Niš Music Festival and avant-garde music: case studies. Concert of the Radio Belgrade Electronic Studio and "John Cage's evening"

Abstract

In the period of domination of socialist realism and moderate modernism, which meant for the Serbian post-war musical creativity isolation from the European and world trends of musical avant-garde, during the sixties and seventies of the twentieth century music of the Serbian and Yugoslav composers of the younger generation becomes more open to a new sound concepts of serialism, aleatory, electronic media and minimalism.  A radical break with tradition and changes in almost all aspects of the new music – aesthetics, notation, sound realization – made difficult to establish a clear criteria for its evaluation and therefore, the general reception of the most actual tendencies. Beside two institutional musical places where the contemporary world and national music was performed and promoted – International Music Biennale Zagreb, founded in 1961 and annual Review of Yugoslav Music in Opatija, founded in 1964 (since 1979 under the name Review of Musical Creativity of Yugoslavia), concert and festival stages in the leading musical centers in former Yugoslavia have shown considerable restraint to the contemporary music. In the case of the reception of electro-acoustic compositions created in the Radio Belgrade Electronic Studio and John Cage’s sonatas for prepared piano that were performed at the Niš (October) Music Festival during the eighties of the 20^th century, the paper discusses about the representation of avant-garde music at this manifestation and openness of the local public towards the contemporary compositional streams. At the concert held in 1981 in the hall of the Niš Symphony Orchestra were presented the latest achievements of the composers Miloš Petrović (Anton with or without Webern, 1981), Paul Pignon (Cartoon, 1980), Janez Matičič (Fusions, 1979), Vladan Radovanović (Audiospacial, 1975–78) and Dragoslav Ortakov (Eleorp, 1976) realized in the Radio Belgrade Electronic Studio founded in 1971. Serbian pianist Nada Kolundžija performed in 1986 at the XII October Music Festival „John Cage’s Evening“ with sonatas for prepared piano. These concerts were the rare examples of avant-garde excesses at the October Music Festival during the 1980s, and therefore they could not significantly influence at the expansion of receptive aspects of the audience. Her confusion and restraint can be interpreted as the expected reactions in a meeting with the new sound, which, equally uninformed music criticis, tried to explain and estimate in an aestetic view from the sphere of traditional music experience.