Full Description
This book asks how a study of many different musics in South East Europe can help us understand the construction of cultural traditions, East and West. It crosses boundaries of many kinds, political, cultural, repertorial and disciplinary. Above all, it seeks to elucidate the relationship between politics and musical practice in a region whose art music has been all but written out of the European story and whose traditional music has been subject to appropriation by one ideology after another. South East Europe, with its mix of ethnicities and religions, presents an exceptionally rich field of study in this respect. The book will be of value to anyone interested in intersections between pre-modern and modern cultures, between empires and nations and between culture and politics.
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
Introduction
Part 1. Balkan Geographies
Chapter 1 Exodus
Sarajevo: little Jerusalem
Two peninsulas: the Sephardic diaspora
Singing the community: music of the Sephardim
Opening out: themes and developments
Chapter 2 Ecologies
Music and place
Ringed by mountains: the Oaş Country
On the voice: the Dinaric Alps and other mountains
Deep in Šumadija
Chapter 3 Displacements
Investing in place
Migrations: Serbs in a Habsburg world
Trading places: Greece and Anatolia
Tallava rules: Kosovars in Macedonia
Chapter 4 Ecumenes
In the minority
All together in Vojvodina
Orchestrating Thrace
Chapter 5 Centres
All in the family: mapping Montenegro
Finding the centre: people and traditions
East - West
Part 2. Historical Layers
Chapter 6 A Makam-Echos Culture
Grand narratives
Byzantine reflections
Ottoman canons
Chapter 7 Eastern Recessions
Allahu Ekber
Coffee break
Turning West
Chapter 8 Infrastructures
Littoral Balkans: Venice and the Adriatic
Mitteleuropa: the reach of the Habsburgs
Reciprocities: modernising the peripheries
The Principalities and beyond
Chapter 9 Nations
The first steps
Two nations
The Berlin Balkans
Yugoslavism
Chapter 10 Inspirers
Building the pyramids: reflections on high culture
Greeks ....
.... and other agents
Either/or: reflections on modernism
Part 3. Music in Transition
Chapter 11 Mixing It
Discourses of transition
Nuts and bolts: elements of popular music
On the record: surveying the legacy
Chapter 12 Join the Club
Following the leader: Manolis Kalomiris
Drawing the circle: the Greek National School
Another way: the failure of Greek modernism
Chapter 13 Moderna
Garlands: Stevan Mokranjac
One people, three names: the first Yugoslavia
Late arrivals: Croatian modernisms
Parallel tracks: Bulgarian advances
Transit to Prague
Chapter 14 Serbo-Croat
Who owns Slavenski?
From the Balkans ...
...to the cosmos
Chapter 15 Placing Genius
A tempting comparison: locating George Enescu
Closing in: Enescu's journey
Wider again: in the modernist canon
Part 4. Eastern Europe
Chapter 16 The Curtain Descends
Left, right....
In extremis: the singular case of Albania
Administered music: performing communism
Composers on message
Chapter 17 Diverging Paths
Traffic with Moscow
The acolyte: Bulgarian bridges
The zealot: Albanian austerities
The maverick: Romanian renewals
Chapter 18 Another Try
Politics versus culture: the second Yugoslavia
The dark decade: mainly Serbia
In from the cold: mainly Croatia, a little Slovenia, and back to Serbia
Catching up: other republics
Chapter 19 Birthright of the People
Orchestras: classicising traditional music
Newly composed folk music
Simulacra: wedding music and more
Chapter 20 One Got Away
Popular art music: Theodorakis at large
Art music: modernism is official
Popular music: rebetika and beyond
Part 5. Global Balkans
Chapter 21 All Change
Brave new world
Another Balkans: the diasporic imagination
Composers in exile
Chapter 22 Conservation
Who needs classical music?
Has modern music really grown old?
Where have all the folksongs gone?
Chapter 23 Balkan Beat
Heroes
Reinscribing Yugoslavia
Divas
Greek mythology
Chapter 24 On Boundaries and Events
In theory
Greece and its neighbours
Music partitioned ...
... and not quite partitioned
Chapter 25 Endgame
Degenerations
Generations
Balkan ghetto: the story of Kosovo
Are we there yet?
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
