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Copyright

Jelena Janković-Beguš

Published On

2024-10-09

Page Range

pp. 71–90

Language

  • English

Print Length

20 pages

4. Debating the Noise

The Reception of Iannis Xenakis’s Music in Serbia as a Part of the SFRY (1960–90)

Chapter of: Meta-Xenakis: New Perspectives on Iannis Xenakis’s Life, Work, and Legacies(pp. 71–90)
I examine the reception of Xenakis's music in Serbia and its capital city of Belgrade, during the period when this republic was a constituent of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). The critical texts which are examined here encompass a period of nearly three decades, from the early 1960s until the end of the 1980s. This timeframe was chosen because the beginning of the 1990s marked the onset of dissolution of the SFR Yugoslavia and a profound change in the cultural landscape in Serbia. Generally speaking, the musical establishment in post-WWII Serbia failed to develop a particular liking to avant-garde music, even at the period of its greatest flourishing in Western European countries. Serialism, in particular, was never really accepted by the vast majority of Serbian composers, while the compositional techniques of the so-called ‘Polish School’ were assimilated to a certain extent, although they were usually combined with other, more traditional approaches to music composition. Serbian composers’ mistrust of the avant-garde was a reflection of the overall artistic climate in Belgrade which was much more inclined towards syntheses of the past and the future than towards radical denial of the past in favor of the future.
These overall standpoints of the Serbian musical establishment in the second-half of the 20th Century can be observed in the critical thought of the time, and they are clearly visible in the attitudes towards the music of Iannis Xenakis. While Xenakis himself did not actually belong to any of the predominant currents of the European avant-garde music (serial, aleatoric), nor was he close to the American experimental current (represented by John Cage and his followers), he was nevertheless perceived in Belgrade as the exemplary European avant-garde composer. Hence, the reception of his music in Serbia was for a long time largely negative, with more favorable opinions about his music expressed only from the 1980s onwards.

Contributors

Jelena Janković-Beguš

(author)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3208-0124

Jelena Janković-Beguš has been active as a researcher in the fields of musicology and cultural policy in Europe for more than twenty years, having published over thirty original scientific studies in journals and collective monographs in Serbia and abroad. She obtained her PhD degree from the Faculty of Music in Belgrade, Department of Musicology in 2022. She has edited and co-edited a number of publications of various genres. Apart from her scientific work, Janković-Beguš is an experienced cultural manager, having worked in the field of classical music production and promotion since 2002. In this field, she pursued postgraduate studies of Cultural Policy and Management at the UNESCO Chair of the University of Arts in Belgrade where she obtained a Master’s degree in 2006 (joint diploma with the Université Lumière—Lyon 2, France). In 2010 she obtained a professional MA degree in the field of Management of Cultural Organizations from the Université Paris Dauphine PSL, France, where she studied as a recipient of a French Government scholarship. She is a Program Manager of the Belgrade Festival Center (CEBEF) and producer of the Belgrade Music Festival (BEMUS), and she is also active as an Expert of the European Commission for Creative Europe and Horizon Europe programs.