different. Agreement between national
representatives at state level is rare, and the two entities largely govern
themselves, and have separate police authorities. Any referendum held in
Republika Srpska, not that such a thing is likely, would certainly result in
an overwhelming vote for independence. In other words, it is the inter-
national community that holds Bosnia and Herzegovina together. Even
so, the regeneration of this country from its low ebb in the mid 1990s
should be presented as a success story on material, economic and cultural
levels. It is the politics that remain in question. Although populations are
drifting back slowly to their places of origin, Republika Srpska remains
predominantly Serb today, and the Federation mainly Muslim and Croat.
The different nationalities co-exist more easily than in the immediate
aftermath of the war, but ethnonationalist forces remain powerful, and
few could confidently rule out conflict in the future were the international
pressure to ease.
Violent events are transformative. And the post-Dayton political trans-
formation naturally had implications for cultural life. Many of the basic
structures of musical life remained as in the pre-war years, of course, and
were common to both Federation and Republic. This was especially the case

33The most thoughtful dissection of Dayton I have read is Woodward 2001, which also
contains useful analyses of the acceptance by European powers of Slovenian and Croatian
sovereignty in the early 1990s.
638 chapter twenty-four

in music education, though even here one might note that the curricula (if
not the structures) of the national music schools have been drifting apart
over the years. But for musical life more generally the changes were bound
to be considerable once a formal boundary was in place. In earlier chapters
I tried to give some indication of how musical activities were slowly regen-
erated in Sarajevo following the trauma of war. In truth they had never
stopped entirely even in the darkest days of the siege. I leave aside here
the iconic figure of Vedran Smailovi, the Cellist of Sarajevo, who used
music to draw the eyes of the world to Sarajevo for a time in a gesture that
inevitably echoes Pablo Casals with his Catalan folk melody. Rather I refer
to the continuing activities of the Academy, thanks to the determination
of the few, and even the continuing, if greatly emaciated, concert life that
just about functioned, sometimes underground, in the city.34
Sarajevo remains of course the cultural as well as the political capital
of Bosnia, but when Republika Srpska gained its semi-autonomous sta-
tus it acquired a separate capital and began to develop a separate cul-
tural life. In the aftermath of the war, there were debates about where
the seat of government should be located. East Sarajevo, centred on Pale,
staked its claim, but the association of Pale with Radovan Karadi and
with the worst excesses of Bosnian Serb wartime activities counted heav-
ily against it. There is an Academy of Music within the University of East
Sarajevo today, but its activities remain little known (hosting the 58th
Trophe Mondiale de lAccordon in 2008 gave it momentary exposure),
and it has no real contact with the more prestigious Academy. In any case
Banja Luka, Bosnias second city, beautifully situated on the river Vrbas in
the northern hills of Bosanska Krajina, was chosen as a more amenable
administrative capital, and it is effectively the cultural centre too. In pre-
war days, Banja Luka was home to a typically Bosnian mlange of eth-
nicities. Today, of course, it is mainly Serbian, and much of its Islamic
heritage has been eliminated or suppressed. But despite the destruction
of the Ferhadija Mosque (now under reconstruction), other mosques and
Muslim cemeteries survive. During a stay there I did occasionally hear the
call to prayer drifting across the city.
Musically, the local hero is Vlado Miloevi, whose compositions
make frequent reference to the folk music of surrounding territories in

34I am not aware of published accounts of music in wartime Sarajevo. But for a vivid
account of just what it meant to be a musician in a war-torn city (Osijek) in the early 1990s,
see Hadihusejnovi-Valaek 1998.
 on boundaries and events 639

the Krajina. The Academy of Music in the University of Banja Luka is

named after him, and in April of each year it organises the Days of Vlado
Miloevi, a mini-festival of concerts, exhibitions and theatrical events.
As in Sarajevo, the Academy is located right at the heart of musical life,
supplying teachers for the music schools and performers for a recently
formed Symphony Orchestra, currently conducted by Vanesa Kreminovi.
Unlike its companion Academy in East Sarajevo, moreover, it maintains
active relations with the Academy in Sarajevo (it should be remembered
that already in the early twentieth century Banja Luka had developed a
musical life along Western lines; indeed its first private music school pre-
dated the one in Sarajevo). However the Academy struggled to re-build
its activities after the war, and the struggles are by no means over. For
several instruments and theoretical subjects it has to depend on visiting
professors from Belgrade. And while the strings are well catered for, there
remain difficulties with wind instruments, harp and percussion.
Exactly these problems exist in North Cyprus, and as we will see in the
final chapter, they exist in Kosovo too. The politics may be very differ-
ent, but the structure is similar, as these small secessionist regions seek
to build an independent culture in the wake of war and in a climate of
financial stringency. As in North Cyprus, it has been easier for Republika
Srpska to fund annual or one-off festivals than to establish and maintain
regular series. And again the difficulties are epitomised in the attempt to
establish a viable symphony orchestra, regarded as essential to cultural
ambition and international prestige, but expensive to run and maintain,
and demanding of high-quality teaching to ensure a satisfactory inflow of
good instrumentalists. In Banja Luka the plans for an orchestra began in
the early years of the new millennium, but it has become a reality only in
the very recent past. It does have government support, but it still relies on
some outside performers for its occasional concerts in the cultural centre
Banski Dvor, and for the overseas tours which have just begun. It is abun-
dantly clear that a formal culture of this kind is in its embryonic stages in
Republika Srpska, in music as in the other arts. There is little evidence of
an active new music scene, though one student at the Academy in Banja
Luka, Dalibor Duki, can claim the distinction of having composed the
first symphony from Republika Srpska!
In art music cooperation between Republic and Federation is good, and
there seems little rivalry. This is also true to some degree of the many
amateur choirs and folk ensembles found in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
for they do indeed perform all over the country and participate in each
others festivals. But there is also evidence here that music can reinforce
640 chapter twenty-four

division as well as heal it. We saw in an earlier chapter how devotional

Islamic hymns (the now ubiquitous ilahije i kaside) and sevdalinkas were
given propagandistic significance in the Federation, becoming in effect
an official national music. In a similar way the Serbian orthodox and folk-
loristic repertories, very much in the Mokranjac tradition, that are asso-
ciated with choral societies in the Republic, of which the most famous
is undoubtedly the Jedinstvo [Unity] choir in Banja Luka, can take on a
political tenor, even inadvertently. The annual choral festival Zlatna Vila
[Golden Fairy] in nearby Prijedor celebrates this tradition and presents
it to the world. Likewise the Tamburica Orchestra of Banja Luka and
the many folk ensembles and festivals in the Republic, together with a
trumpet culture in the spirit of Gua, are showcases for essentially Ser-
bian traditions.
It seems clear that in this way music plays its part in forging a com-
mon sense of identity between the Serbs in Republika Srpska and Serbs
everywhere. That may not necessarily be a good thing. It comes down
to a familiar tension between territory and ethnicity; in other words,
do Bosnian Serbs want to stress the adjective or the noun in this label?
If we look to deeper causes, we might say that the borderline between
trauma-induced nostalgia (as discussed at length by Svetlana Boym) and
nationalist propaganda is not always easy to draw.35 The former would
seek to establish roots from a profound sense of insecurity, whereas the
latter would seek to proselytise and might seek to conquer. This tension
exists, moreover, on both side of the Inter-Entity Border Line. We should
perhaps not make too much of it. Nor should we make too much of the
widening gap that seems to have opened up between traditional reper-
tories either side of the line. The separate cultures do after all cross the
border. But they remain separate cultures.
If there are any grounds for optimism that the destructive nationalism
of the past may recede, they perhaps lie, as in Cyprus, with the levelling
effects of Baumans liquid modernity, which permeates all strata of soci-
ety but which certainly influences the younger generation more than their
fathers and mothers. The issue of the generations will be addressed more
fully in the next chapter, but I should say here that for the young people of
my own acquaintance in Republika Srpska (not a representative sample,
I freely admit), no prospect is more horrendous than the return of conflict.
Many of them seek opportunities to emigrate not so much because they

35Boym 2001.
 on boundaries and events 641

are dissatisfied with their lives here and now, but because they fear for
the future. And the music they listen to seems to confirm this ecumenical
position. Turbo-folk, still imbued with political memories, has lost much
of its popularity among the youth of Republika Srpska in favour of more
international western styles or of politically neutral Serbian and Croatian
stars such as Zdravko oli in Belgrade and Severina Vukovi in Zagreb.
By way of a brief footnote on the generations, it will be worth adding
here that two of the most prominent musicians in Republika Srpska today
are a father and daughter from Banja Luka. They are Bosnian Serbs, and
both have symbolically nailed their colours to the adjective rather than
the noun. The father is Duan esti, a well-known local composer, whose
achievement it is to have composed the national anthem for Bosnia and
Herzegovina (there is, as a matter of fact, a separate hymn for Republika
Srpska, composed by Mladen Matovi). And the daughter is Marija esti,
a graduate of the Academy in Banja Luka, who represented Bosnia and
Herzegovina in the Eurovision Song Contest in Helsinki in 2007 with the
ballad Rijeka bez imena [Nameless River]. She was twenty at the time and
was placed a respectable eleventh in the contest. Bosnia and Herzegovina
once led the way in popular music circles. It now trails badly. It needs new
stars, and it is encouraging to see that Marija esti continues to build an
impressive reputation in local circles.
The question for Cyprus is whether a divided people might eventually
come together. The question for Bosnia and Herzegovina is whether a sup-
posedly unified state might eventually split apart. For despite sustained
attempts to create cross-sector collaboration by the paymasters and their
administrators, the Republic and the Federation seem to be emphasis-
ing rather than smudging the line that separates them. They increasingly
present the aspect of symmetrically mirrored independent entities, even
down to the iconic placement and significance of Brko and Mostar within
Republic and Federation respectively.36 In pessimistic moments, one might
well feel that Dayton has been more holding operation than resolution. As
usual, music can either reflect or resist underlying political tendencies. No
genre is safe in this respect, but in general it is the music with national
resonance the music of the church and of the folk that reflects, and the
music that crosses national boundaries the music of concert halls and
clubs that resists. People use music, but they are also used by it.

36In both towns inter-ethnic warfare was replaced by experiments in externally

imposed multi-ethnic administrations.
 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

ENDGAME

Degenerations

One persons progress is anothers degeneration. Enlightenment dis-

courses gave this truism form, and debates over music were in keep-
ing. Consider the competing claims on behalf of harmony and melody
(charming the ear versus touching the heart) in a well-known polemic
of the late eighteenth century, and in its aftermath. Harmony could be a
triumph of Western rationality (Rameau) or a symptom of cultural decay
(Rousseau). It could enable new, artificial forms of expression, or it could
suppress and constrain older, more natural, ones. It was intrinsic to the
West and to the march of modernity; indeed it codified the separation
of the modern West from world culture. Yet its subordination to system
(Webers progressive rationality) drew it towards over-mechanisation,
over-refinement, or both. As for melody, this was widely recognised as
signalling an expressive imperative, but its status as either derived or
originating remained in question. For Rousseau and his followers it was
ancient and speech-related. Accordingly, if it were to be squeezed to the
margins by an increasingly sophisticated harmonic process, this would be
a symptom of cultural decline. The Marxist critic Fedele dAmico would
later understand musical modernism in just those terms; he called it
La crisi del canto.1
Reductive exercises of this kind encourage the belief that coherent
patterns underlie the messy complexity of historical processes. We might
be tempted, for instance, to relate these readings of music history to a
conventional dialectic of rationality and mimesis. However, there are two
complications here. One is that any reading may be given a positive spin
in one quarter and a negative spin in another. The Rameau-Rousseau
debate, which still echoes faintly today in a debate between Lydia Goehr
and Reinhard Strohm, bears witness to this.2 The second is that thoughtful
commentators recognise that each term in the dialectic contains elements

1DAmico 1962, 4656.

2Goehr 1994; Strohm 2000.
 endgame 643

of the other. The specific line here is that an increasingly rationalised

tonal harmony was eroded from within, but the general message is that
as systems tend towards autonomy, they overrun the logic of their devel-
opment and go into decline. If there is a forcefield between rationality and
mimesis, in other words, its poles will be heavily mediated.3 Processes of
modernisation, in other words, are not just subject to competing interests
(are they good or bad?), but may embody conflicting elements (does the
rational contain the irrational?).
All this has some purchase on the repertories I have discussed in this
book. The debates over Orthodox chant are a case in point. One would dis-
tinguish here between Enlightenment-engendered Chrysanthine reforms,
which set out to rationalise an existing practice (exactly as Ottoman art
music would be rationalised some time after), and the later move to har-
monisation, which sought to modernise in effect to Westernise the
chant. But characteristically both these historical moments were accom-
panied by a rhetoric not just of innovation and tradition but of prog-
ress and degeneration. Or consider the debates about art music in this
region in the modern era, where the opposition between cosmopolitan
modernism and folk-based nationalist idioms was typically couched in
terms of the coldly mechanical (the rational) versus the warmly organic
(the mimetic). For some these were starkly opposed positions (Osterc,
Dobroni). But for others a recovered mimetic impulse could jump-start
the decaying machine, creating in effect a different species of modern-
ism (Slavenski). And consider too the ethical terms in which that same
mimetic impulse (vital, pure, of the people, bypassed by a self-destructive
rationality) was contrasted with the hybrid popular music of the cities,
especially the music of the Roma.
If we understand ideas of progress and degeneration in the widest
sense they are timeless, alive in the ancient world and alive today. But
as controlling agents of history they were formalised and interlocked as
inverted but well-nigh identically structured discourses in Enlighten-
ment thought and in the Positivist-Darwinist-Modernist successors to that
thought. They culminated in Nietzsche, and (in fictionalised form) in the
moralising of Settembrini in Thomas Manns novel The Magic Mountain.4
World War I, which interrupted and changed the course of Manns great

3An interesting case study of this, with a bearing on East and West in music, is Lend-
vais discussion of two natural principles (vertical and horizontal, rational and organic).
See Lendvai 1983.
4Mann 2011.
644 chapter twenty-five

novel, seemed to draw a line under this symbiosis, and where it lingered
World War II finished the job. In the later twentieth century, progress
and degeneration were disaggregated in the discourses of cultural as also
of social histories. Specifically there was a loss of faith in the former. One
could remain committed to the necessity of the modern, but it seemed
more difficult to link this with a belief in progress. Only in the Commu-
nist world was there a calculated propagandistic attempt to preserve that
belief, and even to maintain its specific associations (in the case of music,
an over-rationalised avant-garde, a healthy music of the people, a degener-
ate popular culture). Elsewhere it withered, or led a kind of underground
existence as a latent Utopianism (une promesse de bonheur).
Degeneration was another matter. Daniel Picks classic discussion of
degeneration as cultural history locates itself, with perfect logic, in the
age of progress, meaning the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
turies, culminating in more than a simple chronological sense in the
First World War.5 Looking at medico-psychiatric and social-scientific dis-
courses, at criminal anthropology, and at fictions of degeneration, crime
and decay, his magisterial study gathers together several themes already
discussed in this study, and some about to be discussed. And it analyses
with acuity how stereotypes of West and East emerged around this potent
pairing of progress and degeneration. In essence, the West is harnessed to
progress (albeit a progress that harbours indeed produces degeneracy),
while the East is equated with degeneration (albeit a degeneration that
carries the potential for renewal). Naturally stereotypes of this kind dis-
tort reality, but they can become self-affirming, and often to the point at
which even those stereotyped may begin to believe in them.
Let us fine-tune the stereotypes. One class that emerged from Europe
was the orientalism practised by sophisticated western artists at the turn
of the century. A European image of Asia, racially and sexually degen-
erate but replete with vital life forces, confronted a Europe of decadent
modernity, associated with the coldly mechanical, trade-obsessed west-
ern city. The East was branded as enervating and seductive for the most
part (Picks book Svengalis Web is informative as to music, and there
are relevant commentaries by David Weir and Stephen Downes),6 but
its primitive qualities might also revitalise, and fin de sicle orientalism

5Pick 1989.
6Pick 2000; Weir 1995; Downes 2009. For Weir, decadence provides a conceptual focus
that helps to unify the cultural transition from romanticism to modernism.
 endgame 645

played with both possibilities. It did so always in a spirit of appropriation,

and with musical manifestations that are well known and wide-ranging.
A second class of stereotype emerged from the post-Freudian Eurasianism
associated with certain Russian migr intellectuals in the early twentieth
century. Here a quite different version of the East might redeem the West,
as the transformative power of Russian spirituality was invoked to counter
a Godless and soulless western rationality. In music, for example, Eur-
asianists such as Pierre Souvtchinsky depicted Stravinsky as a Messianic
outsider, though in truth he could as well be associated with primitivist
as with spiritual renewal, and for that matter with futurist artifice and
mechanisation (the music of Le Sacre can invoke the modern city as easily
as a primitive rite!).7
The in-between status of the Balkans is reinforced and illuminated by
these West-East stereotypes. On one hand the region can be represented
as aspiring towards western rationality, chasing the modern, seeking
to catch up. It presents, in short, a weak, emulative version of a mod-
ern urban culture. On the other hand it may be thought to echo, and to
remain fatally attracted by, a lingering mimetic impulse associated with
the East, where mimesis might equate with expression and sensuality,
but also with unchecked barbarism. This informed a third, homegrown
class of stereotype, the Barbarogenius of Zenitist fame, a peculiarly Bal-
kan version of transformative power, and one that contains elements of
both orientalism and Eurasianism. It is in fact closer to the latter than to
the former, in that the source of regeneration lies in a putatively stable
world of traditional rural societies, a world standing for what Buruma
and Margalit have called the old certainties, grounded in faith and given
cultural expression in ritual forms.8 During Daniel Picks age of progress
this world was already fast disappearing, and in the second half of the
twentieth century it was all but irrevocably lost. But it lingered in corners
of the old Europe, and in the Balkans longer than almost anywhere else.
Its stubborn survival in this region created an in-built resistance to influ-
ences from west and east alike.
The story of music and musical life in South East Europe seems to reflect
this in-between status rather clearly, presenting as it does an underdevel-
oped but aspiring western culture, a heavily mediated oriental legacy, and
a cluster of robust but receding indigenous traditions. Even the hybrid

7Humbertclaude 2006.
8Buruma and Margalit 2004.
646 chapter twenty-five

popular music most listened to today right across the Balkans somehow
fits the picture, for it brings all three of these ingredients together in a
kind of synthesis. Of course, there is not much doubt about where this
pop-folk really originates. It is first and foremost a species of a modern,
western, urbanised mass culture, and where it points to an exoticised East
or to native folk traditions, it does so primarily to establish local (Balkan-
Anatolian) identifiers within that mass culture. Despite appearances, there
is not much more than a trace of the orientalist and Zenitist impulses of the
early twentieth century in pop-folk. And what remains of those impulses
has now been both commodified and neutered, subsumed by the culture
industry of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, an industry
that in the eyes of many, and despite the prevalent cultural relativism of
postmodern discourses, is itself a symptom of cultural degeneration.
There is a long history of reading mass culture as an index of social
and cultural decline. Patrick Brantlinger demonstrated that this attitude
in essence the belief that forms of mass entertainment tend towards a
debasement and trivialisation of culture was already alive and well in
the ancient world, citing the Heraclitean axioms that virtue is rare and the
multitude is bestial.9 Likewise, we are reminded by Buruma and Margalit
that Juvenal, in his satire on ancient Rome, equates the commodification
of culture to moral laxity.10 However, it was in post-French Revolution
Europe that this view gained decisive momentum, as the secularisation
and commercialisation of European societies promoted a sharper polari-
sation of attitudes, and creative elites increasingly protected themselves
from the forces of massification. Already in the early nineteenth century
processes of industrialisation and early forms of mass production were
seen to be destructive of art and culture. Such views were given expres-
sion by Blake and the English Romantics, as also by Stendhal and Balzac,
well before they were articulated by fin de sicle decadents. If there was a
natural culmination point for this history, and one that seemed to validate
all earlier discourses of degeneration, it was again the First World War,
the terminus of Picks account.
War and accounts of it do indeed focus the theme of degeneration. It
will be as well to make my general remarks on this subject in the previous

9Brantlinger 1983.
10Buruma and Margalit 2004, 28. Analogies between ancient and modern decadence
became fashionable in the nineteenth century. Already in Gautiers Mademoiselle de
Maupin (1835) analogies between contemporary mores and the declining years of the
Roman Empire were made explicit.
 endgame 647

chapter a little more specific by returning one last time to the war in Bos-
nia and Herzegovina. In the siege of Sarajevo we have a powerful instance
of modern urbicide, to use a term that has recently gained currency,
notably in the work of Martin Coward.11 Here a modern city became the
principal target of ethnonationalist violence, in a strategy that, as Cow-
ard suggests, was partly aimed at destroying plural spaces. There was an
attempt to kill the city, a city that in so many ways represented the acme
of a modern youth culture in the Balkans, not least in music. Music was
certainly not the gravest of the many casualties of this war, but it was a
casualty nonetheless. One of the most dynamic pop-rock scenes in former
Yugoslavia was decimated by the events of the early 1990s, a victim of
both physical and cultural siege, for turbo-folk could be in its own way a
kind of weapon. The dispersal of the bands amounted to an almost com-
plete collapse of that scene, and there has been little of comparable value
since. Classical music fared little better. It will be remembered that the
infrastructure for a classical music culture was all but destroyed at the
time, and its subsequent recovery, in both Sarajevo and Banja Luka, has
been slow and painful.
The siege of Sarajevo, and in particular the destruction of its great
library, was really a sustained attempt to eliminate all traces of a long
tradition of Islamic culture in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It represented the
brutal summation of a history of ethnonationalism that had developed
much more widely in Europe after 1870, closely linked to ideas of nation-
hood, racial degeneracy, and religious persecution (for the notion that
Islam puts the brakes on progress was a long-established one). We should
be cautious about bandying about accusations of genocide, which must
surely stand as the most brutal face of degeneration: barbaric, regressive,
uncontrollable, not just defying reason, but engulfing it.12 But the ethnic
cleansing in Bosnia took such an extreme form that serious commenta-
tors such as Susan L. Woodward have felt no compunction about invoking
this term, even if no less serious commentators (Maria Todorova) have
rejected it.13 Genocide or not, the devastation was immense, and in its
aftermath all cultural forms were transformed. Thus, the sacred music
of Islam and the secular oriental tradition of sevdalinka, both already
freighted with ideology in the early 1990s, were assigned a highly public

11Coward 2008.
12Levene 2005.
13Woodward 1995. Todorova 2000 (here in relation to Kosovo in 1999).
648 chapter twenty-five

role a celebration of nationhood in which original meanings were lost

in the post-Dayton Federation.
It is hard to imagine that those perpetrating the slaughter saw them-
selves, and were viewed by others, as heroes. Yet this was indeed the case,
and it highlights another dimension of war, one well attested in discourse.
For war has often been viewed as the romance of history, and war heroes
everywhere as the embodiment of virtue: our finest hour. Moreover, dis-
courses of war link it not just to virtue but also to culture. In his book,
War Machine, Daniel Pick refers to a range of writers from Hegel to Wil-
liam James and Ruskin in support of this linkage.14 This is Ruskin: all
the pure and noble arts of peace are founded on war (or consider Harry
Lime on the Medicis). Here war is the antithesis of degeneration; it is a
check on the lethargy of a declining culture, an antidote to social decay.
For Bosnian-Serb nationalists, it was the necessary means to preserve
the ethnic, Christian self. It was something great and heroic, something
incorruptible, recovering ancient glories and infusing the modern nation
with lifeblood, with a new and necessary toughness and vitality. Hence
the continuity between the (purifying) acts of the early 1990s and those
heroic deeds celebrated by the guslars, for we should note that the tradi-
tion of epic song was no less subject to transformation than the tradition
of sevdalinka. Indeed it is hard to purge the Serbian epic, and even the
gusle itself, from such associations today.
There is an explosive friction between these two faces of war, barbaric
and heroic, degrading and noble. And there is friction in turn between
each of those faces and a third face of war, as epitomised by the 1995
NATO intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the so-called Operation
Deliberate Force. The calculated, dispassionate violence putative preci-
sion bombing and the rest perpetrated by NATO forces exhibited war as
a machine, an unstoppable engine, a marker of progress, the end-product
of an advanced military-industrial complex in which politics, technology
and big business are inextricably linked.15 As Pick puts it, it is intrinsic
to modernity; politics by another means; industry under another name.
Something of this was already articulated in embryonic form in one of
the classic documents of rationalist war theory, Clausewitzs On War of
1832, and Clausewitz was certainly alive to the frictions. He was also alive
to the paradoxes. The rational war machine, ostensibly distant from the

14Pick 1993.
15See Johnstone 2002, with reference to the later interventions in Kosovo.
 endgame 649

irrational passions of war on the ground, marches irrevocably towards

anarchy. As a semi-autonomous system, it builds its own momentum,
overruns its own capacity, and spins out of any real control. Little that is
good ever comes from war, it seems. As Todorova puts it: whoever wins,
everyone will lose.16 Even such a powerful symbol of musics redemptive
power as the strains of Albinoni resonating in the ruins of Sarajevo tells a
story that has ended badly.
The wars of Yugoslav succession confirmed for many a sense of the
Balkans as an aberrant site of degeneration, a cancer corrupting the body
of Europe. This stereotype, popularised and given respectability by Robert
Kaplan, is just that: a stereotype. The wars were in fact a delayed but logi-
cal, though not inevitable, outcome of the epic conflict between declin-
ing empires and emerging nation states that had wreaked havoc all over
Europe earlier in the twentieth century. This was conflated with the more
immediate collapse of both political and civil order that occurred when a
semi-socialist society was transformed to a market economy in the context
of extreme economic decline, a decline caused more by the international
climate than by internal politics. None of that diminishes the horror. But
the narrative of the wars and of their aftermath should not be mystically
separated off from the rest of European politics. Everything witnessed in
the Balkans was part of all our histories at one time or another. As else-
where, the violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina could generate defiance
in an heroic mould, and that in turn could be reified (the oppressed can
become the oppressors). As elsewhere, myth and history could contribute
to a perversion of heroism, and one that could convert with alarming ease
into barbarism. As elsewhere, the engine of war could take its own course,
and the controlling finger of the outside power could prove, in the end,
anything but controlling. It is not the Balkans that spells degeneration,
but war itself, wherever we find it.

Generations

To paraphrase Confucius, it is human habits, not human nature, that

change over the centuries. War has been with us from the beginning, and
it will not go away. But it may be fought by proxy, and that has been the
preference of major powers since the end of World War II. The goal has

16Todorova 2000, 169.

650 chapter twenty-five

been to displace conflict, to remove it to a site as far as possible from the

boundaries of the power bloc. In some cases war is literally outsourced, as
Armstrong puts it in War plc.17 This does not mean that ethnonationalist
conflict has been eliminated from within the blocs. It is still prevalent
in the post-imperial structures of the former Soviet Union, and it lingers
too in parts of Europe. But it is hard to imagine a war between member
states of the European Union, and as the Union expands, now incorpo-
rating several of the Balkan states, its internal security grows stronger, at
least in relation to competitive nationalisms (I leave aside new kinds of
threat). There is a further factor here, related somewhat to Baumans anal-
ysis of the transformations in contemporary society. Cultures and mores
are undoubtedly becoming more uniform right across Europe these days.
There is a price to pay for this in terms of the richness and diversity of
European societies, but there is also the advantage, or potential advan-
tage, that the political divisions of the past may come to exert less and less
influence. So at least one might hope. And if there is any one group that
seems to justify that hope, it is the younger generation.
In studies of identity politics the key markers of difference have tradi-
tionally been religion, social class, ethnicity and gender. To the extent that
we define ourselves through any of the first three categories we implic-
itly invoke genealogy. To return to the proverb of an earlier chapter, we
resemble our fathers. None of these categories is immutable, of course,
though some are more fixed than others, and much depends on the soci-
etal context. Throughout history it was by no means uncommon for people
in the Balkans to switch religions, very often for political reasons. Likewise
they could migrate across social groups, though this was not always easy
in the more traditional societies. And they could even defy conventional
ethnic definition, a less common move, for sure, but one that did (and
does) occur among minority communities such as Roma, and especially
at population censuses. Needless to say, if people do change their religion
or their perceived ethnicity they strengthen the identity marker in ques-
tion by asserting its importance. The fourth category, gender, is another
matter. For obvious reasons, it is more resistant to change, but even here,
as noted in chapter 23, gender bending has a history in performance con-
texts, and, at least in the modern world, gender transfer is also possible.
The one category that remains beyond our control, except in the realm
of wishful thinking, is generation. Consider the proverb again. We may

17Armstrong 2008.
 endgame 651

resemble our fathers, but we may also resemble our times. Indeed, the
full message is that we resemble our times more than we resemble our
fathers. The suggestion is that generation may be an even more potent
marker of difference than any of the others mentioned above. It may, in
short, outweigh genealogy as a determinant of our identity. In a powerful
essay on Russian social and intellectual history, Stephen Lovell addresses
this question in some detail.18 He examines the shift from genealogy to
generation (to what he describes as cohort thinking) with reference both
to social practices and institutions, and also indeed principally to lit-
erature and criticism. Lovells argument is directed specifically to Russia,
and he is anxious to complicate, in a good way, over-facile readings of
the shift to generational consciousness, notably by unpicking key nine-
teenth-century texts, and by distinguishing between their original mean-
ings and their later resonance. But the broad trajectory from genealogy to
generation remains intact in his exposition, and several of the common-
sensical reasons he gives for that trajectory can have a distinct bearing
on our story.
We may return at this point to the transformative, and often violent,
event. One implication of the event that was not considered in the pre-
vious chapter is its capacity to separate the generations. The argument
would be that it is precisely at moments of extremity, of maximal stress,
of dramatic change, even of reversal, that young people will be provoked
into finding common cause with their coevals, and that this will override,
if not directly oppose, inherited values. The French Revolution might be
taken as the paradigmatic case, and this in turn would link generational
consciousness to processes of rapid modernisation, especially in the con-
text of the increasingly nationalised armies (binding together their per-
sonnel in a collective mentality) that followed the revolutionary period.
Generational difference, it has been suggested, would then have been fur-
ther nurtured by the subsequent, and to some extent consequent, forma-
tion of new civic institutions in the early nineteenth century, as also by
the massive cultural shift from court to city. Lovell, focusing on Russia, is
at pains to emphasise that this transition is anything but clear-cut, but
he does accept the pedigreed view that by the 1860s Russia had produced
something akin to a youth culture in the modern sense, and that this was
indeed the earliest such culture anywhere in Europe.

18Lovell 2008.
652 chapter twenty-five

Stepping outside Russia, it has likewise been argued, notably by Paul

Fussell, that World War I created a new wave of generational thinking
in Western Europe, brushing aside the remnants of genealogical think-
ing associated with pre-war societies.19 Out of the world of summer,
1914, marched a unique generation. Daniel Pick suggests that Fussell is
too quick to see the Great War as establishing new paradigms, arguing
that the topos of inevitable war insolubly linked to that conflict had
itself a lengthy pre-history, as indeed had the perception of an absolute
schism between the pre-industrial rural world and an atomised, rootless
modernity.20 Yet at some point changes become qualitative. Just as the
generation of 1870 crystallised ethnonationalism as a just cause for war
right across Europe, so it was the generation of 1914 that fused once and
for all ideas of modernity that are embodied in technological progress,
and in destructive power.
As though on a time loop, we may watch several of these features play
out again in parts of South East Europe in the late twentieth century.
Indeed it is precisely because modernisation was delayed until the sec-
ond half of that century in the less socially advanced parts of this region,
and was therefore greatly compressed, that generational thinking came
into its own at this time. Perhaps the most poetic depiction of the process
is Ismail Kadares fictional account of the collision of traditional mores
and (violent) modernities in Gjirokastr during World War II. In his won-
derful novel Chronicle in Stone, the disenchantment of the old world
by science and rationality, as also by war and violence, opens up a new
space for a new generation, and resets the terms on which that genera-
tion might engage with the world around it.21 It is a parable of enforced
and rapid modernisation, and it bears witness to similar processes else-
where in the Balkans. Add to this generational bonding the impact, and
then filching, of existing models of youth culture from the West, mix in
the effects of those socially transformative processes identified by Zyg-
munt Bauman as peculiar to our present era, and we can see how easily a
relatively unified voice belonging to the younger generation effectively
yet another generational shift could develop in the Balkans in the late
twentieth century.

19Fussell 2000.
20Pick 1993.
21Kadare 2007.
 endgame 653

This voice is more often conformant than subversive. But in any case
it is distinctive, and clearly set apart from the voice of the fathers. In
the ensuing case study I will suggest that this gap between the genera-
tions could be as relevant to art music as to popular music. But for now
I will focus on the latter. We have already noted that popular music in
this region carved out a stylistic space in which elements of local culture
could be somehow blended with elements of western pop. We noted too
the ambivalent function of oriental elements, and above all their capac-
ity to unify the entire Balkan-Anatolian region. We should now stress the
countervailing tendency. It is hardly surprising, given the globalised, light
modernities identified by Bauman, that many features of this music, and
of the culture it stands for, are all but indistinguishable from youth cul-
tures everywhere. Balkan pop-folk may be a distinctive brand, but all the
brands work in pretty similar ways these days.
It is a bizarre prospect, no doubt, but I will briefly compare youth cul-
tures in two capital cities, London and Prishtina: one of the oldest capitals
in Europe and one of the youngest, a city at the apex of developed Europe
and one that has, to put it gently, some little way to go. The contrast is
stark. Yet if we look at the patterns of young peoples lives in these cities we
will find much common ground, and it is ground that separates them from
their elders. There is the dot com revolution. We all google today, but the
younger generation is born to it, and has neither knowledge nor concep-
tion of a pre-google world. The transformative effects of this instantane-
ity on how youth today learn, socialise and communicate, self-evidently
momentous, are not essentially different in London and Prishtina, and
the ubiquity of mobile phones reinforces a culture of the moment, a dis-
location of time and place. There is a digital playground on offer in both
capitals that simultaneously connects and isolates young people today,
locking them in their bedrooms but at the same time (literally) allowing
them to hook up with others. It is a playground that excludes adults in the
main, though that too is changing, as todays youth become tomorrows
adults (the term kidulthood has been coined in some quarters to address
a second generation of youth culture, a perpetual childhood).
Music has been profoundly influenced by this digital revolution. The
star system remains in place; and in this respect one difference between
our capitals is that Prishtina cultivates both a global and a local system,
while London has only the former. But alongside this there is a new
age of the amateur, or rather an age of do-it-yourself celebrity. We can
all put our music out there, and reality TV can make a celebrity of the
person next door. Downloading music is no less a commonplace. The
654 chapter twenty-five

dubious ideal of a free culture has taken root, and accordingly the value
of recorded music has been diminished, so that several artists now make
their music available free in the certainty that it will pay off in other ways.
This is one respect in which Prishtina has not yet caught up with London.
The material product CD or even cassette tape still counts for more
over there. But this difference is just about time lag. The DJ culture is still
alive in Kosovo, though the biggest of the club scenes, the internationally
known SPRAY, has been closed and its activities dispersed. What has not
yet been fully registered, however, is the new enthusiasm for live music
the growing weariness with DJ mixes that seems to mark youth culture
in London today. This really amounts to a kind of comeback of the live
experience, associated especially with the 02 Arena.22
If this means that Prishtina is locked into an earlier stage of youth
culture, it also means that there are fewer equivalents in Kosovo to the
more disreputable side of that culture in present-day London. The world
of chavs, binge drinking, drug abuse, gangs and hoodies has given rise to
the novel term ephebephobia (fear of teenagers), one that expresses the
gulf between the generations in no uncertain terms. This is not unknown
in Prishtina, but it is less of an issue than in London. Of course Prishtina
had, and to an extent still has, its mafia and its trafficking, but this is
organised crime (there are anyway parallels in London, where some of the
super-wealthy from dubious business communities overseas have taken
up residence), and has little to do with generation.23 The more general
get-rich-quick ethos of the 1990s and early 2000s is distinctly relevant,
however, and in both cities it has resulted in notable changes in social
patterning, with money, consumer branding and postcodes counting for
more than traditional class-based hierarchies. This whole ethos has suf-
fered a hammer blow of course. In London in particular there has been a
dramatic loss of faith in the world of the City number crunchers (banker
bonuses et al.) following the collapse of the money markets. But what
remains immune is the culture of celebrity: the footballers, their wives,
and music stars of either gender.
If the 2000s do indeed reveal certain convergences in the values and
social practices of these two cities, then the increased mobility of the last
two decades, alongside the communications revolution, has taken this a
stage further. Prishtina is now a (literal) presence in London, which is

22For theoretical reflections, see Auslander 1999 and Lysloff and Gay Jr. 2003.
23Glenny 2008.
 endgame 655

one of the most multi-ethnic capitals in the world today. Kosovars have
flooded into London alongside all the others from Eastern Europe who
have serviced the British labour market from 2004 onwards. Conversely
London is a (virtual) presence in Prishtina, which is in contrast a largely
mono-ethic city. Thanks to Satellite TV, things British are avidly followed,
and they extend from English premier league football (everyone supports
a team), to the latest UK fashions, to rock and pop music, to Harry Potter.
There are even local Kosovan versions of familiar UK TV shows. And there
is one further expressive paradox. Prishtina is a Muslim city, but you will
look hard to find the veil, let alone the burka. To see both in abundance,
you must look to London, officially Christian, and de facto secular.

Balkan Ghetto: The Story of Kosovo

From Prishtina we segue to a broader discussion of Kosovo, one of the

most troubled corners of the political landscape of former Yugoslavia.
Kosovo places in sharp relief the central tension in just about all con-
tested claims for nationhood, a tension between historical precedence
and ethnicity. An outsider can be dispassionate about such matters: can
see both sides of the case. But this hardly helps. Where conflicts of this
kind fester, it invariably means that an original injustice, or perceived
injustice, has been topped up over the years, and both sides in Kosovo
claim just that. The divide is ages old, but it was opened wide indeed it
became an unbridgeable gulf following the events of 1999. The future is
uncertain. The international community is still divided about recognising
Kosovo as an independent state, though the International Court of Justice
has ruled that the declaration of independence was at least legal (which
does not in itself legitimate the state), and there are on-going discussions
with the European Union.24 In any case, if statehood is to be sanctioned,
the Serbian community in the north of the country will certainly refuse
to accept it. The parallels with Bosnia and Herzegovina are tantalising,
and not without their ironies. If a semi-partitioned Bosnian state seems
to model a solution for Kosovo, then an independent Kosovo seems to
model a solution for Republika Srpska.

24Justifying recognition is usually based on arguments of either remedial secession or

earned sovereignty, though problems may be raised in relation to each of these doctrines
in the case of Kosovo. For an analysis of causes, see Todorova 2000.
656 chapter twenty-five

At the time of writing, the European Union encircles the Western Bal-
kans. The border describes an extended arc enclosing Italy, Slovenia, Hun-
gary, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece (as well as Cyprus). Only Albania and
the successor states of former Yugoslavia (Slovenia, and by the time this
book is published Croatia, excepted) are now left on the outside, and all
are in the queue, as indeed is Turkey. A glance at the map exposes the
anomalous political geography here, and it is no surprise that the Western
Balkans is commonly described as a ghetto. If such it is, then Kosovo is
a ghetto within a ghetto. There are of course two ethnic communities in
Kosovo, and one communitys friend is anothers foe. Interestingly, they
take rather different positions in relation to their respective motherlands.
The minority Serbian community places its allegiance unambiguously
with Serbia and aspires to a restoration of the status quo; it makes little
or no distinction, in other words, between a Kosovo-Serbian identity and
a Serbian identity. In contrast, the Albanian community is less enthused
by any idea of a Greater Albania that would incorporate Kosovo. Just as
most Turkish Cypriots feel more Cypriot than Turkish, most Kosovars feel
part of Kosovo, not Albania.
There can be no doubt that the country struggles economically, despite
powerful backers on the world stage, for there is institutionalised corrup-
tion at high levels, there are limited opportunities for tourism, and there is
a heavy dependency on outside subsidies. Accordingly, like North Cyprus
and Republika Srpska, Kosovo has exiguous funds to disburse for cultural
initiatives. One message that comes across as with a single voice is that
the golden age for this province was the 1970s, when it benefited from the
best years of Titos Yugoslavia. There was some easement of anti-Albanian
discriminatory practices at this time, notably at school level, and there was
also an attempt to build a cultural life. One should not over-egg the pud-
ding, but as noted in chapter 18 there was a decent Symphony Orchestra
at Radio-Television Pritina (as it then was); likewise the Association of
Composers became independent of the Yugoslav Association, the Faculty
of Music at the Academy of Arts in the University was established, and a
professional choir commissioned and performed new music and toured
extensively. The Red Hall, still the leading (unattractive) venue for major
concerts, was at the centre of a high-profile musical life, hosting musicians
from other Yugoslav republics, and there were opportunities for Kosovar
musicians to take part in festivals throughout the federation. Music in the
schools was reputedly at quite a good level.
All this changed after 1990; indeed it was already changing during the
course of the previous decade. It is not going too far to say that musical
 endgame 657

life more-or-less ground to a halt in the 1990s, symbolised by the virtual

closure of the Red Hall, and certainly its unavailability to Albanian musi-
cians. The only option for such musicians was to use either the Faculty,
until in due course they were excluded from that too and were obliged
to create their own parallel Faculty in private homes, or to turn to the
churches, for these did indeed offer a degree of protection (a womens
choir was able to flourish in just this way). Those concerts that did take
place by the Albanian community became in a way political events, and
were accordingly well supported, notably by academics and political fig-
ures on the Albanian side. A case in point was the post-graduation concert
given in January 1995 by Beza Luzha, who somehow persuaded the Ser-
bian Director of the Red Hall to make it available and invited a number
of musicians from the Albanian community to participate. The success of
this symbolic event, and the atmosphere it generated, was such as to give
serious pause to such activities for the remainder of the decade.
Of course the turning point was the infamous war and ethnic cleansing
of 1999. This was the event that transformed Kosovo. And in its aftermath,
in the context of a NATO protectorate and the gradual return of many
who had left, the most pressing questions were not about culture, but
about survival, and in some cases (unhappily) about reprisals. For a small
group, however, the task of building or re-building a culture was perceived
to be vital right from the start. The Faculty, as it is widely described, had
been the engine room of Kosovos music for some time. Unsurprisingly,
many of the professors who left in 1999 or before did not return. But oth-
ers drifted back after the war, in several cases from Tetovo, and what they
found was chaos. Already a week after the NATO forces moved in, the pri-
ority for Faculty members was to ensure the security of the premises and
especially of the instruments. Only then could the process of reconstruc-
tion begin. The first concert to be put on was organised by Besa Luzha
on 27 and 28 November 1999 (28 November is Albanian flag day), with
programmes ranging from Bach to Copland and with several of the play-
ers brought in from Albania. Then, under the baton of Faculty professor
Bahri ela, the Faculty rehearsed and performed Mozarts Requiem. The
symbolic potency of these concerts can be imagined fairly easily.
From that point the reactivation of musical life proceeded apace. As
in Republika Srpska and North Cyprus, one priority was to establish an
orchestra, always a high-prestige national symbol. Already in 1999 a proj-
ect to reactivate the Kosovo Philharmonic (which had been a State insti-
tution) was announced and a budget set. Initially it was confined to string
players (on salaries from the Ministry of Culture), but wind players were
658 chapter twenty-five

imported for concerts, first from Albania and later mainly from Macedo-
nia, which was cheaper. Even some of the soldier musicians from KFOR
were roped in to swell the ranks! Over the years the quality of this orches-
tra is said to have improved, and under their current Japanese conduc-
tor they are at last able to use local wind and percussion players, since
some teaching provision in relevant instruments is now available at the
Faculty. Audience numbers are robust, but without question the most
striking thing about the audiences is that they are predominantly young,
inverting the normal state of things in formal musical culture. Admittedly
the concerts are free, and just now there is a debate about whether or not
some modest charge should be made in the future.
We return to generations. It is not obvious why classical music concerts
draw in the young in this way. Partly it may simply be that any events
attract attention in Prishtina, especially when they are free. Partly it may
be that the average age in Kosovo is in any case astonishingly young (at
the time of writing, twenty-six). But it may also be symptomatic of the
palpable energy of one sector of Kosovos youth, of their determination to
build a national culture, and of their rejection of the violence of the recent
past. It is worth noting that the promotion of classical music among Koso-
var youth is an active aim of the festival DAM, initially a student-organised
event, but now dedicated to young performers generally, and attracting
some impressive international ensembles.
DAM is only one of a cluster of Kosovo festivals. Exactly as in North
Cyprus and Republika Srpska, the promotion and sponsorship of festivals
has proved a great deal easier than the maintenance of regular concert
series. Already in 2000, just a year after the war, the first of the Bach
Weeks and the first of the International Chamber Music Festivals were
established. Then, in addition to DAM, the April New Music Festival
ReMusica, now a key event in the Kosovo diary, was inaugurated, directed
by one of the leading Kosovar composers Rafet Rudi (b.1949). Other festi-
vals followed, including the Flute Festival New Spirit, the Prishtina Jazz
Festival, more recently a dedicated Chopin Festival, and a clutch of events
dedicated to traditional music and dance. There are comparable festivals
in the other arts, incidentally, and especially in film, with the Prizren doc-
umentary film festival now an internationally recognised event.
Although new music has relatively little exposure beyond the dedicated
festival, the artistic quality of the Kosovar music on parade at ReMusica is
often rather high. Composers such as Zeqirja Ballata and Mehdi Mengjiqi
are performed, as is Mark Koci, who has been living in London for some
20 years now. Rafet Rudi is also well represented, with works that range
 endgame 659

from his Symphony of 1974, with a strikingly original slow movement sur-
rounded by more familiar neo-classical gestures in the outer movements,
through poetic impressionisms such as Les cloches arberesh for solo piano
of 1993, to his intensely expressive Laudatio funebris for soprano and
strings of 2006. Music does seem to run in families in the Balkans. We
encountered Doina and Diana Rotaru in Romania; we met Zeki, Yilmas
and Ruha Taner in North Cyprus; and we have Duan and Marija esti in
Republika Srpska. In Kosovo there are two such cases. One of the found-
ing fathers of Kosovos concert music was Fahri Beqiri, and his son Valton
Beqiri (b.1967) has also been a key figure in musical life, a composer of
relatively conservative bent, a teacher at the Faculty, and at one stage
Minister of Culture. Likewise Rafet Rudis daughter Donika Rudi (b.1982)
is among the most promising of a younger generation of Kosovan com-
posers, with a specialisation in chamber and electroacoustic works. There
are active attempts to promote young composers in Kosovo today, by the
Kosovar Centre for New Music and also by DAM, which now sponsors a
composer competition.
There is of course another community engaged in music-making in
Kosovo, but its activities are now sidelined even suppressed and con-
fined to north of the river Ibar, where Serbs live in a state of semi-limbo.
Certainly there is little in the way of an independent formal musical cul-
ture there, aside from the music of the Church. The Kosovo Serbs regard
themselves quite simply as part of Serbia; they are not energised to build
something new. This is the real difference between the two communi-
ties. What neither seeks nor wants is the bi-communality that constitutes
the agenda of the protecting powers, in Kosovo as in Cyprus and Bosnia
and Herzegovina. This agenda can carry penalties for a majority Alba-
nian culture as well as a minority Serb one. The Institute of Albanology
in Prishtina has a long history of distinguished scholarship on Albanian
and Kosovan culture, including music. Today it is the site for impressive
research into traditions of epic song by Zymer Neziri and his colleagues,
and into north Albanian vocal traditions by Rexip Munishi. However,
the title of the Institute, however longstanding, is regarded as a provoca-
tion to the international authorities, and as a result these scholars now
struggle to achieve anything. Funding is not forthcoming for conferences.
Even salaries are under threat. It is truly hard for culture to rise above
politics.
Youth culture in Kosovo today has many similarities with that in the
other marginalised regions I have considered. Some of this has been
touched upon. The rock culture of the 80s and 90s, epitomised by the
660 chapter twenty-five

highly successful rock festival Boom, has largely been replaced by a club
culture. As noted earlier, the big club SPRAY has been closed, but its activ-
ities continue in a way, in that the organisers now put on events in vari-
ous other locations; there is a sense in which Spray has dispersed rather
than disappeared. More recent interests are in hip-hop and rap, and there
are efforts to bring international stars to the Stadium in Prishtina, often
funded by major commercial concerns such as mobile phone companies,
with obvious vested interests. There is widespread support for some of
the high-profile divas, notably (during the time I was there) the Albanian
singer Aurela Gae. And finally there is a homegrown, socially aware music
cultivated among some of the younger bands in Kosovo today, includ-
ing The Freelancers and The Glasses. This youth culture has the levelling
effects found everywhere today. But the divisions between communities
in Kosovo run very deep. It would be an unusually optimistic commenta-
tor who trusted in the capacity of any music to heal them.

Are We There Yet?

In his controversial book, The Invention of the Jewish People, Shlomo Sand
sets out to undermine the claims of Zionist historiography as to the ethnic
integrity of the Jews.25 His mission is to question their status as a peo-
ple. However, in the course of his (much refuted) argument, Sand makes
a broader plea, quoting Marcel Detienne: How can we denationalise
national histories? This is a challenging question, and one that has the
widest possible resonance. For present purposes, we might reformulate it.
How can we denationalise music histories? might be our question, and it
is one with special relevance to studies of music in the Balkans. It is not
a matter of denying the role and importance of nationalism in the music
histories of this region, but rather of recovering aspects of those histories
that have been suppressed or distorted by.an all-pervasive national per-
spective. When we tell this story as a series of discrete national histories,
as it has mainly been told from within the region itself, we demote com-
monalities that are everywhere apparent. At the very least, we might allow
new distortions to counter the old. We might bypass the nations, in other
words, and tell the story differently: as a tale of shared cultural substrata,
of common imperial legacies, and of the lure of modern Europe.

25Sand 2009.
 endgame 661

There is a musical culture in South East Europe that remains rooted

to the spot, a cluster of repertories welded to their local settings. These
repertories the traditional agrarian and ritual musics associated with
pre-modern rural societies tap into cultural layers that are buried deep
and would once have covered vast spaces. Yet if the relevant musics have
remained in their places, at least within relatively recent history, those
places have become increasingly isolated. They have been left high and
dry, islands of local culture marooned by the tides of modernity. Soon
they will be all but washed away. But where they remain, they bear elo-
quent witness to a cultural life that crossed the shifting borders separating
not just the modern nations but also the older empires. They have been
oblivious to politics, though not impervious to its manipulative designs.
Pre-modern musics give an underlying cultural unity to those regions in
which they have survived, connecting disparate parts of the Balkans to
each other, linking the Balkans to Anatolia, to North Africa, to parts of
Russia, and to some of the remotest corners of Europe, and separating all
of these from modern Europe.
There is also a culture in South East Europe that moves freely and
spreads quickly. Much of it flows from the shared, markedly multicultural,
imperial pasts of these territories. If we look at the music of this region
through the lens of empire, we re-focus not just the pre-national era, but
the period of nationalist ascendancy itself, and even our present age. The
point has already been made that concert programmes right across South
East Europe, even in the heyday of nation-state politics in the late nine-
teenth century, were actually markedly similar. We noted too that there
were commonalities across the urban popular musics of the Balkans in
the early twentieth century, and that there is also something of a com-
mon Balkan music associated with todays pop-folk, however it might be
labelled. Yet despite all this, the national dimension seems hard to shake
off in music histories. Even Donna Buchanans admirable collection on
popular music and the Ottoman ecumene, despite its central premise,
tells its story nation by nation.
Something of the geopolitical perspective of empire has already
informed our observations. We could summarise it here by recognising
two culture areas that had distinctive properties, though with many
overlaps and extensive leakage between them. One would be aligned to
conventional narratives of European music history, with shaping influ-
ences from Venetian, Habsburg, and in some areas Russian or British,
imperial cultures. Both the contextual and the compositional histories of
music in this culture area were shaped very largely by the wider practices
662 chapter twenty-five

associated with these empires, and such was the solidity of this base that
emerging nationalisms often amounted to little more than local colour-
ing. In some regions, Venetian cultures ceded to those of Habsburg or
other empires; in others regions the Habsburgs had a more longstanding
presence. But in any case the structures of musical life, whether of the
court or the city, and the compositional praxes that emerged from those
structures, were common to all, however competitively would-be nations
might assert their uniqueness. Even the traditional music to which they
turned when validating their nationhood was largely a shared music.
The other, and by far the larger, area was shaped by a Byzantine leg-
acy and by an Ottoman imperial culture, and accordingly it remained at
some remove from modern Europe. Musically it was united by a continu-
ous tradition of Orthodox liturgical repertory, by idioms associated with
Ottoman classical and semi-classical music, many of them inherited from
the Byzantine Empire, and by various species of Islamic sacred music.
Emergent nationhood was not really the key determinant in transform-
ing musical styles here. More crucial was the general process of mod-
ernisation that accompanied the colonisation of this culture area by the
fashions and ideas associated with an increasingly dominant Western
Europe, resulting in dialogues variable as to time and place between
Byzantine-Ottoman and European traditions. In this way the second cul-
ture area increasingly aspired towards the condition of the first. There
were straightforward transplantations of European art music to territo-
ries where such music lacked any roots at all, with attendant difficulties
of assimilation. There were attempts to modernise Orthodox liturgical
repertories, accompanied by controversies over the integrity of the tradi-
tion. And there was the widespread co-existence it might be relatively
peaceful or more directly competitive between alaturca and alafranca
varieties of popular music.
The Balkans emerges from this account as a region whose musical iden-
tity was pulled this way and that by politically powerful forces and their
cultures. It is not a misrepresentation. But we might put it another way.
The Balkans was a site visited by musical styles whose centres invariably
lay elsewhere. Repertories and idioms from east, west and north swept
across this peninsula, and as they did so losing something of themselves
and acquiring something new they paid scant attention to national bor-
ders. It is the general inclination of music to flow and to spread in this
way. It is part of the strange power it exerts, and one of the reasons that
governments have been keen to harness and control it. The Goethe Insti-
tute, the Alliance Franaise, the British Council: all such institutions speak
 endgame 663

of a need to direct cultural forms, to keep them in check, and at times it

should be said to help them along a little. Where culture goes, after all,
trade may follow stealthily; and so may politics. Conversely, where politics
and trade go, culture may be dragged along behind. Just what follows what
is moot. All options are possible, and all are in evidence in the Balkans.
Karl Marx had a rather more straightforward understanding of what
follows what. It is tempting to dismiss it as over-schematic and prescrip-
tive, lacking the fluid circuitries I have proposed above. But if we look to
the deep structures we might allow that it carries conviction, albeit with
two qualifications. First, we might recognise, with Max Weber, that ide-
ologies and cultural forms part of Marxs so-called superstructure are
not simply outgrowths of a socio-economic base but have some capacity
to influence that base.26 And second, we might accept that not all changes
in the superstructure emanate from the base. It was this second claim
less ambitious than the first that underpinned Carl Dahlhauss argu-
ment when he used the paradigm of cultural nationalism to demonstrate
that an idea could change the course of music history.27 Dahlhauss point
was that an investment in what he called the Volksgeist hypothesis, and
in the principle of authenticity it embodied, resulted in major changes to
the syntax of music, and in making it he was really bolstering a familiar
enough theoretical position, one that acknowledges the limited autonomy
of the aesthetic. Perhaps there might be a rejoinder to Dahlhaus. It is true
that the idea of nationalism changed music history. But, as I argued ear-
lier in this book, in doing so it produced only local varieties of a single
bourgeois culture, a culture generated from below. No doubt contrary to
his intention, Dahlhaus succeeded only in refining, and not really refuting,
the basic Marxist or neo-Marxist position.
Within Marxs so-called superstructure there may of course be further
debates about the priority of culture and politics. Should cultural national-
ism be represented as the seedbed that nurtured political nationalism? Or
was even Herders theory essentially a political one, in that the (political)
idea of nationhood preceded its cultural definition? Either way, modern
nations have proved themselves adept at manipulating existing cultures.
But they have been less adept at making cultures anew. And that is why the
national perspective, important though it is, can so easily distort cultural
histories. Its tendency is to mark out cultural territories as national when

26Weber 2002.
27Dahlhaus 1980.
664 chapter twenty-five

they have in reality a different origin and a different import. In effect, it

seeks to equate the political and the cultural, categories that stand more
often than not in a dissonant, or at least a contrapuntal, relation. Thus, the
best efforts of European nation states to generate national cultures have
not really succeeded in disguising the deeper, socially generated, com-
monalities between them.
If this has been more widely recognised by ethnomusicologists than
by historical musicologists, it may be because the cognates of these dis-
ciplines are rather different. The cultural turn in a good deal of recent
social sciences research (to which ethnomusicology is proximate) has
long demoted nationhood as a means of understanding culture, even as
it challenges the homogenising, reductionist tendencies of a Eurocentric,
modernist perspective.28 It is entirely characteristic of this cultural turn,
for example, that postcolonial studies in several disciplines have tended
to favour mobile mini-histories over static grand narratives, and that they
have preferred to highlight the diversity of co-existing languages, faiths
and culture to be found within, let alone without, the European heart-
lands than to present stark alterities of religion or ethnicity. The best of
such studies have sought to engage with local specificities. They have tried
to do so in nuanced terms and in recognition that culture is a social pro-
cess, and at the same time they have tried to relate this local scale to
wider regional and global, but less often national, scales.
On the surface this may seem to mirror present-day political orienta-
tions towards both sub- and supra-national collective identities. But the
difference is that these political tendencies are still driven by nationalism,
either in the form of separatist movements seeking self-determination or
of wider hegemonic alliances motivated by the vested interests of particu-
lar nation states. This latter tendency is exemplified above all, of course,
by the European Union. There can be no doubt that the slow-burning
project of European integration has worked to blur the borders separat-
ing nation states, creating uniformities in culture as well as in politics and
trade.29 Like pre-modern societies and like multicultural empires, modern
Europe of its nature tends towards supra-national structures. This is evi-
dent on different levels of cultural articulation. The effects on everyday
culture of the ubiquitous multi-nationals need hardly be spelt out; they
are everywhere to be seen. Likewise the popular cultural forms associated

28Naylor, Ryan, Cook and Crouch 2000.

29See the chapter Towards a New Europe in Rietbergen 1998.
 endgame 665

with todays youth are largely Europe-wide. And equally the products of an
elite culture, including what remains of an avant-garde, are untrammelled
in the main by national traditions. In this respect even those nations in
the queue are partly there already.
That said, Europe is not a one-way street. There seems to be no dif-
ficulty on the part of leading politicians in reconciling fervent European-
ism with the most chauvinistic brands of nationalism. This is where trade
and politics to revert to earlier language tend to drag culture along
behind. For the politics of nationalism, and the consequent determination
to assert a national culture, remains strong right across the continent. If it
has been difficult for national borders to drive wedges into deeply embed-
ded shared cultures, it has been no less difficult for the European project to
erase totally the borders separating national cultures, however artificially
these have been imposed. The moral in all this is that no single narrative
will account adequately for the ebb and flow, the constantly changing cur-
rents, of politics and culture in modern Europe. The European Union in
the end exposes starkly what I earlier called the counterpoint of culture
and politics. A shared culture will not generate a shared politics. Neither
will a common politics guarantee a common culture.
Colm Tibn puts a particular slant on this when he remarks that
although Europe today remains a loose and uneasy collection of com-
peting nation states, it is also a collection of cities, each of which has
been vastly improved by membership of the European Union, with some
space in between.30 Tibn acknowledges, then, the continuing power of
a divisive nationalism, but he implies that Europes real achievements are
to be found not on this political level but rather on a cultural level. The
major cities embody the unifying triumph of humanism (note the faint
but unmistakable echoes of the classical polis), of economic success, of
efficiency, of tolerance, of international law, and of cosmopolitan reason
(or, as Settembrini puts it, of reason, analysis, action, progress: these, and
not the slothful bed of monkish tradition, nor the inaction of the East).31
For Tibn, then, the European Union is something more than the sum
of its parts; it embodies an ideal that can transcend the corruption of its
petty officialdom, the idiocies of its bureaucracy, and even the anarchy
generated by its over-developed systems. It represents, when all is said
and done, the civilising power of the West.

30Tibn 2010.
31Mann 2011.
666 chapter twenty-five

Quite apart from its celebration of the enlightened city, so often taken
as a symbol of degeneration, Tibns analysis challenges the lack of self-
belief that seems everywhere apparent in the West today. As the scare
quotes above suggest, the West has been for some time now a category
subject to interrogation. An earlier chapter referred to an extensive recent
literature on Occidentalism that either extends or inverts an earlier port-
folio on Orientalism. It includes plural readings of the West from afar,
deconstructions of hostile stereotypes of the West; and in the case of
Alastair Bonnett a probing account of the whole idea of the West, as per-
ceived by Westerners and non-Westerners alike.32 Bonnett is anxious to
delay the idea of the West. He notes that as an intelligible field of study
this idea is little more than a hundred years old, its discourses only gradu-
ally defined as separate from related discourses about race (white crisis)
and class (communism). His case study of Ziya Gkalp, Atatrks principal
ideologue, is naturally germane to our topic. Gkalp argued for a position
that is in a real sense betwixt and between, rejecting the East, aspiring
to the West, but fostering a national culture nourished by indigenous tra-
ditions (these latter included Islam, incidentally, though Gkalp was ada-
mant that religion must be separate from the state). In the end Gkalps
middle way proved difficult to sustain. It yielded first to secularism and
then to Islamism.
The interplay of forces in Turkey has been replicated in various parts of
the Balkans: the same problematising of an oriental inheritance, the same
aspiration to modern Europe, the same commitment to a national culture.
That Turkey, as well as a cluster of Balkan states, is now (at the time of
writing) lined up to join the European Union, though I doubt it ever will,
may seem like the latest stage in the triumph of the West, an appar-
ent affirmation of Hegels claim that history moves from East to West.
But again we need to stress that the march to modernity is only one of
the narratives in town. True, the European Union remains something of a
Shangri-La for some of those still on the outside. But just as we approach
the point when anomalous spaces on the map might be coloured in, when
we might indeed be there, the European project undergoes significant
change, its centre of gravity drifting eastwards, and its stability increas-
ingly in question. The future of monetary union is now regularly debated,
and if the Euro goes (if the stronger economies reach a point where they
refuse to support the weaker), it is doubtful whether political unity will

32Bonnett 2004.
 endgame 667

hold. This has already produced a change of rhetoric on the part of aspir-
ing nations, with an increasingly bullish Turkey now inclined to argue that
Europe needs Turkey as much as Turkey needs Europe, and at the same
time displaying an aggressively nationalist politics that does not exclude
terms such as Neo-Osmanism.33 Europe, for its part, has the greatest dif-
ficulty with the idea of admitting an Islamic state to its community.
It is easy to understand why Watchel subtitles the final chapter of his
recent book From the Balkans to South East Europe. That is part of the
story, for certain. Yet is perhaps a little surprising that he of all people
fails to acknowledge the contrary messages emerging from the cultural
world, and in particular from music. There is a narrative of emancipation,
but there is also a narrative of homecoming, of roots. There is a strong
current drawing this region inexorably westwards, but there are eddies,
undertows that pull it back constantly to the East. Robert Kaplan found
the right metaphor, but used it to the wrong ends. Nations are haunted by
empires in the Balkans. Peace is haunted by war, history by myth. Modern
cities are haunted by rural villages. Politics is haunted by culture. When
we listen to music of all kinds from this region we cannot but be aware of
the power of cultural memory. If the music transmits any single message,
it is that South East Europe is haunted by the Balkans.

33Oktem 2011.
 GLOSSARY

Ahengu shkodran Urban genre/repertoire from Shkodr, Albania

Aksak Limping asymmetrical rhythm (in Ottoman
theory, specifically 2+2+2+3)
Amanedes Greek-language oriental urban genre/repertory
Arabesk Turkish vocal genre with Arabic influences
Ashiki songs Albanian songs of Ottoman provenance
Badouska Dance and dance song from Thrace
algiya Urban ensemble/repertory from the eastern
Balkans, especially Macedonia
Cntarea Romniei Romanian National Song Festival: Singing for
Romania
Chalga Bulgarian ethno-pop genre
ifteli Plucked two-string instrument from Albania
and Kosovo
oek Dance and musical genre associated espe-
cially with Balkan Roma
Copla Sephardic popular song similar to, but not
identical with, the Spanish genre of the same
name
Daouli Large double-headed drum
Doina Romanian traditional genre, highly orna-
mented and in free rhythm
Dromos Greek term for mode/makam (literally, road)
Duge pjesme Long songs associated especially with South
Slav traditional music
Dvojka Serbian neo-folk genre
Dvojnica Double flute found in the Balkans
Echos A mode within the 8-mode system of Byzan-
tine music theory
Entekhno lako tragoudhiPopular art song developed in Greece in the
1960s, combining popular musical idioms and
sophisticated poetry
Fanfara Brass ensemble from the Balkans
Fasil Suite in Ottoman classical music
Floyera Traditional shepherds flute
Gaida Bagpipes from the Balkan region
670 glossary

Ganga Type of traditional singing from the Dinaric Alps

Gazel Traditional vocal genre from Turkey
Gusle One-string, bowed instrument used to accompany
epic song
Haiduk Outlaw or resistance fighter in the Balkans
Hasapiko Greek folk dance (traditionally a butchers dance)
Hore boiereti Boyars hora [round dance]
Hor lung Romanian long song
Ilhi Islamic devotional hymn
Ison Drone used in Byzantine chant and traditional
singing
Kalamatianos Greek circle dance
Kng kreshniksh Albanian epic songs, especially frontier warrior
songs
Kann Traditional plucked instrument (zither)
Karsilama 9-beat couples dance from Asia Minor
Kasida Islamic hymn of praise to the Prophet
Kaval Traditional end-blown flute found in the Middle
East and Balkans
Kemne Traditional bowed spike fiddle found in the Middle
East and the Balkans
Klapa Traditional a capella ensemble / repertory from the
Adriatic littoral
Kolo Collective folk dance from the South Slav regions,
especially Serbia and Bosnia
Kdm Pair of small hemispherical drums associated with
Turkish classical music
Lahuta Albanian, one-string bowed instrument (see gusle)
Laka Greek popular music
Lutari Traditional instrumentalists in Romania
Longa Traditional Balkan Ottoman dance in 2/4 metre
Makam System of modes and practices in Ottoman classical
and semi-classical music (Arabic maqm)
Mandilatos Couples dance performed at weddings, associated
with Thrace
Manele Ethno-pop genre from Romania
Mehterhne Military band in the Ottoman Empire
Muzica lutreasc Urban popular music performed by professionals
(usually Roma) in Romania
 glossary 671

Na glas Traditional (ancient) mode of singing in the Dinaric

Alps and similar territories
Na bas Modern mode of singing in 3rds in the Slavonic
Balkans
Ney End-blown flute originating in Turkey
Nisiotika Songs and dances from the Greek islands
Oud Pear-shaped lute from the Middle East and North
Africa
Paradhosiaka Urban oriental idiom / genre of Greek music
Perev Instrumental form in Ottoman classical music
Piyyut Jewish liturgical poem, sung or chanted
Rebetika Urban popular songs in Greece
Raichenitsa Bulgarian wedding dance
Santr Cimbalom-like instrument from the Middle East
Saz Long-necked lute used in Ottoman music
Seyir Melodic direction within makam traditions
Sevdah-rock Ethno-pop genre in Bosnia and Hercegovina
Sevdalinka Oriental love poetry and songs from Bosnia
Sirtos Greek traditional dance type
Skiladeli Ethno-pop genre in Greece; akin to Greek-language
version of Turkish Arabesk
Strigturi Shouts or cries within Romanian traditional music
Svatbarski orkestri Bulgarian wedding music
Svirala Traditional reed pipe from the South Slav regions
Synkathistos Traditional Greek dance and dance song
Taksm Improvisatory prelude in Ottoman music
Tallava Popular music genre associated especially with
Albanian and Kosovan Roma
Tamburica Plucked stringed instrument and ensemble associated
with south Slav traditional music (Turkish Tanbr)
Touloum Bagpipe from Pontos
Tsamikos Greek-Albanian traditional dance (of the Chams)
Tsifteteli Traditional dance (and rhythm) from the Balkans
and Anatolia
Turbo-folk Ethno-pop genre from Serbia
Usl Rhythmic cycle within Ottoman theory
Vlachs General term for Latin peoples (speaking an eastern
Romance language) in the Balkans
Zeibekiko Traditional Greek dance in 9/4 or 9/8
672 glossary

Zikr Remembrance of God ceremony in Islam

Zil Ottoman-Turkish finger cymbals
Zonaradikos Traditional dance from Thrace
Zournas Double-reed wind instrument found in the
Middle East, Central Asia and the Balkans
 REFERENCES

Adanir, Eralp 2001. Kibirsli trklerde mzik, 2 vols. Lefkoa: Drtrenk matbaasi.
Adanir, Fikret 2002. The Formation of a Muslim Nation in Bosnia-Hercegovina: A Histo-
riographic Discussion, in F. Adanir and S. Faroqhi (eds.), The Ottomans and the Balkans:
A Discussion of Historiography. Leiden, Boston and Kln: Brill, 267304.
Adorno, Theodor W. 1956. Modern Music is Growing Old. The Score 18, 1829.
1976 (1962). Introduction to the Sociology of Music, trans. E.B. Ashton. New York: The
Seabury Press.
1982. On the Problem of Music Analysis, trans. M. Paddison. Music Analysis 1/2,
16987.
Aksoy, Blent 2008. Gemisin musiki mirasini bakislar. Istanbul: Pan Yayincilik.
1998. South Slavic Traditions, in J.M. Foley (ed.), Teaching Oral Traditions. New York:
Modern Language Association of America, 2739.
Albright, Daniel 1999. Untwisting the Serpent: Modernism in Music, Literature, and Other
Arts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Alexander, Ronelle 1985. Timeless and Timebound in Serbian History: Vasko Popas
Uspravna zemlja. International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics, 3132, 4158.
Alexandru, Tiberiu 1956. Instrumentele muzicale ale poporului romn. Bucharest: Editura de
Stat pentru Literatur i Art.
1980. Romanian Folk Music, trans. C. Stihi-Boos. Bucharest: Musical Publishing House.
Algazi, Leon 1958. Chants sphardis. London: World Sephardi Federation.
Allcock, John B. and A. Young (eds.) 1991. Black Lambs and Grey Falcons: Women Travelling
in the Balkans. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Alston, Richard 2010. Urban Transformation in the East from Byzantium to Islam, in
M. Hakkarainen (ed.), Acta Byzantina Fennica 3. Helsinki: Suomen bysantin tutkimuk-
sen seura, 946.
Alston, Richard and E. Spentzou 2011. Reflections on Romanity: Discourses of Subjectivity in
Imperial Rome. Ohio: Ohio State University Press.
Amico, Fedele d 1962. I casi della musica. Milan: Il Saggiatore.
Anderson, Perry 2008. The Divisions of Cyprus. London Review of Books 30/8, 716.
Andreeva, Tsanka and R. Smilkow 2009. The Clavier Music of Ivan Spassov. Plovdiv: Vessela.
Andreis, Josip 1971. Prvi muziki asopisi u Hrvatskoj. Arti musices 2, 5378.
1982 (1973). Music in Croatia. Zagreb: Academy of Music.
Andreis, Josip and S. Zlati (eds.) 1959. Yugoslav Music, trans. K. Kunc. Belgrade: Edition
Yugoslavia.
Andreis, Josip, D. Cvetko and S. Djuri-Klajn 1962. Historijski razvoj muzike kulture u Jugo-
slaviji. Zagreb: kolska knjiga.
Andri, Ivo 2003a (1945). The Bridge on the Drina, trans. L.F. Edwards. Belgrade: Dereta.
2003b. The Damned Yard and Other Stories, trans. C. Hawkesworth. Belgrade: Dereta.
2003c. The Days of the Consuls, trans. C. Hawkesworth. Belgrade: Dereta.
Anoyanakis, Fivos 1979. Greek Popular Musical Instruments. Athens: National Bank of Greece.
Antokoletz, Elliott 1984. The Music of Bla Bartk: A Study of Tonality and Progression in
Twentieth-Century Music. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California
Press.
Armistead, Samuel G. (ed.) 1978. El romancero judeo-espaol en el archivo Menndez Pidal
(3 vols.). Madrid: Ctedra-seminario Menndez Pidal.
Armistead, Samuel G. and J.H. Silverman 1970. The Judeo-Spanish Chapbooks of Yakob Abra-
ham Yon. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1971. Judeo-Spanish Ballads from Bosnia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press.
674 references

1981. Judeo-Spanish Ballads from New York Collected by Mair Jose Benardete. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
1986. Judeo-Spanish Ballads from Oral Tradition 1, Epic Ballads, with musical tran-
scriptions and studies by I.J. Katz. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Armstrong, Stephen 2008. War plc: The Rise of the New Corporate Mercenary. London: Faber
& Faber.
Arnold, Matthew 1993 (1869). Culture and Anarchy and Other Writings, ed. S. Collini. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Aeri, Ines 2004. The Role of Dervish Orders in the Islamisation Process in Bosnia and the
Formation of Bosnian Muslim Society in the 15th and 16th Centuries. PhD Diss., University
of Oxford.
Atanasov, Vergiliy 1977. Sistematika na balgaraskite narodni muzikalni instrumenti. Sofia:
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
Attias, Mosh 1961. Romancero sefaradi. Jerusalem: Ben-Zewi Institute, Hebrew University.
1972. Cancionero judeo-espaoles. Jerusalem: Ben-Zewi Institute, Hebrew University.
Attridge, Derek 2004. The Singularity of Literature. London and New York: Routledge.
Aubert, Laurent 2007. The Music of the Other: New Challenges for Ethnomusicology in a
Global Age. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate.
Augustinos, Gerasimos 1992. The Greeks of Asia Minor: Confession, Community, and Ethnic-
ity in the Nineteenth Century. Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press.
Augustinos, Olga 2003. Arches of Discord, Streams of Confluence: The Building of Bridges
in the Balkans, in D. Tsiovas (ed.), Greece and the Balkans: Identities, Perceptions and
Cultural Encounters since the Enlightenment. Aldershot: Ashgate, 15570.
Auslander, Philip 1999. Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture. New York:
Routledge.
Badiou, Alain 1988. Ltre et lvnement 1. Paris: Seuil.
2006. Ltre et lvnement 2, Logiques des mondes. Paris: Seuil.
Baker, Catherine 2007. The Concept of Turbofolk in Croatia: Inclusion/Exclusion in the
Construction of National Musical Identity, in C. Baker, C.J. Gerry, B. Madaj, L. Mellish
and J. Nahodilov (eds.), Nation in Formation: Inclusion and Exclusion in Central and
Eastern Europe. London: SSEES, 13958.
2010. Sounds of the Borderland: Popular Music, War and Nationalism in Croatia since
1991. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Baki-Hayden, Milica 1995. Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia. Slavic
Review 54/4, 91731.
Baki-Hayden, Milica and R.M. Hayden 1992. Orientalist Variations on the Theme Balkans:
Symbolic Geography in Recent Yugoslav Cultural Politics. Slavic Review 51/1, 115.
Balareva, Agapia 1968. Bulgarskite muzikani deyzi i problemat za nazionalnia muzikalen stil.
Sofia: Bulgarska Academia na Naukite.
1985. Secular Vocal Music during the Bulgarian National Revival, in A. Czekanowska-
Kukliska (ed.), Musica Antiqua 7. Bydgoszcz: Filharmonia Pomorska, 6576.
Blaa, Marin Marian 2002. Music and Musicologies of the Hungarian-Romanian Con-
flict. European Meetings in Ethnomusicology 9, 442.
Balivet, Michael 1999. Byzantins et ottomans: relations, interaction, succession. Analecta Isi-
siana 35. Istanbul: Les ditions Isis.
2004. la manire de F.W. Hasluck. A Few Reflections on the Byzantine-Turkish Sym-
biosis in the Middle Ages, in D. Shankland (ed.), Archaeology, Anthropology and Heritage
in the Balkans and Anatolia: the Life and Times of F.W. Hasluck, 18781920, 2 vols. Istanbul:
The Isis Press, 123133.
Banac, Ivo 1984. The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origins, History, Politics. Ithaca and
London: Cornell University Press.
Barali-Materne, Maja 1983. Interpretacija ezana u Bosni i Hercegovini. Zvuk: Jugosloven-
ski Muziki asopis 3, 5258.
2003. Narodne ilahije: ilahije uspavanke. Muzika 7/2 (Sarajevo), 915.
 references 675

Baroutas, Kostas 1992. I mousiki zoi stin Athina to 19o aiona. Athens: Philippos Nakas.
Bartk, Bla 1913. Cntece poporale romneti din comitatul Bihor. Bucharest: Academia
Romn.
1923. Volksmusik der Rumnen von Maramure. Munich: Drei Masken Verlag.
Bartsch, Shadi 1998. Ideology in Cold Blood: A Reading of Lucans Civil War. Cambridge
Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Baskar, Bojan 1999. Made in Trieste. Geopolitical Fears of an Istrianist Discourse of the
Mediterranean. Narodna umjetnost 36/1, 12134.
Baud-Bovy, Samuel 1958. tudes sur la chanson cleftique. Athens: Archives musicales de
folklore.
1984. Essay on Greek Popular Song. Nafplio: Peloponnesian Folklife Foundation.
Baudrillard, Jean 1988 (1981). Simulacra and Simulations, in Selected Writings. Cambridge:
Polity, 16987.
Bauman, Zygmunt 2000. Liquid Modernity. Malden Ma: Polity Press.
Beal, Amy 2006. New Music, New Allies American Experimental Music in West Germany
from The Zero Hour to Reunification. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of
California Press.
Beaton, Roderick 1980. Folk Poetry of Modern Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Beckles Willson, Rachel 2007. Ligeti, Kurtg, and Hungarian Music during the Cold War.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Beissinger, Margaret 2007. Muzic Oriental: Identity and Popular Culture in Postcommu-
nist Romania, in D. Buchanan (ed.), Balkan Popular Culture and the Ottoman Ecumene.
Lanham, Toronto and Plymouth: The Scarecrow Press, 95142.
Bejtullahu, Alma 2006. ifteli and its Meaning in Kosovar Rural and Urban Societies
Through the Time, in S. Shupo (ed.), Urban Music in the Balkans: Drop-out Ethnic Iden-
ties or a Historical Case of Tolerance and Global Thinking? Tirana: Asmus, 18393.
Bell, John D. 1998. Bulgaria in Transition: Politics, Economics, Society, and Culture after Com-
munism. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.
Belonis, Iannis 2008. The Attitude of the Greek Daily and Periodical Press Towards Ska-
lkottas during the period 19201960, in H. Vrondos (ed.), Nikos Skalkottas: A Greek Euro-
pean. Athens: Benaki Museum, 44479.
2009. The Greek National Music School, in K. Romanou (ed.), A Patch to Western
Music History: Serbian and Greek Art Music. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 12562.
Benbassa, Esther and A. Rodrigue 1993. The Jews of the Balkans. Oxford: Blackwell.
Benjamin, Walter 1977 (1928). The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. J. Osborne. Lon-
don: NLB.
Benmayor, Rina 1979. Romances judeo-espaoles de oriente: nueva recoleccin. Madrid:
Ctera-Seminario Menndez Pidal.
Benovska-Subkova, Milena 1996. Christianity within the Context of the Post-Totalitarian
Transition in Bulgaria. Narodna Umjetnost, 33/2, 15764.
Benson, Leslie 2001. Yugoslavia: A Concise History. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Berger, Karol 2007. Bachs Cycle, Mozarts Arrow: An Essay on the Origins of Musical Moder-
nity. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.
Berlin, Isaiah 1969 (1958). Two Concepts of Liberty, in Four Essays on Liberty. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 132.
Bernal, Martin 19872006. Black Athena. The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilisation. 3 vols.
London and New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Bernires, Louis de 2004. Birds Without Wings. London: Secker & Warburg.
Bezi, Jerko 1970. Razvoj i oblici glagoljakog pjevanja u sjevernoj Dalmaciji. PhD Diss., Uni-
versity of Ljubljana.
1982. Hatzes Treatment of Folk Music in his Opera Adel and Mara, in S. Lipovan
(ed.), Josip Hatze. A Croatian Composer, trans. S. Bai. Zagreb: Music Information Cen-
tre, 25359.
676 references

1998. Ethnomusicology and Ethnochoreology at the Institute from the Late Forties
to the Eighties. Narodna umjetnost 35/1, 2351.
Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge.
Bigenho, Michelle 2002. Sounding Indigenous: Authenticity in Bolivian Music Performance.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
2008. Why Im Not an Ethnomusicologist: A View from Anthropology, in H. Stobart,
The New (Ethno)musicologies. Lanham, Toronto and Plymouth: The Scarecrow Press,
4047.
Bjeli, Duan I. and O. Savi (eds.) 2002. Balkan as Metaphor: Between Globalization and
Fragmentation. Cambridge Mass. and London: MIT Press.
Blaekovi, Zdravko (ed.) 1983. Luka & Antun Sorkoevi. Zagreb-Osor: Music Information
Center.
1985. Hrvatsko pjevako drutvo Kolo (19601880). Zvuk 34, 1623.
1988. Katalozi muzikalija u historijskom arhivu i muzeju grada Dubrovnika. Zagreb:
Jugoslavenska Akademija Znanosti i Umjetnosti.
2002. An Inventory of Croatian Music Periodicals. Fontes Artis Musicae 49/12,
94124.
Bloom, Harold 1994. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. New York: Har-
court Brace.
Bogue, Ronald and M. Cornis-Pope (eds.) 1996. Violence and Mediation in Contemporary
Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Bohlman, Philip V. 2004a. Popular Music on the Stage of a United Europe Southeast-
ern Europe in the Eurovision Song Contest, in Bruno B. Reuer (ed.), United Europe
United Music? Diversity and Social Dimensions in Central and Southeastern Europe. Ber-
lin: Weidler Buchverlag.
2004b. The Music of European Nationalism: Cultural Identity and Modern History.
Santa Barbara, Denver and Oxford: ABC-CLIO.
2007. The Politics of Power, Pleasure, and Prayer in the Eurovision Song Contest.
Musicology 7. Belgrade: Institute of Musicology, SASA, 3967.
2008. Other Ethnomusicologies, Another Musicology: The Serious Play of Disciplin-
ary Alterities, in H. Stobart, The New (Ethno)musicologies. Lanham, Toronto and Plym-
outh: The Scarecrow Press, 95114.
Boia, Lucian 2001. Romania: Borderland of Europe, trans. J.C. Brown. London: Reaktion
Books.
Bojikova, Milena 1999. Vassil Kazandjiev. Sofia: Institute of Art Studies.
Bonifaci, Rua 1993. Uloga rodoljubnih pjesama i tamburake glazbe u Hrvatskoj poetkom
1990-ih: primjer neotradicionalne grupe Zlatni dukati. Arti musices 24/2, 185222.
Bonnett, Alastair 2004. The Idea of the West: Culture, Politics and History. Basingstoke and
New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bose, S. Bosnia after Dayton: Nationalist Partition and International Intervention. London:
Hurst & Company, 2002.
Bokovi-Stulli, Maja 1999. Mediterranean Aspects of Croatian Oral Literature. Narodna
umjetnost 36/1, 197222.
2004 (as Bokovi, M.). The Image of the Turkish Invader in Epic Serbian poetry.
South Slav Journal 25/12, 4456.
Bou, Ami. 1854. Recueil ditinraires dans la Turquie dEurope. Dtails gographiques,
topographiques et statistiques sur cet empire. Vienna: W. Braunmller.
Bout, Jacques, B. Lortat-Jacob and S. Rdulescu 2002. tue-tte: chant et violon au Pays de
lOach, Roumanie. Nanterre: Socit dethnologie.
Bourdieu, Pierre 1989. Social Space and Symbolic Power. Sociological Theory 7/1, 1425.
Bourdieu, Pierre and J.-C. Passeron 1970. La reproduction; lments pour une thorie du
systme denseignement. Paris: Editions de Minuit.
Boym, Svetlana 2001. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books.
 references 677

Boic-Buani, Danica 1982. Privatni i drutveni ivot Splita u 18. stoljeu. Zagreb: kolska
knjiga.
Bracewell, Catherine Wendy 1992. The Uskoks of Senj: Piracy, Banditry and Holy War in the
Sixteenth-Century Adriatic. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Briloiu, Constantin 1967. Ritmul aksak, in Opere 1. Bucharest: Editura muzical, 23582.
1973 (1956). Le vers populaire roumain chant, in G. Rouget (ed.), Problmes
dEthnomusicologie. Geneva: Minkoff Reprint.
Brandl, Rudolf 1996. The Yiftoi and the Music of Greece. Role and Function. The World
of Music 38/1, 732.
Brantlinger, Patrick 1983. Bread and Circuses: Theories of Mass Culture and Social Decay.
Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
Braudel, Fernand 1990 (1949). La Mditerrane et le monde mditerranen lpoque de
Philippe II 1: la part du milieu. Paris: Armand Colin.
Breazul, George 1970. Pagini din istoria muzicii romneti 2 [ed. G. Firca]. Bucharest: Edit-
ura muzical, 13946.
Brediceanu, Tiberiu 1957. 170 melodii populare romneti din Maramure. Bucharest: Insti-
tutul de folclor.
Bringa, Tone R. 1993. Nationality Categories, National Identification and Identity Forma-
tion in Multinational Bosnia, in The Anthropology of East Europe Review. Special Issue:
War among the Yugoslavs 11/12, 809.
Brison, Susan J. 2003. Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self. New Jersey: Princeton
University Press.
Brown, Archie 2009. The Rise and Fall of Communism. London: The Bodley Head.
Buchanan, Donna A. 2006. Performing Democracy: Bulgarian Music and Musicians in Tran-
sition. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
(ed.) 2007. Balkan Popular Culture and the Ottoman Ecumene: Music, Image and
Regional Political Discourse. Lanham, Toronto and Plymouth: The Scarecrow Press.
Buji, Bojan 1978. Tematska struktura u prvom gudakom kwartetu J. Slavenskog. Muzi-
koloki zbornik 14, 7387.
1993. Patronage and Taste in Venetian Dalmatia: The Case of Tomaso Cecchinos
Amorosi Concetti. Revista de musicologia 16/3, 141622.
2000. Review of E. Sedak (ed.), Krsto Odak: vot i djelo (Zagreb, 1997). Music and
Letters 81/2, 3356.
Brger, Peter 1984 (1974). Theory of the Avant-Garde, trans M. Shaw. Manchester and Min-
neapolis: Manchester University Press.
Burke, Peter 1978. Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe. New York: Harper Torchbooks.
Buruma, Ian and A. Margalit 2004. Occidentalism: A Short History of Anti-Westernism. Lon-
don: Atlantic Books.
Butt, John 2008. Classical Music and the Subject of Modernity. Proceedings of the British
Academy 154. London: The British Academy, 42548.
aleta, Joko 1997. Klapa Singing, A Traditional Folk Phenomenon of Dalmatia. Narodna
umjetnost 34/1, 12745.
Campbell, John C. 1967. Titos Separate Road: America and Yugoslavia in World Politics.
New York and Evanston: Harper & Row.
Carroll, Mark 2003. Music and Ideology in Cold War Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
Casey, Edward S. 1997. The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History. Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press.
Cavallini, Ivano 1990. Musica, cultura e spettacolo in Istria tra 1500 e 1600e. Firenze:
L.S. Olschki.
avlovi, Ivan 2001. Vlado Miloevi: Kompozitor. Sarajevo: Muzikoloko drutvo FBiH.
2011. Historija muzike u Bosni i Hercegovini. Sarajevo: Institut za muzikologiju muzike
akademije u Sarajevu.
678 references

Ceribai, Naila 1998a. Heritage of the Second World War in Croatia: Identity Imposed
upon and by Music, in S. Pettan (ed.), Music, Politics, and War: Views from Croatia.
Zagreb: Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, 10929.
1998b Ethnomusicology and Ethnochoreology at the Institute during the Nineties.
Narodna umjetnost 35/1, 5371.
Ceribai, Naila and E. Haskell (eds.) 2006. Shared Musics and Minority Identities. Zagreb:
Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research.
Certeau, Michel de 1988 (1975). The Writing of History, trans. T. Conley. New York: Colum-
bia University Press.
etkovi, Gordana 2002. Gradske pjesme iz stare Podgorice. Podgorica: Institut za muz-
ikologiju i etnomuzikologiju.
Chanter, Tina and E. Ponowska Ziarek (eds.) 2005. Revolt, Affect, Collectivity: the Unstable
Boundaries of Kristevas Polis. New York: State University of New York Press.
Chartier, Roger 1988. Cultural History: Between Practices and Representations, trans.
L.G. Cochrane. Ithaca and New York: Cornell University Press.
Chianis, Sam 1967. The Vocal and Instrumental Tsamiko of Roumeli and the Peloponnesus.
PhD Diss., University of California, Los Angeles.
Choiseul-Gouffier, Marie Gabriel Auguste Florente de 1782, 1809. Le voyage pittoresque de
la Grce. Avignon: Fondation Calvet.
Chrysanthos of Madytos 1973 (1832). The Great Theoretic of Music, trans. K. Romanou. PhD
Diss., Indiana University.
Chyliska, Teresa (ed.) 1994. Karol Szymanowski Korespondencja vol. 2. Krakw: Polskie
Wydawnictwo Muzyczne.
Cichon, Ludmilla 2006. Nostalgie und Emotionalitt im Sprachgebrauch der Bulgarischen
Sepharden, in P. Cichon (ed.), Gelebte Mehrsprachigkeit: Akten des Wiener Kolloquiums
zur Individuellen und Sozialen Mehrsprachigkeit. Vienna: Praesens-Verlag.
Ciobanu, Gheorghe 1969. Lutari din Clejani. Bucharest: Editura muzical.
(ed.) 1976. Izvoare ale muzicii romneti 1. Bucharest, Editura muzical.
(ed.) 1978. Izvoare ale muzicii romneti 2. Bucharest, Editura muzical.
Cioroianu, Adrian 2002. The Impossible Escape: Romania and the Balkans, in D.I. Bjeli
and O. Savi (eds.), Balkan as Metaphor: Between Globalization and Fragmentation. Cam-
bridge, Mass. and London: MIT Press, 20933.
iri, Marija 2004. The Eighth Art: The First Steps of Radio Broadcasting. New Sound 25
(English version online).
Clark, Bruce 2006. Twice a Stranger: How Mass Expulsion Forged Modern Greece and Tur-
key. London: Granta.
Clark, Victoria 2000. Why Angels Fall: A Journey through Orthodox Europe from Byzantium
to Kosovo. Basingstoke and Oxford; Macmillan.
Clogg, Richard 1992. A Concise History of Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
(ed.) 2002. Minorities in Greece: Aspects of a Plural Society. London: Hurst.
Cohen, Sarah 1991. Rock Culture in Liverpool: Popular Music in the Making. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press.
olakovi Zlatan 2007. Bosniac Epics Problems of Collecting and Editing the Main Col-
lections. Forum bosnae 39, 32361.
Collin, Matthew 2001. This is Serbia Calling. Rocknroll Radio and Belgrades Underground
Resistance. London: Serpents Tail.
Conversi, Daniele 2007. Mapping the Field: Theories of Nationalism and the Ethnosym-
bolic Approach, in A.S. Leoussi and S. Grosby (eds.), Nationalism and Ethnosymbolism:
History, Culture and Ethnicity in the Formation of Nations. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Uni-
versity Press, 1530.
Cosma, Octavian Lzar 1962. Opera Romneasc. Privire istoric asupra creaiei lirico-
dramatice. Bucharest: Editura muzical.
1974. Hronicul muzicii Romneti 2: 17841823. Bucharest: Editura muzical.
 references 679

1975. Hronicul muzicii Romneti 3: Preromantismul 18231859. Bucharest: Editura

muzical.
1976. Hronicul muzicii Romneti 4: Romantismul. Bucharest: Editura muzical.
1981. Oedipus. Romanian Review 8, 3443.
1995. Universul muzicii romneti: uniunea compozitorilor i muzicologilor din Romnia
(19201995). Bucharest: Editura muzical.
Coward, Martin 2008. Urbicide: The Politics of Urban Destruction. London: Routledge.
Cvetko, Dragotin 1972. Veze Josipa Slavenskog s Slavkom Ostercom. Arti musices 3,
6376.
1981. Juni slovani v zgodovini evropske glasbe. Maribor: Zaloba obzorja.
Cvetkovi, Sonja 2006. The European Tradition in the Chamber Music of Petar Stojanovi.
PhD Diss., University of Belgrade.
Cviji, Jovan 1918. La peninsula balkanique. Gographie humaine. Paris: Amand Colin.
1987. Antropogeografski i etnografski spisi, in V. ubrilovi (ed.), Sabrana dela, 4/1.
Belgrade: SASA.
Dahlhaus, Carl 1980. Nationalism and Music, in Between Romanticism and Modernism,
trans. M. Whittall. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press,
79101.
1983 (1967). Foundations of Music History, trans. J.B. Robinson. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Danforth, Loring M. 1989. Firewalking and Religious Healing: The Anastenaria of Greece and
the American Firewalking Movement. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
2001. We Are Macedonians! We are Not Greeks!, in J.S. Forward (ed.), The Macedo-
nian Minority of Northern Greece. Endangered Peoples of Europe: Struggles to Survive and
Thrive. London: Greenwood Publishing Group, 8599.
Dankoff, Robert 1990. Evly elebi in Bitlis: The Relevant Sections of the Seyhatnme Edited
with Translation, Commentary and Introduction. Leiden: Brill.
2004. An Ottoman Mentality: The World of Evliy elebi. Leiden and Boston: Brill.
Dankoff, Robert and R. Elsie 2000. Evly elebi in Albania and Adjacent Regions (Kosovo,
Montenegro, Ohrid): The Relevant Sections of the Seyhatnme Edited with Translation,
Commentary and Introduction. Leiden: Brill.
David-Fox, Michael 1999. Masquerade: Sources, Resistance and Early Soviet Political Culture.
Trondheim Studies on East European Cultures and Societies 1. Trondheim: PEECS.
Debray, Rgis 2007. Praised be our Lords: the Autobiography. London: Verso.
Deletant, Dennis 2006. Hitlers Forgotten Ally: Ion Antonescu and his Regime, Romania
19401944. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Deleuze, Giles and F. Guattari 1987 (1980). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizo-
phrenia, trans. B. Massumi. London: Athlone Press.
Demetriou, Nicoletta 2008. The Fones Discourse: Ideology and Practice in Greek Cypriot Folk
Music. PhD Diss., University of London.
Demovi, Miho 1981. Musik und Musiker in der Republic Dubrovnik vom Anfang des 11. Jahr-
hunderts bis zur Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts. Zagreb: Musikinformationszentrum.
1983. Biographical elements in the life and work of Antun Sorkoevi, in Z.Blaekovi
(ed.), Luka & Antun Sorkoevi. Zagreb-Osor: Music Information Center, 14981.
DeNora, Tia 1995. Beethoven and the Construction of Genius: Musical Politics in Vienna,
17921803. Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press.
Derrida, Jacques 1994. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the
New International, trans. P. Kamuf. New York and London: Routledge.
Destani, Beitullah and R. Elsie (eds.) 2008. Journals of a Landscape Painter in the Balkans:
Edward Lear in Albania. London and New York: Tauris.
Detrez, Raymond 2003. Relations between Greeks and Bulgarians in the Pre-Nationalist
Era: The Gudilas in Plovdiv, in D. Tsiovas (ed.), Greece and the Balkans: Identities, Per-
ceptions and Cultural Encounters since the Enlightenment. Aldershot: Ashgate, 3043.
680 references

Devi, Dragoslav 1997. Hibridni oblici vieglasnog pevanja u Srbiji in Zbornik radova sa
IV meunarodnog simpozijuma Folklor-Muzika-Delo. Belgrade: Fakultet muzike umet-
nosti, 13251.
Devi, Dragoslav and D. Golemovi 1997. The Balkans and its Musical Roots: The Folk Music
of Takovo. Liner notes, CD 5001.
Dimitroadou Maria (ed.) 2002. Polemame kai Tragoudhame. Athens: PAEA [Panellinia
enosi agoniston ethnikis antistasis].
Djoki, Dejan (ed.) 2003. Yugoslavism: Histories of a Failed Idea 19181992. London: Hurst.
Djoki, Dejan and J. Ker-Lindsay (eds.) 2011. New Perspectives on Yugoslavia: Key Issues and
Controversies. London and New York: Routledge.
Djuri-Klajn, Stana 1971 (1962). Razvoj muzike umjetnosti u Srbiji, in Historijski razvoj
muzike kulture u Jugoslaviji. Belgrade: Pro musica, 58286.
1972. A Survey of Serbian Music Through the Ages, trans. N. urija-Prodanovi. Bel-
grade: Association of Serbian Composers.
Dobroni, Antun 1922. Estetika mog Dubrovakog diptihona, in Muziki eseji. Zagreb:
Hrvatski tamparski zavod.
1926. A Study of Yugoslav Music. Musical Quarterly 12/1, 5671.
1933. Zadatak nae muzike kulture. Zvuk 1/6, 2157.
Doliner, Gorana 1999. Glagoljako pjevanje kao dio fenomena Glagoljatva, in
Z. Blaekovi and V. Katalini (ed.), Glazba, rijei i slike: sveani zbornik za Koraljku Kos.
Zagreb: Hrvatsko muzikoloko drutvo, 3618.
Dorn, Pamela 1991a. Change and Ideology: The Ethnomusicology of Turkish Jewry. PhD Diss.,
Indiana University.
1991b. A la Turca / A la Franka: Cultural Ideology and Musical Change. Cahiers
dtudes sur la Mediterrane orientale et la monde turco-iranien 11, 5161.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor 1993 (187381). A Writers Diary. Evanstone: Northwestern University
Press.
Doubleday, Veronica 1999. The Frame Drum in the Middle East: Woman, Musical Instru-
ments and Power. Ethnomusicology 43/1, 10134.
Dounias, Minos 1963. Mousikokritika. Eklogi apo to kritiko ergo tou. Athens: Hestia
Bookshop.
Downes, Stephen 2009. Music and Decadence in European Modernism: The Case of Central
and Eastern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Doyle, William 1990. The Oxford History of the French Revolution. New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Dragoumis, Markos 1966. The Survival of Byzantine Chant in the Monophonic Music of
the Modern Greek Church, in E. Wellesz and M. Velimirovi (eds.), Studies in Eastern
Chant 1. London: Oxford University Press, 936.
2007. Common Elements in Jewish-Sephardic and Greek Folksongs, in Abo to byzan-
tio sto rembetiko. Corfu: Ionian University, 22949.
Drakuli, Slavenka 2001. As if I am Not There. London: Abacus.
Dreyfus Laurence 1996. Bach and the Patterns of Invention. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Press.
Driessen, Henk 1999. Pre- and Post-Braudelian Conceptions of the Mediterranean Area.
The Puzzle of Boundaries. Narodna Umjetnost 36/1, 5364.
Dunin, Elsie 1988. Salonsko Kolo as Cultural Identity in a Chilean Yugoslav Community.
Narodna umjetnost: Special Issue 2, Zagreb, 10922.
Durham, Mary Edith 1904. Through the Lands of the Serb. London: Edward Arnold.
1905. The Burden of the Balkans. London: Edward Arnold.
1985 (1909). High Albania. London: Virago.
urkovi, Mia 2004. Ideoloki i politii suboki oko popularne muzike u Sbriji, Filozofija
i drutvo 2, 2719.
Durrell, Lawrence 1957. White Eagles over Serbia. London: Faber.
Eagleton, Terry 2008. Trouble with Strangers: A Study of Ethics. Maldon MA and Oxford:
Wiley-Blackwell.
 references 681

Eberst, Anton 1985. Muzika iza bodljikavih ica. Zbornik seanja jugoslovenskih ratnih zarob-
ljenika, interniraca i politikih zatvorenika, za vreme narodooslobodilakog rata 1941. do
1945. godine. Belgrade: SUMUJ.
Eliade, Mircea 1961. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. New York:
Harcourt.
Eliot, T.S. 1950 (1920). Tradition and the Individual Talent, in The Sacred Wood: Essays on
Poetry and Criticism. London: Methuen.
Emerson, Joan 1994. The Music of Albania. Ampleforth: Emerson Edition.
Eriksen, Thomas Hylland 1993. Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives.
London, Chicago and Illinois: Pluto Press.
Erikson, Erik 1969. Ghandis Truth: On the Origin of Militant Non-Violence. New York and
London.
Erlanger, Baron Rudolphe d 193059. La musique arabe. 6 vols. Paris: Paul Geuthner.
Etzion, Judith and S. Weich-Shahak 1988. The Spanish and the Sephardic Romances: Musi-
cal Links. Ethnomusicology 32/2, 173209.
1993. Family Resemblances and Variability in the Sephardic Romancero: A Method-
ological Approach to Variantal Comparison. Journal of Music Theory 37/2, 267309.
Evans, Arthur 1877. Through Bosnia and the Herzegovina on Foot During the Insurrection
August and September 1875. London: Longmans, Green & Co.
Fackler, Guido 2000. Des Lagers Stimme Musik im KZ: Alltag und Hftlingskultur in den
Konzentrationslagern 1933 bis 1936. Bremen: Edition Temmen.
Farhat, Hormoz 1990. The Dastgh Concept in Persian Music. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
Farmer, Henry George 2001 (1929). A History of Arabian Music. New Dehli: Goodword
Books.
Faroqhi, Suraiya 2005 (1995). Subjects of the Sultan: Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman
Empire. London and New York; Tauris.
Feldman, Walter 1996. Music of the Ottoman Court. Berlin: Verlag fr Wissenschaft und
Bildung.
Fermor, Patrick Leigh 1966. Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece. London: John Murray.
1977. A Time of Gifts. On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle
Danube. London: John Murray.
1986. Between the Woods and the Water. On Foot to Constantinople: The Middle Danube
to the Iron Gates. London: John Murray.
Fernndez, ngel Pulido 1992 (1904). Los israelitas espaoles y el idioma castellano. Barce-
lona: Riopiedras.
1993 (1905). Espaoles sin patria y la raza sefardi. Granada: University of Granada.
Filiopoulos, Giannis 1997. Rossikes epidhraseis stin elliniki poliphoniki ekklesiastiki mousiki.
Athens: Editions eleftheroudakis.
Firca, Clemensa 2001. Modernity and the Avant-garde in Romanian Music, 19201940.
Musicology 1. Belgrade: Institute of Musicology, SASA, 10516.
Fisher, Laura Gordon 1990. Marko Songs from Hercegovina a Century after Karadi. New
York and London: Garland.
Fleming, K.E. 2000. Orientalism, the Balkans and Balkan historiography. American Histori-
cal Review 105/4, 121833.
2008. Greece: A Jewish History. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Foley, John Miles (ed.) 1981. Oral Traditional Literature: A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord.
Columbus, Ohio: Slavica.
Fosler-Lussier, Danielle 2007. Music Divided: Bartks Legacy in Cold War Culture. Berkeley,
Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.
Foucault, Michel 2002 (1969). The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith.
London and New York: Routledge.
Fracile, Nice 1995. In the Wake of Bartks Recordings: The Changes and Evolutionary
Tendencies in the Serbian and Romanian Folklores in Vojvodina, Yugoslavia, in Marin
Marian Blaa (ed.), East European Meetings in Ethnomusicology 2. Bucharest, 1523.
682 references

1996. The Aksak Rhythm as a Fundamental Mark of the Traditional Music of Ruma-
nians in Vojvodina, Yugoslavia, and as a Common Thread with the Rumanian Folklore
in Rumania, in U. Hemetek (ed.), Echoes of Diversity: Traditional Music of Ethnic Groups/
Minorities. Vienna, Cologne and Weimar: Bhlau Verlag, 14555.
2003. Prinsu-n jioc The First Adult Chain Dance, a Romanian Custom in Voj-
vodina, Yugoslavia., in I. avlovi (ed.), III International Symposium Music in Society.
Sarajevo: Academy of Music, 152156.
2004. Permanency and Change in the Instrumental Musical Tradition of Vojvodina,
in B.B. Reuer, S. Pettan und L. Tari (eds.), Vereintes Europa Vereinte Musik? Berlin:
WeidlerBuchverlag Berlin, 145154.
Frangou-Psychopaidi, Olympia 1990. I ethniki scholi mousikis. Provlimata. Athens: Meletes.
Frankovi, Dubravka 1978. Korespondencija Kuha-Strossmayer. Rad Jugoslavenske Aka-
demije Znanosti i Umjetnosti, 195275.
Fraser, Angus 1992. The Gypsies. Oxford: Blackwell.
Freidenreich, Harriet Pass 1977. Sephardim and Ashkenazim in Inter-War Yugoslavia:
Attitudes towards Jewish Nationalism. Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish
Research 44, 5380.
1979. The Jews of Yugoslavia: A Quest for Community. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publi-
cation Society of America.
Frejdenberg, Maren 1999. Jewish Life in the Balkans (15th to 17th Centuries), trans. V. Likhter
and G. Passechnik. Tel Aviv: Design.
Frolova-Walker, Marina 1998. National in Form, Socialist in Content: Musical Nation-
Building in the Soviet Republics. Journal of the American Musicological Society 51/2,
33171.
2004 Stalin and the Art of Boredom. Twentieth-Century Music 1, 10124.
2006. The Soviet opera project: Ivan Dzerzhinsky vs. Ivan Susanin. Cambridge Opera
Journal 18/2, 181216.
Fulanovi-oi, Miroslava 2003. Impact of Function to Shaping of the Traditional Folk
Songs in Rural Communities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in I. avlovi (ed.), 3rd Inter-
national Symposium, Music in Society. Sarajevo: Academy of Music, 14351.
Fussell, Paul 2000. The Great War and Modern Memory. Oxford; Oxford University Press.
Galant, Abraham 1932. Turcs et juifs: tude historique, politique. Istanbul: Haim, Rozio
et cie.
Garfias, Robert 1981. Survivals of Turkish Characteristics in Romanian Musica Lautarea-
sca. Yearbook for Traditional Music 13, 97107.
Garnett, James 1993. Complexity in Music: Studies in Compositional, Theoretical and Analyti-
cal Thought. PhD Diss., University of Oxford.
Gazimahal [Ksemihal], Mahmut Ragip 1937. Balkanlar da Musiki Hareketleri. Istanbul:
Nmuni Matbaasi.
Gelbart, Matthew 2007. The Invention of Folk Music and Art Music: Emerging Categories
from Ossian to Wagner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gellner, Ernest 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca and New York: Cornell University
Press.
Gennep, Arnold van 1960 (1909). The Rites of Passage. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Gesemann, Gerhard 1937. Prolegomena povodom gramofonskog snimanja bosanske naro-
dne pesme. Prilozi prouavanju narodne poezije 4/12, 22240.
Gilbert, Shirli 2007. Music in the Holocaust: Confronting Life in the Nazi Ghettos and Camps.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Giovanni, Janine di 2004. Madness Visible: A Memoir of War. London: Bloomsbury.
Glahn, Denise von 2004. The Sounds of Place: Music and the American Cultural Landscape.
Illinois: Northwestern University Press.
Glenny, Misha 1999. The Balkans 18041999. Nationalism, War and the Great Powers. Lon-
don: Granta.
 references 683

2008. McMafia: A Journey through the Global Criminal Underworld. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf.
Gligorijevi, Jelena 2007. A Semiological Analysis of the Song Molitva. Novi Zvuk, 30.
Goehr, Lydia 1994. The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of
Modern Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goldberg, Halina 2004. Remembering that Tale of Grief : the Prophetic Voice in Chopins
Music, in H. Goldberg (ed.), The Age of Chopin: Interdisciplinary Inquiries. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 5494.
Goldsworthy, Vesna 1998. Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination. New
Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Golemovi, Dimitrije 1984. Novije seosko dvoglasno pevanje u Srbiji. Glasnik etnografskog
museja 47. Belgrade, Etnografski musej.
1996. Muzika tradicijia Crne Gore. Podgorica: Union of Montenegrin Composers.
2006. Brass Bands in Serbia: From Urban to Rural and Back to Urban Musical Practice,
in Sokol Shupo (ed.), Urban Music in the Balkans: Drop-out Identities or a Historical Case
of Tolerance and Global Thinking? Tirana: Asmus, 35868.
Goodwin, Jason 1998. Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire. London:
Chatto and Windus.
Gooley, Dana 2004. The Virtuoso Liszt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gordy, Eric D. 1999. The Culture of Power in Serbia. Nationalism and the Destruction of Alter-
natives. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Gramatikova, Nevena 2001. Changing Fates and the Issue of Alevi Identity in Bulgaria, in
A. Zhelyazkova (ed.), The Fate of Muslim Communities in the Balkans, Vol. 8: Ethnology
of Sufi Orders, Theory and Practice. Sofia: IMIR, 564621.
Greenberg, Robert 2004. Language and Identity in the Balkans. Oxford and New York:
Oxford University Press.
Greenfeld, Liah 1996. The Modern Religion?, Critical Review 10/2, 16991.
Grgi, Miljenko 1990. On the Origins and the Growth of the Split Cathedral Musical
Archives. Arti musices 21/2, 193218.
Griffiths, Paul 1995. Modern Music and After. Oxford and New York: Oxford Univerity Press.
Gross, David 1992. The Past in Ruins: Tradition and the Critique of Modernity. Amherst: Uni-
versity of Massachusetts Press.
Guentcheva, Rossitza 2004. Sounds and Noise in Socialist Bulgaria, in J.R. Lampe and
M. Mazower (eds.), Ideologies and National Identities: The Case of Twentieth-Century
South East Europe. Budapest: Central European University Press, 21135.
Gulin, Valentina 1997. Morlacchism Between Enlightenment and Romanticism (Identifica-
tion and Self-Identification of the European Other). Narodna umjetnost 34/1, 77100.
Gnther, Ursula and L. Finscher (eds.) 1995. The Cypriot-French Repertory of the Manuscript
Torino J.II.9. Report of the International Musicological Congress, Paphos, 2025 March
1992. Musicological Studies and Documents 45. American Institute of Musicology. Stutt-
gart: Hnssler-Verlag.
Guzelimian, Ara 2005. A Counterpoint of Cultures. Liner notes for the recording of Golijovs
Ayre. DG BOOOASDG9E.
Habermas, Jrgen 1989. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. T. Burger
and F. Lawrence. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Hadow, William H. 1897. Haydn, A Croatian Composer. London: Seely and Co.
Hadihusejnovi-Valaek, Miroslava 1998. The Osijek War-Time Music Scene 19911992,
in S. Pettan (ed.), Music, Politics, and War: Views from Croatia. Zagreb: Institute of
Ethnology and Folklore Research, 16384.
Hadiselimovi, Omer 2001. At the Gates of the East: British Travel Writers on Bosnia and
Herzegovina from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Centuries. New York: East European
Monographs, Boulder.
Hale, Thomas A. 1998. Griots and Griottes: Masters of Words and Music. Bloomington: Indi-
ana University Press.
684 references

Hall, Richard C. 2011. The Modern Balkans: A History. London: Reaktion.

Hardie, Philip 1992. The Epic Successors of Virgil: A Study in the Dynamics of a Tradition
(Roman Literature and its Contexts). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hasluck, Frederick W. 1924. Athos and its Monasteries. London: Kegan Paul.
1929. Christianity and Islam under the Sultans (ed. M. Hasluck). 2 vols. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press.
Hasluck, Margaret 1954. The Unwritten Law in Albania. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Head, Matthew 2000. Orientalism, Masquerade and Mozarts Turkish Music. London: Royal
Musical Association.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 1967 (1807). Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J.B. Baillie. New
York: Harper & Row.
Heidegger, Martin 1975. Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. A. Hofstadter. New York: Harper
Colophon.
Hemetek, Ursula 2007. Approaching Studies on Music of Minorities in European Ethno-
musicology. European Meetings in Ethnomusicology 12, 3748.
Hemsi, Alberto 193273. Coplas sefardies 1. Alexandria: Edition Orientales de Musique
(193238); 2. Aubervilliers: Edition Orientales de Musique (196973).
1995. Cancionero sefard, ed. and with intro by E. Seroussi in collaboration with
P. Das-Mas, J.M. Pedrosa and E. Romero. Jerusalem: Jewish Music Research Centre.
Henderson, G.P. 1988. The Ionian Academy. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press.
Hercigonja, Nikola 1962. O partizanskim narodnim napjevima, in N. Hercigonja and
. Karaklaji (eds.), Zbornik partizanskih narodnih napeva. Belgrade: Nolit, 18794.
1972 (1948). Muzika nastojanja u narodnooslobodilakoj borbi, in N. Hercigonja,
Napisi o muzici. Belgrade: Umetnika akademija.
Herrin, Judith 2007. Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire. London: Allen
Lane.
Herzfeld, Michael 1987. Anthropology Through the Looking-Glass. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Hickok, Michael Robert 1997. Ottoman Military Administration in Eighteenth-Century Bos-
nia. Leiden: Brill.
Hirschon, Rene 1989. Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe: The Social Life of Asia Minor Refugees
in Piraeus. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
(ed.) 1993. Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population
Exchange between Greece and Turkey. Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books.
Hobhouse, J.C. 1858. Travels in Albania and Other Provinces of Turkey in 1809 and 1810. Lon-
don: John Murray.
Hobsbawm, Eric 1995. The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 19141991. London:
Abacus.
Hodgkin, Katharine and S. Radstone (eds.) 2003. Memory, History, Nation: Contested Pasts.
New Brunswick and London: Transaction.
Hoerburger, Felix 1976. Die Zournas-Musik in Greichenland. Verbreitung und Erhaltung-
szustand, in K. Reinhard (ed.), Studien zur Musik Sudost-Europas. Beitrage zur Ethnomu-
sicologie 4. Hamburg: Verlag der Musikalienhandlung Karl Dietrich Wagner, 2848.
Hofman, Ana 2010. Staging Socialist Femininity: Gender Politics and Folklore Performance in
Serbia. Leiden, Boston and Tokyo: Brill.
Hofman, Ana and A. Markovi 2005. Vokalna muzika tradicija okoline Nia. Belgrade: Cen-
tar za istraivanje muzike balkana, Ni: Punta.
Hogg, Bennett 2005. Whos Listening, in A.J. Randall (ed.), Music, Power, and Politics. New
York: Routledge, 21130.
Holst, Gail 1975. Road to Rembetiko: Music of a Greek Sub-culture. Athens: Anglo-Hellenic.
1980. Theodorakis: Myth and Politics in Modern Greek Music. Amsterdam: Adolf M.
Hakkert.
Holst-Warhaft, Gail 1992. Dangerous Voices: Womens Laments and Greek Literature. Lon-
don and New York: Routledge.
 references 685

2000. The Cue for Passion: Grief and its Political Uses. Cambridge Mass. and London:
Harvard University Press.
Hristov, Dobri 1913. Ritminite osnovi na narodnata n muzika. Sbornik za narodni umotvo-
renija i narodopis 27. Sofia: Akademija na naukite, 148.
1928. Tehnieskija stroe na blgarskata narodna muzika, s kratk istorieski pregled.
Sofia: Akademija na naukite.
Hudson, Robert 2007. Popular Music, Tradition and Serbian Nationalism, in I. Biddle and
V. Knights (ed.), Music, National Identity and the Politics of Location: Between the Global
and the Local. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Humbertclaude, Eric 2006. Pierre Souvtchinski (18921985). Cahiers dtude. Paris:
LHarmattan.
Hunt, Yvonne 1996. Traditional Dance in Greek Culture. Athens: Centre for Asia Minor
Studies.
Hunter, Mary 1998. The Alla Turca Style in the Late Eighteenth Century: Race and Gender
in the Symphony and the Seraglio, in J. Bellman (ed.), The Exotic in Western Music.
Boston: Northeastern University Press.
Huntington, Samuel P. 1993. The Clash of Civilizations. Foreign Affairs 72/3, 2249.
Hupchick, Dennis and H.E. Cox 2001. The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of the Balkans.
New York: Palgrave.
Hutchinson, John 2007. Warfare, Remembrance and National Identity, in A.S. Leoussi and
S. Grosby (eds.), Nationalism and Ethnosymbolism: History, Culture and Ethnicity in the
Formation of Nations. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 4254.
Ichijo, Atsuko and G. Uzelac (eds.) 2005. When is the Nation? Towards an Understanding of
Theories of Nationalism. London: Routledge.
Idelsohn, Abraham Z. 1948. Jewish Music in its Historical Development. New York: Tudor
Publishing Company.
Ignatieff, Michael 1998. Isaiah Berlin: A Life. New York: Henry Holt.
Iordanova, Dina 2001. Cinema of Flames: Balkan Film, Culture and the Media. London: Brit-
ish Film Institute.
Irwin Robert 2006. For Lust of Knowing: the Orientalists and their Enemies. London: Allen
Lane.
Ivanovi, Vesna 2001. The Beginnings of Musical Education in Montenegro: The Second
Military Band. New Sound 18, 10410.
Jankovi, Jelena 2007. The Place of Classical Music Festivals in a Transitional Society. MA
Diss., University of Arts in Belgrade/Universit Lumire Lyon 2.
Jeffery, Peter 1992. Re-envisioning Past Musical Cultures: Ethnomusicology in the Study of
Gregorian Chant. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2000. The Earliest Oktoechoi: The Influence of Jerusalem and Palestine in the
Beginnings of Modal Ordering, in P. Jeffery (ed.), The Study of Medieval Chant: Paths
and Bridges, East and West. In Honor of Kenneth Levy. Woodbridge: Boydell Press,
144206.
Jelavich, Barbara 1983. History of the Balkans, 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Jenkins, Richard 1994. Rethinking Ethnicity: Identity, Categorization and Power. Ethnic
and Racial Studies, 17/2, 197223.
Jezernik, Boidar 2004. Wild Europe: The Balkans in the Gaze of Western Travellers. London:
Saqi Books.
2006. Europeanisation of the Balkans, in S. Shupo (ed.), Urban Music in the Balkans:
Drop-out Ethnic Identities or a Historical Case of Tolerance and Global Thinking? Tirana:
Asmus, 2331.
Johnson, Julian 2002. Who Needs Classical Music? Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Johnson, Sherry 2000. Authenticity: Who Needs It? British Journal of Music Education, 17/3,
27786.
Johnstone, Diana 2002. Fools Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions. New York:
Monthly Review Press.
686 references

Jovanovi, Jelena 2002. Starinske svadbene pesme i obiaji u Gornjoj Jasenici- svatovski glas,
njegovi oblici i razvoj. Belgrade: Institute of Musicology, SASA.
2005. The Power of Recently Revitalized Serbian Rural Folk Music in Urban Settings,
in A.J. Randall, Music, Power, and Politics. New York: Routledge, 13342.
Jovi, Dejan 2004. Communist Yugoslavia and its Others, in J.R. Lampe and M. Mazower
(eds.), Ideologies and National Identities: The Case of Twentieth-Century Southeastern
Europe. Budapest: Central European Press, 291202.
2009. Yugoslavia: A State that Withered Away. West Lafayette, IN.: Purdue University.
Judah, Tim 1997. The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia. New Haven and
London: Yale University Press.
Kadare, Ismail 2000. Three Elegies for Kosovo, trans. Peter Constantine. London: The Har-
vell Press.
1990 (1982). Broken April. London: Saqi.
2007 (1987) Chronicle in Stone. Edinburgh: Canongate Books.
Kalemi, Spiro 2006. Prenk Jakova. Tirana: Gjergj Fishta.
2010. Gjysm shekulli muzik, 19451995. Tirana: Lezh.
Kllay, Benjamin von 1878. Geschichte der Serben. Budapest, Vienna and Leipzig: Verlag
W. Lauffer.
Kallimopoulou, Eleni 2009. Music, Meaning and Identity in a Contemporary Greek Urban
Movement: The Paradhosiaka Phenomenon. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Kalomiris, Manolis 1961. The National Vibration in Chopins Music, in Bulletin of the
National Conservatory of Music: 196061. Athens, 2136.
1988. My Life and Art: Memoirs 18831908. Athens: Nefeli. A translation (as yet unpub-
lished) has been made by Konstantinos Matsoukas (20078).
Kaplan, Robert D. 1993. Balkan Ghosts: A Journey through History. New York: St. Martins
Press.
Karaa-Beljak, Tamara 2005. Bosnian Urban Traditional Song in Transformation: From
Ludvik Kuba to Electronic Medias. Traditiones 34/1, 16576.
Karadi, Vuk Stefanovi 198688 (184262). Srpske narodne pjesme. 4 vols. Belgrade:
Prosveta.
Kardamis, Kostas 2007. Music in the Ionian Islands, in T. Pylarinos (ed.), History and Cul-
ture of the Ionian Islands. Athens: Region of the Ionian Islands, 35766.
2008. Nikolaos Halikiopoulos Mantzaros: Enotita mesa stin pollaplotita. Corfu: Society
for Corfu Studies.
Karnes, Kevin C. 2005. A Garland of Songs for a Nation of Singers: An Episode in the His-
tory of Russia, the Herderian Tradition, and the Rise of Baltic Nationalism. Journal of
the Royal Musical Association 130/2, 197235.
Katalini, Vjera 1995. OFF-MOZART: Musical Culture and the Kleinmeister of Central
Europe 17501820. Zagreb: Hrvatsko muzikoloko drutvo.
Katsanevaki, Athena 1998. Vlachophona kai ellinophona tragoudhia periochis voreiou pin-
dou. Istoriki ethnomusikologiki prosengisi: o archaismos tous kai i schesi tous me to isto-
riko ypovathro. PhD Diss., Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
2006. Traces of Urban Influences in the Upland Communities of the Pindus Moun-
tain-Range in Greece. On the Way to Ioannina...., in Sokol Shupo (ed.), Urban Music
in the Balkans: Drop-out Ethnic Identities or a Historical Case of Tolerance and Global
Thinking? Tirana: Asmus, 286314.
2008. Music and Dance: Greek Archives, Insitutions and Initiatives. Aspects of Research
Related to Regional Styles and the Importance of the Community, in L. Peycheva and
A. Rodel (eds.), Vienna and the Balkans: Papers from the 39th World Conference of the
ICTM, Vienna 2007. Sofia: Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 4975.
Katz, Israel 1972. Judeo-Spanish Traditional Ballads from Jerusalem: An Ethnomusicological
Study (2 vols.). Brooklyn: The Institute of Mediaeval Music.
1988. The Spanish and the Sephardic Romances: Musical Links, Ethnomusicology
32/2, 173209.
 references 687

1992. Pre-expulsion Tune Survivals among Judeo-Spanish Ballads? A Possible Late

Fifteenth-Century French Antecedent, in E.M. Gerli and H.L. Sharer (eds.), Hispanic
Medieval Studies in Honor of Samuel G. Armistead. Madison: The Hispanic Seminary of
Medieval Study, 17392.
Kaufman, Dimitrina 1990. Ot vuzrojdenskata chalgija kum suvremennite svatbarski
orkestri. Journal Bulgarski Folklor 3, 2332.
Kaufman, Nikolay 1964. Jewish and Gentile Folk Song and its Relations to the Liturgical
Music of the Sephardic Jews in Bulgaria. Journal of the International Folk Music Council
16, 63.
Kavouras, Pavlos 1999. The Biography of a Folk Musician: Ethnographic Field Work, Inter-
pretation and Fiction, in L. Liavas (ed.): Music of Thrace. An Interdisciplinary Approach:
Evros. Athens: The Friends of Music Society, 31986.
Kazantzakis, Nikos 1965. Journey to the Morea. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Keil, Charles and A.V. Keil 2002. Bright Balkan Morning: Romani Lives and the Power of
Music in Greek Macedonia. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.
Kelemen, Milko 1971. Der Komponist und die Zagreber Musikbiennale. Graz: Grazer
Universittsverlag.
1994. Labirinti. Zagreb: Koncertne direkcije.
1995. Poruka patera Kolbu. Zagreb: Duriex.
King, Charles 2004. The Black Sea: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kinross, Patrick 1977. The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire. Lon-
don: Jonathan Cape.
Kitsikis, Dimitris 1981 (2nd enlarged edn 1995). Istoria tou ellinotoutkikou horou apo ton
E. Venizelos ton G. Papadopoulo, 19281973. Athens: Hestia.
Knapp, Bettina L. 1991. Exile and the Writer: Exoteric and Esoteric Experiences. A Jungian
Approach. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Knudsen Jan Sverre 2007. What Makes Ethnicity Matter. European Meetings in Ethnomu-
sicology 12, 191203.
Koo, Eno 2004. Albanian Urban Lyric Song in the 1930s. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
Kondos, Vivienne 2000. Fire, Heroes and the Cosmic: Aesthetic Resonances of Fire-walking
in Northern Greece. The Australian Journal of Anthropology 2, 123.
Konjovi, Petar 1984 (1956). Stevan Mokranjac. Novi Sad: Matica Srpska.
Konstantinou, Elena 2001. Skalkottass First Suite for Piano, First Movement (1936): From
First Ideas to Realization. British Postgraduate Musicology 4.
2004. Skalkottass Game: An Exploration of Skalkottass Humour and Play with
Examples from his Works for Solo Piano. Mousikis antifon.
Kos, Koraljka 1994. Zaeci nove hrvatske muzike. Arti musices 7, 2539.
1998a. East and West in Military Music on the Ottoman-Habsburg Border, in S. Pet-
tan (ed.), Music, Politics and War: Views from Croatia. Zagreb: Institute of Ethnology and
Folklore Research, 2954.
1998b Dora Pejaevi. Zagreb: Music information Centre.
Kovalcsik Katalin (ed.) 1992. Ern Kirlys Collection of Gypsy Folk Music from Voivodina.
Budapest: Hungarian Academy for Sciences.
Kristeva, Julia 1984. Revolution in Poetic Language. New York: Columbia University Press.
Krlea, Miroslav 1973. Eseji. Belgrade: Nolit.
Krustev, Venelin 1978. Bulgarian Music, translator unknown. Sofia: Sofia Press.
Kuba, Ludvk 1996 (1892). U Crnoj Gori. Prague: CID.
Kujumdziewa, Svetlana 2002. Review of P. Jeffery, The Study of Medieval Chant. Bulgarian
Musicology 3, 14862.
Kuper, Adam 2006. Culture and Identity Politics, British Academy Review 9, 36.
Kurkela, Vesa 2007. Bulgarian Chalga on Video: Oriental Stereotypes, Mafia Exoticism, and
Politics, in D. Buchanan (ed.), Balkan Popular Culture and the Ottoman Ecumene: Music,
Image, and Regional Political Discourse. Lanham, Toronto and Plymouth: The Scarecrow
Press.
688 references

Kusi, Dane 1997. Positivity of Music and Religion in Turkey. Narodna umjetnost 34/1,
14778.
Kuzelich, Danijela 2001. How to Survive a Murder: An Introduction to Music and Artistic
Life in Yugoslavia, The Journal of Music in Ireland 1/6, 203.
Lachmann, Robert 1978 (1940). Gesange der Juden auf der Insel Djerba, ed. E. Gerson-Kiwi,
and repr. in the original German with transcriptions. Yuval Monographs 7. Jerusalem:
Hebrew University.
Lajosi, Krisztina 2008. Opera and Nineteenth-Century Nation-Building. PhD Diss., University
of Amsterdam.
Lampe, John. R. 2000. Yugoslavia as History: Twice there was a Country. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
Lauevi, Mirjana 2007. Balkan Fascination: Creating an Alternative Music Culture in Amer-
ica. New York: Oxford University Press.
Leake, W.M. (Colonel) 1935. Travels in Northern Greece. London: J. Rodwell.
Le Carr, John. Our Kind of Traitor. London: Viking.
Le Goff, Jacques 2005. The Birth of Europe, trans. J. Lloyd. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lendvai, Ern 1983. The Workshop of Bartk and Kodly. Budapest: Editio Musica.
Leotsakos, George 2001. Christou, Jani, in S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell (eds.), The New Grove Dic-
tionary of Music and Musicians ii/5. London and New York: Macmillan, 8134.
2004a. Greece, in S. Shupo (ed.), Art Music in the Balkans. Tirana: Asmus, 4974.
2004b. An Introduction to Greek Art Music (from the 18th to the early 20th Century),
Works by Greek Composers: 19th-20th Century. Athens: Hellenic Ministry of Culture (Pro-
gramme Booklet of the Cultural Olympiad 2004: 12 CDs of Greek Music).
2005a. Liveralis, Iossif, in S. Shupo (ed.), Biographical Dictionary of Balkan Compos-
ers. Tirana: Asmus, 3612.
2005b. Riadis, Emilios, in S. Shupo (ed.), Biographical Dictionary of Balkan Compos-
ers. Tirana: Asmus, 5105.
2005c. Alekos Xenos. Eptanisiaka fylla 25//34, 4916.
Levene, Mark 2005. Genocide in the Age of the Nation State. Vol. I, The Meaning of Genocide.
London: I.B. Tauris.
Levi, Erik 1994. Music in the Third Reich. Hampshire and London: Macmillan Press.
Levinas, Emmanuel 1981 (1974). Otherwise than Being: or Beyond Essence, trans. A. Lingis.
The Hague and London: Nijhoff.
Levy, Claire 2004. Who is the Other in the Balkans? Local Ethnic Music as a Different
Source of Identities in Bulgaria, in S. Whitelye, A. Bennett and S. Hawkins (eds.), Music,
Space and Place: Popular Music and Cultural Identity. Aldershot: Ashgate, 4254.
2007. Ethnojazz: Local Projections in the Global Village. Sofia: BAN Institute of Art
Studies.
Levy, Isaac 1959. Chants judo-espagnols. London: World Sephardi Federation 196480.
196580. Antologia de liturgia judeo-espagnoles (4 vols.). Jerusalem: Ministry of Edu-
cation and Culture.
Levy, Kenneth and C. Troelsgrd 2001. Byzantine Chant, in S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell (eds.),
The New Dictionary of Music and Musicians ii/4. London and New York: Macmillan,
73456.
Levy, Moritz 1996 (1911). Die Sephardim in Bosnien: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Juden auf
der Balkanhalbinsel. Klagenfurt: Wieser.
Leyser, K.J. 1992. Concepts of Europe in the Early and High Middle Ages. Past and Present
137, 2547.
Liavas Lambros (ed.) 1999. Music of Thrace. An Interdisciplinary Approach: Evros. Athens:
The Friends of Music Society.
Light, Andrew and J.M. Smith (eds.) 1998. Philosophies of Place. Lanham: Rowman &
Littlefield.
Lind, Tore 2012. The Past is Always Present: The Revival of the Byzantine Musical Tradition
at Mount Athos. Lanham: The Scarecrow Press.
 references 689

Lipovan, Sreko (ed.) 1980. Music of Yugoslav Peoples and Nationalities. Zagreb: Savez
Organizacija Kompozitora Jugoslavije.
Lipsitz, George 1997. Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism, and the Focus
of Place. London: Verso.
Ling, Jan 2004. Viennese Classicism and World Music, in M. Kazanawa (ed.), Musicology
and Globalization: Proceedings of the International Congress in Shizuoka 2002. Tokyo: The
Musicological Society of Japan, 88.
Liszt, Ferenc 1859. Des bohmiens et de leur musique en Hongrie. Paris: Bourdilliat.
Little, Bliss Sheryl 2001. Folk Song and the Construction of Greek National Music: Writings
and Compositions of Georgios Lambelet, Manolis Kalomiris and Yannis Constantinidis.
PhD Diss., University of Maryland.
Livanios, Dimitris 2003. Christians, Heroes and Barbarians: Serbs and Bulgarians in the
Modern Greek Historical Imagination, in D. Tsiovas (ed.), Greece and the Balkans: Iden-
tities, Perceptions and Cultural Encounters since the Enlightenment. Aldershot: Ashgate,
6883.
Loos, Helmut 2008. From the Ideal to the Real: A Paradigm Shift, in Dejan Despi and
M. Milin (eds.), Rethinking Musical Modernism. Belgrade: SASA and Institute of Musicol-
ogy, SASA, 4153.
Loos, Helmut and E. Mller (eds.) 2005. Musikgeschichte in Mittel- und Osteuropa. Mit-
teilungen der internationalen Arbeitsgemeinschaft an der Universitt Leipzig, Heft 10.
Leipzig: Gudrun Schrder Verlag.
Lord, Albert B. 1965. The Singer of Tales. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Loutzaki, Irene 2008. Dance as Propaganda: The Metaxas Regimes Stadium Ceremonies,
19371940, in A. Shay (ed.), Balkan Dance: Essays on Characteristics, Performance and
Teaching. Jefferson and London, McFarland, 89115.
Lovell, Stephen 2008. From Genealogy to Generation: The Birth of Cohort Thinking in
Russia. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 9/3, 56794.
Lowenthal, David 1985. The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lozanova, Galina and L. Mikov 1999. The Fate of Muslim Communities in the Balkans, Vol 4:
Islam and Culture. Sofia: IMIR.
Lucassen, Leo, W. Willems and A. Cottaar 1998. Gypsies and Other Itinerant Groups: A
Socio-Historical Approach. London: Macmillan.
Lupacu, Marian 2006. Romanian Music between Orient and Occident, in S. Shupo (ed.),
Urban Music in the Balkans: Drop-out Ethnic Identities or a Historical Case of Tolerance
and Global Thinking? Tirana: Asmus, 11319.
Lysdahl, Anne Jorunn Kydland 2004. Eivind Grovens Pure-Tuned Organ: Past and Future.
Fontes Artis Musicae 51/2, 199216.
Lysloff, Ren T.A. and L.C. Gay Jr (eds.) 2003. Music and Technoculture. Middletown: Wes-
leyan University Press.
MacIntyre, Alasdair 1981. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. London: Duckworth.
MacKenzie, John M. 1995. Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts. Manchester and New
York: Palgrave.
Maheras, Evangelos 1999. I tehni tis antistasis. Athens: Kastaniotis.
Magris, Claudio 2001 (1986). Danube, trans. P. Gough. London: The Harvill Press.
Majer-Bobetko, Sanja 1992. Croatian Music Journals between the Two World Wars. Inter-
national Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 23/2, 17788.
1997. The Case of the Croatian Symphony till the Modern Age. Arti musices 28/1,
4756.
1998. The Question of National Identity and Nationalism in Music. The Example of
Croatian Opera, in S. Pettan (ed.), Music, Politics and War: Views from Croatia. Zagreb:
Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, 7990.
2004. Povijest hrvatske glazbe u ediciji Naa domovina. Jedan potonuli historiograf-
ski izvor, in E. Sedak (ed.), Izmeu moderne i avangarde. Hrvatska glazba 19101960.
Zagreb: Hrvatsko muzikoloko drutvo, 4350.
690 references

Maliaras, Nikos 2007. Byzantina musika organa. Athens: Panas Music.

Malcolm, Noel 1990. George Enescu: His Life and Music. London: Toccata Press.
1994. Bosnia: A Short History. London: Macmillan.
1998. Kosovo: A Short History. London: Macmillan.
Mallinson, William 2005. Cyprus: A Modern History. London and New York: I.B. Tauris.
Malm, Krister and R. Wallis 1992. Music Policy and Music Activity. London: Routledge.
Malm, William 1977. Music Cultures of the Pacific, the Near East, and Asia, 2nd edn. New
Jersey: Englewood Cliffs.
Mann, Thomas 2011 (1924). The Magic Mountain. London: Vintage Books.
Mantzourani, Eva 2011. The Life and Twelve-Note Music of Nikos Skalkottas. Aldershot
Ashgate.
March, Richard 1983. The Tamburitza Tradition. PhD Diss., Indiana University.
Marcus, Scott Lloyd 1989. Arab Music Theory in the Modern Period. PhD Diss., University
of California Los Angeles.
Mardin, erif (ed.) 1994. Cultural Transitions in the Middle East. Leiden: Brill.
Marian-Blaa, Marin 2000. Romanian Traditional Identity As Searched by The Briloiu
Institute. East European Meetings in Ethnomusicology 7, 12782.
Marjanovi, Shlata 1998. Vokalna muzika tradicija Boke Kotorske. Podgorica, Union of
Montenegrin Composers.
Markovi, Tatjana 2005. Strategies of Networking Viennese Culture, in T. Markovi and
V. Miki (eds.), Music & Networking. Belgrade: University of Arts, 4857.
Martoretta, Giandomenico 1988. Il secondo libro di madrigali cromatici a quarto voci (1552),
ed. Maria Antonella Balsano. Musiche rinascimentali siciliane, 9. Florence: Olschki.
Matheisen, Thomas J. 2001. Greece, Ancient, in S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell (eds.), The New Grove
Dictionary of Music and Musicians ii/10. London and New York: Macmillan, 32748.
Maticki, Miodrag (ed.) 2006. Slika drugog u balkanskim i srednjoevropskim knjievnostima:
zbornik radova. Belgrade: Institut za Knjievnost i Umetnost.
Maulen-Berlowitz, Judith A. 1995. Tune and Text: A New Look at Contamination in two
Judeo-Spanish Ballads from the Eastern Tradition, in M.M. Caspi (ed.), Oral Tradition
and Hispanic Lterature: Essays in Honour of Samuel G. Armistead. New York and London:
Garland, 6780.
Maurer, Franz 1870. Eine Reise durch Bosnien die Savalander und Ungarn. Berlin: Carl
Heymann.
Mazower, Mark 2000. The Balkans: From the End of Byzantium to the Present Day. London:
Phoenix.
2005. Salonica City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews 14301950. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf.
McNeill, William 1998. The Changing Shape of World History, in P. Pomper, R.H. Elphick
and R.T. Vann (eds.), World History: Ideologies, Structures, and Identities. Oxford and
Malden, 2140.
Mea, Elvira de Avezedo and I. Steinhardt 1999. The Contributions of Captain Barros Basto,
Apostle of the Marranos. Shofar 18/1, 4064.
Medi, Ivana 2008. Moderated Modernism in Russian Music after 1953, in Dejan Despi
and M. Milin (eds.), Rethinking Musical Modernism. Belgrade: SASA and Institute of
Musicology, SASA, 195204.
Mengeel, Maurice 2007. The Age of Archives in Early Romanian Ethnomusicology
(Towards a Paradign of the Archive between 1927 and 1943). European Meetings in Eth-
nomusicology 12, 14668.
Merriam, Alan P. 1964. The Anthropology of Music. Illinois: Northwestern University Press.
Meyer, Leonard B. 1967a. On Value and Greatness in Music, in Music, the Arts and Ideas.
Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 2241.
1967b. The Aesthetics of Stability, in Music, the Arts and Ideas. Chicago and London,
Chicago University Press, 170232.
Miglia, Guido 1994. LIstria una quercia. Trieste: Edizioni Circolo di Cultura Istria.
 references 691

Mijatovi, Branka 2008. Throwing Stones at the System: Rock Music in Serbia during the
1990s. Music and Politics 2/2, 120.
Miki, Vesna 2008. Aspects of (Moderate) Modernism in the Serbian Music of the 1950s,
in Dejan Despi and M. Milin (eds.), Rethinking Musical Modernism. Belgrade: SASA and
Institute of Musicology, SASA, 18794.
Miklaui-eran, Snjeana 2001. Glazbeni ivot Zagreba u XIX. stoleu u svjetlu koncertnih
programa sauvanih u archivu hrvatskoga glazbenog zavoda. Zagreb: Music Information
Centre.
Milanovi, Biljana 2006. Stevan Stojanovi Mokranjac et les aspects de lethnicit et du
nationalisme. tudes balkaniques: rescherches interdisciplinaires sur les mondes hell-
nique et balkanique 13, 14568.
2009. Serbian Musical Theatre from the Mid-19th Century until World War II, in
K. Romanou (ed.), A Patch to Western Music History: Serbian and Greek Art Music. Bristol
and Chicago: Intellect, 1732.
Miletich, John S. 1990. The Bugartica: A Bilingual Anthology of the Earliest Extant South
Slavic Folk Narrative Song. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Milewski, Barbara 2007. Review of Gilbert, Music in the Holocaust (OUP, 2007), in Holo-
caust and Genocide Studies 21/1, 12932.
Miljkovi, Ljubinko 1986. Donja jasenica. Smederevska Palanka: Centar za kulturu.
Miller, Jeffrey C. 2004. The Transcendent Function. Jungs Model of Psychological Growth
through Dialogue with the Unconscious. New York: State University of New York Press.
Milin, Melita 2000. Der Fall Kirchenmusik: Zum Problem der Tradition und der Innova-
tion in der serbischen Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts, in Lebenund Lehren. zu Qualitt-
Kreotintt-Humanitt in Musik und allen Knsten, Polyaiesthesis Jahrbuch 7. Munich and
Salzburg: Musikverlag Katzbichler, 6574.
2006. Contributions by Slovenian Authors to the Belgrade Music Journal Zvuk
before World War 2 (19321936), in P. Kuret (ed.), Stoletja glasbe na Slovenskem. Jubi-
lejni 20. Slovenski glasbeni dnevi, 2023 June 2005. Ljubljana: Slovenski glasbeni dnevi,
296304.
2008. Musical Modernism in the Agrarian Countries of South-Eastern Europe, in
Dejan Despi and M. Milin (eds.), Rethinking Musical Modernism. Belgrade: SASA and
Institute of Musicology, SASA, 12130.
2009. Serbian Music of the Second Half of the 20th Century. From Socialist Realism
to Postmodernism, in K. Romanou (ed.), A Patch to Western Music History: Serbian and
Greek Art Music. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 8196.
Milojkovi-Djuri, Jelena 1984. Tradition and Avant-Garde: The Arts in Serbian Culture
Between the Two World Wars. New York: East European Monographs, Boulder.
1988. Tradition and Avant-Garde: Literature and Art in Serbian Culture 19001918. New
York: East European Monographs, Boulder.
1994. Panslavism and National Identity in Russia and the Balkans 18301880: Images of
the Self and Others. New York: East European Monographs, Boulder.
2002. The Eastern Question and the Voices of Reason: Austro-Hungary, Russia, and the
Balkan States 18751908. New York: East European Monographs, Boulder.
Miloevi, Vlado 1964. Sevdalinka. Banja Luka: Izdanja muzeja Bosanske Krajine.
Milton, Giles 2008. Paradise Lost. Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of Islams City of Tolerance.
London: Sceptre.
Miso, Pirro 2006. The Role of the Traditional Instrumental Ensembles in the Process of
Birth and Development of the Albanian Urban Popular Music, in S. Shupo (ed.), Urban
Music in the Balkans: Drop-out Ethnic Identities or a Historical Case of Tolerance and
Global Thinking? Tirana: Asmus, 26585.
Mitropoulos, Dimitri 2010. 14 Invenzioni on Poems by C.P. Cavafy, ed. Y. Samprovalakis,
published as a volume of Monuments of Neo-Hellenic Music. Corfu: Ionian University.
Monod, David 2005. Settling Scores: German Music, Denazification and the Americans, 1945
1953. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
692 references

Montague, (Lady) Mary Wortley 1800. Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Written Dur-
ing her Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Paris: Didot and Didot.
Moraitis, Thanasis 2002. Anthology of Arvanitic Songs of Greece. Athens: Music Folklore
Archives.
Morin, Edgar 1987. Penser lEurope. Paris: Gallimard.
Mosusova, Nadeda 2002. Are Folkloric Ballets an Anachronism Today?, in A. Raftis (ed.),
Dance as Intangible Heritage. Athens: International Organization of Folk Art, 10817.
Munishi, Rexhep 1987. Kngt malsore shqiptare. Prishtin: Instituti Albanologjik i
Prishtins.
Nadel, Siegried F. 1933. Georgische Gesnge. Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz.
Najara, Israel 1587. Zemirot Yisrael. Safed.
Nash, Peter H. and G.O. Carney 1996. The Seven Themes of Music Geography. The Cana-
dian Geographer 40/1, 6971.
Naylor, Simon, J. Ryan, I. Cook and D. Crouch 2000. Cultural Turns/Geographical Turns:
Perspectives on Cultural Geography. New Jersey: Pearson Education.
Neikova, Rouja 2000. Some Features of Anastenaria / Nestinarstvo and its Sound in North-
ern Greece. East European Meetings in Ethnomusicology 7, 2034.
Nemec, Kreimir and M. Bobinac 1997. Beka i hrvatska moderna: poticaji i paralele, in
D. Barbari (ed.), Fin de sicle Zagreb-Be. Zagreb: kolska knjiga.
Nettl, Bruno 1983. The Study of Ethnomusicology: Twenty-Nine Issues and Concepts. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press.
1985. The Western Impact on World Music: Change, Adaptation and Survival. New
York: Schirmer.
Neubauer, John 2004. National Operas in East-Central Europe, in M. Cornis-Pope and
J. Neubauer (eds.), History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe: Junctures and
Disjunctures in the 19th and 20th Centuries Vol. 4. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publish-
ing Company, 51423.
Neuberger, Mary 2004. The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nation-
hood in Modern Bulgaria. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Neziri, Zymer Ujkan 2006. Studime pr folklorin, 1: Eposi i kreshinikve dhe epika historike.
Prishtina: Institute of Albanology.
Nezirovi, Muhamed 1992. Jevrejsko-panjolska Knjievnost. Sarajevo: Institut za knjievnost.
Nicolaou-Konnari, Angel and C. Schabel (eds.) 2005. Cyprus: Society and Culture 11911371.
Leiden and Boston: Brill.
Niculescu, tefan 1981. George Enescu and 20th-Century Music. Romanian Review 8, 39.
Nitsiakos, Vassilis and C. Mantzos 2003. Negotiating Culture: Political Uses of Polyphonic
Folk Songs in Greece and Albania, in D. Tsiovas (ed.), Greece and the Balkans: Identi-
ties, Perceptions and Cultural Encounters since the Enlightenment. Aldershot: Ashgate,
192207.
Norris, David 1999. In the Wake of the Balkan Myth: Questions of Identity and Modernity.
Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Norris, H.T. 1994. Islam in the Balkans: Religion and Society between Europe and the Arab
World. London: Hurst & Co.
Norwich, John Julius 2006. The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean. London: Chatto
and Windus.
Novak, Jelena 2011. Mapping the Cultural History of Women Composers in Serbia: The
Scream Beyond Asymptote, in Women and Music in Serbia. Trieste: Fondazione Adkins
Chiti Donne in Musica.
Nye, Joseph S. 1990. Soft Power, Foreign Policy 80, 153071.
Oan-Pop, Rodica 1964. Alexandru Flechtenmacher: Viaa n imagini. Bucharest: Editura
muzical.
Oberling, Pierre 2007. The Heart of a Nation: A History of Turkish Cypriot Culture 15712001.
Nicosia: Rstem.
 references 693

OConnell, John Morgan 2005. In the Time of Alaturka: Identifying Difference in Musical
Discourse. Ethnomusicology 49/2, 177205.
Ohsson, Muradgea d 1787, 1789, 1820. Tableau gnrale de lempire ottoman. Paris: Firmim
Didot.
Oktem, Kerem 2011. Angry Nation: Turkey since 1989. London: Zed Books.
OLaughlin, Niall 1978. Slovenian Composition since the First World War. PhD Diss., Univer-
sity of Leicester.
Olick, Jeffrey K. 2007. The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical Responsi-
bility. London: Routledge.
Ornea, Z. 2000. The Romanian Extreme Right: The 1930s. New York, East European Mono-
graphs, Boulder.
zergin, Kemal 1972. Evliy elebiye gre: osmanli lkesinde algilar. Trk Folklor
Aratirmalari 13, 59556055.
zkirimli, Umut and S.A. Sofos 2008. Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Tur-
key. London: Hurst and Company.
Paddison, Max 1996. Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture: Essays on Critical Theory and
Music. London: Kahn & Averill.
Palikrusheva, Galaba 1986. Contemporary Ethnic Processes in the Radovish Shops Region.
Collection of the XXXI Congress of SZFJ, Radovish, 1984. Skopje: Academy of Science.
Palmer, A.W. 1964. Yugoslavia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pamuk, Orhan 2005. Istanbul: Memories and the City. London: Faber and Faber.
Panagiotakis, Nikolaus 1990. I paidhia kai i musike stin Crete kata tin Venetokratia. Crete:
Syndesmos topikon enoseon demon kai koinoteton Cretes.
Papadakis, Yiannis, N. Peristianis and G. Welz (eds.) 2006. Divided Cyprus: Modernity, His-
tory, and an Island in Conflict. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Papaeti, Anna 2010. Trauma, Memory and Forgetting in Post-war Cyprus: The Case of
Manoli....!, in M. Broderick and A. Traverso (eds.), Trauma, Media, Art: New Perspec-
tives. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 13245.
Papakostas, Christos 2008. Dance and Place: The Case of a Roma Community in North-
ern Greece, in A. Shay (ed.), Balkan Dance: Essays on Characteristics, Performance and
Teaching. North Carolina: McFarland & Co, 6988.
Papanikolaou, Dimitris 2007. Singing Poets: Literature and Popular Music in France and
Greece. Oxford: Legenda.
Paparigopoulos, Kontantinos 1932 (186077). Historia tou hellenikou ethnous: apo ton
archaiotaton chronon mechri tou 1930 (6 vols.). Athens: Editions Eleutheroudakis.
Parpara, Chrysi 2007. The Attack on Manolis Kalomiriss Work in the Periodical Mousika
Chronika (1925, 192833). Polyphonia 10, 65101.
Pascu, Ion Mihai (ed.) 1999. Romania Bucovina: The Monastic Archipelago. Bucharest:
House Press.
Paton, Andrew Archibald 1845. Servia, the Youngest Member of the European Family. Lon-
don: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans.
1849. Highlands and Islands of the Adriatic: Including Dalmatia, Croatia, and the
Southern Provinces of the Austrian Empire London: Chapman and Hall.
Pejovi, Roksanda 2005. Muziki instrumenti srednjovekovne Srbiji. Belgrade: Clio.
Pennanen, Risto Pekka 1993. Sufism and Music in Sarajevo, in K.S. Vikr and H. Palva
(eds.), The Middle East: Unity and Diversity. Copenhagen: NSMES, 14652.
1994. All-Comprehending, United and Divine. The Myth of Ilahija Hymns in Sara-
jevo. World of Music 36/3, 4967.
1999. Westernization and Modernization in Greek Popular Music. Tampere: University
of Tampere.
2003. A Forgotten Treasure-Trove The First Gramophone Recordings Ever Made
in Sarajevo, in Ivan avlovi (ed.), 3rd International Symposium Music in Society. Sara-
jevo: Academy of Music, 1727.
694 references

2004. The Nationalization of Ottoman Popular Music in Greece. Ethnomusicology

48/1, 125.
2005. Controlling Sound and Music: Aspects of Musical Life in Sarajevo under Austro-
Hungarian Rule, in T. Karaa and S. Kazi (eds.), 4th International Symposium Music in
Society. Sarajevo: Academy of Music, 114125.
2007. Immortalised on Wax: Professional Musicians and their Gramophone Record-
ings made in Sarajevo, 1907 and 1908, in Boidar Jezernik et al (eds.), Europe and its
Others Notes on the Balkans. Ljubljana: Filozosfa fakulteta, 10748.
Pentzopoulos, Dimitris 1962. The Balkan Exchange of Minorities and its Impact on Greece.
London: Hurst & Co.
Peri, Ljerka 2002. Muzikalije obitelji Bombelles. Arti musices 33/1, 5367.
Perica, Vjekoslav 2002. Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Perii, Vlastimir 1969. Muziki stvaraoci u Srbiji. Belgrade: Prosveta.
1984. Josip Slavenski i njegova astrakustika. Zvuk 4, 514.
Petrides, Ted 1994 (1975). Greek Dances: Thirteen Dances of Mainland Greece, the Islands
and Crete. London: Lycabettus Press.
Petrovi, Ankica 1977. Ganga, a Form of Traditional Rural Singing in Yugoslavia. PhD Diss.,
Queens University Belfast.
1988. Paradoxes of Muslim Music in Bosnia and Hercegovina. Asian Music 20,
12847.
1995. Perceptions of Ganga. The World of Music 37/2, 6071.
Petrovi, Danica 1985. A Russian Musical Manuscript in the Belgrade Patriarchal Library: A
Contribution to the Study of Russo-Serbian Cultural Links in the Eighteenth Century, in
A. Czekanowska-Kukliska (ed.), Musica Antiqua 7. Bydgoszcz: Filharmonia Pomorska,
27385.
2003. (Ed., and based on material compiled by R. Petrovi and J. Jovanovi), Hey Rudnik,
You Old Mountain: Traditional Singing and Playing by the Crnuanka Group. Belgrade-
Gornji Milanovac: Institute of Musicology, SASA, Cultural Centre Gornji Milanovac and
Vukova Zadubina.
Pettan, Hubert 1978. 150 godina muzike kole Vatroslav Lisinski Zagreb. Zagreb: Jugosla-
venska Akademija Znanosti i Umejetnosti.
Pettan, Svanibar 1996a. Gypsies, Music, and Politics in the Balkans: A Case Study from
Kosovo. World of Music 38/1, 3361.
1996b. Selling Music. Rom Musicians and the Music Market in Kosovo, in U. Hemetek
(ed.), Echoes of Diversity: Traditional Music of Ethnic Groups/Minorities. Vienna, Cologne
and Weimar: Bhlau Verlag, 23345.
1996c. Female to Male Male to Female: Third Gender in the Musical Life of the
Gypsies in Kosovo. Narodna umjetnost 33/2, 31124.
Pettifer, James 2005. Kosovo Express: A Journey in Wartime. London: Hurst & Company.
Peycheva, Lozanka and V. Dimov 2002. The Zurna Tradition in Southwest Bulgaria: Romany
Musicians in Practice. Sofia: Bulgarian Musicology Researches.
Pick, Daniel 1989. Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, c. 1848c. 1918. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
1993. War Machine: The Rationalisation of Slaughter in the Modern Age. New Haven
and London: Yale University Press.
2000. Svengalis Web: The Alien Enchanter in Modern Culture. New Haven and London:
Yale University Press.
Pidal, Ramn Menndez 1958 (1906). Catlogo del romancero judo-espaol, repr. in Los
romances de Amrica y ostros estudios. Madrid: Espasa Calpe.
Pinjo, Mirsad 2006. Cultural and Educational Society Gajret, in I. avlovi (ed.), 5th Inter-
national Symposium Music in Society. Sarajevo: Academy of Music, 11029.
Pistrick, Eckehard 2008. Multipart Singing in the Greek-Albanian Borderland: The Con-
struction of a Cultural Object and its Belongings, in M. Peralsi (ed.), Proceedings of the
 references 695

International Colloquium Vivre et tracer les frontiers dans les mondes contemporaines.
Tanger: Centre Jacque Berque.
Plamenac, Dragan 1998. Glazba 16. i 17. stoljea u Dalmaciji, ed. E. Stipevi. Zagreb: Muziki
centar.
Plastino, Goffredo (ed.) 2003. Mediterranean Mosaic: Popular Music and Global Sounds.
New York and London: Routledge.
Plemmenos, John 2003. Musical Encounters at the Greek Courts of Jassy and Bucha-
rest in the Eighteenth Century, in D. Tsiovas (ed.), Greece and the Balkans: Identi-
ties, Perceptions and Cultural Encounters since the Enlightenment. Aldershot: Ashgate,
17991.
2006. The Greek Contribution to the Development of Romanian Music: The Case
of Nikephoros Kantouniares of Chios, in G. Ocneanu (ed.), Acta Musicae Byzantinae
9, 13555.
Polychronakis, Ioannis 2007. Anna Vissi: The Greek Madonna. INTER: A European Cultural
Studies Conference in Sweden. Linkping University Electronic Press.
Pomper, P., R.H. Elphick and R.T. Vann (eds.) 1998. World History: Ideologies, Structures,
and Identities. Oxford and Malden: Blackwell.
Popescu-Judetz, Eugenia 1996. Meanings in Turkish Musical Culture. Istanbul: Pan Yayincilik.
1999. Prince Dimitrie Cantimir: Theorist and Composer of Turkish Music. Istanbul: Pan
Yayincilik.
Popovi, Tatyana 1988. Prince Marko: The Hero of South Slavic Epics. New York: Syracuse
University Press.
Popovi-Mlaenovi, Tijana and I. Perkovi-Radak (eds.) 2006. Mokranjcu na dar. Belgrade:
Katedra za muzikologiju.
Porter, James 1854 (174661). Turkey, Its History and Progress: From the Journals and Cor-
respondence of Sir James Porter. London: Hurst and Blackett.
Poulos, Panagiotis 2005. Listening to Innovation: The Case of Tanburi Cemil Bey (1873
1916) in Modern Turkish Music Historiography. Polyphonia 7, 5166.
Poulton, Hugh and S. Taji-Farouki (eds.) 1997. Muslim Identity and the Balkan States. Lon-
don: Hurst & Company.
Powers, Harold et al 2001. Mode, in S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell (eds.), The New Grove Dictionary
of Music and Musicians ii/16. London and New York: Macmillan, 775860.
Pratt, Mary Louise 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London:
Routledge.
Prodanov-Krajinik, Ira 2007. Music between Ideology and Religion, in I. avlovi (ed.),
5th International Symposium Music in Society, Sarajevo 2006. Sarajevo: Muzikoloko
Drutvo FBiH.
Quirs, Felipe Torroba Bernaldo de 1972. The Spanish Jews, trans. J.I. Palmer. Madrid:
Rivadeneyra.
Raasted, Jrgen 1985. Compositional Devices in Byzantine Chant, in A. Czekanowska
(ed.), Musica Antiqua: Acta Scientifica 7. Bydgoszcz: Philharmonia Pomorska imienia
Ignacego Paderewskiego, 181204.
Radovi, Branka 1998. The First Montenegrin Symphony. Iloja Lakei: Symphony No. 1 in
G Major. New Sound 11/1, 99105.
Rdulescu, Sperana 1981. La connotation populaire dans la IIIe Sonate pour piano et
violin de George Enescu, in Enesciana IIIII: George Enescu, Musicien Complexe (Bucha-
rest: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste Romnia, 95104.
1999. The Peasant Brass Bands in Romania, East European Meetings in Ethnomusicol-
ogy 6, 6185.
Rajkovi, Zorica (ed.) 1988. Contribution to the Study of Contemporary Folklore in Croatia.
Zagreb: Institute of Folklore Research.
Raljevi, Sanja 2003. Korelacija sociolokih, psiholokih i kulturolokih elemenata u novokom-
ponovanoj narodnoj muzici Bosne i Hercegovine. Sarajevo: Muzika Akademija.
696 references

Ramet, Sabrina P. and F.P. Wagner, 2010. Post-Socialist Models of Rule in Central and
Southeastern Europe, in S.P. Ramet (ed.), Central and Southeast European Politics since
1989. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ramet, Sabrina P. 1996. Balkan Babel: the Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito
to Ethnic War. Boulder, Colorado and Oxford: Westview Press.
2005. The Politics of the Serbian Orthodox Church, in S.P. Ramet and V. Pavlakovi
(eds.), Serbia Since 1989: Politics and Society under Miloevi and After. Seattle and Lon-
don: University of Washington Press, 25585.
Ramovi, Amila 2005. In the Quest for Critical Conscious: Reflections on Musical Culture
in Bosnia and Herzegovina around 2004, in T. Karaa and S. Kazi (eds.), 3rd Interna-
tional Symposium Music in Society. Sarajevo: Academy of Music, 1719.
Randall, Annie J. 2005. A Censorship of Forgetting: Origins and Origins Myths of Battle
Hymn of the Republic, in A.J. Randall (ed.), Music, Power, and Politics. New York: Rout-
ledge, 524.
Rasmussen, Ljerka V. 1996. The Southern Wind of Change: Style and the Politics of Iden-
tity in Prewar Yugoslavia, in M. Slobin (ed.), Retuning Culture: Musical Changes in Cen-
tral and Eastern Europe. Durham (North Carolina) and London: Duke University Press,
99116.
2002. Newly Composed Folk Music of Yugoslavia. New York and London: Routledge.
2007. Bosnian and Serbian Popular Music in the 1990s: Divergent Paths, Conflicting
Meanings and Shared Sentiments, in D.A. Buchanan (ed.), Balkan Popular Culture and
the Ottoman Ecumene: Music, Image and Regional Political Discourse. Lanham, Toronto
and Plymouth: The Scarecrow Press, 5793.
Reinhard, Kurt 1966. Musik am Schwarzen Meer, in F. Bose (ed.), Jahrbuch fr musikalis-
che Volks-u-VlkerKunde. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 2, 958.
Reinhard, Ursula and K. Reinhard 1968. Auf der Feidel Mein...Volkslieder von der osttrkis-
chen Schwarzmeerkste. Berlin: Museum fr Vlkerkunde.
Rice, Timothy 1994. May It Fill Your Soul: Experiencing Bulgarian Music. Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press.
2004. Music in Bulgaria: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture. New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rietbergen, Peter 1998. Europe: A Cultural History. London and New York: Routledge.
Rijavec, Andrej 1969a. Komorno kompozicijsko snovanje Slavka Osterca pred njegovim
odhodom v Praga. Muzikoloki zbornik 5, 92100.
1969b. Prvi i drugi gudaki kvartet Slavka Osterca. Arti musices 1, 17787.
Romani, Teodor 2002. Muzika u Sarajevu. Sarajevo: Rabic.
Romanou, Katy 1990. A New Approach to the Work of Chrysanthos of Madytos: The
New Method of Musical Notation in the Greek Church and the Mega Theoretikon tes
Musikes. Studies in Eastern Chant 5. New York: Crestwood, 89100.
1996. Partema 7: I metavoles tou repertoriou ton ekdeiloseon tou Odeiou Athenon.
Ethnikes mousikes periegesis 19011912. Hellenika mousika periodika os pege ereunas tis
historias tis neoellenikis mousikis, Meros I. Athens: Cultura, 279311.
2005. Eastern Naturalness versus Western Artificiality: Rimsky-Korsakovs Influence
on Manoles Kalomoires Early Operas. Musicology 5. Belgrade: Institute of Musicology,
SASA, 10115.
2006a. Keyboards for the Eight Echoi, in G. Ocneanu (ed.), Acta Musicae Byzantinae
9, 1722.
2006b. Entekhni helleniki mousiki stous neoterous chronous. Athens: Cultura.
2008. Local Tradition and Western Influence, in K. Romanou (ed.), Aspects of Greek
and Serbian Music. Athens: Editions Orpheus, 15570.
2009a. Exchanging Rings under Dictatorships, in R. Iliano and M. Salo (eds.), Music
and Dictatorships in Europe and Latin America. Music Speculum 14, 2764.
2009b. Skalkottas, in K. Romanou (ed.), A Patch to Western Music History: Serbian
and Greek Art Music. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 16386.
 references 697

2009c. The Ionian Islands, in K. Romanou (ed.), A Patch to Western Music History:
Serbian and Greek Art Music. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 99124.
2010. The Pendulum Case: Musicians Dilemmas in Marginal Societies, in D. Despi
and M. Milin (eds.), Spaces of Modernism: Ljubica Mari in Context. Belgrade: SASA and
Institute of Musicology, SASA.
Rombou-Levidi, Marika 1999. Pieces of a Dance Puzzle in the Evros Region. The past, the
Present, Local Practice and Supra-Local Ideology, in L. Liavas (ed.), Music of Thrace. An
interdisciplinary Approach: Evros. Athens: The Friends of Music Society, 14592.
Roudometof, Victor 2001. Nationalism, Globalization and Orthodoxy: the Social Origins of
Ethnic Conflict in the Balkans. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
2002. Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict: Greece, Bulgaria, and
the Macedonian Question. Westport and London: Praeger.
Runciman, Steven 1990. The Fall of Constantinople 1453. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Rusinow, Dennison 2003. The Yugoslav Idea before Yugoslavism, in D. Djoki (ed.), Yugo-
slavism: Histories of a Failed Idea 19181992. London: Hurst & Company, 1126.
aban, Ladislav 1982. 150 godina Hrvatskog Glazbenog Zavoda. Zagreb: Hrvatski Glazbeni
Zavod.
Sahlins, Marshall 1983. Other Times, Other Customs: The Anthropology of History. Ameri-
can Anthropologist 85/3, 51744.
Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
2000. Reflections on Exile and Other Literary and Cultural Essays. London: Granta
Books.
Samson, Jim 1977. Music in Transition: Studies in Tonal Expansion and Early Atonality 1900
1920. London: Dent.
1992. Chopin: The Four Ballades. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
(ed.) 2002. The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
2003. Viirtuosity and the Musical Work: The Transcendental Studies of Liszt. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
2006. Orpheus and the Exile: Liszt and Victor Hugo, in J. Waeber (ed.), La note bleue:
mlanges offerts au Professeur Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger. Bern: Peter Lang, 26785.
Samuel, Raphael 1994. Theatres of Memory: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture. Lon-
don: Verso.
Samuel, Raphael and P. Thompson (eds.) 1990. The Myths We Live By. London and New
York: Routledge.
Sand, Shlomo 2009. The Invention of the Jewish People. New York: Verso.
Saunders, Francis Stonor 1999. Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War.
London: Granta Books.
Savile, Anthony 1982. The Test of Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schama, Simon 1996. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, 2nd rev edn. London:
Penguin.
Schneider, Marius 1940. Kaukasische Parallelen zum europischen Mittelalter. Acta Musi-
cologica 12, 287306.
Schroeder, Brian 1996. Altared Ground: Levinas, History and Violence. New York and Lon-
don: Routledge.
Schwartz-Salant, Nathan and M. Stein (eds.) 1993. Liminality and Transitional Phenomena.
Wilmette, Ill.: Chiron Publications.
Sedak, Eva 1984. Josip tolcer Slavenski. Skladatelj prijelaza, 2 vols. Zagreb: Muziki Infor-
mativni Centar.
1989. Petar Konjovi u hrvatskom tisku, in D. Stefanovi (ed.), ivot i delo Petra
Konjovia. Belgrade: SASA and Institute of Musicology, SASA.
2004. Znakovi moderne u djelima hrvatskih skladatelja. Pokuaj tipizacije, in
E. Sedak (ed.), Izmeu moderne i avangarde. Hrvatska glazba 19101960. Zagreb: Hrvatsko
Muzikoloko Drutvo, 1136.
698 references

Selverstone, Marc J. 2009. Constructing the Monolith: The United States, Britain and Interna-
tional Communism, 19451950. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Seress, Hugues 2006. Lharmonisation des mlodies pentatoniques chez Bla Bartk et
Josip Slavenski: quelques lments de rflexion, in M. ivkovi (ed.), Josip Slavenski i
njegovo doba. Belgrade: SOKOJ-MIC, Fakultet muzike umetnosti i Musicoloki institut
SANU, 21138.
Seroussi, Edwin 1989. Mizimrat Qedem: The Life and Music of R. Isaac Algazi from Turkey.
Jerusalem: Renanot, Institute for Jewish Music.
(ed.) 1998. Ottoman Hebrew Sacred Songs, in Anthology of Music Traditions in Israel,
12. Jerusalem: The Jewish Music Research Centre.
2001. Jewish Music, III/4, in S. Sadie (ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians ii/13. London and New York: Macmillan, 5961.
Shankland, David (ed.) 2004. Archaeology, Anthropology and Heritage in the Balkans and
Anatolia: the Life and Times of F.W. Hasluck, 18781920. 2 vols. Istanbul: The Isis Press.
Shaw, Stanford J. 1976. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Vol. 1. Empire of
the Gazis: The Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire 12081808. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
1991. The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic. New York: New York
University Press.
Shaw, Stanford and E.K. Shaw 1977. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Vol 2.
Reform, Revolution and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey 18081975. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
Sheholli, Bahtir 2006. Shiites, Ilahis and the Ashiki Songs in the Dervish Tradition, in
Sokol Shupo (ed.), Urban Music in the Balkans: Drop-out Identities or a Historical Case of
Tolerance and Global Thinking? Tirana: Asmus, 392418.
Shiloah, Amnon 1992. Jewish Musical Traditions. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
1995. Music in the World of Islam. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Shupo, Holta 2006. The Musical Life in Albanian Cities from the Late Antiquity to the 17th
Century, in S. Shupo (ed.), Urban Music in the Balkans: Drop-out Identities or a Historical
Case of Tolerance and Global Thinking? Tirana: Asmus, 14264.
Siani-Davies, Peter 2007. The Romanian Revolution of 1989. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press.
Signell, Karl 1977. Makam: Modal Practice in Turkish Art Music. Seattle: University of Wash-
ington Press.
2006. Mevlev Ambiguities in Turkey, in S. Shupo (ed.), Urban Music in the Balkans:
Drop-out Identities or a Historical Case of Tolerance and Global Thinking? Tirana: Asmus,
4314.
Silverman, Carol 1996. Music and Marginality: Roma (Gypsies) of Bulgaria and Macedonia,
in M. Slobin (ed.), Retuning Culture: Musical Changes in Central and Eastern Europe.
Durham (North Carolina) and London, Duke University Press, 23153.
2008. Transnational oek: Gender and the Politics of Balkan Romani Dance, in A.
Shay (ed.), Balkan Dance: Essays on Characteristics, Performance and Teaching. Jefferson
and London: McFarland, 3768.
2012. Romani Routes: Cultural Politics and Balkan Music in Diaspora. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Simi, Vojislav (ed.) 1986. Miloje Milojevi, kompozitor i muziki pisac. Belgrade: Udruenje
kompozitora Srbije.
imii, Darko 2003. From Zenit to Mental Space: Avant-garde, Neo-avant-garde, and
Post-avant-garde Magazines and Books in Yugoslavia, 19211987, in D. Djuri and
M. uvakovi (eds.), Impossible Histories. Historical Avant-gardes, Neo-avant-gardes,
and Post-avant-gardes in Yugoslavia, 19181991. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 29431.
Simes, Joo Gaspar 1984. A gerao de 70: alguns tpicos para a sua histria. Lisboa:
Inqurito.
Sirakouli, Vasiliki 2010. The Music of Xanthis Carnival. PhD Diss., University of Athens.
 references 699

irli, Adriana 1981. Modale strukturen in Annherung zur orientalischen Kirchenmusik

im Oedip von George Enescu, in Enesciana IIIII: George Enescu, Musicien Complexe.
Bucharest: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste Romnia, 12532.
Skendi, Stavro 1980. Balkan Cultural Studies. New York: East European Monographs.
Slapak, Svetlana 2005. Womens Memory and an Alternative Kosovo Myth, in K. Kaser
and E. Katschnik-Fasch (eds.), Anthropological Yearbook of European Cultures: Gender
and Nation in South Eastern Europe. Vienna and Mnster: Lit Verlag, 95112.
Slavenski, Josip 1946 (1941). Nae narodne melodije. Muzike novine 1/2.
Slavenski, Milana 2006. Josip. Belgrade: Muzika kola Josip Slavenski i Muziki infor-
mativni centar.
Smith, Anthony 1999. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Oxford: Blackwell.
2007. Ethnic Traditions in the Modern World, in A.S. Leoussi and S. Grosby (eds.),
Nationalism and Ethnosymbolism: History, Culture and Ethnicity in the Formation of
Nations. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 32536.
Smith, Dave 1983. Music in Albania, Contact 26, 2022.
Snel, Guido 2004. The Footsteps of Gavrilo Princip: The 1914 Sarajevo Assault in Fiction,
History, and Three Monuments, in M. Cornis-Pope and J. Neubauer (eds.), History of the
Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe: Junctures and Disjunctures in the 19th and 20th
Centuries 1. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 20215.
Sokoli, Ramadan and P. Miso 1991. Veglat muzikore t popullit shqiptar. Tirana: Akademia
e Shkencave e RPS T Shqipris.
Sola, David Aaron de and A. Emanuel 1857. The Ancient Melodies of the Liturgy of the Span-
ish and Portuguese Jews. London: Wessel.
Sola Pool, David de, R. Patai and A.L. Cardozo 1960. The World of the Sephardim. New York:
Herzl Press.
Souvtchinsky, Pierre 1953. Musique russe: tudes runies. Paris: Presses universitaires de
France.
Spasova, Rozalina and S. Georgieva 2011. Unknown Letters of Jakov Gotovac, Boris Papan-
dopulo and Josip tolcer Slavenski in Boris Gaidarovs Archives: From the History of
Bulgarian-Croatian Music Contacts between the 1920s and the 1940s, Arti musices 42/1,
535.
Speer, Daniel 1978, 1980 (1688). Musicalisch-Trckischer Eulen-Spiegel. Vokalkompositionen
und Tnze. Bratislava: Opus.
Spencer, Edmund 1851. Travels in European Turkey in 1850. London: Colburn and Co.
Spentzou, Efrossini 2014 (forthcoming). Violence and Alienation in Lucans Pharsalia: The
Case of Caesar, in D. Scourfield and M. Gale (eds.), Texts and Violence in Latin Litera-
ture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Spiri-Beard, Danijela 2005. Canon at the Periphery: Contextualising the Music of Josip
Slavenski, in T. Markovi and V. Miki (eds.), Music and Networking. Belgrade: Univer-
sity of Arts, 1728.
2012. Border Bridge Crossroads: The Construction of Yugoslav Identity in Music
(183538) and the Case of Josip tolcer Slavenski. PhD Diss., University of Wales.
Sprengnether, Madelon 1990. The Spectral Mother: Freud, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis.
New York and Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Stefanija, Leon 2006. Between Autonomy of Music and the Composers Autonomy: Notes on
Modernisms and Traditionalisms in Slovenian Music of the 20th Century, Musicology 6.
Belgrade: Institute of Musicology, SASA, 11744.
Steiner, George 1989. Real Presences. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Stipevi, Ennio 1982. Messe a quattro voci dal Padre Gaetano de Stephanis. An Analysis
of the Work and the Significance of the Composers Sojourn in Split. Arti musices 13/2,
17790.
1992. La cultura musicale in Istria e in Dalmatia nel XVI e XVII secolo. Principali
caratteristiche storiche, geopolitiche e culturali. International Review of the Aesthetics
and Sociology of Music 23/2, 14152.
700 references

1998. Ivan Lukai, Sacrae cantiones. Facsimile Edition. Zagreb: Muziki Centar.
Stobart, Henry 2006. Devils, Daydreams and Desire: Siren Traditions and Musical Creation
in the Central-Southern Andes, in L.P. Austern and I. Narodnitskaya (eds.), Music of the
Sirens. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 10539.
(ed.) 2008. The New (Ethno)musicologies. Lanham, Toronto and Plymouth: The Scare-
crow Press.
Stoianovich, Traian 1994. Balkan Worlds: The First and Last Europe. New York: Armonk.
Stoin, Vasil 1927. Grundriss der Metrik und der Rhythmik der bulgarischen Volksmusik. Sofia:
Pechatnitsa S.M. Staikov.
Stojanovi-Novii, Dragana 2004. A Cry from the Trombone: Vinko Globokar will be Dis-
cussed, in T. Karaa and S. Kazi (eds.), 4th International Symposium Music in Society.
Sarajevo: Academy of Music, 906.
Stokes, Martin 1992. The Arabesk Debate: Music and Musicians in Modern Turkey. Oxford:
Clarendon.
2008. Afterword, in H. Stobart, The New (Ethno)musicologies. Lanham, Toronto and
Plymouth: The Scarecrow Press, 20715.
Stolz, Benjamin A. 1969. On Two Serbo-Croatian Oral Epic Verses: The Bugartica and
the Deseterac. The Bulletin of the Midwest Modern Language Association 2/1, 15364.
Strohm, Reinhard 1993. The Rise of European Music 13801500. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
2000. Looking Back at Ourselves: the Problem with the Musical Work-Concept, in
M. Talbot (ed.), The Musical Work: Reality or Invention? Liverpool: Liverpool University
Press, 12852.
Strunck, Oliver 1977. Essays on Music in the Byzantine World. New York: Norton.
Sugarman, Jane 1997. Engendering Song: Singing and Subjectivity at Prespa Albanian Wed-
dings. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press.
1999. Imagining the Homeland: Poetry, Songs, and the Discourses of Albanian
Nationalism. Ethnomusicology 43/3, 41958.
2006. Inter-ethnic borrowing and musical modernity in Balkan popular musics past
and present, in S. Shupo (ed.), Urban Music in the Balkans: Drop-out Ethnic Identities or
a Historical Case of Tolerance and Global Thinking? Tirana: Asmus, 6475.
2007. The Criminals of Albanian Music: Albanian Commerical Folk Music and
Issues of Identity since 1990, in D.A. Buchanan (ed.), Balkan Popular Culture and the
Ottoman Ecumene: Music, Image and Regional Political Discourse. Lanham, Toronto and
Plymouth: The Scarecrow Press, 269307.
Sulzer Franz Joseph 1781. Geschichte des transalpinischen Daciens. Vienna: Rudolph Grffer.
Susam-Saraeva, ebnem 2006. Rembetiko Songs and their Return to Anatolia, in L. Polezzi
(ed.), Translation, Travel, Migration. Special Issue of The Translator: Studies in Intercultural
Communication 12/2, 25378.
Svaek, Maruka 2001. The Politics of Artistic Identity: The Czech Art World in the 1950s
and 1960s, in G. Pteri (ed.), Intellectual Life and the First Crisis of State Socialism in East
Central Europe, 19531956. Trondheim: PEECS, 283403.
Svolos, Yannis (ed.) 2004. Works by Greek Composers: 19th 20th Century. Athens: Cultural
Olympiad. Accompanying booklet to 12 CDs.
Swets, Wouter 1997. Review of cds, The Janissaries Martial Music of the Ottoman Empire
and Turkish military band music of the Ottoman Empire, in Oideion: Performing arts
online 1.
Terzopoulou, Miranda 1999. History, Memory and Commemorative Songs, in L. Liavas
(ed.), Music of Thrace. An Interdisciplinary Approach: Evros. Athens: The Friends of
Music Society, 11144.
Thacker, Toby 2007. Music After Hitler 19451955. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Theodorakis, Mikis 1972. Mousiki yia tis mazes. Athens: Olkos.
Thomas, Adrian 2005. Polish Music since Szymanowski. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
 references 701

Todorov, Todor Vasilev 2002. Vasil Stoin zhivot i delo. Sofia: Akademichno Izdatelstvo
Prof. Marin Drinov.
Todorov, Tsvetan 1999. Voices from the Gulag: Life and Death in Communist Bulgaria, trans.
R. Zaretsky. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Todorova, Maria 1995. The Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans, in G.G. zdoan and K.
Saybaili (eds.), Balkans: A Mirror of the New International Order. Eren: Marmara Uni-
versity, 5574.
1997. Imagining the Balkans. New York: Oxford University Press.
2000. The Balkans: From Invention to Intervention, in W.J. Buckley (ed.), Kosovo:
Contending Voices on Balkan Interventions. Michigan and Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerd-
dmans Publishing Co., 15969.
(ed.) 2004. Balkan Identities: Nation and Memory. London: Hurst and Company.
Tibn, Colm 2010. I Dont Know Whether to Laugh or Cry. The Guardian, 20 Nov., 4041.
Tokumaru, Yoshihiko and O. Yamaguchi (eds.) 1986. The Oral and the Literate in Music.
Tokyo: Academia Music.
Tomaek, Andrija (ed.) 1982. Muzika i muziari u NOB. Zbornik seanja. Belgrade: Futura.
Tomaevi, Katarina 1996. Muzika delatnost jezuita u Beogradu i Petrovaradinu tokom
17. i 18. veka, in Zbornik matice srpske za scenske umetnosti i muziku, 18/19. Novi Sad,
6978.
1997. Znaaj velike seobe za razvoj muzike u srpskom pozoritu 18. veka, in Sentan-
drejski zbornik 3. Belgrade, 19199.
1998. Miloje Miloevi: izmeu tradicionalnog i modernog, in Kompozitorsko
stvaralatvo Miloja Milojevia. Belgrade: Institute of Musicology, SASA, 416.
2001. Songbook. Collection of Songs from the play Comedians, in Comedians.
Medaillons from Old Serbian Comedies. Belgrade: National Theatre, 96102.
2006. The Contribution of Czech Musicians to the Serbian Music in the 19th Cen-
tury. Muzikoloki zbornik 17/1, 127139.
2007. Conflict and Dialogue of the Old and the New in Serbian Music between the
Two World Wars, in G. Chew (ed.), New Music in the New Europe 19181938: Ideology,
Theory and Practice. Prague: Koniasch Latin Press, 162171.
Tomai, Tamara 2004. Opasne veze: glazba i politika u Zagrebu od 1941. do 1952., in E.
Sedak (ed.), Izmeu moderne i avangarde. Hrvatska glazba 1910.1960. Zagreb: Hrvatsko
Muzikoloko Drutvo, 7184.
Torp, Lisbet 1993. Salonikis The Best Violin in the Balkans: Dimtrios Smsis alias Saloni-
kis: An Outstanding Musician, Composer, and Recording Director. Copenhagen: Museum
Tusculanum Press.
Tragaki, Dafni 2007. Rebetiko Worlds: Ethnomusicology and Ethnography in the City. New-
castle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Treitler, Leo 1974. Homer and Gregory: The Transmission of Epic Poetry and Plainchant.
Musical Quarterly 11, 33372.
1986. Orality and Literacy in the Music of the European Middle Ages, in Y. Tomu-
maru and O. Yamaguti (eds.), The Oral and the Literate in Music. Tokyo: Academia
Music, 3856.
Trevor, Roy 1913. Montenegro, Land of Warriors. London: Adam and Charles Black.
Trgovevi, Ljubinka 2003. South Slav Intellectuals and the Creation of Yugoslavia, in
D. Djoki (ed.), Yugoslavism: Histories of a Failed Idea 19181992. London: Hurst & Com-
pany, 22237.
Trotter, William 1995. Priest of Music. The Life of Dimitri Mitropoulos. Portland, Oregon:
Amadeus Press.
Tsernianski (Crnjanski), Milo 1994 (1929). Migrations, trans. M.H. Heim. London: Harvill
Press.
Tsetsos, Markos 2011. Ethnikismos ke Laikismos sti Neoelliniki Mousiki: Politikes Opsis mias
Politismikis apoklisis. Athens: Idryma Saki Karagiorga.
702 references

Tsibiridou, Fotini 2004. Muslim Experience of Fear and Shame: the Case of the Pomaks
in Greece, in D. Shankland (ed.), Archaeology, Anthropology and Heritage in the Balkans
and Analtolia: the Life and Times of F.W. Hasluck, 18781920, 2 vols. Istanbul: The Isis
Press, 34562.
Tsiovas, Dimitris (ed.) 2003. Greece and the Balkans: Identities, Perceptions and Cultural
Encounters since the Enlightenment. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Tsurtsumia Rusudan and J. Jordania (eds.) 2003. The First International Symposium on Tra-
ditional Polyphony 28 October 2002. Tbilisi: Tbilisi State Conservatoire.
Tuksar, Stanislav 1980a. Croatian Renaissance Music Theorists. Zagreb: Music Information
Centre.
(ed.) 1980b. Ivan Mane Jarnovi: A Croatian Composer. Zagreb Osor: Music Informa-
tion centre.
1982. Josip Hatze Conductor, Teacher and Composer in the Light of Newspa-
per Reviews (19011959), in S. Lipovan (ed.), Josip Hatze. A Croatian Composer, trans.
S. Bai. Zagreb: Music Information Centre, 16183.
1992. Music Research Libraries, Archives and Collections in Croatia, International
Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 23/2, 11940.
1994. Musique et politique Dubrovnik lpoque de la renaissance. International
Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 25/12, 191202.
1998a. The Musical Baroque and the Western Slavs, in S. Pettan (ed.), Music, Poli-
tics and War: Views from Croatia. Zagreb: Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research,
5564.
1998b. Eduard Hanslick, Franjo Ksaver Kuha et alii and the National-International
Relationship in the Croatian Fin-de-Sicle Musical Culture. International Review of the
Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 29/2, 15564.
Turda, Marius 2009. National Historiographies in the Balkans, in S. Berger and C. Lorenz,
The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories. Basing-
stoke: Palgrave, 46390.
Ugrei, Dubravka 2005. The Ministry of Pain, trans. M.H. Heim. London: Saqi.
Vasiljevi, Maja 2006. Haos i Muzika 38 kao odgovor Josipa Slavenskog na pitanja dodekafo-
nije, in M. ivkovi (ed.), Josip Slavenski i njegovo doba. Belgrade: SOKOJ-MIC, Fakultet
muzike umetnosti and Musicoloki institut SANU, 75101.
Velimirovi, Milo 2001 (1980). Echos, in S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell (eds.), The New Grove Dic-
tionary of Music and Musicians ii/7. London and New York: Macmillan, 86264.
Verdery, Katherine 1996. What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? New Jersey: Princ-
eton University Press.
Vickers, Miranda 2006 (1995). The Albanians: A Modern History. London and New York:
I.B. Taurus.
Villiers de lIsle-Adam, Auguste 1985. Two Augurs, from Cruel Tales, trans. R. Baldrick.
New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Vlagopoulos, Panos 2004. Symphonic Music IV, in Y. Svolos (ed.), Works by Greek Compos-
ers: 19th20th Century. Athens: Hellenic Ministry of Culture (Programme Booklet of the
Cultural Olympiad 2004: 12 CDs of Greek Music), 747.
2008. The 30s Generation and its Musical Equivalent, in P. Pizanias (ed.), The Greek
National Revolution: A European Event. Corfu: Ionian University Press.
Vucinich, Wayne 1978. Croatian Illyrianism: Its Background and Genesis, in S.B. Winters
and J. Held (eds.), Intellectual and Social Developments in the Habsburg Empire from
Maria Theresa to World War I. New York: Columbia University Press, 55113.
Wachtel, Andrew Baruch 1998. Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation: Literature and Cultural
Politics in Yugoslavia. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
2008. The Balkans in World History. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wagstaff, Malcolm 2004. Colonel Leakes View of the Turks, in D. Shankland (ed.), Archae-
ology, Anthropology and Heritage in the Balkans and Anatolia: The Life and Times of F.W.
Hasluck, 18781920. Istanbul: The Isis Press, ii, 23751.
 references 703

Warraq, Ibn 2007. Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Saids Orientalism. Amherst:
Prometheus Books.
Washanbaugh, W. (ed.): The Passion of Music and Dance: Body, Gender and Sexuality.
Oxford and New York: Berg, 1998.
Weber, Max 1958 (1921). The Rational and Social Foundations of Music, trans. and ed.
D. Martindale, J. Riedel and G. Neuwirth. Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press.
2002 (1934). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Penguin
Classics.
Weber, Zdenka 1995. Impresionizam u hrvatskoj glazbi: recepcija glazbe Claudea Debussya
u Hrvatskoj 19181940. Zagreb: Nakladni Zavod Matice Hrvatske.
Weich-Shahak, Susana 1990. The Bosnian Judeo-Spanish Musical Repertoire in a Hundred
Year Old Manuscript. Jahrbuch fr musikalische Volks- und Volkerkunde 14, 97122.
Weir, David 1995. Decadence and the Making of Modernism. Cambridge Mass.: University
of Massachusetts Press.
West, Rebecca 1977 (1942). Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey through Yugoslavia. Lon-
don: Macmillan.
Wheatcroft, Andrew 1995. The Ottomans: Dissolving Images. London: Penguin Books.
White, Hayden 1987. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Represen-
tation. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Wiener, Leo 1903. Songs of the Spanish Jews in the Balkan Peninsula. Modern Philology
1, 1332.
Wightman, Alistair (trans. and ed.) 1999. Szymanowski on Music: Selected Writings of Karol
Szymanowski. London: Toccata Press.
Wilkinson, John Gardner 1848. Dalmatia and Montenegro, 2 vols. London: John Murray.
Willems, Will 1997. In Search of the True Gypsy: From Enlightenment to Final Solution, trans.
F. Cass. London and Portland, Oregon: Frank Cass.
Williams, Alistair 1997. New Music and the Claims of Modernity. Aldershot: Scolar Press.
Williams, Chris 2003. The Cretan Muslims and the Music of Crete, in D. Tsiovas (ed.),
Greece and the Balkans: Identities, Perceptions and Cultural Encounters since the Enlight-
enment. Aldershot: Ashgate, 20819.
Wilton, Robert 2004. Review of H. Williams, Parachutes, Patriots and Partisans. South Slav
Journal 25/12, 1213.
Winchester, Simon 1999. The Fracture Zone: A Return to the Balkans. New York: Harper
Collins.
Windschuttle, Keith 1999. Edward Saids Orientalism Revisited. The New Criterion 17,
3036.
Wolff, Larry 1996. Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the
Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
2001. Venice and the Slavs: The Discovery of Dalmatia in the Age of Enlightenment.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Woodward, Susan L. 1995. Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War. Wash-
ington DC: The Brookings Institution.
2001. Compromised Sovereignty to Create Sovereignty: Is Dayton Bosnia a Futile
Exercise or an Emerging Model?, in S.D. Krasner (ed.), Problematic Sovereignty: Con-
tested Rules and Political Possibilities. New York: Columbia University Press, 252300.
Wright, Owen 1988. Aspects of Historical Change in the Turkish Classical Repertoire.
Musica Asiatica 3, 1108.
1992. (transcribed and ed.) Demetrius Cantemir: The Collection of Notations Part 1. Lon-
don, SOAS.
2000. Demetrius Cantemir: The Collection of Notations 2. Commentary. Aldershot:
Ashgate.
Xanthoudakis, Haris 2004. Papaioannou, Xenakis and the Postwar Avant-Garde, in
Y. Svolos (ed.), Works by Greek Composers: 19th20th Century. Athens: Hellenic Ministry
of Culture (Programme Booklet of the Cultural Olympiad 2004: 12 CDs of Greek Music),
8490.
704 references

Xenos, Alekos 1984. Katigoro to rebetiko, Anti 264 (22.6.1984), 467.

Yack, Bernard 1996. The Myth of the Civic Nation, Critical Review 10/2, 193211.
1997. The Fetishism of Modernities: Epochal Self-Consciousness in Contemporary Social
and Political Thought. Notre Dame: The University of Notre Dame Press.
Yeilada, Ekrem 2008. History of Turkish Music: The Developmental Process of Traditional
Turkish Music in Cyprus and in Turkey. Nicosia: Rstem.
Yekta, Rauf 1921. La musique turque, in Lavignac, Encyclopdie de la musique I/v. Paris:
Delgrace, 29453064.
Young, Antonia 2000. Women who Became Men: Albanian Sworn Virgins. Oxford and New
York: Berg.
Zadeja, Tonin 2006. Shkodras Heng in the Kol Gurashis Manuscript, in S. Shupo (ed.),
Urban Music in the Balkans: Drop-out Ethnic Identities or a Historical Case of Tolerance
and Global Thinking? Tirana: Asmus, 26064.
Zaimakis, Yiannis 2010. Forbidden Fruits and the Communist Paradise: Marxist Thinking
on Greekness and Class in Rebetika. Music and Politics 4/1, 125.
ani, Ivo 2007 (1998). Flag on the Mountain: A Political Anthropology of War in Croatia and
Bosnia 19901995, trans. G. McMaster with C. Hawkesworth. London: Saqi.
Zannos, Ioannis 1994. Ichos und Makam. Vergleichende Untersuchungen zum Tonsystem der
griechisch orthodoxen Kirchenmusik und der trkischen Kunstmusik. Bonn: Orpheus-
Verlag.
eraska-Kominek, Sawomira 1986. Symbolika struktur modalnych na podstawie form
cyklicanych azji centralnej. Warsaw: Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego.
ero, Muhamed (ed.) 1996. Sevdah bonjaka. 430 sevdalinki sa notim zapisom. Sarajevo:
Biblioteka Sehara.
ganec, Vinko 1962. Folklor sela i grada. Narodna Stavaratvo Folklor 1, 58.
ivkovi, Mirjana (ed.) 2006. Josip Slavenski i njegovo doba. Belgrade: SOKOJ-MIC, Fakultet
muzike umetnosti and Musicoloki institut SANU.
Znepolski, Dencho 1997. Pozmurtna izpoved, ed. M. Znepolska. Sofia: Hristo Botev.
Zubovi, Alma 2001. Glazba u funkciji vjerskog obreda dervikog reda mevlevija u Sara-
jevu u doba otomanske uprave, in I. avlovi (ed.), II. Medunarodni Simpozij Muzika u
Drutvu, Sarajevo 2000. Sarajevo: Muzikoloko Drutvo FBiH, 2406.
Zupani, Beno 1976. Workers and Culture. Belgrade: Socialist Thought and Practice.
 INDEX1

Abatzi, Rita2867 Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung206

Abbasid dynasty137 Alliance Isralite Universelle31, 290
Abbate, Carolyn601n Alston, Richard549n, 568
Abdlaziz, Sultan219 Amanedes71, 177, 179, 181, 285, 287, 513,
Abdlhamit II, Sultan219 610
Abdlmecid I, Sultan219, 237 Ameti, Muharrem79, 610
Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahn137 Amico, Fedele d642
Academy of Athens519 Anastenaria956, 312, 357
Adami, Emil345 Andersen, Hans Christian568
Adamis, Michael150, 534 Anderson, Perry629n
Adanir, Eralp632n Andreadis, Athena527
Adanir, Fikret119n Andreeva, Tsanka454n
Adiexodo543 Andreis, Josip1901, 198n, 202n, 345,
Adler, Guido340 348n, 350, 472
Adorno, Theodor W.254, 270, 307n, 376, Andreyev, Leonid361
379, 406, 415n, 530, 580 Andri, Ivo36, 63, 123, 189, 279
Aeschylus534, 536 Andricu, Mihail44950, 4602
Ahengu shkodran295, 500 Anghel, Irinel587
Ajdi, Alojz564n Anglo-Hellenic Information Service529
Ajvatovica61 Anglo-Hellenic Review52930
Akin, Fatih562 Annan, Kofi634
Aksak rhythm88, 283 Anoyanakis, Fivos140n, 322
Aksoy, Blent121n Anthi98
Alafranca159, 219, 279, 662 Antokoletz, Elliott379n
Alan Kuju98 Antonescu, Ion415
Alaturca65n, 152, 219, 233, 279, 291, 662 Antoni, Lorenc494
Albniz, Isaac290 Antoniou, Theodore531, 571
Albinoni, Tomaso649 Apollon326n
Albright, Daniel412n Arabesk297, 300, 505n, 5445, 611
Alecsandri, Vasile265 Araci, Emre571
Aledo, Pedro191 Ardeleana86
Alessandrescu, Alfred409 Arel, Sadettin158, 2812
Alexander, Ronelle220, 477 Argyrides, Vassos633
Alexandra, Liana587 Aristoxenus87n
Alexandria25 Arkan (eljko Ranatovi)511, 600
Alexandru, Tiberiu43, 44n, 140n, 406n Armistead, Samuel G.15n, 16n, 17, 21n
Alexiadis, Minas588 Armstrong, Stephen650
Alexiou, Haris527 Arnaoudov, Georgi454, 586
Al-Farabi137, 154 Arnaoudov, Vassil352
Algazi, Isaac23n, 26 Arni, Bla345, 360, 475
Algazi, Leon26 Arnold, Matthew2512, 267
Ali Pasha (of Tepelena)1801, 183, 2323, Arsenije III, Patriarch arnojevi63
239 Arvanitaki, Eleftheria527
Alia, Ramiz Taf551 Arvanites91, 93, 96, 621
Allcock, John B.116n, 166n, 167n Asachi, Gheorghe265

1The index proceeds alphabetically irrespective of diacriticals.

706 index

Aeri, Ines161, 162n Balakirev, Mily306

Ashiki songs102, 170, 297 Balareva, Agapia102n, 353n
Ashkalije789 Blgarska muzika453, 569
Ashkenazim156, 17n, 22, 31 Balivet, Michael137n, 161n
Astroakustika3867, 389 Balkanarama557
Asuar24 Balkan Beasts558
Atanasov, Georgi353 Balkan mountains46
Atanasov, Vergiliy140n Balkan wars76, 247, 250, 335, 446
Atanasovski, Petre Vasilev (Pece)295 Balkanism272, 276, 398
Atatrk, Kemal122, 219, 666 Balkanplus559
Athens724, 1489, 171, 2101, 233, Balkanski, Rossen585
2558, 260, 285, 2878, 303, 3058, 314, Balkanton501
3179, 327, 329, 416, 530, 534, 541, 571, Ballata, Zeqirja494, 658
57980, 591, 594, 613, 6256 Ballos286
Athens Technological Institute260, 531 Balsano, Maria Antonella630n
Athinganoi98n Balzac, Honor de646
Athos, Mount1456, 148 Banac, Ivo239, 241n
Atriadis, Dimitris285 Banat51, 63, 84, 86, 1723, 198, 205, 211,
Attias, Moshe26 238, 515
Attridge, Derek33 Band88
Aubert, Laurent38n Bandi, Alma300
Augustinos, Gerasimos70 Banja Luka2078, 470, 6389, 647
Augustinos, Olga237n Banski Dvor639
Auschwitz-Birkenau camp417 Baqqashot23n
Auslander, Philip654n Barali-Materne, Maja170n, 171
Avramovski, Risto4912 Baranovi, Kreimir349, 369, 416
Aydin70 Baremboim, Daniel636
yn155, 282 Baroutas, Kostas210n
Ayvalik287 Baroveca, Iliqn Mihov610
Azis6101 Bartk, Bla42, 44n, 55, 867, 89, 112,
Aziz Mahmud Hdy155 325, 3278, 363, 365, 370, 374, 376, 379,
Azra5089 383, 388, 393, 406, 40911, 4423, 459,
491, 532, 534, 581, 585, 590
B-92 Radio512, 600 Bartsch, Shadi618
BabaGranoush558 Bai, Mirza559
Babi, Damjan504 Baskar, Bojan189
Babylon561 Bastias, Kostis318
Bacewicz, Graina465 Baud-Bovy, Samuel181, 185, 227, 315n, 591
Bach, Alexander243 Baudrillard, Jean496, 517
Bach, Johann Sebastian269, 395, 463, Bauman, Zygmunt28n, 568n, 610, 6202,
657 628, 650, 652
Baka63, 84 Bayezit II, Sultan18
Badali, Hugo244 Bayram99, 153
Badiou, Alain3334, 35n, 61620 Beal, Amy527
Baghdaddies560 Beaton, Roderick182n
Baglama72 Beirovi, Radovan106
Baidanov, Georgi353 Becker, Gunther530
Badouska97 Beckett, Samuel534
Baja Mali Kninda511 Beckles Willson, Rachel432n
Bajamonti, Julije196 Beethoven, Ludvig van118, 245, 306, 309,
Baji, Isidor103n, 339 407, 411, 440, 580
Bajramovi, aban300, 502 Begovi, Milan348
Baker, Catherine518n, 6023 Beissinger, Margaret515, 608
Baki-Hayden, Milica276 Bejtullahu, Alma77n
 index 707

Bektai order72, 122, 153, 1623, 167, 169, Bitola [Monastir]18, 160, 294
172, 239, 297 Bizet, Georges236
Bleta Shqyptare239 Bjeli, Duan I.32n, 123n, 276n, 407n
Belgrade18, 51, 57, 59, 667, 91, 1712, Blake, William646
2035, 22930, 247, 261, 2634, 3324, Blato Club508
3369, 343, 3589, 363, 367, 370, 372, Blaekovi, Zdravko192n, 202n, 340n
375, 37780, 3834, 417, 437n, 456, 471, Bloom, Harold412
4746, 480, 487, 490, 503, 506, 50810, Boban Markovi Orkestar100
512, 5636, 5756, 5824, 592, 597, 600, Bobinac, Marijan360n
625, 641 Bodas24
Bell, John D.551n Boethius154
Bellene camp421, 438 Bogdanovi, Ognjen565n
Bellini, Gentile218 Bogdanov-Kocko, Petre490
Bellou, Sotiria74 Bogojevi, Nataa5646
Belonis, Iannis303n, 311n, 313, 321 Bogue, Ronald620n
BEMUS5756 Bogumilism478
Benaroya, Samuel26 Bohlman, Philip V.229n, 589, 603, 605
Benbassa, Esther18n, 20n, 31n Bhm, Joseph264
Benjamin, Walter35 Boia, Lucian28n, 32n, 211, 212n, 395n
Benmayor, Rina289n, 291 Bojikova, Milena585n
Benovska-Subkova, Milena553n Bolgarski rospev148, 238, 333
Benson, Leslie468n Bolshevik Party437
Bentoiu, Pascal410, 4656, 586 Bombelles family200
Beqiri, Fahri494, 659 Bonifaci, Rua108n
Beqiri, Valton659 Bonnett, Alastair666
Berat164 Borodin, Alexander319, 382
Berg, Alban537 Boru153
Berger, Karol268, 601 Bosanquet, Rovert Holford Macdowall
Berger, Wilhelm Georg465 386
Berio, Luciano481, 534, 580 Bosanska vila337
Berisha, Sali551 Bokovi-Stulli, Maja106n, 186n
Berlin235, 317, 3269, 354, 358, 378, 416, Bou, Ami14n
464, 570, 581 Bout, Jacques4041, 43, 591
Berlin, Isaiah5278 Boulanger, Nadia491
Berlin (Treaty of)198, 217, 2389, 444, Boulez, Pierre455, 580
446 Bourdieu, Pierre37n, 59n, 82
Berlusconi, Sylvio544 Bourgault-Ducoudray, Louis-Albert228
Bernal, Martin133n Bouzouki723, 75, 179, 2868, 313, 522,
Bernires, Louis de70n, 167n 5245, 543, 545, 612
Bersa, Blagoje246, 346, 349, 360 Boym, Svetlana27, 62, 150n, 640
Besa107 Boi, Darijan486
Beli, Halid5034, 601 Boic-Buani, Danica196n
Bessarabia (Moldova)212, 444 Bracewell, Catherine Wendy186n
Bezi, Jerko187, 343, 592 Brahms, Johannes247, 399
Bezi, Nada201n Briloiu, Constantin87, 406, 408, 442,
Bhabha, Homi K.82, 114, 115n, 203, 275, 448, 497
277 Brandl, Rudolf94n, 99n, 176, 502
Bigenho, Michelle39, 41n, 58990 Brantlinger, Patrick646
Biha470 Braov [Kronstadt]206
Bijelo Dugme44, 504, 5078, 5101, 597 Brassens, Georges523
Bijelo Polje1067 Bratislava [Pressburg]200, 203, 383
Biniki, Stanislav204, 264, 3378 Braudel, Fernand 46, 189
Birtwistle, Harrison568 Brul2967
Bithikotsis, Grigoris522 Brauner, Harry497
708 index

Bravniar, Matija342 Cntarea Romniei451, 498

Brko641 Cntec de dragoste2967
Breazul, George216n, 498 Cntec doina2967
Brecht, Bertolt478 Cntece btrneti296
Brediceanu, Tiberiu42, 461 Cantemir, Demetrius138n, 1567, 214,
Bregovi, Goran44, 100, 504, 507, 544, 282
558, 583, 597, 601, 606 Cappadocia701, 94, 315, 319
Brena, Lepa506, 601 Cardoza, Abraham Lopez 17n
Bresler, Joel291 Carnegie Hall566
Brezhnev, Leonid445, 550 Carney, George O.38n
Brndu, Nicolae466 Carpathian mountains44, 47, 103, 397
Bringa, Tone R.58n Carrer, Pavlos2323
Brison, Susan6178 Carroll, Mark527n
British Council (The)529, 662 Casals, Pablo638
Brkljai, Ivan576 Casey, Edward S.35, 36n
Brown, Archie549n, 550n Cassaba [Turgutlu]290
Brui, Rudolf476, 487 Castaldi, Alfonso409
Bruckner, Anton345 Caudella, Eduard237, 391, 398
Buchanan, Donna446, 500, 503, 608, 661 Cavafy, Constantine P.316, 318, 328, 331,
Bucharest171, 213, 215n, 2167, 236, 264, 533
409, 433, 460, 462, 464, 467, 498, 578 Cavallini, Ivano191
Bucovina Club560 Cavern Club596
Buda (Budapest)64, 172, 201, 203, 206, avlovi, Ivan492n, 563
224, 333, 346, 370, 595 Cazaban, Costin570
Budva470 Ceauescu, Nicolae434, 4501, 4667,
Bugartica185 513, 550
Buji, Bojan194n, 348, 350, 374n, 376 Ceca (Svetlana Ranatovi)577, 600,
Bukovina211, 238 608
Buni, Ivan191 Cecchini, Tomaso194
Burada, Gheorghe216 Cecilianism332, 385
Burgana, Josepo2901 Cela, Bahri657
Brger, Peter26770 Celarianu, Mihai Mitrea570
Burian, Emil Frantiek371 elebi, Evliy14, 121, 155, 1634, 167
Burke, Peter32n elebi, Tazde Receb156
Bursa158 Cengi, Bato44
Buruma, Ian6456 Cepenkov, Marko
Busoni, Ferruccio3278 Ceribai, Naila82n, 416n, 419, 422, 502n,
Butt, John268 593
Buttler, Ljiljana300 Cerkveni glasbenik340
Byron, Lord (George Gordon)532 Certeau, Michel de135n
Cetinje104, 113, 470
Caesar, Julius618 etkovic, Gordana108
Caf chantant180, 419 etniks106, 416, 422
Cianu, Ioan206 etta, Anton185
akavian dialect191 Ceza (Bilgin zalkan)561
akovec370 Chalga177, 514, 605, 60810
aleta, Joko110n Chams622
algija77, 1768, 283, 287, 2946, 5134 Chanter, Tina33n
Callas, Maria579 Chartier, Roger139, 254n
Calo, Speranta519 Chianis, Sam182n
Calvino, Italo454 Chios209
Campbell, John C.468n Chirescu, Ioan150
Cankar, Ivan246 Choiseul-Gouffier, Le Conte165
Cantacuzino family586 Chomsky, Noam45, 105
 index 709

Chopin, Fryderyk237, 3057, 3967, 399, Cosma, Octavian Lzar215, 265n, 400,
51920, 658 449
Christodaktyli100 Cosma, Vladimir570
Christodoulides, Michalis633 Costeas, Mikis633
Christodoulou, Nikos322 Costinescu, Gheorghe570
Christoff, Dimiter454, 585 Cottaar, Annemarie292n
Christou, Jani260, 5368, 540, 570 Courtoys (the younger), Lambert192
Chrysanthos of Madytos1467, 150, 643 Coward, Martin647
Cichon, Ludmilla27n Cox, Harold E.212n
ifteli186 Cozb296
Cimarosa, Domenico255 Craiova2167, 264
Cimbalom88, 90, 406 Crammed Discs5601
Cimmeria94, 96n Crete147, 151, 168n, 194, 209, 424, 521,
Ciobanu, Gheorghe144n, 146n, 175n, 216n 533, 546, 631n
Ciobanu, Maia466 Crimean War216, 237
Cioroianu, Adrian3978 Crnjanski, Milo62, 64, 68n
Cipra, Milo480 Crouch, David664n
iri, Marija340n Cmb2901
Civil War (The Greek)74, 97, 2589, 520, Cune, Predrag Gojkovi502
528, 624 Cuza, Alexandru Ioan216
Clark, Bruce69 Cvetko, Dragotin195n, 198, 366n, 472
Clark, Victoria133n Cvetkovi, Sonja338n
Clausewitz, Carl von648 Cviji, Jovan189, 337
Clejani175, 296 Cyprus209, 529, 544, 558, 571, 622,
Clogg, Richard82n, 302 62837, 63941, 6559
Cloud Society567 Cyril and Methodius143, 4901
Cluj-Napoca [Kolozsvr]201, 2067, 217,
244, 434, 578 Dahlhaus, Carl33, 232, 663
oek99, 294, 505, 606 Daija, Tish430, 458
Cohen, Sara596 Dalaras, George5256
Cohen-Lnaru, Mauriciu2367 Dalkas, Antonis286
olakovi, Zlatan106n, 186n Dallapiccola, Luigi533
oli, Dragutin367, 475 Daly, Ross546
oli, Zdravko641 DAM6589
Collin, Matthew512 Danforth, Loring M.92n, 96n
Cologne456, 4834 Danilo I, Prince (of Montenegro)113n
Columbia Records285, 294 Dankoff, Robert14n, 120, 152n, 163n,
Cominform states419, 424, 437n, 468 164n
Comiel, Emilia429 Danon, Aben25n
Confucius649 Danon, Jakob4178
Congress of Cultural Freedom5278 Danon, Oskar420, 474
Constantine I, King211n Danube47, 84, 203, 207, 397
Constantinescu, Dan462, 4645 Daouli71, 95, 98
Constantinescu, Paul410, 416, 449, 4601 Darmstadt seminar450, 462, 464, 4801,
Constantinides, Dinos571 484, 5345
Constantinidis, Yannis [Kostas Yannidis] Dar-l-Elhan632
235n, 259, 313, 3156, 420 Darwin, Charles138
Conversi, Daniele221 Dash Caf560
Cook, Ian664n Dassin, Jules523
Copla245, 181, 28991 Dast-gah21
Copland, Aaron657 David-Fox, Michael435n, 438
Corfu20910, 2323, 248n, 254, 255n, 588 Dayton accord13, 552, 6367, 641, 648
Cornis-Pope, Marcel620 Debord, Guy28n, 620
osi, Dobrica476 Debray, Rgis377
710 index

Debussy, Claude307, 323, 350, 358, orevi, Aleksandra-Anja583

3613, 404, 427, 581 orevi, Bora511
Dediu, Dan466, 587 orevi, Jovan242, 509
Delev, Goce490 Dorn, Pamela26, 289n
Deletant, Dennis415n Dostoevsky, Fyodor238n
Deleuze, Giles411 Doubleday, Veronica177n
Deli, Iiijaz301 Doublemoon Records5612
Demetriou, Nicoletta631n Dounias, Minos314, 315n
Demovi, Miho192, 195n Doussopoulos, Natalia545
Denev, Lubomir586 Downes, Stephen644
Denisov, Edison445, 569 Dowsett, Brian559
DeNora, Tia4078 Doyle, William549n
erelez, Alija220, 458 Dragatakis, Dimitris533, 626
Derrida, Jacques34, 619 Drgoi, Sabin460
Deseterac185, 2245 Dragostinov, Stefan456, 585
Despi, Dejan487, 566, 583 Dragoumis, Markos136n, 288n, 591, 594
Detienne, Marcel660 Drakuli, Slavenka618
Detoni, Dubravko483 Dresden346, 358
Detrez, Raymond237 Dreyfus, Laurence269
Deus ex Machina543 Driessen, Henk189n
Devi, Natko480 Dromos73, 99, 284
Devi, Dragoslav5354 Dri, Marin191
Devirme system152 Dubioza kolektiv599
Diafana Krina543 Dubrovnik [Ragusa]113, 1917, 346, 471
Dietrich, Wolf294 Duge pjesme45
Digenes Akritas95, 227, 519 Duki, Dalibor639
Digenis, Dimitrios210 Dulian, Zora583
Dimi, Nataa332n Dumitrescu, Ioan449, 461, 587
Dimitroadou Maria422n Dunay559
Dimitrov, Georgi420, 433, 4478 Dunin, Elsie39n
Dimov, Ventsislav98n, 294 Dunn, Ross80
Dinaric Aps448, 52, 54, 63n, 103, 107, Durham, Mary Edith51n, 52, 60, 61n, 106,
110, 183, 189, 420, 603 108, 116, 1667, 179, 184, 429n
Dinescu, Violeta570 uri, Tomislav55n
Dinev, Petar150 urkovi, Mia5056
Dionysiou, Stratos542 urkovi, Nikola230
Dionysos392, 395 Durrell, Lawrence52
Diskoton504 Duan, Tsar59, 225, 230
Dittersdorf, Carl Ditters von206 Dvojka506
Divljan, Vlada597 Dvojnice54
Djoki, Dejan552n Dvok, Antonin247, 398
Djuri-Klajn, Stana67n, 173n, 198n, 332, Dylan, Bob542
338, 359, 472, 474, 477 Dzhurov, Plamen456
Dobroni, Antun246, 339n, 340, 3424,
3478, 350, 365, 367, 371, 378, 475, 479, Eagleton, Terry618, 620
482, 511, 643 Eastern European Folklife Centre556
Doan, Aynur561 Eberst, Anton417, 418n
Doimitriou, Angela Echinos96
Doina43, 297, 4056, 409 Echos21, 1356, 138, 143, 145, 147, 149
Doliner, Gorana187 Edirne [Adrianople]150, 158
Domeneginis, Franciskos209, 232, 233n Edituri Muzicale449, 467
Donaueschingen372 E-fieldwork591
Donizetti, Gaetano219 Efthimis, Artemis614
Donizetti, Giuseppe218 Egyptian Book of the Dead (The)537
 index 711

Ehrlich, Henri236 Farmer, Henry George136, 137n

Eigen, Michael278n Faroqhi, Suraiya56, 158n, 218
Elbasan164 Fasil1558, 1778, 2823, 294
Elektrini orgazam508 Faur, Gabriel314, 399
Elgar, Edward231, 235 Fauriel, Claude228n
Eliade, Mircea29n, 5960, 412n Feldman, Morton464, 538
Eliot, Thomas Stearns116n, 267 Feldman, Walter108, 137n, 153, 157, 281n,
Ellis, Don557 282
Elsie, Robert14n, 163n Ferat Ali Afendi96n, 97n
Elytis, Odysseus524 Fermor, Patrick Leigh94, 97n, 98, 146,
Emanuel, Aguilar21n 176, 179
Emerson, Joan429n Fernndez, Angel Pulido15
Emmanuel, Maurice228 Ferrara-Florence, Council of143
Emmerson, Simon561 Ferr, Lo523
Encounter527 Ferris, Costas75
Endelekheia543 Fidetzis, Byron234, 322
Enderun155 Filiopoulos, Giannis148n
Enescu, George217, 237, 280, 313, 325, Film508, 510, 596
327, 391412, 4423, 448, 450, 460, Film Noir543
4625, 479, 501, 578, 581, 587 Filotei sn Agi Jipei214
Entekhno lako tragoudhi523, 525, 542, Finscher, Ludwig630n
545 Firca, Clemensa410
EOKA628 Firfov, ivko295, 490, 499
EOKA B629 Fisher, Laura Gordon104n
Ephebephobia654 Flambouro98
Epidauros Theatre525, 588 Flamenco27, 901
Epirus47, 76, 1801, 183, 208, 2201, 227, Flechtenmacher, Alexandru207, 216,
238, 250, 533, 60910, 6234 236n, 2646
Epitheorisi technis422n Fleg, Edmond3923
Erddy family200 Fleming, K.E.223, 277
Eri, Zoran4878, 566 Florina91n, 100, 544, 592
Eriksen, Thomas Hylland41n, 82 Floyera97, 107, 141
Erikson, Erik38 Foerster, Anton247
Erkel, Ferenc442 Foley, John Miles104n
Erlanger, Baron Rudolphe d290n Fonton, Charles157
Eskenaze, Roza177, 288 Footman, David52
Esterhazy family200 Ford Foundation (The)527, 531
Ethnomixicology561 Foreti, Silvio483
Ethnos326n Fortis, Abb Alberto112, 195
Etzion, Judith24n, 25 Fosler-Lussier, Danielle442
Eurasianism645 Fotino, Dionysios216n
Euripides392 Foucault, Michel111
Eurovision Song Contest6034, 641 Fournadjiev, Nikola356
Evanghelatos, Antiochos316 Fracile, Nice856, 87n, 89
Evans, Arthur166 Franciscan order000
Evros93, 95 Franck, Csar236, 345
EXIT festival577 Frangou-Psychopedis, Olympia234, 303n
Ezn [adhn]153, 160, 168, 173 Frankovi, Dubravka245n
Ezgi, Suphi158, 2812 Fraser, Angus292n
Frashri family239
Fackler, Guido417 Freelanders (The)660
Fanfar88, 99 Freiberg481
Fantazia560 Freiburg486, 571
Farhat, Hormoz137n Freidenreich, Harriet Pass14n, 15n
712 index

Frejdenberg, Maren18n Glasbena Matica246, 339, 361

Freud, Sigmund62n, 645 Glasnost550
Frolova-Walker, Marina431n, 433n, 450 Glasses (The)660
Frula54 Glazbeni vjesnik340
Fruka Gora51 Glenny, Misha134n, 654n
Fulanovi-oi, Miroslava45n Gligorijevi, Jelena604n
Fuleihan, Anis631 Glinka, Mikhail378
Fussell, Paul652 Globokar, Vinko472, 484, 567
Gluck, Christophe Willibald195
Gae, Aurela660 Goebbels, Joseph318
Gaci, Pjetr458 Goehr, Lydia642
Gadamer, Hans-Georg335 Goethe Institute (The)5301, 662
Gade292 Gogla, Anton201n
Gagauz93 Gkalp, Ziya219, 666
Gaida85, 89, 967, 141, 181, 461 Goldberg, Halina307n
Gainsberg, Fred285 Goldmit, Slavko418
Gainsbourg, Serge523 Goldsworthy, Vesna32, 52n, 1168, 166,
Gaj, Ljudevit2412 167n
Gajdov, Stefan490 Goleminov, Marin96n, 357, 452
Galant, Abraham21n Goleminov, Mihail454
Galas, Diamanda5578 Golemovi, Dimitrije53n, 54, 102n, 109,
Gallipoli150 591
Ganga44, 51, 107 Gomirje59
Gaqi, Thoma459 Goodwin, Jason120n
Garaanin, Ilija225n Gooley, Dana4078
Garfias, Robert296 Gorbachev, Mikhail445, 550
Garnett, James138 Gordon, Mike557
Gatsos, Nikos522 Gordy, Eric D.505n, 5112, 600
Gautier, Thophile646n Grecki, Henryk453, 455, 582
Gay Jr., Leslie C.654n Gostuki, Igor565n
Gazel71, 158, 179, 610 Gotovac, Jakov339, 342, 34850, 354,
Gazi Giray Han155 416, 475
Gazimahal [Ksemihal], Mahmut Goudi coup302
Ragip122n Gourzi, Konstantia571
Gelbart, Matthew139n Gracia, Donna18n
Gellner, Ernest114, 2223 Gramatikova, Nevena169n
Genesis Foundation583 Granados, Enrique290
Gennep, Arnold van278 Graz194, 416
Georgescu, Corneliu Dan4667, 570 Great Novena60
Georgieva, Stefanka417n Greenberg, Robert241n
Georgiou, Andreas633 Greene, Graham269
Gerbi, Fran247 Greenfeld, Liah2213
Gershwin, George570 Gregorian chant119, 136, 139
Gesemann, Gerhard298 Grellmann, Heinrich292
Gheorghiu-Dej, Gheorghe449 Grgi, Miljenko193n
Gilbert, Shirli417 Gribajevi, Mehmed299
Giorgoudes, Panikos635 Griffiths, Paul568
Giovanni, Janine di76 Grigoriu, Theodor465
Gjirokastr164, 500, 652 Grocheo, Johannes de139
Gjoka, Martin425 Gross, David35n
Gjoni, Simon4589 Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
Glagolitic (script, chant)1878, 191, 243, (The [New])136, 369, 472
349n Groven, Eivind386n
Glahn, Denise Von37 Gruen, Gundula559
 index 713

Grupa 220508 Haydn, Joseph195, 245

Grupa umetnika372 Haydn, Michael206
Grua51, 5354 Head, Matthew152n
Guattari, Flix411 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich101, 648,
Gubaydulina, Sofia445 666
Gua festival54, 100, 577, 640 Heidegger, Martin37, 275
Gueti, Nikola Vitov192 Heimerini kolimvites544
Gudilas237 Hellenic Association for Contemporary
Gdulka95 Music25960
Guentcheva, Rossitza447 Hellenic Group for Contemporary
Gulin, Valentina112n Music531, 571
Gunduli, Ivan191 Hellenic Weeks of Contemporary
Gnther, Ursula630n Music5301, 571, 626
Gusinje40n, 107 Hemetek, Ursula293n
Gusle36, 49, 85, 1046, 1089, 185, 205, Hemsi, Alberto2526, 2901
220, 225, 511, 567, 648 Henderson, G. P.209n
Guta, Nicolae610 Heraclitus of Ephesus538, 646
Guzelimian, Ara30 Hercigonja, Nikola420, 4223
Herder, Johann Gottfried112, 140, 229,
Hba, Alois365, 371, 477 245, 590, 663
Habermas, Jrgen262n Herrin, Judith117n
Hac Arif Bey157 Hercovici, Philipp Moyseyevich445
Hadjidakis, Manos74, 25860, 423, 520, Herzfeld, Michael112, 134, 146n, 182n,
5225, 531, 5878 407
Hadjigeorgiev, Dimiter353 Hesychasm1445
Hadow, William H.245n Hickok, Michael Robert161n
Hadihusejnovi-Valaek, Miroslava Hidirellez99
638n Hilandar Monastery148, 229
Hadiselimovi, Omer165n Hilleprand-Prandau family199
Hfz Post156 Himma154
Haidouks3523, 439 Hindemith, Paul316, 3667
Halay99 Hiotis, Manolis522
Hale, Thomas A.105n Hip-hop543, 545, 561, 6145, 660
Halevi, Yehuda22n Hirschon, Rene69n, 70n
Hall, Richard C.39n Hitler, Adolf415, 444
Hamparsum Notation157 Hobhouse, John C.166n
Hampe, Felix15 Hobsbawm, Eric134n, 549n
Hanslick, Eduard246 Hodgkin, Katharine36n
Harapi, Tonin430, 456, 458 Hodi, Ta560
Hardie, Philip105 Hoerburger, Felix94n, 99n
Hari Mata Hari598, 604 Hofman, Ana55, 499500
Hasapiko73, 286 Hofman, Sran487, 583
Hasikou, Anastasia632n Hogg, Bennett512n
Haskalah29 Hohenzollern dynasty
Haskell, Erica82n, 502n Holst-Warhaft, Gail (Holst, Gail)50, 74n,
Hasluck, Frederick W.145n, 162, 167 521n, 522, 524, 526
Hasluck, Margaret116, 167n Homer1045, 608
Hatib Zkir Hasan Efendi155 Hora86, 99, 175, 2967, 404
Hatze, Josip246, 339, 3423, 346, 349 Hor lung43
Hatzis, Christos571 Horozi, Asim582
Hatzis, Kostas542 Horvat, Stanko481
Haustor509, 597 Hoxha, Enver162n, 426, 429, 431, 457, 551
Hawkesworth, Celia36n Hrelkov, Nikolai354
Hayden, Robert M.276 Hristi, Stevan340, 35860, 475
714 index

Hristov, Dobri87, 148, 150, 238, 3334, 211, 214, 218, 227, 238, 256, 285, 2889,
351, 3535 305, 3112, 320, 549, 561, 622, 625
Hristova, Dora352 Istria18991, 387, 418, 472, 480, 494
Hrvatski glazbeni zavod201 Ivana (Vania Todorova Kaludova)609
Hudson, Robert511n Ivanievi, Jovan493
Hugo, Victor307 Ivanovi, Vesna113n
Humbertclaude, Eric645n Ivanovi, Vojislav564
Hunt, Yvonne182n Iwaszkiewicz, Jarosaw392
Hunter, Mary152n Izmir [Smyrna]18, 23n, 701, 147, 158,
Huntington, Samuel P.116 180, 211, 219, 258, 285, 28991, 3023, 305,
Hupchick, Dennis212n 310, 315
Hutchinson, John223 Izvor557
Hvar194, 196
Jacimovi, Srdjan565n
Iai2136, 236, 2645, 391, 434, 578 Jackson, Michael612
Ibn Arab154 Jagoda, Flory25n
Ibrahimi, Feim429, 4589 Jakova, Prenk4268, 457
Ichijo, Atsuko222n James, William648
Idelsohn, Abraham Z.22n, 23n Jana (Dragana Todorovi)609
Idoli60, 508, 597 Janek, Leo325, 3634, 374, 383, 389,
Ieromonahul, Macarie214 403, 442, 581
Ifaistos98 Janissaries65n, 152, 162, 218, 359
Ikonomov, Stefan585 Jankovi, Jelena577n
Ilhi [ilahija]3, 26, 61, 153, 158, 1701, 181, Jarnach, Philipp326
385, 598, 640 Jarnovi, Ivan Mane196n
Ili, Dragutin230 Jasenica52, 54
Ili, Jovan102 Jasenovac camp4178
Ili, Miroslav506 Jedinstvo Choir640
Iliescu, Ion550 Jeffery, Peter22n, 30n, 137n, 139, 143
Iliev, Konstantin448, 4523, 455, 626 Jefti, Dragan55
Illyrian(ism)46, 108, 110, 190, 200, 222, Jelavich, Barbara3n
2413, 245, 342, 347 Jeli, Vinko194
Imamovi, Zaim502 Jenkins, Richard29n
Imvros302 Jenko, Davorin2301, 242, 2645
Indika542 Jerusalem13, 27, 35, 290
Ioachimescu, Calin587 Jesuits66, 1976, 199, 206, 208, 425
Ioannidis, Yannis535 Jeunesses Musicales Cyprus635
Ioannina [Janina]1801, 239, 592 Jeunesses Musicales Macedonia470
Ionian Academy209 Jevrejski glas16, 22
Iordanova, Dina506 Jevrejski ivot16
Ipavec, Benjamin247 Jevti, Ivan566
IRCAM587 Jezernik, Boidar32, 35, 171, 213n
Irig68 Jirk, Karel Boleslav365
Iron Gates (The)47 Joachim III, Patriarch148
Irwin Robert152n Johnson, Julian5734
Isakovi, Vuk64 Johnson, Robert88
ISCM366, 371, 408 Johnson, Sherry41n
Islam, Aida163n, 168 Johnstone, Diana648n
Ismail Dede157 Joksimovi, Boidar264
Ison47, 148, 299, 320, 3823, 462, 533, Jonson, Ben88
610 Jora, Mihail410, 44950, 4602
Isovi, Safet502 Jordan Misja Music School426
Istanbul [Constantinople]37, 71, 92, 143, Jordania, Joseph72n
1457, 14950, 153, 1556, 158, 160, 1801, Joseph II, Emperor198
 index 715

Josif, Enriko4767, 487 Karamanlis, Kostas524, 543

Jovanovi, Jelena5354, 56n, 591 Karamouza98
Jovanovi, Jovan334n Kardamis, Kostas209n, 210n, 233n, 255n,
Jovanovi, Vladimir565n 422n, 530n
Jovi, Dejan468, 552 Kardelj, Edvard469
Juchzer47 Karleua, Jelena60910
Judah, Tim59n, 225n Karlovac chant67
Jugoslavenski muziar (Muziar)340 Karnes, Kevin C.332n
Jugoton501 Karras, Simon140, 5412
Juki, Ivan Franjo185 Karsilamas97, 286, 631
July theses513 Kasida171, 640
Jung, Carl537 Katakouzenos, Alexandros210
Junimea2145 Katalini, Vjera252
Jutkevi, Sergej428n Katharevousa226, 303
Juvenal (Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis)646 Katsanevaki, Athena46n, 47, 55, 87n,
Juni vetar5046 102n, 142n, 1802, 221n, 228n, 591, 624
Katz, Israel24n, 2526
Kadare, Ismail104, 1167, 185, 225, 652 Kaufman, Dimitrina177, 178n
Kadr, Ama156 Kaufman, Nikolay27n, 585
Kafe aman712, 74, 177, 17980, 294 Kavakopoulos, Pantelis94n
Kagel, Maurizio462 Kaval71, 97, 141, 603
Kairos3334 Kavkaz Club508
Kajkavian dialect197 Kavouras, Pavlos97, 594
Kalamatianos182, 286, 315 Kayseri [Caesarea]70
Kalan Mzik561 Kazandjiev, Vasil455, 585
Kalauz, Alojz230 Kazantzakis, Nikos146n, 303n, 308, 3112,
Kalemi, Spiro427n, 456n 524
Kalgay, Halil634 Kazantzidis, Stelios74, 542
Kllay, Benjamin von54n, 207, 239 Keil, Angeliki Vellou98n, 99n
Kallimopoulou, Eleni75n, 526, 546, 627 Keil, Charles98n, 99n
Kallinikos, Theodoulos631n Kelbie, Dave560
Kalomiris, Manolis74, 211, 231, 2334, Kelemen, Milko4814, 567, 626
237, 2569, 280, 30227, 354, 407, 416, Kemal, Ismail425
423, 51920, 523, 528, 5334, 625 Kemne71, 77, 141, 177
Kalophonic chant145 Kempf, Davorin483
Kmran Aziz Ensemble632 Kenan, Mustafa632
Kandov, Alexander454, 5689 Kennan, George527
Kng kreshniksh1857 Ker-Lindsay, James552n
Kant, Immanuel6189 KFOR658
Kann (kanonaki; zither)27, 71, 77, 86, Khachaturian, Aram445
141, 177 Khadzhiev, Parashkev447
Kanun of Lek107, 116n, 458 Kharkiv [Kharkov]257, 302, 3067
Kaplan, Robert D.134n, 649, 667 Khrennikov, Tikhon437, 445
Kapon, Abraham15 Kidulthood653
Karaa, Igor564 Kiev67, 143
Karaa-Beljak, Tamara299 Kilar, Wojciech453
Karaorevi dynasty51, 204, 223, 229 Kindl, Ivana603, 613
Karadi, Radovan638 King, Charles114
Karadi, Vuk Stefanovi106, 185, 205, Kinross, Patrick120n, 133n
2246, 2412 Kirly, Ern89
Karagz218 Kitsikis, Dimitris135n
Karajli, Nele598, 601 Klapa10910, 602, 636
Karakatsanis, Tasos522 Klephts72, 94n, 179n, 183, 187, 227, 232
Karamanli70 Klezmorim293
716 index

Knapp, Bettina L.62n Krauze, Zygmunt455

Knudsen Jan Sverre82n Kreibig, Eduard215n
Koca, Osman Efendi156 Krek, Gojmir340, 345
Kek Dervi Mustafa Dede156 Krek, Uro340, 484
Koch, Mariza542 Kreminovi, Vanesa639
Koci, Mark658 Kristeva, Julia17, 33n, 4950, 62, 75, 618
Koo, Eno295n Kritiki521
Kcsgduda86 Krlea, Miroslav365, 367, 474
Kodly, Zoltn370, 442 Kronos Quartet5667
Kodeksi508 Krsti, Dimitrije67
Kogoj, Maciej33940, 3601, 366 Krsti, Neboja597
Kohen, Moritz418 Krsti, Petar3378
Kokan and the Traitors597 Krushchev, Nikita445, 450
Kokkas, Nikos94n, 591, 594 Krustev, Alexander353
Kolar, Zdenko597 Krustev, Venelin354n, 421, 433n, 4478
Kolari, Pajo108 Kuba, Ludvk15, 113, 208, 298, 351
Kolektif Istanbul562 Kdm161, 171
Kolettis, Ioannis226 Kuha, Franjo2456, 263, 298, 342, 347,
Kollr, Jn240 351, 482
Kolo49, 54, 107, 420 Kujumdziewa, Svetlana144
Kolo Ensemble202, 499 Kukuljevi, Franjo242
Kolokotrones, Teodoros94n Kulenovi, Vuk4878, 564, 566
Komadina, Vojin4923, 564 Kuljeri, Igor4834
Komotini96, 98, 288, 294 Kultur Shock557
Kondos, Vivienne96n Kului Club508, 595
Konitsa91n Kundurov, Aristotelis319
Konjovi, Petar332n, 33940, 342, 347, Kunstreligion268, 384, 410, 440
3635, 369, 372, 375, 475 Kuper, Adam116n
Kono, Kristo4578 Kurkela, Vesa506n, 6089
Konstantinou, Elena327n Kurrenay153
Konstantinov, Aleko356 Kurti, Palok425
Konstantinovi, Radomir32n Kusi, Dane153n
Koprivstitsa500, 594 Kustorica, Emir44, 100, 5078, 598, 601
Korais, Adamantios226 Kuzelich, Danijela487n
Kor295, 425, 457 Kyriakidis, Stilpon182
Korkodotos, John631n
Krner, Theodor244 La Alborado15
Ks152 La Benevolencia15
Kos, Koraljka63n, 66n, 347n La Gloria15
Kosovo, Battle of59, 184, 225, 230 Laberia Club425
Kotor1089, 113, 194, 208, 470, 493 Lacan, Jacques17, 4950, 62n
Koukos, Periklis588 Lachmann, Robert22n
Kou-kou Band611 Lada Federation247, 337
Kounadis, Argyris531, 571 Ladino23n, 24, 289
Kouroupos, Giorgos588 Lado Ensemble499
Koutev, Philip352, 356, 451, 499, 502, 584 Lahuta1856, 225, 295
Koutev Ensemble295, 499, 503, 578 Laibach510
Kovalcsik, Katalin89n Laka5424, 605, 612
Kozainski, Manuilo6667 Laji-Mihajlovi, Danica106n
Kozina, Marjan345, 360, 475 Lajosi, Krisztina236n, 2656
Kozinovi, Lujza187 Lajovic, Anton340, 342, 345
Kragujevac2035, 229, 261 Lakei, Iloja4934
Krajanski, Ernest371 Lalas, Dimitrios322
Kramer, Dawn565 Lamartine, Alphonse de52
 index 717

Lambelet, Georgios234, 235n, 304, 313, Ligeti, Gyrgy462, 481, 567, 570
325 Light, Andrew28n
Lambelet, Napoleon324 Lind, Tore145n
Lambrakis, Grigoris524 Ling, Jan562
Lampe, John. R.335n Lingas, Alexander631n
Lara, Manuel Manrique de15, 25, 289 Lipatti, Dinu407, 410
Larissa160 Lipovan, Sreko489n
Larousse Dictionary429 Lipsitz, George506n
Lausanne conference6971, 92 Lisinski, Vatroslav242
Lauevi, Mirjana5567, 560, 602 Lissa, Zofia442n
Latcho drom560 Liszt, Franz78, 293, 307, 315, 319, 378,
Lutari1746, 2145, 236, 283, 287, 296, 398, 404, 407, 442
360, 397, 405, 498, 513, 515 Little, Bliss Sheryl235n, 313n, 315n, 319n
Lavrangas, Dionysios234 Livadi, Ferdo242
Lazr, Filip40910 Livanios, Dimitris226
Lazar, Prince59, 225 Liveralis, Iossif2323
Lazarapole295 Livorno24
Lazarian rituals4849 Ljubljana201, 3389, 343, 361, 366, 471,
Lazarov, Simo585 474, 4856, 4901, 508
Le Carr, John551 Lloyd, Albert Lancaster186, 294, 429
Le Goff, Jacques117n Logar, Mihovil3667, 474, 4757
Leake, Colonel William M.165 Logothetis, Anestis531, 571
Leandros, Vicki527 London69n, 425, 55960, 584, 6535
Lear, Edward166 London Bulgarian Choir558
Lebi, Lojze486 Longa121
Leeper, Sir Rex429n Longinovi, Tomislav6001
Lehr, Franz104n Loos, Helmut250n
Leipzig321, 333, 358 Lord, Albert1046, 185, 186n, 220, 2256,
Lendvai, Ern379n, 643n 298n
Lenin, Vladimir468 Lortat-Jacob, Bernard40n
Leotsakos, George211n, 2334, 254n, Loutzaki, Irene497n
256n, 259n, 322, 324, 420n, 42930, 456n, Lovell, Stephen651
536 Lowenthal, David36n
Lesbos159, 183 Lozanova, Galina169n
Leskovik296 Lubarda, Petar476
Letu tuke598 Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus)618
Leva332 Lucassen, Leo292n
Levant21, 87, 135, 276, 405, 564 Ludwig-Pear, Nada492
Levantine Jazz Trio Lukai, Ivan194
Levene, Mark647n Lungu, Nicolae150
Levi, Erik416n Lupascu, Marian175
Lvi-Strauss, Claude621 Lusignans630
Leviev, Milcho569, 586 Lutajua Srca59
Levin, David170n Lutosawski, Witold454, 465
Levinas, Emmanuel101, 61920 Luzha, Beza657
Levy, Claire177, 178n, 586n Lviv [Lww]237
Levy, Isaac21n, 26, 289 Lyra71, 956, 533
Levy, Kenneth30n, 136n Lysdahl, Anne Jorunn Kydland386n
Levy, Moritz14 Lysloff, Ren T.A.654n
Levy, Sultana291 Lyuki chushki557
Levy, Yasmin27
Leyser, Karl J.117n Macarie, Ieromonahul214
Lhotka, Fran349, 365 MacIntyre, Alasdair33n, 439
Liavas, Lambros94n MacKenzie, John M.117n
718 index

MAD613 Marjanovi, Shlata110

Madonna6123 Marko Kraljevi of Prilep, Prince104,
Magdi, Josip493, 564 220, 230
Magris, Claudio62 Markopoulos, Yannis526
Mahala Rai Banda90 Markov chains539
Maheras, Evangelos422n Markovac, Pavao340, 417
Mahler, Gustav392 Markovi, Tatjana56n, 64, 2034, 205n
Mahmud II, Sultan155n Mrquez, Juan Manuel517
Maiorescu, Tito32n, 215 Marshall Plan (The)527, 529
Majer-Bobetko, Sanja195n, 242n, 340n, Martin, Bohuslav442
348n, 350 Martoretta, Gian Domenico630
Majka, Edo599 Maruli, Marko191
Makam4, 21, 23, 256, 71, 73, 99, 1368, Marx, Karl335, 521, 642, 663
1558, 168, 175, 179, 2814, 2878, 290, Marxism-Leninism424, 436, 438, 448
2956, 299, 4056, 606, 633 Mascagni, Pietro346
Makarios III, Archbishop62930 Matheisen, Thomas J.136n
Makedonski, Kiril490 Matii, Janez484
Makriyannis, Yannis257n, 258 Maticki, Miodrag123
Malakasis, Miltiadis307 Matija Gubec368
Malcolm, Noel63n, 76, 161, 391n, 398 Matovi, Mladen641
Malec, Ivo481 Matz, Rudolf340
Malshova, Sejfulla427 Maulen-Berlowitz, Judith16, 22, 105,
Maliaras, Nikos140n 289, 290n
Mallinson, William629n Maurer, Franz14
Malm, Krister43n, 535n Mauss, Marcel37n
Mamangakis, Nikos534 Maya (Maya Alikaj)60910
Mamula, Nada298 Mayr, Simon255
Manchev, Tomi492 Mazower, Mark46, 160, 177, 220n, 321
Mandilatos96 Maurani, Ivan106, 185, 242
Manele513, 515, 605, 608, 610 McNeill, William80
Mann, Thomas643, 665n Mea, Elvira de Avezedo17n
Manojlovi, Kosta33940, 3423 Meclis157
Manolov, Emanuil353 Meedovi, Avdo106
Manoussos, Antonios233n Medi, Ivana345n
Mantzaros, Nikolaos Halikiopoulos Meimurje3489, 3702, 374, 3778,
20910, 2323, 242, 2545, 257 380, 382, 3867, 389
Mantzos, Constantinos46n, 221n, Meugorje60
6234 Megaron322n, 579
Mantzourani, Eva330n Mehmed VI, Sultan156
Marag, Abdlkadir154 Mehta, Zubin576
Maramure40, 4244, 47, 211 Mehter (Mehterhna)65n, 1523, 157n,
Marb, Miriam462, 464, 570 164, 1734, 214, 216, 635
Marble and Sounds festival577 Meneti, Vladislav191
March, Richard108n Mengeel, Maurice498n
Marcus, Scott Lloyd281n Mengjiqi, Mehdi658
Margalit, Avishai6456 Mercan Dede562
Maria Theresa, Empress198 Mercouri, Melina523
Marian-Blaa, Marin42n, 497n Merlier, Melpo72n, 94n, 326, 591
Maribor471 Merlin, Dino596, 598, 601
Mari, Ljubica367, 4779, 4868, 626 Merriam, Alan139
Marija Bistrica60 Mekhne155, 157, 282
Mariovo40n Messiaen, Olivier375, 385, 4623, 588
Marinella542 Metrovi, Ivan337
Marinkovi, Josif205, 231, 337 Metastasio, Pietro195
 index 719

Metaxas, Ioannis71, 73, 2589, 318, 419, Mitropoulos, Dimitri260, 326n, 3279,
496, 497n, 524, 541 520, 533, 625
Metaxas, Nikolaos Tzanis233n Mitsoura562
Metessi, Renato597 Mladost474
Meianu, Lucian570 Moba54
Metro Decay543 Moiseyev Ensemble496
Mevlev order22, 122, 1545, 158, 1612, Mokranjac, Stevan689, 148, 150, 205,
170, 282, 631 231, 3326, 339, 343, 351, 360, 3634, 368,
Mevlt153 492, 640
Meyer, Leonard B.412, 535 Mokranjac, Vasilije476, 487
Michael, King (of Romania)450 Moldovan, Mihai466
Michaelides, Solon6323 Moldoveanu, Nicu150
Mici, Ljubomir123, 373, 375, 377 Mller, Eberhard250n
Miglia, Guido189 Monaldi, Miho192
Mihajlovi, Ana565n, 5668 Monat (Der)527
Mihajlovi, Milan488 Moniuszko, Stanisaw442
Mihalovici, Marcel460 Monod, David527n
Mijatovi, Branka600 Montague, Lady Mary Wortley18, 19n,
Miki, Vesna345n, 4767 154n, 165
Miklaui-eran, Snjeana201n Montesquieu165n
Mikov, Lubomir169n Moraitis, Thanasis91n
Mikuli, Carol236n, 237 Moras, Jean314
Miladinov, Dimitar238, 243 Morgenstern, Juraj Karlo Wisner200
Miladinov, Konstantin238, 243 Morin, Edgar118
Milan234, 290 Morlachs32, 44, 107, 1112
Milanovi, Biljana262n, 264, 3356, Moscow358, 432, 4356, 444, 4468,
339n, 358 4501, 457, 461, 474, 497
Miletich, John S.185n Mostar13, 300, 470, 559, 641
Milewski, Barbara417 Mostar Sevdah Reunion3001
Milin, Melita68n, 135n, 341, 4767 Mosusova, Nadeda360n
Miljkovi, Katarina5657 Mousika chronika326
Miljkovi, Ljubinko53 Mousiki zoi326
Miller, Jeffrey278n Mouskouri, Nana5223, 525
Millet system19, 29, 64, 69, 145, 151, 237 Moustoukis, Andreas633
Milojevi, Miloje335n, 340, 343, 3589, Mozart, Amadeus217, 268, 570, 657
3625, 3678, 388, 417 Mozi, Aladar610
Milojkovi-Djuri, Jelena15n, 208n, 238n, Mukaabele154
337, 339n, 343n Mukayyad154
Milosavljevi, Ana566 Muli, Redo494
Miloevi, Jovan493 Mller, Theodor215
Miloevi, Miloje493 Munich322, 333, 346, 358, 362, 571
Miloevi, Predrag3668, 417, 475 Munishi, Rexhep45n, 659
Miloevi, Slobodan77, 84, 5112, 552, Munteanu, Viorel150
564, 567, 575, 577, 597, 600, 607 Murad IV, Sultan155
Miloevi, Vlado298, 492, 6389 Murgu, Eftimiu235
Milovuk, Milan204 Murko, Matija104
Milton, Giles71n, 219n Musical Quarterly347
Mintev, Georgi454 Musik in Geschichten und Gegenwart
Minune, Adrian Copilul610 (Die)472
Mirkovi, Igor509, 5957 Musikalen pregled353
Miro296 Musikalen vestnik353
Mirtchev, Emil585 Musique concrete4801
Miso, Pirro140n, 296 Musorgsky, Modeste323, 3634, 477
Mitko, Thimi239 Mussolini, Benito425
720 index

Mutlak154 Nisiotika73
Muzicescu, Gavril150 Niko Polje56, 499
Muzika revija340 Nitsiakos, Vasilis46n, 221n, 591, 6234
Muziki glasnik33940 Njego, Petar II Petrovi1046, 113, 225
Muzikoloko Drutvo FBiH493 Noli, Bishop Fan Stilian425
Myaskovsky, Nikolai445 NOMUS577
Mystre des voix bulgares (Le)352 Norris, David32, 172
North, Frederick Earl of Guildford209
Nabukov, Nicolas527 Norwich, John Julius189
Nadel, Siegried F.72 Nottara, Constantin409
Nagyvrad [Oradea]206 Noumas257, 306, 313, 326n
Nai [Ney]27, 141, 157, 282 Nouras, Kostas285
Najara, Israel23, 25 Novak, Jelena564n
Nakkare153 Novk, Vitzslav371
Nakibendi order163, 168, 1701 Nova muzika340
Naples210 Novi akordi340
Napoleon Bonaparte190, 1978, 209, Novi Sad89, 204, 261, 264, 334n, 469, 577
223, 280 Novi Zvuk52n, 583
Nash, Peter H.38n Nye, Joseph S.628n
Nasi, Thoma425
Naice199, 346 Oan-Pop, Rodica264
NATO77, 529, 544, 5501, 600, 648, 657 Oberling, Pierre634n
Naumoff, Dimitar569 Obradovi, Aleksander487
Naylor, Simon664n Obradovi, Dositej103n
Nazos, Georgios211, 231, 2567, 303, 306 Obrenovi, Prince Mihailo103n, 173,
Nea estia326n 2034, 223, 229, 2612
Nea phorminx326n Obretenov, Svetoslav3534, 421
Negrea, Marian4601 Occidentalism119, 123, 608
Neikova, Rouja96 OConnell, John Morgan219n
Nemec, Kreimir360n Odak, Krsto3489, 365, 371, 475
Nemescu, Octavian4667, 587 Odeon recordings295
Nenov, Dimitar3578, 448 Odessa212
Neoellinika Grammata315n Ohrid146, 151, 168, 294, 470
Neo-folk5058, 512, 515, 6067 Oktem, Kerem667n
Nettl, Bruno31n Oktoechos142, 332, 399, 4789, 487
Neubauer, John244 Olah, Tiberiu4623, 570, 626
Neuberger, Mary169n OLaughlin, Niall340n
New York Balkan Arts Centre556 Old Stars Band597
Neziri, Zymer185, 659 Olga, Queen147
Nezirovi, Muhamed14n, 16n, 22n Olick, Jeffrey36
Niarchos Foundation579 Oltenia211
Nichifor, erban587 Onassis Foundation579
Nicolaou-Konnari, Angel630n Opatija Festival479
Nicosia [Lefkosia, Lefkoa]6303, 6356 Operation Deliberate Force648
Niculescu, tefan402, 4623, 467, 587, Orchestra of Colours525
626 Oresteiada91n
Nietzsche, Friedrich312, 346, 373, 3923, Orff, Carl477
643 Orientalism119, 272, 398, 6089, 6445
Nikoli, Sofka299 Ormenio97
Nikolov, Lazar448, 4525 Ornea, Zigu415n
Nikolovski, Mihailo491 Oro Ensemble499
Nikolovski, Vlastimir490 Orpheus92n, 96n
Ninou, Marika75 Ortakov, Dragoslav490
Ni166, 1712, 469 Orwell, George484
 index 721

Osborne, Nigel559 Parida24

Osijek108, 172, 197, 199, 201, 346, 418, Paris213, 217, 233, 314, 320, 322, 358,
469, 638n 3612, 365, 3723, 380, 409, 481, 491,
Osmanagi, Jasmin564 5212, 5389, 570, 581, 588, 595
Osterc, Slavko340, 342, 344, 349, 3657, Parisini, Rafaele210
375, 388, 486, 511, 643 Parpara, Chrysi326n
Ottescu, Ion Nonna409 Parry, Milman1046, 185, 186n, 220, 226,
Oud (outi)71, 77, 95, 141, 2878, 290 298n
zergin, Kemal164n Prt, Arvo582
Ozgijan, Petra487 Partch, Harry386
zkirimli, Umut135n, 142n, 221n Pascu, Ion Mihai211n
Passeron, Jean-Claude82n
Paddison, Max415n Patai, Raphael17n
Paisiello, Giovanni255 Paton, Andrew Archibald165n
Palamas, Kostis257n, 3067, 310, 318 Patras210, 579
Paldum, Hanka300n, 506 Patrola508, 597
Pale638 Paunovi, Milenko3589
Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da332 Paveli, Ante415, 419
Palikrusheva, Galaba48n Pavlovi, Aleksander487
Paljavo kazalite5089 Payumdzis, Stratos287
Pallis, Alexandros307, 324 Pei, Aleksandr459
Palmer, Alan W.160 Peja [Pe]4, 59n, 113, 146, 151
Palmoti, Junije192 Pejaevi, Dora246, 3467, 356
Pamuk, Orhan37, 601 Pejaevi family199
Panagiotakis, Nikolaus147n Pejovi, Roksanda140n
Panevo2045, 224, 230 Pelagi, Vasa238n
Panhellion Records285 Pennanen, Risto Pekka15n, 70, 72, 170,
Pankrti508 2837
Pann, Anton236n Peno, Vesna68n, 332n
Panov, Anton490 Pentzopoulos, Dimitris70n
Pantatzis, Lefteris543 Peri, Ljerka200n
Pantchev, Wladimir56970 Perestroika550
Papa, Loni458 Perica, Vjekoslav58n, 60
Papachristodoulou, Polydoros94n Perii, Vlastimir69n, 386
Papadakis, Yiannis629n, 630 Peristeris, Spiros287
Papaeti, Anna633n Peristianis, Nicos629n, 630
Papafeio Orphanage321 Perkovi-Radak, Ivana332n
Papaghika, Marika286 Perlea, Ionel409
Papaioannou, John G.25961, 327, 520, Permeti178, 295
530, 5378 Perpessas, Harilaos328n
Papaioannou, Yiannis25961, 520, 5314, Pervan, Dzani598
626 Pesaro346
Papakostas, Christos92n Peshev, Panche420
Papanastasiou, Alexandros625 Perev1568, 282
Papandopulo, Boris349, 416, 480 Petkanov, Konstantin357
Papandreou, Georgios423, 543 Petrarch [Francesco Petrarca]102
Papanikolaou, Dimitris523n Petrescu, Ioan460
Papapavlou, Maria100n Petri, Egon329
Paparigopoulos, Kontantinos134n Petri, Ivo486
Papazov, Ivo514 Petrides, Ted182n
Para, Frano483 Petridis, Petros31921
Para, Ivo346 Petrovaradin66
Paradhosiaka75, 506, 526, 546, 627 Petrovi, Ankica25n, 44n, 47, 170, 294
Paranosi, Milica565n Petrovi, Danica53n, 67n
722 index

Petrovi, Metropolitan Mojsej67 Popovi-Mlaenovi, Tijana332n

Petrovic, Princess Darinka Popovici, Fred466, 587
(of Montenegro)113n Porter, Sir James165
Petrovi, Radmila53n Porumbescu, Ciprian237
Petrovi-Njego, Petar II1046, 113, 225 Postoli, Foqion458
Pettan Hubert201n Poulis, Panagiotis157n
Pettan, Svanibor778, 294 Poulton, Hugh61n
Pettifer, James76 Pountney, David583
Peycheva, Lozanka98n, 294 Power of the Aegean546
Phanariots138, 156, 174, 2114, 218, 283 Powers, Harold281n
Philiki Etairia212 Prague64, 203, 241, 341, 345, 3637,
Phorminx326n 3712, 395, 453, 458, 4745, 477, 480,
Piaf, dith614 487, 493
Picasso, Pablo373 Pratt, Mary Louise68n
Pick, Daniel271n, 629, 6446, 648, 652 Prazna flaa557
Pidal, Ramon Menndez15, 21n, 25n Pre-Raphaelites608
Pindus mountains4647, 1834, 187, 591 Preuves527
Pinjo, Mirsad208 Prifti, Naum458
Pinotti, Elisabetta232 Prijedor640
Piotiko tragoudhi526 Princip, Gavrilo13
Pipkov, Lyubomir3526, 4512 Prishtina [Pritina]4, 494, 65360
Pipkov, Panayot353 Prizren, League of239
Piraeus70, 723, 179, 2855, 2878 Pro musica viva486
Pironkov, Simeon453n Prodanov-Krajinik, Ira474n
Pistrick, Eckehard6234 Prokofiev, Serge329, 365, 401n, 445
Piyyut2223, 25 Prokopiev, Trajko490
Pizmon23 Propp, Vladimir17, 105
Plamenac, Dragan194n Proev, Toma491
Plastino, Goffredo540n Proti, ore113
Plato154, 608 Prusac61
Plav40n, 109, 591 Psakhos, Constantinos136, 149n, 228n,
Plemmenos, John138n, 212n 326n
Pleyel, Ignaz Josef200 Psycharis, Yiannis303n, 306
Pliny the Younger568 Puccini, Giacomo234
Ponowska-Ziarek, Ewa33n Puci-Sorkoevi, Jelena195
Plovdiv [Filibe]238, 433, 455 Pythagoras538
Podgorica [Titograd]1079, 113, 116
Polet508 Qamili, Bujar610
Politis, Nikolaos182, 316 Quental, Antal de19n
Politopoulos, Haris309n Quilter, Roger529n
Poljanski, Branko V.373 Quirs, Felipe Torroba Bernaldo de18n
Pollak, Linsey558
Polychronakis, Ioannis558, 613 Raasted, Jrgen143n
Pomaks82n, 92, 945, 96, 989, 175 Rachmaninoff, Sergei355
Poniridis, Georgios319, 530 Raki, Franjo243
Pontos702, 934, 592 Radenci471
Pop, Adrian466 Radi, Duan4767, 487
Pop, Ioan43 Radi, Indira609
Popa, Vasko4767 Radica, Ruben481
Popescu-Judetz, Eugenia138n, 152n, 154, Radovanovi, Vladan488
156 Radovi, Branka494n
Popovi, Branka583 Radovi48, 812
Popovi, Kokan597 Radstone, Susannah36n
Popovi, Tatyana225n Radu, Ioana501
 index 723

Radujevac296 Risti, Marko362

Rdulescu, Ion Heliade216, 2656 Risti, Milan367, 4757
Rdulescu, Sperana40n, 43, 405, 502, Ritsos, Yannis2589, 5224
591 Rizvanolli, Esat494
Radulovi-Vuli, Manja493 Rockefeller Foundation (The)527
Raichenitsa99, 353 Rodotheatos, Dionyssios233, 256
Raichev, Alexander453n Rodrigue, Aron18n, 20n, 31n
Rajii, Stanojlo367, 4757 Rogalski, Theodor40910, 4601, 501
Rajkovi, Zorica100n Rogoi, Marko494
Raljevi, Sanja505 Rojko, Uro486
Rambo Amadeus510 Rolling Stones (The)509
Rambouillet talks77 Roma54, 65, 779, 834, 8790, 92, 94,
Rameau, Jean-Philippe642 98101, 108, 121, 152, 158, 164, 1748, 180,
Ramet, Sabrina P.59n, 508, 510, 550n 200, 278, 283, 287, 290, 2929, 415, 4189,
Ramovi, Amila493, 598 502, 507, 5125, 544, 555, 558, 560, 562,
Ramov, Primo484 593, 602, 608, 610, 621, 643, 650
Ramparts527 Romaioi146, 304
Randall, Annie J.497n Romani, Teodor208n
Raskolniki148 Romaniot Jews29
Rasmussen, Ljerka V.75n, 496, 5046, Romanou, Katy146n, 149n, 210n, 228n,
599600, 602, 608 256n, 306n, 309, 317, 330n, 530n, 625
Raiu, Adrian462, 464 Romberg, Bernhard215
Ravel, Maurice314, 324, 355, 363, 404, Rombou-Levidi, Marika97
409 Rome143, 333, 337, 358, 416, 549
Razastarr543 Rossini, Gioachino217, 219, 255
RCA Victor285 Rotaru, Diana587, 659
Rebetika70, 725, 179, 2589, 2837, Rotaru, Doina587, 659
28990, 294, 301, 405, 423, 5223, 527, Rotas, Nikiforos421, 534
540, 542, 559, 612, 627 Roudometof, Victor58n
Red Army (The)416, 444, 616 Roukounas, Kostas286
Red Hall (The)6567 Rouss433
Redepova, Esme502 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques112, 642
Reed, Carol269 Roussel, Albert320
Reger, Max321, 392n Rudi, Donika659
Reggae558 Rudi, Rafet494, 6589
Reinhard, Kurt72n Rumelia92, 120, 151, 238
Reinhard, Ursula72 Rumi, Djalal al-Dn392n
Reinhardt, Max354 Rumiana, Margaritova169
ReMusica658 Runciman, Steven549n
Reidbegovi, Dino564 Rundek, Darko509, 597
Reek, Ivo371 Rusinow, Denison2401
Rhodes18n, 23n, 25 Ruskin, John608, 648
Rhodope mountains46, 934, 95n, 96, Russell, Bertrand536
98, 333 Ruzitska, Franois236
Riadis, Emilios149, 3215, 407 Ruzitska, Jzsef206
Riblja orba50912 Ryan, James664n
Rice, Timothy46n, 499, 503, 514
Ricordi publishers583 abac261
Rietbergen, Peter664 aban, Ladislav201n
Rihtman, Cvjetko492 Sabor1978, 484
Rijavec, Andrej366 Sacher, Sran (Samuel)597
Rijeka194, 197, 469, 471 Sachsenhausen camp417
Rimsky-Korsakov, Nicolai309, 323 Safavids158
Rinuccini, Ottavia192 Saf al-Dn al-Urmawi154
724 index

afranek-Kavi, Lujo340 Schwartz-Salant, Nathan33n

Sahlins, Marshall134n Scola Cantorum217
Said, Edward W.62, 117, 152, 276, 609 Sedak, Eva3445, 350, 364n, 3701, 376n,
Saka, Branimir480 379, 480n
Sakellarides, Ioannis147, 149, 228 Seferis, Giorgos
Salabert publishers407 Selm282
Salihovi, Selim299 Selim III, Sultan157
Saltik, Hasan561 Selverstone, Marc J.549n
Sam154 Sem154
Samaras, Spyros2334, 243, 303 Semsis, Dimitris2878
Samlai, Erih418 Serafimovska, Velika Stojkova48, 49n
Samson, Jim33n, 279n, 307n, 310n, 573n Seress, Hugues379n
Samuel, Raphael36n, 437 erifovi, Marija604
San Stefano (Treaty of)217, 238, 446 Serocki, Kazimierz465
Sand, Shlomo660 Seroussi, Edwin21n, 25n, 26n, 27
Sandal, Mustafa545 Serres98, 160
Sandak of Novi Pazar63, 1067, 116, 238 etar Murad Aa156
Santr [santouri, santorini]71, 525 esti, Duan641, 659
aper, Sran597 esti, Marija641, 659
Sarajevo1316, 18, 35, 44n, 81, 161, 1701, Sevdah-rock602, 605, 608
2078, 297, 299301, 337, 341n, 384n, Sevdalinka4, 27, 102, 109, 169, 178, 283,
470, 490, 492, 5024, 5068, 556, 5634, 287, 297301, 364, 4056, 5023, 505, 513,
575, 582, 598, 6389, 647 559, 598, 604, 6478
Sarakatsani82n, 93, 94, 179 Svres (Treaty of)302
arin, Dino5989 Sexon, Sejo597
ark156, 158 eyd155
arlo Akrobata508 Seyir2812, 284, 299
Sarris, Haris594 Shabani, Elda610
Satie, Erik3612 Shakespeare, William466
Saunders, Francis Stonor527n Shantel560
Sava, Saint59 Sharia law29
Savaihis, Lambros287 Shaw, Ezel K.120n
Savi, Obrad32n, 123n, 276n, 407n, 608 Shaw, Stanford J.14n120n
Savile, Anthony568n Shebalin, Vissarion445
Savin, Risto247, 339 Sheholli, Bahtir162n, 170
Savremenna muzika353, 451 Shehu, Bashkim494
Savvopoulos, Dionysios523n, 526, 542 Shiloah, Amnon18n, 21n, 23n, 24n, 55,
Saz27, 71, 73, 169, 299300 137n
Saze178, 283, 287, 2956 Shkodr166, 178, 295, 4257, 429, 4578
Schabel, Chris630n Shopi48, 81
Schaeffer, Pierre481 Shostakovich, Dimitri445
Schama, Simon549n Shukar Collective562
Scherchen, Hermann539 Shupo, Sokol55, 164n, 456n, 459
Schlager602 Siani-Davies, Peter550n
Schlegel, Friedrich244 Sibelius, Jean356
Schneider, Marius72n ibenik194
Schnittke, Alfred445 iber, Ivan438
Schoenberg, Arnold260, 270, 316, 32631, Sibiu [Hermannstadt]206
3601, 367, 372, 379, 387, 409, 477, Sicilianos, Yorgos531, 534
5801 Siena481
Schott Music383 Signell, Karl155n, 158n, 174, 281, 283
Schreker, Franz360, 372 ikar, emtov26
Schroeder, Brian619n Sikelianos, Angelo303n, 310
Schubert, Franz399 Sikimi, Biljana88n
 index 725

Sikorski, Kazimierz455 Sofos, Spyros A.135n, 142n, 221n

Siliqi, Llazar427 Sokoli, Ramadan140n, 427, 459
Silverman, Carol78, 176n, 293n, 502 Sola, David Aaron de17n, 21n
Silverman, Joseph H.16n, 17, 21n Solakzde, Miskal156
Silvestri, Constantin410 Solomon ibn Gabirol22n
Simaku, Thomas571 Solomos, Dionysios232, 242
Simi, Goran559 Sombor261
Simi, Vojislav362n Sonemus Ensemble582
imii, Darko375n Songlines561
Simes, Joo Gaspar 19n Sophia, Queen (of Greece)211n
Sinaia398 Sophocles3923
Sinasos70 Sorkoevi, Antun195
Sirakouli, Vasiliki100 Sorkoevi, Luka1956
Srba2967 Sorkoevi, Marina1956
Sirens6079 Souvtchinsky, Pierre645
irli, Adriana399n Spalding, Baird T.586
irola, Boidar340, 343, 34850, 416 Spanoudi, Sofia331n
Sirri, Sadeddin163 Spasova, Rozalina417n
Sirto121, 286, 631 Spassov, Bozhidar5689
Six Degrees561 Spassov, Ivan4545, 585, 626
Ska558 Speer, Daniel88
Skalkottas, Nicos260, 316, 32631, 520, Spencer, Edmund165
530n Spentzou, Efrossini568, 618
Skalovski, Todor490 Spiri-Beard, Danijela3589
Skendi, Stavro67n, 186 Split191, 1934, 196, 208, 343, 346, 469
kerjanc, Lucijan Marija345, 360, 475 SPRAY654, 660
Skiladeli544 Sprengnether, Madelon62n
Skjaveti, Julije194 Srca, Lutajua59
Sklad340 Srebotnak, Alojz486
Skopje77, 160, 163, 168, 294, 396, 470 Srem63, 84, 173
kroup, Frantiek207 Sremac, Stjepan100n
Skryabin, Alexander328n, 357, 363, 385, Sremski Karlovci657, 113, 2234
387 Srpski knjievni glasnik337, 33940, 359
Slapak, Svetlana224n Stbler, Gerhard429
Slavenski (tolcer Slavenski), Josip246, Stainov, Petko353, 3556, 358
34850, 363, 3656, 36990, 394, 401, Stalin, Joseph420, 424, 428, 431, 434, 437,
407, 420, 443, 480, 4878, 643 4445, 449, 468
Slavenski, Milana3723 Stamitz, Johann195
Slavonia1989, 202 Stankovi, Kornelije679, 103n, 148, 204,
lezinger, Josif103n, 203, 207, 229, 2615 224, 2301, 233, 333
Slovenska muzika340 Stara Gradika418
Smailovi, Avdo492 Stara Zagora433
Smailovi, Vedran638 Stefani, Jan206
Smetana, Bedich305, 442 Stefanija, Leon485
Smilkov, Romeo454n Stefanova, Dessislava558
Smith, Anthony2212 Stefanovi, Ivana488, 566
Smith, Dave429n Stefanovski, Goran369
Smith, Jonathan M.28n Stein, Murray33n
Snel, Guido13n Steiner, George346, 412
Socialist Realism432, 434, 439, 449, 451, Steinhardt, Inacio17n
453, 4734, 476, 47980, 496 Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)646
Socor, Matei4489, 460 Stephnescu, Gheorghe217, 398
Sofia18, 160, 171, 337, 433, 451, 456, 499, Stephanis, Gaetano di193
584, 586 Stipevi, Ennio189n, 193n, 194n
726 index

Stobart, Henry589, 608n Syngros, Andreas256

Stockhausen, Karlheinz488, 568, 580 Synkathistos96
Stockmann, Doris186, 429 Syros210
Stockmann, Erich186, 429 Syrtos1823, 524
Stoianov, Blazho453 Szapora560
Stoianovich, Traian117n Szymanowski, Karol305, 313, 325, 357,
Stoin, Elena421 369, 3916, 399n, 411, 442, 581
Stoin, Vasil87, 351
Stojanovi, Petar338 Tabakov, Emil456, 585
Stojanovi-Novii, Dragana485n Tadjwd (tilvet)153, 160
tokavian dialect197n, 241 Tahiri, Ramiz564
Stokes, Martin151n, 297, 301, 505n, Taigetus mountains46
58990, 611 Tajevi, Marko363, 365, 369, 377, 475
Stolz, Benjamin A.186n Taji-Farouki, Suha61n
Stoyanov, Vessilin356, 360 Takovo54
Stojkov, Stojan491 Taksm (taximi)23, 157, 282, 2868, 405,
tokavian dialect197n 633
St. Petersburg [Leningrad]456, 490, 581 Tallava75, 779, 610
Stratou, Dora499, 541 Tambal296
Strauss, Richard234, 362, 392 Tamburica (tanbr)10810, 141, 157, 166,
Stravinsky, Igor320, 323n, 374, 379, 385, 177, 282, 299, 301, 511, 557, 602, 640
389, 410, 459, 4769, 482, 524, 537, 571, Tamindi, Borislav494
581, 645 Tnase, Maria501
Strigturi43 Tanbr Ali Efendi157
Stroe, Aurel462, 464 Tanbr Cemil Bey1578
Strohm, Reinhard396n, 642 Tanec Ensemble295, 470, 490, 499
Strossmayer, Bishop Josip Juraj243, 245 Taner, Ruha632, 659
Strunck, Oliver21 Taner, Yilmas632, 634, 659
Stubli, Jura508, 5967 Taner, Zeki632, 659
tuli, Branimir (Johnny)508, 510, 595 Tanev, Ivo610
Stylianou, Tasos633 Tanzimat19n, 122, 158, 218, 237
Sublime Porte18, 59n, 120, 151 Tapan98, 141, 153, 287, 2934, 296, 567
Subotica204, 469, 509 Tarabuka [darbuka]109, 141, 177
Sufis61, 122, 1534, 160, 162, 164, 168, Taraf de Haidouks90, 296n, 560
1701, 561 Taraful Gorjului501
Sugarman, Jane176, 239, 605 Taragota90
Suk, Josef371 ranu, Cornel462, 465
Sleyman I, Sultan151, 244 ara Oaului404, 47, 812
Sulzer, Franz Joseph212 Tarmakov, Roussi569
umadija5156, 81, 374, 591 Taskov, Krassimir585
Snnet99, 153 Tasovac, Ivan576
Supek, Olga100n Tatcho drom559
Susam-Saraeva, ebnem, 627 Tathyay, Mehmet Ali631
utka79 Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich345, 535
Suvorov, Maksim6667 Teamim22
Svaek, Maruka441 Tenedos302
Svatbarski orkestri5145 Tennyson, Lord Alfred104
Sv. Cecilija202, 340 Teresa, (Mother)459
Sveti Stefan470 Terzakis, Dimitris531
Svetli55 Terzetes, Georgios227
Svirala54 Terzopoulou, Miranda93
Svolos, Yannis311n Tetovo45n, 77, 168, 657
Swets, Wouter87, 295 Thacker, Toby527
 index 727

Thasos94 Troelsgrd, Christian136n

The Man Who Cried560 Trophe Mondiale de lAccordon638
Theodorakis, Mikis74, 2589, 4223, Trotter, William329
5208, 538, 542, 572, 579 Truman Doctrine529
Thermopylae, Battle of115 Tsagkarakis, Ioannis531n
Theresienstadt camp417 Tsamikos1823
Thessaloniki [Salonica]14, 18, 25, 31, 76, Tsenova, Julia5856
98n, 177, 288, 3212, 579, 612 Tsetsos, Markos254n, 311n, 312
Thomas, Adrian432n Tsibiridou, Fotini95n
Thompson, Paul437 Tsifteteli734, 99, 175, 2867, 5445,
Thrace46, 70, 83, 91100, 153, 160, 177, 606, 631
183, 238, 294, 302 Tsiovas, Dimitris223, 258
Timooara173, 205, 213, 215n, 515, 550 Tsitsanis, Vassilis74, 259
Tipoplastika54 Tsouyopoulos, Georges535
purituri41 Tsrvena Kniga295, 558
Tirana76, 100, 167n, 295, 4268, 430, Tsurtsumia Rusudan72n
457, 610 Tuksar, Stanislav191n, 192, 193n, 196n,
Tito, Josip Broz589, 84, 107, 335, 368, 2456, 343
390, 420, 423, 434, 444, 4689, 4735, Tulip Age218
489, 508,596 Turbo-folk506, 512, 514, 544, 577, 596,
TMT628 6002, 6058, 612, 641, 647
Todorov, Kosta354 Turda, Marius240n
Todorov, Todor Vasilev351n Tutev, Georgi4524
Todorov, Tzvetan437 TV Palma512
Todorova, Maria2, 36n, 76, 80n, 272, TV Pink512, 609
2768, 622, 647, 649, 655n TXC (Terror X Crew)614
Tibn, Colm665 Tzoumerka-Knoedler, Vicky571
Toids557
Tokumaru, Yoshihiko30n Ufk Bey, Ali (Wojciech Bobowski)156
Tolinger, Robert113 Ugrei, Dubravka62, 369
Tomaek, Andrija422 Ulu, Ahmet561
Tomaevi, Katarina66, 68n, 69n, 262n, Umayyad dynasty137
263, 358, 362n, 367n, 5767 UNESCO47, 51, 623n
Tomai, Tamara480n United States information Service
Topola51, 55 (USIS)528, 530
Torp, Lisbet73n Uskoks186
Touloum71 Ustae106, 340, 350, 415, 4178, 420, 422
Toundas, Panayiotas288 Usl25n, 87, 1558, 283
Traeger, Paul167n, 184, 429n Uzelac, Gordana222n
Tragaki, Dafni612
Tragodistes, Hieronymos631n Valaades70
Trajkovi, Vlastimir4878, 583 Valaorites, Aristotle227
Trans-global Underground560 Valpovo199
Transylvania40, 44, 47, 856, 151, 198, Vamvakaris, Markos723, 259, 286, 288
2056, 211, 214n, 235, 238, 408, 433, 444, Vancea, Zeno410
461, 465 Vandi, Despina6134
Trebinje500n Vanhal, Johann Baptist200
Trebizond180 Varadin197, 2001, 370, 371
Treitler, Leo30n, 1389 Varse, Edgard3878, 535
Trevor, Roy104n, 1156 Varna354, 433
Trevor-Roper, Hugh527 Varon, Ishak26
Trgovevi, Ljubinka247 Varvoglis, Marios3136, 326n
Trieste191, 203 Vasari, Giorgio218
728 index

Vaughan Williams, Ralph235, 311 Vukovi, Severina641

Vedral, Vaclav264 Vukovi, Vojislav340, 343, 3678, 417
Veles294 Vuji, Joakim242, 262, 263n
Velikovi, Jasna583 Vukdragovi, Mihailo474
Velimirovi, Milo136 Vukovar418
Venice24, 151, 18991, 1934, 196, 208,
218, 6612 Wachmann, Eduard216
Venice Biennale389, 584 Wachmann, Ion Andrei216, 236, 2646
Venizelos, Eleftherios3023, 30810, 318, Wachtel, Andrew Baruch225, 227, 334n,
520 3368, 469, 553, 554n, 667
Ventura, Fra193 Wagner, Cosima322n
Verbunkos86, 90 Wagner, F. Peter550n
Verdery, Katherine468n Wagner, Richard215n, 235, 247, 306,
Verdi, Giuseppe219, 234, 244 3089, 318, 322, 358, 362, 392, 409, 416,
Verona194 578
Versailles (Treaty of)240, 248, 250, 354, Wagstaff, Malcolm165n
446 Wallis, Roger43n, 535n
Vickers, Miranda183n, 551n Warsaw Autumn Festival260, 450, 455,
Vidalis, Giorgos286 482, 484
Vienna64, 147, 151, 197201, 2035, 213, Watteau, Jean-Antoine314
224, 230, 236, 241, 2434, 264, 306, 330, Weber, Carl Maria von217
333, 338, 3456, 358, 360, 365, 395, 419, Weber, Max135n, 138, 642, 663
456, 534, 564, 56971, 581, 583, 587, 597 Weber, Zdenka350n
Vieru, Anatol4624 Webern, Anton von487, 533
Vila608 Weich-Shahak, Susana24n, 25, 290n
Villiers de lIsle-Adam, Auguste351n Weill, Kurt326, 581
Vimer, Frantiek-Franjo113 Weir, David644
Virovitica199 Welz, Gisela629n, 630
Viegrad36 West, Rebecca167
Vinji, Filip224 Wheatcroft, Andrew19n, 120n, 549n
Vissi, Anna6134 White, Hayden254
Vita pis543 Wiener Figaro354
Vital, Moshe23n Wiener, Leo15
Viteazul, Prince Mihai2356, 265 Wightman, Alistair393n
Vlachopoulos, Yannis531 Wilkinson, John Gardner14n, 104n, 106n,
Vlachs47, 82n, 89, 91, 94, 101, 104, 111, 115, 166
2201, 226, 621, 623 Willems, Wim292n
Vladigerov, Pancho3548, 416, 4513 Williams, Alastair580
Vladimerscu, Tudor212 Williams, Chris167n
Vlagopoulos, Panos228n, 2589, 536 Wilton, Robert106n
Vlor [Valona]18, 425 Winchester, Simon134n
Vojna Granica (Military Border)63, 65, Windschuttle, Keith152n
689, 81, 83, 186, 198 Wisocki, Stanisaw455
Vojvodina51, 63, 8391, 94, 96, 103n, 108, Wittgenstein, Ludwig5367
168, 1723, 1978, 2035, 230, 238, 261, Wolf, Hugo369
338, 566, 593 Wolff, Larry32, 111, 114, 276, 395
Volner, Ivo418 Wolfram, Stephen565
Vorpsi, Pllumb459 Womad561
Vosganian, Mihaela587 Woodward, Susan L.552, 637, 647
Voudouris, Lilian322n World Fairs501, 556
Vourliotis, Nikos (NiVo)614 World Music27, 80, 90, 169, 175, 518,
Vranje102, 178, 364 5613, 567, 602
Vrebalov, Aleksandra5657 World of Sevdah559
Vucinich, Wayne207n Wright, Owen156n, 282
 index 729

Xanthi934, 96, 98, 100, 294 Zannos, Ioannis137, 281n

Xanthoudakis, Haris232, 260, 328n, 533, Zappa, Frank542
539, 588 Zatrijeba107
Xanthoulis, Nikos588 ebeljan, Isadora565, 568, 583
Xena Warrior Princess603 Zeaj, Emina299300
Xenakis, Iannis96n, 260, 319, 422, 429, Zeibekiko73, 286, 288, 631
463, 521, 525, 53740, 555, 5657, 570, Zeitschrift fr Musik416n
572, 579 Zeka Dede157
Xenos558 Zemun65
Xenos, Alekos259, 318, 4213 Zenitism123, 373, 375, 377, 381, 384, 509,
Xesyrtos96 6456
Xydakis, Nikos542 eraska-Kominek, Sawomira154n
Xyndas, Spyridion233 ero, Muhamed300n
ganec, Vinko348, 448, 592
Yack, Bernard2212, 268 Zhdanov, Andrei424, 427, 437, 43940,
Yalta Conference443, 616, 624 445
Yamaguchi, Osama30n Zhivkov, Todor445
Yannatou, Savina527, 564 ia59
Yapaci, Haim26 idovska svijest16
Yeilada, Ekrem632n Zikr (dhikr)154, 170, 385
Yetka, Rauf158, 2812 Zil161
Young, Antonia56n, 116n, 166n, 167n Zingarelli, Niccol Antonio255
Ypsilantis, Alexander212 Zionism16, 31, 660
Yugoslavism224, 2402 ivana (blind ivana)224
YU-Grupa59, 508 ivkovi, Mirjana370
Yusuf bin Nizameddin155 Zlatari, Dinko191
Yusuf Dede156 Zlati, Slavko472
Zlatna Vila Festival640
Zabranjeno puenje509, 5978 Zlatorog353
Zadar196 Znamenny chant144, 148
Zadeja, esk4568 Znepolski, Dencho421
Zadeja, Tonin295n Zog I, King (of Albania)425
Zagreb2012, 243, 245, 247, 335, 3389, Zografski, Tomislav491
343, 3634, 3702, 416, 471, 481, 4901, Zonaradikos93, 96
493, 50810, 564, 592, 5956, 5989, 641 Zoraqi, Nikolla4578
Zagreb Biennale Festival479, 4812, Zoras, Leonidas3179, 416, 530
6256 Zoster599
Zaimakis, Yiannis422n Zubovi, Alma170n
Zaimov, Velislav586 Zupani, Beno476n, 500
Zajc, Ivan201n, 2435, 342, 347, 349 Zurla (zournas, zurna)3, 979, 141, 153,
Zakynthos147, 232 287, 293, 296
Zambelios, Spyridon182 Zvecka Club508
Zana608 Zvuk3402, 365, 367, 511
ani, Ivo108n, 225, 420n, 436n, 438n