Arti musices, Vol. 40 No. 1-2, 2009.
Original scientific paper
History as the Important Communication Event . Notes at the Half-Centenary Jubilee of Josip Andreis’s Historija muzike [History of Music, 1951-54] Focused on the Presentation of the Slavic People’s Music
Marija Bergamo
orcid.org/0000-0002-5973-5509
; Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
At the half-centenary jubilee of the extensive three-volume Historija muzike [History of Music] by the Croatian historian Josip Andreis, this contribution attempts to signify on the segment devoted to the Slavic people’s music Andreis’s historical points of departure, reference points, ideals and sources, and encouragements and limits in the conception and realization of the work. In the region of the former state, that work filled in a substantial void and represented an important communication event. It contributed to shaping historical awareness over several decades.
Just the place that the author gave to the music history of the Slavic peoples in the context of "the great European histories" is a particularity of the work. Observing it as an equally valuable entity, he accepted the methodological and ideological assumptions of his sources in its description, strongly stressing both the social-historical framework and the assumed function music should serve within it. Endeavouring to give shape to the music identity of the Slavic regions, he concentrated on the referential themes, which were carried through the entire interpretation like leitmotifs. In the first place these are precisely social function as an exceptional value criterion, then the national and national style as the basic positive determinant and proof of the meaningfulness of music endeavours, relying on folkore as the source material, and (insufficiently defined) the realistic approach. Despite the discourse conditioned by the programmatic ideas of his time, the author managed to set aside undoubtedly aesthetic values and to rely in his argumentation on designations of insights that were systematic in nature and on autonomous reasons based on music.
The perils of contemporary and subsequent observation and instrumentalization of historical facts serving particular ideologies, and the author’s pioneer musical insights that were acknowledged and elaborated in later research, are revealed in the examples from the opus of M. Musorgski A. Skrajbin and L. Janáček.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
47495
URI
Publication date:
20.11.2009.
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