Serbian musical criticism and essay writings during the XIXth and the first half of the XXth century as a subject of musicology research
Authors: Vasic Aleksandar 
Published: November 2009

The beginning of 2006 marked two decades since the death of Stana Djuric-Klajn, the first historian of Serbian musical literature. This is the exterior motive for presenting a summary of the state and results of up-to-date musicology research into Serbian musical criticism and essay writings during the XIXth and the first half of the XXth century, alongside the many works dedicated to this branch of national musical history, recently published. In this way the reader is given a detailed background of these studies ? mainly the authors' names, books, studies, articles, as well as the problems of this branch of Serbian musicology. The first research is associated with the early years of the XXth century, that is, to the work of bibliography. The pioneer of Serbian ethnomusicology, Vladimir R. Djordjevic composed An Essay of the Serbian Musical Bibliography until 1914, noting selected XIXth century examples of Serbian literature on music. Bibliographic research was continued by various institutions and experts during the second half of the XXth century: in Zagreb (today Republic of Croatia); the Yugoslav Institute for Lexicography, Novi Sad (Matica srpska); and Belgrade (Institute for Literature and Art, Slobodan Turlakov, Ljubica Djordjevic, Stanisa Vojinovic etc). In spite of the efforts of these institutions and individuals, a complete analytic bibliography of music in Serbian print of the last two centuries has unfortunately still not been made. The most important contributions to historical research, interpretation and validation of Serbian musical criticism and essay writings were given by Stana Djuric-Klajn, Dr Roksanda Pejovic and Dr Slobodan Turlakov. Professor Stana Djuric-Klajn was the first Serbian musicologist to work in this field of Serbian music history. She wrote a significant number of studies and articles dedicated to Serbian musical writers and published their selected readings. Prof. Klajn is the author and editor of the first and only anthology of Serbian musical essay writings. Her student Roksanda Pejovic published two books (along with numerous other factually abundant contributions), where she synthetically presented the history of Serbian criticism and essay writings from 1825 to 1941. Slobodan Turlakov, an expert in Serbian criticism between the World Wars, meritorious researcher and original interpreter, especially examined the reception of music of great European composers (W. A. Mozart, L. v. Beethoven, F. Chopin, G. Verdi, G. Puccini etc) by Serbian musical critics. Serbian musical criticism and essay writings were also the focus of attention of many other writers. The work quotes comments and additions of other musicologists, but also historians of theatre, literature and art philosophers, aestheticians, sociologists, all members of different generations, who worked or still work on the history of the Serbian musical criticism and essay writings. The closing section of the text suggests directions for future research. Firstly, it is necessary to begin integral bibliographical research of texts about music published in our press during the cited period. That is a project of capital significance for national science and culture; realization needs adequate funding, the involvement of many academic experts, and time. Work on bibliography will also enable the collection and publication of sources: books and articles by Serbian music writers who worked before 1945. A separate problem is education of scholars. To study musical literature, a musicologist needs to be knowledgeable about the history of Serbian literature, aesthetic theory, and theatre, national social, political and cultural history, and methodology of literary study. That is why facilities for postgraduate and doctorial studies in musicology are necessary at the Faculties of Philology and Philosophy.