“Different New Music in Yugoslavia”: The Earliest Minimalist Manifestations

Laura Emmery; Ivana Miladinović Prica

doi:10.25038/am.v0i28.566

Authors

Laura Emmery Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America
Ivana Miladinović Prica Faculty of Music, University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i28.566

Keywords:

Yugoslav experimental music; Yugoslav minimalist music; Yugoslav neo-avant-garde; conceptual music; Opus 4; Ensemble for Different New Music; Student Cultural Center in Belgrade (SKC); music festivals.

Abstract

Some of Yugoslavia’s most radical musical manifestations unfolded during the 1970s and 1980s. Aided by postwar Yugoslav cultural programs, the iconic Student Cultural Center (SKC) in Belgrade – a student-managed “safe space” for free expression and creativity – opened its doors in 1971 and instantly became a magnet for experimental musicians throughout the Western and Eastern Blocs. A group of rebellious composers and performers – Opus 4 and the Ensemble for Different New Music made some of the largest strides in Yugoslav music history and defined a new era of avant-garde and a unique brand of minimalism, influenced by performance and conceptual art, Cage-style experimentalism, Fluxus, and the use of multimedia. This study briefly illustrates their robust vision that connected the East with the West in a fruitful exchange of ideas, despite the geo-political division of the world at the time.

Author Biographies

Laura Emmery, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America

Laura Emmery is Associate Professor of Music Theory at the Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia (USA). She is the author of Elliott Carter’s String Quartet No. 1: Myths, Narratives, and Cold War Cultural Diplomacy (Cambridge University Press, 2024), The Origins of Yugoslav Musical Minimalism (UK Parobrod, 2024), Elliott Carter Speaks: Unpublished Lectures (University of Illinois Press, 2022) and Compositional Process in Elliott Carter’s String Quartets: A Study in Sketches (Routledge, 2020). Her current research examines political, social, and cultural events that led to the momentous avant-garde and experimental music scene in Yugoslavia, from 1945 until 1991 – ending with the year when all artistic activities came to a sudden halt with the start of the Yugoslav civil wars. Her research follows the emergence of a Yugoslav post Second World War cultural program that turned the country into a magnet for experimental musicians and artists from the Western and Eastern Blocs, which was then followed by a sudden and violent dissolution of that program with the collapse of the political state.

Ivana Miladinović Prica, Faculty of Music, University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia

Ivana Miladinović Prica is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the School of Music of the University of Arts in Belgrade (Serbia). Her research in contemporary music focuses on neo-avant-garde and experimental practices in American, European, and Serbian music. She is the author of The Origins of Yugoslav Musical Minimalism (UK Parobrod, 2024), Od buke do tišine: poetika ranog stvaralaštva Džona Kejdža [From Noise to Silence: The Poetics of John Cage’s Early Work] (Faculty of Music in Belgrade, 2011). She has also published numerous articles in journals such as Contemporary Music Review, New Sound, Tacet, and Glissando. Her current research explores the institutionalization and dissemination of musical experimentalism in Yugoslavia, specifically within the context of the Cold War cultural diplomacy, drawing parallels between Yugoslav, European, and American experimental and minimalist music.

References

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“Different New Music in Yugoslavia”: The Earliest Minimalist Manifestations

Authors

DOI:

Keywords:

Abstract

Author Biographies

Laura Emmery, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America

Ivana Miladinović Prica, Faculty of Music, University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia

References

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