Arti musices, Vol. 54 No. 2, 2023.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.21857/y26kecgxe9
Institutionalization of Music Culture in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1878-1941): Identification of Key Figures and Processes
Fatima Hadžić
orcid.org/0000-0002-0418-1318
; Univerzitet u Sarajevu – Muzička akademija. Sarajevo, Bosna i Hercegovina
Abstract
The first civic institutions of musical culture in Bosnia and Herzegovina were created at the end of the 19th century, much later than in neighboring countries. Namely, for more than four hundred years under Ottoman rule (1463-1878), Bosnia and Herzegovina belonged to the Islamic-oriental cultural circle. With the accession to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1878, Ottoman rule ended, an event which had a specific effect on the musical culture of that period. The focus of this paper is the identification of the key actors of institutionalization, that is, the process of creating modern civil music institutions from 1878 to 1941 within the so-called institutional theories.
Consideration of institutionalization – the process of creating modern musical institutions of the civic type – implies an understanding of the specific historical context in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the field of musical culture, socio-political influence is visible as a new, Central-European cultural model that the Austro-Hungarian government promoted through cultural and political action, which consequently caused a sudden transition from the Oriental-Islamic to the European cultural circle. Cultural life was conditioned by the complex relationship between the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina in their struggle for ecclesiastical and educational autonomy and the Austro-Hungarian government, which strove to achieve its own colonial goals. Immigrants and professional foreign musicians played the main role in the institutionalization in the field of musical culture, i.e. the transmission and application of a new cultural model.
The social contexts of the Austro-Hungarian period and the period between the two world wars are significantly different, but in the field of musical culture one line of development can be traced through three phases of institutionalization, and which relates to performing and composing activities and musical education.
The first phase (1878-1888): the introduction of a new cultural model takes place in the first decade of the Austro-Hungarian rule in order to satisfy the cultural needs of the settlers, and is manifested through new forms of musical life such as salon music, public performances by military orchestras, and concerts by guest artists. At the same time, concert halls were built (Officer’s Casino, 1881), and an extensive school reform was carried out. The main actors of the first (but also the second) phase are immigrants, foreign musicians, among whom Czech musicians were especially numerous.
The second phase (1888-1918): the adaptation of the new cultural model begins relatively quickly, already in the second decade of Austro-Hungarian rule with the massification of musical amateurism, and especially the very popular domestic singing societies that nurtured the practice of vocal and instrumental music following the example of similar associations in the region, but under the influence of national ideologies. In this period, the first private music schools were founded, and the first compositions were written mainly by foreign composers, but very soon also by the first domestic composers. The second phase lasts until the end of the Austro-Hungarian administration in BiH (1918).
The third phase (1918-1941): the replacement of the accepted model with a new one which, in the socio-political conditions of the first Yugoslavia, prescribes the »new« Yugoslav cultural policy. The results were the establishment of the first state cultural institutions (National Theater in Sarajevo, 1920, National Theater in Banja Luka, 1930) and musical institutions (Regional Music School, 1920 and Sarajevo Philharmonic, 1923), as well as the activity of the first generation of Bosnian composers.
Keywords
Bosnia and Herzegovina; institutionalization; musical institutions; the Austro-Hungarian period; the period between the two world wars
Hrčak ID:
313368
URI
Publication date:
16.1.2024.
Visits: 334 *