Musicologica Brunensia (Jun 2019)
Civilist tendencies in the inter-war Czech music : at the beginning of a research
Abstract
The study deals with "civilist" [civilistní] tendencies in music and musical culture of the interwar Czechoslovakia. The "civilism" [civilismus] in literature had its parallels in other areas of Czech artistic production too, especially in visual arts, and later – after the First World War – also in classical music. Since the culture of the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938), being seen in its entirety, appears to be saturated with various reflections of modernity (either real modernity or imagined), the term "civilist" makes sense only when it refers to such works of art that unilaterally focus on representing the typical civilizational and civil moments and realities of the 1920s and 30s: sports, physical education and other leisure activities, jazz, tango and popular musical culture in general, attributes of the metropolitan environment, technical devices, machinery, cars, motorcycles, klaxons, airplanes, film, cabaret, circus, bar and cocktails, and various aspects of everyday urban life. Although the civilist tendencies represent a crucial and typical phenomenon of Czech music and musical culture of the inter-war period, musicology has reflected them only very little and has not approached them as a particular research problem so far. The present study proposes hypotheses and methodology for a future research on musical civilism, gives an overview of contemporary discourse about musical civilism, and presents the most important musical works and topics which the future research should focus on.
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