Music-theoretical writings of Vlastimir Trajković as a reflection of his advocating for a new recognition of Serbian art music

Abstract

In this paper I analyse selected articles by the composer and academician Vlastimir Trajković (1947-2017), published in various collective monographs and journals over the period of nearly three decades (1982-2008). These writings emphasise Trajković’s constant urging for a fairer (from his point of view) evaluation of Serbian art music in a wider, European and global context, but also within the state/national frameworks. Trajković aimed to prove that Serbian art music, as well as writings on music, would have enjoyed a wider recognition, had certain of their top achievements not been left forgotten and unpublished, and thus unavailable to potential researchers and performers. That is why he pleaded for the improvement of sheet music publishing in the country, as well as for the targeted promotion of Serbian art music repertoire. Moreover, he insisted on the proximity of the Belgrade ’cultural climate’ in the interwar period with the artistic and scholarly tendencies in France and its ’zones of influence’ in the same period. Consequently, Trajković particularly insists on the new evaluation of the opuses of the composers and musicologists Miloje Milojević (1884-1946) and Dragutin Gostuški (1923-1998) - whom he saw as those creative and intellectual individuals who had fallen victims to the ’historical injustice’ and whose (re)positioning within the Serbian music culture would increase the relevance of that same culture both in the national and international contexts.

Keywords

• miloje milojević
• dragutin gostuški
• impressionism
• claude debussy
• manuel de falla
• reduction
• antiromanticism