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New Sound 51

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Issue No. 51

Conversations

Jelena Novak – MUSIC THAT KNOWS WHERE IT’S GOING. Conversation with Tom Johnson
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Studies

Nice Fracile – THE PHONOGRAPHIC RECORDINGS OF TRADITIONAL MUSIC PERFORMED BY SERBIAN PRISONERS OF WAR (1915 –1918)
Abstract: This paper will focus on an examination of the phonographic recordings of traditional music, as performed by Serbian war prisoners during World War One (1915–1918) in the German camps of Königsbrück and Parchim. These recordings of traditional Serbian songs and instrumental tunes were made on the spot by the German researcher Georg Schünemann. This is a unique and outstandingly valuable source – in terms of quantity, quality and scientific approach – providing material about Serbian folklore from the early 20th century. The author of this paper will examine the basic poetic/musical features of that material, the difficulties in deciphering the recordings and the identification of the informants, and also the continuity and changes in the style of performing those songs and instrumental tunes, which can still be heard sung and played in Serbia – in comparison to the musical folklore material from the early 20th century. Moreover, the significance and current relevance of the material for Serbian ethnomusicology will be highlighted, considering the fact that it has not been accessible to the scholarly public so far.
Keywords: phonographic recordings, wax cylinders, Serbian prisoners, German camps, Königsbrück, Parchim, poetic/musical features, dactylic form, heterometric and heterorhythmic structure.
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Ivana Vesić, Vesna Peno – THE STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE SPHERE OF MUSICAL AMATEURISM IN SOCIALIST YUGOSLAVIA: A CASE STUDY OF THE BEOGRADSKI MADRIGALISTI CHOIR
Abstract: In this paper we focused on investigating how the sphere of musical amateurism functioned in Yugoslavia in the decades following the end of WWII. Observing through changes in the role and significance of amateur music ensembles, specifically choirs, in Yugoslav society from the late 1940s until the late 1960s / early 1970s that were manifest in their de-massification, gradual professionalisation and extensive use in cultural diplomacy, we sought to explain that this involved multiple factors – above all, the shifts in Yugoslav international policy after the confrontation with the Soviet Union in 1948, and, consequently, the revisions of its cultural policies. Their influence was observed through a detailed examination of the activities of the Beogradski madrigalisti choir, from its foundation in 1951 until the late 1960s / early 1970s. Although it was unique among Yugoslav choirs in many respects, the early history of this ensemble clearly reflected the demand for excellence in the sphere of amateur performance from the 1950s onwards, one of the most prominent indicators of its deep structural transformation.
Keywords: musical amateurism, choral performance, socialist Yugoslavia, cultural diplomacy, Beogradski madrigalisti choir, professionalisation
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Bogumiła Mika – MUSIC OF KAROL SZYMANOWSKI IN THE INTERTEXTUAL DIALOGUE
Abstract: In this paper I delineate how two aspects of the music of Karol Szymanowski – subjective and objective – enter into intertextual dialogue with other musical pieces. The subjective aspect of intertextual dialogue is defined as Szymanowski’s use in his own music of fragments of the works of various composers and of folk music. The objective aspect of intertextual dialogue is defined as citations from or allusions to Szymanowski’s work by other Polish composers. The problem of intertextuality in music remains important when considering participation of a single musical work in ‘the world of musical art’ in general, as well as in the world of common human experience.
Keywords: Karol Szymanowski, intertextuality, quotations, borrowing, references, stylisation
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Interpretations

Geraldine Finn – PANIC AT THE PROMS (perhaps the explanation lies in his background)
Abstract: This paper has been written as both a celebration of the music of Harrison Birtwistle – “the most forceful and uncompromisingly original British composer of his generation” according to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians – and as a response, at once playful and polemic, to the critics and commentators who struggle to name, claim, frame and contain it within the familiar categories and tropes of contemporary music interpretation. My particular focus is Panic which is exemplary in this respect and what Birtwistle cognoscendi have a habit of referring to as ‘his background’ to ‘explain’ the idiosyncratic difficulty and difference of his work, as in the quotation cited as my subtitle.
Keywords: Birtwistle, background, jingoism, panic, Proms
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Tribute to prof. Dr. Roksanda Pejović

Ivana Perković – NARRATIVE MONOLOGUE AND (INTERNAL) DIALOGUE: IN MEMORY OF ROKSANDA PEJOVIĆ (1929–2018)
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Katarina Tomašević – A FAREWELL TO AJA: FRAGMENTS OF MEMORIES
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New Works

Bojana Radovanović – WHAT DOES THE HUMMING AVATAR REMEMBER? COMPOSER’S VOICE AND MEMORY IN ANA GNJATOVIĆ’S PHONATIONS
Abstract: Written as a two-fold dissertation on Ph.D. studies of composition at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade, which consists of the piece and the autopoetic text, Ana Gnjatović’s Phonations for voice and electronics (2016), raises, among others, questions of performance of music for voice and electronics, as well as issues of the composer’s/performer’s voice, and the topic of (musical) memory. Focusing on these problem points, this paper deals with Ana Gnjatović’s ‘vocal identity’, represented and performed in the layering sounds of voice and electronics, with Edward T. Cone’s notion of ‘composer’s voice’ in mind.
Keywords: Phonations, Ana Gnjatović, composer’s voice, electrovocal music, performance
Sound example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgbJ7s-f8i4
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Olga Otašević – ‘HARMONY OF THE SPHERES’ IN THE MUSICAL ‘VITRAGE’ OF THE THIRTEEN-STAR FLOWER OF CASSIOPEIA: MICROAND MACRO-MANIPULATION WITH TIME AND SPACE
Abstract: This paper deals with an analysis of the phantasy for orchestra Trinaestozvezdani cvet Kasiopeje [The Thirteen-star Flower of Cassiopeia] by Vladimir Trmčić (1983). Special attention is paid to the motivic analysis of the work and general aesthetical premises of the program, which influenced the formation of the musical flow. The static nature, sustained tones and micropolyphony enable the composer to experiment with time, space, intervals, timbres, resulting in music with an immanent logic guided by the movement of energy masses.
Keywords: Vladimir Trmčić, symphonic phantasy, music time, music space, cluster
Sound example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKBa4wqrI-s
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Analytical Perspectives

Dragan Latinčić – POSSIBLE PRINCIPLES OF MATHEMATICAL MUSIC ANALYSIS
Abstract: The text is a summary of many years of research in the domains of micro-intervals, metric-rhythmic projection of the spectrum harmonics, and the establishment of a link with mathematics, more precisely, geometry, with a special focus on the application of the Pythagorean Theorem. Mathematical music analysis enables the establishment of methods for constructing right, obtuse, and acute musical triangles as well as projections of their edges (sides), which are recognized in trigonometry as the functions of angles: the sine, cosine, and so on; as well as the establishment of methods for constructing spectral and scalar (intonative-temporal) trigonometric unit circles with their function graphs.
Keywords: Aristoxenus of Tarentum, Johannes Kepler, lambdoma, micro-intervals, Pythagoras, planimetrics, rhythm, spectrum, trigonometry, triangle
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Research and Tradition

Sonja Marinković – THE 80TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FACULTY OF MUSIC IN BELGRADE
Abstract: The text sheds light on the activities of the Faculty of Music (est. 1937), Serbia’s oldest institution of higher education in the field of music pedagogy. The aim is to present the context in which the institution developed, changes in the structure of its study programmes, to illuminate the dilemmas it had to negotiate while building a particular approach to higher education in the domain of art and the study of art, focusing on the institution’s development over the last 30 years or so.
Keywords: Music Academy / Faculty of Music in Belgrade, music pedagogy, higher education, jubilee, Serbian music
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Reviews

Ana Kotevska – Marija Bergamo, Muzikološke sledi ob osemdesetletnici (Musicological Traces at Eighty), Ljubljana: Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete, 2017, 343 pp. ISBN 978-961-237-955-1
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Sonja Cvetković – Katarina Tomašević (ed.), Davorin Jenko (1835–1914). Prilozi za kulturu sećanja / Prispevki za kulturo spomina [Contributions to Cultural Remembrance], Belgrade: Institute of Musicology of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, National Council of the Slovenian National Minority in the Republic of Serbia, 2016
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Radoš Mitrović – Nada Kolundžija, Breathing in / Breathing Out: A Little Anthology of Piano Music (1914–2014), Ivana Miladinović Prica (ed.), Belgrade: Vertical Jazz, 2017, 3Cds, 207 pp. ISBN 978-86-86037-17-6
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: ser / eng

Defended Doctoral Thesis

Radoš Mitrović – THE END OF POSTMODERNITY IN EUROPEAN MUSIC AND ITS DEPENDENCE ON SOCIOPOLITICAL AND ARTISTIC CONTEXT
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Milan Milojković – DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY IN SERBIAN ARTISTIC MUSICAL OUTPUT (1972–2010)
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