Byzantine church music between tradition and innovation

There is hardly any relevant musicological and theological literature regarding the content and meaning of terms such as canon and Holy Tradition, on the one hand, and creativity and innovation in connection with ecclesiastical psalmody on the other. The focus of our attention here is a specific phenomenon of kalophony (“beautified” chant) which Edward Williams rightly described as an Eastern Christian musical Ars Nova in an age of political, but not cultural and artistic, twilight in the Byzantine Empire. Theodore Metochites (c. 1260-1332), one of the most famous polymaths and patrons of late Byzantine art, wrote sadly that his age “has nothing more to say”. However, it is well known that the Palaiologan era was actually an age in which art and science flourished, despite the fact that its result, as Viktor Lazarev notes, was the end of something old, and not the beginning of something new. Was the movement towards kalophony during the artistic renaissance of the Palaiologoi termed “conservative traditionalism” by historians of art, an innovation that was originally supposed to enrich the “traditional sound” that followed prayer? Or, on the contrary, was kalophony a mark of a more radical modernism that deprived the Church music of its primary liturgical function by making it an independent artistic entity? Did late Byzantine composers, who not incidentally carryied the title of master of the art of singing, and who consciously moved away from the anonymity of their many predecessors,6 want to transcend or nullify the unwritten, but nevertheless accepted and ancient rule that melody should follow, emphasize, and interpret the text of prayer or, in other words, to be in its service? Even more important, what was the reason behind this liberated artistic creativity and can it possibly be justified in a theological and liturgical context

The post-Byzantine psaltic origin of the recent Serbian church chant

During the difficult years in an enslaved Serbia under Turkish rule, there were no favourable circumstances for the development of the psaltic art, and neither can one talk about any centre of psaltic art, something that might have been for the Serbs what the Great Church of Constantinople was for the Greeks. Church music was learnt only orally, and one can speak hardly at all about musical training during this period. On account of the lack of musical MSS, we cannot be sure which genre of ecclesiastical melody the Serbians brought with them to the cities of Sremski Karlovci, Szentendre, Komoran etc., or to the newly founded monasteries of Fruška Gora, which under the new circumstances would become centres for a renaissance of Serbian spirituality. The opinions of the first scholars of Serbian church music disagree when it comes to the origins of ecclesiastical melody before and just after the period of the great migrations. The majority of them, correctly, supported the idea that church music before the 18th century derived from the Byzantine tradition, with certain special characteristics deriving from the use of the Church Slavonic language. There existed also, nevertheless, the baseless opinion that before the uprooting there was a special Serbian melodic tradition, which one might have heard in Serbian churches and monasteries, since the so called Srbulje – liturgical books written in an older Serbian form of the Church Slavonic language – were used. However, later, and rather more analytical, studies of later Serbian church music proved its close relationship with the melodic tradition that was recorded using the New Method, something that confirms precisely the present author’s opinion that we are dealing with a unified Orthodox psaltic tradition. The indisputable contribution of Greek teachers to the formation of Serbian psaltic music is confirmed by the surviving information concerning the first organized schools of Byzantine music, as well as from the Greek musical codices preserved in several places in Serbia, which were, as I shall demonstrate, certainly also used on the analogia by Serbian psaltai

“Summer spiritual academy of musical youth” – testimony about spiritual and musical opportunities in Serbia during the period of transition

Godine 1992. u manastiru Studenici – zadužbini rodonačelnika srpske dinastije Nemanjić – održana je prva po redu “Duhovna akademija muzičke omladine” u organizaciji Muzičke omladine Srbije, a pod pokroviteljstvom Ministarstva kulture i Ministarstva za omladinu i sport Srbije i s blagoslovom Srpske pravoslavne crkve. Koncepcija ove desetodnevne manifestacije bila je praktično u celosti preuzeta iz “Jugoslovensko-nemačke horske nedelje”, koja je pred početak rata u Jugosloviji, nakon više od jedne decenije, bila iznenada prekinuta na inicijativu koordinatora iz Nemačke. I jedna i druga manifestacija podrazumevale su negovanje horske duhovne muzike, zajednički višednevni boravak i uključenost u pripremu određenog muzičkog repertoara mladih polaznika, kao i završni koncert na kome bi svi zajedno nastupali s programom na kojem se radilo...In 1992, the first “Spiritual Academy of Musical Youth” was held at the Studenica monastery – the foundation of the progenitor of the Serbian Nemanjić dynasty. The organizer of the Academy was the Music Youth of Serbia. Financial support was provided by the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Serbia, while the Serbian Orthodox Church supported the event by providing hospitality for participants of the academy. The concept of this ten-day event was completely taken over from another event called The “Yugoslav-German Choir Week”, which was suddenly interrupted before the beginning of the war in Yugoslavia after more than a decade,on the initiative of the coordinator from Germany. Both the one and the other manifestation included the nurturing of choral spiritual music, the involvement of the young participants in the elaboration of a specific musical repertoire to be presented at the final concert, as well as appropriate lectures on topics from various fields

Omladini (ne)dostupna sfera umetnosti: „Jugoslovensko-nemačka horska nedelja” u afirmisanju crkvene muzike

Iako je građanima FNR / SFR Jugoslavije bila zagarantovana sloboda pripadnosti verskim zajednicama, kao što je takvim zajednicama bilo zagarantovano i pravo da obavljaju svoju delatnost i komuniciraju s vernicima, postojali su različiti, kontinuirani oblici pritiska na jedne i na druge nakon kasnih 40-ih. Kao rezultat toga, verske zajednice imale su ograničen pristup javnoj sferi, posebno masovnim medijima i kulturnim institucijama. Imajući u vidu takve okolnosti, pokušaj da se jugoslovenska omladina upozna s crkvenom muzikom, započet krajem 60-ih u okviru MO Jugoslavije i Srbije, predstavljao je zanimljiv iskorak. U ovom poglavlju fokusiraću se, pre svega, na pojedinosti u vezi s osmišljavanjem, pripremom i odvijanjem višedecenijske međunarodne manifestacije „Jugoslovensko-nemačka horska nedelja”, a zatim i na rad grupe umetnika i naučnika koji su u tome imali presudnu ulogu. Pozabaviću se i promovisanjem specifičnih pogleda ove grupe umetnika i naučnika na estetske, muzičke i istorijske karakteristike srpskog crkvenog muzičkog nasleđa među mladim Jugoslovenima

The "Serbian" Sung Word. A Contribution to Demystification of the Term Folk in the Phrase Serbian Folk Church Singing

During the 19th century, monophonic church chanting in the Serbian Church received a complex name made up of the terms Serbian, Orthodox, ecclesiastical and folk. These epithets were never the subject of a thorough (ethno)musicological study, either in detail or as a whole. Certain articles, although sporadically and without an analysis based on arguments, pointed out the uniqueness of the Serbian vocal tradition and the interconnection ofecclesiastical and folk music. Theological discourse concerning the validity or invalidity of a certain pleonasm (Orthodox-ecclesiastical) and a signifier of nationality (folk-Serbian) in this compound was completely omitted. A thorough analysis of Serbian folk church singing should include various aspects, and each of these could be the subject of a separate study. However, I will dedicate my attention to the term folk and analyse it from the perspective of the "temptation of religious nationalism” which is more than relevant for the Orthodox nations in the Balkans during recent history. This, for musicology an apparently marginal phenomenon, becomes very important in certain historical, ecclesial, and socio-cultural circumstance

Статус римокатоличке богослужбене музике у процесу Другог ватиканског концила

Студија истражује историјски, друштвени, културни и антрополошки аспект римокатоличке богослужбене музике током Другог ватиканског концила. По затварању Концила, утврђивање границе између сакралне и секуларне музике одложено је на неодређено време. Овоме је значајно допринела делатност Конзилијума за спровођење одлука о Светој литургији, професионалних црквених музичара, као и њихова међусобна интеракција. Увиди у процес који се одвијао током припреме, доношења концилских одлука, и њиховог спровођења у пракси, оправдали су потребу интердисциплинарног приступа у разматрању црквене музике

International conference Kosta P. Manojlović and the Idea of Slavic and Balkan Cultural Unification (1918-1941)

This conference is organised within the project Serbian musical identities within local and global frameworks: traditions, changes, challenges (No. 177004) financed by the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development. It is supported by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia as well as the Department of Fine Arts and Music SASA

The beginnings of Byzantine musicology in Serbia: Achievements and impasses

The paper presents the circumstances in which musicological medievalism emerged in Serbia after the Second World War as a separate discipline within the research projects of the newly founded Institute of Musicology of the Serbian Academy of Sciences. It focuses on the contributions of three first musicologists medievalists: Miloš Velimirović, Stojan Lazarević and Dimitrije Stefanović. It outlines the conditions under which these researchers adopted the methodological principles of the Western musicological school - Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae - which were current at the time but soon became outdated. In light of the disagreements among Western and Greek scholars regarding the approach to the interpretation of the development of neumatic notation immediately before and after the fall of Byzantium, the paper also shows the personal scholarly credo and interests of certain Serbian researchers, as well as their (un)willingness to adopt and even present new knowledge and trends to the wider academic community