Българският музикален съюз: първата национална музикална организация
The Bulgarian Musical Union: The First National Musical Organization

Summary/Abstract: The main goal of the article is to present important highlights of the history and development of the Bulgarian Musical Union. Until now, there have been completely missing information fields, and thus the present exposition is a step forward in the direction of “filling them in”. The prerequisites for the creation of a national musicians’ organization are examined, a periodization of the Union’s activity is proposed, and congress activities and decisions are briefly presented. The paper clarifies some discrepancies in data relating to the history of the Union present in earlier musicological sources. It also focuses on the leading ideas that are in fact the driving force of the Bulgarian Musical Union and which have not been the subject of research interest so far. Their deeper analysis helps to complete the notion of the musical attitudes of this period as well as the specifics in the development of Bulgarian music. Important results achieved by the Bulgarian Musical Union have been indicated, along with their influence on musical life in Bulgaria. The study of the activity of the Bulgarian Musical Union has been part of the current trend over the last three decades towards a new reading of the period from the end of the 19th to the first half of the 20th century. The activation of this process is mainly due to the failure (after 1944) to comprehend the musical phenomena of the previous decades resulting from the imposition of ideological dogmas and censorship on scholarly thought. From the viewpoint of modernity, the existing distance enables new research perspectives.

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