Macedonian Composition School – Yes or No?

/, Blesok no. 08, Sound/Macedonian Composition School – Yes or No?

Macedonian Composition School – Yes or No?

Another important reason that impales the emphasized appearance of the general in the Macedonian composition school is the historical esthetic moment in which it was created and develops.
In the European music of the XX century, the tendency of individualization in the choice of composer’s means, which has begun in the XIX c. in the romanticism, is continued. The ends of this individualization are placed with the appearance of many opposite and distant esthetical positions and their modifications that are reflected in the opposed and sound specific systems. All the pluralism looks as an impediment in the interpretation of the general music style of the era, but the paradox is that exactly in the pluralism the sound of easily recognizable stylistic uniqueness of the XX century is hidden. The individual principle is more superior to the general, united, in our century also in the two recognized directions, schools and individual works, it is not always easy, but also is not impossible to draw a line of the general, united, common.
As a reminder:
The professional composing tradition in Macedonia is one of the youngest in Europe. Its beginnings mark the appearance of the works in the national history of music or the header of the national revival A. Badev, Macedonian composer, and pedagogue and music worker from the end of the XIX century.
The historical conditions in which the Macedonian professional work was born, and developed, are very much like the conditions of development of the professional composer traditions of some of the eastern republics of the Ex USSR, or for example, the neighboring Albania. They are: growth of the national consciousness, the struggle for liberation from the national country, creation of conditions for free economic, scientific field of music: the inherited, very rich folk traditions, the process of progressive adoption of the professional European music traditions (brought by rare domestic or foreign schooled musicians) and their cooperation with the national expressed in the pioneer composer attempts, the period of creation of the national interpreting “infrastructure” – amateur and later professional choirs, orchestras, opera groups; the appearance of professional composers whose schooling has been created in places with longer professional music tradition; which results in announcing the end of the fore history and the beginning of the history of the national composer practice to appear with the first bigger works for orchestra, cantata-oratorio, and opera.
Like the representatives of the above mentioned young composition school, the Macedonian composers have chosen to adopt the European professional music tradition as a base for their own, individual works. This choice led them to the big European music centers of learning of the composing mastership. Petersburg and Moscow have opened their spiritual doors not only to the literature writers but also to the composers; in the period between 20s and 60s years of our era many authors are studding in the highschools and universities in Belgrade and they are the founders of the national choir, orchestra, ballet tradition’ in the period after the World War II, Ljubljana and Zagreb have very important place, also the study stays in Petersburg, Paris, Prague, Darmstadt are very important. Coming back to the homeland from many sides, the composers have brought and practiced the norms of the harmonic and polyphonic forms, instruments, vocal, instrumental and vocal-instrumental forms and genres, composing means of expression typical for the centers of the European music in which they have been schooled. By this, the Macedonian composers have done that to which the Macedonian State aims now, or, in other words, have become a part of Europe.
Nevertheless, this does not mean that by the adoption of the European traditions the national ones are put aside, as in much printed matter is supposed.
Already mentioned scientist in his book “The style in the music reminds us that in the approach to the problem of the national historic category which is in a continuous process of development and adoption of new levels of individualism is taken as an initiative. In the music culture as one of its most representative attributes, this process is reflected in the mutual traditions, and according to the one or the other mutual influence-appearance of new levels of national tradition.
According to this, the individual composing works, created and influenced by the given historical period of development of the national culture, inevitably includes some level of connection, on one side, with the national folklore (both the country and the town tradition) and the national professional works, and on the other side the influence from abroad.6F
The development of the Macedonian music works in different historic periods was exposed on strong influences of both eastern and western music traditions. In the oldest folk tradition, especially of the town-with the period of the Turkish reign, the adaptation of the “oriental” instruments, genres, the revival in the XIX century again the same town folk tradition, the influence of the western professional music is strong and it is reflected in the use of harmony, the string instruments of western kind, widening of the size of the melodies. The Macedonian spiritual music has influence on a great number of various and historically more distant music traditions. The famous Macedonian medieval Ph. D. S. Golabovski, proposes his periodisation of the Macedonian spiritual music, beginning from the periods of the antic, Byzantium, Oriental and Western influences.
The Macedonian professional works (the youngest music tradition) in the beginning has been formed under the influence of the Russian choral spiritual tradition of he XIX century of its generic, structural and stylistic characteristics, adapting the high composer’s norms on the abilities of the already created Macedonian amateur choirs. Between the Macedonian composers filtrated through the Composition school and the performing abilities of the capital of the monarchist Yugoslavia. The works of S. Mokranjac are very strong, whose “Rukoveti” has probably been the source for T. Prokopiev to write his “Girls from Kumanovo”… By the way, the same Mokranjac is under strong influence of the Macedonian folk song to which he turns many times, by which he proves once more the implementation the folk traditions of given nation, which not always mean inclusion in the Composition School of that nation.
After the World War II, with the establishing of the institutions and the groups of the professional music culture, and by the rapid increase of the media abilities for communication with the European music flows, has also brought a rapid increase in the variety, size, forms and the intensity of various influences of Petersburg composer’s school (M. Mussorgsky, I. Stravinsky, D. Shostakovich); the works, the esthetical attitudes and composer’s technique of B. Bartok; the achievements of the contemporary Polish composition school (W. Lutoslavsky, C. Penderetzky); the liberalism of contemporary French music; the Darmstadt seminars, the jazz.
Thanks to these mutual influences of the national music traditions, with the traditions of other musical nations and cultures, the music bands have appeared, the city string orchestras, the choirs and choral music, the national, solo, chamber, symphonic music, the national opera and ballet have appeared which had plots from the folk tales, events and personalities from the Macedonian history; the Macedonian music culture has been closely connected with life, the ideas, interests, needs, with the spiritual atmosphere of the Macedonian country, new levels of Macedonian music have appeared.
The Macedonian composition school has gone through the road of folk songs, the road of citing of folk themes and the road of creation of a folk spirit; by the symphony of the national prototype “Teškoto” (the Hard Dance) has rounded a kind of a national genre; created national opera; uses composer’s techniques which are in agreement with the folklore and the flows in the music of the XX century. It has gone through the period of the national romanticism in a specific, slouched form, succeeding to make an own system of music expression, but, at the same time not declining into stylistic anachronisms to express (reflect) the spiritual flows of its time.

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6. ibid p.226

AuthorGoce Kolarovski
2018-08-21T17:23:59+00:00 April 1st, 1999|Categories: Reviews, Blesok no. 08, Sound|0 Comments