Continuities and Discontinuities in Serbian Music, 1930-1950
Continuities and Discontinuities in Serbian Music, 1930-1950

Summary/Abstract: Like in the other state communist countries, in Serbia (then in the frame of Yugoslavia) a discontinuity was created between the pre- and post-WW2 composed music. The imposed doctrine of Socialist realism didn’t affect all active composers in the same way; generally speaking, those having been more modernistic oriented before the war experienced more difficulties to adapt to the new ideological precepts. Socialist realism however didn’t appear completely unprepared in Serbia because in pre-war times there had been attempts, however rare, to follow the Soviet Party line in the field of music composition. So a quite weak continuity could be discerned between the works of composers who were communists before the war, such as Vojislav Vučković (1910-1942), who after having composed several modernist works influenced by the ideas of Arnold Schoenberg and Alois Hába, began to simplify his idiom and introduced socially critical themes. The majority of Serbian composers were however confused as to the ways of implementing the new rulers’ demands. The relative shortness of the Socialist realist period – approximately four-five years, followed by several more years of its gradual diminishing of importance due to the political U-turn of 1948-1949 – was to blame for the great majority of the Serbian composers having been unprepared for the reception of the post-war international avant-garde music, at the time when it became acceptable to join the current Western trends (around 1960). So, it could be claimed that although Socialist realism served as a bridge between the pre- and post-war Serbian music, it also proved to be a serious cause of discontinuity in the development of the national music, whose effects took more than two decades (until around 1965) to be overcome.

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